Tara Isabel Zambrano

Two Stories

Ungauged, Unseen

Winds blow, brush past a bruise on Rama’s upper arm. Three days ago, her husband pinched her skin with hot tongs because the chapattis she served him were cold. A pebbly landscape with a bright lid of sky, squints her common brown eyes. She presses the dark patch, imagines her husband shredding cane in a sugar factory not far from where she sells vegetables along with other greengrocers. His hands−coarse like granular, tea-colored soil of the Deccan plateau. When he apologized while applying turmeric-basil paste over her burnt skin, she realized she didn’t love him anymore. A train whistles in distance. Her toddler nibbling on a baby carrot, next to the wicker basket, pauses. She mouths chook-chook and sways her upper body. The toddler grins, slivers of carrot stuck near his lips.

*

In tenth century, Rama is a part of the Indian Deccan trap rock−her bosom holds hills, her midriff is invaded with rivers that swell during the monsoon, merge into the sea in weird positions.

*

To distract herself from the unbearable heat, Rama closes her eyes and counts all the lakes in the city. The toddler is asleep. When she opens her eyes, the sun is high up, making the granite laden rocks sparkle.

*

Rama is a mermaid in the Arabian sea in the thirteenth century; her head resembles a cobra. She swims in the dark waters, entwines a giant rock until her hard scales slowly smoothen it into a mirror. She decomposes staring at her reflection.

*

Rama fans away flies, adjusts her baskets and calls out to customers. Two women at a fruit stall next to the grocers are discussing the best days to visit the cliffs topped with deities and shrines. An old woman is napping next to Rama’s mat, her snores punctuating the day traffic on a distant highway. When Rama listens closely enough, she can hear the rumbling beneath the land.

*

In the early fifteenth century, Rama is a tribal princess in eastern India, her face luminous, her hair set in tight curls, all set to bear a strong heir. She nurtures the lush folds of her belly and walks slowly to balance her weight, golden chains dangling between her bare breasts, her skin dark and rich. She chooses a mate, delivers a girl. The girl possesses a rare beauty that drives men mad.

*

The day stretches like a long dream and the greengrocers slide the pallus, exposing their cleavage and arms. Male hawkers pass by, singing Bollywood songs. The women laugh and curse as they adjust the pleats of their sarees. Afterwards, they sit and wait, their temples dripping with sweat.

The early dusk sky is crimson. Rama arranges the left overs, picks her toddler while another grocer helps with placing the basket on Rama’s head. In distance, uneven crags pose as mysterious totems, their geometry−a hymn written in air. She thinks of the man who squeezed her hand while handing the change. The unmistakable lust in his eyes and how for a moment, Rama wanted to follow him where ever he went. The toddler coos, breaking her into a smile.

*

Four centuries ago, Rama is a courtesan. Her eyes heavily lidded−two massive moons rising out of the clouds. She dances like a peacock, her moves uncontested. Nawabs and princes visit her Kothi to learn etiquette, understand music. She feels like a conqueror of the city until she falls in love with one of her pupils, a boy with long lashes and pink privates. After he marries a princess from a neighboring province, Rama gives up her profession, lives inside a cave in a mountain, her robes riddled by moths, her hair wild, ants marching on her limbs. Naked, she lays on the cool mud. The earth licks her skin, makes her grow roots.

*

After folding the laundry, Rama whips three eggs in a bowl and lights the stove. When the toddler cries, she holds him just above her hip. A thought creeps in of leaving her husband tonight. Her toes press on the unswept floor. The next moment, she imagines biting on his earlobes, arching her torso, letting him splash her insides white, as if that’s the natural course of her feelings. She watches the red-yellow oil separating from the spices yet a part of it. Like land and water crisscrossing for centuries, slowly invading another, touching the sky and falling−each time accessing a depth full of hunger−ungauged, unseen.

Tunnel Clime

A dead, naked girl is lying between the two rail tracks in a tunnel, her right hand resting behind her head as if she’s taking a siesta. A detective in a leather jacket, coughs, saunters past the graffiti on the walls – a cupid with fish-colored eyes, rising from the grit, his arrow directed towards the night curving along the white patches of putty at the domed entrance.

The officer squats down, cocks his head sideways. He props the pads of his fingers along the crease of his trousers and notices a used condom by the side of the corpse. Then he peers at an abandoned rail car on the neighboring track. Its door broken, a dark hovel. There’s something familiar about the girl― kohl dipped eyes, glittered nipples, her painted nails like red holes in the dirt, revealing and concealing all at once. He assumes he’ll be working weeks before he’ll be replaced by someone he loathes. Until then it’ll involve monitoring the streets, the strip clubs in the city and watch his favorite, Lynn, in black lace, pole-dancing in a slippery, dim light. It’ll involve asking questions up and close while the clubs’ staff stares, their arms crossed like museum guards. He’ll proceed with caution, clearing his throat, gesturing at the air. He’ll be polite and pleasant but obsessed with getting down every detail. He’ll appear sleepless, ghostly. And his eyes brighten for an instant as if he’d just cracked the case. 

He squints into a haze funneling from a streetlight, a satisfying distance where two of his subordinates are smoking, their voices bouncing off the walls before drowning in the traffic tearing the highway overhead. They probably think he’s good at what he does. The forensic team will take at least an hour to arrive because of the construction on the access road to the tunnel. He places his gloved finger on the girl’s neck and traces all the way to a piercing at her navel, the skin pale and rubbery. He swears as he senses an erection. Then he gets up and calls out the other men. They grind their leftover cigarettes into the ground with the soles of their shoes and rush towards him. He spits, a chewed gum still under his molars like a flattened bone, his voice low and hoarse, his bore throbbing between his legs. The men nod their heads and hustle away talking on their walkie-talkies. The detective turns around and his muted shadow eclipses the girl’s body, his hands stretch out as if drawing heat from a cold furnace.