What Lies Between Us by Nayomi Munaweera

say goodbye to the river and the garden, the house and the dog. I hug and kiss Sita one last time, hold on to her and feel like I will choke until finally she pushes me away, wiping her face with her sari pallu. We get into the car and behind us she waves goodbye, Punch at her side. I watch until they are tiny and then we drive away from Kandy and down into the hot, crowded press of Colombo. A week later we leave the island. Framed in an airplane window, it lies below us, its palm trees waving goodbye, its long white beaches like lit crystal, its bustle and boom forgotten. It turns smaller and smaller until from this distance it is a garden blooming in the sea. I put my forehead on the cold window to say goodbye to both my father’s ghost and the threat of Samson. On a fulcrum in my chest, grief and relief are balanced in equal measure. Then we trace a path between the tempest-tossed ocean and the canopy of stars and are carried into a new world.

 
    Eight
    We land in Fremont, a suburb in Northern California full of wide-open freeways, a sky that turns plum at dusk. This is a place where life is lived inside houses on silent streets and in strip malls. There are some sari shops, a few “ethnic” restaurants, but the predominance of brown skin, of Afghanis and Pakistanis and Indians that will come to mark this place, is far off in the future. We are few and far between. These are lonely days full of misunderstandings.
    In those first few weeks I saw unbelievable sights. A woman walking down the road with a small black dog on a leash, a plastic bag in her hand. At home a dog like this, a mutt, would be left to wander by itself. It might be beloved, but no one would leash it and walk it. It might perhaps follow at its owner’s heels, but only a dog of some preciousness, a discernible breed, would be put on a leash and led. But much more than the dog, what catches my attention is that mysterious bag in her hand. Full of what? I watch astounded as she stoops down behind the dog’s lowered flanks, the plastic bag spread wide in her hand, and scoops up shit, ties the bag, and walks away. As if the bag is precious, as if the dog has bestowed upon her a treasure that must be carried home and savored. How impossible to imagine, in this richest country of all, that people are saving dog turds? For what possible purpose? My imagination boggles at the question until Dharshi, my guide to everything in this new place, explains.
    There are other, more serious differences. On the island we were fixed in place from birth. We knew where we fit. You were this person’s older sister, that person’s second cousin on the father’s side, that one’s oldest cousin. Names would tell you everything about a person’s placement in the complex familial and community matrix. The naming described your destiny from birth to burning.
    In Sri Lanka, when two strangers met, they asked a series of questions that revealed family, ancestral village, and blood ties until they arrived at a common friend or relative. Then they said, “Those are our people, so you are also our people.” It’s a small place. Everyone knew everyone.
    But in America, there are no such namings; it is possible to slip and slide here. It is possible to get lost in the nameless multitudes. There are no ropes binding one, holding one to the earth. Unbound by place or name, one is aware that it is possible to drift out into the atmosphere, and beyond that, into the solitary darkness where there is no oxygen.
    *   *   *
    But before all this, we stumble off the plane, jet-lagged and dazed, into America. In the arrival lounge are Aunty Mallini, Uncle Sarath, and Dharshi. And my story of America always starts with Dharshi.
    We drive a maze of freeways through an alien world, and at the house she says, “You’ll share with me,” and leads me to her room. It is a cave, one wall covered floor to ceiling with posters