When Faults Collide (Faultlines Book 1) Read online

  WHEN FAULTS COLLIDE

  by Claire Granger

  When Faults Collide

  Copyright © 2015 by Claire E. Granger

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Book design by Emily Sibitzky

  ISBN 978-1511773492

  To my beautiful children, who prove

  every day that miracles are real.

  When Faults Collide

  “Do not be led by others,

  Awaken your own mind,

  Amass your own experience,

  And decide for yourself your own path. ”

  -The Atharva Veda

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty One

  Chapter Thirty Two

  Chapter Thirty Three

  A Note from the Author

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  I ran my toes back and forth along the window seat, curling them in and out, the feel of the cool tiles distracting me from her voice.

  “Vh aa rhaa hai, Asha,” (He is coming, Asha,) I heard her say, her Hindi much more formal than my own.

  I continued to look out the window impassively. I drew my knees up to my chest and sighed.

  She pursed her lips and shook her head, but conceded and walked away.

  She says he’s coming. Just like my mother said he was coming. My entire life has been listening to women tell me that the elusive HE, my father that is, is coming.

  Just like my mother, Mausee was wrong too.

  I snorted at the title.

  Mausee. Auntie.

  Calling the orphanage staff by auntie and uncle is supposed to make us more comfortable and feel like family.

  Family.

  Well, I had family. My mother. She is gone, so is the idea of family.

  He is not coming because he does not exist. And since he does not exist, then I will never have family.

  So I will sit here, go through the motions that I need to go through, until I am old enough to leave.

  I could probably run away, since I appear to be one of the oldest kids here.

  However, I am no fool.

  At thirteen, there are only two options for me if I leave.

  One is death. Dying from starvation or from a beating or from illness.

  The other option would be going back to the chakala.

  I am never going back there.

  Suddenly it hit me again. The smells, the sounds — I was being taken back there in my mind.

  I covered my ears and shook my head. It didn’t matter. I was being dragged back to that place and to the last memories of my mother.

  The smell was the worst part. A heady mix of incense, sex, sweat, and the lingering smells of food.

  There were no doors, just open doorways. Many of the other women hung curtains; my mother hung an old sheet that was mostly tattered and torn and did very little at its only job of concealment.

  Of course, nothing could conceal the sounds. The sounds were by far worse than the smells.

  The grunting, squealing, occasional laughter, sounds of pleasure, sounds of pain, crying, and the sounds of body parts and sweat combining.

  Yes, the sounds were the worst.

  My mother had given me a cassette player with headphones to drown it out with American music. One of her clients had given it to her as a gift and she gave it to me. It was a regular client, a British business man.

  Lyle. I hated Lyle. He pretended to be nice, as if we were all good friends.

  He got a kick out of how excited I was to get the Walkman. He said it was old technology but my excitement was a sign that I had good character. According to him, British kids had music players called iPods, and they would never even accept a gift like a cassette player.

  The only pods I knew were pea pods, so I had no idea what he was talking about.

  Lyle liked to talk to me. During many of his visits when he was finished with my mother he wanted to stay for dinner to talk with me.

  He could pretend like we were friends, but I knew his type. He had the eyes of a predator and he smelled of bad cologne and cigars.

  Since many of the other girls who lived in the chakala were working by the time they were my age, I think he assumed it was just a matter of time.

  When I was eleven he started bringing gifts just for me. Books, cassettes, drawing paper, journals, pencils.

  What I hated most was that I loved the gifts. A book was a commodity that kids who grow up in a chakala don’t often receive.

  My mother knew how to read and write in English and Hindi, which was as rare as a blonde-haired Indian.

  My mother was beautiful, just as pretty as the women in Bollywood movies, and she was smart and well mannered.

  She wasn’t the ugly, wasted trash that surrounded us.

  Because she was so beautiful, and because she was smart, I never understood our life. As a small child it was all I knew, but the older I got the more confused I became.

  My mother didn’t attract the regular clients that the other women did, either. Sure, she had men who tried, but all of her regulars were wealthy men. Many from out of town.

  In fact, by the time I was ten, more than half of her clients had her come to them at their hotels.

  While this may be common in other countries, here the men were expected to just visit the chakala and be done with it, the exception being the high-priced escorts that lived in luxury with the wealthiest men. While she certainly could have been, she wasn’t a high-priced escort. Towards the end though, she would regularly escort some of her clients to dinner and other dates.

  She would come home and I would beg her for stories of how nice the men were. When I compared the life that the other women were living to the life my mother lived, hers seemed almost glamorous.

  She always looked sad when I showed any interest and patted my cheek and told me that we would not discuss it. Then she would pick out a book for us to read and we would curl up on our straw mattress and read together.

  One night she came home just as I was finishing our dinner — a simple meal of rice and lentils. She had clearly been crying and had the beginnings of a bruise on her cheek.

  “Mama!” I had exclaimed. “What happened?”

  I ran over to her, which wasn’t far to run in our one room, and reached up to touc
h her cheek.

  She winced when my fingertips made contact and then sat on our mattress and patted next to her for me to join. I did.

  She pulled me close and rested her chin on my ebony black hair and started rubbing my back.

  “Asha, sweet girl, I need you to listen to me,” she began. “You are never to worry about me. Mama will always be fine. And one day soon, your father will come for you, and you will leave me and go on and do great things.”

  My lip trembled and I grabbed her hand to distract me from the sob that began rising in my throat.

  “Mama, I will never leave you, ever.” I said firmly. At twelve I had a fire in me and was stubborn as a mule.

  She took my face in her hands, her dark brown eyes looking deeply into my bright blue eyes. The eyes that she says I got from my father; the only thing distinguishing that I was not completely Indian.

  “Sweet girl, this is no life for you. You deserve to be in school, to have friends, to have nice clothes, and be able to live somewhere that you are not surrounded by the depravity and lowest part of humankind.”

  So I finally asked her what I had wondered for several years but never asked before. “Then why are we here, Mama?”

  She closed her eyes and her lip trembled. Then she exhaled as if she had been waiting on me to ask her that very question.

  “We had no choice, my love,” she sadly explained. “When your father left, he did not know about you. I did not know about you yet either. You were just a tiny little bean in Mama’s belly. Your Baba, your grandfather, he was furious when we learned about you, so he sent me away. I was alone and cold on the streets, and I needed to be somewhere safe with food to keep you safe and growing. That’s when I met Chandra.”

  Chandra was my mother’s best friend at the chakala. She had been family to me before tuberculosis took her from this world when I was eight.

  “Chandra introduced me to the chakala. There is no chance of work or opportunity for a young, unwed, pregnant mother in Kolkata. The chakala was the only place we could go.”

  I understood what she said, but it was the first time she spoke of Baba openly.

  “Where is Baba now, Mama? Could he have changed his mind?” I inquired.

  She closed her eyes and a single tear fell from her cheek.

  “No, sweet girl, Baba was taken from this world when you were only two years old. My Mama passed when I was a girl. So there is nobody else.”

  “Well why did my father leave? Where is he now?” I asked.

  “My love, your father had to leave. He had to go back to America. And some day, some day soon, I will tell him about you, and then he will come for you. But I am selfish, and I want you for as long as I can have you. Because my life without you is no life at all.”

  Well, this was news to me.

  “You mean he still doesn’t know about me, Mama? He could have come and taken both of us from this horrid place.” I said, my voice going a few octaves higher than I normally would speak to my mother.

  “Hush love. He will find out in time. In the meantime, let’s have dinner and then finish up this book. What chapter are we on love?”

  We had started The Count of Monte Cristo a few nights earlier.

  And just like that the subject was closed.

  A year passed and suddenly I was thirteen. I began to develop and go through puberty. This made the chakala a very dangerous place for me.

  At this point I was barely allowed to leave our room. I had begun writing in my journals and sharing my thoughts, which helped with the loneliness.

  Mama had gotten sick and I knew she needed the doctor. She kept brushing me off and telling me that she was fine, but I could see that she was not fine.

  Her color, normally olive and a beautiful golden tan, had turned ashen. She had deep circles under her eyes and all she did was cough and hack. She said it was just a virus and that it would pass. I didn’t believe her.

  There was a clinic a few miles away that I knew I could get to, but I would have to sneak out to get to it.

  Mama lay on our straw mattress but didn’t sleep.

  “Asha, love, come lay with me” she rasped, her voice ragged and rough.

  I went and laid next to her. If this would help her get to sleep so I could get to the doctor I would do it.

  She hacked into her handkerchief. “Asha, love, do you know what your name means?”

  I nodded. “Hope.”

  “Yes, love, it means hope. You gave my life hope. You are my hope for the world. You can do amazing, world-changing things, love. You are hope. Please don’t ever forget that.”

  “Mama, stop talking like that. You make it sound like I am leaving you. I told you I will never leave you.” My voice was strained.

  She nodded into my hair and closed her eyes. Her breathing, though ragged and hoarse, began to even out. I waited a few minutes then slipped out of the bed and began my trek to the clinic.

  I tiptoed out of our room and down the hallway. The tiles beneath my feet were cracked and filthy.

  The air was muggy and smoke filled. Aati, one of the women who lived there, sat perched on the top step of the stairs smoking a cigarette. Her sari was ripped to shreds, barely covering her body. Her long legs peeking from beneath it had long bruises running down them. Aati was one of the women who marketed herself to men who liked to inflict pain. Mama said that if the men who visited her were demons, then the ones who visited Aati were the devil.

  “Namaste, Aati” I said politely as I passed her going down the stairs.

  “Namaste, Asha” she replied, her voice flat and with no emotion.

  I quickly descended down the stairs, grabbing my shoes which sat next to the front door, slipping them on quickly as I went outside.

  I hesitated for a moment. It had begun to get dark and I knew that going out so late in this area was a bad idea. I knew, but I also knew that this was possibly my only chance to get to the clinic.

  So I pushed the danger out of my mind, popping my headphones on my ears, pressing play, and letting the sounds of The Smashing Pumpkins drown out the sounds of the city streets.

  I didn’t hear him behind me because of my music. I didn’t hear his catcalls and lewd comments because I was too busy tuning everything out with the singular goal of getting to the clinic.

  So when his hands — his greasy, calloused hands — grabbed me by my shoulders and turned me around, I hadn’t heard him.

  I shrieked and yanked off my headphones.

  “Aap kyaa chahate ho?” (What do you want?) I exclaimed.

  His hair was matted down the sides of his face and when he laughed he smelled of stale smoke and liquor. He had almost no teeth and his lips were cracked.

  “Tsk, tsk, tsk,” he chided before jerking me into the alley and tossing me against the wall.

  I kicked at him to no avail. I was petite, he was a large man. Even when I made contact he just laughed at me.

  “Aap kyaa chahate ho!?” I screamed again.

  He laughed again and then ran his nose against my cheek.

  “Keval turn dekhate jao,” (Just you wait,) he breathed crudely into my ear.

  His hand then began trailing up my leg and thigh. I shook and cried, my whimpers making no difference in his intention.

  I continued kicking and squirming and fighting to get away, determined to fight.

  He reached his hand back and punched me square in the nose. Blood poured and I faltered, dizzy.

  He held one hand over my mouth, used his other hand to push down his pants, and then ripped my sari.

  My eyes widened despite my dizziness and I screamed louder. His hand did its job and muffled my screams.

  He laughed and then thrust himself inside me, destroying a lot more than my virginity in the process.

  I passed out.

  I stood shakily, wiping the blood from my face with the side of my hand. My hands were shaking and my legs were sore and weak.

  Was I in shock? I don’t know. I just knew t
hat I had to get to the clinic. I could deal with this later. Mama was what mattered.

  I walked out of the alley as they rolled the cart out of the front courtyard of the chakala. A sheet lay over the cart, outlining a body.

  My world stopped. I felt gravity holding me in place. I didn’t realize I was screaming until Aati began to shake me.

  I looked at her, but I could hardly see her through the tears that were flowing freely down my face.

  She grabbed me and held me close to her. “Mujhe afsos hai,” (I’m sorry,) she said softly.

  “Ah Beti, Asha. Mujhe afsos hai,” (My dear, Asha. I’m sorry,) Mausee said while rocking me. She was comforting me. I hadn’t even realized that I had begun to cry.

  I shook loose of her. I would not accept this comfort.

  “No! Do not comfort me,” I said firmly, though my hands were shaking.

  She pursed her lips and sighed. She patted my knee and sat down next to me on the window seat.

  “You speak good English,” she said softly.

  My eyes darted to her. This was the first time she had spoken to me in English.

  I nodded. “My mother and I only spoke in English.”

  She nodded, looking at me with endearment.

  “Your mother sounds like she loved you very much.” She said.

  I nodded, but dared not to speak because I knew my voice would fail me and I would crack again.

  I pulled my knees up to my chest again and began to once again run my toes along the tiles of the window seat.

  The door opened to the left of me but I didn’t turn to look. Mausee looked up and a twinkle appeared in her eyes.

  “Asha, look,” she said to me, pointing to the door.

  I shook my head and continued to look out of the window. I didn’t care what entertainment they had brought up today. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

  Suddenly a hand touched my back. I recoiled then jerked and looked up at whoever dared to touch me.

  I inhaled sharply.

  The man standing in front of me was a tall, brown-haired white man with piercing blue eyes the color of a beautiful clear sky.

  I had only ever seen those eyes in the mirror.