| Flight by Thomas Anderson |
| Tom Anderson won a fellowship
in fiction from the Massachusetts Council of The Arts. He has a book
of short stories and a novel in the agent hunt, and has edited and
co-authored a non-fiction book: Java for Business. On her tenth trip back to India, at thirty-three, Chitra was divorced and desperate, tired, and had a heart that was beating too fast. The speed of the thumping in her chest frightened her, as did the speed of the plane and its obscene distance from the ground. Worries from Boston chased after her. There was a woman at work who hated her and was plotting against her and would now, in her absence, have a free lying range. There was a man she was seeing, an older man, who couldn’t leave his job to come with her, or wouldn’t, or didn’t like India, or was afraid. She’d seen Kevin, her ex-husband, just the week before her trip, looking for lost papers, and they had both been up in their attic, her attic now, moving boxes, digging into their past. He’d been angry; he was a flame of anger. She’d felt he’d murder her, right there, and go away, and she’d rot there, and her soul would go to hell. She was a Christian, and half-Indian, and when in India would be a minority of a minority of a minority, a Catholic sect within the Catholic Church within the Christian whirl of churches. There was a bone, purportedly from Saint Thomas the Apostle, in their church in Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of Kerala. The priests took it out once a year and held it up and waved bowls of incense, and the pungent smoke thickened, and everyone prayed, as intensely as they’d ever prayed on any Christmas or Easter or funeral. There’d be people in rolling beds along the aisles, and wheel chairs lined up outside, and crutches, and people weeping. They’d never find her bones if the plane went down. She was going to see her grandmother, her father’s mother, a Hindu, who loved her, she felt, despite the genetic dilution and the different faith. She was alone seeing her for the first time; her parents were in Europe in a sabbatical year at the Max Plank Institute. She’d been with them on every previous trip to India, and with her ex-husband once, who’d hated it, initially hating the beggars and the stink and the crowdedness and the racism of Bombay, and then, as they all bussed down the coast from Bombay, hating the tourists and traffic and confusion. He didn’t like her grandmother and she didn’t like him. That was the ninth trip. Chitra closed her eyes and breathed deep. She wanted to still her heart. She shifted in her seat once, and then again, and a third time. She adjusted her pillow between the side of the seatback and the wall of the jet and put the right side of her forehead against the cool window. “Are you all right?” the man next to her asked. She turned and smiled a dismissive smile. She rested her forehead back on the window. He got the message. “Okay.” He went back to his book. “Okay,” he said softly. He was reading quickly. It made her more nervous, his quick turning of pages. She shut her eyes. Her grandmother had not come to Boston for her wedding; the woman refused to fly and was afraid to fly. She’d sent along a Hindu prayer that she insisted be read at the wedding, and it was, and Chitra’s friends, shifting in their dresses, politely listened, as did the entire church, and the Jesuit priest looking very skeptical, and her ex-husband smiling with his mouth open and his teeth white and sharp and gleaming. It was a nice wedding and well intended. Kevin was a Protestant and had a Lutheran minister at the wedding. But it was a Catholic ceremony. With a Hindu prayer. And great hope. She was more attractive then, she felt. She was at her peak. Men would babble about her, and soften their voices, and harden, right there, in public, and get embarrassed, and shift and hide it, or try to. It happened repeatedly. Kevin hovered around her. Kevin discouraged them. But he wasn’t everywhere, and he couldn’t follow her to work, or the grocery store, or the pharmacy. Women resented her then, and some resented her now. Her nemesis, her succubus, the woman who was plotting against her, who told someone else she didn’t think she was that attractive, who resisted peace-making, who used “sacred cow” in almost every conversation, derisively, who suggested she should cut her hair, who announced that India would have more people than China in ten years, who wanted her job to disappear, who wanted her out, who had, in fact, talked for an hour with her now ex-husband at a company function, off in some corner, her hand touching his arm, Kevin’s head bobbing, their drinks both held high, and who said, to someone in the women’s room, when the divorce was public, that Kevin was better off now and of course she was and maybe it would change her, the woman said, she’d be less controlling, less political. The woman ascribed her own faults to Chitra, and was relentless, and Chitra was filled with her, and couldn’t shake her out of her head, and lost sleep to her, and was afraid. Chitra stood up, halfway, excused herself, and the man next to her moved his knees and pressed his book to his chest, and she squeezed by, and she got into the aisle of the plane. All eyes were forward. No one was sleeping. Everyone was attentive; everyone could see her. She walked slowly to the back of the plane. Eyes followed her, men’s eyes, women’s eyes. The cabin was darkened, and they couldn’t see how her beauty had aged. It was just the right light for her, she felt, deceptive, but flattering. Her boyfriend, now, the older man, said she was, objectively, one of the ten most attractive human beings on the planet at that particular point in time and said she should have a child, quickly, before she got any older. He’d have it with her, he offered. But he didn’t want to marry. Him, the man who refused at the last minute to come to India, was the proximate cause of her divorce. She’d met him in Cambridge at an extension course. He had stood in the pit of the amphitheater, and extolled the new generation of Indian writers. He seduced her; she succumbed. He was shorter than Kevin and didn’t make as much money. And he lied, repeatedly. The plane bumped and she held onto the seats on both sides of her, as a precaution. But there wasn’t repetition, and the plane smoothed out, and the large man in line in front of her turned and smiled. It was a Buddha of a man and he winked at her. In the bathroom she leaned close to the mirror and looked closely at her own eyes. She stood back up straight and looked at herself in profile. When finally she sat down and peed she leaned forward, and prayed. It was an almost prayer position. Hell at the airport. Hell. Hot and crowded and demons poking people about and high English accents and long trains of luggage carriers and hustlers and beggars and police and men holding signs and women in saris and Japanese, even the Japanese, harried and impatient. A Japanese man photographed her, repeatedly, and she blushed and moved away. A model walked in front of her, a perfectly shaped model, dress up to her ass, hair perfect, face perfect, with a man following behind her, also a blonde, with a dangling camera, and with the look of a dog who caught the wolf, and was shut up for that, and went from barking to whimpering. The man’s eyes darted about. The model’s were focused and directed. There was some familiarity to all of this for Chitra. It was in her DNA and all of that DNA, in long, wispy strands, was now home and happy to be there. She maneuvered about, successfully. Men were attracted to her, she being familiar and different, Indian and American, big dowry and big sex. She was more powerful here, actually, with all of that, and grew puffed and proud, and could bubble through the squalor, and forget what she left and what had been running and running in her head. Her heart beat quickly, and still couldn’t catch up with her thinking, but she ignored that. The springs in the airport bus seat were worn and she sunk down low and her head was low in the window and she had a good angle to look up at the Indian sky, which had a tinge of rust and was hot and immovable. The small plane, that would take her south to Kerala, rumbled in place for what seemed like hours, but it finally left, and hugged the coast, and flew low. She peered down at the boats and beaches. Her grandmother cried when she saw her. They embraced. Chitra had her arms around the old woman, and she was fragile and light, a feather, bones filled with air. Her grandmother had a driver waiting, and Chitra’s bags came quick. They both sat close to each other in the back seat of the car. “Your father called,” Chitra’s grandmother said. “He was worried about you! I told him I was just going to pick you up. “ “How did he sound?” “He said things were good. He loves his new laboratory. Brand new. Your mother has two classes to teach and he doesn’t have any, and he was pleased with that. She does her classes in English, and I suppose that isn’t a problem, but I imagine they’d prefer German. He said there is a brilliant Indian psychologist on the faculty and there is a group of students from Dehli, four or five of them.” “He was excited about going to Germany,” Chitra said. “I don’t know about my mother. I think she wanted to stay at Stanford.” Her grandmother made a face. “I don’t know about her either.” Chitra laughed. Her grandmother reached for Chitra’s hand. “And no more Kevin. It’s better, yes? It is better. I know it’s better. Trust me. He was so unpleasant to me, to your cousins, to Dimple and Raj and Sunil. Awful. His skin was so white.” Chitra’s grandmother pulled her hand away, shivered. “White! Too white! Better to be alone. Better to be divorced.” “I have a new boyfriend,” Chitra said. “I’m fine.” “An Indian?” Chitra shook her head. “No. He’s American. But he teaches Indian fiction. He loves Indian writers. I think he’s in love with my name. ” Her grandmother leaned closer to her. “No. No. He’s okay. He’s smart,” Chitra said. “He likes me. He’s very nice. He’s older than I am, he’s forty-nine. We’re not rushing things. But we do have fun. “ Chitra touched her grandmother’s arm. “He’s a bit crazy. But he’s nice.” She paused. “He’s not really crazy.” Chitra’s grandmother nodded, anxious to agree. “I want to meet him. You should have brought him! Next time, bring him!” Her eyes teared and she pulled a tissue out of some folds in her sari and dabbed her eyes. She smiled. “And your work is good?” “Work is good.” “I’m so happy you came.” Chitra looked at her watch. Nine p.m., Boston time. The building would be almost empty. Her office would be dark. She wouldn’t have a desk when she got back. She wouldn’t have a prayer. Her nemesis would turn everyone against her. She later laid in bed, thirteen thousand miles from home, almost the farthest she could possibly be away, her heart at double speed. She kicked her feet. She sat up on the bed. She lay back down. She sat up again, her legs dangling over the side of the bed. There was an insect flying about, but she couldn’t see it, and the sound of the insect would rise and fall and disappear and rise again. There was no discernable pattern to it, and she’d wait, and guess, and guess wrong, and the sound would come. Her heart, untethered, she thought might explode. She breathed deep. She prayed. She enlisted all the saints, and Jesus, and Mary, all the Hindu gods, her ancestors, any human who lived before she did and was god-wired, and finally her heart slowed, from the weight of the requests, and she slept. She went alone to the church with the bones of St. Thomas the Apostle, a church she’d been at nine previous times, at various ages and states of anxiety. It was dark inside the church, and there were a few people praying and one man at the far right of the last pew who was looking down and suddenly made a noise, a sob or a cough, she couldn’t tell, and he turned and looked right at her. The windows were rounded windows and the pew wood was black and shiny. There was the smell of burning candles. And there was a mural of St. Thomas that arched across the rounded ceiling. He was dark-skinned in the mural, and the hand that touched Jesus was haloed, as was the saint’s head. She should have called work. She hadn’t done the lab’s forecast, and now it was overdue. She went into the same pew where she had been with her husband three years before, the same pew she had been in with her parents six years before, the same pew she had been in with her grandfather twenty-four years before. She knelt down and blessed herself. She prayed for all of them; she prayed for India; she prayed for all the planes aloft right then, at that moment, and their safety. She prayed, feeling Christian, for her enemies at work, and prayed they would get new jobs and would leave the company. She prayed for Michael, the man who wouldn’t come with her to India. She prayed his class would be cancelled and the other women wouldn’t be sitting in front of him, wouldn’t be talking with him. She had her parents, but they had their own lives. They were brilliant and innovative and they published, repeatedly. They were working away, true scientists, cognizant of time passing and the chance for great work behind them, but they could still contribute, they felt, and would keep at it. Kevin was a scientist as well, and was good, but worked in industry, and did little creative work. He moved paper around and organized other people’s time. What she did, half-science. She prayed. She prayed for Kevin. She prayed for forgiveness. She prayed for her grandmother. She wanted to stop everything, right there, and not leave and return in nine years, and have everything changed again, her grandmother dead, her child, if she had a child, kicking beside her, her husband, Michael maybe, tired of her, Kevin re-connected with some new, more permanent woman, her parents off working the particle accelerator at Sydney or Tokyo, and her nemesis, her antagonist, then president of the company (president!) and she, Chitra, forced-out, long before, a former beauty who had once worked there, a distant memory, a warning. If she could touch the bone that was two thousand years old, the one right there, the one right in the church, the one in the locked chamber, the one that came out once a year, the purported piece of the nervous saint, the bone of the finger on the hand that poked at Jesus, the bone that went to Greece and came back again; if she could get a tiny bit of it and DNA test it, and carbon-date it, and validate it, and get brilliant by touching it, and get good, and connected - she’d convert her grandmother, sure. The sun was bright outside the church and Chitra blinked repeatedly, and cupped her hand over her eyes and looked about. There were people looking at her, who would look at anyone coming out of the strange church that really didn’t belong. There was a white couple, tourists, obviously, who came over to her. “Can you help us?” the woman asked. “Do you speak English?” Chitra nodded. “Is this the Church of St. Thomas the Apostle?” “It is, ”Chitra said. “Yes it is.” She turned to look at the church. There were actually three more in the city, one Anglican, two Orthodox. “Sure. Yes” “Are you an American?” the woman asked. “Half Indian,” Chitra answered. “Half American.” The man stared at her. “You have extraordinary color,” the woman gushed. “Thank you,” Chitra replied. Her heart was off again, with a mind of its own, and a speed that was frightening, and Chitra stuttered, and said goodbye, and she headed back down the thin streets towards her grandmother’s house. She felt lightheaded. The streets angled this way and that, and some of the buildings were askew and appeared to lean in, from both sides of the street. She got lost, but felt she was heading in the right general direction, towards the ocean, and she pressed forward, from rich homes to middle homes to poor homes, and from walking alone to have two and then ten and then twenty children follow her, who touched her back, who touched her legs, who looked up at her all bug-eyed and needy, children just this side of begging. Soliciting, perhaps. Asking. Craving attention. The path went up a hill and she stood at its peak and turned and looked back and looked forward and nothing was familiar. She wasn’t even sure if she could find her way back to the church. The children, tiring of their game, left her. The last boy slapped her ass, and then ran down the hill. It was impolite, and un-Indian. They were demons, perhaps, she fantasized, in the shape of children. They had carried her off. They wanted her to be lost. She needed a Hindu god, something with wings, or a mole-god that could dig her home, or a god of brilliance who would bestow her brilliance, and she’d find her own way. She was nauseous, and she looked this way and that. She could jump out of her skin, she felt, and she breathed deep and she gritted her teeth, but she still could jump out of her skin. Which way? She flew back, down the hill, and walked quickly, and had her eyes straight, and killed extraneous thoughts, and ignored the children, back with her again, and ignored the heads at the windows, and the men who leered and the shocked women who clicked their tongues. She was a goddess to them, she guessed, an apparition. Not necessarily a good goddess. Her heart entered a new plateau, beating so fast the beats were indistinguishable. The drummer was mad. You couldn’t follow the speed of his hands. She tripped, and fell, and, unconscious, finally lay in the hospital, her grandmother wailing, and everyone else who had known her and cared for her or who had known her and hated her, were oblivious, and lived fine without her, and went on with all they did, hearts beating normal, light and dark blood flowing, valves shunting, as they should. Drugs quieted her, and she lay there, at last and finally serene.
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