Tahmima Anam - The Bones of Grace

He jumps up, pulling my arm so hard I have to give his hand a good slap.

We go downstairs and throw ourselves into the empty street, not a rickshaw or a cigarette-wallah to see us as we walk crooked. Everything is quiet, all the shops closed, everyone at home with their fathers and children. ‘The street is sadder than the hut,’ I tell Dulal. I want to go back, but he’s saying, ‘Don’t worry brother, you’re going to thank me,’ and he’s passing the bottle back into my hands, and it’s going to my blood, so I just follow him. Who cares anyway, I think. I carry the sad inside me, one place is the same as the next.

We go around a corner and walk for what feels like a long time, though I’m not sure, everything is moving around. Dulal’s talking the whole time about Eid, and there’s blood on the street from the cows they’ve just slaughtered. Shathi had to sell her bull, maybe it came here, nice fat one for a rich guy’s table. He’s eating its liver now, the bastard.

Finally we get there. I see a broken-down building, two floors with a veranda upstairs, saris hanging on the washing line. We go inside and there’s a chair with a few women sitting around, wearing clothes like they might be going to a wedding, except if you look close, it’s all cheap. Eid Mubarak, they say.

I know what it is. I’ve been to one when I was a kid, before Megna, brother and me and a couple of boys from the village. I told them all I’d done it, pretended I was a real man, but I couldn’t. I was shit scared of the woman, her sex staring at me like a little cat. I can’t remember what she looked like, except I know she laughed at me, in a bored sort of way, like she sees that sort of shit all the time. Probably a lot of guys couldn’t make it happen at the last minute. It’s harder than it looks.

Even through my drink I can smell perfume. Dulal slaps me on the back. ‘What I said! Only place open on Eid day!’

The madam, bloated arms with paint all over her face, looks us up and down and says, ‘Money first.’

Dulal makes me pay. After I get my cash out, the madam is all smiles. There’s a line of girls and she says to choose one. Last time I can’t remember them being so young. Maybe it’s the drink but the whole thing’s making me gag — kids, perfume, madam and her fat arms. But this time I’m not going back. You’d think I was Jesus for all the sex I haven’t had. I look at Dulal. I look at the madam, laughing now, teeth at the back all orange from chewing her Eid paan. I’m not going back. I stare up at the girls, find one who doesn’t remind me of anyone. Dulal’s already picked his, a tall girl, skinny, they’re arm in arm like he’s known her since his village days. I’m getting mine and he pokes me with his elbow. ‘Just like your Megna, eh brother? Arre, Megna, your hero’s coming! Megna! Megna!’ He says her name like she might appear if he says it loud enough. If only. He takes another swig from his bottle and he’s gone behind one of the curtains.

Girl takes me up to her room. I try to get turned on by the look of her ass swaying in my face as she climbs the stairs. We go behind a curtain and the bed’s narrow and bare, just a sheet and a few long pillows. There’s a calendar and a mirror with a broken corner. We lie down. She pulls down my zip and takes my dick out of my trousers. I put my hand on her head. She puts it in her mouth. I look up, I see lizards hiding in the tin roof. I feel good. I pull the girl’s hair and she climbs on top of me. Her face isn’t pretty but it’s not mean. I’m sliding into her, easy, like it hasn’t been ten years I’ve been hating my own cock. When it’s going to be over, I grab her and pull her face close to mine, so I can’t see anything, only eat the lipstick off her face and taste the sex in her mouth, and I hang on to her like I’m falling out of the ship and she’s going to save me, a little dinghy in the hard boil of a river.

After, she says, ‘I had a friend called Megna.’

Madam comes in, says, ‘Your time is up.’ I take out the last of my money and buy another hour. Girl keeps talking. It’s her. Megna was her friend, a good friend. Always sharing her rice. I’m patient, I don’t try to rush her. The men didn’t always like her, she had a mouth. But she never complained, always said this was her fate.

Girl says, ‘We all took a little bit, here and there. Sent some home. But Megna, she was paying off a big debt. Everything eaten, never had a paisa put aside.’

‘By who?’

‘Madam, who else?’

The debt meant that Megna had to do whatever. The perverts. Old men. Policemen who got freebies so they left madam alone.

I want to tear the skin off my face. Sun’s rising through the door. I don’t have long, so I finally ask, ‘Did she say anything about a kid?’

Girl looks around at the broken mirror like it’s going to tell her something. ‘I don’t know what happened to the kid. But kid’s why she owed madam all that money.’

Madam comes in again. ‘Out,’ she says. ‘Come back when you have more money. And get your friend out too.’ She stands there till I drag myself out. Girl comes down with me. Dulal made a mess. I clean him up, throw a handful of water on his face. ‘What happened to her?’ I say again, heaving Dulal up, putting his arm over my neck. ‘What happened to Megna?’

Girl keeps talking while we drag Dulal to the door. ‘The sickness took her,’ she says. ‘Died last year.’

My arms go limp and Dulal slips to the floor.

‘Ei,’ says madam, ‘I said get out.’

Girl helps me get Dulal up again. ‘Did you bury her?’ I whisper.

Madam is watching, hand splayed across her hip. We drag Dulal out on the street.

‘We took her out and put her in the water,’ girl says.

‘Which water?’

She points in the direction of the sea. ‘We borrowed a dinghy. We all went, every girl.’ And she runs back inside, her footsteps as light as a rat’s.

I call Shathi. ‘She’s dead,’ I cry. Shathi listens, quiet. ‘Come home,’ she says. She’s right. That I still have a home is a miracle. I should go, start all over, pay my penance somewhere else. Is my kid dead, too? I’ll never know. If I could just see Megna’s face one more time. There’s no face like hers in the world, no eyes dancing like that, hair like she rode with her head out of a car window. Just one more time. I think about the time I thought I saw her, that woman with the fancy clothes who played tricks on my mind. All this time, she was dead, fish-eaten, not even a grave to rot into.

Dulal and me, we have the morning shift. No way he’s going to make it, so I go to the Boss and make an excuse. Diarrhoea. Boss gives me words on cutting Dulal’s pay and then I’m back in my harness. My eyes are cloudy, I can’t see through the goggles. My torch burns through the metal. I’m remembering my Qur’an, saying a prayer for Megna. Died of the sickness. The sickness of paying off a big debt. She was a whore after all, but only because I made her one. All the stories I had dreamed up for her life, new start in the city, kid going to school — none of that was ever going to happen. Shit like that doesn’t happen to people like us. Any chance she had of a life, I took from her.

Sun beats down hard on me. No wind, everything so still, and me baking in the hot, now with a dead girl around my neck.

I don’t know how the day passes. Later, we’re eating a few scraps together. Dulal’s up, he gives me a wink when I sit down next to him. He’s telling me about the girl he did, how luscious she was, best Eid he ever had. ‘They should make it part of the day,’ he says. ‘You kill a few cows, roast their livers, then go fuck a few cheerful women — everyone’s happy. I should be Prime Minister.’