About to get smaller—how many of those boys I left there are alive now? The base just after I left.
And now I am here in the desert, aiding one set of colonizers against another set of colonizers on behalf of a new power whose colonial ambitions haven’t gone past their own continent as of yet, but whom I strongly suspect of waiting to seize the pie. The dreams and desires of the aren’t even the nail clippings of a concern for any of these nabobs— Pea.
I cannot tell you what I’m doing, but at least it’s no longer ambulance duty. When I work with the locals it isn’t so bad, but the British officers are worse than even my memory of them. It appears that having grown up does not save one from much torment. Being a Hindu—and not a servant—is more than enough to stir their nationalist bile.
Goodness, I can’t imagine that any of that went through. Unless the censors are American, of course. Wave to good old Uncle Sam, Pea. The land of the free, the home of the brave. That star-spangled banner does seem to be hanging in there after all these years, doesn’t it?
It makes me wonder about my hands, in fact. All of our hands. It makes me wonder about a universe that would give these people almost all of the power and then, of a moment, give a little sliver of it back. But with such a burden, it sometimes seems better to be powerless. Not quite. And yet, the hands torment you. They are obsessed with our necessary complicity. Even here, they hate what I have to do and for whom.
They would rather kill us for the greater good than let us find happiness in this lifetime.
Durga visits me in my dreams sometimes, don’t ask me how. Please stay safe. I’m not sure what we are bringing into this world, but I am sure that Durga is a soul burnished by fire.
I must end this letter—they’re calling me at headquarters. But I must ask—I had a very strange dream the other night—one of Durga’s, I hope. It reminded me of an incident with Tamara a few years back. You should ask her about it. That night backstage at the Pelican. Though maybe you shouldn’t bother. You know Tammy, she’ll just lie about the bad parts.
Goodbye, my sweet Pea. Touch our Durga for me and tell her to be still and to send the bad dreams to me.
Your
Dev
Tamara didn’t sleep that night. She sat in the dark in the kitchen, knees hugged to her chest, stomach churning along with her brain, thinking of all the ways that the people who she loved the most saw straight through her, and how much she hated them for it. She burned with the unfairness of it: she, who had never done anything truly bad, even if she’d gone knocking on bad’s door, now had to tolerate the judgment of the Village’s most notorious killer and her stoolie lover?
She felt hot and cold, as though she had a fever, as though shame could eat her up from the inside and leave her zombie corpse rattling around come morning. Had Phyllis known she was lying? You know Tamara, Dev had written, as though Tamara’s untrustworthy character were an old, reliable joke. Sure, she had loved Dev—she’d certainly enjoyed being his lover—and Phyllis was like a sister to her, but those relationships had always been within certain parameters. Tamara was the regular girl, the good one, the foil against which their bad decisions stood out more starkly. It was supposed to be a fair exchange: Tamara’s innocent, easy friendship for their hard reputations and checkered pasts. She made them feel better about who they had to be while they protected her from the world. But now … did they think, all this time, that they had been doing her the favor? Had they indulged her rosy vision of herself while believing that she was really just like them? And if so, why had they never told her?
Her nails had dug four half-moons into her palms by the morning. An empty bottle of wine spilled little red drops on the floor by her feet. Another wineglass lay shattered somewhere behind her; she’d seen Victor around midnight, picking at his silver teeth with a chicken bone. He’d vanished after she threw the glass. She finished the rest of the bottle direct. She ought to take that laudanum, she thought. She ought to just drug herself and drown the clawing shame in dreamless sleep. And she might have, but for the unexpected sound of someone coming down the stairs.
Tamara held her breath, but Phyllis didn’t come to the kitchen. She went to the parlor, instead. What was she doing? Pea had been sleeping all the time lately. Even with Tamara’s bad habits—the cards, the wine, the relieving drops of old-fashioned medicine—she would wake up a little before noon, which was generally when she managed to rouse her friend.
But now Pea was in the parlor, building up the fire, as though it didn’t cost her to move past the dreams that big-headed baby sent her. Tamara thought of going straight in to confront her, but the shame of admitting how she knew—Stealing Dev’s letter, baby, really? And this is how you plan to prove that you’re better than me?—held her back.
Phyllis picked up the phone. She dialed a number that Tamara wasn’t in any fit state to guess by the clicks on the rotary dial as it went around, and when she spoke it was in a clipped, professional, white-people voice that felt shocking, given the hour.
“Yes, sorry to have kept you waiting. I’m moving a little
