Wolf

Jessica Gardner

Shivani and I are playing shaadi again. The wedding is being held at its commonly appointed place – her bedroom floor – the congregation is made up of our combined collection of figurines. They are the miscellaneous representations that vary between Christian martyrs, farm animals, and busty faux-Barbies bordering on the transvestite. The fortunate bride and groom of this auspicious event are St. Francis of Assisi and a cow. We find this incredibly considerate given the former’s devout love of animals.
A few of Shivani’s small Hindu representatives in the crowd are lost in the tufty orange rug she and I refer to as Mick Shagger. Ganesh is particularly incapable of following the ceremony and we, too, are quickly tired of the everyday processions. I could really go for some MTV, But Shivani’s Mum and Dad won’t get satellite, much to my friend’s humiliation at school and omission from all things cool.
We both attend Saraswati Devi Catholic School for Girls, even though neither one of us is Catholic. That’s okay though, our namesake isn’t either. She’s the goddess of learning and the arts. I suppose the old English sisters who opened the place thought the locals would respond to her image more. You know, rein them in with a busty, dark woman on a lotus flower and then confine the kids to a room with the bleeding, naked man strung up on a cross on the wall. Either way, it’s the best education offered in our little city, so we must endure the ridiculous convent rules and the horrifying uniforms. And as if our own monthly sufferings were not enough, we are dragged along to chapel for a three-hour long mass once every four weeks.
Shivani and I always sit together. She’s probably my best friend. We’ve got quite good at distracting ourselves from Father Nusswan’s excruciating sermons, then ceasing just before the burn of Sister Hurley’s steely glare falls upon us. Hymns provide an even better opportunity for gossiping amongst our larger group. Our friend Alice once revealed during a rendition of “All Things Bright and Beautiful” just how much she loves the body of Christ. That was interesting.
One piece of gapshap has been particularly pressing on my mind, though, since Caroline, all-round class superstar, divulged her diatribe on getting to second base with her older brother’s friend. Now, the race has begun. Except I don’t have an older brother. Or breasts. Or legs up to here. Poor Shivani’s in an even worse situation than I am, what with the lack of television, her mother’s fondness for plaiting her hair into an odd mock-hairband on top of her head, and my friend’s strange affinity for making phlegmatic noises at the back of her throat at awkward opportunities. Even my mother refers to her as, “that peculiar girl you always hang out with.” Poor thing’s got no chance.
“Want to put on some of Mummy’s makeup again?” She asks, sensing how over Francis’ vows to a rubber bovine I am. I can’t help but think that no amount of cosmetics could save the girl’s face – scrunched up like a pug with an eager to please smile.
“I’ve got a better idea,” I tell her, “Let’s go into town – to that arcade opposite Om’s Sweets. I bet there’s tons of people there.”
The pug wrinkles her nose worriedly, “I don’t know… five o’clock already… Mummy would be upset if I wasn’t home for dinner…”
Her meekness stirs me on. “Aw, come on Shiv, one hour can’t hurt.” She’s buckling already, I can tell, but I decide to slip in a little extra for dramatic effect. “Well, that’s too bad. Ram hangs out there all the time I hear.” I make the best disappointed face I can muster, but the words have already done their work.
“Well, maybe if it’s just for one hour.”
“No, no Shiv. I can’t make you. Come on, I think Mr. Assisi was almost at ‘I do’.”
The torture has worked in my favor. How cruel, I think, as my little sparrow of a friend jumps up, repeating, “I want to go! I want to go, really!” and rifling through her chest of drawers for the prime choice of outfit. Ram is the poor soul she’s had a crush on for the past four years, ever since he moved from one of the big cities to live with his aunt and uncle on our little hill. He’s a tad older and therefore considered by most ridiculous girls at school to be some sort of a catch. He works afternoons at his uncle’s general store beside the clock tower. The lines after school are embarrassing as an army of silly pre-teens man their attack, bombarding the clerk with questions like how much it costs for a clearly marked packet of crisps and a Limca.
He always retorts with something biting yet distant. “Smart girl in your posh uniform – you can’t add rupees?” The effects are spectacular. His lips peel back into an annoying smirk while the adolescent assailant blushes and giggles off empty-handed, somehow cheered on for tomorrow’s attempt.
“Shiv, you’re taking too long na, let’s just go.”
“But we’ve still got on our uniforms.”
“Such a whiner. Here.” I grab at her kurta, unbuttoning the neck and rolling up her sleeves, then finish off by unleashing the lumpy braids wound about her head. I take her glasses off too, but the lost expression is too pathetic to bear. Shivani’s face transforms from pug-like to that of a squinty tortoise, so I give them back. The improvements are minimal, but the best I can do. I adjust my own uniform. “Fabulous. Let’s go.”
Shivani lives at the top of our town, so we only face a ten-minute walk downhill to the arcade. Her little legs move in double-time as she tries to keep up with my pace. Some people would consider ours a sleepy little city, but those of us who have lived here our whole lives know that the oddities and varieties of people here will always surpass those of the normal folk who flock to the big cities. Take Mr. Kumar for example, our village Doctor Doolittle. Every morning he wakes up early and leaves his house with a bag of fresh bread, some assorted nuts and fruits in one hand and a plate of vermillion powder in the other. All day he wanders uphill and down, feeding and blessing the animals. We usually pass him coming home from school, and mutter a “Namaste ji” to the man crawling with red-dotted bandars and mangey pie dogs. Mummy and Daddy say he is just a funny old man and nobody can tell him what to do anymore, but I think somebody should at least explain that spending that much time with vermin is a really easy way to get worms.
But there are stranger stories afoot here than the one of Mr. Kumar. Stories a little more… hostile. I don’t know, it seems silly to pay any attention to an old bit of local legend, it’s just that, well nobody has ever figured out the thing that could have killed all those langurs over the past handful of years. And not just killed them, really – when they were found it was like they had been… torn. They were always in shreds. That’s the funny thing – no animal could do that with just its teeth, it took hands. And yet a huge monkey like a langur has at least twice the strength of a man. Its whip of a tail alone can snap a leg bone. I suppose that’s why people turn to myth, because they’re more frightened of the not knowing.
But it’s all just a bit of nonsense. The usual backwards, ghoulish kind of story that only the elderly believe in and perpetuate. They actually brought back this ancient legend about some sort of creature, a wolf or something that lives up in the forest. The elders even pretend like they’ve seen this sort of thing before. It’s like the parables and things Father Nusswan reads to us in school – nobody is ever content with just letting things be, they need to trust in some conclusion to tie up the loose ends, even if they are led there by blind and foolish faith. As Shivani and I head down towards the old army barracks, I wonder how many of the sad people around us actually believe in all of that.
The view is prettiest at this old part of town. There are always a lot of tourists around during these summer months, and the air is filled with foreign chatter, coated in the aroma of popcorn. This is what the seaside must be like, I imagine, except that our ocean is a deep and vast valley. Light refracts from the under towns as shopkeepers and families await the oncoming dusk. People and cars are swimming through street ways like coral cities on an ocean floor.
A sign outside the games hall promises “Unlimited Fun,” but this has become strictly a mission of business. I shall not be defeated by Caroline Devi’s superior breasts, nor am I about to allow my dunce of a friend to spoil my chances. Amidst the shooting stalls and air hockey tables I scour for an opportunity to ditch Shivani, and that’s when I spot Virender. Good old Virender Subbayan. He’s standing by the entrance next to a couple of lazy clowns on their beedi break. It’s no wonder I didn’t spot him straight off – he blends right in wearing that old mask of desperation and screwing up his face at the lingering smoke.
I don’t have a year in my remembrance when Virender was not in love with all the town girls at once. He’s an all too hopeful romantic with a puffed up chest of sighs constantly at hand, ballooning them over Parvati, Lakshmi, Veerandra, Poojah, anyone, even Shiv.
He looks over at us at the perfect moment, taking my gaze to be an invitation. Now he’ll dreamily stroll over, deflating all the way, and dish out one of his vile opening lines.
“Ladies,” he pauses expectantly after this slimy offering, apparently thinking that today he can pull off the cool come-on technique of a Bollywood smoothie twice his height and a thousand times better looking. His upper lip is following suit – from this close I can just make out its feeble attempts at growth, like weeds cracking through the pavement.
“Oh, hello Virender,” I say nonchalantly. Shivani stares intently at her feet.
Undeterred, our ever-amorous lover boy quickly capitalizes the silence by launching into an account of his victory at the Himachal Pradesh spelling bee finals last week. He stumbles excitedly over his words, then occasionally recalls his affected coolness, squinting the eyes and looking down at us over his chin. “See, most people aren’t thinking about the roots of the words. Take zygodactylism, for example. You have to break it down – zygo, meaning…”
“Ow!” I shriek, and clutch my stomach in agony. “Where did that come from? Ooh, it hurts!” My friends loom over my hunched frame, genuinely concerned.
“Can I get you anything?” Virender outstretches his arms in support, but I manage to evade them.
“No! No, I think I’ll just step into the bathroom,” I murmur all victimized and back away.
“Here, I’ll come with you,” Shivani pipes up.
“No, I couldn’t do that to you. I’m sure it’s nothing…”
“No really, I will!” She calls out, practically begging, but I’m already halfway across the crowded room, rushing off to cure my sudden afflictions and shouting empty promises to be right back.
Poor Shiv. Honestly, I intended to stick around for longer than that, but that squinty, mole-like look on his face was just too much to suffer through. The two are made for each other anyway – maybe I’ve done them both a favor.
Problem is, it would be too dangerous to try to slip back into the games hall now, unnoticed. There’s a smallish window above the toilet, though. I make my escape. I justify my actions, as I squeeze legs first through the portal to my last hope of social acceptance; I am a modern girl – I cannot wait around for a Prince Charming to save me from my tower, I have to make things…
“Oh Jesus!” The blasphemy slips out of me like a reflex, because I am not, as I thought, the only person in the alleyway. Because (how could I forget?) Prakash Mamu’s general store is next door and so here he is, in the flesh, the Great Ram.
“Don’t worry, I don’t bite,” he recovers smoothly, flashing a glinting smile and all his charms, even though he could never have expected a pair of legs to crawl through the window, much less followed by the torso, arms, and head of a strange girl. Oh God, I’ve been breached into a dirty back alley. My face feels hot. “What were you doing in there anyway?” he asks.
“Taking control of my sexual destiny,” I reply, challengingly. “Excuse me.” But he blocks my exit, chuckling.
“I know you. You hang out with that girl with the glasses.” Strange girl I am not, apparently. Although I don’t much fancy the association with Shivani, best friend or not. “You don’t come into the shop, not like the other girls from your class.” I was determined all this time not to see in him what those other silly girls did, but up close there’s actually something quite nice about his big eyes, something a little spellbinding about that grin…
Suddenly I feel quite ridiculous for standing in a pile of discarded scraps, half-eaten by pie dogs. In the corner I spot a grey bundle of something that looks almost like hair, but the Great Ram sidesteps and I can’t see it anymore. He has a beedi in his hand. He takes a drag and holds the stump out in offering to me. Bodies move closer. It tastes like campfire but I try not to make a face, not to cough. He puts his hand on the wall beside me, leaning into my smoke. Splashes of paan spit, bright red, decorate the concrete.
I tell him my name. He knows, he says. “I’ve never seen a girl smoke one of those before,” he smiles. I hand him back the cigarette and our hands brush. It’s then I notice how long his fingernails are, for a boy.
And now the Great Ram is standing almost right over me, telling me all about those other silly girls and his big plans for the shop involving some giant Coca-Cola sign and he keeps puffing away, making kissy faces with those lips. For some reason my mind darts far away, and a flash of one of those skinned langurs crosses my vision. But then I think of Caroline Devi’s smug face. This is it, I am the envy of every Saraswati girl who ever breathed our mountain air, because every exhale closes the gap between our faces just a little more so that I’m swimming, just a head now, in his smoke cloud, closing eyes, here it is…
But now I feel my body again. Hand on waist, mouth on mouth, up against the wall, standing in the discarded scraps half-eaten by pie dogs. What is this on the tip of my tongue? This sharp… Blood. Now blood is trickling from my mouth, from the edge of a big, glinting canine, onto the concrete with the bright red splashes of paan that is no longer paan that is blood. And on the ground, a pair of black boots that can’t possibly be boots because it looks like there’s no feet in them, like those skinny legs just stick down into nothing… And on his face, what big eyes! What big teeth!
I duck under the arm that is no longer an arm and I sprint. Sprint away from the smoked beedi and the red blood-paan on the ground. I do not care about Caroline Devi or her brother’s friend or her legs up to here or the fact that it has started raining. I am beyond caring, beyond the arcade now, running past the army barracks like the seaside where the lights are all bright now, up the hill past Kumarji’s house where in the living room I can see him slouched in an armchair with a couple of red dotted bandars on his shoulders. The langurs are screeching in the trees like an alarm. Up up, past Aggarwal’s Café and its cooking smells of dal barfi on my left. The crack of breaking branches splinters against the mountainside and barks peal like bells in my ears. Shivani’s house on my right, almost home…
I run, soaked to the bone, all the way into my mother’s arms. She is in the kitchen chopping up onions and I clutch her from behind. She is chastising me, “Chii Beti! Where have you been? I was so worried! I was about to send Daddy out after you.” But I just hug her. Both our eyes are streaming, hers from onions mine with tears and rain, so that if you walked into our kitchen at that particular moment you’d find the two of us standing in a puddle, hugging and crying like the saddest mourners at a funeral.
Because all I can think about now is of the bundle of grey fur at the end of the alley, shredded to bits, and the great big eyes of the wolf standing above me… and I’m crying because I see the truth in everything.