Champa Bilwakesh Words: 4374

5 Garfield Lane East

Andover, MA 01810

978-475-3346

A Safe Place

By

Champa Bilwakesh

See that tree with the red blossoms? Don’t know what it’s called but that is where I stop to do my stretches, under that tree. I like coming here in the morning before the other walkers arrive, so I can have this place and the river all to myself. I face the river while I stretch my calves, heels down. The trees on the bank across the river have started turning colors and they suddenly light up as if someone flicked stage lights on them, their orange and yellows glowing at the tips. The river sends up a little breeze and I shiver slightly and pull my hood up, finish my stretches and then start an easy jog. A couple of times up and down along this stone wall and back to the apartment makes it five miles.

I think of Mr. Silva, he reminded me even yesterday to show up for the track try out today. ‘I’ll think about it’ I had said although I knew I’ll be there. Mr. Silva is Portuguese, and he’s ok. He reminds me of some men I have known in India.. Men make me uneasy, not scared exactly, but close. They seem somehow tightly wound. I feel they can lose it anytime and I would never know what it is I do that sets them off. I don't know why I feel this way but I once read in Glamour that girls who had a good relationship with their father have more self-confidence. My father, he died when I was a baby. He fell over the railway tracks while waiting for the train at Madras Central Station.

"No, we don't have any pictures of him. They are all lost."

"How did he fall, did someone push him?"

"Aiyo! What questions you ask! No one pushed him, he fell, that’s all."

"Did the train run over him?"

"No. Nobody knows, no one was with him when it happened. He was…he was a little sick. Now don't think about it so much."

I try to think of what his face would have looked like. Before he fell, I mean.

An old Chinese looking couple walk towards me with a German Shepherd. Cambodians, I decide as they come closer, their complexion is more like ours, coffee and milk, some with more milk and some with more coffee, like mine. I smile, they smile, the wrinkles on their faces change shapes and we pass.

Faces get old in different ways. Some get angular and even fierce as they age and others become soft like an over ripe mango. My grandmother’s face is like that now. Always soft and round, it would develop angles when she used to shape the red kunkum into a dime sized circle between her brows. But now she wears this little red felt sticker, since my grandfather died. It was the first thing I noticed when Mom and I met her in front of the green doors at Logan last night. And this look in her eyes. Well, it's not what was in it but what was not. She had slung a handbag on a shoulder and was pushing a cart with two suitcases. She suddenly stopped walking towards my mother and me and stood still. People with bags scurried around and past her. I walked up and put my hand on her shoulder. She had shrunk more since I saw her in Madras last. She looked up and then something must have clicked, because her eyes brightened. Her finger stroked my cheeks, her eyes measuring my height, loving me.

"Nimmi, so tall you're girl! I thought you're some American standing there, with this hat and coat!" she said.

I felt her thin body in my arms as we hugged and hated the way people change when you're not watching. My mother took her bag from her hands, and my grandmother took in the cropped hair.

As we started moving towards the exit, she announced, darting a quick look at my mother's face: "Chandra has sent sarees for Divali. For you and Nimmi."

My mother did a quick glance-down-and-straight-ahead, silent.

Chandra mama, the eldest son of my grandfather’s first wife. He wheezed when he spoke and more when he laughed or shouted. I'm not sure if it was from his asthma or the cigarettes. When he was in the room, he took up a lot of space, not because of his size or anything, but just by being.

My grandmother after we got into the car, spoke of: the rain in Madras the worst in many years, prices that have tripled on everything, the new Nilgiris supermarket that has opened in K.K Nagar. She then sat quietly in the back seat. I glanced at my mother. She was twirling a strand of hair furiously around her left index finger. She turned quicky to look at me and then smiled a thin kind of smile. There is this thing between them, my mother and her. I turned to ask my grandmother something and there she was, her hands crossed over her lap, draped in her maroon silk sari, as the icy surface of steel and glass sped behind her in a dark sky. I forgot what it was I wanted to know.

I hit the five minute wall, my leg and thigh muscles burn. My chest feels tight and I want to stop, just forget the whole thing and go home. I wait for my body to fall into sync and the pounding rhythm of my feet hitting the ground to take over. Soon I feel the steady pulse of the blood throbbing at my temples and I don’t notice my breathing or the burning anymore. I’m cruising now.

I wave to my mother as she speeds past me in her Honda. She’s giving me the worried look and I know she is glancing up at the rearview mirror now. I run inside our apartment building - Camelot 2, which is next to Camelot 1. There are many similar looking complexes built on this side of the highway facing the Merrimack river. Ours has a small balcony that looks out into the highway and the river across it. A couple of other Indian families live in the building but it's not like we are a big happy neighborhood or anything. I think it is because Mom actively discourages any familiarity from them. Or it could be something else but they mostly look at us and then smile suddenly as if they remembered how to.

I let myself in with the key. The apartment smells of roasted curry leaves and mustard seeds and the sweet-sour smell of tamarind. It usually smells of burnt toast in the mornings.

When I come out from the shower pulling my damp hair through a crunchie, my grandmother is standing in front of the sliding glass door against the yellow white light. She is wearing a kaftan, one of those batik things you can buy in Pondy Bazaar. I have never seen her with hair disheveled, not even first thing in the morning. It lies now smooth and silvery like a lining on her scalp. She has braided and wound it in a bun. I stand next to her. In the distance the river's dimpled waters catch the sun. She smells of soap and agarbatti and something else, something familiar. I feel good.

"Lowell," she says. "What kind of a name is that? Lowell. Sticks to your tongue."

"I think it is the name of some important American guy, a businessman or something. They named the city after him."

She turns and looks at me but I don't think she heard what I said.

"Do you take oil-baths regularly?" she asks stroking my hair, smiling.

"Sometimes."

"Don't even think about cutting it. Such wonderful hair you have."

I go into the kitchen and pour some orange juice.

"I don't know why she wants to live here," she says suddenly, turning away from the window, and looking across the room at me. "Cook and clean and shop and do everything by yourself, living and working here like a man. Cannot see a bird or a living thing outside this window."

"Don't you like America?"

"What's there to like and not like? This is not where she belongs, not a place to raise a girl-child. Without a man. How is she going to get you married?"

I choke on my juice

She clicks her tongue with impatience and waves a hand. "When it's time of course. But it will be before you blink an eye. What is she going to do then, how is she going to find a good match, hmmm? Who’s going to take care of her, I would like to know, who?"

I tear a paper towel and wipe up the spilled juice.

"She has a job." And me. I think of telling her about Kundan and then decide not to.

"Job, shwab. Nurse! Touching and prodding all kinds of bodies. God knows what diseases they have. She has family, she's not alone in the world. Why does she need to work? Like this. The two of you alone. But she's stubborn, your mother, she'll never listen to me." She sits down on the couch and looks at the birdless sky.

When I leave for class, she's clicking on the TV remote control.

My mother is lying down on the couch, staring at the ceiling. She's still in her poison-green hospital uniform, pants and tunic. Her legs dangle over the arm. The white socks have dirty smudges on them. My grandmother is sitting across from her. She has changed into her sari now and her glasses glisten on her face.

It reminds me of the way my grandmother used to wait in the front verandah for my arrival from school every afternoon and her glasses were the first things I saw, two glistening circles. One day her face was turned away. My mother greeted me. She was visiting. I did not know then that she had been gone only for two years, because in my mind I had thought she had died. She might as well have been because Boston and America sounded like the moon when I was six. "Let's go get some ice-cream," she had said, tying the ribbons in my braid that had come undone. As I held her elbow sometimes, and skipped ahead sometimes, I could sense there was something she wanted me to tell. I worried whether I knew it or not.

I set my bags down, remove my sneakers and throw them in the closet. I enter the kitchen. It is warm with smells of cooking.. I lift the lids on the pots and pans and look - green beans and coconut, lentils simmering. I grab a bag of potato chips.

My grandmother tells my mother she should come back to Madras. Her studies are over, she says, come home, plenty of jobs for American graduates, all kinds of multinationals are hiring and paying fat salaries.

"I'm forty-two and a registered nurse. Multinationals are not looking for me."

Mom picks up a pillow and covers her face. Two gold bangles slide down her thin wrist.

"Fine then. Why work? What is this big job you have? Quit and come home with me. Are you an orphan, no one responsible for you? Chandra feels very hurt that you will do this to him."

"What? Do what to him?" My mother swings her legs down and sits up. The pillow flies off and lands on the floor. "That I am not living in his house and set my program by the expression on his face every morning?"

"Why do you say things like that? Has he been that way? You have to let these things pass. Men are like that. It’s for your good only that he said, it is not good for a woman to live alone. And what about Nimmi?"

My mother looks at my grandmother silently.

"Nimmi, don't snack," she says, still looking at her. "Let's eat."

Kundan comes around after dinner. He has on a black leather jacket and his hair, in curls below his hat, brushes his shoulders. His cuteness arises partly from his height which is medium. Medium short.

"I'm making the team."

He gives me a high five.

He is the manager at Blockbuster Video and that is how we met him, my mother and I, while looking for Raise the Red Lantern.

"Great movie," he said from behind us when Mom and I were debating between that and Ghosts in the Shell which I wanted to see. We both looked at him, surprised, because first of all he had this British accent, not the Indian-British but the real thing. Secondly, and this is important, he was smiling in a friendly way not just look and look away the way most Indians we have seen here do. So there he stood, in his medium short height, a black hat, sweatshirt over jeans. With his mustache smile. My mother and I looked at him and he kept smiling. And the movie was good. After that he would save movies for us. I think he just wanted an excuse to talk, Mom and I knew that, and he would suggest some new Japanese or Italian director to us and we three would stand there and talk about movies. He attended the film school at NYU for a short time and he'd go on and on about editing and photography until I cry BO-ringgg!

Later he got us a couple of free tickets for a Anil Kapoor-Sri Devi Extravaganza - he knew someone who was a part sponsor for the show and he had some extra tickets. Then one day he asked my mother out. Just like that! To see The English Patient at the Coolidge Corner cinema. She laughed and asked him if he knew she was twelve years older than him and he said so what we both like great movies so why can't we as well watch them together, and she laughed and shook her head, and he asked again, and again and finally she agreed and they have been watching a lot of movies since. My mother says that is not going out but just going out together. Whatever.

"Namaste," Kundan says to my grandmother.

She smiles her visitor smile. Kundan glances at my mother, and my mother does not look at him.

"Are you Punjabi?' Ammama asks in careful English.

"My family was originally from Sind, but I grew up in Kenya."

He hangs his jacket on the kitchen chair. He has a small paunch but he camouflages it cleverly with black pleated pants that flow smooth and long and a shirt that buttons up to the neck, no collars.

"Amma wants me to quit and go back to India, Kundan," my mother says, her voice raised. She is seated with one leg tucked under her and the other one dangling. I look up from under the bright light over the dinette where I am doing my home-work. She winks at me.

"Not a safe place for a woman alone," my grandmother says in her careful English again, looking at Kundan.

"Why alone? Nimmi, is your Mom alone?"

"Nope."

"Not a good place to raise a girl-child," my grandmother tells Kundan. "We have a house, her brother has plenty of money. Here she lives... like ... like this," she throws her hand around the apartment.

I look around the apartment. There are pieces of what looks like shredded lint covering the tan carpet. The coffee table is covered with mail and newspapers. There are two blue plastic baskets with laundry - clean - next to me on the floor. A large Kellogs Corn Flakes box is sticking out of the trash bin in the kitchen, where something had spilled and dried to brown patches on the floor.

" River front apartment, Ma-ji, just look at that view," Kundan says rising and steps towards the slider, giving Ammama his mustache smile, like a bribe. "In some places you have to pay two thousand, may be more, to get a view like this. Well it's dark now but you should go for a walk in the morning, it's beautiful. It's the Merrimack river over there. And the colors, just wait another week. Lots of people your age, walking dogs and all. Nimmi runs there, she knows," he points to me with his chin.

I roll my eyes without looking up.

My mother untucks her leg and gets up. She enters the kitchen and starts loading the dishes.

"So what if there is river and trees, this is not a place to raise a daughter, for a woman alone."

"Ah, a woman alone," Kundan says. "What does a woman alone do in India?"

My mother comes back, wiping her hands on a towel.

"Why, doesn’t she have family?" Ammama says, "A big home we have, she can be comfortable. Why work here like this? Look at her tired! All and wrung out."

He looks at my mother. Her hair is hanging limp now and her makeup is stale and faded. Her forehead and cheeks shine. He smiles at her.

"That is not my house. It's my brother's house," my mother says with a strangely bass tone in her voice.

My grandmother looks up at her. I see the reflection of the kitchen light in her glasses.

"You have a share in it."

"It is his house."

"You can always live there, you know that. As long as you want."

"It's his house."

"So what? You belong there."

"How do I belong? Nobody thought I did when I needed to belong." There is no anger in my mother’s voice. No not anger.

"No one knew about -- whoever thought --"

"No one listened."

The silence is thick and it lingers, gathering under the table around my legs.

"Know what? Who?" My voice sounds like a bell.

The reflection in Ammama's glasses shifts and she looks down at her hands, palms up.

Who, who, what, tell, tell.

My mother goes back into the kitchen. Pots and pan clang and the faucet hisses.

My grandmother gets up but her knees look still bent. She wishes Kundan goodnight. Her hand rests on my shoulder for a second before she makes her way to the bedroom.

Before he leaves Kundan goes to the kitchen, Mom fills a glass with water and hands it to him.

Kundan drinks the water, hands the glass back to my mother.

"I'll call tomorrow?"

My mom is silent and I know she's going to say no.

She shrugs. "OK"

The man. I never see his face, only the back of his head and neck, and the blue of the rolled up shirt sleeve, the thick brown arms. There is a steaming pot of lentils on the honey colored corner of a table. The smell of mid-morning, of simmering tamarind and curry leaves. Skinny rectangles of sunlight cover one wall and creeps on to the table in long golden bars. A steel dinner plate flys up in the air and the sambar and rice and the vegetables fling out and the plate falls to the floor, swivels around, vibrates a couple of times and then comes to rest. The walls are splattered bright yellow and the goop slides down. He is shouting but there is no sound. He is now pushing the woman by her shoulder, gripping it. She crouches down at her knees and tries to free her arm from his hold. He then clutches her braid and she scrunches her eyes shut. There are two dark squiggly lines where her eyes should be and her mouth is open in a big O. He is shoving her and then pulling her by her hair. The folds of her sari come undone and she grabs them with one hand, the other hand trying to release her hair. I see his arm reach out and open the door and then she is behind it. Her eyes look over his shoulder and reaches me, as the doors, one and then the other shut over her face and she is screaming let me in, please let me in. I extend my hands to her, but they don't rise, they feel like lead ... Let her in, …please let her in, she's my mother....

"Nimmi! Nimmi. Wake up, child."

My grandmother is sitting on my bed and shaking me by my shoulders.

"What? Whatimezt? Shit, I 'm late."

"Shhhh. You were having your nightmare."

I cannot see her, just the rounded shapes of her thin shoulders and head. She is brushing the hair off my face, murmuring something, her finger tips scratchy. I sit up, pull my knees to my chest and hug them. I shiver and realize my nightie is damp from sweat. We have gone through this routine many times, my grandmother and I. She would take me to the kitchen and make me something to eat and then I would go back to bed and fall asleep. Somehow I don't think that is going to work this time.

"Was that my father? Was it? Is that what she meant?" My lips stick together, my voice squeezing out.

"Shhhh, don't worry about, it was all so long --"

"Why?"

She is silent.

I shake her hands off and rise from the bed quickly. It is ten to five. I grope in the closet and find a pair of sweat pants on the floor. I sniff at it and then pull them on and look for the rest of the stuff.

"Nimmi are you going running now? It’s so dark still, baby."

My head is buzzing with sounds, deep and insistent sounds. Her voice comes over as if through cotton. I don't answer her and continue to dress. She follows me to the bathroom and waits outside. When I come out she is standing, waiting.

"Nimmi, it's too early, you'll catch a cold." She puts her hand out and I jerk around it, untouched. I cross the hall to my room and quickly shut the door behind me. She waits.

The room smells faintly of the Tiger Balm she uses for her arthritis. I drop back into the bed, pull the cover over me, and pull my knees to my chest and hug myself. My face gets wet with tears and snot and I need a tissue. I pull down the cover. Gray light has entered the room through the windows. Across from me is the twin bed in which my grandmother was sleeping. The blanket and comforter make little mounds over it. I rise up and go to the dresser, grab a Kleenex and blow my nose. The Dalmatian in a fireman's hat tips over but without a sound. I reach for it to straighten it. It had fallen on the silk sari folded in a neat rectangle. I run my finger tips over the sari. The thin zari border catches on my nails. I wonder when she got this, she always associates a sari with the occasion - Rani's engagement sari, Chandra's gift for pongal, he got me two like this.

I pick up the sari and hold it to my face. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. The smells. Layers and layers of them. I know these smells and they do not belong here in this bedroom. They are from that room we called the camera room in my grandfather's house where I had buried my face in Ammama's lap, among the folds of her sari, and she had stroked my head and whispered. 'Just close your eyes child, and go to sleep.' Then I would sink back into the pillow, blocking my ears with my index fingers against the angry voices outside the door. With my face pressed against the pillow I have watched the thin line of light that glowed from under the door before I pressed my eye-lids tightly together. Paper doll cutouts of children danced in brilliant relief under my eye-lids. My grandmother’s sari would brush my cheeks. And she smelled of the musk she kept in a little jar in the cabinet, and cooking. Of lentils simmering with turmeric and the sweet-sour smell of tamarind. It had penetrated the fibers of her material, maybe even her skin, and had wrapped itself around me, creating within me a place that felt safe.

I lower the sari to the table. I try to brush off the tearstains but they have already soaked into dark circles on the material.

"Nimmi? Nimmi?" My grandmother knocks gently.

I move to the window and raise the shade. I press my head against the coldness of the glass, feeling a little sick. The divided highway spreads wide and gray below. A car speeds by, with little triangles of light in front. Beyond the highway the concrete merges into grass and then the pathway along the short stonewall that rises on the banks of the Merrimack. Dawn hangs over the tree tops, waiting. Between the trees I see a patch of liquid gray. It's the river, placid and still, yet always moving, moving. I imagine the cool air from the river on my face, brushing over skin hot and sweaty, blood pulsing beneath, the rhythm of my feet pounding the track, the burn of muscles, my chest sucking wind, the rush, the high. I close my eyes, the image of the river flows behind my eye-lids, steady, smooth, moving to a beat that she keeps to herself, like a secret. I sway slightly.

There is a soft knock on the door again. I feel her fragile presence on the other side of the door.

I know now the questions. I open the door. She is in the blue kaftan with white batik print. Her hair is ruffled and hangs in a thin braid that she had made before going to bed. Her face is clean, no kunkumum, no red sticker, smooth in the morning light.

I think of how much I have loved her. And how differently I love her now.

"Ammama, come with me. You can walk while I run."