The Centre(42)

This is what happens, I thought, to curious cats.

When I was young, we once bought some newborn chicks off one of those street sellers who wind in and out between cars at traffic lights, rapping on windowpanes and showing customers their wares. This man carried a large cage filled with sweet baby chicks, their feathers dyed neon shades of purple, pink, and green. The chicks were small enough to nestle perfectly in the palm of my nine-year-old hand, and he was selling them for a hundred rupees each. I picked two yellow ones. Maybe I thought, even as a child, that the non-dyed ones would be more likely to survive, although, looking back and remembering the fluorescence of their shade, I think they, too, had been artificially colored.

Anyway, one of the chicks fell sick the first night he arrived. He cowered in the corner of his little shoebox and refused to eat. I remember nestling that delicate ball of fur in my hands, determined to love the strength back into him. My sister said that this would make things worse, that I should leave him be. So I put him back in the box. At some point, finding the strength to move, he reached clumsily for his small water bowl and ended up tipping it over. He was drenched and started shivering uncontrollably. My mother tried to warm him with lightbulbs and hairdryers, until he was no longer wet but still shaking. At night, we covered the box with a piece of cloth and went to bed.

I remember waking up very early the next morning, possibly before dawn, to check on him. When I pulled the cover off the shoe box, I saw him, Jugnu—we had never named him officially, but his name was Jugnu—lying there, stiff and straight, his little legs stretched out like twigs. Even if you’ve never seen a dead thing before, you know it when you see it. The heart recognizes it instantly and stops.

What did I do then? I put the cover back on the box and went to sleep. Later that morning, the maid had taken care of it. She’d found the body, disposed of it, and told me the sad news. I reacted as if finding out for the first time.

·

I awoke in my bed at the Centre the next morning with a headache, thinking of Jugnu the chick. My sleep that night had been deep but uncomfortable, the sheets drenched with perspiration. I groggily got up and made my way to the meditation room in a daze, trying to piece together the previous night. I vividly remembered reading Natalya’s email but had no clear memories of making my way out of the staff quarters, through the courtyard, and back into my room. I felt annoyed with myself for drinking that last glass of wine and disturbed by the haziness of my recollections.

When the gong rang to finish meditation, I opened my eyes to see Shiba through the window. She was standing by the oak tree, beckoning me to come join her in the speaking area. I did.

“Anisa, I’m so sorry. I must have fallen asleep. You should’ve woken me.”

A chill wind whispered through the willow, and the sun shone bright and clear overhead. Everything is fine, I told myself.

“I found my way back easily,” I said.

“Oh … that’s good. You okay?”

“Everything’s fine. I think I’m late, though.”

“For breakfast? You’ve got time.”

“Oh, well. I should still go … let’s catch up later.”

“Anisa.”

“What?”

“Are you annoyed about something?”

“No, why would I be? Look … I’m sorry. I’m just a bit out of it. Haven’t had my coffee yet.”

“Oh, good. You just gave me this look …” she trailed off, confused but also relieved. “I thought something was wrong.”

“Nope. Everything’s fine.”

After breakfast, I went back to my booth and continued listening to Anna, but this time more attentively. I started wondering when she would get to her arrival in England, to her time at the Centre. Vague theories would form in my head and then evaporate. In the break, I sat in the palm-shaped hollow of the old tree in the courtyard, and it enveloped me protectively. From there, I surveyed the people around me. The staff members, I suddenly felt, were watching me from the corners of their eyes as they passed, flashing looks at one another afterward. Did they know I’d been in the staff quarters the night before? That I’d read that email?

And then I let myself think the terrible thing: Did they have something to do with Anna’s death? Maybe because she’d broken one of their precious rules, they’d had to “bump her off.” After all, if the Centre had nothing to do with Anna’s death, why would Shiba lie about it or be paying for the funeral? The more I asked myself these questions, the more I felt the staff members’ gazes boring into me, until I worked myself into a panic, my heart beating hard and fast, the grip of the tree tightening around my body. I scrambled out and went back to my room, washed my face, and tried to calm myself. When I came back out, I no longer felt quite as surveilled and thought maybe I’d just been receiving those strange glances because of my own panicked state. My head was a fog, and my disturbed sleep from the night before wasn’t helping. I went through the motions for the rest of the day while another part of me buzzed like static. And although I was able to keep the panic at bay, a nauseating question throbbed dully in the background: If they were somehow responsible for Anna’s death, would they kill me, too, if they knew that I knew?

That night, I slept badly again. My dreams of the seaside and fresh bread continued but were interrupted and warped by other images. I dreamed of a helpless child crying out for me, but it was too dark to see who. I dreamed that Adam broke into Naima’s flat and kidnapped Billee. I dreamed that Shiba and I were running hand in hand through the Centre’s vast garden while being ferociously pursued by one of the venomous plants, which had escaped its chicken wire enclosure and grown large, drooling plant legs.