The Bones of Grace by Tahmima Anam Read Free Book Online

on for an extra few seconds by way of apology, and I promised to keep in touch. I took out my phone and dialled your number, but there was no reply. I thought I’d sit under one of the big oak trees in the Quad for a few moments before trying you again, but when I went through the double doors, dragging the suitcase behind me, there you were on the steps. You had removed your jacket and rolled up the sleeves of your shirt, and for a brief moment I imagined you making loveto your Indian girlfriend and how your forearms would have straddled her body and how she must so desperately miss those forearms, in fact, was probably thinking about them at this moment, that she and I must be having the same dream, and how much she would hate me for being closer to your forearms than she, thousands of miles away in Delhi. Poor girl. Poor Delhi.
    â€˜Are you all right?’ I asked. You passed me a pamphlet, printed on craggy recycled paper. Clementine Alexandra Rowena Morris. Cartographer, Adventurer, Poet, Activist, Mother, Dancer, Artist .
    The day had cracked open, the sidewalks shimmering in the heat. We walked in silence, struggling with the upward slope of Mass Ave as it neared the wider streets of Somerville. You stopped to look in the window of an origami shop and we discussed paper, and folding, and cranes, then we turned into a side street, and you led me to a pale yellow house with rocking chairs on the porch and wilting daffodils in the front yard. The sort of house I had walked by many times, Obama posters in the window, the smell of laundry and Thanksgiving, modest, Protestant, indifferently grand.
    The door was open. A few people stood on the porch, and, as we approached, one of them waved and called out your name. I saw a tall man with wide shoulders and a square, friendly face who shook my hand and introduced himself as your uncle, and as we passed through the front door and more guests said hello and patted you on the back, you took my hand and guided me through. People’s shoes were noisy on the wooden floorboards and their voices rose up to the high, white ceiling. The house was bright and frayed and bigger than it had seemed from the outside. We entered a room at the back with tall windows and double doors that opened onto the garden beyond.Immediately you pointed out a woman who you said was your mother. She was slim under long, loose layers of black and dark grey, with tousled hair and a pair of eyes that matched yours in warmth and colour. You told her my name and she smiled distractedly and asked me to make myself at home. I gripped your arm, and we turned towards an older woman with a narrow face. She held out a thin hand, the bones close to the surface, and you told me she was your great-aunt.
    â€˜Hello,’ she said. ‘I’m Autumn, Clementine’s sister.’ Her voice was reedy and English.
    â€˜Zubaida Bashir. It’s lovely to meet you.’
    â€˜I met Zubaida last night, at the Shostakovich,’ you said.
    Autumn asked me if I was a musician. Although they must be around the same age, she could not have been less like my grandmother. Nanu had fewer lines around her eyes, but in her manner she was much older, her ironed saris, the pearl necklace she always wore around her neck, and Autumn, though her face was craggy and she had a slight tremor in her hands, appeared as though she took long walks in the snow. I told her I was no musician, but a palaeontologist.
    â€˜Fossils! You know, Elijah’s great-great-great-grandfather was the original Indiana Jones.’
    Of course he was. I looked around me now, at all the people in black dresses and suits. On a sofa that faced the garden, three men who looked almost identical to each other and to you were crowded together, playing Scrabble. They must be your brothers. I realised I didn’t even know which one you were in order of age, but, even as I asked myself the question, I knew you must be the youngest. Ezekiel,