Sister of My Heart by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
That veil seems to have frozen into gold ice between me and Anju. After Sunil returned to America and she went back to the mothers—she never did tell me why—I called several times to ask how she was. I would sense in her pauses and her broken-off replies that she missed Sunil, that she longed to talk about him. Yet if I asked how he was faring, all alone in America, she answered curtly, as though she did not trust me with the details of her husband’s life. We would end up speaking inanities—weather, food, films—the way we had vowed never to. After I hung up I wanted to cry. I wanted to hate Sunil with his easy American charm. Sunil who had whirled his way into our lives, as thoughtless as a tornado. But how could I when my cousin’s happiness was so intertwined with his? I wanted to demand of God if this was my reward for giving up my happiness for Anju’s sake. But that was a foolish question. I did what I needed to. Being rewarded had nothing to do with it.
But today as I lean into the window bars, I’ve put those old sorrows away. I am so excited I cannot sit still. A song rises into my mouth and I hum it softly, so as not to wake Ramesh. Yesterday, after a long silence, Anju called to tell me that her visa had arrived, that she would leave for America in three weeks. I could feel her exhilaration throbbing through the phone cord. A frost-knife twisted in my gut. My dear cousin, how far she would be going from everything familiar. From me. I prayed that she would be satisfied with what she found on the other side of the world.
“Please come to Bardhaman so we can be together one last time before you go,” I begged.
Anju hesitated. I could hear her thinking up an excuse, as she had done every time I invited her. But finally, uncertainly, she agreed. She is coming today. My heart shakes with the joy of it. But I am also a little afraid. What will she see when she looks at my new household with her clever, critical eye? At the new me?
ALL THROUGH the train journey to Bardhaman I’m sweaty and uncomfortable and angry with myself. Why couldn’t I just have told Sudha I was too busy? It’s going to be terribly awkward, both of us trying to find safe topics to discuss, tiptoeing around Sunil’s name as if it’s a lake of drowning sand waiting to suck us in, like in Pishi’s stories.
The first-class compartment is stuffed to bursting with all kinds of people—passengers and beggars and vendors selling everything from sugar-dipped candy to magic cures. Most of them are traveling without the benefit of a ticket. This upsets my sense of justice and makes me feel put upon. I glare at the old woman squatting by my feet beside a basket of smelly, squawking chickens. She scratches her armpit and gives me a betel-juice-stained grin.
The mothers hadn’t wanted me to travel by train. They’d arranged for Singhji to drive me down, but I’d refused. I was old enough to travel by myself, I said. It was only a few hours by train. Singhji would drop me off at the station and Sudha would pick me up at the other end. What could be safer? And hadn’t they themselves said, all these years, that once I was a married woman, they’d no longer have to worry about my reputation?
“I’m concerned because you’ve never traveled anywhere alone,” Mother said. “And the trains get terribly crowded,” said Pishi. They looked so distressed that I was about to give in when Aunt N piped up, “There you go, being difficult as always, always insisting on your own way. What’s your father-in-law going to say if he hears we bought you a ticket and put you on public transportation, like a common servant girl?”
Mention of my father-in-law put me into a foul mood, and I argued and argued (wasn’t I going to America in less than a month? And how would I learn to travel alone unless I traveled alone?) until Mother said, Fine, if that’s what I wanted I could have it. So now I sit here smelling like chicken droppings, with no one to blame but myself.
Finally the train lurches to a stop at Bardhaman. My clothes are stuck to my back, my eyes red from engine smoke. I step down, fully prepared to be disagreeble. But when I see Sudha, her face bright with a simple, generous joy, the walls I’d set up so carefully collapse around me like a house of cards. Inside my heart it feels wet, like new rain. I drop my bags and throw my arms around her. In spite of all my insecurities, in spite of the oceans that’ll be between us soon and the men that are between us already, I can never stop loving Sudha. It’s my habit, and it’s my fate.
I dislike the house as soon as I see it. There’s something ominous about the hulking brick structure that makes me shiver as I stand before a door massive enough to keep out whole armies of invaders—or is it designed to keep people in? I hear the grate of a bolt, the door swings open, and I’m face-to-face with Mrs. Sanyal.
Years later I’ll think back on this, our first real meeting, and try to reconstruct what I saw. It would be hard to keep the details from being colored by what came afterward, but this much I’ll be sure of: Though Mrs. Sanyal is most pleasant, when she looks at me I feel a focused intensity in her gaze, like a ray of sun through a magnifying glass, as if she’s trying to figure out whether I’m a good influence on her daughter-in-law, or a bad one.
“Come in, dear Anju,” she says. Behind her there’s an enormous wall panel carved with fierce-looking figures, clawed and weaponed. She sees me staring at them and smiles. “They’re yakshas. They guard our house. Come in, come in. I’m glad you’re finally here!” I’m about to thank her when she adds, “Ever since she knew you were coming, Natun Bau’s been so excited she hasn’t been able to concentrate on a thing!”
The rebuke beneath the pleasant words is quite clear. I cast a quick glance at Sudha to see how she’ll handle it and am baffled to see her smiling. When she replies, I hear only respectful affection in her voice. “I know, Mother. I’ve been no help to you at all. But now that Anju’s actually here, I’m sure to do better.”
As Sudha leads me upstairs to an oppressively large guest room crowded with oppressively large furniture, I wonder, didn’t she hear what I heard? Or have I grown overly sensitive because of Sunil’s father-in-law?
Below us, Mrs. Sanyal calls sweetly, “Natun Bau dear, once you settle your cousin, don’t forget it’s almost time to start rolling out the rutis for dinner.”
Throughout the visit, little things bite at me like ants. The way Sudha serves the family at dinnertime, even Ramesh’s younger brothers, cleaning up their spills and removing their dirty dishes. The way her smile doesn’t falter when one of the boys pushes away his plate, telling her—the cheeky brat—that the fish curry didn’t turn out right. The way, whenever Mrs. Sanyal calls her, she drops what she’s doing—even abandoning me in the middle of a conversation with an apologetic “Why don’t you rest for a while, Anju”—to go to her.
But what bothers me most is that Sudha’s so determinedly cheerful. It’s not that I want her to be unhappy. But this bustling young woman who does everything so well—from supervising the maid as she milks the cows, to putting out quilts in the sun, to frying fresh singaras for Ramesh’s brothers when they get home from school—isn’t the dreamer I’ve admired and been exasperated by, loved and wanted to protect. Can she really have cut Ashok so cleanly out of her heart, like a cancerous growth? Or is she hiding something from me?
One afternoon, sitting under the neem tree in the courtyard while Sudha mends Ramesh’s socks, I ask her if she doesn’t get tired of all the work she’s made to do. “Why is it you that has to count out the dirty clothes for the dhobi and then count the clean clothes he brings back? Why is it you who has to make up the market list each day and hand out the spices for grinding and cut the vegetables for lunch and dinner? Why is it always you who runs up to the terrace to check on the—”
“But, Anju,” says Sudha, looking at me with amusement, “no one makes me do anything. I like helping my mother-in-law. After all, she’s getting old and frail, and has worked so hard all her life—”
To me, Mrs. Sanyal looked tough as alligator hide and fit enough to outlast us both by decades. But Sudha always did have a tendency to see only what she wanted.
“The servants do all the heavy work, but you know how it
Oh my princess of the snake palace, is this what you’ve dwindled into?
I try once more. “Doesn’t it bother you that Ramesh is always going off to faraway places, leaving you alone with his family?”
Sudha shrugs. “He can’t help his job, and they’re my family too. Besides, when he’s here, he’s so kind, I have nothing to complain about.”
I want to shake the platitudes from her mouth. Is kindness enough to satisfy you, as if you’re a stray dog? I want to say. Forget Ashok, but what about your other passions? Your own clothing design business? Taffetas and silks and satins and eyelet lace?
Is this what marriage is, this settling for the mediocre? The thought terrifies me.
A dappled sunlight falls over Sudha as she picks up a ripped pant belonging to one of the boys and continues her mending. Her stitches are neat and precise. Is it a trick of the dusty afternoon light that her face seems suddenly far away, like an anemone at the bottom of the sea which might disappear in a swirl of sand if the current changes even a little?
It strikes me that that’s how fragile her happiness is.
What right do I have to judge my cousin for the ways she’s chosen in order to survive? What right do I have to be disappointed because she no longer sees herself as the heroine of a romantic tale? Who am I to say that small joys are less valuable than a passion which shatters your life?
And so, for the rest of my visit, I focus on what we have. We talk about the mothers and the old house, all the great times we’ve had there. I compliment Sudha on the new dishes she’s learned to make, and ask for second helpings. When Ramesh goes out of town I sleep with her in her big bed, and when she falls asleep, I press my face into the cloud of hair spread over her pillow and breathe in the smell, so that I’ll carry it with me to America. When it’s time to leave we hold each other for a long time. Marriage has complicated our lives, divided our loyalties, set us on our different wifely orbits. Revealed things we must keep from each other. Never again could we live together the way we did in our girlhood, that time of simple and absolute raptures. It would be too dangerous.
But no matter how far we travel from each other, our hearts will always be inseparable.
When Singhji picks me up at Howrah station, I lean back against the familiar cushioned seat and close my eyes. The childhood journeys I took in this car were so much simpler, though then I hadn’t recognized them as such. Tears are seeping from under my eyelids. It’s not simply the sorrow of parting—surely that wouldn’t leave me with this sense of prickly dread. Little images explode against my eyelids, getting all mixed up. When just the three of us were out for a walk, Ramesh put his arm around Sudha. But when Mrs. Sanyal’s around, he hardly even looks at her. The bowl of chutney Sunil’s father threw at his mother, how it arced through the air, staining it a dejected brown. The day a neighbor lady brought over her little grandchild, Mrs. Sanyal smiled her hard smile and said, Soon I’ll have one to show you too. Sunil’s eyes had glittered like light on the edge of a knife when he fought with his father. Drinking and whoring, don’t think the stories didn’t get back to me. Later in bed he hadn’t bothered to deny the accusations.
“Is something wrong with Sudha Didi?” Singhji’s voice makes me jump. In all these years, I don’t remember him ever initiating a conversation. Against the darkness of his beard, his scarred face looks paler than usual. Of course he’d be concerned! He always did have a special bond with Sudha, a conspiratorial friendship, right from the time he’d stop the car so she could give away her lunch sweets. And he’d taken some big risks to help her with Ashok. I wish I’d been more thoughtful and agreed to have him drive me to Bardhaman. Now he probably won’t have the chance to see her for a long time because Mrs. Sanyal didn’t believe in Natun Bau going to too many places.
“She’s just fine,” I assure him. “Everyone in her new home likes her.”
“They are lucky to have her.” He nods his head with emphasis, then adds, kindly, “And your new family is lucky too.”
Impulsively I ask, “Singhji, do you think we’re going to be happy in our husbands’ houses?” Immediately, I’m irritated with myself. What can I expect this old man to say except the meaningless traditional responses: Of course, or I’ll pray for it.
But I’m wrong. “You must make your own happiness, Anju Didi,” Singhji says with a passion that takes me aback. “You must be wise enough to recognize it when it comes. And if it doesn’t come in spite of all your efforts, you must do something about that as well.”
I want to ask what one can do to capture a truant happiness, but we’re at the gate already, and at the end of the worn driveway, under the cracked marble of the entry arch, I see the mothers waiting, their tense, eager faces like lights flickering in a gale.
SOMETIMES WHEN I realize that over three years have passed since I placed the wedding garland around Ramesh’s neck, I cannot quite believe it. My days have such a sameness to them, a hypnotic placidity, like a pool into which nothing ever falls, leaf or stone or human life. I float on this pool. I know I am needed; I know I am liked. And so I am not unhappy.
Even sex with Ramesh—for after a few months, one night he put his hand on my breast and I let him, it was his right after all, and he’d been patient enough—is only a minor inconvenience. For I have discovered that if I try hard enough, I can shut down my mind while things are being done to my body.
I’m glad to know from Anju’s letters that her life is very different from mine. The quiet rhythms of my existence would have driven her to desperation—I saw that even in the brief space of her visit. Her restlessness, though she tried hard to hide it, made me restless as well. It affected the others too. The boys were more demanding than usual, and Ramesh quieter. And my mother-in-law, who is usually busy with her own work, would come by a dozen times on the merest of pretexts, almost as though she were keeping an eye on Anju and me. And so when it was time for Anju to leave I was sad, but not unhappy. Much as I loved her, she reminded me of all the things I had chosen to give up.
So perhaps it is best that now all we have of each other are our letters. Letters are so much more comfortable, so much less complicated than people. In them the world can be reduced to an inch-wide window, can be idealized like a touched-up photograph. This is truer of my letters than Anju’s, which vibrate with all her feelings and opinions. But since they are reduced to the rectangular white silence of paper, I can enjoy them without worrying about whom she might offend with her frankness.
Even then there are problems. In Ramesh’s family, the day’s mail is passed out at dinner. My heart starts beating fast as soon as I glimpse, among the bills and boys’ magazines and advertisements for Ayurvedic remedies, the blue aerogram from America. When it is handed to me, I glance through it very quickly, only taking in half, because in a minute my mother-in-law will ask how Anju is getting along. From her cool, clipped tones I know she feels I should show her the letter. But no matter how much I want her approval, I cannot do that. It’s something I promised Anju during her visit.
At night, after everyone has gone to bed, I go into the bathroom. I switch on the dim bulb and lean against the water tank to read the letter one last time, slowly, intensely, trying to commit every word to memory. Through the rustle of the sheet, I can hear Anju’s eager voice trying to show me her world. I picture the bedroom she has decorated with the silk bedspread we bought together at the Maidan fair, the vase of bulrushes she and Sunil picked during a hike, the Chinese dinner they had last weekend. I try out the delicious, exotic syllables, chow fun, mu shu, braised tofu, delighted that she is experiencing so many brave new things. In my reply I address her as Anju, mistress of chopsticks. On the day she writes that she has started taking classes at her local college, and describes for me the strange American chairs with little desktops attached to them, I weep for joy.
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Today the household is in a flurry, because Ramesh’s Aunt Tarini, his late father’s sister, has come to visit us from Bahrampur. She has brought with her a retinue consisting of her oldest son and his bride of six months, her ayah, her chauffeur, her doctor, and various impoverished female relatives who serve as her confidantes and spies. My mother-in-law is determined to impress them all, even if it kills her.
It is a rivalry that goes back decades, Ramesh has told me, to the time when my mother-in-law was a new bride in this house, and Aunt Tarini (just a girl herself) had wrinkled up her nose and said, “Oh my, is this the jewelry your father gave you for your wedding? Why, even our maidservants wear better things!” My mother-in-law did not come from a rich family—her father had been forced to mortgage his house to raise her dowry—and Aunt Tarini’s insult had lodged in a deep place inside her, festering. Years later when Aunt Tarini’s husband took a mistress and moved into a separate house, she’d been heard to remark that she understood perfectly why the poor man behaved as he did. To which Aunt Tarini retorted that at least she hadn’t driven her husband to the cremation ground.