Bamboo

The bamboo frightened Pragya.

And it was everywhere.

Windy days troubled her. The gusts seemed to breathe and suck through the bamboo, spawning strange hisses and whistles that reminded the girl of her grandfather’s final exhale when he had died—the way his ossified chest seemed to collapse in on itself, never to inflate again, and creating a hollow, moaning noise that Pragya thought could not possibly be human.

 

The bamboo reminded Pragya of that night. No one had believed her story, except her Aama, and it made her feel alone. She worried that as time passed she’d stop believing herself too. So a few months after the incident, she wrote down her story on a piece of cardboard, wrapped it in the plastic sheathe from an old newspaper, and buried it by a tree in the yard when no one was around.

It read:

You snuck out for a walk at night like you did sometimes when you knew Buwa and your uncles were off getting drunk. You knew Aama and your aunts were talking in the kitchen. They assumed you were in bed and never checked. And the cousins with whom you shared a room never tattled. When you were a child, you liked these walks alone in the night. They were peaceful and helped clear your mind.

Usually you just walked down the hill in the backyard—the one that leads to a clearing and the shrine to Balarama and the bridge. This night, while you were standing on the bridge, you felt an urge to go into the bamboo forest. It was a very calm realization. It was like an even-tempered voice was telling you to go, that there was a reason, and it would be fine.

So you went, even though you were never supposed to do that, especially after dark. You knew in your head you’d be in trouble—big trouble—especially with Buwa, but your heart felt calm and it felt right to be walking in. You were not scared of getting lost or being attacked by wild animals or strange people.

You do not know for how long you walked—it could have been ten minutes or a hundred. Your eyes had adjusted to the dark, but suddenly it was completely black, like a bright light had been turned out. It startled you and you stopped walking. You could not see your hand stretched out in front of you. You could only make out the dim outlines of bamboo around you. A few seconds after the blackness, you heard a loud scream. It was not a person screaming, but you could not describe it. It was almost-human, almost-animal. Whatever it was, it sounded like it was in pain.

It grew louder and louder, coming closer and closer. You were frozen in place from the fear and would not know in which direction to run anyway.

Suddenly, you felt a hand. It grabbed your hand in its hand and started pulling. The hand seemed to be all bones and no flesh. It felt so cold that it hurt to touch. So cold it was burning.

The hand dragged you, quickly, so you were forced to run. You struggled to keep up with its pull. The scream followed you, closer and closer, and the thing pulled you, farther and farther.

Hours seemed to pass in that terrible darkness.

You finally reached the outskirts of the bamboo woods. The screaming ceased. The hand dropped yours and was gone.

The candle at the Balarama shrine had been unlit earlier. But when you returned, it had been lit again.

You knew it was a bhoot pulling you along. Or maybe a bhoot screaming. Or maybe they were spirits, like lakheys you read about in fairy tales.

Over time, you might not even believe your own experience. You may bury it so far away it seems like a dream…or like nothing at all.

But I promise you, it happened.

You might not have wanted it to happen, but it did.

 

Years passed. Pragya’s life seemed to occur to her as a series of photographs—she was always one step removed, floating above herself and looking down…

She was the little girl buried under the shallow, milky mud of the paddy: yelled at, scoffed at—or worse, pitied.

She was the lone figure trudging up the hill to school in the sandy morning light. She saw herself behind a gaggle of students—once her friends—her leather shoes creased where her toes bent from months of wear and hundreds of hilly climbs. The other children would run ahead, racing and singing. Pragya willed one weighty foot in front of the other.

She saw the little schoolhouse, New Rise Academy. Once: a sanctuary. Now: a wooden box perched on its bluff in such a precarious manner that Pragya imagined the softest touch could send it toppling, prompting an avalanche that would devastate the entire village.

Pragya saw herself leaning over her exams. Her mind was vacant as she grasped in desperation for the right English words.

C. Mira _________ the ___________ flowers on the way to her grandmother’s.

1. ate; dead
2. burned; eager
3. picked; beautiful

She saw her cheeks color as the exam went on. She didn’t know a single answer. Most of the test she left blank, unwilling to render a guess. She would not be able to go to high school in Kathmandu. She would not be able to go to high school at all.

Pragya saw herself in the paddy, her back becoming hunched during her formative years: bending, bending, bending. She saw her stooped body thinning the rice plants in an effort to prevent overcrowding—killing some baby sprouts to make room for the others to grow.

She saw the girls and boys from New Rise Academy, once her friends, trickle away from the village like the last drips of water from a spout.

She saw the disdain in her Buwa’s eyes, provoked by anything, but always directed at her. The nights he did not go drinking with his brothers, he would often spend fashioning switches from the husks of bamboo. He would whittle the tough, tan wood down to a desirable width and, after a couple of Gorkha beers, get to practicing his swing on a tree in the yard. Sometimes after Buwa had gone to bed, Pragya would go to the chuletro tree and drag a nubby fingernail down the perforated recesses of the scars left on the trunk.

She saw Buwa drop the switches in the family’s work basket, along with hoes, sickles, hats. The switch would not hesitate to leave its sting on her wrist or the back of her neck if Pragya paused for even a moment to catch her breath during the harvest. Buwa had become more of an overseer than a farmer.