I am changing a tyre. It may have been the shattered glass on the side of the black hole pothole I tried to avoid. It may have been shitty driving all in all, flash and dash speed racer shifts between agreeable, tarred terrain and the danger zone. But the car has sunken into the wet red earth as if it’s resting its rounded snout on a failing elbow. I tell myself I’ll never wear white again, and that I’ll never wear pants that stick this close to my ass. I get offered help four times, I refuse the first and second more wholeheartedly than the rest. I am changing a tyre, I mentioned that. It’s a repetition, shaky, more like a tremor. I’ve pulled up under a Cassia tree and there’s a carpet of yellow flowers beneath us. Us. Me and the car, and I suppose, the removed tyre, now separate from where it began, leaning back on the driver-side door, with saggy pants, hands in pockets, and its own thing going on. Quick moving, these flat tyres. It’s looking west, while the slumped snout looks south, and I wonder if the right amount of time and distance is a recipe for perfectly pillowy mountains of … ceasing to remember? failing to recall?
But that shit is too heavy for rubber, too fluid for steel … back to the tyre, I’m changing a tyre … I have done this a hundred times but I didn’t remember to loosen the lug nuts on the ground and I didn't consider the state of the ground. So here we are – we – just the car, the tyre and I … sinking fast into the bubbling-to-the-brim core of the earth because we could not find solid ground, and I kick myself, mid free fall, because it was a Tabebuia tree not Cassia. And I do it again, because I find myself failing my own tests. It’s not a memory thing, well, it is, but not in an ‘eat your almonds and remember to call your sister!’ kind of way. Maybe I’m confusing it. What I’m trying to say is, once, not very long ago, I could, without a single error, trace the lines of your palm onto a sheet of butter paper, down to the microscopic rivulets that coursed the paths of your heart and your head, your sun and your moon. But again, I’m just changing a tyre. I shouldn’t be reading into it this much, analysing the number of times I check the tightened lug nuts, wondering if I’ve lost my mind. Wondering if next year I’ll remember less about you. Or if I should stop saying YOU. Not so long ago, it felt like I was speaking up into the mountains, to a YOU that could hear me from the clouds, a YOU that could shout back to me from across the ocean, but now it all feels a little false, like maybe I should start referring to you in third person, say your name out loud and speak of YOU in past tense. But then I wonder if the year after next I’ll still be able to remember the shape of your face, the scar underneath your left eye, it’s blurry already, and fuck me but I’ve completely forgotten what you smelled like, and it’s a real bitch reviving a scent … so I try my best, to keep you around, but it’s feeling a little forced and I’m grinding my teeth and trying to focus on the concrete block sandwiched between the jack and the loose ground. It IS a memory thing, which is the reason for the repetition. For wanting to go back to anywhere you were, to count my steps and repeat, in the hopes that mapping it out will solve the whole thing, somehow bend time.
A man walks up to me, young, cocksure. His feet follow his shoulders, he kneels down to angle the jack, doesn’t say a word. A real hero. ‘Excuse me?’
‘I’ll do it’
‘That’s fine, thank you,’ I say. He grunts, wraps his arms up and stares. ‘Ok then, let’s see what you got, bitch.’ He doesn’t say it out loud. I bend down to lift the thing, the car gets heavier with an audience, the weight of it is cutting into the slab of concrete, I know it’s going to crack, I can’t stop because he’s watching.
‘Not good to do on mud.’
‘I know … but I’m fine thanks.’
He doesn’t leave.
‘Listen, I’ve told you, I don’t need your help. Now please can you go away?!’
I try to say it plainly, not get too caught up in it. ‘Try and be dispassionate sometimes, it’s easier to deal with the bullshit that way.’ Did you say that? Real poet. I get caught up in it. I can’t help it, it’s physical, my throat gets caught at the please, and the rest of it sounds pathetic … please can you go away ?!… a death cry. He leaves, turns around every two seconds, either to see if I’ve made any progress, or if I’ve bent low enough for my nips to do a peakaboo. I’m paranoid, that’s it. I zapped my brains out when the neurons were vulnerable and then never went back to being the same. The worst part is, I knew it happened when it did, the ‘change’. It wasn’t gradual, it was one day, within an hour, a few minutes. I told myself while it was happening, this is happening, it’s happened, it’s done. You’re there and you’re there and you’re there and you’re gone. Phase two.
Cut to the best part, it was all for a coffee. Nothing fancy, a mediocre Americano that I convinced myself I needed in order to turn my life around. And I could’ve walked, it was a nice day. And I could’ve taken the metro, it was an hour and a half past the rush. But, I tell myself, I need to be changing this tyre. I need to be here, I need to be present. I need not to use your being gone for my having stopped, I don’t know, being here. But, it is phase two. Everything is different, not less heightened just pinnacling in a different direction, I hadn’t travelled there prior. Do you know what I mean? Metaphysically? But no, not you, you’re out, we’re done now. It’s ok, I am telling myself that I can forget, that the ocean moulds the sand differently every minute. Letting go, I clench my words, ‘detachment’, it takes practice. Does it? A doctor on late night tv gathers a crowd and speaks through a megaphone, ‘Two cups of bitter gourd juice and ten thousand hours of practice in detachment will solve all your problems, ladies and gentlemen.’
The jack has buried itself into the ground twice and cracked the first piece of concrete. I find another, bigger, the one that’ll do the trick, a thick slab that I have to tilt and drop to get there. I dig the jack out of the mud, the car creaks back into place when I loosen it. I shake off my hands and take a second to breathe, he’s back. The cock. Standing across the road grinning to himself. I scoff, I ignore him, I get back to work. The problem is the stepney looks hopelessly deflated. Possibly perspective. Shifted angles, unevenly weighted, I fool myself, because after all this I don’t have any choice but to change it.
‘tchip’ I hear from across the road, he’s kissing his teeth and shaking his head. Oh man. Detachment, I clench my words. Focus. I have spent too much time analysing it, too much thought, no action. I blame it on you, on my vulnerable neurons, on the big old let down that is realising maybe I wasn’t as cut out for the whole thing as I thought I was when they handed me first prize for something or the other in the 6th standard and the whole world felt like it was up for grabs. Perspective, I was never a fan.
‘What you doing?’ He’s walking over now. ‘This won’t work.’ He’s talking about the fucked up stepney. I am desperate, less sure of myself than before.
‘I know, but it may be better than the flat,’ I say and continue ‘and then I can get it to a shop … get it filled up.’
He doesn’t say anything, he looks pointedly at the stepney and then less so at me, the afterthought. ‘Your name?’ he asks.
‘No thank you, please go.’ The death cry, please. He doesn’t.
It’s now two in the afternoon, we’re on a residential street, parallel to the destination – coffee shop. What do I have to do to get him out of here? What are the rules on sharing public space? I stand up, wipe my shirt. I’m a mess, but I’ve fully committed to the role. I open the car and get my phone out. I walk a few feet away and pretend to make a call, I stare at him the whole time, frowning exaggeratedly, hurting my forehead. He doesn’t move.
‘please go,’ I say it one more time. He backs away, eyes fixed on the tyre and then the afterthought, and stops on the other side of the road, leaning on a corner post. I’m paranoid, I tell myself, I’m not seeing clearly. I start winding up the jack, the car creaks upward. The new slab is holding strong but cutting slowly into the mud. A fluorescent cricket ball lands plop next to the back tyre and it rolls (I let it) underneath the chassis. Too far in to simply stretch a hand out to get it. I look around and I ignore it. This is the series of events. I have actively removed you from all thought, I think. I am focussing on the jack, I am not focussing on the ball. That’s the problem, it has become unidimensional, my capacity for focus. That’s what it is, I have space for one thing but not much else. I should have worked on that, whilst practicing late night detachment.
A boy comes running down the stairs of his house. He is followed by a smaller child, his brother. The house is a single storey one, with a large terrace and clothesline that can be seen from the road, all small clothes for these small children. Shorts and socks and brightly coloured t-shirts. They are searching for the ball. I say nothing. Unidimensional detachment. I speak to you, my eyes turned inward and alone. I hear nothing. This is not a good place to be. Am I meant to remain here in all of the aftermath?
Their voices are small, bird chirp voices. Their talk is playful. Finches, sunbirds. The older one is hoarser, not close to cracking but getting there. I can’t tell what they’re saying, just bird chirps in the distance. The sun shone brighter when it heard the children, the earth closed up the gaping hole, caused by the jack and the sinking concrete, all but for a minute. Their faces are soft, peach fuzz faces. I imagine that they woke up this morning and rushed through breakfast eager to play cricket; it is Saturday, it is summer. I imagine their parents tell them to be careful with this ball, be careful on that terrace, all.the.time. I imagine they don’t have a problem being here, that it is, in fact, the only place they know to be. That their here is magic, soft edged, sweet green grass fields fresh from a rain, soft edges, softy ice cream, no edges at all.
I’ve cranked it up to almost off the ground. The whole exercise takes longer because of the mud, longer because of my not being here, longer because of the audience. I think about removing some mud, from around the almost-off-the-ground tyre, I think this’ll help. I hear him from across the street, an insidious ‘Ahhhh-hahhh’. Please go away, I swallow my breaths, I breathe in my words. The car creaks heavily, an insurmountable weight atop something that can only handle it for so long, the creaks vocalising its time limit, the beginning of the countdown. Ten. I hurry myself up, it’s all happening faster than I expected.
I have to leave you behind with this old tyre. I have to pick you out of my brain, place you aside and walk away. Goodbye mountains, goodbye ocean, goodbye – I can’t bring myself to say it yet. Some more convincing, some more beating around the bush. But I have to say it, that’s the only way I can think to try to be here, turn it around. It’ll be a quick goodbye, not the epic I promised I would write your name in front of. But that is uneconomical at this point. I’m preparing myself, clearing my throat, being logical. Focussed detachment.
Goodbye. Yes, there it is. On to the stepney, the car shifts out of place when I put it on, two inches closer to the ground, partly due to my shuffled instalment, partly due to the dead weight carried by the tragic replacement. There are iron grade steam engine creaks, real debilitating, real shake you to your core with the possible weight of a crash, a crush. I ignore them, a side effect of the detachment. I had wrongly aligned my targets and now needed permanent re-attaching in too many places to count, a major procedure, general anaesthesia, two years of post-operative care, lithium for a lifetime.
I had forgotten about the sunbirds and the finches. They’re talking to me, asking me to get the ball. I am unaware, just not here. Giving myself some time off after the goodbye. They talk to each other in sing song. They pick up a stick and they gurgle into their necks like spotted doves, planning the retrieval. They picked up a stick. This is the series of events. They try to angle it, swing it. It is too small a stick for a cricket ball, they need a larger surface area to make any difference. They still try, they still miss. Their faces are pressed to the ground, they sound like parakeets calling to each other through Banyan trees, one insisting that the stick must move to the right, the other insisting that the stick had been moved as far right as physically possible. They do it again, they get it to the very centre, dead centre. They had a stick. They had a stick. They dropped the stick. Still, they could have found another. Still, they could have rolled a stone at it, still, they could have waited till I’d lowered the car off the jack. Still, they could have called out to me louder. Still, I could have just been here. All but for a minute, the earth closed up the gaping hole, but just one more minute for the sunbird and the finch.
The older one leaps underneath. He is wearing baby blue.
‘No, no, no, stop!’ a shout from across the street.
*
Zui Kumar-Reddy is a Biology graduate living in Bangalore. She loves Out of Print where she has been previously published. She is currently working on her debut novel The Generation of Light.