The Lowland

moment he felt no part of her resisting him. She watched as he finished up outside her, wiping what spilled on the surface of her abdomen, or watching as he directed the proof of his desire into his cupped hand. She bore his weight when he collapsed on top of her, when he had nothing more to give.
    4.
    At four Bela was developing a memory. The word yesterday entered her vocabulary, though its meaning was elastic, synonymous with whatever was no longer the case. The past collapsed, in no particular order, contained by a single word.
    It was the English word she used. It was in English that the past was unilateral—in Bengali, the word for yesterday, kal, was also the word for tomorrow. In Bengali one needed an adjective, or relied on the tense of a verb, to distinguish what had already happened from what would be.
    Time flowed for Bela in the opposite direction. The day after yesterday , she sometimes said.
    Pronounced slightly differently, Bela’s name, the name of a flower, was itself the word for a span of time, a portion of the day. Shakal bela meant morning; bikel bela, afternoon. Ratrir bela was night.
    Bela’s yesterday was a receptacle for anything her mind stored. Any experience or impression that had come before. Her memory was brief, its contents limited. Dispersed but still afloat, lacking chronology, randomly rearranged.
    So that one day she told Gauri, who was combing a stubborn knot out of Bela’s thick hair:
    I want short hair, like yesterday.
    It had been many months ago that Bela’s hair was short. And at first, this was what Gauri told her. She explained that it took more than a day for hair to grow long again. She told Bela that her hair had been short perhaps one hundred yesterdays ago, not one.
    But for Bela, three months ago and the day before were the same.
    She was frustrated with Gauri for contradicting her. Disappointment traveled like a dark cloud across her face. There was no obvious trace in it of Gauri or of Udayan. How was it that her forehead was faintly convex, that the inner corners of her eyes dipped down? The placement of the eyes was distinctive. Gauri was aware of the contrast of her own toffee skin to Bela’s lighter complexion, a creamy fairness she had received from Gauri’s mother-in-law.
    Where is my other jacket? Bela asked another day, as Gauri handed her a new one. They were on their way to school.
    Which?
    The yellow one from yesterday.
    It was true, there had been a yellow one the previous spring, with a hood trimmed in fur. Too small for her now, given away to a church on campus that took in used clothes.
    That was last year’s jacket. It fit you when you were three.
    Yesterday I was three.
    She was waiting for Bela to stop marching this way and that in the corridor. To stand still so that Gauri could put her arms into the sleeves of the jacket, so that they could be on their way. When Bela resisted, she gripped her by the shoulders.
    That hurt. You hurt me.
    Bela, we’re in a hurry.
    The jacket was on now, unfastened. Bela wanted to pull up the zipper. Her fumbling attempt to do this was delaying them further, and after a moment Gauri could not bear it, she pried Bela’s fingers away.
    Baba lets me do it myself.
    Your father’s not here.
    She tugged the zipper shut at the base of Bela’s throat, perhaps a bit harder than she should have, almost catching the skin. She chided herself for being impatient. She wondered when her daughter would know the full meaning of what Gauri had just said.
    After dropping off Bela she bought a cup of coffee at the student union. Every summer and again every winter, at the start of each term, hundreds of students stood in long lines, registering for classes. From time to time Gauri would pick up a catalogue abandoned on the floor. She looked at the offerings in the philosophy department, circling classes that appealed to her. She remembered sitting in on the ancient philosophy class, secretly, after she’d first arrived in Rhode Island.
    There were no classes that term during the time Bela was at school. Instead Gauri walked over to the library, to sit and read. The effort of concentration eliminated, if only for an hour or two, the obligation of anything else. It eliminated her awareness of those hours passing.
    She saw time; now she sought to understand it. She filled notebooks with her questions, observations. Did it exist independently, in the physical world, or in the mind’s