The Girl in the Road (10 page)

I stayed on the truck. When you came back from the market, you were carrying a blue plastic bag. You pulled out a notebook and on the front was a picture of an albino woman in a pink dress with a big red dot on her forehead.

You like it? you asked me.

I nodded. I hugged it to my chest. Thank you, I said.

Well, don't just hold it, you said. This is for learning your letters. Here, use this to write.

You handed me a sparkle pen. It was like receiving treasure.

You sat down across from me and opened the book for me. There was the same cartoon character on the margin of each page, but the rest of the page was blank.

Francis swung up to join us as the engines started rumbling.

So lessons have begun? he said. Which language will you teach her?

Wolof won't do her any good in Ethiopia. Neither will French or Arabic.

She speaks Arabic, though. So it might be a good place to start sounding things out.

Maybe. The most useful language for Ethiopia proper would be Amharic, but I don't know Amharic.

I could teach her Amharic.

I wish you could teach her Mandarin or Hindi. I don't know either. Mariama, would you like to learn English instead?

I nodded, not knowing the difference between any of these languages.

All right, Francis, I'll teach her English and you teach her Amharic.

Francis bowed and flourished his hand in a way that made you roll your eyes.

Ae.

Bee.

See.

Dee.

Eee.

I pranced from one end of the truck to the other, reciting my English alphabet, until you told me to stop and recite it quietly to myself in a corner.

Ha.

Hu.

He.

Ha.

Hey.

Amharic was much harder because there were ten times as many letters to memorize! Francis showed me that all the symbols followed a pattern, and that made it a little easier, but still, it was overwhelming at first.

You told me that when I could recite each alphabet without making a mistake, you would have a surprise for me. You lent me a slender metal bar that clipped onto my dress, and it came with little plastic pearls to put in my ears, and when I pushed a button I heard a woman's voice reciting either alphabet I chose. Of course later I knew what all these things were, Yemaya—a sirius and ear buds—but at the time, it was so new to me. You had amazing treasures in every pocket of your bag. I was sorely tempted to go rooting through it when you weren't looking, just to see what else was in there.

It took me one day to recite the English alphabet without making a mistake. But it took me three days to recite the Amharic alphabet. We had plenty of time because in addition to our load-ins and load-offs, the trucks kept having things wrong with them. There were many breakdowns and necessary repairs. Sometimes we were stuck in the desert for hours while Muhammed or one of his other helpers flagged down a utility vehicle headed for the nearest town to bring back a mechanic in case we couldn't fix something ourselves. And then there was the bureaucracy! Once we stopped at a checkpoint and some men came to tally our cargo, and they looked so strange I screamed. You told me to be quiet, but one of the men indicated it was all right. He said something to you, and you translated to me: He's asking if you've ever seen a Chinese man before. I said no, I hadn't. He smiled and waved at me. He pointed to himself and said, Soon. I pointed to myself and said, Mariama. He was trying to be friendly and I was friendly back. But secretly I felt terrible for him, having to go around looking like that.

Francis told me not to worry about all the stopping, but I could see he was frustrated. That made me frustrated too, and the kreen stirred in my chest. I asked Francis why the police kept stopping us, and he told me that Malians were always scared about attacks from Azawad, to the north.

Why do they attack?

Because they're angry.

Why are they angry?

Mali's not letting them go.

Why don't they let them go?

I don't know. I say cut the bastards loose and let them have their own country, but what do I know? Ethiopia let Eritrea go thirty years ago and we still hate each other.

Then you spoke, Yemaya. You said, It's because of energy.

What's because of energy? said Francis.

Why they won't let them go. The Malian government knows about the oil fields in the north, but they can't tell anyone about it because the Chinese won't let them.

Francis looked hard at you. How do you know that? he asked.

You looked down at your lap and said, I have
connections,
overarticulating the word as if making a mockery of it.

Well, said Francis, making light again after the silence, You can sell that information to the Indian government when you get to Ethiopia! No doubt they'll be very glad to have it and you'll be a rich woman.

I don't want to be rich, you said.

I thought of Doctor Moctar Brahim's gold teeth and jumped in and said, Me neither. Rich people have to get chips, and I didn't get one, and that's how I got away.

You said, Lucky you.

But I couldn't tell whether you were joking or not.

At the next town we reached, you told me to stay on the truck and you'd come back with my surprise. I sat in the exact same place you left me in with my hands folded in my lap. You came back a half hour later, this time holding a pink plastic bag.

Indian sweets, you said. I didn't know whether they'd have them or not, but they did. Would you like to try one?

I nodded.

You handed me something that looked like a ball of desert sand.

What is this?

A ladoo, you said. They're best when they're fresh, but these are the prepackaged kind you find in the Sahel.

I took a tiny bite. The dusty-honey taste was overpowering.

Too much, huh? you said. Keep it. You'll get used to it and I bet you'll be wanting more in about five minutes.

You were right. I ate the whole rest of it and then wanted more. You gave me another one, and watched me eat it.

So. You're from Nouakchott? you asked.

I nodded.

What do you know about Ethiopia?

That they speak Amharic there. That it's on the other side of the country.

The continent, Mariama, not the country. It's on the other side of the continent of Africa.

I nodded.

Where is your mother?

I don't have one.

And I'm a warthog, you said.

I giggled.

You said, You must be an orphan.

I disliked the way you said the word, so instead I asked, Why are
you
going to Ethiopia?

You shrugged and made your voice sound casual. Needed to get out of Dakar, always wanted to see Addis for myself, you said. The music, the dance, the culture. And they make beautiful clothing there. When we come to the market in Lalibela I'll show you the cotton dresses. They're white but they have bright-colored crosses, like you see in stained glass windows. Have you ever been to a Christian church?

What is that? I said.

You laughed. Good little Muslim, you said.

But I didn't get the joke. What a bitter education it was, all these adults telling me what I was and wasn't! Black, not Moorish; Hassaniyya-speaking, not French-speaking; Muslim, not Christian. That I Must Be an Orphan. The kreen was rustling in my flesh like a bird taking a dust bath.

I asked for another ladoo but you said no.

You knew what was best for me, Yemaya. I was greedy even then.

We were in true desert now, so it was cooler at night than it had been before. There was a new moon so it was pitch-black, aside from the starlight. You and I had been sleeping on our sides facing away from each other. But that night, after a few minutes of both of us shivering, you told me to come close. You said we could keep each other warm with our bodies. So I stayed still and let you hug me like a pillow, with one arm thrown over me and the other under me, the inside of your elbow a warm, clammy spot to rest my cheek. I could hardly breathe for being so close to you, mashed up, skin-to-skin. But then I let myself breathe back into you, and feel you breathe forward into me. And for the first time, the kreen was totally quiet. Like a burn soothed with ointment. I felt calm and safe.

I mouthed the word
Yemaya, Yemaya, Yemaya
to myself. It seemed a better word than
saha,
the word I'd first used to calm myself. I could no longer remember where it had come from—somewhere remote—but I knew where
Yemaya
came from. It came from you, the person holding me, and you were real and warm.

The memory has a solid component, of coolness on my cheek: I was leaning in the doorway because though my mother called me in to her study, she didn't notice me at first, so I lingered there.

She asked me to sit down in the chair she kept for patients. I did. Then she told me that she was not really my mother.

Is Appa my father? I asked.

No, she said. I'm sorry, Meena. Appa is really your Muthashan, and I am really your Muthashi. But you are still our family, our granddaughter. We will raise you faithfully.

I wagged my head. I didn't want to know a single thing more.

Do you want to know what happened to your parents? this formerly-Amma, now-Muthashi asked.

I said yes because I was still scared of her.

She gestured that I come forward and sit next to her, behind the desk. She told me to bring the chair closer so that I could see the file folder on the top of her desk. She'd planned and prepared for this day. She opened the folder and gave me a printout from the
Times.
“Indian Lovers Butchered in Addis Ababa.”

Lovers, I said to myself.

They were not married, she said, as if that were the most important thing. They were both medical students. But there was a big election happening and the atmosphere for Indians in Ethiopia was very bad. Their maid was a secret rebel who wanted them out. She killed Gabriel and his girlfriend, and then she escaped, and the Ethiopian police didn't bother to go after her. You were three months premature. No one even knew your mother was pregnant. She was a shapely woman and hid it well. But the murders took place in an Indian hospital, so the Indian nurses found you and got you medical attention right away. It was a miracle you survived. You wanted to live very badly.

Gabriel, I said to myself.

Gabriel is your father, and my only son, she said. Would you like to see a picture of him?

She didn't wait for me to answer. She opened a desk drawer and handed me a framed picture of a young man. He was running backward, wearing a red cricket jersey, smiling as bright as the sun. He was extraordinarily beautiful. He had long wavy hair, golden skin, and bright lotus eyes. He looked like a prince from my
Children's Illustrated Mahabharata.

As you can see, he was very handsome, she said, as if explaining an anatomical chart. He was studying to be—

I threw the picture against the wall. Then I was running away from that woman, who was now standing and screaming at me.

I ran outside, through the courtyard and down to the river beneath the banana palms where the quail was singing her winding spiral song, waterspouts that were spent as soon as formed. I summoned to mind a long knife, a kilometer long, with a blade so subtle that its edge began long before it was visible. It was only an atom thick so that it began to separate matter, invisibly, long before it cut. And it could cut anything. Coconut palms, silken saris, fruit stands, the metal of trains, and people. Everything would be halved.

I closed my eyes and turned in a slow circle.

The pain wakes me up. I'm rocking back and forth with my cheek on a cool surface. I feel like I got sucked down a wormhole of sleep and then spit up again. The snakebites in my chest feel like the tips of five skewers, rotating.

I see light to one side. I turn my head. My vision aligns. It's a beautiful ring of orange stars. That triggers the cascade of locus et tempus: it's late night, I'm on the Trail, I'm looking at Marine Drive from two hundred meters away, and I'm injured. No more euphoria. I'm in Phase Two of this journey now.

I rise to my hands and knees and all my muscles tingle. Eight scales so far. That means I've come eight meters. I can try another eight and then see how I feel.

I make it three more before I throw up.

I retreat from the vomit. I wait politely and let the seawater slosh it off. I examine my finger, which is swelling and stiff to the touch, but not broken. I might take anti-inflammatories when I get a bit farther.

I cover two more. It's getting harder to see the outlines of the scales and perceive depth accurately. I have visions of myself as a cat.

I miscalculate and hit my chin again. I'm pretty sure the skin's come clear off this time because I can feel a liquid trickle down my throat.

I scramble forward in a fresh burst of energy. As a result I hit my knee so hard I get an instant headache.

I take a rest.

I give myself permission to go very slowly and cover five without throwing up or significantly hitting any body part.

I stop to rest. I take deep breaths of sea air. The waves make
glock-glock
sounds.

I look behind me. The Queen's Necklace glows. I can still see the cars on Marine Drive and hear their gentle zooms.

I cover three more.

I've come twenty-five meters.

To celebrate, I dry-heave.

The nausea passes again.

I cover five more without causing more injury to myself. It was an unthinkable goal twenty minutes ago. I pause to appreciate this.

I look ahead. Past a certain point, the Trail becomes a ribbon of silver, lit by the moon. How can something so beautiful be so difficult. Eve, beauty, snake, treachery: all the accidents of misogyny.

I cover five more meters. I must call them meters instead of scales. They are successive units of length that I conquer one by one.

I notice that the color of the light is changing. A little less is from the streetlights of Marine Drive, and a little more is from the moon overhead.

How long till the light is all moon.

I can't rest.

Am I in Phase Three yet.

I cover ten at a stretch and on the last one, collapse back into beetle pose.

I tell myself I'm on a train. I got to ride an antique coal-powered train, once, which was bumpy. Mohini hated it, but I liked it. I've always been able to sleep better when rocked by movement. I think it's because I used to nap on the floating jetty on the river that ran past Muthashi's clinic. I had the sweetest dreams there, of a sky full of milk.

I get up again and cover seven before I have to rest.

Walking upright on this thing is fucking unthinkable. So I just won't think about it for now. I will crawl all the way to Africa if I have to.

Various parts of my body report to my brain, reminding me of pain and serious injury.

Forehead.

Knee.

Chin.

Heel.

Finger.

Solar plexus times five.

Armpit, don't forget the armpit. I cut out a delta of skin there with a filet knife.

Each wound is a blazing star, and I'm a moving constellation.

I see myself as a cat again.

I used to watch cats pad along the ramparts of the stone wall around Muthashi's clinic. I watched their shoulders rotate and wished I could reprogram my flesh.

For the first time, I lose count of how many meters I've come.

Too late to go back and recount.

Sixty-ish, though.

That accounts for space. As for time, it's like a cloth being pulled underneath me, crosswise, wrinkle by wrinkle.

The water is black edged in white, like obsidian and shaving cream.

Things are not themselves. Just symbols. This experience should be a practicum for IIT-Bombay's introductory philosophy course. I'll have to write to the department about it.

Sixty-five-ish now.

I've covered the last five without paying as much attention.

I see a buoy bobbing to my right, outlined by moonlight. I wonder how much else is out there around me, but not visible. Floating fakirs. Cartoon sharks.

The barefoot girl, winged and perfectly dry.

I'm not in my right mind.

I can see the clouds better, now. There's a bank of them sleeping against the horizon.

Something like eighty-two.

Of all the pain stars, the one in my armpit is shining brightest. I stop to examine it and see that my entire left flank is soaked with blood. I pinch the fabric of my shirt and it peels away with a wet sucking sound.

I venture to half-turn, again, to see the shore. The streetlights on Marine Drive are smaller and dimmer and farther away.

I have to calculate what is reasonable.

I have to rest. I have to take water. I have to, if at all possible, re-dress my wounds.

The past hour is a patchwork of shades of black.

I make myself go twenty more meters, taking lots of breaks. And then I stop. I have to rest.

I sink into my new best friend beetle pose and take off my backpack. For several long moments I feel unspeakable rage at the sea. I don't understand why it can't be still just for five motherfucking seconds. What animal would ever choose to make their home atop a medium that moves.

I'm still not in my right mind.

I find my sunbit and squeeze it so I can see better. Earlier today I read my pod's inflation instructions while I was still sitting in the seawall. I hope I remember them right. I can program the pod from my scroll, or vocally, but I don't remember the command sequence, so it's good that there are also manual controls on the panel of the pod itself. “Press Full to activate the molecular pumps in the pod's skin, so that it slowly fills with air.”

I press it and nothing happens. I realize why. The skin isn't charged. Here I spent the entire day's worth of sunlight reading about Senegal instead of charging my pod.

Crying would be a luxury, here, now. So to deal with it in the short term I name it a Mild Annoyance. I curl up on one side and fold my pod into a neat pie-shaped wedge that will make an economical pillow until the sun comes to charge it. I hug my bag to my body and curl around it. I close my eyes.

I get sucked back down the wormhole.

I get spit up again.

I open my eyes. The sky is a little paler. A little trickle of seawater is surging, with each pitch, across the scale hinge toward my head.

I don't know how much I slept but I spring to as if I've had a raj's rest in a feather bed because I remembered something: the compressed gas capsules. Misbah talked me into buying them, saying, These will work if it's cloudy and you can't charge the pod. They come in a hard case so they can't be crushed accidentally.

I find the case. Its edges are quivering. I'm grotesquely lucid. I have to make the best of it while it lasts. I pick out one capsule, make a rent in the pod with my thumbnail, toss in the capsule, reseal the pod, bring down my fist on top of the capsule and then jump back. I watch the pod blow up into a real thing. I remember dimly that now I'll be one of those blurry smears that Anwar sees against the sea from his office high up on Nariman Point. This feels like Phase Three, finally. Things are looking up.

I wait till the skin is taut and then slice an opening and climb in quickly so that the air doesn't get out, and reseal it behind me by pinching the material closed.

It's pleasant. Actually it's wonderful. The air from the gas capsule is perfectly mixed and scented with rose. I remember that the pod also has settings for porosity and opacity so I find the control panel and experiment with sliding my fingers along the scales. When I increase opacity, the inner surface of the pod goes silver-grey. This is much better than full transparency. I also increase the porosity so that passive air exchange is increased. The internal pressure of the pod will lessen, but not enough to collapse in on me.

I've made my house.

I close my eyes and fall back asleep before my head finishes falling.

New canticles of pain wake me up.

My skin is hot. My brain feels like throbbing strings of glue. I must be dehydrated. I realize I haven't drunk any water since setting out last night. I also never tended to my finger, which is blackish purple now, like I dipped it in ink. Several life-threatening emergencies I must address calmly and in turn.

I slice an opening in my pod just big enough for my forearm. Wet heat and light flood in. I lean out over the water and dip my desalinator bottle. Someone watching would see an arm appear out of nowhere and then slip back into its own dimension.

While the water filters, I take anti-inflammatories and wrap my pinched finger with gauze. Saliva wells up around my gums and I pinch the pressure point between my thumb and forefinger to prevent nausea. I should probably eat something too, so I turn on my kiln, which came already charged. But fucking fuck I have to stuff something organic in it. I slice an opening again and hang over the edge again. I see a kelp patch and so I haul in a handful of it, which looks like felt-coated plastic holiday garlands, and draw it back inside and stuff it into the top of the kiln. I program idlee at ambient temperature and close the door and save the rest of the kelp for later and after ten minutes there are four cubes of rice meal in the well. They don't yet come in the proper saucer shape but I hear they're working on it. I don't know why they haven't yet. Because if you've developed organic matter reprogramming then topological finishing should not be that fucking hard.