I scowled in the dark. Hadn’t I been focusing on little things all this time? And hadn’t the biggest thing then slipped away?
“What I want is to go somewhere I’ve never been,” I said, “like you, to start a new life.”
“You don’t want to be like me,” she said.
I was only half listening. “I’m not sure where to go,” I said. “Can you tell which would be the best place for me?”
“I don’t think going anywhere will help.”
“Why not?” I asked angrily.
“You’ll still be carrying yourself. Even into another lifetime, you’ll carry your old, tortured self.” Was it my imagination, or did her fingertips turn chilly as she spoke? “Remain where you are and work on your heart. Once you’re dead, it’s much more difficult.”
Was this a joke? She seemed serious. “What I’m telling you is, don’t try to kill yourself again. I have to go now. Remember, if you change inside, outer change will follow.” At the door she waved good-bye. I tried to see her face, but the light from the passage shone in my eyes.
A few minutes later, another nurse came in. This one was square and bulky and carried a clipboard. She turned on the night-light, checked my vitals, and forced me to take a pill. When I grumbled about her disturbing my sleep by coming so soon after the first nurse, she pursed her lips and wrote something on her clipboard. I asked for a damp towel to wipe my face, and while she went to fetch it, I glanced at the board. In the comments section at the bottom, she had written delusional.
WHEN I RETURNED HOME, I TRIED TO RISE ABOVE LETHARGY and follow the first nurse’s advice. (Had she actually been a nurse? Was she even a real person?) But her words had grown indistinct, a landscape seen through smoke. The smoke seeped inside me. Was it the result of the numbing medications the psychiatrist insisted I take, or was it a deeper malaise? She had said something about enjoying my days, and I tried. The fact that I was alive was a miracle. But the seeping smoke had filled my cavities. It was hard to feel thankful with Mr. Pritchett hovering, bags of worry under his eyes. And harder still to admit that it was I (a foolish I, a too-young-to-know-better I, but I nevertheless) who had brought calamity upon myself by choosing to marry, against the advice of friends and family, a man I had not understood. One thing had changed: I no longer wanted to commit suicide. But secretly, I increased the dosage of my medication. The numbness brought some relief. Still, I was carrying my old unhappy self inside, I didn’t know how to get away from it, and I felt guiltier. So when Mr. Pritchett showed me the picture of the Indian palace, those curtains delicate as spiderwebs blowing in a foreign breeze, and asked if I wanted to go there, I was struck dumb with joy. It was as though the universe had opened a door.
Now that I’m probably not going anyplace, I, like Mr. Mangalam, have a confession to make. This is why I was so excited about going to India: Once I got there, I planned to leave Mr. Pritchett. I planned to dive into that roiling ocean of one billion people, all our karmas fitting together like jigsaw puzzle pieces, and begin anew.
MRS. PRITCHETT’S ADMISSION FILLED UMA WITH A PRIMAL SORROW. They were about to die. It was now clear that the entire group believed this. The sorrow infiltrated her lungs. Ramon! she called in er mind. In answer, a memory came, a summer walk she and Ramon had taken in the hills. They had climbed up a trail of slippery orange gravel, impeded by picnic supplies. When they reached the top, the puckered golden skin of the bay stretched below them. They had spread a sheet on the narrow, bumpy ledge and eaten chutney sandwiches and oranges and densely sweet chocolate pan de huevos. Then they had held hands and watched the sky until the clouds turned purple.
Uma looked down on their intertwined fingers and was surprised to see that Ramon’s were as brown as hers. But this was not right. Ramon was lighter skinned. In this not-quite-a-memory, Uma’s eyes moved up his brown arm, his shoulders, and his neck, until they alighted on his face. She gasped because the man was not Ramon at all. He was Indian. His features shifted as she watched-now a mustache, now a pair of high cheekbones, now square-framed glasses over wide-set eyes-but his Indianness was never in question. Watching him, she realized what she must have guessed deep down when her mother had interrupted herself during their phone conversation. “Enough time for-” her mother had said. Now Uma was able to complete the sentence: “for us to introduce you to some nice Indian men.” Was this subterranean knowledge the reason she hadn’t told Ramon where she was coming today? Did she want to meet the nice Indian men her parents were even at this moment lining up for her?
Had she been only playing at love, all this time? Was that the kind of person she was?
LILY WAS TRYING TO WHISPER, BUT THEY ALL HEARD HER. “Gramma, do you think that woman was a ghost?”
The word hung in the air, papery. Uma thought she felt presences around them-not malevolent or sorrowful, but startled by their sudden weightless existence.
“I think yes,” Jiang said. “When I was young, I heard stories. Spirits that died in the place where you are, coming back to warn you.”
Lily said, “So many people must have died in this quake. Perhaps they can save us?”
MR. PRITCHETT SAT WITH HIS HEAD BOWED. HE WOULD NOT look at anyone. If it had been possible for him to go somewhere and never see any of the group again, he would have done so. But their world had shrunk to three desks. Hell is other people, Uma thought on his behalf.
It was completely dark now. Cameron had to switch on the flashlight again. For a moment it didn’t work. Had water leaked into it?
Give up Seva, said the voice inside his head, and I’ll fix the flash-light. Cameron ignored the voice. He shook the flashlight hard until it came on. He shone the beam around to check for problems. He trained the circle of light for an instant on the cubicle wall, beyond which the dead man lay in the water. Cameron’s chest hurt. But no more procrastination was possible.
15
When Cameron first met the holy man, he didn’t recognize him as such. Partly, he didn’t fit Cameron’s concept of holy men: no beads, no robes, no beatific expression on a bearded face. And partly, Cameron was distracted; it was the thirtieth anniversary-or as close to it as he could figure-of his son’s death, and with each passing year, the event weighed more heavily on him.
They were traveling on a crowded Muni. Cameron was on his way to the hospice where he volunteered one afternoon each week. So was the holy man, though Cameron did not know this. The man, whose name was Jeff, stood holding on to one of the bus handlebars, swaying as the vehicle made a wide turn. He was white, with pleasant, nondescript features; he wore jeans and a freshly laundered shirt. His head was shaved, but it was currently fashionable for men to shave their heads, so Cameron barely noticed it.
Cameron stared out a window, trying to occupy his mind with observation. The passing scenery was painfully familiar, so like the landscape of his childhood, the ugly streets he had labored to escape: storefronts with grills over the doors and windows, piles of garbage, men passed out in doorways. Dealers hung out on street corners, keeping an eye out for customers, or for cops. Even without opening the window, Cameron knew what it would smell like: rotting food, sour armpits, piss, marijuana, and the desperate hilarity of young men who waited for night. But when the doors hissed open, it was to let Cameron-and Jeff-out into sunshine and a happy burst of music and the not-unpleasant odor of Sesame Fried Chicken from Tang’s Carry Out. From across the years he could hear Imani’s voice, so clear that he had to sit down on the bus-stop bench and put his head in his hands: You already decided you going to leave, so you can’t see nothing good even if it up and smack you in the face.