balaat baby

by tamara buran

I am sitting on the balaat, toes curled and tucked away. The cold stone is pressing on my legs, stinging my colorless skin. My cramped back is to the wall and I can hear every word of every guest. There is a perfectly good carpet lying a foot away and despite the chill from the ground, I am too tired to inch towards it. I feel as though I have a fever. I touch my forehead in vain, knowing full well that is not the problem. My palm stays on my head. I move it to my stomach.

I do not feel well.

Footsteps.

There is someone walking towards my room. I would know the sound of her shuffle anywhere. I can see her shadow from underneath the door. I get up quickly, peeling my sticky, pale skin off the shiny, stone floor and open the door quietly.

Ghanti laughs at me.

“Madam,” she smiles, “are you dressed?”

I shake my head no. I am shaking my head too severely to look natural. Ghanti’s black, beetle eyes narrow and she studies my face. She is taking in every pore, every sweat droplet, and every misplaced hair. Only she, she does not mind. She never minds. She likes my pores, my sweat droplets and my misplaced hairs.

“You are not dressed, Madam.”

She pushes her way past me and into my room. She is shifting the weight of her head from side to side, rocking her neck back and forth while gazing at my unmade bed and closed windows.
I sit on my unmade bed to show her that I do not care about my mess.

She makes her way toward me and softly presses my neck, her long fingers covering half my chest.

“Psssss,” she hisses mockingly, “too boney.”
She glides past me and opens my window. I have not seen the sun adequately in days. I am in the desert, only to find myself hiding from any contact with heat. My room is hot enough. I do not need the outdoors anymore.

The light does not pour in the way I thought it would. It is not like the movies and it doesn’t come in slow motion. It just appears. Ghanti turns, her profile revealing her little belly and her full, relaxed cheeks. Her belly is the product of multiple helpings of rice and fruit cakes, her cheeks her only the link to Sri Lanka, where they are touched upon with care.

She is wearing my favorite apron. It is checkered with green and white. There are speckles of today’s lunch on her blouse. Her hands go to her hips and she turns to me.

“Madam, please get dressed.”

Ghanti does not say this to be rude. She says this to save me from my father’s parents. She knows the temper of my grandmother. She knows the passiveness of my grandfather. She knows that I will be ignored for weeks if I do not pick my sticky self off the bed and change into something acceptable.

I cannot say no to anyone. I have always been weak when it came to matters of speaking to those in my family. My grandmother will occasionally sneer about this in my direction, but I know that she is secretly grateful that her granddaughter is a coward. She will sigh to my father about my anemic will and blame my mother for passing this trait to me. My father will begin to defend me. He will fumble his words and laugh awkwardly. He will realize mid-sentence that it was he who passed down the gene of silence. He will remember why my mother lives in the States. Just as he does with me, he will remember that he has never spoken up for her. This is when he will stammer that I am just “shy” and “bashful.”

I am not shy.

I am not bashful.

I am loud. I am a huge person on the inside.

In the moments when I walk outside of the huge stone gates to the awaiting taxi, I transform. I laugh rowdily, swear in front of men and smoke cigarettes with the janitors at my school. I have tried to bring this side of myself back home to my grandmother’s house. This girl, this girl that spits and mashes her lips to men’s mouths? She disappears as soon as she enters the gates of the house. If they knew what this girl was capable of her grandmother would have me sent away. I would go back to the States. My grandmother would relish in telling the neighbors about my double life. She would blame my mother, of course. My grandfather would just stare at his book, not reading a word. I have tried on many occasions to bring my secret self to dinner or on our visits to different auntie’s houses, but no.

No.

She departs quickly and into what I believe is the darkest part of me: the cowardly hole behind my stomach. That’s where she lives, waiting to jump out, waiting to laugh without covering her mouth. Sometimes, when I feel brave, I let her reveal herself when I speak to Ghanti. Ghanti has seen this part of me. She has been with me since I was a year old. I wonder if she knew what this part of me was capable of.

I think she has seen her.

I hope she has seen her.

Ghanti steps towards me, “Madam?”

I look up, my face still riddled with sweat droplets.

I blink.

“Please, Madam. Dress.”

As soon as the words leave her wrinkled, brown mouth, the sound of the guests get louder. Someone has opened the door to the bedrooms. They are walking towards my room. I stand quickly. I know these footsteps well.

I dread these footsteps.

My grandmother opens my door. She does not poke her head in. She does not knock. I would even believe that she did not have to use the door handle. These doors are wise enough to know that they should open on demand.

She does not look at me. She looks past me. She stares at my bare legs and my rounding stomach.

Her eyebrow arches.

“You have gained weight.”

I slump my shoulders and shrug.

“I don’t feel well,” I stammer.

Ghanti is hidden near the closet. She addresses my grandmother, “Madam, I am picking her dress now. We will be ready in ten minutes.”

My grandmother smiles, her teeth a slight shade of yellow from smoking too many cigarettes with my grandfather when they were young.

“Good,” she coos. My grandmother stares at my body again. “Wear something modest,” she breathes.

I can feel the hidden part of me swelling. How I wish I could rip open my chest, crack my ribs and let her out. She would charge out of me- sweeping up every evil word these walls have absorbed. She would slam my grandmother’s head to my swelling stomach and laugh. She wouldn’t be ashamed to touch her fingers to her lips for a man; she would not shy away from showing her boney neck or her legs to complete strangers. No, she would thrive on these moments of pleasure and looseness.

After all, she had once before.

I watch my grandmother walk out of the room, leaving the door open. I can hear her heels clicking the tile, sounding so opposite from the usual sound of my bare feet.

Ghanti is looking at me again. Her eyes are on my legs, too. They move to my round stomach and my boney neck. She walks inside my closet and begins to touch the rows of dresses and linens. Her hands reach and she pulls out a blue dress.

“I have three children,” she says. She pulls the dress onto me. “My son is named Amithnal.” I turn to face Ghanti. She has never spoken of her children in Sri Lanka to me.

She continues, “he studies at a good school now. He makes a very good grade in University.” I was surprised. Ghanti’s face showed no signs of her age. Her smooth skin was beautiful, a dark brown, with wrinkly lips and straight, white teeth.

“I don’t feel well,” I whisper.

“I know,” she says, as she smoothes the stray hairs away from my eyes. “I know.”

The dress does not zip up. I have grown sideways in the past four months. My grandmother was right. I had gained weight.

Ghanti smiled and pulled the dress off of me. She reached for another. “I have two daughters,” she smiled. “One is twelve years old. Her name is Kalathma.”

I take a sharp breath. This dress is tight.

“What is she like?” I ask, trying to ignore my dizzy head.

“Kalathma? Kalathma loves her paints. She loves to draw.”

“Is that why you send back crayons and paper?”

Ghanti grins, showing me her shiny teeth. “Yes,” she says. “Shemail me very nice pictures.”

The dress is off of me now. Ghanti touches my perspiring forehead. I am taller than Ghanti. I have my mother’s height and her hair. Ghanti was loyal to my mother when she lived here. They would stuff grape leaves outside together in the shade for hours and take turns getting up to change the radio station. I look at Ghanti’s hands and wonder if they smelled of grape leaves and rice.

Her palms touch my cheeks and her eyes are glassy.

I worry about what she will say now. I quickly ask about her third child.

Ghanti touches my boney neck again and laughs. “Nayanadini.”

“Nayanadini,” I repeat, the syllables tripping over my tongue.

“Yes, Nayanadini.”

“Tell me about her.” I look away. I can feel my eyes becoming glassy, too.

“She has beautiful black hair. Long. Green eyes. She does not look like my other children.”

I look at Ghanti again. Her face is worried and soft. “Whom does she look like, Ghanti?”

“It does not matter who she looks like. She is mine.” She chooses a final dress. It is looser than my usual attire. It slides on, wrapping around my shoulders and my chest. Ghanti picks up the sash and stands in front of me. She ties it around my waist, stopping at my naval.

Her fingertips touch my hard, slightly round stomach and she looks at me. I don’t need to say a word, but I do.

“I don’t feel well,” I choke. My face is hot with shame and I stare at the cold floor, blinking back non-existent tears.

There should be tears. There should be many tears. I have not cried once since I found out. I stopped smoking cigarettes, though. I don’t know why. It seemed polite and courteous at the time.

I can feel my hidden spirit rising.

I look at the balaat. My heart drops to my stomach and I feel a mixture of dishonor and something like pleasure. I cannot escape the cold ground, no matter how hard I try. Ever since my wicked acts four months ago, I have walked on identical tiles all over the city. Every house is fashioned with the same, shiny ground. I walk into my auntie’s house and I am faced with the tile I shamed myself on. I walk to the kitchen for water and my toes touch the same surface. It is the same ground I sit on daily, sticky and pale.

I have tried to ignore the balaat for the past four months, for that is where she came out of me, wild and heated for the first time. I almost laugh at what she did. What I did, how reckless and joyful I was that night. The coward in me is humiliated. The courage in me feels no shame or guilt- only excitement for what is to come.

The balaat will not let me forget.

I take another sharp breath. My legs are weak and shaky and I cannot stand. My face is so damp, my breathing shallow. I am shaking and I can feel my eyes fluttering behind my head. Ghanti gently touches me and I recoil, my skin hurts. Ghanti lowers me to the ground. Her face is alarmed and she pulls a pillow under my head.

Her hand reaches under my dress and her eyes widen. Her pupils are now bigger than my grandmother’s finest dinner plates. She does not show me her hand. She does not want to scare me.

The balaat is where this started; it is where it should end.

I can feel my chest ripping open and my ribs bending back.

Oh, God.

She is out.

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Tamara Buran is a fourth year undergraduate student at UC Berkeley.