Tania James - Atlas of Unknowns

The meeting ended with Mr. Brown offering to look up Anju’s status himself as he rarely, but discreetly, did for other clients. Several days later, Mr. Brown called Rohit with the same information that Rohit is passing to Anju now:

“So as it turns out, the school never reported you. You’re not illegal.”

It takes her a moment to decipher the content of his words.

“Anju? You there? You’re legal is what I’m saying.”

ROHIT HAS BEEN TALKING for so long that Anju’s ear has grown hot from the receiver; still she does not move. “Illegal,” “legal” … the two words float around her head while Rohit continues his stream of giddy talk. She waits for some kind of thrill or relief to surge through her body.

“Now what?” she manages to ask.

“Now we find a college, some kind of two-year program. Maybe that medical-dental school? We’ll have to do some research about financial packages and stuff. I mean overall, it’s probably like a seven-year process. These days it could take up to nine. But Mr. Brown is optimistic—”

“Nine years?” Anju unfolds her legs and sits up. “It will take nine years?”

“Well, I don’t know. It might. I mean, that’s probably more like an upper limit, so it could take a lot less.”

“How much less?”

Sensing the stiffness in her voice, Rohit hesitates. “It’s hard to say. But Mr. Brown said … I mean it would definitely take, like, seven to nine years for everything to fall into place.”

Today, it seems, Anju will never stop falling. The ground will never rise to meet her feet. “I thought you said …” Her voice loses strength. Rohit has always been contagiously optimistic, but he never once explained a time line. “I thought, because my visa took only short time—”

“We’re talking green card here, Anju. Citizenship . I know seven to nine sounds like a long time …”

Seven to nine sounds like a jail sentence.

“… but think how gratified you’ll be when you bring your family to the States to become naturalized citizens. This is the immigrant story, you know? I mean, my parents were the same way. They got here with just two suitcases to their name, but they worked their asses off, and now they’re living the American dream—”

“Your father has a villa and a street both wearing his name.”

Rohit pauses. “Who told you that?”

“He did.”

“Okay. True. But my point is that this is what people do to get what they want. Trust me, these years are just going to fly by. You’ll make the money you need to make, and Mr. Brown will get you the green card, and I’ll be here to film it all along the way. When I’m not back at Princeton anyway.”

“You are going back to college?”

“Yeah, my mom won’t let me defer forever. But this film is my main thing. Maybe even my thesis. I’ll just go back and forth on the weekends or whatever, for however long it’ll take. And who knows what’ll happen in that time? Maybe I can even go to India and interview your family. How wild would that be? This story is so rich, and it’ll only get richer with time. All the best docs take, like, years to make, and I’m willing to put in the effort—”

“I want to go home.”

And though Anju is sure he has heard her clearly, Rohit asks: “What’s that?”

“I want to go home. To Kumarakom. To my family.”

She listens to the rigid silence on his end.

“Go home?” For the first time, Anju hears a thin, hairline fracture in the usual cool of his voice. “Right now? What kind of ending is that?”

“I don’t want this film anymore.”

Shock renders Rohit speechless, but only briefly. “You don’t care about all the time that you and I have already put into this thing? This is my life, Anju. This is the first time that something I’ve worked on has had any significance for me.”

“And what if nothing works out?”

“Well then, we’ll film that too. I—” He expels a slow, deathbed sigh. “Why don’t you meet Mr. Brown with me? We’ll hash things out, we’ll even film it. Hey, we can make your indecision part of the film itself, you know, to show how complicated these decisions really are—”

“The decision is not complicated. I want to buy a ticket home.”

“Well, then buy it yourself.”

He utters this sentence so coldly and quickly that she almost skims over its meaning. “You will not help me?” she asks.

“I am trying to help you, Anju, but I’m also trying to make a good film. Like I said, I think that both these things — the film’s best interest and your best interest — converge really nicely for everybody. Right? Listen.” He switches to his Real Rohit voice with all the ease of Superman sliding on his Clark Kent spectacles; the change is just as unconvincing. “I know it’s scary out there. I shouldn’t get upset with you. Let’s just take a day off from each other before we say things we don’t mean, and I’ll call you in the morning. Okay?”

She grips a handful of her own hair, tightly, but makes a calm, affirmative noise through sealed lips.

“I’m on your side, Anju. You know that, right?”

“Thank you. Yes. I know.”

ANJU HAS $875 in her Folgers canister. The bills, uncurled and classified by their meager denominations, surround her in a semicircle, a configuration that seems appropriate for a sum that amounts to only half of what she needs. A flight to Delhi would cost about $1,000, but the flight to Kochi and the bus to Kottayam would cost $400 more.

Around noon, Bird calls to check in. “You are sure you don’t want me at home?”

“Home.” The word itself has crawled under Anju’s skin, so that she cannot hear it without wincing inside, like hearing a wrong note in a familiar tune.

“No,” Anju says. “I am fine. I think I might go for a walk. To see a friend.”

“You mean that boy with the camera?”

Anju hesitates. “I will not be home till later.”

“Fine. If you have to.”

Anju hangs up and reviews her options, which takes almost no time, as she seems rather optionless at the moment. She does know that the answer lies no more with Bird than it lies with Rohit. She will not leave this country with debts. Slipping the bills into an envelope, she zips her savings into her coat.

She hopes that the Solankis are not out of town.

IT IS EIGHT P.M. when Anju boards the number 7 train, the vein that takes her to the coiled heart of Manhattan. There, she switches to a downtown train that rushes her to Chelsea. A group of boys in wind-breakers and popped collars board the train along with her, passing a plastic bottle of clear liquid between them. As their night begins, another day ends for the puffy-ankled woman sitting in the corner, clutching her purse and dozing along the many stops until her destination.

Anju exits the train but takes a seat on the subway bench, where each sitter is allowed only the cubby of space between two slabs of wood. A homeless man lies slumped over two seats, defiantly malodorous. Unable to think properly in his company, Anju wanders to the tracks.

I have failed . It is necessary for her to repeat the sentiment several times, as many times as is required for her body to unflinchingly bear the sting. From the moment she returns to the Solankis’ home, her failure will be present in every disapproving pair of eyes, and she should not shy away from it. She should accept it, like the blow of a severed branch, like another mouthful of Bird’s Cream of Wheat.

On the tracks, a charcoal rat rustles with enthusiasm in a fallen pretzel bag. Anju once saw a Malayalam movie wherein the heroine, a young girl caught up in a forbidden love affair, flung herself before the bright eye of a roaring train. The suicide, the screaming, the plaintive violins, all this equaled a box office success. She imagines doing the same, hurling herself into the path of the number 1 train, which would give Rohit a spectacular ending, not a dry eye in the audience. Her last words over the phone, his attempt to save her, and then cut to: her body in an open coffin. Rohit interviewing Bird. Bird interviewing Rohit. Some closing thoughts, some tears, maybe some text about the high suicide rate in Kerala, and fade to black.