Arranged Marriage: Stories (25 page)

The day I received the last piece of information, I was so furious that I called my mother even though I’d just phoned her the previous week. I really wanted to call Runu, but I was afraid it would get her into trouble.

“Did her husband go for a checkup too?” I shouted over the crackling line.

My mother, who is usually an outspoken woman, was strangely silent. Then she’d said, “That’s how they do things here, Anju. Have you forgotten?”

“Why is it always taken to be the woman’s fault?” I fumed to Sunil when he came home that night. “If I were Runu, I’d just pack my bags and leave!”

I’d expected him to be shocked and angry, like myself. Sympathetic. But he merely shrugged and said, “It’s a man’s world in India. Runu’s in-laws are a lot better than some others I could name. And anyway, where would Runu go if she left?”

There was a disturbing tone in his voice.
See how lucky you are to have a husband like me, to live in this free and easy American culture
, it seemed to say.
You’d better start working harder at being a good wife. Or else
.

“You shouldn’t have called India twice in two weeks,” Sunil was saying. “Don’t you remember how huge the phone bill was last month?”

Indignation—for myself as well as Runu—had made me bold. “You’re such a penny-pincher, I can’t believe it!” I snapped in a tone I’d never used with him before. “Such a tyrant. You’re no different from all those men in India. A woman is nothing but a baby machine to you.”

“You need a reality check, Anjali,” said Sunil in a tone cold with displeasure. I knew how angry he was by the fact that he used my full name. “Then perhaps you’d be a bit more grateful.”

I’d retreated with a pillow and blanket to the family-room couch, where I wept long, hot tears at the unfairness of a world which insisted not only that women had to have husbands
but that they had to be grateful to them. But all the time I felt guilty for saying the things I had, and when Sunil called me to come to bed I’d wiped my eyes carefully and gone back.

All that’s behind us, though, now that the babies are on their way. Sunil has grown so loving that sometimes I tell him—and I’m only half joking—that I wouldn’t mind being pregnant forever. In the early months when I suffered from nausea and couldn’t stand the smell of cooking, he took over the kitchen. I remember him going through piles of cookbooks trying to find something that would tempt me to eat. Even now each week he drives to Mumtaz Cuisine, clear at the other end of town, to get
rasogollahs
, my favorite sweet. He massages my back and brings me hot milk in bed. Sometimes when I wake at night I find his hand resting on my stomach, careful and cupped, as though to protect us both.

And it’s the same with Runu. Nothing is too good for her. At mealtimes she’s served first, with the biggest, best portions—the coveted fish heads stewed with lentils and sprinkled with lemon, the creamy top layer of the sugary rice pudding she loves. New saris every time her husband comes back from a trip. Perfume, chocolates, recently even a pair of gold earrings. She gets to sleep in late, to lie down in the afternoons. Her brothers-in-law are not allowed to pester her with demands for new dishes. And her redoubtable mother-in-law, usually so stringent with money, has actually bought imported prenatal vitamins which she urges Runu to take every morning at breakfast!

The shrilling of the alarm startles me from sleep. I shut it off and lean over Sunil, who moans in protest, to reach for the phone. It is 1
A.M.
, early afternoon in India, our agreed-upon time. I know Runu will be waiting by the phone. I smile with the delicious anticipation of telling her everything that’s happened.

But when I finally get through, Runu isn’t the one who picks up the phone. Someone whose voice I don’t recognize—one of the brothers-in-law, perhaps—tells me she’s resting. He hesitates when I insist I must talk to her, then tells me to hold. He’s gone a long time. I chew on the inside of my cheek and try not to think of the phone bill.

Finally Runu’s on the line. She sounds dreadfully tired, her voice a dead monotone I hardly recognize.

“Are you sick?” I ask, frightened. “Shall I call some other time?”

“No,” she says, then adds, with obvious effort, “How’s your baby?”

“Fine,” I say, “he’s fine.” There’s an awkward silence full of all the things I want to tell her, the question I am afraid to ask but finally must.

“My baby’s OK too,” she replies, then makes a small choking sound. “Can’t talk anymore now,” she says.

The line goes dead.

I sit there holding on to the phone. The muted dial tone buzzes in my ear for a while, then the metallic bleeps, then a female American voice instructing me in polite tones to replace the receiver. Obediently, woodenly, I do as it says. Something’s very wrong, but I can’t figure out what. If Runu’s OK, and her baby’s OK—could it be Ramesh? I want to slap
myself for not having asked. My mind had been too full of the babies, the lacy fins of their limbs undulating within our wombs. I dial India again.

This time I have to try for an hour before I get the long-distance connection. My eyes are burning with tiredness. I can hardly keep them open.

“Go to bed,” Sunil wakes up and tells me. “You’ll make yourself sick. What’s so important that it can’t wait till tomorrow?”

I glower at him in silence as I continue to dial.

But when I get her, my mother doesn’t know what it is either. It can’t be a death or a major accident, or someone would have informed her.

“Go to sleep now,” she says. “I’ll call you if it’s something really serious. Stop crying so much, it’s bad for you—and for my grandson.”

Her grandson
. I quieten myself to consider the statement. This little life inside me, which I’d always thought of as totally mine, already belongs to so many other people. Grandson, cousin, son of his father. And it’s the same with Runu’s baby.

Into the silence my mother says—mostly to console me, I think—“Maybe it’s nothing. You know how pregnant women get emotional for no reason.”

I don’t believe it, but it’s what I repeat to myself as I fie down, pushing my aching spine against Sunil, who is asleep again. Without waking he puts out his hand, finds my hip, and strokes the stretch marks that line it like silken seams. His breath ruffles the small hairs on the back of my neck until I, too, sleep.

The next morning I don’t go to school although I know I’ll miss my psychology midterm with Professor Warner, who doesn’t allow makeups. I’m afraid to leave the phone even to go to the bathroom, though by now it’s past midnight in India. But I imagine Runu tiptoeing down the dark staircase of the sleeping house and lifting the receiver with trembling fingers. I have to be here for her.

By evening I’m exhausted from waiting. My shoulders ache as though I’ve been pushing a huge rock uphill. All I’ve managed to eat all day are some saltines clipped in milk.

Sunil’s face grows heavy when he returns from work to find me curled up on the sofa by the phone, still in my nightgown, wads of damp Kleenex strewn around me. “Anjali,” he says, “I know your cousin is really important to you, but this kind of obsessive behavior isn’t helping either you or her.”

He pushes me into the shower, promising to call me if the phone rings. “Take a long, hot one,” he commands. He hands me a new bar of the Mysore sandalwood soap that we save for special occasions and the blue silk kaftan Mother sent for my last birthday. By the time I come out, he has dinner ready—fried rice with shrimp, tofu with stir-fried green beans, and lemon chicken, all in the gay little red-and-white take-out containers from the China Lion.

“Voila!” he says with a sweeping bow.

I have to laugh. “Wrong language,” I say, suddenly ravenous.

I’m having a nightmare, one of those where you know you’re dreaming, but that doesn’t make it any less terrifying. In my nightmare my baby is trapped somewhere underwater, far from me. He lifts a tiny black receiver to call me for help. I hear the muffled ringing of the phone and try to run to it, but my limbs are like stone. I cannot move even a finger. A submarine wind starts to blow. The water, quiet until now, rushes swirling around my little boy, rips the phone from his fingers. It forms itself into a whirling mass around him, sucking him in. His face crumples as he goes under.
Anju
, he cries,
Anju
-
anju-anju …

“Anju, wake up,” calls Sunil. He’s leaning over me, shaking me gently. “It’s Runu.” He puts the phone into my numb hand.

There’s a lot of disturbance on the line. I can hardly hear Runu’s voice as she says hello. Then I realize it’s not a faulty connection. It’s the background noise of some public place—bells ringing, people shouting questions, the clang of machines, the distant roar of a bus. My heart begins to pound crazily. Normally Runu would never be allowed to go somewhere like that—and certainly not by herself.

“I’m at the main post office,” says Runu, her sentences short and jerky. “Couldn’t talk from home. Took a cycle-rickshaw here. They think I’m in my room, sleeping.”

“What’s wrong, Runu? I’ve been worried sick. Is it Ramesh? Or your mother-in-law?”

“No,” says Runu. “They’re fine,” she adds with venom.

Then she says, “They want to kill my baby.”

“What?”
I’m sure I’ve heard it wrong.

“They want me to have an abortion.”

I can’t handle this alone. I motion for Sunil to pick up the extension in the family room. But already I know—how could I not have guessed earlier—what Runu is about to say. I remember the show some time back on “60 Minutes” about the increasing popularity of amniocenteses in India.

“The amnio showed that it’s a girl.” Runu’s voice is a hollow echo against my ear. “My mother-in-law says it’s not fitting that the eldest child of the Bhattacharjee household should be a female.”

“But Ramesh—what does he say?”

“He agrees, at least for this time. He says I’m young and strong. We can start trying for another baby right away. If it’s a girl again, then he’ll think about whether to keep it or not.”

I am too stunned to speak.

“I wept and begged. I even threatened suicide. But they’re adamant….”

“Your time is up, madam,” interrupts the operator’s voice with its heavy Indian accent.

“Anju,” Runu calls desperately, “what am I going to do?”

My brain is frozen, and my tongue. “Charge the call to this number,” I finally manage to tell the operator. “That’ll be a collect call then, double charge.”

“OK.”

I hear the intake of Sunil’s breath on the extension. I stiffen, sure he’ll ask me to call Runu back. But he doesn’t.

“Do you have anything with you, any money?” I ask Runu. I’m afraid to hear her reply. As in most traditional households, her mother-in-law handles the finances. When Runu needs something, she has to ask her for it.

But Runu surprises me.

“I have three hundred rupees—I took it out of Ramesh’s desk drawer. And all my jewelry that was in the house. Just in case.”

“Just in case what?” I want her to say it. I need to hear her say it.

“Just in case I decided not to go back.” Runu’s voice is stronger now. I think she needed to hear herself say it too.