25. Make Strange with Me - Lords of Serendipity

With her mother and father she had traveled to a fishing village where at night they boarded a boat that was going to take them to Italy.

After fifteen or sixteen days the boat stopped working. A second boat came. There was no space on the deck. Actually, there was, but they were told it wasn’t safe. Patrols. They were sent down into the hold and when the door closed, they heard the first boat going away. It had started working again.

Down in the dark of the second boat, suddenly there would be light.

And the light was blue the first time, then white, orange, gray, was black and dots, was moon.

Light came when they opened the hold to hand down buckets and take up buckets. Not men but the shadows of men did this, because the men from the boat were dark shapes in all skies.

Buckets were for rocks of bread and fresh water and waste.

Questions were called up.

Excuse, but why can’t we be on the main floor please?

Mahetteya, I have certification in elocution—may I assist?

Sir, can you see Italy?

Brother, is Italy here for us yet?

Machan, have we come to Italy please?

Which were, really, just one question. The question Cham asked her ammi again and again.

How long more?

The shadows of men said Soon and shut the hold.

In the dark again, Ammi said soon soon soon into her ears and against her neck until she fell back asleep, her head pressing in just above Ammi’s fire-iron chest, near where her arm joined the rest of her. And beside or behind Ammi, she could never say for sure, but always there, always close, was her thathi, rubbing the top of her head with his finger-backs. Sometimes pulling her ears just below the studs, and then she would giggle and Ammi would cinch at Thathi, who would giggle. Sometimes even Ammi giggled. No. That was a lie. Ammi only giggled once.

One time when she hadn’t yet gone back to sleep in the soon soon soon. In the very dark and quiet she felt a hand on her leg.

But Ammi was already holding her.

And Thathi was holding Ammi.

Whose hand was that hand, on her leg, moving up her leg, closer and closer to her private parts?

Ammi, she said, quietly. Who’s touching there?

Then bomb voices and fighting.

The hold opened at the commotion, and it was gray light and the shadows of men threw buckets of water on her father and the man he was fighting. Then the door closed and it was very dark again.

Holding her close and balled up, like a washerwoman with her bundle, her mother pushed and pushed until she reached a corner of the hold so that there was nothing behind her except the damp, pickled wood of the hull. Her father came and pressed his wet back into them, and her mother reached forward, past her, and hugged her father. No, not hugged. She was patting his chest until she felt something, and he said it was still there, their money was still there.

And so they waited. But soon soon soon didn’t work anymore. Because it wasn’t just dark and rolling again. They had been followed into this part of the hold. Others had moved away, legging and arming into each other, on top of each other. There were threats of new fights. In this corner was the heavy breathing of men who had just fought each other and were close together again, Thathi and the bad hand-man and their muttered curses. These were brought down on each other’s birth hours and mothers and fathers, families, villages. The curses were braided tight as schoolgirl plaits with promises of the things that would be done as soon as they reached land and there was enough light and space to thrash a dirty yaka. For now though, her father just spat, and, like everyone else down in the hold, including the man he wanted to kill for touching his daughter, sighed and waited.

Also, there was hissing.

The whole time.

A wet susurrus sound.

Because the bad hand-man had punched out one of  Thathi’s teeth.

Ammi found the tooth and gave it to her and told her it was her job to keep it, no matter what. And so she held it hard and close for the rest of the trip, turning and turning it in her hand, thinking of it as a morsel to feed a starving man, a jewel missing from a king’s crown, the fingernail of a sad, strange beast. Eventually, she was bored. Job changed to toy.

She moved the tooth along her father’s wet and heaving shoulder. It was a strong little ship, at last reaching the shore, again and again.

When they were taken out of the hold and told to jump in the water, she made a fist, but she had to hold on to Ammi, who was holding on to Thathi, and everything was a tumbling in green water and by the time they were all crawling and lying down face up on the beach, coughing and spitting the green sea back at the second boat going away, she had lost her father’s tooth. But she only started crying when she saw that he was missing all of his front teeth, crying and also yelling at Ammi because Ammi must have lost the rest.

Women in yellow vests came.

The women in yellow vests gave them scratchy blankets and cups of hot, meaty water that she had to drink fast, revealing the shape of her empty belly in the burning feeling. The broth left bumpy patches on her tongue. She was drinking fast like everyone else, not just because she was so hungry but also because the women wanted the cups back. Then the women in yellow vests went away.

Men came.

Army men.

They wore big black boots and big black helmets and Thathi went to speak with them, a self-appointed embassy. He was pointing at the hand-man and at her, now standing in front of Ammi, who was holding her bony little shoulder like a cleat and not saying anything. Later, she would wonder why her mother hadn’t tried to stop her father from going back to the army men. How could a woman who proved so good at seeing what was going to happen, so good at making things happen, so psychotically good at keeping things the way she wanted them to be, not see what was going to happen to a ragged, toothless, soaking illegal migrant running up to a group of soldiers, yelling?

But of course her mother knew what was going to happen. And in fidelity to the memory of her father, Cham had decided never to ask herself why her mother had allowed this to happen.

Thathi’s front teeth were gone, and he wanted the bad hand-man dealt with. In broken internet English along with his demands for justice he offered praise and thanks that they had arrived in Italy, a truly good country.

From where she was standing, worrying the burns on her tongue, flinching from her mother’s grip on her shoulder, Cham could see that her father was spitting at the army men the whole time he was talking. They pushed him away and he didn’t have legs for that kind of push and he fell down. Ammi told her to stay where she was, and she went to him and helped him up and said something to him and pointed at her. And he waved at her and bobbled his head and took a packet from somewhere inside his shredded polo shirt and considered it. And just like that, her mother looked many years older than her father. She had sunken, hard cheeks. His were soft, full pouches.

She took the money packet from him and then pointed at the bad hand-man and back at Cham and then at the army men, and Thathi nodded and went back to the soldiers and kept trying to say, pointing at Cham, now back in Ammi’s grip, and at the bad hand-man, who looked at the army men with his head cocked at a painful angle, watching the new Roman gods in black boots and black helmets.

They knocked her father down and put a black cloth bag over his head and dragged him away and then came back and took all the other men away too, bagged. She asked her mother when they would see Thathi again. She asked her on the beach that day, and then on the first bus, and the second, and on all the other buses and in the tents, clinics, school gyms, and church basements of their new life. The answers, never extensive to begin with, reduced and reduced until eventually all she was getting back was a disappointed stare.

Cham and her mother began living in a room on the outer rim of Rome. They shared the room with many other women and girls. Most were Sri Lankan. There was a kitchen and, three doors down a dark hallway, a bathroom that you only used if you absolutely had to, and never, ever by yourself. Inside the room there was a window crisscrossed in twirly black metal bars that left your fingers red with rust, a very different kind of red than bay rum dregs. People took turns sleeping on the mattresses lining the walls. In the middle of the room, always, there were cardboard boxes and flashing piles of umbrellas, flags, selfie sticks, phone chargers, stuffed bears and beanbag priests, plastic mother wolves and rubber-duckie nuns, pizza Frisbees and key chain Colosseums and scooters, gold and silver plastic swords and shields and red-plumed helmets, bouncy balls that lit up and sticky neon blobs that beeped when you squeezed. Boxes were brought in every morning, and things were taken out and organized into suitcases and backpacks for the men and boys who lived across the hall, who, when they weren’t sleeping in shifts, were out in the city, on bridges and in church squares, selling and hiding from the Guardia.

Mondays were outside days, and, in good weather—which, in Rome, meant weather that went unnoticed—she and her mother would walk with the others to a big white tent that was set up on the red ground outside a giant white church that had palm trees in its courtyard. Lunch was given—a foiled brick of bread with cheese, a yellow-green apple, a bag of chips, and a jammy pastry that came in a green wrapper covered in golden letters and made you thirsty. This was the only time you could sit outside and trace letters because you didn’t have to take your turn keeping watch.

One day an empty bus stopped in front of the tent.

Scratchy-looking men in leather jackets came from cars parked beside the bus. One had a loudspeaker. The men were waving euros and pointing to the bus, saying that the migrants would be paid cash to attend a very important meeting and that they had to hurry and that the bus would bring them back here after the very important meeting. They ignored the ones who ran away. They just kept moving everyone else onto the bus and they were actually giving out five-euro notes, two-euro coins to children. The church people came and were asking and asking and soon yelling but the men only shrugged and ignored them too and the man on the loudspeaker said they had to hurry or they were going to be late for the very important meeting and then the money would go to others.

They got on the bus and Cham knelt on her mother’s lap to look out the window at a city built for giants. The bus stopped in front of a house that looked like a cake near a big green park.

Everyone on the bus was pointing at the flag flying outside the house. Some were excited. Some were relieved. Others were worried. Cham’s mother was also looking at the flag. It was the Sri Lankan flag.

They sat inside the bus for a long time while the men in leather jackets walked around in front of the house, talking and pointing and smoking cigarettes. Then two vans arrived and women with red lips and lion hair stepped out, followed by fat men holding cameras on their shoulders. Then the bus doors opened and everyone was told to get out and go to the gates. Whistles, bells, cans full of nuts and bolts and screws were given, and the men in leather jackets made motions to show what they wanted them to do while the cameramen filmed the red-lipped women speaking into microphones.

This was repeated the following Monday. The Monday after that the migrants were told to hold signs demanding that they be let out of Italy and sent back to Sri Lanka. By this point Cham and her mother had twenty-one euros between them, which her mother kept inside the packet she’d taken from her father on their first day in Italy. On the fourth Monday, her mother told Cham she could have her five euros, along with the coin she’d already been given, if she went to the front of the crowd and stayed there by herself and made no noise at the gate even if she saw her mother come and go. The game was to pretend it wasn’t even her ammi. But Cham wanted to be with Ammi wherever she was going, whatever she was doing. She didn’t want to be by herself, even with a coin of her own.

But then Ammi said, Do you want to stay with me always?

Yes, Ammi.

In the room?

Yes, Ammi. And here, too.

Here, too?

Yes, Ammi.

Here? her mother said again, pointing at the gate to the ambassador’s residence.

Yes, Ammi. Please.

Then do as I say, child. Wait for me here. And you must make strange with me, like you don’t know me.

But why, Ammi?

Never mind. But let me tell you what will happen if you don’t make strange with me.

What, Ammi?

They’ll take me away to the same place they took your thathi. Understood?

So she waited, ready to pretend she didn’t know her mother, and Ammi returned, as promised. But the next morning, and every morning after that, Ammi left her in the room, more ignored than watched by the other women unpacking and packing trinkets while singing Jim Reeves and other songs from the village. Ammi wouldn’t say where she went. She left very early and came home late every day, her sweat smelling like cooking oil and soap. Though she was never around to take the bus to the ambassador’s house on Mondays, she told Cham to go, and to always stand in the very front and hold the iron bars of the gate. If she did, she could keep all the euros for herself. She did as her mother told her, every time.

And then one Monday, the ambassador’s new nanny, Cham’s mother, was minding the ambassador’s daughter, a lonely little girl told to stay upstairs on migrant demonstration days. The nanny asked the ambassador’s daughter what she was watching through the upstairs window. She told the nanny it was another little girl, a little girl who was always there, holding the bars of the front gate. The nanny looked and, actually telling the truth for once, said the little girl looked very lonely down there by herself, on the other side of the gate. The ambassador’s daughter nodded, biting her lip. The nanny told the ambassador’s lonely little daughter that the little girl outside looked like she was very nice, no? The ambassador’s daughter made for the stairs, the nanny failing to catch her until the ambassador’s daughter reached the front gate. She leaned down and touched fingers with the little girl on the other side, who, despite being three years older, was presumed by the cameras and everyone else to be the same age as the ambassador’s daughter (tapeworm) and only fated to a very different, much sadder life, outside the gate, until suddenly, she wasn’t.

Because the gate opened. The guards stepped out, sticks raised, to hold back the other protestors, but there was no need. The others were also watching. Some were stunned. Some were smiling. Some were cursing that they’d left their children behind in garbage-and-trinket-filled rooms. Even, if just for a moment, the leather-and-jeans Italians were also smiling as the one little girl led the other across the stone courtyard, the nanny watching over them from a distance. The two girls went through a rounded dark door into the grand house, already discussing what there was to eat and not even hearing the gate clank shut and the chanting and noisemakers start again.

Inside, Cham stayed silent as she was introduced to the ambassador and Madam. Men in short-sleeve shirts and ties were standing around them, pointing at her and talking to each other. She was given biscuits by the nanny, who had dry black stones for eyes, and who never, not once, not even when no one else was around, called Cham daughter again. When asked, Cham said she had no parents and that she couldn’t say or remember where they were, or even their names, just Ammi and Thathi and that they were nowhere. She lied because of what her mother warned her would happen, what would be lost, who and what would be truly and forever lost, if she tried to tell the truth. The army men would be called back, and they would take her mother away to live with her father. Who truly was nowhere. And where would she be, then?

After those first few flashing days, after the demonstrations in front of the house stopped, when this thing was really, actually happening, Cham tried in small ways—a quick look when Nanny was giving her a rough fast bath before dinner; pulling Nanny by her hard little wrists when she came to her at night to tell her to stop crying in the giant, soft, cool bed where she couldn’t fall asleep by herself; leaning back in search of the bony frame when Nanny was plaiting her hair. All in vain. All in vain. And so Cham stopped trying in small ways to make her mother show her she was still her mother.

One day she tried in a big way.

Sitting on a bench near the front door, Nanny forcing her feet into hard new school shoes, she leaned down and whispered, Ammi.

Nanny didn’t look up. Not even showing her those black stone eyes.

She said it again. Ammi.

Just wanting them to be in this lie together and both know they were in this together, just once, and then fine, she’d never call her by her true name again.

Ammi!

Nanny dropped her leg and the shoe fell off and she looked up at her. She might as well have asked when they were going to see Thathi again.

Nothing from before, she said to Cham. She pointed around the grand house. I have given you all these things. But only if there is nothing from before. Now make strange! Understood?

A big fat tear dropped onto the floor. And another, and another. Cham sat there, crying, the electric fan circling like a vulture above her as she looked down at her shiny new shoe.

And then she heard Nanny say, firmly, because this was final, her new life, their new life, the new life that had begun: Madam! Please! This child is calling for you.

And now, success, yo soy yo y mi circunstancia, Cham was just another American college student with black acrylics and a Longchamp bag, wandering through Rome at night.