There’s only one person I want to talk to. The clock reads three in the morning; it is daytime on the other side of the planet. I dial my mother’s number. She picks up right away, and the sound of her voice has me choking broken sounds down my throat.
Her voice rises. “Darling, is that you? What is it? What has happened?”
“Amma.” The word is a plea.
“Sweetheart, what is it? Is the baby okay?”
“Yes, Amma.” I can hear her breathe again.
I say, “But Daniel…”
“What? What’s happened to him?”
“He’s leaving me, Amma.”
A shocked little “Oh.” I can see her mouth making the sound.
“He’s leaving, Amma. He’s going. He’ll take Bodhi with him. I’ll be alone.” A flood of tears, and then the words rushing out of my mouth. “Amma, I think something’s wrong with me. I don’t know what it is. I feel like something is wrong with me. Something really, really bad. That’s why he’s going.”
A silence.
“Amma, what is it?”
She sighs. “It’s all my fault.”
“What?”
“It’s my fault. I was trying to protect you. So we never talked about it. I thought you couldn’t remember. What happened with you when you were small. I should have stopped it. I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault. I didn’t know any better.”
The door is opening. She will swing it open. I want to hear her say it. I want to hear her voice saying the words. I need to hear it.
“You mean what happened with Samson?”
“Samson?”
“Yes…” I will her to speak the words.
Her voice is gentle and heartbroken. “No, baby. It wasn’t Samson. He didn’t do anything to you. Samson always tried to protect you.” She says, “He died trying. Don’t you know that?”
“What? No, Amma, how can you say that? I was hurt. He hurt me. He touched me. I remember his hands. For years.”
“No, baby. It wasn’t Samson. If it had been him, it would have been easy. He was a servant. I could have had him thrown out at any moment. It would have been easy.” Her voice is cracking wide as if a river will flow out of the crack in her soul. Her words are sinking inch by inch into the strata of my brain.
“Amma, it happened. All the time. When you weren’t there. In the dark and in the corners.”
“Yes, baby. I know that. I tried to protect you. But I wasn’t strong enough. I was just a village girl. If I had said anything, you and I would have been thrown out. No one would have believed me. No one would have taken us in. They would have thought I was making up stories. Things like that didn’t happen back then. Or if they did, no one believed it. No one talked about it. But it wasn’t Samson.”
My chest is shattered open, memories flying out like bits of torn paper with the truth written on them. A maelstrom of words flying around my face, a heaving, swirling snowstorm of memory. I’m in the house. It rises up all around me. Dark passages and empty hallways. I’m small again and running from someone whose footsteps thud just behind my fleeing body. But not Samson. Someone else. A hand landing huge and heavy on my shoulder, spinning me around weightless as a top, a blast of arrack in my face. A gasping shudder from deep inside me. My body naming its perpetrator.
Amma is talking. “He touched you. But he never raped you. You know that, right? It was only some touching. I’m sorry. I tried to protect you. So did Samson that night, and then your father went out with the gun and … I’m so sorry. I thought you knew. And now you are the mother of a daughter. I didn’t want to bring up these terrible memories. I was trying to protect you.”
Everything is quiet inside my head. The storm of words and visions subsides into a single point that pierces my chest, reenters. There are no more tears. I force my voice to be calm. “Amma, it’s okay. I have to go, okay? I’ll call you later. I promise.”
And she, lulled by this tone, says, “Okay, baby. I’m sorry. I love you.” I hang up and all my life falls into a different pattern than it had been in before. Everything is shaken and reconfigured at grotesque, unnatural angles. Voices whisper what must be done, what is the only thing. I listen; I am attentive. They make me remember. All those times Daniel hugged Bodhi to him. All those times he went to comfort her and left me alone. It all falls into a different pattern now. I must save her. The way Amma never saved me. But I can save my little girl.