Insects Are Just Like You and Me Except Some of Them Have Wings (14 page)

Senthil decided to write Amala a note. He would stick it on her forehead when she was sleeping. She would read it over and over again; whenever she saw him, the words would run across her eyes like subtitles.
Dear Amala
, Senthil thought to himself. Or no, Just Amala.

Amala.

What I want to say is

I’m being chased by insects.

I want to eat my cigarettes.

Senthil decided to write the note later, when he had something else to say.

•

That evening he ate his dinner with the Polio Girl. Her little metal plate held a handful of watery rice and a single, bright red chili.

“That’s it?” said Senthil, looking at her plate.

“It’s the only thing she’ll eat,” said the plump, sad woman. She dropped a teaspoon of salt into the Polio Girl’s plate and disappeared into the kitchen.

“Well no wonder you can’t walk properly,” said Senthil. The girl dipped the chili in salt, bit the end and crammed a handful of rice into her mouth. Senthil began fishing out the chilies from his karakozhumbu and rice.

“Here,” he said, placing them on the Polio Girl’s plate. “I’m sorry I tripped over you.”

After dinner he fiddled with the radio, listened to patriotic songs in Hindi and a play about dowry harassment. When he went to bed, he noticed a folded piece of paper under his pillow.

My grandfather woke up after you left.

He thinks it’s 1964

And that I’m my mother.

He thought about finding her and asking her to come to bed. But he ended up falling asleep instead.

•

Senthil was sitting on the front porch of the house. The old man with the moustache was gone but he had left his umbrella inside Senthil’s chest—he could feel it bob up and down each time he took a breath. Beside him sat the Polio Girl, writing something on the steps in green chalk. Amala was standing in front of him, dripping thick black water onto the dusty ground. Tiny silver crabs were swarming around her lips and eyes.

“They wouldn’t let me in,” said Amala, shaking strands of algae from her hands. “My own family!”

“You’re not allowed in the house either? Is it because of me?” asked Senthil.

“Not the house, the pottakennar! I tried to drown myself and I floated!”

“But that’s not right, everyone’s allowed to drown themselves in wells. Even Dalit Christian lesbians who write feminist manifestos are allowed to drown in wells. It’s physics. Or chemistry.”

The Polio Girl suddenly stood up, teetering slightly. Senthil held his hands out to steady her, though he was sure he couldn’t catch her if she fell.

“What does that say? What’s she written?” said Amala, frowning at the green lettering on the steps. Senthil looked down at the words. They seemed to be shimmering, as if they were underwater.

“
Suicide letter is the most common form of letter,
” read Senthil.

“That’s incorrect on a number of levels,” said Amala. “It makes no sense grammatically, for one thing. Furthermore, a suicide letter is not a thank you note. It’s not a shopping list. There’s nothing common about it at all.”

Amala turned and began to walk down the steps.

“Where are you going?” asked Senthil.

“The pottakennar. I have to try again.”

“Take them some flowers. Tell them I’m a wealthy Brahmin boy working in the States.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Amala as she faded into the distance. “I’ll take them some flowers.”

•

Senthil got up early the next morning and walked to the tea stall for a cup of coffee. The road was dotted with crushed frogs, turtles and scorpions, all glistening mutely in the morning light.

“Would you like a Special Tea instead?” asked the tea stall owner.

“I don’t like tea,” said Senthil.

The tea stall owner grinned at him. Senthil suddenly wished he had said “I don’t drink tea” instead.

“You’re staying at the Big House?” asked the tea stall owner.

“Yes.”

“Come from the city? You’ve come with Aiyya’s granddaughter, right?”

Senthil nodded and looked back at the roadkill. A crow was picking away at the remains of a crushed turtle.

“One Special Tea then?” asked the tea stall owner.

“No tea, coffee. One coffee.”

“The Special Tea is very good.”

“Don’t you have any coffee?”

“No coffee, sorry.”

Senthil made his way back, weaving carefully through the road kill. When he got to the house, he told Amala he was going home. She didn’t try to change his mind—she just stood there, holding his thumb in her fist, nodding steadily.

“Are you coming?” asked Senthil, as he packed his things.

“Not right now,” said Amala. “I still want my grandfather to see you. Have you got a picture of yourself? Even a passport-sized one would be okay.”

“No.”

“You better take some when you get back to the city then. You never know when you’ll need a passport-sized photo of yourself.”

“When are you coming home?”

“Soon.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Probably not tomorrow.”

Amala walked him to the gate but refused to come to the bus stop.

“Well?” said Senthil.

“Well what?”

“Anything you want to give me?”

“I’m not kissing you if that’s what you mean. This isn’t the city you know.”

Senthil nodded and made his way to the bus stop. He watched as crowds swelled and stuffed themselves into every bus that arrived at the stop across the road. Senthil couldn’t help feeling that he was waiting in the wrong place, for a bus that was going the wrong way. In front of the tea stall, he saw the Polio Girl. She had two grubby green mango slices in her hand, each one doused in deep red chili pepper.

“You keep eating mango slices like that and your stomach will fall off,” said Senthil. She staggered awkwardly towards him and they stood side by side. A large, black thunderhead spread across the sky like an ink stain. For a second, the sun shone brightly on Senthil and the Polio Girl, then disappeared.

“You better go home,” said Senthil. “Before it starts raining.”

Senthil watched the girl as she hobbled away. When his bus finally arrived, it was completely empty. The driver was whistling to himself and the ticket conductor was sleeping on one of the front seats. Senthil sat behind the driver and looked out the window. The Polio Girl was still walking unsteadily home; there was only one mango slice in her hand now. He opened his wallet of suicide notes and pulled one out:

Don’t forget me when I’m gone

Your heart

Will break.

Goodbye.

He thought of holding the notes out the window, then letting them go, one by one. He could already see them flying by his head, fluttering onto the hot, sticky tar like a flock of dying birds.

It is either Sunday night or Monday morning. Moths flutter like disoriented twists of paper as we enter a genuine Indian pocket of red spittle and highway magic. We both carry a reputation for missing the epiphany, for asking for a straw when the whole point is to drink from the bottle. This time we are ready; even if we don’t find a bathroom, we are pretty sure there will be talking scorpions under the tables.

•

The sign is an angry city at sunset—important and undecipherable.

TOLAITELEADIE

“Wow,” she says with genuine admiration, “That could mean anything.”

This corridor has been specifically grown for the summer season and is thick with the scent of molten spiders and sweet tea.

“Brother can you tell me where the bathroom is?”

A boy with kohl-lined eyes jerks his head towards the sign.

“It’th written there, ithn’t it?”

“But what does it mean?”

“I can’t read Englith.”

He slips beneath the curls of smoke and disappears.

“Did you hear that?” she hisses, “He lisped!”

•

We marvel at the phenomenon of lisping boys who go on to be lisping men.

“I never met a Tamil guy who lisped,” she says. “Always thought it got eaten by the Adam’s apple or something.”

We practice lisping in Tamil, our tongues slithering like trapped fish between our teeth. A thick, black lizard waddles onto the sign and strikes a series of poses, hoping one of us will take a picture.

•

While watching the lizard pose, memories of no less than seven lisping Tamil men collide with all notions regarding the violent eating habits of the Adam’s apple. Granted they all lisped softly, like stuttering snakes—this is why she couldn’t remember any of them. The recollection makes her take a walk.

•

She returns with one of her sleeves rolled up.

“They have Pepsi, you want Pepsi?”

“No.”

“You have to tell him now. He has to put it in the freezer for cooling if you want.”

“I don’t want any.”

“He makes nice bread omelet, you want?”

“He who?”

“The guy making omelets. Hey are we still looking for the bathroom? Why didn’t I ask him about the bathroom?”

•

Things would have been different if we were dying. Or pregnant. You need to carry a certain amount of drama before you can watch the universe spin inside a dirty steel tumbler.

“That boy? With the lisp? Complete put-on. He’s going to Bombay next month to join the eunuchs. Did you see the bathroom?”

“Did you?”

“It’s filled with coconut husks. I don’t think it ever was a bathroom.”

“Then what was with the sign?”

She shrugs.

There weren’t any talking scorpions either.

When Prasanna looked at the Keerapalayam village road she thought of ants caught in a jar of thick oil. Sometimes she thought of wasps banging against windows but usually she thought of ants. The road neither dipped nor turned; it simply ran past the library as if it had more important things to see and do. Prasanna closed her eyes and whispered, “My name is Prasanna. My name is not Prasanna. In either case I am not here.”

Last year the library had been the Keerapalayam Tsunami Relief Center and Prasanna had been the Tsunami In-Charge. She had spent her time looking after large cardboard boxes which she liked to think were filled with tsunamis. This year, the boxes had been pushed to the back and two metal bookshelves brought in, filled with Tamil translations of the Bible, water irrigation reports from 1972, and multiple copies of a book called
Where Are You Going, Young Man and Woman?
Prasanna became the Library In-Charge and her time was now spent sitting beside the window, watching the road absorb footprints.

Today a pale, ropy man strode briskly between the cattle and roadkill, his cargo pants and sense of purpose marking him as one of the tsunami volunteers from the city who had forgotten to leave. He entered the library and placed a package on her desk.

“We’re not buying any encyclopedias,” said Prasanna.

“My name is Kathir,” he said. “My poem has been published in
The Macadamia Review
and they wanted me to keep these copies in my local library.”

He began to unwrap the package, his fingers moving as if they were attached to invisible strings.

“The what review?” asked Prasanna.

“Macadamia.”

“Isn’t that a nut?”

“It’s an Australian magazine. They were so pleased to have a poem from India, would you like to hear it?” He picked up a copy and cleared his throat.

“Your lips do not interest me.

Your feet are cracked and dry like the earth.

Your ears flap like an elephant’s

and you never have anything to say.

I am only here because you let me touch you

and your breasts are like

purple mangos in the sun.”

Prasanna noticed that his lower lip was dotted with tiny violet scabs and flecks of pale grey skin.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“Well, mangos aren’t purple. Has she been beaten up or something? Is it about domestic abuse?”

“I’ve seen purple mangos.”

“Where?”

“Have you been to Goa?”

“No.”

“I’ve seen them in Goa. Anyway, this poem’s been published so it doesn’t matter what you think.”

“Then why are you asking me?”

“I’m not.”

The magazines suddenly snapped and rustled on the desk, as if they were applauding.

•

The next day a suspicion took root in Prasanna’s mind, something so aggravating that it made her shift uncomfortably in her plastic chair. What if the road didn’t go anywhere? What if it ended under the horizon, breaking off into a wide, blue space that was filled with empty coconut shells? Or what if it simply came in again at the other side of the village? She frowned at the possibilities. There were far too many of them.

Kathir was standing in front of the library, staring at the sky as if he was waiting for something to fall on his head. Prasanna propped up a thick, dusty book on Rural Irrigation Techniques and watched him from behind it, remembering the purple scabs on his lips. When Prasanna was younger, her mother had said that bad girls bit their lips; it came with bad-girl territory, like letting your navel show when you wore a sari. This was why Prasanna had done all her lip biting at night, secretly peeling away neat strips of her bottom lip as she heard terrible things move inside her. She could feel monsters growing on her back, flicking their tongues and cursing her waist so that no sari would ever stay put. She knew she was doomed and people would call her Low-Hip Prasanna when she was older.

“What are you staring at?” Kathir called out.

“What?”

“What are you looking at me for?”

“Can you see me from there?”

“Of course I can.”

“What am I doing?

“You’re staring at me.”

Prasanna could never remember the dynamics of windows. Night, lights on, people can see you. Daytime, lights on, people can’t see you. Or they could. She sighed and put the book down.

•

The next afternoon Kathir’s head appeared at her window like a runaway balloon.

“What if I changed the purple to green?” he asked.

“I thought it didn’t matter what I thought.”

“It doesn’t. But what if it was green instead of purple?”

“What would that do?”

“Well, I thought about it and I realized that green mangos are more like breasts. Purple ones, not so much.”

“Give me your hand.”

“What?”

“Your hand.”

His fingers were cold and pale, as if they had been kept underwater for too long. Prasanna glanced around to make sure no one was looking. Then she placed his hand on her left breast.

“Well?” she asked.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Are green mangos hard or soft?”

“Yes. I mean hard.”

“Does this feel hard to you?”

“I was thinking more of the shape really.”

Kathir looked like a rickshaw driver with his hand ready on the air horn.

“Maybe you should take your hand away then,” said Prasanna.

“Of course. Sorry.”

“I didn’t know you were talking about the shape,” she said. “I wouldn’t have done that if I knew you were talking about the shape.”

“I understand.”

“Don’t think that I usually do things like that. Because I don’t.”

“Of course not. Thank you.”

Prasanna watched him disappear down the road, his head bobbing up and down like a coconut on a swollen river. Her ears were buzzing with questions that had no answers. Why had he shown up at the window instead of coming inside? Why had he thanked her? Why had she let him touch her breast?

“Why does anybody do anything?” she said, and the words hung in the air like a cloud of mosquitoes.

•

A few days later Kathir entered the library carrying a small plastic bottle. Inside it was something that looked like a piece of dried, orange parchment.

“I wanted you to see this,” he said. “Sometimes a mother will conceive a set of twins but one will get flattened during pregnancy. It’s called a vanishing twin. This is mine.”

“This is your twin?”

“Yes.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes, it’s my brother. That black dot would have been his eye. I wanted you to see him because he’s the only family I have.”

“What about your parents?”

“They’re dead.”

Prasanna wondered if he had flattened them and stored them in bigger bottles at home. She wondered if he would bring them tomorrow.

“Anyway, I’m going to Chennai for a few days,” he said. “Will you keep him while I’m away?”

“No.”

“I thought you would say yes.”

“Why would you think that?”

He turned and headed for the door, leaving the bottle on her desk. His head re-appeared a few seconds later at the window.

“I was wondering if I could touch your—”

“No.”

“How about when I get back?”

Prasanna thought she saw the twin wink at her from inside the bottle.

“We’ll see,” she said.

•

That night she dreamed she was sitting alone in the library. The twin had sprouted arms and legs and was sticking its tongue out at her.

“Do that again and I’ll rip you up into tiny pieces,” she said. The twin began to cry, rubbing its tiny leathery fingers into its black eye.

“How does he even know you were a boy?” said Prasanna. “What if you were a girl?”

The twin looked up and blinked, as if it was waiting to hear the rest of the story.

“If you were a girl they would have named you Kavitha. You would have married a software engineer from California. You would have had two sons with American accents so thick they couldn’t pronounce their own names.”

The twin giggled.

“If you were a boy, they would have named you Senthil. You would have loved cricket and been a state player. You would have neglected your studies in college and fallen in love with a prostitute. She would have died of AIDS and you would have grown a beard and thrown yourself in front of an express train.”

The twin began to bawl again, piercing the air with a wail that reminded Prasanna of old ladies in mourning.

•

The next day was orange and heavy with the scent of lightning. Dogs howled for no reason and ants relocated in panic, carrying sprays of white eggs from one crack in the floor to another. Prasanna decided not to think about the road. Instead, she pictured herself dying in the Keerapalayam library, her mutinous soul slipping out of her ear while she took her afternoon nap. Her skin would fuse to her plastic chair and her body would be so furious it would refuse to burn on the funeral pyre. Nobody would cry, nobody would come except maybe Kathir to save a patch of her elbow in an old perfume bottle.

The twin was lying face down in the bottle as if these premonitions were too overwhelming to bear. Prasanna began to feel a little sorry for it.

“It’s not so bad,” she said, but the twin was unmoved. It stared at the floor as if it was contemplating something serious and permanent.

“You should get some fresh air, might do you good,” said Prasanna. She went outside and tipped the twin onto the road. It skittered to the side and lay perfectly still, as if it was considering its options. Then it began to tumble forward, picking up speed as if it had decided on something. Soon it was shrinking into the horizon like a discarded plastic bag.

“The vanishing twin,” said Prasanna and she smiled because she liked it when things fit that way. It was like hearing something click.

•

Kathir arrived at the library window two afternoons later, unshaven and smelling like the unreserved compartment of the Day Express.

“I just got in,” he said. “Wanted to pick up my brother before going home.”

Prasanna had seriously contemplated making a duplicate twin but she couldn’t find any orange paper and the store keeper would not sell her an orange crayon separately. She later realized she didn’t have any scissors either and decided that the matter was very much out of her hands.

“You want him right now?” she asked.

“I’d feel weird going home if he wasn’t there.”

She placed the empty bottle on the window sill and watched as his brow slowly furrowed. Before he could say anything she grabbed his hand and crushed it against her breast.

“Where is he? What are you doing?” said Kathir, trying to pull his hand free.

“I lost your twin,” she said.

“You what?”

“He fell.”

“Fell how?”

“He slipped out.”

“What do you mean he-fell-he-slipped-out? Let go of my hand!”

“I’m really sorry.”

“Let go!”

He pulled back and collided with the coconut tree behind him.

“Are you angry at me?” she asked.

“How can you lose someone’s brother? Are you stupid?”