V.V. Ganeshananthan
I’ll Help You to Go
Like so many others, Vyshali’s mother Lakshmi had not lived in her own village for a number of years, and so, in late December on the day of the retreat, when the Tiger cadre she knew the best and disliked the most came and told her they would have to go, she almost could not believe she would have to leave her house again. She had hoped intensely that this might not be the case—although she knew what the noise south of them was—and had thus far failed to pack or prepare anything they would need to depart. She called her daughter overseas immediately, but there was no answer, so she put the phone to charge and promised herself she would try again later. Where is my husband, she asked herself, and then, where is my grand- daughter, and then, in her head, she began listing and sorting and prioritizing and panicking, because she was older now and could not carry as much as she had the first time she had been displaced, which was so long ago now that she could not remember the year, just the place, which had been Jaffna, which now seemed far away, although it was where she had been born and where she had raised and lost her own children.
They should take pots with them, she knew, and pans, and some food. Some of the pots and pans, treasured gifts from her mother, had been on such journeys before. The battered, persistent radio—from which her husband had gotten his nickname—had come with them too. This time they would have to leave that behind. They were too old now to carry sentimental things.
And she could no longer delay commencing the process of leaving. To begin, she took one of her old cotton saris and spread it out on her bed. Outside the bedroom windows, which—like all of the windows in all of the houses in which she had lived—had iron bars against thieves, she could hear the birds chirping away sweetly in the damp. From the kitchen, near the wood-burning stove, she collected and wiped the cookware, which was old and dented. Two pans would be more than enough; she stacked the smaller into the larger and tied their handles together with pieces of twine.
She found one book of matches by her husband’s bedside, and another by the small shrine she kept near her own. These she put into the pots, along with a small bag of rice, a coconut, a jar of parippu, another of milk pow- der, and another of loose tea leaves. The tea strainer she wrapped in one of her husband’s handkerchiefs, and then she put all of this together into the center of the old sari and tied it up in a neat knot, so that it made a lumpy parcel. She picked it up and held it over her shoulder by the ends, experi- mentally, and found that it was heavy.
She untied it again and put in spoons: big, and little, and a knife, and a small comb of Radio’s favorite kind of bananas, and two packets of Maliban biscuits, and a jar of sugar, although almost none of them took sugar any more now that she and Radio were both nearly diabetic. The dogs barked and Radio came in at the gate. He stomped his feet in their shoes, stepped out of them, came into the house and called for her.
“We have to hurry,” he said.
She pointed to the bundle and he nodded in approval. “Where is Gayathri,” he said.
“I thought she was at the school but she ought to have come back by now.”
He looked at his wristwatch, and, frowning, licked his finger and wiped its dial.
They stood in the dusty heat on the veranda and waited for her. Their granddaughter was a good girl, so good and meticulous that it sometimes made her late. Exactly Right Acca, some of the younger children called her. Because they lived so close to a main road, they could see that peo- ple were already leaving, passing them by, in tractors and lorries but also on foot, carrying tissue bags crammed with things: extra slippers, pots and pans, rice, bananas, coconuts, other fruits. Some of the women, Lakshmi suspected, had sewn any remaining gold they had into their underskirts, and were carrying rupees in pouches around their necks. In earlier years some of them might have wept but now most of them just appeared to be in a furious rush. Their next-door neighbour hurried by, holding the hand of her small boy. He was crying, but trotting alongside her obediently, a gentle fingerprint of black pottu smeared across his forehead. Perhaps it was the first time he had been asked to leave. His mother murmured at him, telling him to be quick. She looked up as she passed and Lakshmi and Radio nodded at her and she nodded back without slowing.
“All right?” she called.
“Just waiting for the child,” Radio called after her.
“Ah, see you then,” she said, and the current of displacement swept her downstream. The street was filling and clogging now, people fortunate and quick enough to have grabbed cars, lorries, and three-wheelers piling into them and jerking their vehicles against the slower pedestrian traffic. Lakshmi and Radio would be the tail end of the departure now, certainly. Panic pushed at her again, insistent, ulcerous. The phone at its charger rang and Radio went inside to pick it up. Lakshmi stayed on the veranda, putting her hand over her eyes to see if she could make out anything farther away. Was that Gayathri’s tall, sturdy figure, so like her own daughter’s, coming toward them? No, it was someone else. A tin cup fell from one man’s bag onto the ground and he stopped to retrieve it. Lakshmi had forgotten cups and also, she thought, oil. What were pans without oil in them? Plates. Pans and rice and parippu, yes, but oh, what about salt? She did not want to go without salt. Flour. She began making another list in her head. When Gayathri came she would go back inside, and pack spices: curry powder and salt and black pepper and dried chillies and also, a few potatoes and what about some of the limes from the tree in the back, what about some beans, what about onions. Could she manage to tug the baby goat along with them? He was so new and bandy-legged, perhaps he would be too slow, and anyway, this would depend on if Radio wanted to bring the car or the old tractor, which with its thirsty petrol tank would eventually be a liability.
“That was Vyshali,” Radio said, back at her side again. “You told her.”
“Yes. And I tried Gayathri’s mobile. No answer. Here. I collected the documents.”
He showed her his weathered old leather purse, into which he had placed the deed to the big old Jaffna house, which the Army was now occupying, as well as some documents relating to their marriage and their births. He had seen any others lose what belonged to them for the lack of such documents, and after all, he had been a civil servant known for keeping his things in or- der. He always remembered where these things were. Her national identity card, and his, and then the Eelam cards they had been given also.
But then—“Wait,” she said. For all his care, he had forgotten some- thing. She went to their room and opened the drawer in the bureau where she kept the certificates for Gajan’s death, and for Ravi’s. She brought them back out to the veranda and he held the purse open and she slid them in. This was how they had kept Gayathri safe. You already took her uncles, she had said to the stern-faced cadre who had visited, wanting to know if Gayathri had received her training. She comes from a family that already gave. We already gave, and you may not take anything else, she had said. And she had glared at him, furious.
Where was Gayathri? Another cadre was coming toward the house, pushing through the crowd, opening the gate. Not so long ago young people had called more respectfully at the doors of their elders. But was this Gayathri herself? Had she put on the uniform of the movement at this late hour, after so many years of eluding it, of her grandparents refusing to yield even one more inch? Lakshmi’s spectacles were inside, and she squinted. No, no, the cadre lifted his face and it was one she knew, but not her grand-daughter’s. The one who had told her that they would have to go. He disliked her, perhaps because they had come from Jaffna. This was not their place, even after all these years of living here.
“Why are you still here, Amma,” the cadre said. Sivan, his name was. “Waiting for the girl,” Radio said, more briefly this time.
“You’ll have to go soon, whether she comes or not,” the cadre said. “We can’t go without her,” Lakshmi said.
“Well, you’ll have to. The Army will come whether or not she does, and none of us will be here. You’ll have to go,” the cadre said.
Lakshmi wouldn’t look at him.
“She’ll come,” Radio said, staring somewhere into the distance, into the crowds, past the cadre.
“I’ll come back in half an hour or so,” the cadre said. “And if she isn’t here I’ll help you to go.”
He turned on his heel and went. Had he delivered a promise or a threat? Radio looked at Lakshmi. Where was the girl? What had happened to her at school?
“Cup of tea,” Radio said. Lakshmi went inside to make it.
V.V. Ganeshananthan is the author of a novel, Love Marriage (Random House, 2008), that is set in Sri Lanka and its diasporas. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts and the Radcliffe Institute, she teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota.