“You and I — just married, like cattle to the herd, unsurely out of childhood, learning to love. The night was still not quiet; someone’s phone was ringing, the sound of traffic, and the air grew warm, warmer, hot like a furnace.”
Night of the Golden Darkness
By Mandira Paittnak
Brace again, for we might be gone again.
Another November night chilly like this, bodies eroded from working overtime in the small, cramped space stitching and packing garments for another world, rag-quilts on the basement floor, seven in the space for two, packed like smirks on a joker’s face, barely asleep — fingers, eyes, tracing my skin. You and I — just married, like cattle to the herd, unsurely out of childhood, learning to love. The night was still not quiet; someone’s phone was ringing, the sound of traffic, and the air grew warm, warmer, hot like a furnace. Had it been the next day, we’d collect our wage and off to Kusalganj by the morning bus, remember? But it was not to be. We struggled to attribute source and meaning to the heat in the windowless dungeon, hearing shrieks and cries, rising, rising, enveloping our senses, walls, and floor burning like coal. We clung to each other, trapped. Hands comforting me, you pulled me closer — it made us escape the heat — at least the sense of it: your eyes — pools of calm hope.
I’d never know what had gone wrong. Remember a golden darkness later, twisted melted steel, black smoke, charred bodies wrapped in half-burnt polo-tees emblazoned C & A, Walmart, and Li & Fung, and the date — November 12, 2012, Dhaka. They only said the workshop was illegal or overcrowded; you just pulled me away and said we should hurry and be gone.
Then and now. Your eyes tell me to be brave again, for soon, we might need to run again.
Now our backs hurt from loading and unloading beer crates and boxes of what-not. Mumbai Port is busy at night for extra cash. Palms, rough from alternating between foam and adhesive, ears used to words: Hey you! Go back, you! — appended with one of those that scream You are the other! The outsider! — As though one or the other names that you call us by will stick and fire us up to violence, and hey, we get packed to jails, like all in a day’s job for them. It won’t leave us in peace. They will kill us if they can. The warning is upon us.
Brace again. Prepare to be gone again. When you hug me last thing at night, your droopy eyes — steadily losing hope.
Mandira's work appeared in McNeese Review, Penn Rev, Quarterly West, QAE, Rumpus, and AAWW. More: mandirapattnaik.com
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