Sister of My Heart by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
The women are strewn around the courtyard like plucked blossoms. From their dust-wrinkled saris and wilted faces, it seems that many have been here for several days. Some lie face down on the heat-baked bricks, weeping quietly. Some lean into the pool, praying aloud, their tears falling into the water. Some are writing on slips of paper which they tie, along with their jewelry, to the tree. Some sit as in a trance, their gaze turned inward, listening to things I cannot hear. Next to me a woman beats her head in a steady rhythm against the concrete edge of the pool, calling, “Mother, Goddess, speak to me, save my life.” Sorrow fills the courtyard, the air is acrid with it as with smoke, it stings my eyes. I want to weep too, not for me but for us all—for rich or poor, educated or illiterate, here we are finally reduced to a sameness in this sisterhood of deprivation.
I feel I should pray, so I kneel and place my head on the bricks. But I am too distracted. When I close my eyes, unrelated images flash across them. Ramesh drinking tea as he leafs through a paper, a stray cat I used to feed as a child, the Shiva temple where Ashok presses his marigold-scented lips on mine, the back of Singhji’s turbaned head as he drives Anju and me to school, the way a fugitive sorrow flits across Anju’s veiled face as she watches Sunil watching me at our wedding. So much unfulfilled desire in this world, so many people in need of help. What—who—shall I pray for?
The woman who’s been beating her head on the concrete sits up and looks around confusedly. She is just a girl, maybe sixteen or seventeen, and pretty in her rural, dark-skinned way, though right now her forehead is bruised and bleeding and there is an unfocused look in her eyes. I am torn between pity and revulsion. I want to comfort her, to bathe her forehead and hold her by the hand. But also I want to run from this horrifying place, so like—the image comes to me from a class I took in my final year of school—one of the circles of Dante’s Inferno. Desperately I try to remember that there is a saner world where women study and work and go shopping and visit the cinema with their girlfriends, where it is permissible for them to live normal lives even if they cannot be mothers. I repeat to myself the names of classmates who I’ve heard have become doctors and teachers and famous dancers, but they are too far away. Reality is this bloodied, weeping girl next to me. A sludgy fear clogs my throat. How long before I too am driven to a similar desperation?
The girl makes a wheezing sound in her throat. Against my better judgment I lean closer to listen, and between my breasts Ashok’s letter crackles like a bay leaf that has been thrown into scalding oil.
“I heard the goddess. She spoke. But I didn’t understand her. She said”—here the girl’s voice grows low and guttural, as though it is someone else’s—”you must choose between your two loves, for only one love is allowed to a woman.”
The girl’s words make me shiver in spite of the heat. The air around me is startled still. The white eye bores into me.
The girl clutches at the edge of my sari with chipped nails, her words coming in gasps. “But I don’t have two loves, not even one. Or else why would I be here like this, waiting and fasting for two days now? You explain it, Didi. You look like a school-educated woman. I’ll tell you my story. You tell me what the goddess meant. Three years this monsoon, I’ve been married. Haven’t had any babies. My husband’s family’s been upset with me ever since the wedding. They say my parents didn’t give them enough, even though my poor father gave them everything he had. I tried to run away home, but my parents sent me back. They couldn’t afford my weight on their shoulders, they said. I understood that. I accepted my in-laws’ slaps and curses. But now they’re planning something else, I know it. I overheard the whispers at the women’s lake. They want to get my husband married again. He’d be happy enough to. He never did care for me, thought I was too dark from the start.”
“Will they send you back to your parents?” I ask.
The girl shakes her head. Her nostrils flare like those of an animal ringed by fire. “By the rules of our community, they’d have to return my dowry then. But if I die, if there’s an accident, like what happened a few months back to the washerman’s wife, while she was cooking—”
Her words lacerate my skin, nails of rust and ice. I’ve heard of such “accidents.”
“But if I’m pregnant, they wouldn’t do it. They’d forgive me all my faults if I can give them a son. That’s why I’m here. I decided I wasn’t going to leave until the goddess gave me an answer. Now she has, and I don’t understand it.”
But I do, I think, as I watch the girl, who has broken into sobs. If those are indeed the goddess’s words—and they must be, for this poor girl is incapable of making them up—then I, Sudha, am the one they’re meant for. I am the one who wants it all, the passion of a lover, the adoration of a child. The one who was foolish enough to believe that it is possible for a woman to possess so much happiness.
I slide from my arms a set of thick gold bangles that Gouri Ma had given me and hand them to the weeping girl. When she stares at me, open mouthed, I tell her, with all the conviction I can muster, that the goddess wants her to have them. They are to pay for her and her husband to visit the Bardhaman hospital—they must do it together—so doctors can see if there is a reason why she is not getting pregnant. “Tell your in-laws,” I end, “that unless they do this within a month, a great disaster will fall on their family.”
She nods mutely. An amazement of fear and hope flickers over her face like a flock of butterflies. Then she is gone.
As for me, I wade across the pool to the tree. I reach into my blouse and take out Ashok’s letter. I long to read it one last time, but I don’t. I tie it to a branch. I am not weeping, though inside me a new-painted rainbow is fading into blackness. Ashok-AshokAshok, once again I am losing you.
Anju would say I am crazy to heed the words of this half-hysterical girl. But she is only repeating a truth I had accepted long ago into the core of my pessimistic heart, a truth that passion made me briefly forget: a death for a life, one love sacrificed for another. That is the nature of this world. And as for my choice, had it not been made already, made and sealed with my virgin-blood, during those never-ending nights I could not have survived otherwise in Ramesh’s bed? Because a child is yours in a way even the most solicitous lover can never be. Carved from your bones, borne into the world upon your breath, the flame you cup carefully in your palm against the coming dark.
I let the crushed petals fall from my hands into the pool. As I walk out, the wall beside me wavers in the heat. But the eye on it watches, unmoving and satisfied.
My mother-in-law looks up suspiciously as I reach the gate. “Done already, Bau? Why, the priest tells me some of the women have been here for three or four days.”
I say nothing, but the priest peers into my face and replies, “She’s done. It’s in the goddess’s hands now.” When I touch his feet before leaving, he intones the old blessing, “May you be the mother of a hundred sons.”
Just one child, I think. That would be enough for me. And as though he has heard, his old face creases into a smile. “Very well,” he says, and sprinkles my head lightly with holy water.
“What did he mean, very well?” asks my mother-in-law once we’re in the car. But she doesn’t expect me to know and goes on to another matter. “I see you’ve left your gold balas at the shrine. Let’s hope the goddess is pleased with that.”
“I know she is,” I say, and I do. In this world of uncertainties, it’s one thing I am sure of. I close my eyes to evade further questions. The way back is jerky, pothole to pothole, but for comfort I have the girl’s hope-lit face, hidden behind the raw red of my eyelids.
FOR A FEW weeks now I’ve been uneasy. I’m tired all the time. I want to fall into bed in the middle of the afternoon and stay there for at least a year. At the oddest moments I go crazy with hunger, but only for certain things—mango achar flecked with chilies, or pizza for breakfast. Halfway through eating I have to throw up, right into the kitchen sink. Fortunately, my bouts of vomiting occu
“What’s the problem?”
“You thrash around too much,” I say grumpily. “I can’t get a wink of sleep.”
“It must be your time of month,” he says, in that superior male tone that makes me want to scream. “You’ve been bitching about everything.”
That’s part of the problem. It is my time of month, and nothing’s happened. But it can’t be! We’ve been taking precautions. I’ve worn that awkward, slimy diaphragm-thing, much as I detest it, whenever we had sex because I know how important it is that we don’t have a baby now. Sunil and I can’t afford one. More important, I must finish college, which I’m loving more than anything else in America.
But the nausea won’t go away, and finally I buy a pregnancy test, and sure enough, the strip changes color. I’m so upset I burst into tears—just like those bimbos on the soap operas, which I watch from time to time to see how brainless American TV can get. And though I know it’s wiser to wait until he’s home, I can’t stop myself from phoning Sunil.
When I tell him, there’s a long pause at his end—the kind they call pregnant, I think hysterically. Then he says, “Are you sure?”
“No. I made it up. It’s my idea of humor in the morning.” But as soon as I say it, I’m sorry. Sunil doesn’t respond well to sarcasm, especially from me, and right now I need him on my side.
“No need to snap at me,” he says irritably. “You were the one supposed to be careful, weren’t you? Wasn’t that our agreement?”
“I was,” I admit. My throat stings with guilt as though I just swallowed a cactus. “I did everything the little booklet said—” I’m a failure, I know it. A moron who can’t even follow bold-print instructions.
Another silence. What if he says I should have an—? Terror thuds out-of rhythm in my chest. A-bor-tion. A-bor-tion. An impossible, monstrous word. On the other hand, how’ll I take care of a baby? What’ll happen to all my plans for my future?
Then I think of Sudha, who’d give anything to have this child I’m carrying so grudgingly, and I feel so ashamed that I burst into tears again.
“Hush, Anju,” Sunil says, with one of his sudden turnarounds. Now that he’s reduced me to tears, his voice is kind. “It’s not a disaster. We would have had a baby anyway, sooner or later. So we’ll have to plan and budget more carefully than we thought. We can manage that.”
“Really?” I breathe, light-headed with relief. “You really think it’ll be okay?”
“Of course it will. Now go wash your face and lie down and rest. I’ll come home as soon as I can.”
I wash my face and in celebration I make myself two large mango achar sandwiches. Even when I throw up right afterward, it doesn’t upset me. When I lie down, I’m too excited to sleep. For the first time since I found out, I allow myself to imagine my baby—he or she must be no larger than a grape—clinging tenaciously, cleverly, to my insides. I place a hand over my lower belly and think I feel a special warmth, a tingly light, the clean, pale green of a California grape, radiating into my hand. A big, foolish, sentimental smile spreads itself over my entire face.
Then I remember that I’m going to have to tell Sudha.
Once Sunil gets used to the idea of the pregnancy, he can’t stop talking about our baby. I’m surprised at how boyishly excited he is, how willing to let me see it. I’d thought only women felt this way.
Sunil comes home earlier nowadays. He’s brought home a stack of healthy eating books from the library and often cooks for us, carefully balancing proteins and carbohydrates and using only extra-virgin olive oil. Each day he makes me a drink of hot milk and crushed almonds, which he insists will increase the baby’s brain power. He tries hard not to fight with me because he’s heard that might affect the baby’s personality. His computer’s gathered an inch of dust because he’s too busy compiling lists of baby names, writing them out in Bangla and English. From time to time he’ll try one out on me. Do you like the meaning? he’ll ask, his forehead squinched up. Do you think it’s easy enough for American tongues? He particularly likes to talk about the things he wants to do with the baby. They’re predictable enough—visits to the zoo, playing ball in the park if it’s a boy, taking her to dance class if it’s a girl—but the urgency with which he speaks makes me wonder what gaps in his own childhood he’s trying to fill.
Ever since the doctor confirmed the pregnancy and said the baby was doing fine, he’s been dying to call India and tell our mothers. I’m the one who keeps putting it off.
“But why?” Sunil asks, his brow knotted. “Don’t you want them to know? They’ll be so happy.”
“Give me another week,” I say. “Let it be just our secret for one more week.”
The truth, which I can’t tell Sunil, is that I’m afraid. Afraid of the silence that’s bound to be there at the other end when I tell Sudha, who’s got to be the first to know. I can’t write about this to her—something this vital has to be spoken, voice to human voice, not conveyed through cowardly black squiggles on a page. I can already hear her suck in air at the irony of it—that I, who hadn’t wanted a child at all, should become pregnant so unthinkingly, with such unfair ease, while she—She’ll hurry into speech then, speaking too quickly to show me she doesn’t mind, that she’s happy for me, and really, she will be. Because that’s the thing about us human beings when we really love someone, we can be happy even while our heart is breaking.
I spend a lot of time planning my speech, picking the right words so she won’t be hurt. When I finally get up the nerve to call—on a Saturday night, to make use of the low rate—one of Ramesh’s brothers picks up the phone. Sudha’s still in bed, he says. He’ll go call her. I’m puzzled. It’s past nine in the morning in India—Sudha never sleeps that late.
It seems to take Sudha an awfully long time to get to the phone. From the kitchen where he’s fixing us hot cocoa, Sunil stops stirring, though he doesn’t say anything. I’m just about to hang up and try later, when I hear Sudha, with a breathless little catch to her voice, like she’s run all the way, saying, “Anju, are you still there? Sorry, I was sleeping. What is it? I was worried—you hardly ever call from America.”
All my carefully rehearsed words take flight like pigeons startled by a gunshot.
“Sudha,” I blurt out. “I’m going to have a baby. I had to tell you.” I pause and swallow. The silence is awful, like a vacuum sucking me into the small black holes of the mouthpiece. “Sudha,” I cry, “I’m sorry.”
“Dear, silly Anju,” says Sudha. There’s a wobble in her voice. It takes me a moment to realize it’s not from tears. “Why should you be sorry?” Her laughter spills through the phone lines, as bright as pomegranate juice. “I’m so delighted I could dance—remember, the way we used to clasp hands up on the old terrace, and whirl and whirl until everything became a blur of light? I’m delighted—for us both. I wanted to wait another week to let you know, so I’d be surer, but there’s no need because inside me I’m certain already. I’m going to be a mother too! Oh, Anju, how I wish we could be together now!”
The same longing racks my insides, as physical as one of my overwhelming hungers. “I’ll write to you every single week, promise,” I say, dizzy with this gift that’s just made my pregnancy perfect. There’s a hundred questions milling around inside my head. What’s Sudha’s mother-in-law saying now? Did Ramesh finally go to the doctor? Did they manage to get away on a little vacation as I’d suggested? I hope so! That way I can tell my little nephew or niece, You know what? If it weren’t for my wonderful idea, you wouldn’t be here! But our time is up. “I’ll keep you posted on everything that’s happening,” I call out urgently,
“I will,” says Sudha.
I stand at the window after I hang up, sipping the rich, sweet cocoa that Sunil has handed me, looking out at the chocolatey dark. High above, there are halos around the stars, like in a Van Gogh painting. Two babies, coming to us together! It’s a wonderful world, more wonderful than I deserve, and I vow to be a good person for the rest of my life—gentler and calmer and less selfish, like my cousin—so I can measure up to it.
WHEN I WAKE from my afternoon nap, the sun has painted the walls of my bedroom a gentle gold. I rub my eyes, trying to remember the dream I had, something soft and warm like the quilt I am curled under, but it plays hide-and-seek at the edge of my mind and will not let itself be caught. I stretch, catlike—no, more like a tigress. I am filled with power and potency and well-being, with the beauty of my sleek, ripe body.
I come downstairs and join my mother-in-law, who’s having her evening tea. “Had a good nap?” she asks pleasantly, then calls, “Oh, Dinabandhu, bring Bau Ma some cha.” Now that I’m expecting, she has taken to a more affectionate form of address. She even puts down the paper she’s reading to chat with me until the steaming cup of ginger tea, reputed to be particularly excellent for pregnant digestive systems, arrives.
Since the pregnancy, my mother-in-law’s taken over a lot of my duties. She doesn’t want me bending over a hot unun, or lifting sacks of rice and lentils from the storage room, or running up to the terrace to check on the pickles set out in the sun.
“You should let me do some of it, Ma,” I say sometimes, feeling guilty. “I feel useless—and bored.”
“My dear!” Her eyes take on a dewy softness, as they often do nowadays. “What are you talking about! You’re doing the most useful thing of all. And as for bored, why don’t you ask Ramesh’s brothers to run to Biren’s shop and pick up a new video movie for you?”