When they entered the room, he kissed her roughly and then handed her the bottle of clear liquid. She rubbed it over her stub, and then she closed her eyes. She’d done this so many times that she could do it by feel. But behind her closed eyelids, there was a different vision. And in this vision, she saw a collapsed building. She couldn’t see what had made it collapse, but she saw that not only that building, but all the surrounding buildings, and all the houses around the surrounding buildings, they were also collapsed. And it went on: beyond the houses, there were slums, and these, too, were rubble. And then followed the factories and the garbage dumps and the fields: flattened. She didn’t know what had caused this collapse, all the way to the horizon; she didn’t need to. She only needed to see the ruin, know the ruin, know it would never end.
When Suresh went to the bathroom, she slipped out of the room and rifled through the first drawer of the desk. And then the second. And then the third. Nothing. No little blue books. Where could they be? Anyplace. A million other places. Probably not even in the warehouse. She ran back inside, and when she did, Suresh was coming out of the bathroom. He looked at her, and then at the open door. “Where’d you go?” he said, his voice even.
“I heard a sound.”
He raced past her and checked the warehouse and then outside. He came back and said, “Nothing.” He eyed her suspiciously, sternly, and then he took two steps, to where she was standing, and slapped her, hard, and said, “Next time there’s a sound, I’ll check.”
*
When she got back to the apartment, she sat on her cot for a long while. She listened to the night sounds: Padma’s and Geeta’s breathing, the swoosh of cars, the rustle of leaves, the burning of stars. Then she took out the remaining strip of Poornima’s half-made sari and brought it to her face. She cried out.
Geeta sat straight up. “What? What is it?”
Savitha whisked it behind her. “Nothing. A bad dream.” Padma didn’t wake. She looked from her to Geeta, who’d fallen back on her pillow, and then brought it out again: even in the dark it was plain to see: Another piece. Gone. Now it was hardly the size of a towel. Now she understood. Now she knew. The pieces were a warning. They were a message. The pieces said: Stop. But how? How did they know? And how many pieces were left? How many till the last?
She looked at the cloth, as if for an answer. “From boll to thread to loom to now,” she whispered into it. And then, “We’re leaving, you and I.”
*
She waited. She wondered about the blue book.
*
She asked Geeta in a whisper one morning, after Padma had left, “You need it to go places? What places?”
“How should I know?”
“You mean if Vasu can’t pick me up. If I take the bus.”
“No, not like that. You need it to get on a plane. To go to another country.”
Savitha was astonished. Relieved. She looked at Geeta. “How long have you been here?”
“Five years.”
“How old were you?”
“Seventeen,” she said.
Savitha nodded. Around the same age I was when I met Poornima, she thought. And then she thought, But where will I go? Certainly not back to India; she didn’t have the money. Or the blue book. But she didn’t know anyone here. No one. Except—there was that one lady, the jilebi-haired lady, the one with the teeth of pearls. It was something, at least; someone. When Geeta went to take a shower, Savitha took out the white rectangle of paper and looked at it. Her name was Katie, Katie something. And under her name was a string of letters. No phone number, but there was an address: New York, New York. Twice. And to the east.
A few days later, she saw a young woman, with a kind face, coming out of one of the apartments, and she pointed to the string of letters. “What, please,” she said.
The young woman looked at her, perplexed. “Excuse me?”
“What this?”
The young woman looked at it. “That’s an e-mail address.”
It was Savitha’s turn to look perplexed.
“Do you have a computer?”
Ah. Savitha nodded, and thanked her.
A computer.
Well, she didn’t have a computer, and she couldn’t head west; Mohan said there was only the ocean to the west. And north, south? What was there to the north and south? She had no idea. But east. It would have to be east.
*
She began carrying Poornima’s half-made sari with her. Every day. Mohan noticed it once, on a clear, cold day in mid-September. “What is that?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said, stuffing it back into her pocket. “Just something someone left in one of the apartments.”
He looked at her, hurried into his clothes, and said, “I have to go. Pick them up.”
“Who?”
“The girl with the cleft lip.”
Savitha nodded. After he left for the airport, she took out the half-made sari, folded and refolded it, smoothed it with her one hand. She was now even more careful. Clutching it in her hand as she slept, never letting it leave her sight, even while she was in the shower. Still: nothing. Nothing. But she knew it would have to be soon.
*
On a Thursday evening, by now late in September, Mohan came for her again. He took her back to the park, the one overlooking the lights, the beads, and the band of water, and then he asked her what apartments she’d cleaned that day and took her to the one on Phinney Ridge. By now, she’d taught herself some of the street names and had learned to read a few signs, like Stop and Exit and Merge. Merge—she liked the sound of that one best. She’d also learned her numbers and how to write her name in English letters, and she’d asked Mohan how to spell his, and then she’d asked him how to spell Seattle. They hadn’t gotten much farther than that.
She watched him now, in the kitchen, making coffee. She remembered the first time she’d seen him, and how he’d gazed at her cast, knowing it was false, but still with genuine concern and curiosity. And how he’d bought her her first American bananas. And how he’d wooed her, in his fashion, in this place. In the intervening years, though there was so little she knew about him—since most of his stories were told to her in English—she’d come to sense that there fluttered in him some fragile being, some lone and broken creature, beating its wings against some lone and broken heart. And if she had to guess, she would say he had no idea what to do with her either, with this. But that, too, was as it should be. There was no answer. He was raised for different things. Different ends. Things maybe even he didn’t understand. But she? She knew what she was raised for, even with one hand, she knew: she was raised for the loom, the cloth, the magic of thread, the magnificence of making a thing, of wrapping it, like a lover, around your body.
And so it was—with hardly any hesitation—that she reached over and took out his wallet from the pocket of his pants. Why wait any longer? There was a little more than a hundred dollars, $112. Over six thousand rupees! It would certainly get her to New York. It would have to.
Just as she tucked the stack of bills into her pocket, she noticed lodged between them the photograph he’d shown her, the one of Spearfish Canyon. She considered it for only an instant before ripping it in two and stuffing the half with Suresh back into his pocket. And the half with Mohan, along with the money, into her own.
*
He dropped her off. Not this time, and never before, did they kiss good-bye.
*
She had to leave that night, that very night, before Mohan opened his wallet, before her love for him stopped her.
And so she did. She crept out of the apartment—after she was sure Geeta and Padma were asleep—and eased down the stairs. Nearing Vasu’s apartment, she saw the crack under his door was dark. Still, she trembled as she passed it; her left foot landed. Her right. A creak.
The lights came on.
Savitha stopped; she held her breath. Footsteps. Go—go now. She bolted down the remaining stairs. She opened the front door with a crash.
She knew east. East, she knew. She ran.
Poornima
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