Locust Girl: A Lovesong Read online

  If only I could remember enough to tell the other story. Once upon a time locusts were sustenance. They kept themselves hidden because they smelled our hunger. Once upon a time locusts were silent.

  It whirred even more loudly when her fingers grazed it. My brow itched in a pleasurable way.

  ‘It’s only one, but it sings like two,’ she said in awe.

  The whirring played three notes, sometimes all at the same time. It did harmonies, so alien to the pure rise and fall of single notes that Beenabe knew so well.

  ‘Not like The Songs of my orange box,’ she shook her head sorrowfully. I sensed that she was trying to be kind. She kept herself from saying her orange box was so beautiful and she missed it. She couldn’t use the word beautiful. She had made me feel bad enough.

  I was sensing too many things then, like little melodies in my skull.

  We grew silent, staring at the other side. A different colour now, a different story. For miles and miles, brown under the unbearably hot sun. Then the horizon.

  I made my move forward but was stopped. ‘No, don’t step there, those buried things are sharp,’ she said, quickly lifting me over the line of skeletons to the other side. Her renewed strength surprised me. Then she put me down, saying, ‘We’re going home, Beena,’ and almost smiled.

  I felt a warm rush in my chest. My friend’s eyes were soft. Her face was close to mine and this time she did not shudder.

  ‘But tell me, Beena, how did you get that mark?’

  ‘Peel your eyes off me

  I am not beautiful

  Peel your eyes off me

  I am not the road’

  ‘I said, don’t look behind you — ah, stubborn girl.’ Beenabe’s scolding returned as quickly as it had gone. ‘Promise me you’ll forget that place, we must forget that place. If anyone asks you, I was never there.’

  How can she deny our story? Throughout that walk, she kept asking me to make promises against what we left behind. But sometimes when she told me about her home, she spoke about how she had spied the plains of black and white from the highest peak — ‘But all that is past. Fix your eyes only on the line ahead, Beena.’

  It shimmered in the heat, it undulated, or did I just imagine that? What was it really, a forever line or a stop line? Something for the eyes to follow endlessly or something to warn the feet that everything ended there? I had never seen the horizon before, until then.

  ‘F-far … ’ Another remembered word rolled in my mouth.

  ‘Far, but we’ll reach it,’ she argued and after some hesitation added, ‘We will get home. I walked all the way here from home, surely I can walk back.’

  Each time we stopped to rest, Beenabe stretched her arms towards that long line, which we never seemed to reach. We were growing slower and my stomach insisted that it be acknowledged after ten years of denial. She could no longer stop me from bringing fistfuls of sand to my mouth. She looked at me with disgust, then with dismay, then with sadness. She who was used to scavenging and bringing home gifts for the table could find nothing among the sand or under stones, or between boulders and overhangs of rock. This desert was as mean as it was dry. Even our tongues had begun to shrivel. Soon all talk ceased. We would have been as silent as those skulls and bones, if not for the whirring in my brow.

  It was this whirring that kept us moving. It whirred towards other sounds, or it led us towards them. It picked them up before we even heard it. A stray gust of wind, a rolling pebble, dust from a rock, and my brow itched in response, sometimes into full melody copying what it heard. It seemed to carry on a conversation with even a faraway sound and always our feet could not resist. We found ourselves walking to the source of the sound. Even our feet had been afflicted with the song of the locust.

  ‘Meet me over there

  My left foot says to my right

  Where there still lies

  A wee quiver of life’

  From afar it was only a rock. Solitary, as if it had decided to shun its own kind. We had left the rugged terrain and were now walking through the flattest dryness, so the rock stood out like a bump in the horizon. Only a silent rock, but quickly my brow began to sing even before it itched. Beenabe and I stopped in our tracks and she looked back at me in wonder, for this was not the usual whirring. It confused me. It began as simultaneous notes, like a burst of harmonies that slowly tapered into three notes ultimately parting ways but all pushing our feet towards the rock. Soon the three notes became two, echoing the weary rise and fall of our soles. Then one of the notes grew faint, no, it had gone elsewhere. It had strayed from my brow to give voice to the rock, for it was also singing now, or was it? Just one note, like a subtle beat conversing with its abandoned pair in my brow.

  Beenabe began to run towards the rock, but she was too weak, she kept falling. I lagged behind as usual. I had forgotten the possibilities of feet, their urgency to race each other. I saw her raised arm beckoning me forward, quickly, and jabbing at the air towards the bump in the horizon.

  This time the two notes merged into one. My brow and that rock seemed to have melded. No more rise and fall, just the steady thudding of a single note. Ah, so familiar and so comforting. So unmistakable.

  ‘Water!’ Beenabe cried out. ‘Over here, over here!’

  But how could I follow her now? My knees had grown even weaker and someone was hushing me to sleep … ‘Riverrrr with a delicate roar, ocean with a ssshh …’ I lay down, lost in the steady dripping in my brow. It cooled me even as I curled up on hot sand. I am the vessel into which water drips. I will be full, I will be full and I’ll grow up to be big and strong and good.

  Big. Strong. Good. In my skull the words became the steady dripping. Who was speaking in there?

  ‘Beeee-naaaaaaa! Beeee-naaaaaaa!’

  Wrong name, wrong name, the voice in my head answered Beenabe’s insistent call. I could hardly make out the speck of her, brown on vast brown. Quickly the whole world closed its eyes and the brown was swallowed by something cool and bright at the same time. It was round and curved, floating towards me. Like what I had dug up beside the creature that I could not put back together again. Like where the blessed earth had rested before it touched my mouth. How cool … and whole and growing bigger, drawing closer. Bowl. Blue bowl about to cover me. Blue. How did I ever forget that?

  Then it was brown. It was Beenabe shaking me, Beenabe finding her voice again. ‘Beena, it’s a hole, a cave — it’s a cave with water — can’t you hear it?’

  What is the colour of water?

  ‘We’re saved, Beena, we’re saved!’

  What tongue unshrivels quickly with a rumour?

  Beenabe could not stop talking and sobbing. It was one of her damp moments. ‘Wake up, Beena, what’s the matter with you? You can’t do this to me, oh wake up, please! We have to go in there, there’s water in there, can’t you hear it, of course you can, you know this — and you — your — it must lead us there.’

  Its one note dripped steadily and my brow stopped itching.

  When I finally came to, it was dark. I thought night had fallen, but then I realised we were inside the cave. Beenabe had dragged me in, all the way from where I had fainted. I wondered how she found her strength. I could hear her scrambling around, scraping, digging with her hands, desperate for the rumour to be confirmed. My brow was silent now, but I knew in her head the dripping rang true, as loud as her hope.

  Several times the world closed and opened its eyes, and each time I came to, I found her squatting beside me. She was not crying now. Like a stoic guard, she watched and waited for my brow to start singing again.

  She had dragged me deeper into the cave and I felt like I had returned to my home of ten years. It was so dark, I could not even see my hands, and it was damp. Was it Beenabe’s sweat, for she was holding me close again but with barely a shudder. She was fearless in her sleep. She mumbled stories that made sense only much later.

  Not sweat. Indeed the ground was damp and so were the walls of the n
arrow cave. I was careful not to wake her as I groped my way in the dark, wanting to find the truth. Like Beenabe, I could not forget the rumour of water. Here was more proof. I brought my hand to my mouth. Indeed it was wet, but it tasted strange. Was this water? In response, my brow began singing. A soft dripping and somewhere deeper in the cave, its twin note.

  ‘Beenabe …’ I whispered, not daring to disturb this rumour that had begun again.

  She heard it too, she told me, first in her dream where she was not allowed to drink, much to her dismay. Whatever was in the brown barrel was not meant for drinking, her sisters said. In her dream, she was back home and severely scolded, for she had returned empty handed.

  Dream. I had one too, I told her. The skulls and bones were alive, drinking from blue bowls. Five hundred thirsty mouths — where did that number come from? But I had no chance to ask. Beenabe waved my story away and finished telling her own. She said her sisters beat her, because she brought no gifts from her long trip. Too long for a girl, the eldest who should have stayed home to cook dinner. ‘No drink for her then,’ her sisters decided. So she woke up dying of thirst, she explained, to excuse her shameless licking of the walls when she found them damp.

  ‘Water, Beena, water!’

  This time it was I who guided her in the dark, led by the singing in my brow. We could tell the passage had begun to widen. We could no longer touch the walls and we could almost stand without knocking our heads on the roof. It was cooler here. No, it was cold. I held Beenabe close, half carrying her. Weak with thirst, she had stopped ranting.

  Gradually the single note seemed to break into several notes again. Or were they echoes of one resonant dripping — of water on water? In our ears, the full realisation came. Somewhere here was a vessel of water gathering more water. Our tongues and throats ached in their dryness. Then our toes grew colder and wet. We took another step and our whole feet got wet, up to our ankles. A pool of water!

  ‘Oh, Beena, water, water!’ she cried, falling on her knees with a loud splash, then we were both drinking even if the water tasted strange, even if it was salty and we grew even thirstier — before another sound halted us. I touched my brow. Was it the one that sighed, for it was a sigh, wasn’t it? And were those feet walking on water towards us? The sighing grew as loud as the beat of water on water. Beenabe clung to me, shaking. I could hear her teeth, then her screaming as a pair of cold, damp arms enfolded us, sighing into our ears.

  My locust sighed in return.

  Hush,’ the woman sighed. I was certain it was a woman’s voice. We were gathered into her damp sighing. She rocked us gently, as if her sighs were a lullaby, until Beenabe grew silent. Even the woman grew silent, but the single note kept on: water on water.

  Then my head was getting wet. I reached out. Someone’s cheeks were wet and they were not Beenabe’s. I quickly withdrew my hand and dared not breathe when the woman spoke.

  ‘Children?’ In the dark the arms and hands were all over our bodies, trying to confirm a wish. ‘Yes, children … ah, such a long time …’

  ‘Who are you?’ Beenabe’s usual question even when she was distressed or terrified.

  ‘Cho-choli,’ the woman sobbed. ‘Childless Cho-choli.’

  The name rang through the cave like a plea and none of us could answer it. Her sobbing dragged itself up and down the cave and we were held tighter. We felt her bony arms, her clutching fingers. Then the single note of dripping water broke into a multitude of notes, of various pitches. It was her sobbing vibrating inside our skulls. Listening was painful, but we could not tell her to stop, not when she started telling us her story.

  ‘Once upon a time my cheeks were dry, my eyes were dry. Once upon a time I had a husband and two children, a boy and a girl. Once upon a time their cheeks were dry, their eyes were dry …’

  She went on and on. With those many ‘once upon a times’, perhaps Cho-choli’s was a time so old, it was before anyone knew there was such a thing as time.

  ‘But our well was not dry, yes, we had a well once upon a time. Our whole village could drink once upon a time, even our animals. It was green once upon a time — ’

  ‘Green! Tell us, what’s that like?’

  But Cho-choli seemed not to have heard Beenabe. ‘Then the good men and women came to our village once upon a time. They came to tell us we had too much water and we were wasteful. We had to save water for the future. So they built pipes into our well and our water disappeared.’

  Even my shoulders and arms were wet now, and so were Beenabe’s. Cho-choli was bathing us in tears.

  ‘Once upon a time the good men and women said they were the keepers of water. Once upon a time they said that our water was somewhere safe now for the future, and they promised to send us just enough water, so nothing will be wasted. So once upon a time there came barrels of water, which we had to share, but there was never enough and our well was completely dry. Then the barrels stopped coming. The good men and women forgot their promise. So our village began drying up, even the wombs of our women. But by that once upon a time, I already had two children, a boy and a girl, and they made me weep.’

  Her tears dripped over our bodies into the pool where we stood — and it hit us. This was Cho-choli’s water! Salty. Unstoppable in its dripping.

  ‘Once upon a time as our village turned brown, our animals began to die, then our children. Do you understand what this means? So once upon a time all the husbands sought the good men and women to demand that they keep their promise. The mothers like me had to stay home to watch our children die. While once upon a time our husbands walked to the horizon and never came back. There were rumours of fires that sprouted along the way … once upon a time.’

  The cave was awash with sound and too much once upon a time. Each of her words became like dripping water. More notes added as her story went on and the locust in my brow began copying each note, playing it over and over. I thought my skull would split with this invasion. I had to stop her. My wet arms reached out again towards her face. I wanted to plug her mouth, her eyes, but quickly I shrank away. No eyes, no eyes!

  ‘I wept, I wept them out

  Find them in each sigh

  I wept, I wept them out

  Find them in each story’

  We fled from the cave of the weeping woman, her stories pursuing us. How we ran, but we could not run away from the story of her green village once upon a time. Even if Beenabe said we should not speak about that cave ever again, I knew, like me, she was wondering about green.

  What’s green? Vaguely I remembered asking someone the same question long ago, but the present was a hot wave that washed it away. Outside it was as brown and dry as ever. Beenabe kept convincing herself that a story was never told, that it never happened. But how could she deny it when the saltiness remained in our mouths?

  It took two days of walking for my brow to behave. It kept singing Cho-choli’s story, as if to memorise it. So how could we deny it?

  Beenabe refused to listen. She refused to walk with me. She was the one lagging behind now. She must stop to rest, she called out to me. But I saw from the corner of my eye that she was studying the brown sand, her brown wrap, her brown skin. On the second night as we lay together after a meal of sand, she finally asked me, ‘What’s green, Beena?’

  I knotted my brow until it hurt, to remember. Nothing. Even my locust did not stir. We slept dreaming of green. We invented it. It became everything that was good once upon a time.

  Green was anything we wanted it to be. Like dry cheeks and dry eyes or faces with eyes, or hot barley soup, or barley sprouting on blessed earth, or putting together again the creature that I had broken, or sleeping with sisters, or drinking not salty water, or walking past the horizon then home.

  Or maybe it was a strange song that sneaked into our dreams. It began with a single note repeated at even pace, but it was unlike the earlier dripping. It went tap-tap-tap-tap continuously. It bewildered and blessed us. Beenabe dreamt of her sister’
s finger tapping the table before she served barley soup. I dreamt of something, was it a spoon, tapping the blue bowl, in a call for a walk after dinner. Soon the song became more than a tapping. Voices began singing over it, men’s voices blending in a strange, beautiful way that we could not understand.

  My brow stirred. I heard it mimic the song, which was faint and scratchy, with parts missing. We could not understand it, but the voices were so comforting. The song began again. Who were these singers? Maybe fathers sitting together after a meal? There was contentment in their voices and the final word sloped down, as if sighed out, but this was unlike the sighs in the cave. This had no pain. This was a sigh of good things. In my sleep I stroked my brow again and again.

  We walked into a village that was like Beenabe’s own, she said, but this one was empty. She held back her tears. She would refuse her own damp moments from then on. She would refuse to be like that woman in the cave. ‘I don’t want to lose my eyes, Beena.’

  As we walked, the song kept playing in my brow and from somewhere, dragging our feet to its source. We visited each empty stone hut, tapping the song’s rhythm on the door, wall, table, bed, as if calling for some revelation to be served to us. What is this place? We left our mark wherever we tapped, for the rhythm remained there, so when we entered the last hut, the whole deserted village seemed to be singing in harmony. The doors, the walls, the tables, the beds sang in different timbres but with that conspiratorial joy of gathering, of doing something together. ‘Like when bodies bump into each other in a dance, our mother told us,’ Beenabe whispered sadly. Once upon a time her village danced, she said, because the full rations still arrived and the sky was not yet brown.

  Outside the last hut we stopped and kept our fingers from tapping, because the singing was in there, in there! It was loudest in there. We held our breaths before we pushed the door open. Those men’s voices sound like they just had a full meal. Will they ask us to join them? Will they be kind? Will they offer us a meal?