February 25th, 2012. Four channels of smiling Indians, singing love and longing and dancing joy and lust. One of static. A loop of Sherlock Holmes on the sixth and I leave my world for two hours, my offshore offwhite walls and vacant seats and cold stewardesses who wear tiny red bindis and tightly felled buns. A man waits for the bathroom, silver textured prayerbook in right hand, cotton white prayer beads in the other. His suit is tacky, his horse bit bracelet too, but I am offensive with my legs curled under, my feet bare.
I watch the place creep over water and soon over land on my screen, on the others beside me, and I wish I was not here. My fingers cramp, stiff, poor circulation, I tell myself, the air vents recycling breaths from the Freckled French boy behind me, his awkward sister, with her gaudy pink shirt and the twenty-something Indian boy across the aisle who pretends to look ot my half shuttered window at the murky blue, when actually stares at my frizzy hair, illuminated from the cold light.
I wish for the barred light at Mother Teresa's, streaming in panels and angular shape that cut the washroom in intersecting lines. The dappled warm light that angled across limbs into the side room where I squeezed packets of green fruity shampoo into a tumbling bottle, the thick liquid dripping like moss into the funnel. Light that found unseeing eyes, found shivers and poses and insecurities, found Ama's uneven nostrils every morning, as I perched on her checkered bed. Found Maya Gudi and her unworded hug, her gangly arms wrapped around my soft hips. Light illuminated Anu's smile, coaxed by a rub on a pudgy into sparks of missing teeth and beauty interspaced. Pushpa and Priya as they exercise their tired English phrases to my worn Hindi, their naked bodies hunched into rolls, the stools soaking as they wash each other.
The light of cold mornings where I hold Fatima's hand as she shakes with Parkinson's, Mary, wrinkled and arm twisted. The brown and golden light on Rosie's face as she scratches her lice-covered and flat hair, the slight namaste as her fingers form a temple, a church steeple, a holy dome. Ranjeet Kaur's stoic faces she hold out bruised and sore fingers, brown and purple and pink, for my awaiting needle every morning.
The slight obtuse light filtered by smooth walls and smells of curry as Shanti and Belmadina shear and sort fresh cabbage and carrots into metal buckets. As they hold slim arms to my blood pressure machine, the silver mercury rising as I beat my hands in pumps, and pumps and pumps.
The strong and sometimes severe sun light over the meadow as Anita and I sit on the edges of cries, picking grass, her silence profound, I think, my contant chatter indicative. I don't understand, she will say, and I say, ok.
The cloudy light as Kamla prods me with a stick, her green shawl askew on her confused hair. Pushing me toward the top of a dusty tree, unripe oranges hanging from yards above. I can't reach, I say, and she moans, and I say, No Kamla, nein, no oranges today. You're not even supposed to be having them anyway, come on, aja, chello, aja Kamla. And she moans again, and I pull her stiff wrist towards the meadow, and I take the barbed thin stick from her hands, gently, and throw it on the ground among crumpled leaves. She moans, pulls bak, and her green shawl falls on the ribboned concrete, and so I don't press her. I sit next to Sima, an overweight unstable woman who excuses her lack of diet and exercise on fatigue, a head cold, I am tired, no sleep, my eyes are falling out, they hurt, my arm is swollen, my feet too. I watch Kamla with my hand shading from the heat, and she drops the stick, inching towards the middle ofthe field where she stands motionless, ragged men working in the walled field feet from us, Priya and Alyssa pulling weeds and overturning cracked yellow soil with little shovels.
I return to the tree, my fingers avoiding thorns, and knock down an orange. I peel the yellow fruit for Kamla, bolo donyvad Kamla, say thank you. Donyvad, she says, weakly, chipped mouth hinting at a smile.
We walk back to the center, my hand resting loosely in Suzanne's, her eyes blank, voice soft, my other in Nico's, and I sing snippets of familiar pop songs that they do not understand.
Kamla drops her orange twice, the road soaking in dirt and grass, and she washes the adhesive fruit in a weak spout protruding from a bed of wild flowers, warm and rosy and yellow blossoms for prayer and patience and patients. She delivers the orange, few pieces eaten, to Ama's bed, and I feed the rare fruit to her. She spits the seeds from her bed onto the floor, and we both chuckle.
Donyvad, Kamla, I say.
Pictures they draw, Sunita blue puffy flowers, Sebrina a cross, I love you, Jaya her name, bold and purple and dominant and she looks guilty and sneaky, and I laugh as I take the crushed and ruined crayon from her small hands. I collect them under the end table, covered in a cloth to hide my jacket and IPod and scratched keys, for use next week. The bulging mirror next to an out of date calendar, the picture of a beautiful and effeminate Jesus basking in the creamy light of the small room.
My light in the place is red and green and blue, the horizon line seeping onto screen, my plane having flown a little further. Clouds peak and sag, spirits and stratus and seeming the same as the place I came.
I support Ama as she shuffles to the bathroom, and I am not fazed, the splattered urine on my once-white torn shoes. She hunches as we walk back to her bed, and I tuck her into the flimsy blanket, as always. Every day for the past three months. I call Sebrina, can you translate? Ama, today is my last day. I won't be coming back here. Sebrina overflows my words, repeating adding, subtracting, I'm not sure how much and Ama starts too. We cross our words, running sentences, she she starts crying, her voice cracks and she says, hold my hand, please, please do not forget me. I wish you a long and happy life and a good man and many children, why are you leaving? We will meet again, either when I am I alive, or when I am dead. And I start crying too, I promised I wouldn't, I will never forget you, I promise. Don't forget me, she says. My hand rests on the top of her blanket, abler her bones that I can feel shift beneath.
Sebrina says, she wants you to hold her hand, so she can bless you. And I peel the cloth back, hold her hands in mine, mine patterned with intricate designs of orange tapestries, done for a good price, good price, by a seventeen year old in Green Park. I love you, I say, and she says it back, or imitates it back, Iwuvyew, and I cover my wet mouth with my hand. I stand up, bye bye, I wave, my henna wet and glowing as I wave to all the patients sitting upon their pink and ornage and yellow beds preparing for an afternoon nap.
The light dims in the cabin, and I turn my harsh screen off. I wish I relived my days, my last one too sad, but wish I had another, wish I wasn't going to another country to start again, again.
Someone behind me sprays a noxious fruity perfume. Who are you meeting? I hope you have a wonderful time.
Orange and white lights shine in rows through the darkness to me, miles above. I see traffic stopped, cars moving, halted. I will not forget. You are preserved in my heart, in my words.
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