WHILE WAITING: JILL M JARVIS
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Jill Marie Jarvis is a writer hailing from the Northwestern
United States, but has made her home in New York City. She has taught
literature and writing to college-bound high school students from low-income
neighborhoods of the city. She is also a graduate student in the Creative
Writing program at Sarah Lawrence College, where she is working on her
first novel. As the recipient of the Fulbright Scholarship, Jill Jarvis
has lived and studied in Sri Lanka; the focus of her studies there was
upon the diversity of Sri Lankas religious communities and the
Sinhala language.
* * *
Indunil would have tea prepared
and hot at the moment Ana arrived. It was difficult to anticipate what
time this would be, so she set five scoops of high-grade black tea leaves
aside in the metal flask. Dhammika had brought this packet from his
visit to a friends upcountry tea estate near Nuwara Eliya last
weekend. Indunil was glad to have these leaves; their scent was textured
and deep, and the taste would be far richer than the medium grade teas
in plastic packages at the Kandy Central Market or Cargills Food
City where she usually shopped. She set the tea strainer on the tray
beside six china teacups and saucers one for her husband, one
for her father, one for each of her two children, one for herself, and
a new one that would belong to Ana for as long as she stayed with them.
Six months certainly, Ana had written in her last letter, but perhaps
a year. Indunil hoped for a year, or more. She set a packet of Maliban
lemon biscuits, sweet moong caoung left over from the Sinhala New Year
in mid-April, and a comb of bananas on the tray. There was another tin
cup, not on the tray but beside it on the white-tiled counter, for Sita,
her house helper, who slept on a grass mat on the kitchen floor and
once a month visited her family in a small village somewhere along the
Ampitiya road. Though Sita had said its name a few times, she usually
referred to her home as apee gama, our village, and Indunil
could never, when asked, recall its actual name.
In todays tea, Indunil would use fresh cow milk instead of the
usual Milo milk powder. Amarasinghe had come up the road this morning,
sarong hitched up between his knobby legs, braying like a siren to announce
the price of the clinking glass bottles of warm milk he carried. Indunil
dissolved several spoonfuls of sugar into the milk in a separate flask
and then put the flask in the small refrigerator beneath the counter
in one corner of the kitchen. The water was in the electric water heater,
waiting for the flip of a switch. Indunil had already boiled it for
twenty minutes that morning; a foreigners stomach could be sensitive,
and better not to take risks, she thought, though she herself knew that
Kandys water was perfectly clean. Ana would certainly be tired.
Tea would be the perfect thing.
But now it was only half past two in the afternoon. Indunil calculated
yet again. In a letter posted from Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. two weeks
earlier, Ana had outlined the itinerary that would end at 159 Rajapihilla
Mawatha: SeaTac to Tokyo Narita, Narita to Bangkok, Bangkok to Colombo
Katunayaka, scheduled arrival at 11:25 a.m. Ana would then travel to
Kandy in a hired van rather than struggling with all her luggage into
Colombo to catch the train or the intercity bus. If she had arrived
at Katunayaka on time, which, given AirLankas reputation of being
Always Late, was highly unlikely, then Ana may have met
her hired van by 12:30 for the three hour drive up the mountains to
Kandy. Three hours in good traffic, Indunil thought, refiguring to allow
for the possible
accidents on the mountain road or for the after-school
traffic crush that clogged Kandys streets. Perhaps Ana would telephone
on disembarkation? But if so, shouldnt she have rung by now? Did
she say that she would ring? Indunil left the tea spread and Sita chopping
vegetables in the kitchen, a small knot of anxiety tightening in her
belly.
Anas most recent letter, detailing her itinerary, rested where
Indunil had left it in the lacquered letterbox affixed to the wall by
the entryway; she went to the front room to retrieve it. She removed
the letter from its soft-edged envelope and unfolded it as she already
had so many times. The handwriting was broad-stroked and slanting, not
rounded and curling and contained in the Sinhalized way that Sri Lankans
write their English, the penmanship of someone with thoughts too quick
and large for her own hand. Indunils eyes scanned the page, which
she already had memorized, but found no hidden indication that Ana intended
to telephone. What to do but wait, then, and be ready when she came?
Usually, by this time in the afternoon, Indunil would have been pressed,
dressed and ready to go out in the van with Herath, the driver, to collect
Namith and Savisha when their schools let out at three. But today Dhammika
would leave in the blue Mercedes from his jewelry shop beside the Queens
Hotel to drive first to Trinity Boys College and then to Mahamaya
Girls College to pluck them from the white-clad throngs of Kandys
schoolchildren. Then he, instead of Indunil, would shepherd them to
elocution tuition class at Mrs. Pereras on Old Peradeniya road.
Indunil snorted smugly to herself when she thought of the irritation
on Dhammikas face over breakfast, his eyes riveted on her from
across their unpolished wooden breakfast table, his right hand arrested
in its trajectory toward his mouth with a bit of hopper and onion sambol.
But the shop, Manique, I cant be going off
in the afternoon just like that
He used her childhood nickname
whenever trying to coerce her into something against her will. His hand
finished its journey; he chewed and swallowed the bite of food, then
stared at his wife. Indunil was unmoved.
Theres dinner to prepare and Ana arriving
today; she might at any time come and so dont you agree I should
be here to greet her? What will she think if
? Dhammi, you go and
collect the children, then come. My god, man, its only for today.
Dhammika conceded, but grudgingly; boarding an American
researcher was Indunils idea, not his. She had gotten the idea
from a posting on the British Council bulletin board
months ago, and here the girl was about to arrive. Without
question, he would be a gracious and generous host, but was instinctively
wary of this early indication that having a houseguest would somehow
excuse Indunil from her usual responsibilities.
Indunil refolded the letter, slid it back into its envelope, and returned
it to its place with the others in the lacquered letterbox. Then she
turned from the door to face her sitting room and tried to imagine that
she herself had just arrived from America. What would Ana see when she
looked at this room? It was a fine, clean room, well-swept and dusted.
Indunil contemplated it carefully in an effort to see the things in
it as if she hadnt seen them every day of her life. The brass
pahana and their teakwood furniture bought at an import store in Colombo
gleamed richly; certainly as well-to-do as anything Anas parents
might have in her own home there. It seemed to Indunil that the framed
impressionistic painting of the Eiffel Tower should communicate a certain,
desirable sense of worldliness to Ana; though Indunil herself had never
seen it, she had once dreamed of becoming an AirLanka hostess so that
she could learn French, visit Paris and London and Sydney and New York
these dreams had faded into an impulse to hang this painting
on her sitting room wall, and there Ana would see it. Indunils
gaze traveled over the compact disc collection on a narrow shelf beside
the shiny, glass-encased entertainment system sent via airmail by her
older brother, Naveen, who worked for an IT company in Dubai. Indunils
sitting room would impress even an American, surely!
Above the stereo was her oversized wedding picture, framed
and hung there by her mother against Indunils protests. She rarely
looked at this obtrusive billboard, but now Indunil studied her nineteen-year-old
self for a moment, wearing her dowry jewelry and encased in an elaborate
red and gold sari that Dhammika had bought for her in Madras as the
wedding agreement was finalized. Her mothers hired dresser had
taken four hours to wrap Indunil up in this ornate thing the day of
their wedding. Fingering the fashionable layers of thick hair she had
had ironed and styled in Colombo on their last trip to the lowcountry,
she remembered how, when she was nineteen, her mother had still been
alive to forbid a haircut, and how it then hung heavily down her back
like thick ropes of black silk. Indunil slipped back into earlier layers
of memory then, recalling the strength of her mothers vigorous
fingers massaging coconut oil into her scalp and through the long, thick
sleekness of her waist-length hair. While a part of her felt a fleeting
sadness in the absence of that gentle weight, another part of her was
relieved to be rid of it. Beside her in the photograph, Dhammika looked
almost laughable in his wedding costume, an abashed Kandyan prince,
eleven years her elder.
Sometimes Indunil felt an impulse to laugh at him, or to do something
cruel to him. He was of good family and Goyigama caste, like her, of
course, and had inherited his fathers gem and jewelry business,
dutifully running the workshop behind his mothers home and a shiny
little showroom attached the Queens Hotel across from the Maligawa as
if he had never imagined any life besides this. Dhammika and Indunil
were recommended to each other by a matchmaker, and met not quite a
half-dozen times before conceding to the proposal, delighting both of
their families and gaining an auspicious nod from the astrologer who
had matched their horoscopes. Yet, after ten years and two children,
Dhammika was still a stranger to Indunil. She knew his favorite curries,
what underwear he liked to wear, could summarize his views on Tamils,
Muslims, the civil war, international commerce, the moral decline of
Buddhist monks, and the attempted assassination of Madame President
Chandrika Kumaratunga Bandaranayake. He fulfilled his duties at home,
provided for all of her needs, and was nice enough in general, but Indunil
often wondered what he thought about when he left her house to travel
on business to Colombo or went to drink arrack and watch matches at
the cricket clubhouse with his old school mates. Indunil felt that though
they belonged to one another they did not really know one another; she
was contained in her private universe between these familiar walls,
and he, elsewhere, in his.
It all comes in time, her mother used to tell
her; her marriage, too, had been a proposed one.
For what? For what am I waiting? Indunil studied
the bright eyes of her younger self in the photograph, and thought to
herself as she stilled her restlessness: my life is filled with
waiting.
She had waited to pass her O and A levels, waited to wear
her hair in a knot instead of plaits, waited to wear saris, waited to
get married, waited for children, now she waited every day to meet them
after school, waited for them after swimming practice and elocution
and music classes, she waited for their marks, waited to feed and wash
them, waited for them to pass their O and A level examinations so that
they could go off to university abroad. She waited for the new house
Dhammika said they would someday build on the hill higher up above Kandy,
she waited for him to become dear to her. She had watched and waited
for her mother to die, now waited to have her own daughter marry so
that Indunil could tell Savisha all the things that Ranjani had once
told her, waited to grow old and fat and world-weary to perform meritorious
acts in hopes of better rebirth and then she would wait, as she had
all along, to die, and then what? To do it all over again?
Indunil sighed.
Indunil straightened the cushions on the divan and wiped the glass side
table clean with a cloth she stored for that purpose in the concealed
drawer beneath it. Beside her wedding photograph was her parents.
It was black and white, slightly smaller than the colored one, but the
wedding clothes were identical to hers and Dhammikas. Her father
Princely Wickremasinghe looked proud and fresh as a schoolboy who had
won a prize, her mother Ranjani demure and beautiful. This house had
been their home. Indunil had been their youngest child in these rooms.
She both loved and hated the open, musty spaces that contained almost
all of her memories. When she was a child she had imagined the rooms
haunted by the ghost of the British colonial servant who, her parents
explained somewhat too proudly to any visitors, had built and lived
in it with his family for decades before Independence in 1948. The house
had an austere colonial grandeur, white-walled with wooden trellis windows
opening onto a screened veranda that kept monkeys from invading but
allowed the geckos to slither through. The floor was age-darkened hardwood
instead of cool stone polished red and smooth like other Sri Lankan
homes. In the early part of the century, that British official went
mad with malarial fever and returned with his infected wife to die in
London, the neighbors said; Indunil heard them whisper about this when
she was a child, though she never corroborated that part of the story
with her parents. Sometimes she couldnt sleep at night for dread
of his ghost, her eyes wide open in the blackness of the bedroom she
had shared with Naveen. Manike, Sitas aunt and their family servant
before her, used to ask the devalaya mahathaya who lived behind the
temple up the road for yantras to ward off any demons, promising Indunil
that the chanting the yantras every night would repel even English ghosts.
Though ashamed to admit it, Indunil was still, at certain moments, afraid
of the darkness in the corners of the too-big rooms; they were hard
to keep clean and hard to light well. Large roaches and palm-sized spiders
lurked in the corners, too, and though used to these creatures and reticent
to do them harm, she secretly wished she could simply forbid them to
enter her home.
Indunil remembered, too, the brightness of shrieking karam games she
used to play with Naveen and his friends in the kitchen when their parents
hosted dinner parties in the dining room, how wild and exhilarating
it was to play like a boy, a freedom that somehow dissolved after the
week of seclusion when she got her first period and was kept in her
dark bedroom until the feast that announced her womanhood to the entire
world. She thought secretly of Rajan, the Tamil boy who used to sneak
over the fence to her ground floor window to pass love notes through
the trellis bars at night when she was a senior student at Mahamaya,
defiant in the face of her mothers tight-lipped disapproval. There
were also moments she thought she could still smell her mothers
tumor infusing the rooms, as if the acridity of her illness had seeped
into the wooden floorboards and crevices of the walls to linger since
her death two years ago. Until the last day of her mothers life,
Indunil had bathed and dressed her for bed as she now did her own two
children each evening. She combed her mothers hair every night
in those days, rather than the other way around, as it had always been.
The memories of this made her feel heavy and tired as she stood in the
room, remembering very much alone though these walls were now
permeated with the needs of her living family. She wondered, briefly,
if her mother had ever felt this way.
What way? Indunil couldnt quite name
the feeling, but if her mother had ever felt this, she had not shown
it.
A muffled shout of laughter from the room in the annex
beside the kitchen startled Indunil only because her nerves were unusually
taut. Her father, Princely, still lived here with them, and this shout
signaled that he was in his bedroom watching television. As Indunil
could rarely find him if she wanted him for any reason, she had ceased
monitoring his movements, and simply ensured that enough food was left
aside for him at every meal. When Ranjani died, after the one-month
dana ceremony was finished, Princely had transitioned somehow seamlessly
from funereal white to wearing the white Nehru shirt and white sarong
of national dress, as if he had suffered more than only the loss of
his wife, and as if his newly discovered Buddhist nationalism was somehow
an extension of his mourning. Princely read Buddhist Publication Society
pamphlets on karma and loving kindness and went every full moon day
to meditate with all the grandmothers at the Dalada Maligawa. He revered
the Anagarika Dharmapala, Sai Baba, and the Dalai Lama, though he was
apologetically defensive to his friends at the BPS about his affinity
for the Hindu and Mahayana Buddhist leanings of the second and third
of these core allegiances. When not secluded in his small annex bedroom
watching cricket matches or Buddhist sermons on his grainy black and
white television, Princely Wickremesinghe would leave the house to roam
up and down the length of Rajapihilla Mawatha, wrinkled and white-clad,
dispensing proverbs of quoted Dhammapada wisdom to the neighbors
servants like an itinerant and benignly senile bhikkhu.
Indunil put away the dusting cloth she had clenched in her sweaty palm
and glanced uneasily at the cuckoo clock that hung on a wall opposite
the photographs. It was a present that Dhammika had brought home from
a jewelry exposition in Switzerland soon after their wedding. It still
worked beautifully, the small carved chick popping sweetly from its
secret box to mark the passing of each hour of her married life; still
it was only a quarter past three, the little bird in seclusion for another
forty five minutes. The sun was high and hot, and the house sultry even
in its shaded enclave, encircled by coconut palms, banana palms, and
an avocado tree. In the gated yard was a small garden with curry and
chili plants and medicinal herbs that Sita tended, and a burgeoning
frangipani bush from which Sita plucked blossoms every morning for the
Buddha-puja that Princely would ritually perform exceptionally
loudly with his grandchildren before the shrine in the sitting
room, while Indunil cooked breakfast and Dhammika watched the morning
news on the BBC.
Indunil felt encircled by this army of foliage, cut off from the road
and the surrounding houses within her shaded familial enclave. She pulled
closed the window shutters, darkening the sitting room to cool it, and
returned to the kitchen. Sita squatted on the floor, scraping coconut
meat to press milk for dinner that night. Sita was small and dark
perhaps why she never married in her village, Indunil suspected, then
found herself with the forgotten name of Sitas village on the
edge of her thoughts. Sita wore a brightly patterned cloth and blue
cotton jacket that exposed the leathery brown skin of her midriff, her
bare feet tucked back under her lean thighs, splayed toes marking hers
as feet that had grown up without shoes. Sita wiped a loose strand of
hair from her sweaty forehead with the back of her arm and looked up
at Indunil.
Nona, she asked, meechera pol athiy
wey da? She gestured to the bowl of scraped coconut before her
and to the three remaining halves of coconut waiting to be scraped;
would it be enough? Indunil paused to consider. Assembled on the counter
and floor were shallow palm-leaf baskets of vegetables that Sita had
already cut. There were cubed potatoes for frying with oil and chilies,
young jak cut into chunks, diced green beans and sliced brinjal, also
chicken for herself, Dhammika, and the children. Ana said in her letter
that she was a vegetarian, which had delighted Princely immensely, but
mystified Dhammika.
There are vegetarians in America? Dhammika
had marveled aloud while Princely nodded his brooding approval. Indunil
calculated: the jakfruit, green beans, brinjal, and chicken made four
curries, and they would need milk for the red lentil paripu; the greens
shredded for maalung would require a sprinkling of grated coconut too
and there ought to be enough left over to make a spicy pol sambol.
Madhiy, Indunil answered her servant, thaava
ekak gahanna. Sita would grate another coconut; she straightened
obediently, stretched her spine in a way that reminded Indunil of a
cat, and retreated out the back of the kitchen to collect one from the
pile near the washing spigot. Indunil inspected Sitas work to
see if there was anything left that she, Indunil, could do. But enough
green chilies, red onions, and garlic had already been sliced for all
the curries; enough had been scraped from the hard brown chunk of sun-dried
maldive fish, and Sita had gathered a pile of fresh karapincha leaves
from the garden behind the house. There was a packaged stack of round
white papadams ready to be fried, and saltwater, curry powder, turmeric
powder, mustard seed, and chili powder were aligned in potent-looking
jars above the stovetop range. Sita had already sifted the stones from
the rice, Indunil noticed with satisfaction. She would remind Sita to
reduce the chilies; foreigners could not tolerate full spice, at least
not without some acclimation. Ana should experience no discomfort, no
distaste. There was nothing left for Indunil to do besides preside over
Sitas cooking of everything, which she would begin as Indunil
served the tea, and so still there was little to do but wait.
Standing in the warm, stone-floored kitchen, Indunil felt the sweat
beneath her arms and in the hollow between her breasts. She looked down
at herself and wondered if she should put on a sari; she never wore
them except to weddings, her childrens school functions, and to
business dinners to make a good impression for Dhammika. She left Sita
in the kitchen again, retreating to the front entry to climb the creaking
spiral staircase to her bedroom, where she surveyed the cramped contents
of her closet. She hated saris, actually the jackets were nice
enough, they accentuated her breasts and fine collarbone but
she found the long swaths of cloth exasperatingly suffocating. All the
pins to keep track of, the hitching and fixing and tugging, and so ungodly
hot. She preferred shorter skirts and baby doll shirts from Odel in
Colombo, or gauzy wrap skirts and blouses, and especially denims and
trousers, though she knew the neighbors talked about her western clothing
and how now that shed married a wealthy jeweler and didnt
have her mother around to remind her of what things matter most for
a woman, Indunil had grown proud and impolite. Indunil knew that the
neighbors treated her and her family with deferential respect that her
parents had earned, though she didnt see any point responding
to what she knew they said privately to one another about her. They
would gossip more if she resisted, or simply registered awareness of
their sentiment, so she generally ignored their murmurs and went about
the routine business of raising her family. She hated the web of gossip
but that was Kandy for you, opadupa, everyone with their nose in everyone
elses business, everyone so madly concerned with respectability
and so quick to flap their tongues about any woman who breathed out
of line. She decided against trying to impress Ana with a sari, but
changed from her housedress to a knee-length blue cotton skirt and yellow
blouse. In the mirror, she applied lipgloss but nothing more. Her face
was still young, round, soft; she smoothed her hands over her body,
admiring herself in a way she wished Dhammika would, remembering Rajans
poems. For a moment, Indunil considered digging out from the bottom
of her closet the concealed box of Rajans decade-old letters to
her, just to read a few while she waited, but she then she heard the
iron gate creak open and the crunch of vehicle tires on the stones of
the yard. She held her breath, listening, and released the breath when
she heard Namiths anguished voice crack out of the car as soon
as its door opened.
Nangi, no, nangiiiii, nooooo, you heard me, I already
called Night Rider at five oclock! Thaththy tell her! Indunil
heard Savishas demonic giggle, a slamming car door, feet scrambling
across the stones of the yard, a riotous wrestling at the front door
downstairs, then her two children in a mad struggle for possession of
the television controller.
She sighed and descended the stairs. Dhammika entered
the front door just as Indunil reached the bottom of the stairs.
Has Ana arrived? He asked immediately, looking
past Indunil and into the sitting room.
No, not yet, but at any minute she could come. The
children, Dhammi, do something, will you?
Dhammika gave her a look similar to the one hed
aimed at her over the breakfast table that morning, set his packages
and Daily News on the entryway table, and followed the hollering of
their children to the television in the sitting room. As soon as he
reminded them of the American Visitor who would soon be arriving, Namith
and Savisha were chastened.
They turned off the television penitently. Indunil knew
already that Namith, ten years old and top of his class at Trinity College,
would sit and pretend to read his Harry Potter or his Tintin comic books
so that he could studiously observe Ana when she walked in the door;
he would ask curious and polite questions about Anas family and
life in America in his perfectly modulated British English. Seven years
old Savisha would slink to the kitchen to hide behind Sita when the
stranger came; she would at first pretend not to know English, but her
shyness would last perhaps a day before the wild half-Sinhala, half-English
yakkhini in her re-emerged. Indunil decided to make tea for her children
and husband now, because who could say when Ana would arrive, and without
tea they would all be most unpleasant. But no biscuits biscuits
would spoil their supper, and too much sugar would have bad effects
on their blood pressure.
Namith, Savisha, go and change out of your uniforms
and come. Then and then only will you have your tea. She retreated
to the kitchen as the children stirred in gestures of obedience. The
evening call to prayer echoed up from the speakers of the mosque in
the town valley below.
Allahu akbar! Dusk would be falling soon.
Just as Indunil clicked the water heater switch with her thumb, she
heard two sharp hiccoughs of a van horn at the gate, and Dhammikas
voice, suddenly exuberant in the sitting room, as if this were his long-awaited
guest: The American has arrived! Indunil heard the front
door creak open again and his footsteps trotting outside to slide open
the iron gate. As Indunil knew she would, Savisha slunk around the edge
of the kitchen door and scampered silently to crouch next to Sita on
the floor. With a look, Indunil communicated to Sita to light the stove
and begin cooking, and the woman wordlessly obeyed. Savisha followed
her like a silenced shadow, her little almond fingers clenching Sitas
redda cloth for security that her mother wouldnt provide. As the
tea water began to rumble in a soft boil, Indunil listened to her husband,
using the voice he used with foreign customers in his shop as he asked
the van driver if the drive was fine, any accidents along the Kandy-Colombo
mountain road, if he was driving back to Colombo that night.
No, ah, yes, relatives in Kandy, is it? You will
eat and sleep then drive tomorrow? Fine, fine. And then, You
are Ana! Welcome to our home! How was your flight? Very tiring, isnt
it? I myself have done the same. Let me help you carry
A
tired laugh, a womans polite protesting and gratitude, but no
words that Indunil could identify.
Indunil felt her heart beat more quickly now that her houseguest had,
at last, arrived, but with steady hands she poured the hot water into
the flask of tea leaves. She stood perfectly still as they seeped; the
water was hot, it didnt take but a moment, long enough for Dhammika
to unload Anas trunks from the van. Namith surprised Indunil because
she heard his voice in the yard as well, polite but more eager than
shed anticipated. She poured the tea through the strainer into
an empty flask, then set the strainer of tea leaves in the sink and
lifted the cool flask of sweetened milk to pour it into the steaming
deep brown liquid. The milk dropped and flowered in a delicate white
cloud through the rich black well of tea; Indunil watched it as if meditating
before stirring the milk tea into homogenous light brown with a spoon
that neatly clinked the sides of the metal flask like a tiny temple
bell.
Quickly now, as she heard the van pull away and the front door creak
open to let Dhammikas hospitable blather and Anas polite
but exhausted laughter enter into her home, Indunil poured the tea from
one flask to another, once, twice, thrice, once more, until it churned
frothy and light. Sita had begun to fry the onions and chilies with
oil and spices, preparing the base for the curries; the chilies bit
at Indunils throat. She poured hot milk tea without an excess
drip, the steam curling upward to melt into the humid air above each
of five china cups. She left her own on the kitchen counter near Sitas;
she would wait to drink her tea after the others had been served.
Indunil set down the emptied flask. She lifted the tea
tray with both of her hands and carried it carefully through the kitchen
door, looking up to see Ana for the first time, her heart restless as
a bird caught in the cage of her ribs.
***
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