When they landed at Heathrow, the first thing Savitha noticed was that it smelled like nothing, absolutely nothing—as if not a single animal had passed through here, nor a single flower bloomed—and then she noticed that it was cold. So cold that it seemed to be spilling out of the walls, climbing out of the floor. She asked the woman if they were in America. The woman said, No, we’re in England. Why did we stop here? she asked. Because it’s halfway between India and America, the woman said. They sat in the transfer lounge, which Savitha only registered as a long, crowded room with row after row of orange chairs. There were also a few shops, which were so brightly lit that they scared her away. She sat in one of the orange chairs and looked at the other people in the lounge. They, too, scared her. She noticed a few Indians, but mostly, the people around her—sleeping or eating or reading or talking—seemed to her like giants. Tall and unwieldy and oily. Some of them pale giants, some of them burnt, crisp giants, but all of them towering over her, even over the woman who was supposed to be her mother. Where had they all come from? Where were they all going? It felt to Savitha as if the world was full of them, these giants, suddenly, and that she and the old woman and Indravalli and Vijayawada were all merely their playthings, kept locked in a box in a hotter part of the world.
After that, after boarding another plane and after more hours upon hours had passed, during which, whenever Savitha woke and blinked into the dark of the plane and into the dark of the world beyond, she thought that maybe she was dead, and that this was the afterlife: all of them headed in a long bus to whatever was next, and around and beyond them was only stillness, and stars, and below, far, far below, only some gigantic moving mass, by turns white and then gray and then only black, reflecting the stars but darker, angrier than any night sky, and when she pointed to it and asked the woman, in alarm, What is that? the woman hardly even glanced at it, never even took out her cotton balls, and as she closed her eyes again, she said, “Water.”
*
The next morning, or what Savitha presumed was morning because the woman said, “Go brush your teeth,” they landed again. This time, when Savitha said, Is this America? the woman said, Yes.
They were at JFK.
They stood in one long line and then another. Then they sat down in another transit lounge. This one had blue chairs. Otherwise, it was just the same: the same lack of scent, the same cold, the same giants. “What city are we in?” Savitha asked. “Are we in Sattle?” No, the woman said, New York. And then she told her to sit right there, don’t move, and went off to make a telephone call. Savitha could see her in the distance, standing at a pole with a telephone attached to it. The woman put something into the telephone and pressed some buttons and started talking.
Savitha was nauseated, or maybe just lonely, so she closed her eyes and tried to think of Poornima, of her sisters, of her father, of anything that had perfume that she could inhale. Her mind swirled, but she was so tired, so depleted of memory, that nothing came to her. Not one thing. So she leaned down and opened the suitcase that Guru had given her to pack her few things, and she took out Poornima’s half-made sari and held it to her nose. She breathed. And there, even after coming all this way, to the other side of the earth, there was the scent of the loom. The scent of its picking stick. The scent of the rice starch used to dampen the thread and the scent of the charkha and the scent of the fingers that had wound it on the charkha, perfumed with turmeric and salt and mustard seed, and there, just there, was the scent of Indravalli Konda, and the deepa, the oil burning low, drenching the cotton wick as if with rain, with typhoon; she buried her face deeper and out rose the scent of the Krishna, winding its way through the mountains and valleys and into the sea.
When she raised her head, the woman seated across from her was watching her.
Savitha averted her eyes, but the woman kept looking.
The woman who was supposed to be her mother seemed to be saying her good-byes. Savitha wished she would come back quickly, but then the conversation seemed to take another turn, and the old woman began talking animatedly again. Savitha looked over, and when she did, the strange woman across from her, one of the giants, her hair the color of jilebi, and with round spots on her face like a ripe banana, leaned across toward Savitha, gazed at the cast on her arm and then into her eyes, and said, “Are you okay? Do you need help?” Savitha had no idea what she’d said, so she only shook her head, and then nodded, and then waited, hoping the jilebi-haired woman was satisfied and would leave her alone. She considered getting up and going to the woman who was supposed to be her mother, but she’d specifically told Savitha to stay put and watch their bags.
“Do you understand English?”
Savitha smiled and nodded again.
The woman smiled back. And it was then—when the woman smiled, when she revealed her tiny teeth, not at all giant, but dazzling, pearls, the most luminescent pearls, as if the oyster who’d made them had been in love during their making—that Savitha saw how gentle the jilebi-haired lady was, how concerned. Gentler and more concerned than anyone she’d met in a long, long time. Maybe ever. And Savitha thought, Maybe I’ve come far enough away. Maybe I’m in a good country. Maybe I’m in a kind one. Just then, a loud announcement came over the PA system and Savitha jumped, but the woman seemed unafraid; she reached inside her purse and took out a small white rectangle of paper and held it out to Savitha. Savitha took it, not knowing what else to do, and then the woman picked up her purse and her bag and walked into the mass of people that had gathered when they’d heard the announcement. Savitha watched the woman, inexplicably sad at her departure, and then she looked at the card. It had letters, maybe her name, and then more letters. She stared at it and stared at it, and when she looked up, the woman who was supposed to be her mother was walking toward her. Savitha had no idea what the letters spelled, but she knew enough to slip the card into the inside of her cast.
6
When they landed in Seattle, a man came to collect them. On the plane from New York, Savitha had looked out the window and seen the sky in front of her brushed with strokes of deep orange and rose and rust, but when she turned around, so was the other side. Though ahead of her it was brighter, the reds fiercer. West. They were heading west.
Savitha stepped through the sliding doors into the open air (after what felt like a lifetime) and saw that it was midday. The sun was high and warm. Lines of cars, shiny and silent, drifted by her; a few were stopped and had one or two people standing next to them, loading luggage or embracing or standing expectantly. One couple even kissed, and Savitha looked away in embarrassment. A few were standing at a far end, smoking. Otherwise, it was empty. There was no noise or clamor or porters or horns. There was not one policeman blowing his whistle, shouting for people to keep moving, nor a single person haggling with a taxi driver or laughing or eating from a cone of peanuts, dropping their shells on the ground, birds pecking among them for food, dogs sniffing at blowing wrappers and the discarded rinds of an orange or a mango, not even idle young men, standing in groups and watching the women and smoking beedies and spitting betelnut. Waiting for life. Here, there was nothing but a silent, ordered sleekness.
She looked up at the sun again.
It, too, was quiet. Not blazing and insolent and angry and rowdy, like it was in Indravalli, but tempered, emasculated. She didn’t know if she liked this sun. She doubted it was even the same one.
It was then that a black car, the windows so spotless they shone like a mirror, pulled next to her and the woman who was supposed to be her mother. The man who’d come to collect them, named Mohan, stepped out. He was older than Savitha, maybe thirty, though she couldn’t be sure, because he, too, was a giant. The first Indian giant she’d ever met. He was not exactly fat or puffy, though certainly there was something cherubic about his face. He was muscular, though, like the images of the cinema heroes Savitha had seen on posters, when she’d passed a handful of times along the Apsara or the Alankar. She saw them again now, those heroic muscles, curved, firm, rising from Mohan’s arms, his chest, while his neck and his hands held taut with their power, their magnificence, nearly discomfited by their rising and falling. Savitha found it disconcerting: this well-fed, well-tended extravagance, this health.
Nevertheless, what struck her most about Mohan was his melancholy. Eyes and lips turned by some sorrow, some blunder, the sad slope of his stride as he came around the car, reached for their few bags. His gaze paused at Savitha’s cast and then continued up her stomach and breasts to her face.
“Is that all?” he asked in Telugu. The old woman nodded, and they climbed into the car.