Sister of My Heart by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
“I know that,” I interrupt impatiently. “Ma told me that already. But how’s your mother-in-law treating you? And your husband.”
“Ramesh has been wonderful. Last night he promised me he’d go and see the doctor and do whatever is necessary, and already this morning he’s set up an appointment with him. But we aren’t going to tell my mother-in-law any of this.”
I guess that answers both my questions.
“Has she been pressuring you a lot? Does that bother you? Do you even want a child right now? I know I don’t—and fortunately, Sunil doesn’t care either way.”
“Oh, Anju!” Sudha breathes into the phone. I haven’t heard that tone in her voice since the time—how long ago it seems—when she used to tell me about Ashok. “I want a baby more than anything else in the world. Your life is different. You’ve got college, and Sunil. Who do I have to love, to call my own?”
I hear my bedroom door open. Sunil comes into the room. I scowl at him to indicate that I want him to leave. He ignores me and starts rummaging in the dresser drawer.
“I do wish my mother-in-law didn’t feel so strongly about it, though. I can see how important it is to her, but it makes me so tense that—”
I wait, but that’s all Sudha will say. How can I break through that cactus fence of foolish loyalty she’s built around her?
“Perhaps you and Ramesh can go somewhere together, just by yourselves, like a little holiday?”
“Anju!” Sudha starts laughing, but it’s not a happy sound. “You’ve really forgotten how things are in a joint family, haven’t you? I can just see my mother-in-law smiling sweetly and waving good-bye as Ramesh and I drive off into the sunset, like in your American movies!”
Stupid me. She’s right. But I won’t give up so easily.
“Why don’t I speak to Ramesh for a minute? Maybe I can persuade him—”
Sudha’s very quiet. Have I upset her by suggesting I can succeed with her husband where she can’t? But when she speaks, it’s about something so different that it shocks me.
“Anju, remember the bus stop at the corner of Rani Rashmoni Road, the one we passed every day on our way back from school? Well, this morning Singhji took Ramesh and me for a drive that way, and I thought I saw—he was wearing a white shirt—just like—”
There’s a loud clatter as Sunil drops something, and Sudha breaks off abruptly.
I place my hand over the mouthpiece and glare at Sunil. “Can I please have a little privacy?” I whisper angrily. He glares back at me, looks pointedly at his watch, and leaves, slamming the door. Oh, he’s going to be one sorry guy as soon as I get off the phone.
“Sudha,” I say, carefully. I’m stepping on unsure ground here, speaking things perhaps better left unsaid. “Are you sure it was him? Did it upset you? Do you want to talk about it?” But the moment is lost.
“I can handle Ramesh,” Sudha says. Her voice is cool and slightly tinged with displeasure. She picks up our earlier conversation so smoothly, it’s as though I imagined what she said a moment back. Then her voice deepens with concern of a different kind. “It’s Gouri Ma you need to have a serious talk with. This morning I ran into her on the upstairs landing. She’d just climbed up, and her face was white and she was panting. It scared me. You know how her doctor suggested an operation even before our wedding—well, I think she shouldn’t put it off any longer. Don’t listen to her excuses, although I’m sure, knowing Gouri Ma, that she’ll have some good ones.”
“Sudha,” I say, “Wait, first tell me—”
But she’s slipped away already, without the answers I want so badly, Sudha, who’s learned a new elusiveness. So I spend the rest of the call arguing with my mother, who’s even more stubborn than I am.
Sunil and I never do have that fight.
When I speak to her, my mother says she doesn’t want the doctors cutting her up. She would rather die in peace, in her own home, when the time comes.
“And when it does, no doctor can save me anyway. I’m beginning to believe what they say in our holy books, that the moment of our death is written by the Bidhata Purush on our foreheads as soon as we are born. Why spend the little money we have, money that your Pishi and Aunt Nalini can live on, trying to stretch out my life? I’ve lived long enough and done all I needed to. Now that you’re happily settled, I’m ready to move on.”
The finality in her voice frightens me. It’s too serene, too fatalistic. Not like the mother I know. It’s as though, while I was caught up in my American life, she’d been loosening the ties that held her to this world. Any moment now she’ll cast off the last one and go spinning off into space.
When I hang up, I bury my face in the pillow and weep. I think of my sick mother, my beleaguered cousin, my husband who’s probably hunched in front of his computer, lost in cyberspace. Or maybe he’s taken the car and gone off somewhere in his anger. How quick and eager I was to come so far from my family, not knowing how much I was giving up, and how little I would gain. I’m like one of those ghosts in Pishi’s tales who can see disaster coming to her dear ones but is unable to intervene. She shouts out warnings, and they hear only the wind moaning in the bamboos. She puts out her ghostly arms to hold them back from misfortune, but they walk right through her, because even in their memories she’s no more substantial than fog.
At lunchtime Sunil comes looking for me. When he sees my swollen face and red eyes, he bites back whatever he was intending to say. He brings me a cool, wet towel and a couple of aspirin—he knows crying always gives me the worst headache. He holds me like one would hold a child who’s had a nightmare and rubs my back and tells me he’s there for me if I want to talk. When I shake my head, he nods equably. A few minutes later I hear him on the phone, ordering takeout Chinese from the Golden Dragon, my favorite restaurant. When the food arrives, he sets it out on trays and brings it to the bed, fragrant steam rising from the little red and white containers of fried rice and chow mein and Kung Pao chicken. He fills a plate and hands it to me and starts telling me about a funny incident at work. Like a child I allow myself to be consoled by food and warmth, the voice of a loved one and his touch. We sit back against propped-up pillows, and as I eat I snuggle into Sunil’s shoulder. The monsters haven’t gone. I know that. They’re waiting, under the bed, in the closet. But I don’t have to deal with them until it’s dark, until loneliness oozes up again around me like river mud.
MY BRIEF RESPITE passes in the sighing of a single breath, and already it is time for us to return to Bardhaman. I go for a last walk in the garden and see with sorrow how overgrown it is, the weeds spilling onto the graveled driveway, the mansa cactus pushing up its thorny leaves through the few remaining roses. The new owner of the bookstore never did pay the mothers fully, in spite of a court battle, and for a long time there hasn’t been enough money to hire a mali. Pishi tells me in her letters that Singhji does what he can with the garden, but it is obviously too much for him to handle.
I pull dead flowers and yellowing leaves from a jasmine bush and think of Singhji. He too has aged more than he should have in just four years. When he climbs out from the driver’s seat, it takes him a moment to straighten up. After money became a problem, Gouri Ma decided she would sell the car. She broke the news to Singhji as gently as she could. Much as they hated it, she said, they’d have to let him go. But Singhji refused to hear of it.
“You can try to sell that old metal pile—I doubt you’ll get much for it,” he said with a great frown, “but you can’t get rid of me so easily! You’re the only family I’ve known for more than twenty years. How can I leave you now, when you’re all alone? And where would I go anyway? I’m too old to start over in some rich upstart’s household, to put up with their kicks and curses.”
“But I don’t have the money to pay you, Singhji,” Gouri Ma said.
“I don’t need a salary. I saved a good bit of what you paid me over the years—being a single man, what expenses did I have? It’ll keep me till God sees fit to call me to Him.”
>
Mother had agreed happily, but Gouri Ma would not hear of it. They argued back and forth until Pishi suggested that Singhji give up his rented room and stay full-time in the gateman’s cottage. They’d take care of his meals as well. So he moved his few belongings over, and each day, morning and evening, Ramur Ma took over a covered tray of food for him, grumbling all the way. But deep down she was happy about it, as were the mothers. It was a relief, Pishi confided to me, to have a man around the house again—and such a handy one, too, who always knew how to repair a leak or fix a broken hinge on a window.
I decide suddenly that I’ll go see Singhji. But maybe it is not such a sudden decision. Maybe it has been growing in me since this morning, when Singhji took us for a ride along the old roads we used to travel as girls, and I thought I caught a glimpse, a figure in a white shirt out of a dream, and looking into the rearview mirror, I met Singhji’s sharp, knowing eyes.
“Sudha beti,” says Singhji, opening the door so quickly that I wonder if he has been waiting for my knock. He is dressed already in a crisp kurta pajama set and an immaculate white turban—he is to drive us to Bardhaman in a little while—and beyond his shoulder I see that his room is clean and spare, like himself. In his ravaged face his eyes light up in a pleasure so heartfelt that I am ashamed that I did not come to see him earlier. And now that I am here, it is purely to satisfy my own selfish need.
Singhji brings a stool. I am touched by the meticulous way in which he takes a small towel and wipes it before motioning for me to sit. Is this how it’s always going to be in my life, love and caring denied to me where I expect them, and given when I am not looking?
I want to express my appreciation, but there is no time for courtesies. “Was it him?” I ask bluntly.
“Yes.” The smallest of words, but enough to throw my heart off the course I had charted so carefully for it.
“But how?” I whisper.
“He knew you’d be coming. He’s been in touch with me. We meet every month. He asks for news of you.”
My palms are sweating. My pendulum heart swings from wild happiness to consternation. “What have you said?”
“Everything.”
The staccato reply brings heat to my cheeks. Perhaps it is just that Ashok should know all my humiliations. That he should have the comfort of saying, See what happened to her because—Still, I feel betrayed. “You shouldn’t have told him anything,” I say accusingly. “Why did you?”
“Because he’s waiting for you.”
“What do you mean?” My hands are shaking. My stomach feels as though I am on a runaway train.
“He hasn’t married. He still loves you. He told me to tell you that he didn’t mean what he wrote in that first angry letter. He wishes all will turn out well for you. But if you ever need him, he’ll be there. Oh, beti—” A sigh shakes Singhji. “If only you’d listened to me and gone away with him.”
I close my eyes against the sharp pain of what might have been. I want to ask Singhji how Ashok looks. If he is well. Are his eyes the same? His blunt-cut, responsible fingernails? The smell of his hair, like sunlight and smoke?
But that is the way to only more unhappiness. And danger.
Outside I hear Pishi calling, “Sudha! Sudha! Where has that girl disappeared to?”
“Here,” says Singhji, handing me an envelope. “He sent you this. If you want to send back a message, I will take it.”
There’s no time to read, so I fold it up and thrust it into my blouse. So many words are whirling in my foolish, greedy heart. I push them all back. “Tell him to marry,” I say. “Tell him to forget me.”
“Might as well tell the ocean not to throw itself on the rocks,” says Singhji dryly.
Halfway through the journey back to Bardhaman, I cannot bear it anymore. I say I have to use the bathroom. In the ill-lit, foul-smelling toilet of a roadside dhaba, I tear open the envelope. There is only one line written on the sheet inside. Come with me. My heart hammers so hard, I have to hold on to the wall. I fold the sheet, hide it in my blouse, and splash water on my face. Still, my cheeks burn, and when I come out Ramesh asks in concern if I am coming down with something. I keep my eyes closed the rest of the trip, telling Ramesh my head hurts. The car lurches over potholes. Ramesh’s arm around my shoulders grows to an unbearable weight. Ashok’s words are searing themselves against my eyelids. I allow myself a small thrill of hope. I could run away, yes. My mother-in-law would be happy, Ramesh would forget me soon enough, and Anju is so far away that even the farthest ripple of my action cannot touch her, especially since—my mother gleefully informed me of this—Sunil and his father are not on speaking terms. Would my act be evil, or good? I am not sure, and I am not sure I care. Live for yourself this one time, my heart sings. And the child I long for so much, who is to say I cannot have that child with Ashok? Then it would be a doubly loved child, doubly precious, because it belonged to both me and him.
The car groans to a halt in front of my in-laws’ house. I am surprised when I open my eyes to find that the day has turned dark. Rust-colored clouds hang over the brick building. The ominous heaviness of the afternoon light—as though a storm is rising— emphasizes the hard contours of the house and makes me reluctant to go in.
I must say something to Singhji—though what I have not decided. Maybe I can speak to him while Ramesh is supervising the unloading of our baggage. But before I get a chance, my mother-in-law comes bustling out. From the newly starched sari she’s wearing, I can tell she is about to go somewhere. I give an inward sigh of relief. That will allow me to take refuge in bed and think things through.
“Ah, here you are finally!” she says. “How is it you’re so late?” She throws an accusing glance at Singhji. “I’ve been waiting and waiting. I was afraid the auspicious hour would pass, but luckily you got here just in time.”
My brain feels stiff and cramped, like my legs. What is she talking about?
“Come on, Natun Bau.” It’s telling, I think, as she grabs my hand, that she still calls me New Wife, though it has been almost five years now. Perhaps to her I will never shed my newness to become a true part of this household. She pulls me to the other side of the courtyard, where I see the family car and chauffeur are waiting. “There’s no time for dawdling. We’ve got to start right away.”
“But, Mother,” Ramesh protests as he follows us. “Where are you taking Sudha? She hasn’t been feeling well. She needs to rest—”
I blush to hear the caring in his voice. If only he knew what I had been thinking in the car, while he held me so tenderly.
“She’ll be fine!” says my mother-in-law in a testy voice. “Stop fussing over her and go drink some cha. I’m taking her to Goddess Shashti’s shrine in Belapur.”
“What shrine is that? I’ve never even heard of it!” Ramesh is displeased too, and for a moment I think he will put out his hand and pull me away from his mother. “I don’t think Sudha should go anywhere right now—”
“There’s a lot you haven’t heard of, my boy. While you were wasting time in Calcutta, I’ve been making inquiries. The goddess is very powerful. All kinds of women have had babies after visiting her. I’ve already contacted the priest, but in order for it to do us any good, we must get there during the auspicious hour, before the sun sets.”
And before I can say anything to Ramesh or to Singhji, she’s pushed me into the car and nodded to the driver. The engine clanks to life, the car sputters, raising clouds of dust, and we are on our way.
Soon we’ve turned onto a mud road which winds through coconut palms and ponds filled with mosquito plants. It is a road I do not know, taking us deep into the rural landscape, bamboo forests and fields of mustard flowers, abandoned wells beside crumbling huts, taking us westward to where the sun glares at us from a tear in a black cloud.
“Pray, Natun Bau,” says my mother-in-law. “Pray to the goddess for a son.” She is still holding on to my wrist. Her nails bite my flesh, and her lips move feverishly all the way to
the shrine of the goddess of childbirth.
I walk by myself down the dark, winding corridor to the inner courtyard of Shashti’s shrine. Only the actual supplicants—the childless wives—are allowed in here, for which fact I’m immensely thankful, because it means my mother-in-law must wait reluctantly on the stone bench by the main gate.
I am a little frightened as I walk, unsure of what to expect. A part of me wants this place to be fake—the product of greedy priests preying on superstitious minds—so my mother-in-law can be proved wrong. But the part of me which used to love the old tales longs to believe that this is a site of true power compared to which the most potent modern drug is less than dust.
The old priest at the gate pressed a handful of flowers into my palm along with a piece of string, but gave no further instructions.
“Go, go,” he said when I tried to ask. “When you get there, you’ll know what to do.”
I blink as the courtyard bursts upon me in a sudden blaze of heat and wailing sound, too much to take in all at once. There’s a shadeless, airless square paved with bricks that burn my naked feet, and when I squint upward, the clouds seem to have all disappeared. Each wall of the courtyard is painted with a shape—an eye, an enormous, white eye, which stares out with the goddess’s unblinking, all-seeing gaze. I find it hard to look away from. Is that a shallow pool in the center of the courtyard, edged with concrete? And in its center, not a deity, as I’d expected, but a small square of earth with a tree I cannot recognize. Everything hurts my eyes—the harsh white paint, the glint of water, the shimmering leaves of the tree. But they are not leaves, for as I watch, a woman—I realize, suddenly, that the courtyard is full of women, weeping young women—a woman wades across the pool to the tree and ties something to one of its branches. I walk closer and see it’s a pair of gold earrings. The tree is weighed down with such offerings—neck chains, bracelets, toe rings, armbands, a fortune’s worth. I’m amazed they have not been stolen. The goddess must truly be powerful to inspire such reverent fear.
“Ramesh has been wonderful. Last night he promised me he’d go and see the doctor and do whatever is necessary, and already this morning he’s set up an appointment with him. But we aren’t going to tell my mother-in-law any of this.”
I guess that answers both my questions.
“Has she been pressuring you a lot? Does that bother you? Do you even want a child right now? I know I don’t—and fortunately, Sunil doesn’t care either way.”
“Oh, Anju!” Sudha breathes into the phone. I haven’t heard that tone in her voice since the time—how long ago it seems—when she used to tell me about Ashok. “I want a baby more than anything else in the world. Your life is different. You’ve got college, and Sunil. Who do I have to love, to call my own?”
I hear my bedroom door open. Sunil comes into the room. I scowl at him to indicate that I want him to leave. He ignores me and starts rummaging in the dresser drawer.
“I do wish my mother-in-law didn’t feel so strongly about it, though. I can see how important it is to her, but it makes me so tense that—”
I wait, but that’s all Sudha will say. How can I break through that cactus fence of foolish loyalty she’s built around her?
“Perhaps you and Ramesh can go somewhere together, just by yourselves, like a little holiday?”
“Anju!” Sudha starts laughing, but it’s not a happy sound. “You’ve really forgotten how things are in a joint family, haven’t you? I can just see my mother-in-law smiling sweetly and waving good-bye as Ramesh and I drive off into the sunset, like in your American movies!”
Stupid me. She’s right. But I won’t give up so easily.
“Why don’t I speak to Ramesh for a minute? Maybe I can persuade him—”
Sudha’s very quiet. Have I upset her by suggesting I can succeed with her husband where she can’t? But when she speaks, it’s about something so different that it shocks me.
“Anju, remember the bus stop at the corner of Rani Rashmoni Road, the one we passed every day on our way back from school? Well, this morning Singhji took Ramesh and me for a drive that way, and I thought I saw—he was wearing a white shirt—just like—”
There’s a loud clatter as Sunil drops something, and Sudha breaks off abruptly.
I place my hand over the mouthpiece and glare at Sunil. “Can I please have a little privacy?” I whisper angrily. He glares back at me, looks pointedly at his watch, and leaves, slamming the door. Oh, he’s going to be one sorry guy as soon as I get off the phone.
“Sudha,” I say, carefully. I’m stepping on unsure ground here, speaking things perhaps better left unsaid. “Are you sure it was him? Did it upset you? Do you want to talk about it?” But the moment is lost.
“I can handle Ramesh,” Sudha says. Her voice is cool and slightly tinged with displeasure. She picks up our earlier conversation so smoothly, it’s as though I imagined what she said a moment back. Then her voice deepens with concern of a different kind. “It’s Gouri Ma you need to have a serious talk with. This morning I ran into her on the upstairs landing. She’d just climbed up, and her face was white and she was panting. It scared me. You know how her doctor suggested an operation even before our wedding—well, I think she shouldn’t put it off any longer. Don’t listen to her excuses, although I’m sure, knowing Gouri Ma, that she’ll have some good ones.”
“Sudha,” I say, “Wait, first tell me—”
But she’s slipped away already, without the answers I want so badly, Sudha, who’s learned a new elusiveness. So I spend the rest of the call arguing with my mother, who’s even more stubborn than I am.
Sunil and I never do have that fight.
When I speak to her, my mother says she doesn’t want the doctors cutting her up. She would rather die in peace, in her own home, when the time comes.
“And when it does, no doctor can save me anyway. I’m beginning to believe what they say in our holy books, that the moment of our death is written by the Bidhata Purush on our foreheads as soon as we are born. Why spend the little money we have, money that your Pishi and Aunt Nalini can live on, trying to stretch out my life? I’ve lived long enough and done all I needed to. Now that you’re happily settled, I’m ready to move on.”
The finality in her voice frightens me. It’s too serene, too fatalistic. Not like the mother I know. It’s as though, while I was caught up in my American life, she’d been loosening the ties that held her to this world. Any moment now she’ll cast off the last one and go spinning off into space.
When I hang up, I bury my face in the pillow and weep. I think of my sick mother, my beleaguered cousin, my husband who’s probably hunched in front of his computer, lost in cyberspace. Or maybe he’s taken the car and gone off somewhere in his anger. How quick and eager I was to come so far from my family, not knowing how much I was giving up, and how little I would gain. I’m like one of those ghosts in Pishi’s tales who can see disaster coming to her dear ones but is unable to intervene. She shouts out warnings, and they hear only the wind moaning in the bamboos. She puts out her ghostly arms to hold them back from misfortune, but they walk right through her, because even in their memories she’s no more substantial than fog.
At lunchtime Sunil comes looking for me. When he sees my swollen face and red eyes, he bites back whatever he was intending to say. He brings me a cool, wet towel and a couple of aspirin—he knows crying always gives me the worst headache. He holds me like one would hold a child who’s had a nightmare and rubs my back and tells me he’s there for me if I want to talk. When I shake my head, he nods equably. A few minutes later I hear him on the phone, ordering takeout Chinese from the Golden Dragon, my favorite restaurant. When the food arrives, he sets it out on trays and brings it to the bed, fragrant steam rising from the little red and white containers of fried rice and chow mein and Kung Pao chicken. He fills a plate and hands it to me and starts telling me about a funny incident at work. Like a child I allow myself to be consoled by food and warmth, the voice of a loved one and his touch. We sit back against propped-up pillows, and as I eat I snuggle into Sunil’s shoulder. The monsters haven’t gone. I know that. They’re waiting, under the bed, in the closet. But I don’t have to deal with them until it’s dark, until loneliness oozes up again around me like river mud.
MY BRIEF RESPITE passes in the sighing of a single breath, and already it is time for us to return to Bardhaman. I go for a last walk in the garden and see with sorrow how overgrown it is, the weeds spilling onto the graveled driveway, the mansa cactus pushing up its thorny leaves through the few remaining roses. The new owner of the bookstore never did pay the mothers fully, in spite of a court battle, and for a long time there hasn’t been enough money to hire a mali. Pishi tells me in her letters that Singhji does what he can with the garden, but it is obviously too much for him to handle.
I pull dead flowers and yellowing leaves from a jasmine bush and think of Singhji. He too has aged more than he should have in just four years. When he climbs out from the driver’s seat, it takes him a moment to straighten up. After money became a problem, Gouri Ma decided she would sell the car. She broke the news to Singhji as gently as she could. Much as they hated it, she said, they’d have to let him go. But Singhji refused to hear of it.
“You can try to sell that old metal pile—I doubt you’ll get much for it,” he said with a great frown, “but you can’t get rid of me so easily! You’re the only family I’ve known for more than twenty years. How can I leave you now, when you’re all alone? And where would I go anyway? I’m too old to start over in some rich upstart’s household, to put up with their kicks and curses.”
“But I don’t have the money to pay you, Singhji,” Gouri Ma said.
“I don’t need a salary. I saved a good bit of what you paid me over the years—being a single man, what expenses did I have? It’ll keep me till God sees fit to call me to Him.”
Mother had agreed happily, but Gouri Ma would not hear of it. They argued back and forth until Pishi suggested that Singhji give up his rented room and stay full-time in the gateman’s cottage. They’d take care of his meals as well. So he moved his few belongings over, and each day, morning and evening, Ramur Ma took over a covered tray of food for him, grumbling all the way. But deep down she was happy about it, as were the mothers. It was a relief, Pishi confided to me, to have a man around the house again—and such a handy one, too, who always knew how to repair a leak or fix a broken hinge on a window.
I decide suddenly that I’ll go see Singhji. But maybe it is not such a sudden decision. Maybe it has been growing in me since this morning, when Singhji took us for a ride along the old roads we used to travel as girls, and I thought I caught a glimpse, a figure in a white shirt out of a dream, and looking into the rearview mirror, I met Singhji’s sharp, knowing eyes.
“Sudha beti,” says Singhji, opening the door so quickly that I wonder if he has been waiting for my knock. He is dressed already in a crisp kurta pajama set and an immaculate white turban—he is to drive us to Bardhaman in a little while—and beyond his shoulder I see that his room is clean and spare, like himself. In his ravaged face his eyes light up in a pleasure so heartfelt that I am ashamed that I did not come to see him earlier. And now that I am here, it is purely to satisfy my own selfish need.
Singhji brings a stool. I am touched by the meticulous way in which he takes a small towel and wipes it before motioning for me to sit. Is this how it’s always going to be in my life, love and caring denied to me where I expect them, and given when I am not looking?
I want to express my appreciation, but there is no time for courtesies. “Was it him?” I ask bluntly.
“Yes.” The smallest of words, but enough to throw my heart off the course I had charted so carefully for it.
“But how?” I whisper.
“He knew you’d be coming. He’s been in touch with me. We meet every month. He asks for news of you.”
My palms are sweating. My pendulum heart swings from wild happiness to consternation. “What have you said?”
“Everything.”
The staccato reply brings heat to my cheeks. Perhaps it is just that Ashok should know all my humiliations. That he should have the comfort of saying, See what happened to her because—Still, I feel betrayed. “You shouldn’t have told him anything,” I say accusingly. “Why did you?”
“Because he’s waiting for you.”
“What do you mean?” My hands are shaking. My stomach feels as though I am on a runaway train.
“He hasn’t married. He still loves you. He told me to tell you that he didn’t mean what he wrote in that first angry letter. He wishes all will turn out well for you. But if you ever need him, he’ll be there. Oh, beti—” A sigh shakes Singhji. “If only you’d listened to me and gone away with him.”
I close my eyes against the sharp pain of what might have been. I want to ask Singhji how Ashok looks. If he is well. Are his eyes the same? His blunt-cut, responsible fingernails? The smell of his hair, like sunlight and smoke?
But that is the way to only more unhappiness. And danger.
Outside I hear Pishi calling, “Sudha! Sudha! Where has that girl disappeared to?”
“Here,” says Singhji, handing me an envelope. “He sent you this. If you want to send back a message, I will take it.”
There’s no time to read, so I fold it up and thrust it into my blouse. So many words are whirling in my foolish, greedy heart. I push them all back. “Tell him to marry,” I say. “Tell him to forget me.”
“Might as well tell the ocean not to throw itself on the rocks,” says Singhji dryly.
Halfway through the journey back to Bardhaman, I cannot bear it anymore. I say I have to use the bathroom. In the ill-lit, foul-smelling toilet of a roadside dhaba, I tear open the envelope. There is only one line written on the sheet inside. Come with me. My heart hammers so hard, I have to hold on to the wall. I fold the sheet, hide it in my blouse, and splash water on my face. Still, my cheeks burn, and when I come out Ramesh asks in concern if I am coming down with something. I keep my eyes closed the rest of the trip, telling Ramesh my head hurts. The car lurches over potholes. Ramesh’s arm around my shoulders grows to an unbearable weight. Ashok’s words are searing themselves against my eyelids. I allow myself a small thrill of hope. I could run away, yes. My mother-in-law would be happy, Ramesh would forget me soon enough, and Anju is so far away that even the farthest ripple of my action cannot touch her, especially since—my mother gleefully informed me of this—Sunil and his father are not on speaking terms. Would my act be evil, or good? I am not sure, and I am not sure I care. Live for yourself this one time, my heart sings. And the child I long for so much, who is to say I cannot have that child with Ashok? Then it would be a doubly loved child, doubly precious, because it belonged to both me and him.
The car groans to a halt in front of my in-laws’ house. I am surprised when I open my eyes to find that the day has turned dark. Rust-colored clouds hang over the brick building. The ominous heaviness of the afternoon light—as though a storm is rising— emphasizes the hard contours of the house and makes me reluctant to go in.
I must say something to Singhji—though what I have not decided. Maybe I can speak to him while Ramesh is supervising the unloading of our baggage. But before I get a chance, my mother-in-law comes bustling out. From the newly starched sari she’s wearing, I can tell she is about to go somewhere. I give an inward sigh of relief. That will allow me to take refuge in bed and think things through.
“Ah, here you are finally!” she says. “How is it you’re so late?” She throws an accusing glance at Singhji. “I’ve been waiting and waiting. I was afraid the auspicious hour would pass, but luckily you got here just in time.”
My brain feels stiff and cramped, like my legs. What is she talking about?
“Come on, Natun Bau.” It’s telling, I think, as she grabs my hand, that she still calls me New Wife, though it has been almost five years now. Perhaps to her I will never shed my newness to become a true part of this household. She pulls me to the other side of the courtyard, where I see the family car and chauffeur are waiting. “There’s no time for dawdling. We’ve got to start right away.”
“But, Mother,” Ramesh protests as he follows us. “Where are you taking Sudha? She hasn’t been feeling well. She needs to rest—”
I blush to hear the caring in his voice. If only he knew what I had been thinking in the car, while he held me so tenderly.
“She’ll be fine!” says my mother-in-law in a testy voice. “Stop fussing over her and go drink some cha. I’m taking her to Goddess Shashti’s shrine in Belapur.”
“What shrine is that? I’ve never even heard of it!” Ramesh is displeased too, and for a moment I think he will put out his hand and pull me away from his mother. “I don’t think Sudha should go anywhere right now—”
“There’s a lot you haven’t heard of, my boy. While you were wasting time in Calcutta, I’ve been making inquiries. The goddess is very powerful. All kinds of women have had babies after visiting her. I’ve already contacted the priest, but in order for it to do us any good, we must get there during the auspicious hour, before the sun sets.”
And before I can say anything to Ramesh or to Singhji, she’s pushed me into the car and nodded to the driver. The engine clanks to life, the car sputters, raising clouds of dust, and we are on our way.
Soon we’ve turned onto a mud road which winds through coconut palms and ponds filled with mosquito plants. It is a road I do not know, taking us deep into the rural landscape, bamboo forests and fields of mustard flowers, abandoned wells beside crumbling huts, taking us westward to where the sun glares at us from a tear in a black cloud.
“Pray, Natun Bau,” says my mother-in-law. “Pray to the goddess for a son.” She is still holding on to my wrist. Her nails bite my flesh, and her lips move feverishly all the way to
I walk by myself down the dark, winding corridor to the inner courtyard of Shashti’s shrine. Only the actual supplicants—the childless wives—are allowed in here, for which fact I’m immensely thankful, because it means my mother-in-law must wait reluctantly on the stone bench by the main gate.
I am a little frightened as I walk, unsure of what to expect. A part of me wants this place to be fake—the product of greedy priests preying on superstitious minds—so my mother-in-law can be proved wrong. But the part of me which used to love the old tales longs to believe that this is a site of true power compared to which the most potent modern drug is less than dust.
The old priest at the gate pressed a handful of flowers into my palm along with a piece of string, but gave no further instructions.
“Go, go,” he said when I tried to ask. “When you get there, you’ll know what to do.”
I blink as the courtyard bursts upon me in a sudden blaze of heat and wailing sound, too much to take in all at once. There’s a shadeless, airless square paved with bricks that burn my naked feet, and when I squint upward, the clouds seem to have all disappeared. Each wall of the courtyard is painted with a shape—an eye, an enormous, white eye, which stares out with the goddess’s unblinking, all-seeing gaze. I find it hard to look away from. Is that a shallow pool in the center of the courtyard, edged with concrete? And in its center, not a deity, as I’d expected, but a small square of earth with a tree I cannot recognize. Everything hurts my eyes—the harsh white paint, the glint of water, the shimmering leaves of the tree. But they are not leaves, for as I watch, a woman—I realize, suddenly, that the courtyard is full of women, weeping young women—a woman wades across the pool to the tree and ties something to one of its branches. I walk closer and see it’s a pair of gold earrings. The tree is weighed down with such offerings—neck chains, bracelets, toe rings, armbands, a fortune’s worth. I’m amazed they have not been stolen. The goddess must truly be powerful to inspire such reverent fear.