Tahmima Anam - The Bones of Grace

‘No. But she knows something’s wrong. You’ll have to come out for lunch, at least, or she’ll call a doctor. She loves you. Everyone loves you.’

There it was again.

‘I love you too,’ I forced myself to say. And then, a truer statement: ‘I don’t want to lose you.’

The day dragged on. I took a shower and dressed in something Dolly would approve of. At lunch I was given broth and broken rice. In the afternoon everyone went to their respective parts of the house and it was very quiet, so I went outside and destroyed a few ixora flowers by pulling them from the bush and squeezing them between my fingers. A few of Rashid’s relatives came after dusk, and snacks were wheeled out on a trolley, and Dolly made excuses for my silence by claiming I had been ill for the last few days, and an uncle put his hand on my forehead and declared me feverish, after which I was excused and given dinner in my room, everyone taking a certain amount of pleasure at my frailty.

Later, in bed, Rashid turned away from me and I swam my palms across his back, overcome by a deep longing to be held. When I tapped him on the shoulder, knowing he was awake, he turned around and I said it all again, the sorrys and the forgive mes, genuine this time, because how could I want for anything, here in this house that had welcomed me, Rashid even now willing to lie beside me on the bed, and I said how undeserving I was, how I would try and make it up to him, that I did love him, I did. He kissed me on the forehead, his breath grave with smoke, and that is when I realised he hated me — you both did, except one of you would do it from afar, and the other from up close.

I couldn’t sleep and neither could he. I felt him twisting and turning on his side of the bed. At one point he got up and paced the room, finally settling into the armchair with another cigarette. He turned on the lamp by the dressing table, casting a lean shadow against the wall. When he finished smoking, he changed into shorts and running shoes, and I thought he would leave then, for the gym, but he switched off the light and sat back down. Every so often I would open my eyes and he and his shadow were still there, gazing back at me.

As the hours passed, I felt a small seed of rage taking root inside me. It occurred to me that I was owed something in return for what was happening. What was happening was that I would never be touched in the way that you had touched me, that all the things I had said to you as we made love would come back to you and you would be disgusted by the thought of me, and if I was going to have myself live in your memory as a woman who had no will, who, given all the freedoms and choices in the world, would choose this, if I was going to fall that far in your regard, then I would demand something in return.

The logic was faulty, of course — I have told you before, there had never been any explicit demands, no ultimatums or threats. And yet I felt as if they were all holding my life to ransom. What would I ask for in exchange? What could be as big as this? Even as the question was posed in my mind, the answer came catapulting back: I would seek out the woman who had eluded me my whole life. This was the only reasonable exchange, the only bargain I was willing to strike. And with this resolution firmly lodged in my mind, I fell into a thick sleep.

A few hours later I woke to find Rashid packing for an overnight trip to the factory. He was rolling his socks into cylinders and while he was placing them in a corner of his bag, I told him I had decided to find my birth mother. He paused, a pair of trousers folded over his arm. ‘How does that make anything better?’

‘I’ve decided,’ I said.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘you’re confused. I can see why you think looking for your — for this woman — is going to help, but it won’t.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because there are probably things you would rather not know.’

I recalled our trip to Savar, his proposal by the rectangular pool. ‘What are you trying to say, that I’ll find out I have adulterous genes or something?’

‘Zee, don’t bullshit me, I know you know what I mean.’

‘What, that I couldn’t help myself so I cheated on you?’

‘What the fuck do I know why you lied, cheated, whatever the fuck you did with whatever fucked-up stranger you met in America?’ He turned away from me and I saw he had an old scar just below his cheekbone on the left side. I had never noticed that scar before. What kind of a wife did that make me? I was a poor companion to him even before you came along. Then he said, after a long time, ‘Are you in love with him?’

It was the first time he had asked me, and I knew it wouldn’t be the last. I was tired and my head was heavy. I leaned against the soft upholstery of our bed. I considered telling him the truth, that not only was I in love with you, but that there was something out there called love, something I had never believed in because I thought it was beyond me until I met you, and now that I had, this did not make the love more desirable — perhaps even less, because of the wreckage it would leave in its wake — but unassailable, something enormous and fixed, a piece of architecture that would remain in my consciousness no matter how hard I tried to deny it.

‘No,’ I said.

‘Thank God for that.’

‘No,’ I repeated. He asked for assurances, and I gave them to him. I swore up and down the walls and past the corridors, and my sorrys spilled out into the garden outside, where the thick-leaved trees stood still. But I was resolved, and his resistance had only made me more determined. I was full of rage, against him, and Abboo and Ammoo, Dolly and Bulbul and all the other people who knew and had refused to talk to me all this time. The rage made it so that giving you up was the best thing I ever did, Elijah. Do not allow this to wound you, because in my anger — at my own cowardice, at the chain of events beginning with my birth that had conspired against me, against love, against all that I longed for in my body and breath and soul — I was finally released. I would do something, I would jump out of my own scissored self and traverse the difficult and treacherous chasm of history, and though I didn’t realise it at the time, because all I could feel was the missing-limb ache of your loss, the start of this journey prompted a small, electric joy.

To find my mother I would start with my mother.

I called Ammoo and found she was on her way to a sari shop in Gulshan Two. I asked if I could meet her there, and, always suspicious when there was a spontaneous change in plans, she asked me repeatedly why, and when I refused to say, she relented and gave me the name of the shop. ‘Fifteen minutes,’ she said. ‘Unless the traffic is bad.’ When I arrived she was already there, sifting through a pile of printed saris. I observed her for a minute before entering the shop, noticing how, lately, she had become more beautiful, something in the way her face had settled into middle age made her appear gentler, almost placid. She had chosen a sari now, a blue cotton, and the shop attendant was opening it up to show her how the pattern changed across the six yards of material.

I pushed open the glass doors, slipping into the cool of the shop and remembering a joke I sometimes shared with my father about Ammoo’s moods, referring to her as a thermometer. ‘What’s the reading today? Fever?’ ‘No,’ he would reply, ‘chills only.’

Ammoo spotted me, leaned back and frowned. ‘This was a strange place to meet. Is something wrong? Where’s Dolly?’

I had thought about it on the way over, rehearsing the scenario in my mind. ‘I wanted to buy you a gift,’ I said.

‘Why?’

‘Because I’ve saved some money, and I thought I should get you something. How about this one?’ I said, pointing to the blue cotton.