Wreck and Order (22 page)

I find Suriya sweeping the dirt yard, making a pile of dead leaves and trash. “I've been thinking,” I say, “that it's getting to be time for me to leave. Travel around a bit and then head back to the U.S.”

Suriya rubs her lips together, distracting her mouth from forming unbecoming sounds. “Oh, El, but you can wait to go back to Kandy with me, no? My school starts in two weeks only. We can go back together then, okay?”

Giving a set quantity of time to these days of being nothing but an American witness to Suriya's life of chores and worship panics me. I have to do something.

“I thought maybe you'd like to travel with me, before I go back.” Suriya looks at me hard, her lips downturned. “I'll take you on vacation.”

“I take vacation with you?”

“Sure. Why not? You want to stay at a fancy hotel and swim in a pool and meet lots of Europeans?”

Suriya grins, eyebrows raised. “I will take a vacation in my own country!”

“Yes, I will take you. Let's get your things together. You don't need much. I can lend you clothes. Or we can buy you new ones.” I'm holding her hands, bending my knees as if preparing to jump, as if it's the scene in the musical where the crippled boy learns to walk or the prostitute finds true love and gives up the smack and finds a cure for AIDS.

Suriya drops my hand and looks toward the kitchen. “We need to bring food for our trip. How will we take our meals?”

I take my toothbrush off the ledge of the water tank. “At restaurants. I'll pay. You won't have to cook.” I spit toothpaste into the cakey dirt. “Your father will let you go, right? You'll only be gone a few days.”

Suriya's father is snoring on a cot in the room of rats and abandoned clothes. “Just tell Ayya,” I whisper to her. Ayya is in his room, staring into a half-filled duffel bag open on his bed. I stand beside Suriya while she explains our plan, adding encouraging phrases now and then—“So much practice with English!” “Very nice hotel!” Ayya looks from Suriya's face to mine. “Go with your friend,” he says in English, adding Sinhala that Suriya translates for me: Do not worry for our father. I will make him not be angry. Have fun.

Suriya puts a couple of skirts and T-shirts in a bag. “This one, El? Or maybe the blue is better?”

“The blue one,” I say without looking, wanting to get on the road before her father wakes up, giddy now that I'm finally making something happen.

She stands in the center of the room, sighing and serious in the way of a final goodbye. What exactly does she believe I'm offering her? “El Akki?” she says. “I promised Rajith we would visit today. He will be lonely without his mother.”

“Let's take him with us! By the time we get back, his mom will be better.”

Suriya laughs. “You are serious?”

She makes a pot of rice and prepares three plates for her father—food she made for breakfast this morning and dinner last night. She leaves the day's meals in a neat row on the table, covered by a plastic dome to keep the flies away. Although I insist it's unnecessary, she wraps up a couple of leftover curries to take with us, in case we get hungry on the bus. She splashes water from the tin jug onto the food-spattered kitchen floor. The water breaks into tiny beads as it hits concrete.

Rajith's home is a one-room cube with an old sari for a front door. Suriya calls out. No one comes. We peer inside. Dusty floor. A table topped by plastic bowls abuzz with flies, drunk on the stench of congealed coconut milk and rotting vegetables. Suriya calls out again. A woman responds from the yard. She wears a long skirt and faded sari blouse, holds a baby in one arm and Rajith's hand in the other. Rajith points at us, his eyes wide, his hoarse voice urgent.

The woman smiles and draws near. Suriya holds out her hands and takes the baby, who starts crying as soon as his mama releases him. Suriya bounces him forcefully until he quiets. She is so much more confident than I am. Still bouncing, she explains why we've come. The woman steps back, stares hard, asks a question full of doubt. Suriya insists. The woman laughs and claps her hands together. She addresses Rajith, who nods his head with dangerous vigor.

Suriya chooses our lodging. I ask if there's anywhere she's ever wanted to visit and she names a fancy hotel a few towns away, pronouncing the word as if it's a disagreeable question. I look it up in my guidebook: a resort and spa in the mountains, seemingly the only tourist attraction in the area. The rooms are six times the price I'd pay for myself. But this is a gift.

At sunset a bus deposits us at the base of a primitive mountain road. Barefoot children and hunched elderly women with broken teeth mill around a small sign advertising
THE ROYAL RESORT
in pink cursive, their palms extended. A tuk-tuk driver pulls up in front of me and gestures to the back of his car. “Royal Resort, yes, madam? Come, madam.” He looks disappointed when Suriya crowds into the back with me, Rajith on her lap. “Keeyada?” she asks. He answers sullenly, forced to give the local price.

We crawl up the stony mountainside, listing from side to side to avoid the largest troughs and spikiest rocks. Rajith beats his hand on his lap, thumpety-thump-thump. Suriya watches the orange sky rushing over billions of sea-green tea leaves, her back straight and lips pursed, affecting an air of sophistication that makes me nervous. I purposefully fall into Rajith at the largest bumps, making him laugh, trying to put Suriya at ease.

The hotel entrance is a white arbor encircled by tiny, aggressive jasmine flowers. While I pay the tuk-tuk driver, Suriya takes out her handkerchief and pocket mirror, dabs her face, smooths back her hair. Her real self and her reflection compete for solemnity. As we walk into the lobby, brown bodies buttoned into white uniforms pause to look at us, then hurry on, unsure how to address our unusual trio. The man behind the desk looks only at me as I book a double room.

A Sri Lankan woman with enormous eyes and breasts takes us up. Suriya grips Rajith's hand as we step inside the elevator, whispering fiercely. “They are your friends?” the pretty hotel clerk asks me just before she leaves us. I wish Suriya would answer in Sinhala, but she just stands still and serious, waiting to be identified.

“Yes.” My voice is loud and ugly, feigning comfort. “They are my friends.”

Once we're alone in our room, Suriya begins to relax. She sits on the edge of the bed and bounces the mattress, looks out the window at the now purpled sky and darkening hills below. “Wow, El,” she says. “Wow.” Rajith burrows under the covers headfirst. Suriya tickles his feet, resting on the pillow, ankles splayed. Then she makes him get up and scrub his feet in the bathroom. She removes the case his feet touched and fluffs the pillow. Clean-toed, Rajith returns to his den and giggles from under the covers. I ask Suriya if she would like to take a bath before dinner.

“Sit in that bowl of water?”

“Yes. Hot water.”

“No, Akki. That is not necessary.” But she spends a long time getting ready. She leaves the bathroom door open at first, knotting a towel around her chest like a sarong. “I'll take care of Rajith,” I say. “You can have privacy.” I pull the door closed before she can protest.

I lift up the covers from the foot of the bed where Rajith is burrowed and—peekaboo! He laughs. Suriya turns on the shower. I feel agreeably new to myself—motherly, accommodating—as the minutes pass and Suriya remains alone in a room with a closed door, naked, a continuous stream of hot water raining down on her, steam to draw out her private thoughts, enough time and space for the thoughts to exist without scrutiny. A few Sinhala words interrupt the white noise of falling water—soft words caressing and dissolving. Or so I want them to be. Words like rose petals melting on Suriya's eyelids. I feel so good.

Rajith chatters away on the walk to the hotel restaurant but grows shy once we step inside the enormous room. Plastic gargoyles menace the diners from its four high corners. Rajith reaches his arms up to Suriya, but she refuses to carry him, takes his hand instead. I lead us to a table near the buffet. Suriya stands behind her chair, staring at the place settings, stricken. One large plate surrounded by cutlery: two knives, two forks, two spoons. “El,” she whispers. “I cannot eat with a fork.”

“Why would you? We're in your country.” But as we fill our plates at the buffet, I notice that even the Sri Lankan families—men in ties, children in bejeweled salwar kameez and kurtas—are eating with utensils. So what. Who cares what people think? We are here to have fun, to be free. I speak these words aloud as we settle back at our table, my voice sharp and clear, as if I'm addressing the whole room, making a statement. About what? For whose benefit?

Rajith digs in first, loudly crumbling his papadum over his goat curry, mashing it into balls and shoveling the balls down. Suriya pours us water from the pitcher at the table with absurd care, back erect, forehead clenched. The water falls in a frustrated trickle. I must eat with my hands to put her at ease. But my fingers remain poised over my plate, refusing to dirty themselves in this room of Western eaters. I can't help myself, I'm hungry, this meal will probably cost me more than all of my previous Sri Lankan meals combined. I pick up my fork and mix the aubergine and fried bitter gourd with moist, spicy sambhol. Yum. Suriya takes the large spoon, wipes it across her plate until it's full, opens her mouth so wide I can see her tonsils, ducks her chin down to her plate, closes her mouth around the spoon, swallows with the utensil still in her mouth. Pitying, embarrassed, made thoughtless by discomfort, I take the forkful of food I'm about to consume and dump it into my other hand, then pop the handful into my mouth. Suriya watches my hands and mouth in astonishment. With a small sigh, she picks up her own fork and also begins using it as a miniature shovel. My movements grow mechanical and frenzied. Fork, hand, mouth, repeat, fork, hand, mouth, repeat. Suriya's forehead is dotted with sweat as she tries to keep up with me. I had wanted so much to give her a decadent, relaxing meal. Now I just want this awkwardness to end as quickly as possible.

Rajith watches us and laughs. He begins using all three pieces of cutlery at once, dumping food from his spoon onto his knife and catapulting the knife toward his open mouth, spraying coconut milk and goat bits. A waiter approaches to ask if we'd like anything to drink. I have a fork in one hand and a palmful of curry in the other. Food coats my chin. “I would love a Coca-Cola, thank you.” I hate soda and have never ordered a Coke in my life. “Suriya? Rajith?” I ask brightly. “Yes, please,” Suriya says, rice kernels coating her large, purple lips, green sauce dripping from her chin.

“Coca-Colas for everyone,” I say.

“Yes, madam.” The waiter—teenaged, pimpled, self-consciously tall—hurries away. When he returns with our Cokes on a plastic tray covered in flaking gold paint, Suriya sits up straighter and enacts my ridiculous amalgam of eating techniques with painstaking care.

A long, unabashed laugh enlivens the dining room. Several waiters are crowded in the doorway to the kitchen, staring at our table. One is doubled over with loud guffaws. Another shushes him, just as loudly, staring and grinning. Rajith is beside himself with delight, plowing his food into a mound at the center of his plate, mashing it down with a thwack of his spoon, giggling, shoving handfuls into his mouth, destroying and rebuilding his mountain of fancy curries. The waiter stands erect over us. Would madam care for anything more?

I would not, thank you, please just charge the meal to my room. Suriya's face is tight and red, as if she's not breathing. She commands Rajith harshly and wipes her face with her napkin. “Why are we eating in this manner, El?” she asks.

“Because I got confused.” I'm not used to being the madam, to charging meals to my room. I wouldn't know how to behave even if I were alone. “I'm so sorry.”

We don't speak on the walk back to our room. Suriya scrubs Rajith's face with a washcloth, his eyes falling shut then snapping open. She carries him to bed and curls up next to him, not even brushing her hair. I want her to sleep with me, her purple pajama pants and loud, slow breaths reassurance that she is okay, still herself in this strange place. “You can sleep alone if you like,” I say. “I'm happy to share with Rajith.”

“No, no, El,” she murmurs. “The bed is good. Comfortable fun for my body.”

I apologize again for the mess I made of dinner.

“Do not worry for that, Akki.” Her voice sinks into the short, sweet pause of sleep.

Room service for breakfast the next morning: a large basket whose contents—jam and bread—seem to disappoint Rajith. No matter. The swimming pool will fix that. I offer to lend Suriya a bathing suit but she looks at me like I've lost my mind. She does ask shyly if she can wear my running shorts on the bottom, instead of the knee-length pleated skirt she normally swims in. “Wow,” she says to her mostly bare legs in the mirror. “I dress like this in my room sometime but never outside before.” She cups her knees and swings them side to side, examining her thighs from all angles. Legs of such a beautiful shape and color that I have a pang of absurd envy: No one will ever see her legs except her husband.

I have to keep myself from breaking into a run as we approach the pool, whose far end spills over the edge of a cliff overlooking endless hills of tea leaves, lapping at each other, folding in on themselves, bursting out in exuberant summits. The sky is barely blue, barely there at all—emptiness, space. “Oh,” I say. “Wow,” Suriya says. She remembers Rajith and grabs for his hand, lest he propel himself into the rectangle of cool water, made teal by the porcelain tiles. Long, oiled white limbs are sprawled on lounge chairs. A Sri Lankan girl in a ruffled one-piece and goggles is in the pool with her large-bellied father, who is trying to teach her the breath pattern for the crawl stroke. I ask the pool attendant—leaning back in a plastic chair, surveying the sky—for three towels.

Partly to cover my nudity, which feels grotesque beside Suriya's suggestive modesty, I walk straight to the deep end and dive in, pump my legs and arms through velvety water until I run out of breath. I beckon to Suriya and Rajith. Suriya pulls off Rajith's T-shirt, speaking excitedly. He hops from foot to foot, belly protruding, eyes big. In a rush that seems like a surge of courage, Suriya pulls off her drawstring pants, exposing the small running shorts beneath. She takes Rajith's hand and leads him to the pool stairs, pauses on the second step, smiles at the water lapping her calves. The pool attendant marches up on long, fast strides. “You must not swim with a shirt,” he says. “Proper attire, please.”

“It's not a shirt.” The words drop out of my mouth like bricks. “It is a swim costume.”

“Proper attire, please,” he says.

“It is proper attire. It is a Sri Lankan swimming costume and we are in Sri Lanka.” I enunciate loudly, hoping the other Sri Lankans at the pool will hear this absurd interaction and come to Suriya's defense. But they're all wearing Western swim trunks and sleeveless bathing suits. I wait for Suriya at least to speak to the man in Sinhala, but she's already removed her feet from the water. “We did not know this rule,” she tells the attendant in slow, perfect English, her arms crossed over her chest. “Thank you.”

“You can borrow one of my bathing suits,” I say, joining Suriya on the pool deck. “Let's just go back to the room and change.”

“A bathing suit like you dress? No. Maybe in your country, I dress that. But in a place with Sri Lankans—no no no. You swim with Rajith.”

But as soon as Suriya pulls her pants back on and settles on a lounge chair in the shade, Rajith walks up to her and pulls her hand. She explains, gestures toward the pool, smiles, urges. He shakes his head. She leads him forcefully to the water's edge, places his hand in mine. He looks up at me, his face waiting to know how to feel. “The water is good,” I say. He probably understands some English. “Come and swim.” With each step down, his grip on my hand tightens. On the last step, he stops and says, “Ne.” Of course. He must not know how to swim. So we stay on the bottom stair, hopping lightly, water up to his chest. I long, shamefully, to be alone here, swimming laps, floating on my back, ordering a piña colada, stretching out in the sun and letting the contents of my mind dissipate. Soon Rajith, too, longs for something different. He walks to Suriya. They decide to go back to the room for a little while.

“Should I come with you?” I offer. “We don't need to stay at the pool.”

“No, El, you stay here,” Suriya says. “Enjoy your swim. We will be back soon.”

Relieved and guilty, I float on my back and then stretch out on a lounge chair. A middle-aged Sri Lankan woman wearing rhinestone sunglasses approaches me. “Are you a sponsor?” she asks.

“A sponsor? Of what?”

“The young woman and her child. My husband and I were noticing you and we would like to offer our congratulations. You are so brave. We also sponsor poor children, but only in our home.”

“They are my friends.”

“It is so kind of you to take them here.”

“Believe me, I'm no one's sponsor.”

She fakes a laugh to cover her confusion and bids me a good day.

Suriya returns to the pool carrying both Rajith and the newspaper packet filled with curry that she made yesterday morning. Oh no. She cannot be planning to eat that here. “Rajith needs to take a meal,” she says.

“Me too.” I hurriedly pack my things. “Let's check out that café over there.”

“The restaurant is so much money, El. I think it is waste. We have our food.” She sounds tired. I brought her here so that she could finally rest.

“Don't worry about the money. Let me treat you. That's what a vacation is for.” My voice is bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, the long-ago sound of my mother urging my father out of bed on his bad days. I take Suriya's hand and steer us to the café next to the tennis courts.