Tania James - Atlas of Unknowns

“Did you know my mother?” Anju asks. “Gracie Vallara? Or I suppose she was Gracie Kuruvilla at that time.”

Mug in hand, Bird takes a seat across from Anju. So this is the moment that Bird has been waiting for, the pivotal point at which she can lay her secrets open and close the gap between herself and Anju, between herself and Gracie, between this world and the one before. In a single evening, she can tell her version of the story, open the grand velvet curtain on the truth according to Bird.

But Bird looks at the girl across from her whose face is clouded with suspicion and confusion, and suddenly all words are lost to her. They fly from her like wintering crows, and in their wake, the old questions return: What can she possibly say to honor the past? What words can do justice to the truth without chasing Anju away? Gracie chose her life long ago, and here, across from Bird, is the fruit of that choice. Here is a girl with her mother’s calves and puttering snore, who inexplicably dislikes Pop-Tarts, who lunges after what she wants even when wounded. What would Gracie have wanted her to know?

As Bird forms her next words, she feels a crumbling within her, the tiny, extinguished death of a dream. It requires all her strength to conceal the loss, to say calmly:

“Sort of. The name is familiar.”

“Only sort of?”

Bird scratches her throat, then sits up suddenly. “Oh! Did she have thick eyebrows? Shaped like”—she draws an eyebrow in the air—“commas almost? And she was very thin?”

“Yes. In her pictures, she looked thin.”

“Hah!” Bird claps her hands. “Of course I remember! You are her daughter?”

“You did know her, then?”

“Yes, yes, I knew her, I knew everyone in the troupe. That’s how it is when you travel in such a way, eating meals together, brushing teeth together. She seemed like a very sweet young woman, and smart.” Bird nods with wonder. “My, my. Her daughter. Sitting here. How small is this world!”

“Oh. Ghafoor was wrong, then. He thought you knew her well.”

They fall silent. With her hands in her lap, Anju looks despondent, and Bird, for her part, wishes they shared a kind of mother-daughter language, of nourishing hugs and held hands. For such a small world, the space from person to person can span a whole sea.

“It is strange, isn’t it? That you met her … and then you met me …” Anju’s voice trails off. “My father never told me she acted in plays. But my father never told me many things.”

“I knew her before she married your father.”

Anju nods. “Ghafoor said she had only a small part.”

“Sometimes small parts are the ones to remember.”

EVERY TIME Anju picks up any phone, she speaks for as brief a period as possible, imagining that a network of operators can track her location and send it to the INS. She prefers pay phones to Bird’s landline, though most pay phones have been uprooted in favor of cell phones. In Kerala, too, she has seen cell phones in the hands of men and women, bleating strange tunes from their pockets and purses. Even serious-looking businessmen seem to take pleasure in selecting their tune; once, on a bus, she heard a cell phone chuckle maniacally before its owner, a middle-aged man, picked it up without shame. But what pleasure it must be to take someone’s voice with you, what weight it must lift from the word “good-bye.”

Rohit’s phone is a miniature computer, able to accomplish the tasks of a whole entertainment center — surf the Internet, check the weather, watch clips from the Godfather trilogy (which he does often). She would not be surprised if he told her that his pocket-machine could compose music as well. And yet for all its tiny functions, the phone often fails in its primary task: to connect Anju to Rohit himself. He could be avoiding her calls, as she has become rather obsessive about the immigration lawyer. But it is April now, and how could there be no progress?

“I’m telling you,” Rohit sighs over the phone, “there is progress.”

“Please explain the progress.” Anju grips the cordless phone and turns away from the salon window, ready for a verbal tussle if this is what is needed. It is 6:45 a.m., well before anyone else will arrive.

“Anju, it’s, like, dawn over here. I know you’re in Queens, but aren’t we in the same time zone?”

She shushes him, wary of the operators knowing her coordinates. “No, not the same. Difference is that your life is very comfy and nice, and my life is going no place.”

Immediately Rohit goes into deferential mode, a mechanical response she knows well. “I understand, you’re right. No, you’re absolutely right. It’s just, it’s early, I’ve got a hangover …”

“You said you would meet a lawyer last week, but did you?”

“Actually I did. A few days ago. His name is Charles Brown, and he’s with one of the top firms in Manhattan dealing with immigration law.”

Anju’s free hand grips the curly cord of the phone. “Already you met?”

“And we’re having a follow-up call today.”

“Why you did not invite me to this meeting?”

“I didn’t want to get your hopes up because I’m not sure about him yet. I’ll know by today. But in the meantime, maybe the guy has a website. Why don’t you look him up?”

Anju fumbles for paper and pen. “What is the web address?”

“I don’t know. Just type his name into a search engine.” He describes the steps, where she should go and how. “It’s like, if you type in ‘Rohit Solanki,’ my entry at the Rolling Oak Film Festival comes up. And also the Louisville Watertower Film Festival, I think …”

“So I type in what?”

“Rohit Solanki. Oh sorry, I mean Charles Brown. C-H-A-R-L-E-S —”

“Brown, yes. Okay, thank you, call you later.” Anju hurriedly hangs up, both due to her operator surveillance theory and so she can fiddle on Ghafoor’s computer before the others arrive. Fumbling with several of Bird’s keys, she finally unlocks the office door. She reminds herself to return the mouse to its position in the lower left corner of the mousepad.

Following Rohit’s directions, she types the names into a blank strip of space: Charles Brown . The Internet lags. She jostles the mouse, trying to shake the sand in the hourglass icon.

A sentence appears on the computer screen: Did you mean Charlie Brown?

Below this, a carpet of text unscrolls from top to bottom, most entries referring to a bald cartoon boy. A “Charles Brown” appears beneath these entries, a musician whose albums include “Snuff Dippin’ Mama,” “The Best of Charles Brown,” and “Charles Brown Sings Christmas Songs.” Clicking on each page, Anju finds that the grand, godly sprawl of Charlie Brown has mostly trampled the existence of all smaller Browns. She gives up.

But the lack of a website has not altered her mood. At long last — a lawyer, one with strategies and plans! Perhaps attached to a firm triad of names! Anju imagines a silvery-templed type with a noble jaw and pictures of grandchildren on his desk, which he will reach across to shake her hand.

The cursor blinks in the search engine space, after the n in “Brown.” Such a luxury it is to be able to paddle carefreely along the Internet. She begins to type her name. A-N-J … but then stops upon imagining what might surface. Perhaps that Malay ala Manorama article about her scholarship. She prefers not to know what else, if anything.

Who can she search for? The first name that comes to mind, always and now, is Linno. Knowing that she will find nothing, Anju types Linno’s name in the search engine anyway. Linno is an uncommon name. Anju expects the search engine to politely ask her: Did you mean Linda?