Tania James - Atlas of Unknowns

FOR THE SAKE OF THE FILM, Anju allows Rohit to come over to the apartment and speak to Bird when she arrives home from work. Anju forbids him from turning on the camera until Bird agrees to being filmed, a rule that Anju will not allow him to bend, out of loyalty to Bird.

Anju perches nervously on the couch while Rohit moves the blue vase from the coffee table to a side table and turns on all the lamps he possibly can. He is appalled by the darkness, baffled by the fact that Anju and Bird could survive here in this cave they call home. His own is as ruthlessly bright as a hotel, but since arriving here, Anju has come to prefer the forgiveness of shadows. She thinks of her bedroom back home and its single window as familiar to her as a member of the family. How well she knows its view, its moods, as when the light comes hard and glinting through the bars or lugubriously blue, and shadows travel across the room, marking the passage of hours.

The front door opens. Anju sits up straight, though what she was planning to say— I’ve been meaning to tell you … I believe this is the best way to … — flies out of her head along with her courage.

In steps Gwen, flushed from the cold. She pulls off her lime green galoshes before noticing Rohit and the video camera on the coffee table. “Oh hey. What’s going on?”

“I’m Rohit.” He raises his hand in a swift hello as he goes for his camera.

“We said no camera,” Anju says sharply.

“No, no, it’s cool,” Gwen says. The tip of her nose is charmingly ruddy. “Is this for a project or something?”

“I make documentaries. Actually, I’m making one about Anju here.”

“Oh yeah?” Gwen pulls the elastic from her ponytail and fluffs her hair. “Very cool. Did you do something special, Anju? Something I don’t know about?”

“She’s done a lot.” Pointing the camera at Gwen, Rohit presses the record button.

Usually, when Gwen enters a room, Anju withdraws to her own so as to minimize conversation. She is fairly sure that Gwen thinks that she knows very little English, a comforting assumption that allows Anju to continue on her silent orbit within the apartment, without the collision of a conversation. But she does think it strange that the shampoos and creams of virtual strangers should occupy such intimate positions in the bathroom. Anju uses Bird’s efficient and unlabeled bottle of shampoo plus conditioner. Gwen’s shampoo is called Pure Blonde, a golden bottle whose fliptop is always open, like a taunting tongue. Once, on impulse, Anju used the Pure Blonde on an inner lock of her hair, but it did nothing to “release the golden tone and caramel essence of each strand.”

Gwen is saying something about Truffaut’s auteur theory and the caméra-stylo , to which Rohit is murmuring, mhm, mhm . Holding the camera to his eye, he asks, “So do you know Anju’s story?”

“Does who know Anju’s story?” Bird asks from the doorway, both arms saddled with grocery bags. She steps past Gwen and into the living room, but Rohit keeps the camera rolling. “Who are you? Why are you filming in my house?”

“This is Rohit,” Gwen says brightly. “He’s making a documentary about Anju.”

Bird stares at Anju, brow furrowed, the bags still in her hands, which are ashy from the cold. Anju elbows Rohit, and he lowers the camera.

“Since when?” Bird asks in Malayalam. “We didn’t discuss this.”

Silence follows, during which time Rohit turns off his camera and puts it on the couch. He picks up the blue vase with both hands, as if it has suddenly gained in value, and sets it in its original place on the coffee table.

Gwen backs into her room, her brightness diminishing with each step. “I’m gonna hop in the shower.”

IT COMES AS NO SURPRISE to Anju that Bird is uninterested in befriending Rohit. Neither is Anju all that offended, on Rohit’s behalf, that the only “interaction” he witnessed was Bird pointing at the door and asking him to leave. In fact, he seemed prepared to leave yet confident that he would return, adding: “I’ll let you both talk this out.”

Now Anju watches Bird preparing dinner, wondering how to talk things out when all of Bird’s words form incredulous questions. “You want to let this boy follow you around with a camera?” Bird breaks a fistful of yellow twigs over a pot of boiling water. “You are an illegal. How much attention do you want?”

“He says that attention is good, when directed the right way. Attention can help.”

Bird goes back and forth between the fridge and the stove, muttering, “Salt, salt.” She pulls a clear jar of salt from a high cupboard. “So you trust him.”

“Yes.” And she does. Trying to mimic his magnetic sense of urgency, she translates his words into Malayalam. “Because my best interest is in his best interest. He wants the same ending that I do — citizenship in the States. He promised to get me the best lawyer because his parents know many powerful people.”

“What about your father? Maybe we should get his opinion.”

“But in the meantime, I will keep filming with Rohit. If my father says no, I will stop.”

Bird opens the jar and spoons a heap of salt over the twigs, which have softened and curled into a wreath of noodles. “Why do you need this Rohit? I told you I would help you.”

Anju chooses her words carefully. Over the past two weeks, Bird has grown strangely sensitive, hurt when Anju did not want to watch The Price Is Right with her, irritated when she learned that Anju’s clothes were still in her duffel bag rather than folded in the dresser.

“I want to move forward,” Anju says. “All this time I feel I’ve been walking in one place.”

“You think I am holding you back?”

Anju says nothing.

Bird busies herself in hurt silence while Anju slowly closes the lid on the salt jar. She spots an ant burrowing a tunnel through the white sand, not far from its colleague working an inch below. Her mind falls through the past months, to Linno and Tang in sweaty steel cups.

“This is sugar!” Anju says, holding up the jar.

Bird sips from the wooden spoon. “Oh shit hell dammit!”

Anju stares at Bird, stunned by her unlikely string of curse words.

Bird snaps off the stove, nearly taking the dial with her. In one motion, she pours the noodles into a colander, steam drifting off the hot, sweet mess.

AT NIGHT, Bird lies on her sliver of bed, listening to the fuzzy drone of Anju’s snore. Bird hadn’t noticed, but earlier in the evening it had rained, leaving the windows gemmed with droplets that redden each time a car’s headlights go streaming past. Bird had imagined this day turning out much differently, with spaghetti marinara that she would make from a recipe out of Good Housekeeping magazine, quickly perused but not purchased under the disapproving eye of a magazine vendor.

And to come home to this — to a camera in her face. To hear that Anju has been cooking up some disastrous Make-Me-Famous recipe, fed to her by a boy claiming to be a filmmaker. Could they possibly be in love? No, Anju is more discerning. Bird remembers him from his visit to Tandon’s office. There was something untrustworthy about him, about the way he barreled into a place with his camera, the way he seemed to be examining you through a lens even when he wasn’t. Why doesn’t Anju listen to her elders, or in this case, her elder? And why did she take so long to unpack her bags, waiting until Bird simply hung up her clothes for her?

It is almost as though Anju feels no real attachment to Bird.

The thought of this is a weight upon Bird’s chest. Feeling queasy, she rolls onto her side, facing Anju, whose lashes are fluttering between dreams. Merely looking at the girl makes Bird wish for so much more than what she has, makes her think, This is the closest I have come to home. A thin wind escapes from Anju’s mouth, which in sleep belongs to her mother and during the day belongs to someone else. Anju looks nothing like the baby in the photograph that Gracie sent so long ago, of chubby Linno seated on an upturned crate, Anju in her arms like a surprised sack of flour. Maybe Bird could tell Anju that she and Gracie were acquaintances. Friends of friends. She could paint over the past in a clean dull white, but the loss of that landscape, carefully preserved all these years, would erase her as well.