What Lies Between Us (28 page)

My lips warm with the heat of him, I whisper against his throat, “I love you so much.”

The silence thunders. I wait, and with every passing moment, my skin is flayed.

He sighs and shifts. “I have to tell you something.”

“What? It can't be that important. Nothing is that important. Don't tell me … shh.” I press myself against him. Willing him to be silent, to stay here with me.

He gets up, carefully disentangling himself from my limbs, so that I'm left in a slump on the floor.

He says, “I have to go.”

“What?”

He's buttoning his shirt with trembling fingers, pulling on his jeans.

I grab his calf. “What's happening? Why are you going? We'll be together now right?”

He starts walking and I have to let go of him.

“I'll call you,” he says as he walks out the door.

I lie on the floor and try to understand what has happened.

*   *   *

I call his cell phone over and over. He doesn't pick up. I pace and smoke until the room is clouded. I listen to his voice telling me he isn't available right now. But it's okay, it's going to be fine. We are back together. Even the thought of sleep is impossible. Outside, the slivered moon is high, glaring into the room like an intruder. I jerk the curtains shut. I can't bear that searing light. My phone clicks, a message from him. “Can I come back? We have to talk.”

He walks in looking terrible. His hair is raised in stiff quills, his face pale as if he has been walking the cold streets since he left. I will time to reverse, taking us both back to that beautiful place a few hours ago.

He takes a deep breath and says, “I'm sorry. About what just happened. About everything. I shouldn't have. But you know it doesn't really change anything. We just aren't suited. You must know that, right? We're too different. Different worlds. It just isn't working.”

Some terrible thing is happening inside me. Over the ruins of the world, the dark waterweed is unfurling, the minotaur is awakening. I feel its shadow; it has grown tenfold. It shudders along every passage in my body, crawls along the inside, so I am dark green rotted, bull faced.

And then I know. I say, “Is there anything else?”

He looks like he's going to cry. He says, “No, what else could there be?”

“You've met someone, haven't you? Another woman.”

“No. I knew you'd say that. I haven't met someone. I just can't be with you anymore. This isn't working. You know that.”

“Liar!” I throw the word at him and turn to stagger blindly down the hall. He says, “Wait! Are you all right?” He comes after me. I slash at his face, drawing bloody streaks along his cheek. He grabs my wrists, pulls me hard against him, says, “Stop it. Calm down.” I wrench away from him and run into the bathroom, lock the door, turn on the scalding water. I plug up the tub, get in, lay against the curved bottom shivering, my arms clutched around my knees. Hot water pools around me, floods my clothes. The rush of water in my ears. Outside, he is calling my name, slamming his palm and then his fist against the wood. “Please, just talk to me … just come out for a minute, just … I didn't mean it. Why do you always do this? I just want to talk to you. Please.”

I lie in the rushing, burning water. After a while, I hear him slump down to the floor, rest his back against the door. I roll in the water. Like returning to the womb. I am a fetus again, warm and safe inside my mother. No man has reached in yet to hurt me. Hours later, I hear him call out from very far away. “Okay, I'm going now. I'm sorry. I never ever meant to hurt you.” I stay silent and he says, “Okay, I'll call you tomorrow. It'll be fine. We'll work something out.” And then he is gone.

I float, weightless, thinking of a different time. A time when I was the container and she swam inside me. When she was only a squirm of life, the bulge of eyes to be, the stubs of limbs, the entirety of her coming into being inside me. I had given him this. I had created her. The greatest gift I could give. And now he might deny it, but I know the truth: the siren-woman has come to steal everything. Screaming voices, rage, pain ripping through my whole body. I gasp and shudder and sink underwater, open my eyes, my mouth, scream into liquid.

*   *   *

It's much later. The water has grown cold. I stand up in the tub, pull off my sodden clothes, and drop them into the water. I walk into the bedroom, dripping puddles. I open drawers and put on heavy clothes, a gray sweatshirt that he has forgotten, sweat pants. My hair is stuck to my face, water soaking through the fabric across my breasts like a new mother's milk.

There's only one person I want to talk to. The clock reads three in the morning; it is daytime on the other side of the planet. I dial my mother's number. She picks up right away, and the sound of her voice has me choking broken sounds down my throat.

Her voice rises. “Darling, is that you? What is it? What has happened?”

“Amma.” The word is a plea.

“Sweetheart, what is it? Is the baby okay?”

“Yes, Amma.” I can hear her breathe again.

I say, “But Daniel…”

“What? What's happened to him?”

“He's leaving me, Amma.”

A shocked little “Oh.” I can see her mouth making the sound.

“He's leaving, Amma. He's going. He'll take Bodhi with him. I'll be alone.” A flood of tears, and then the words rushing out of my mouth. “Amma, I think something's wrong with me. I don't know what it is. I feel like something is wrong with me. Something really, really bad. That's why he's going.”

A silence.

“Amma, what is it?”

She sighs. “It's all my fault.”

“What?”

“It's my fault. I was trying to protect you. So we never talked about it. I thought you couldn't remember. What happened with you when you were small. I should have stopped it. I'm so sorry. It's all my fault. I didn't know any better.”

The door is opening. She will swing it open. I want to hear her say it. I want to hear her voice saying the words. I need to hear it.

“You mean what happened with Samson?”

“Samson?”

“Yes…” I will her to speak the words.

Her voice is gentle and heartbroken. “No, baby. It wasn't Samson. He didn't do anything to you. Samson always tried to protect you.” She says, “He died trying. Don't you know that?”

“What? No, Amma, how can you say that? I was hurt. He hurt me. He touched me. I remember his hands. For years.”

“No, baby. It wasn't Samson. If it had been him, it would have been easy. He was a servant. I could have had him thrown out at any moment. It would have been easy.” Her voice is cracking wide as if a river will flow out of the crack in her soul. Her words are sinking inch by inch into the strata of my brain.

“Amma, it happened. All the time. When you weren't there. In the dark and in the corners.”

“Yes, baby. I know that. I tried to protect you. But I wasn't strong enough. I was just a village girl. If I had said anything, you and I would have been thrown out. No one would have believed me. No one would have taken us in. They would have thought I was making up stories. Things like that didn't happen back then. Or if they did, no one believed it. No one talked about it. But it wasn't Samson.”

My chest is shattered open, memories flying out like bits of torn paper with the truth written on them. A maelstrom of words flying around my face, a heaving, swirling snowstorm of memory. I'm in the house. It rises up all around me. Dark passages and empty hallways. I'm small again and running from someone whose footsteps thud just behind my fleeing body. But not Samson. Someone else. A hand landing huge and heavy on my shoulder, spinning me around weightless as a top, a blast of arrack in my face. A gasping shudder from deep inside me. My body naming its perpetrator.

Amma is talking. “He touched you. But he never raped you. You know that, right? It was only some touching. I'm sorry. I tried to protect you. So did Samson that night, and then your father went out with the gun and … I'm so sorry. I thought you knew. And now you are the mother of a daughter. I didn't want to bring up these terrible memories. I was trying to protect you.”

Everything is quiet inside my head. The storm of words and visions subsides into a single point that pierces my chest, reenters. There are no more tears. I force my voice to be calm. “Amma, it's okay. I have to go, okay? I'll call you later. I promise.”

And she, lulled by this tone, says, “Okay, baby. I'm sorry. I love you.” I hang up and all my life falls into a different pattern than it had been in before. Everything is shaken and reconfigured at grotesque, unnatural angles. Voices whisper what must be done, what is the only thing. I listen; I am attentive. They make me remember. All those times Daniel hugged Bodhi to him. All those times he went to comfort her and left me alone. It all falls into a different pattern now. I must save her. The way Amma never saved me. But I can save my little girl.

I go to the kitchen and find the pills. Sleeping pills I stored up for all those nights when Samson threatened to come. Their whiteness as pure as the underside of a sea gull's belly, pills to give me wings, to make me fly. I shake the capsules, one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty into the wooden mortar.

Unbidden, the memory of the last Kandyan noble woman comes. She who with her torn ears gushing down onto her sari blouse crushed her children's heads in a mortar like this one. With a pestle that she had to raise and slam down onto their skulls. Their dulled eyes watched her, their broken mouths did not protest. What had fractured in her, then? Did some crack in her soul reach down through the ages, through the bloodlines of those born in that place, and touch me here now?

I go into her old bedroom and get her sippy cup, come back to the kitchen and fill it with apple juice. I reach for my own water bottle, unscrew the lid, pour in juice. I upturn the mortar into the golden liquid. Two chalices. One for the queen, one for the child. Then I go to the bathroom, wash my face. My eyes in the mirror are clear, are focused. I change into jeans and a sweater; I brush my hair. Purpose is important. It's the only way I will save her.

There are a thousand demons in the room. I can feel their wings brush my skin, their shadows settling in my hair. They are shrieking in my ear, wrapping themselves in my skin. I put the chalices with their golden liquid in my bag, wrap myself in my big black coat, and walk out into a dawn just lit in gold.

*   *   *

I knock until the old couple, sleep-faced and in their pajamas, open the door. Daniel's mom say, “Oh, hi. We didn't expect you so early. Daniel came in late last night. Shall I wake him?”

I say, “Oh no. I just wanted to get Bodhi. We're making breakfast at my place. Pancakes.” I'm smiling hard so they don't see the great gashed tear in me.

The old man says, “But it's just dawn. Poor child. She's fast asleep. Maybe it's better if you get her in a few hours.”

“No, I
promised
. She'll be sad if I'm not there when she wakes up.” I push gently past him. I walk through the house and into the room, bend over to kiss her, and she wakes, wraps her arms and legs around me, and says, “Mama?”

“We have to go, okay?”

She nods, reaches down to grasp her Pooh blanket.

The old lady, standing in the door, breaks in. “Are you sure everything is fine?”

“Yes. Everything is completely all right. We just have to go.”

Her heavy little body is in my arms. She is barefoot and in her pink fleece pajamas. I push past their worried faces, out the door, down the stairs into the honeyed light. I walk to the car and strap her tight into the car seat, cover her in the blanket, the yellow bear smiling at me. I tuck the corners in around her knees. Her eyes rake my face, taking in everything, and she knows she's safe now. I am taking her away from people who could hurt her. Because you never know who could hurt a little girl. Sometimes it's the ones you trust most. She pulls on a corner of the blanket, feels it between her finger pads, sucks it into her mouth. I say, “We're going for a ride, okay?” I kiss her temple, inhale her sweet scent. I get into the front seat, start the car, and drive fast across the Bay Bridge; it's too early for traffic. I'm heading toward the city.

Somewhere in the maze of the city she asks, “Daddy?”

It might have been different if she hadn't said
this
word. We might have driven home, the long way perhaps, the scenic way past the Bay. We might have turned around and gone back home. I might have carried her back into the house, put her in her bed. We might have made our way through the world.

But the thing is, she said this word. And it opened a rip in me, some hidden wound that was already hemorrhaging blood. It killed me, this word. It spoke of trust and betrayal. She was asking for her daddy. I was picturing another father and what had been done to me. Her daddy would take her from me. He would call in the evening and say he was filing. He would steal himself out of my life; he would steal her away, forever out of my reach. And she would be a little girl in the world with no one to protect her. Just as I had once been.

I reach into my bag and then back, say, “Here, baby, apple juice.” My shaking fingers hand her the sippy cup. She grasps it with both hands like a squirrel. She doesn't ask about her daddy again. Maybe she is used to disappointment already. Maybe she's too small yet to know that love can kill.

I am calm. The pace of the world is slowed, the traffic is easy. A certain grace fills the air. I unscrew my water bottle, raise it to my lips, and then set it down untouched in the cup holder. I will do this awake. Aware. The morning bursts through the sky with ribbons of pink, catching the world on fire. Sunlight slants across the window, strokes my face like a lover's hand. On the other side of the sky, a bitten moon lingers. I roll the window down as we stop at a light; the birds have started their symphony.