Island of a Thousand Mirrors (17 page)

The sun is sending long rays across the earth as I leave that dead roofless house,
my hands clutching the ripped dress together. The smell of the men is buried deep
inside my skin, burrowing into my head. If I can only get home, I will be alright.
Amma will take care of me. She will wash away the smell, put me to bed, and then this
pain will go away, the sound of the men over me, their grasping hands and teeth, it
will all go away. If only I can get home.

I walk and walk. Through fields and over bunds. It seems like hours, every muscle
in my body feels ripped. When I come into the village, there are people on the streets.
They look at me with wide staring eyes. A man on a bicycle swerves as I walk past,
his front tire falling into a pothole. Someone calls out my name. I stumble along
the lagoon toward the house. From inside the house, Amma, who has known the sound
of my step since before I was born, calls out, fear in her voice, “Who’s there?”

*   *   *

There is sound and silence. Amma beats her breast and hurls curses. Appa wears silence
like a cloth pulled over his head. From the moment I staggered into the house, lame,
bleeding, wild-eyed, he has not talked to me. He has avoided my eyes and also those
of Luxshmi and Amma. His gaze skims over us all as if we are not in front of him.
In the mornings, he limps from the house although we know there is nowhere for him
to go. When he returns at night to this house of grieving women, we hear the lagging
reluctance in his step.

At night, I lie with Amma on my left, her heavy arm stretched over me, Appa on my
right, his back turned on me. I lie trembling, teeth gritted, eyes wide open, staring
into the impenetrable dark. I will not sleep because then the soldiers return. As
soon as my eyes close, they climb all over me. Their smell drops over my head, pushes
its way into my nostrils, deep into the caverns of my skull, until I am full of it,
fighting, kicking, and scratching, and then I wake, limbs thrashing, teeth grinding,
fighting Appa, who has climbed over me and is holding down my wrists, his face a crumpled
mask from which tears drop onto me, making me fight even harder, remembering other
shining drops falling.

Luxshmi’s voice, small, terrified, “What has happened, Amma? Why is Akka like that?”

“Shhhhh, little one. It is nothing. She is only a little sick these days.”

I lie, rigid, while they fall asleep around me. My hands clutched into fists, the
nails ripping into my flesh so that the pain keeps me from falling back into that
pit of men.

I lie on the mat for weeks, my head turned to the wall. Amma spends the last of her
money to buy fish, greens, spices. She spends hours in their preparation. When the
food is ready, she feeds me, mixing the curries with her fingers, talking to me of
people in the village, of the bird’s nest in the mango tree, the possibility of fresh
fish in the market, anything to keep me from remembering. But the smell of food turns
my stomach, and everything she puts in my mouth tastes of blood.

Visitors come to see whether there is truth in the rumors. I stay hidden in the back
room, but I can hear them talking. When they ask about me, Amma says I have been sick,
that I caught a fever and am resting, that I will soon be well. They say, “A lot of
fevers this time of year. The mosquitoes have been so bad. Cases of dengue are up.”
From behind the curtain, I hear the curiosity in their voices like open fish mouths
just under the surface of the water. I cover my ears with my hands and turn to the
wall.

Amma keeps Luxshmi home from school now. She sits beside me, strokes my head, and
brings me bright tumblers of well water. I am parched like a fish stranded in the
paddy fields after a storm. I drink and drink, but always, my throat is dry. There
is such terrified curiosity in Luxshmi’s eye. She wants to know like I wanted to know.
What is this thing that has happened to me? What is it that makes me broken, makes
me fight and scream in the night? But I cannot meet her eyes, cannot explain to her
the shame of what has happened.

She brings me jasmine strings from Kanahamma. The old lady gives these to her and
says, “Give this to your sister. She must have something good to smell.” I hold the
flowers against my face, their scent rises, sweet and pure, driving away the smell
of the men. I fall asleep, the blossoms crushed in my fist.

In Amma’s cloudy mirror, I catch a glimpse of a girl. I know she is me, only because
there is no one else in the room. She is big eyed, bruised, with a wounded, torn mouth.
Thin as a bone ravaged by the street dogs, her shoulder blades as sharp as knives.

The flesh has dripped from me. The hair that Amma combs every day hangs limp like
oily curtains on either side of my face. I want to draw them shut. Close off the view
of this terrified, wide-eyed creature who looks out of my eyes.

*   *   *

Some weeks later I hear a familiar step outside. Miss’s voice. I hear the chair creak
gently as she sits. I see her in my mind’s eye. Miss in her deep red sari, the molten
drops of her tiny gold earrings catching what little light is there in the darkness
of our front room, her hands carving elegant gestures and the long thick braid shaking
as she asks Amma if I am alright, if anything has happened to me, if she can help
in some way. I hear Amma say, “No. No, of course nothing has happened to her. What
could happen? The girl is fine. She has just been a little sick. But soon she will
be fine.” Miss isn’t convinced. She says even if something has happened, it is alright.
I must return to school immediately, start studying for the teacher’s examinations
that are coming fast. She will help me catch up on the weeks of lost work. She says
she has brought my books with her.

They send Luxshmi to fetch me, but I push away her small desperate hands. I don’t
want Miss to see the deep shadows beneath my eyes, the dark blossoming marks on my
wrists and neck. I can’t bear to have her smell the men on me. She thought I was like
her and I believed her. I thought I could take her place at the blackboard, live in
her little house. But I’m not like her at all. I’ve slipped into some other place
that exists alongside this one, a place no one else knows about where men can take
girls, rip them open, and bury a kind of corruption in their flesh. I feel it now,
this other thing buried in my flesh and marked by the smell of them. I know this thing
will not go away, so I lie with my head to the wall, waiting for Miss to leave.

She stays for so long that I start to think maybe she wouldn’t mind so much about
the smell. I am willing my legs to move, my head to rise when I hear her say, “Okay.
Well, make sure you tell her I was here. Tell her I’ll be waiting in the school for
her. She must come back. She’s a very talented student, you know. One of my best.
Here, let me leave these books for her…” I hear her steps on the verandah, and then
she is walking down to the mango tree where she has leaned her bicycle. I see her
ride away in my mind’s eye. I watch her until she is only a streak of vermilion against
the green banana trees and tall, waving palmyras, and then she is gone and I am truly
alone.

Luxshmi brings the books into the room. They lie in the corner for days, calling to
me in first soft, and then strident voices. When I can no longer ignore their summons,
I crawl to them, insert a finger into one, flip it open. By the dimpled afternoon
light, I survey the numbers, wait for them to cast their usual spell over me, to enmesh
and submerge me. I stare at the page. It is easy material I mastered years ago. My
own precise and neatly rendered solution on the right side of the page. But now, the
long rows of numbers are a foreign language, a blurring, messy heap that will not
disentangle into order. I try to control them, but the numbers look like bits of debris
fallen across the page, accidental and lacking order. I know then that the Teaching
Certificate has slipped through my fingers. I leave the books in their corner. Sometime
later, they are gone and I do not ask after them.

*   *   *

I wake to Amma’s fingers on my forehead, casting away my nightmares. Slow tears are
following the curve of her cheek, falling into my hair like the first drops of monsoon.
Panic rises like gorge and I struggle upright, instantly awake. She says, “My girl…”
I stare at her, waiting for her to speak, watch as she pulls herself together and
then says, “You have to go from here, my daughter. We can’t keep you with us anymore.
You must go to the training camp. Learn to fight. Become a hero.” And realizing that
this is not the trailing end of a nightmare, I grasp her hands, “Please, Amma. Please.
Let me stay with you.”

“Think, my girl. What will you do here? What man will take what the soldiers have
spoiled? Who will give their son for your sister? If you don’t go, you will ruin us
all.”

I beg for my life. “Amma, please. Please. Let me stay with you.”

She shakes her head. “You must go. Show people that you are a good girl. If you don’t
go, no one will believe that you were taken by force. They will say, she is not even
angry. There is a checkpoint close to the house and she must have encouraged them
in some way. We will lose face with everyone. You must go. It is the only way.”

She gets up, shakes off my clinging, reaching hands. “I have packed your things. Appa
will take you to the camp after you eat.”

In the other room, Appa and Luxshmi are eating. Bits of roti, the crunch of an onion.
They will not meet my eyes.

I stagger outside. It is half dawn, the sky swathed in night-chilled ribbons of pink.
I look into the blind open mouth of the well. There is one way out, Parvathi’s way.
I drop the bucket into the well, hear it boom against water, pull it up, hand over
hand, heavy and sopping, rough rope cutting into my fingers. I splash cold water against
my gasping face. Lift the bucket, pour water through my hair, molding my sarong to
my skin. Shivering, my bare toes digging into this wet bit of earth. My ears open
to the cry of the water birds high above, the stir of the mango leaves, Snowy barking
somewhere …

She is sending me away.…

When I go back inside, Amma is waiting with scissors in hand. I sit on the ground
in front of her and she takes them to my head. Appa and Luxshmi watch silently as
ropes of wet hair fall all around me. She cuts until my nape is bared. Until my head
is suddenly light, suddenly airy, the weight of all that hair, sixteen years of it
lifted off my head, my shoulders. Behind me, Amma is crying, but I am tearless now.

nine

Yasodhara, Los Angeles

In 1989, we take the oath, exchange our maroon Sri Lankan passports with the sword-wielding
lion, the pages upturned by exposure to sweat, humidity, sea air, for crisp-paged,
clean blue ones. We have become the most privileged and God-blessed persons on the
planet, Ameri-cans, thank you very much, not Ameri-can’ts.

*   *   *

When I tell Amma and Thatha that I am going to study literature at university, there
is less consternation than I had expected. Of course they see no evident future in
the study of books. The truth is, neither could I. But at that time I could see nothing
more desirable to do with my life than to spend it burrowing in words. Possibly Amma
and Thatha could see no other possibility for me, either, because beyond certain mumblings
of “Well, at least you might be able to get into law school afterwards,” they let
me go.

At university I read mountains of text, argue philosophy, write into the dawns, and
study without respite. I lose my virginity, drink too much, chew on fibrous mushrooms,
and dance in unknown but tender arms. I make love that feels like war with ivory-skinned
or ebony-hued boys, but never with the shy brown ones who remind me painfully of certain
long-lost fingers grasping my pulse.

I learn that the plainness of my face, the roundness of my figure, are not deterrents
to desire, that even the ugly sister can be adored. And then I fall hard into love.
He is green eyed, smooth muscled, caramel toned. We tumble and twine, lips and hips
joined through two years of college. He reads me Heidegger and Byron, introduces me
to the Mexican grandmother who brought him up, shows me secret watering holes and
hot springs deep in the California desert until I am sufficed and sated. Despite his
declarations that marriage is a trap, a grotesque prison, his inability to understand
why anyone would willingly castrate themselves within it, I dare to dream secretly
of forever, imagining emerald-eyed, brown-skinned children, somewhere to nest. I know
that I would have to risk Amma and Thatha’s wrath. They would never understand me
falling in love with a “foreigner.” Especially Amma, I know, will never forgive this
breach of etiquette. But for his kiss, I could face her anger. When he leaves me,
suddenly, unexpectedly, for a poetry-spouting freshman with ugly glasses, I learn
that the tearing of the heart muscle is far more painful than the tearing of the hymen.

After graduation, I stumble home, ripped open by heartbreak, unsure of what to do
next. I hide my anguish from Amma and Thatha with excuses about studying too hard
for final exams and am relieved when they seem to accept this. One morning Amma comes
to me while I am still in bed. Her fingers stroke my forehead like I’m a little girl.
She says, “Duwa, is there someone? You know, someone that you like? A special friend?”
I shake my head. She nods, pleased. She says, “Maybe it’s time that you thought about
it. Thatha and I can make inquiries, you know, just see what is available. Who is
out there. It’s a good thing for a girl to marry young. That way you can grow up with
your children like I did with you. You won’t be an old mother like these foreign women.”
I listen to what she is not saying. The fear that I will grow old and bitter with
my books, while other, younger girls get married. I lie in bed thinking about it after
she leaves. My whole body throbs with the loss of love. What do I have to lose?