Tahmima Anam - The Bones of Grace

I won’t. At night after she gives me the dinner, Shathi listens from outside until my plate is clean. Then she comes, pours a bowl of water over my hands, passes me a bar of soap. She dries my hands with the end of her sari. Then she eats alone. In the bed I can hear her breathe, her sigh as she rolls from one side to another, trying not to disturb me while the blood stirs in her. She wants to be touched. Even though she’s skinny and from the looks of it there’s nothing but bones to her, I know she has blood, I know her blood wants to be moved, circled around, so she knows she’s a woman. My hand reaches out to touch her, but I whip it back. There’s nothing for me in that body, no comfort. My hand moves again, floating across the valley between us. I reach out and put my hand on her hip. She lies very still but I can hear a tiny breath escape from her lips. My hand gets heavy on her, like it’s going to stay there, and then I can feel myself about to shift, nudge myself a bit closer to her, and Pahari and Megna come back to me, and the moment is poisoned. I push her, rough. ‘Move to your side,’ I say, soothed when I am cruel, then I turn around, I ignore the deep breath she is trying to suppress, the tiny moonsliver of a cry.

Friday and I’m walking around the village and this time I think I’m not going to avoid the mosque. Too early for the prayers, grounds are empty. I go around the side and enter the small door at the back. This mosque was built a long time ago. It was tiled in blue and white, once, before people picked off the tiles and stuck them above their own doors. There was a tiny room at the back where Megna had lived with her mother. The mosque-cleaner and her daughter. They came to this village when Megna was a just a baby. I go inside now, pulling away the thin curtain over the door. I’m waiting to see the cot, the calendar of Ganesh her mother hung under the window. She had wandered into the village and said her husband had died, there was no one to take care of her, and the imam at the time took her in, said the room was empty and she could have it.

What did I expect to find? Megna’s mother, the room exactly as I remembered? It’s empty, not a mattress or a scrap of clothing. Damp on the walls and ceiling like it’s gonna fall down. I put my hand on the wall and paint comes off easy. The way Megna had opened her legs for me, the little slut. My mind goes back to all the things we did in that room while her mother was out sweeping the mosque or planting beans in the small plot in the front. At night, I would knock on the window and she would crawl out of the bed she shared with her mother and we would lie down under the tamarind tree and touch each other like it was the end of the world.

I’m dreaming so hard I don’t hear the mullah until he’s clearing his throat and spitting a big one just next to my foot. I turn around and he’s pulling his beard and looking at me, and next thing I know he’s holding his arms out for me and I guess it slipped my mind everyone’s sweet as candy to me now, so I don’t know what to do, then I remember, I play my part and we do the three-time hug you only do on Eid with your brother. I’m a big man now, everyone wants to be related. Now he’s looking at the patch of paint that’s come off on my hand and he’s saying, Shame, that, mosque in such bad shape, you remember this place used to be much nicer. Take a cup of tea with me, son.’

We go to the tea stall, and the tea-wallah pulls out his best stool. I offer it to the mullah and I squat on my heels. We drink. ‘Village is changing,’ he says. ‘Boys are going out, they’re not coming back.’

‘Everybody wants to go to foreign,’ I say, already tired of squatting.

He slurps his tea with a loud sucking sound. ‘They leave the women behind and that’s no good, is it?’

‘I suppose not.’

‘Times like this, mosque is what keeps a village together.’

I nod, thinking, how much longer will I have to stay here? It takes him five minutes maybe to finish his tea, slurping and sucking, slurping and sucking. Finally he finishes and he stands up. I stand up too, my knees complaining. Then he says, ‘Mosque was a place you spent a lot of time in, son.’

He looks at me and for a long time he doesn’t say anything, and then I realise he’s telling me he knows I used to sneak in here, knows about me and Megna, then he says, ‘We have a fund, you know, mosque fund. Been saving for six years, all the gone-away boys have been sending money.’ Then he holds his hands behind his back like he’s being arrested and I know what I have to do. I say, ‘I’ll pay. Whatever’s left, I’ll pay.’

I let him grab me again, even harder this time, so I can smell the flower oil in his hair and feel the sand of his beard. ‘Sobhan Allah! You are a true son of the village.’ Then he says, like I just asked him a question: ‘That woman who used to clean here, she died. Typhoid, I think. Daughter disappeared, too.’ I’m thinking, the bastard was waiting to tell me that. He knew all along that’s what I wanted, some information about Megna, but waited till I’d coughed up the money, and then he dropped it on me.

I can’t sleep that night. For the first time I wonder exactly what happened to Megna after I left for Dubai. Like a film I’m seeing it: I leave, I don’t even say goodbye. Her stomach starts to give up its secret. She tells her mother. Disgusting girl, her mother says. And then what happens? They leave the village together? They pack up their things and take a bus — where? Who will take them in? Who can I ask, I don’t know.

The next day, early, before the mullah has called the village to pray, I pack a bag. Shathi watches me, doesn’t say a word. I show her where I put the money, locked in a trunk under the bed. Key is on a string around my neck, hanging next to my heart. I take the string, pass it over her head. Like we’re getting married all over again, garlands and all that. She touches my feet. She’s like a wife in an old movie, black and white, doesn’t say anything or ask any questions, just accepts I’m a bastard and doesn’t flinch.

I still have to face my mother. I can’t think what to say, so I tell her the truth. ‘I’m going to look for Megna,’ I say. She slaps her forehead, like I knew she would. ‘I told you find a new wife, not dig up a girl you threw away.’

I stand quiet, knowing she has to get her words out before I can explain. She stands up. I think she’s about to hit me, like before when I was always getting into the sugar, when my father was working in the railroad and we had sugar. ‘Do you know where she could have gone?’ I ask, thinking, if she’s going to hit me anyway, I might as well get some information out of her.

‘Girl disappeared the day you left for foreign, no one saw her again.’

Her mother?

‘Dead. They said she swallowed rat poison.’

‘Mullah told me she caught the typhoid.’

‘Same thing, whatever. You’ll never find her.’

‘Megna told me her father’s people were from the south. Near Chittagong.’

She shrugs. ‘I don’t know,’ she says, but then she looks down at her feet and I know she’s lying.

‘You know something. Tell me. Tell me.’ I’m raising my voice.

She puts up her hand up like she’s going to slap me and then she says, ‘Village is called Chondonpahar. She had an uncle. Rest I don’t know.’

I’m sorry for shouting. I’m going to touch her feet, ask for forgiveness. Then she says, ‘You going to leave me with that darkie again?’

For a change I decide to do something nice. I grab my mother’s hand. I take her across to Shathi, who is putting straw into the fire. ‘I’ve given the key to Shathi,’ I say. ‘Go on, show her the key.’ Shathi takes the key out of her blouse and holds it up but she looks away, so that Amma can’t see the grain of smug on her lips.