The Girl in the Road (20 page)

You had asked the nurse to bring us tea, and he did, on a silver platter. We were both surprised at how nice their tea set was; though it wasn't real silver, you told me, it still shone. You knelt and poured while I sat, slumped to the side because my body still ached. I could see Muhammed at the other end of the garden, now in a wheelchair, conversing with the head doctor.

You handed me a cup and you said, How would you like to live with me in Addis Ababa?

I nearly threw the cup into the air.

Really? I asked.

Really, you said. I can send you to school, and feed you and clothe you. You don't have to do any work for me, besides what a normal little sister would do, helping around the house.

What can I do? I said. I was breathless.

You can go to school and do your homework and compose kinae with golden meanings, to recite for your schoolmates, you said.

I said, But in exchange for what? I'll do any work you want me to.

Child, you said. You must stop thinking you are owned. You only belong to yourself. Can you promise me that?

I said yes because I would promise you anything.

Muhammed wheeled over to us. He said, You look well, Mariama.

I'm going to live with Yemaya, I blurted out.

Muhammed looked at you in surprise. Is she? he said.

It's something I was thinking about, you said.

You've come to love her, said Muhammed.

Yes.

I understand. But God entrusted her to Francis and me.

You said to me, Mariama, can you go play?

I got up, my tea not even tasted, and went back into the clinic. The big room was full of rows of beds with bright-patterned cloth, most empty, and each with a metal staff at the bedside. Through the doorway I looked back at you talking to Muhammed with great passion and animation. I wished I could eavesdrop, but there was no clear way to do it.

Eventually the two of you stopped talking and Muhammed wheeled up the ramp into the clinic. He saw me standing there.

I've agreed to let Yemaya take you, he said, on the condition that she provides me proof of your schooling. She's very young, this woman. And she's much aggrieved by Francis's death even though she doesn't show it. She may have good intentions, but with the young, intentions count for little.

I nodded right away. I didn't comprehend anything he said, really, because I was so happy he'd agreed to let me go.

I regret you won't meet my daughters, he said. Fatima and Rahel. You would have gotten along like old friends.

Then he wheeled past me, looking sad.

I rejoined you on the bench and said, I think Muhammed has come to love me, too.

He'll be all right, you said.

I know, I said. I just want to be with you, anyway. Can we take a truck by ourselves and Muhammed can give out the oil by himself?

Ah, oil, you said.

You sat forward with your elbows on your knees and looked back at me, as if considering. I sat forward to join you in your seriousness. That made you laugh.

I have something to tell you, you said. You may not understand all of it, but it's important for you to know. I don't believe in hiding things from children. Besides, you've reached the age of reason.

Okay, I said.

Mariama, what are we carrying on the truck?

Oil, I said immediately.

That's what I would have said. And Muhammed. But when the truck overturned, the barrels came loose, and five of them broke open.

I nodded, remembering now the explosion sounds and the silver mist.

We weren't carrying oil, you said. Muhammed was deceived. His superiors may have been deceived too. We were carrying metallic hydrogen.

What's that?

It's a material used for conducting energy, you said. You see how the lights in the clinic turn on? And the ceiling fans run? All of that uses energy that comes through wires. But this material can make a wire that works so well, no energy is wasted. It just travels straight through. It gives exactly what it receives.

It all sounded very inconsequential to me. I must have looked unimpressed.

I can't make it sound exciting, you said. But it's important. This material is illegal in most of the world because it's dangerous.

Then I remembered. I said, When the horsemen stopped us and I got in the barrel, I felt cold.

Because it was refrigerated. Metallic hydrogen is refrigerated during shipment.

Won't people be mad when they see they've been getting the wrong thing all this time?

None of the handlers knew what they were handling, you said. Only the end users knew. The whole plan was to pretend it was crude oil so they could get it across borders easily.

Is Muhammed mad?

As mad as Muhammed gets, you said. He's still trying to get straight answers from people. But he can't do much when he's stuck in bed all day.

But we're still going to Ethiopia, right?

Yes. Muhammed still has to make his deliveries, no matter what those deliveries are.

You picked up a pebble from the ground, fingered it, and dropped it again.

He's not in a position to refuse to.

We were approaching our final days of recovery and I was more eager than ever for our long-promised home. In the garden, after a rain, I asked you to tell me stories about Ethiopia even though you'd never been there. They didn't have to be stories, I said. Just things you knew.

You pointed at the hills. You see those? you said. They're the beginning of the Great Rift Valley.

I didn't know what those words meant, Yemaya, but the hushed way you said them gave me chills.

The Great Rift Valley is splitting Africa apart, you said. It runs from Djibouti all the way down to Mozambique. Millions of years from now, the whole valley will be filled with water again and all the cities will be drowned. But in the time that it's been dry land, the human race rose out of the earth and spread all over the world. It's important for you to know about Dinkenesh, since we'll be living in Ethiopia. It means “You are wonderful.”

What's Dinkenesh? I asked.

She's our ancestor. That means your mother's mother's mother's mother's mother's mother's mother's mother's mother's mother's mother, all the way back, as far back as you want to go.

(I thought to myself: How far back do I want to go?)

Dinkenesh is revered in Ethiopia, you said. When we go to Addis, I'll take you to see her.

Should we bring her ladoos?

No, Mariama, you misunderstand. She's a skeleton.

What's a skeleton?

It's a person's bones. Dinkenesh is only bones. She's not alive like you and I are alive, but she lives, nevertheless. Do you understand?

To be alive, but
not
alive—I did understand. In fact I think I knew exactly what you were talking about—what you'd told me on the bench in Ouagadougou, and then what the girl in the road had told me!

Was Dinkenesh running away? I asked.

I don't know. Maybe she was.

Did she run into horsemen, and then ran into the desert?

You didn't answer.

Did she know it was better to die than be taken by a man?

You didn't answer.

Because that's what the girl in the road said to me.

You hit me so hard I saw the black fizzy soda in my eyes. I'd only seen that once before, when I fell off the truck.

I stayed in the pose the slap had sent me to, cast like clay. I tried to draw breath but could only get little sips of it. I knew I had done something very, very wrong, but I wasn't yet old or wise enough to understand what.

Of course, now I do, Yemaya. I was greedy and arrogant and trying to learn all your mysteries at once! I wasn't ready to love you the way you deserved. And even though you apologized to me at once, crying, which I'd never seen you do, just a few seconds after you hit me, saying you didn't mean it, that it was because of your father, I knew you wouldn't have done it without just cause. I didn't cry. I fed the tears to the kreen, who was very much awake, and simply a part of my body now.

Shortly after sunset, when my pozit reads 227 kilometers, I see what looks like the end of an old-fashioned telephone receiver sticking up out of the waves and hung over the Trail. As I get closer, it gets bigger. It might be four meters tall.

I assume the worst and approach with my hands up. At least I have my dignity this time. I see a young man drop down out of a hatch in the receiver, then an older man. The young man stalks forward while signaling to the older man to stay back. They're both wearing khaki vests and sun hats.

The young man calls out,

FARSI
:
Hello

Great, more Persians. Maybe I'll ask them what
dear bitch I am fifty percent
means.

“Hello,” I say. “I come in peace.” I feel dumb saying it, but it seems necessary out here.

“Where are you from?”

“India.”

“You're traveling?”

“Yep.”

“What are you doing it for?”

The older man intervenes. “Navid,” he says. “She's harmless.”

Navid transforms at the older man's voice, becomes placative. “We shouldn't trust anyone,” he says.

The older man addresses me. “Forgive my son,” he says. “He's just protective of me. You're the first traveler we've seen on the Trail.”

“How do you know I'm harmless?” I say.

It's not a question either of them was expecting. Navid tenses up. Maybe I shouldn't have said it but I fucking hate it when anyone assumes I'm harmless because I'm a woman.

“We don't,” says the older man. “But if you say you mean us no harm, we'll believe you.”

“I don't,” I say. “Do you mean me harm?”

“No!” says the older man, surprised, and then looks over his shoulder at Navid, who's giving me the evil eye. Finally he says, “I mean no one harm who means me no harm.”

“Well, I mean no harm,” I say. Why am I so obstreperous? It's like, now that I see so few humans, I have to audition them for worthiness.

Our charade is done. The older man claps his hands together and approaches me and says, “Great! That's settled. I'm Dr. Mohsen Yazdi, and this is Dr. Navid Yazdi.”

They're father and son oceanographers based at the University of Tehran. The phone receiver thing is actually a mobile seastead, a spar model that can bob around the seas and not fall over, which seems intuitively ridiculous, but here they are. It's technically illegal to park their spar on the Trail, but they do if they're close and no one's watching. We like to stretch our legs, says Mohsen.

I sit a few scales away while they perform the evening prayer. Navid's temper cools and he tunes me out when he joins with his father's voice. It calms me to hear other people pray. On the open ocean, their chant doesn't echo, it just goes nowhere.

When they're done, Navid climbs back up into the spar to heat water. Mohsen apologizes and says they don't have much left besides what they've caught on the Trail. He offers me some dried sea-snake meat. I say sure. He climbs up into the spar too and after a few minutes he descends with a plate of circles like cucumber slices, except they're dry, withered, and colored pink with black skin. I bite one and it's chewy, with a texture like dried mushroom and a strong metallic flavor.

“It's a cultivated taste,” says Mohsen. “They're an invasive species. Beautiful things in the water though, just beautiful, like black ribbons.”

He reminds me of Muthashan.

“You have a faraway look in your eyes,” says Mohsen.

“You remind me of my grandfather.”

“Is he still with you?”

The question is strange to me. My glotti probably didn't catch the nuance, but I think he's asking whether Muthashan is still alive.

“Yes,” I say. “Far as I know, anyway. Haven't been in touch with him for a while.”

“Does he know where you are?”

“Nope.”

“Ah.” Mohsen sits back on his mat. “What in me reminds you of him?”

Here we go again, when I try to translate what's in my head to what comes out of my mouth and I fuck it up. If I could say it right, I'd tell him about the time I looked out the window and saw Muthashan sitting alone on a stone bench in the garden, and his shoulders were shaking, so I thought he was coughing. I'd just made chai, so I brought some out for him in a chipped white cup. I rounded the corner of the bench and he turned to me with cheeks wet and eyes red. So he wasn't coughing, he was crying. I was mad. I was a teenager and he'd sprung this on me.

I turned to go, but he held out a snotty hand to invite me to sit next to him. I did. I could tell he wanted to make a Connection. He put his arm around me and hugged me to him and cried on my shoulder. I stayed still, absorbing the shudders of his body. It was so un-Malayalee of him. I usually didn't care about that kind of thing, but at that moment, I did.

I watched an orange lizard thrash over the lettuce bed.

Finally I asked, So what are you upset about?

My son, he said. My son Gabriel.

Oh, I said.

Your grandmother would be so angry with me if she knew I was sitting here, crying like a child, while you comforted me.

My hand settled on his back, but my eyes were blank. His crying dissolved into coughing. So I'd been right to bring the chai after all.

“Here's your tea,” says Navid.

I realize I'd never answered Mohsen. I'd spaced out again.

“Gentleness,” I say to Mohsen. “You have a quality of gentleness.”

“That's kind of you,” says Mohsen. “I take it as a compliment.”

“I mean it that way. So what do you do out here?”

“Gathering data on waveforms.”

“Height and energy?”

“That, and frequency and morphology,” says Navid, having decided I'm worth talking to. “And the usual conductivity, temperature, depth.”

“You do this every year?”

“Every year for the last ten,” says Navid.

“He was fifteen, the first time I took him out in the spar,” says Mohsen. “He did so well! The best assistant you could ask for.”

Navid actually blushes. These men are fascinating to me. I never knew fathers and sons to behave like intimates.

“So what are you finding out?”

Navid and Mohsen exchange looks. “How much do you know about the weather?” says Navid.

“I know it's getting worse.”

“Right,” says Navid. “Because there's more heat in all of the systems, which means more energy needs to be redistributed.”

“Average wave heights all over the world are increasing quite dramatically,” says Mohsen.

“Good time to invest in wave energy,” I say, indicating the Trail.

“Indeed,” says Mohsen. “HydraCorp knew what they were doing. Now if the Trail itself can just survive being out here.”

“Why wouldn't it?”

“Ah, you underestimate the sea,” says Mohsen. “She's a violent mistress.”

“I can't believe you're walking on this thing,” says Navid. “Do you know anything about metallic hydrogen?”

“I know it's the superconductor used in the Trail.”

“It's also unstable.”

“Navid, peace—it's unstable under certain circumstances, like any substance.”

“Killed hundreds of workers in Africa,” says Navid. “And it's never been tested at sea. So hey, it could be fine, it could stay inert. Or it could get out and propagate instability.”

“Speaking of which, I'm surprised I haven't run into any storms.”

“Ha! You will,” says Navid. “Bound to happen. What protection do you have?”

“My pod goes underwater,” I say. “I haven't had to try it out yet.”

“You'll have your chance yet,” he says.

Why is he on my tits. I want to smear that condescending smirk off his face.

Mohsen comes in to rescue us young hotheads. “Yes, there's plenty more heat to redistribute,” he says, “which means stronger winds, which means stronger waves.”

“So what makes a wave?”

“An initial imbalance.”

“Between what.”

“Between layers of a gradient. All systems wish to be at rest. So they redistribute energy until they re-equilibrate, though of course, they never quite get there.”

“Like castes,” I say.

The word doesn't initially translate for them. I have to say, you know, like layers of people in traditional Indian society, Dalit, Kshatriya, Brahmin.

Oh, oh, yes, they nod.

“Like people themselves,” Mohsen says. “Seeking equilibrium.”

“But you can never trace the first imbalance.”

“It depends on how far back you want to go.”

I think:
How far back do I want to go?
For a second I feel like a game-show contestant and I'm pondering the question with bright flashing lights all around.

For now I say, “So you're saying we're doomed.”

“Yes,” says Navid at once. “Even the ocean may reach a tipping point. It will look calm, and then it will snap.”

“Live far away from the shore and you'll be fine,” says Mohsen.

“Or live on the Trail,” says Navid. “There could be a tsunami coming through here right now and we'd never know it.”

Mohsen sees that my tea is finished. He nods to Navid, who takes the cup and plate from me and kneels a few scales away to wash them in purified water.

“So you're headed off again tonight?” asks Mohsen.

“Yeah. I mostly walk at night because the water is calmer. And I don't get roasted by the sun.”

“Very smart. Do you know the stars?”

“Some of them.”

“The Needle?”

“The what?”

He tries again. “The North Star?”

“Oh, the Dhruva Tara. No, actually. I always forget how to find it.”

Mohsen stands up and scans the sky, which is flushed deep blue now. He points northwest up toward the Saptarishi and tells me to trace upwards from the two pointer stars. I can see it now. A very unassuming star.

“Thanks,” I say.

“Take good care of yourself,” says Mohsen. “Be smart. Be careful.”

A kilometer later, I throw up all the sea snake I ate.

I wish Navid hadn't been right, but he'd been too much of a prick not to be. When I wake up a few days later the sky is overcast and the wind is snappish. As I make breakfast I notice planks and other flotsam knocking up against the Trail, on the south side. Their corners aren't weathered. They've splintered off in recent history. I guess that means a nearby meteorological event.

I stop and check my locality. Nothing. I widen the range, and then I see it: Cyclone Geeta, coming up from the southeast. Wonderful. It's not even cyclone season. Though seasons as a concept don't have much integrity anymore.

I'm heavy, but not that heavy. I can't risk the wind on the surface of the Trail if the cyclone hits. According to my scroll it's about twelve hours away, so I keep walking through the night. There's a full moon, but it's covered by clouds, so its light suffuses the whole sky like I'm walking under a gray veil thrown over a lightbulb. On the Trail it's hard to appreciate natural beauty. I'm too aware of thousands of kilometers left. These sights might be beautiful to me, someday, in memory, but now I just walk a tightrope over an abyss.

When the sky begins to lighten, I see a discoloration to the southeast, approaching like an army on the battlefield. But of course each stage of arrival is not the ultimate stage. The sea is still calm. I feel a little reckless. For a while I entertain the illusion that I'm keeping pace with the storm or even outpacing it. But it keeps arriving. I see the first flashes of lightning.

Time to go under. I take out my scroll and pull up the pod manual. It says that my pod is designed for depths of up to ten meters and that the skin can be adjusted for oxygen porosity, though it takes more energy the deeper it goes, because dissolved oxygen gets more scarce.

I inflate the pod as usual and activate the oxygen extraction mode that assumes submersion in water. I have no idea what these pods were originally designed for. Rich Brahmin adrenaline hounds? I imagine them inflating pods and taking them over Jog Falls. Which would be idiotic, though hardly less idiotic than what I'm doing. And I'm Brahmin too, imagine that. The poor don't have the luxury to be so dumb.

The wind is picking up and the waves are getting choppier. I have to work fast. In the original pod kit are two items I'd been tempted to throw out in the arrogance of someone who assumes that if they don't know the purpose of a thing, it must have no purpose: (1) a ten-meter elastic cord that expands in water and (2) a rubber sphincter lined with the same polymer as the cord, so that, when joined, form a watertight seal. Again, up to ten meters' depth. Regarding anything below that depth, the manual is silent.

I need something to secure the cord to. On the seasteads, I'm sure they have steel rings anchored to the platform for this very purpose. What can I use? The Trail runs smooth for hundreds of kilometers in each direction. There are no protuberances. Excellent. I'm fucked. I begin to feel rain spattering my face. The only thing I can think to do is tie the cord around an entire scale, which will take up two or three meters of its length, and hope it holds.