He sighed heavily, marched to the back of the car, threw her suitcase into the trunk again, and dropped into the driver’s seat. He looked at Madhavi in the rearview mirror—Poornima had hardly heard her breathe since they’d climbed into the car—and then he looked at Poornima. She couldn’t quite decipher his expression. A mixture of curiosity, maybe, but also a vague protectiveness, she thought, perhaps from her scarred face and neck. She tilted her face imperceptibly to the left, to reveal the center of the burn. He studied her face some more, but he didn’t seem at all to be pitying her, which she’d come to expect. Nor did he seem disgusted, to which she’d also become accustomed.
“I’m still monitoring you. Every day for those three weeks. Don’t think I won’t,” he said, and drove them to a small, one-room flat in a different part of town, more residential, with peeks of dark blue water between some of the buildings. He and Poornima took an elevator to a flat filled with light, even though clouds were gathering to the west, which was the direction the apartment faced; it had wood floors and spotless white cabinets. She looked around the room and said, “Here? We can stay here,” knowing Madhavi would never be allowed to remain with her.
“The girl comes with me.”
“Where will she stay?”
“This is your first time being a shepherd, isn’t it?”
She wanted to smile, but knowing her face contorted grotesquely, she only nodded.
“You’ll need food,” he said, looking around the empty apartment. “I’ll get you a blanket, some dishes.”
“Rice and pickle will be fine.”
“There’s a small store two blocks from here. Don’t go any farther than that. They’ll have rice. No pickle. You have to go to an Indian grocery store for that.” He seemed to be considering that statement, and Poornima wanted to ask him where the Indian store was, but she knew he wouldn’t tell her; her burned face was far too conspicuous to frequent a small store where the Indian community probably gathered and most likely gossiped. Who is she? they’d ask, and then look around for an answer. “Do you know English?” he asked after a moment.
“Yes,” she said proudly, lifting her head, “I know English.”
He seemed unimpressed, and said back to her in English, “I’ll bring them over tonight.”
*
What surprised Poornima was that there was no snow. It was the middle of September and she was in Seattle, and yet there was no snow. She’d heard endless stories over the years about how cold it was in America, and how the snow reached to your waist, and how the cars just went along anyway, slipping and sliding on the snow and ice. She had to admit that she was a little disappointed. Not only was there no snow, it was actually hot. Not as hot as Indravalli or Vijayawada, certainly, but it must be over thirty, she thought, opening the two windows of her one-room flat, fanning herself, taking off the thick brown men’s socks she’d bought in Vijayawada, specifically for the trip, in anticipation of a cold country.
She was also surprised, by the time she returned from the corner store—with a small packet of rice and some vegetables and salt and chili pepper and a container of yogurt and a few pieces of fruit, along with a bar of soap and a small bottle of shampoo—that the country was so empty. In the two blocks to the store, she’d seen a few cars drive past and a plane overhead, and heard a distant honk, but there hadn’t been a single person on the streets. Not one. Where were they? Did anyone even live here? she wondered. Did they all go to another city to work or to school or to shop? And where were the children? She’d passed a small park, but that, too, had been empty. It frightened her a little, the quiet, the emptiness, the loneliness of the streets and the sidewalks and the houses, standing so abandoned, built for people who never passed or never stayed. It wasn’t till that evening, while she waited for Mohan, that she saw a few lights come on inside the neighboring houses, and every now and then saw a figure pass in front of a window; Poornima nearly whooped with joy to see them.
All through that first afternoon, though, she held herself back. She clenched her fists and kept herself from bursting out of the door and running up and down the streets looking for Savitha. Yelling out her name. What good would that do? None. She had to be systematic, and for that she needed Mohan.
He returned that evening with a sleeping bag (which he had to show Poornima how to use), a pillow, and a bag containing a pot, a pan, a few utensils, and some plastic plates and cups. Poornima looked at them, piled on the kitchen counter, and said, “How is the girl? Madhavi?”
He eyed her sternly. “Why?”
“I traveled halfway around the world with her.”
“You no longer have anything to do with her,” he said. “Forget it.” He turned and walked to the front door. When he reached it, Poornima forced her voice to thicken, to break, and said, “They’re loved, you know. You think they’re not, because they’re poor, or because they were sold, or because they have a cleft lip, but somebody loves these girls. Somebody longs for them. Do you understand? They’re loved. You can’t possibly know that kind of love.”
He glared at her with what seemed to her like murder, and she blanched, falling silent, but then his gaze seemed to ebb in some way, and he said, his voice disquieted, “She’s fine.”
“Then show me where she lives. What could it hurt? Take me now, in the dark. She can’t be far, can she? I just want to see.”
She held her breath. She thought he would refuse again, but he looked at her for a long moment. “This once. Just this once. After this, shut up about it.”
*
She didn’t think it possible, but the streets were even quieter than they had been during the day. She rolled down her window, better to see the street names, but she couldn’t make out a single one in the dark, or else Mohan drove so fast past them that she didn’t have a chance to read them. The ones she did glimpse—with her limited English—just looked to her like a jumble of letters. So she began focusing instead on the turns he was making, the number of streets between each turn, and the slope of the streets and the look of the houses and the reach of the trees. Even flowerpots, on the edge of porches, she memorized.
Finally, after ten or so minutes of driving, they reached a narrow street that was long and lined with what looked like cheap apartment houses. He drove to the middle of the street, eleven houses in, on the left, pointed to a window on the second floor, and said, “There. See? The light’s on. She’s fine.” Poornima, in the few seconds before he sped up again, noted every feature she could of the shadowed building: the tattered brown awning over the front door, the lighted windows, six across and each hung with cheap curtains, a tree with flat, dark green leaves at the edge of the building, one of its branches angled toward the window that Mohan had pointed out, Savitha’s window, maybe, the branch twisted, trying to reach inside. Would it look the same during the day, or was it a trick of the light? She needed more. She looked for a star, any star, but the sky was now completely smeared with clouds. They were waiting at a traffic light, at the end of the street.
“Are the stars here the same as in India?”
“More or less,” he said.
“So the North Star,” she said, her voice relaxed, as if only mildly curious, making conversation, “it’s behind us?”
“No, it would be there,” he said, pointing ahead of them.
She said, Oh, as casually as she could manage, and smiled into the dark.
*