Angana
I wait on rock tonight as Marisol play in court with ghosts. This is how we make our world, in dark, in spaces human leave behind. But I cannot frolic with them, too caught by lines spreading everyday on myself. Almost as if I still have body: veins running from feet to thighs, roping belly to neck. Ten, twenty, circling without end. For what?
Someone hums by tide, Priya with silver basin of rice and chickpea and banana. She sets basin in sand crater and because Marisol cannot tell me no, because now my human has come to me, I climb down rock. I flick pine needle off Priya's bare head.
My daughter whips around, say, "What's that?" Games, what a mother plays with her girl. But my girl doesn't laugh, doesn't see, just breathe quick, grab from pocket shiny knife she wave through me like toy.
I must seize night, as they say, if I want her to hear. So I step into slant of round moon, tide not too high, not too low, this moment meant to be. But she drop knife and lift hand like criminal, breath lost, no word at all.
Does she see breasts that feed her, hands that rub ointment on knee, soft Assamese cheek that press hers in sleep? Or she see what I have become: seaweed soul, wandering out for people?
What role to play, mother or ghost, I don’t know. But with one moment voice, I try both. Soul like me must begin big. “Priya,” I say. “I’ve come back.”
This does not help at all. My daughter shut her eye, step out of moon, hum same old tune.
“Remember Ma?” I say.
Moon and touch lost, I am unknowable-unless my daughter step back near, choose to see me. Instead, she step back, humming louder, and trip backward over basin.
"Shit!" she say. Just like that, she disappear, running like baby camel through sand, for bus to take her home, wherever that is.
My ghosts gather round, where I must sit like rock on rock, because Marisol stroke my hand. I point hers toward my daughter's gift. Look at that, my friends say. Together, we watch basin gleam by tide. We listen as seagull shriek, landing heavy on its rim.
Priya
Morning call after call, but when I get Trisha, the Parks girl, she tells me to go ahead. Take the beach, quick.
"I've dreamt of things too," she says. "Things I saw months ago. You never know what washes up."
Just like that, she clears the beach corner for the afternoon, though my brothers don't buy my story. Dilip's answers-stress, nervous breakdown-are clipped on the phone, till I say the cops called again.
"Alright," he says. "I'll leave work after lunch. I want you to know you're not in this alone."
As always, Roy picks up on the umpteenth ring, then laughs. "What the hell were you snorting?"
"I saw her," I say. "The cremation's set. Dilip's coming."
"Don't," he says, "expect me to let him light the fire."
"Roy," I say, "the eldest always does it."
"You shave your head and I can't light the fire?"
"We'll light it together."
Noon, Manni sits up in bed, dark curls mussed, and blinks as if he doesn't understand my English. When I finger his bellybutton, he slips beneath the sheet. "I think you're being manipulative."
"Manni." I nestle in next to him. "The basin's gone."
He cocks his head at me. "Are Dilip and Roy going?"
"I always knew they would."
He ruffles the fuzz on his chest, then yanks the sheet off. "What're we waiting for? Let's go."
The beach is all sugar, boys smoking weed on bench tops, longtime couples like Ma and Baba were ambling the walkway, whispering. We march in file, Badlani Uncle up front, lifting his dhoti from puddles, Dilip and Roy shouldering Ma's mummy on a carrier, Manni pushing a shopping cart of wood. I plod along behind my makeshift family and wonder if, after Ma's burning, this picture will last.
As we stack a pyre by the rock, throne Ma's mummy right on top, Badlani Uncle reads Geeta passages I don't know. Only when he prays in Assamese, words Baba uttered when I was sick, placing his rough palm on my forehead, do I remember what I thought was magic:
Om namaste sa te sarbaloka srayaya ... Dilip lights a slow snake of fire at the base ... namaste sitebiswa rupa twakaya ... Roy pokes in dry chunks of wood ... tameba mata sa pita tameba, tameba bandhi sa sakha tameba ... Badlani Uncle tosses rice kernels on Ma's mummy ... tameba sarbam mama deba deba ... I pour the holy water over her body ... asato ma sat gamaya, tamaso ma jyotir gamaya ... we press, even Manni, our folded palms to our faces ... mrityo ma amritam gamaya ... and I wonder if these words that promise souls that never die are another fort we build against the pain.
The fire swings like a dervish over the wood, melting everything it touches. Sinew to bone, skin to ash. High-lickety, the flames jump, steaming us back to tide. Crackling: life is an act of scavenging. What's left, we'll toss today to ocean, hoard in jeweled boxes for years to come.
A breeze floats in, with drizzle that spots my neck, arms, the pit of my clasp in Manni's. So I look up, at smoke tunneling into smoke from thirteen days past. And there it is, my story and the city's written all over the blue sky.
Angana
They march to rock, my body raised high over them, my children. Already, I pull their way, every vein tingling for climbing fire they build.
But not yet.
Spirits sweep about me like birds in storm, calling, whirling sand up to rock. Over us, sky is black with smoke of building. Before us, sea ripple with ghosts who land, pale and bruised. More and more.
"The rescuers will never find me," Marisol say. "I won't see you again."
"Just wait," I say. "When they find your body, you'll forget me."
"You can't leave," she say. "You never found your story."
"Once there was Indian woman," I say, "who cross Atlantic to live in New York City."
Marisol take my hand and cry.
"She meet Indian man," I say, "and raise three lovely American children."
"That's not a story," Marisol say.
I squeeze her hand, then let it go.
No time, no choice now. I pirouette up over circle of ghost friends, whirl of sand and smoke. I hover over fire, spark and crackle like all the voices I hear these twelve days. Up I shoot, sea-spray. Down I come, rain. On my children's heads and limbs. Into tide that slips out-in to ocean.
About the Author
Reema Rajbanshi grew up in the Bronx and has done research work in Brazil and Northeast India. She attended Harvard for her BA in English and Women's Studies and just graduated from U.C. Davis with an MA in Fiction Writing. Her parents are from Assam.
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