Inheritance (8 page)

“No one will ever love me, no one that gentle,” she said.

“Maybe you don’t have to sleep with your husband,” I said, but even as I said that, I knew it was preposterous. Children were always the object of marriage; everyone knew that.

“There is only one thing I can do, and I need to do it soon,” she said.

I became alarmed, and thought she meant to take her life, but she merely clasped a blue prayer book to her heart and closed her eyes.

“What will you do, Jani?” I asked finally, scared.

“I am going into the convent.”

“Convent!”

“I’m devoting myself to God.”

Eight

My grandmother took Jani’s news badly.

“What do you mean?” she screamed.

“I’m better suited for a convent. I’m not made for this world,” said Jani.

“Is it because you don’t like C.P.? You don’t have to marry him; we can look elsewhere.”

“I don’t want to look anywhere. I’m becoming a nun.”

“And what about our gods? Are they not enough for you?”

“I’ve thought it over, and my mind and heart are clear,” said Jani.

“Why do I have such strange girls around me?” moaned my grandmother, glaring at all of us, including my mother.

When Jani said she wasn’t meant for this world, I was reminded of something else. A long time ago, something terrible had happened to Jani. A baby she was watching died. Little Jou-Jou was a cousin’s baby, and Jani at ten was asked to keep an eye on her while the mother was gone. Jani sat in a chair and for five minutes watched the baby’s face; Jou-Jou looked like an old woman with red eyes. Then Jani turned away and settled more comfortably in the chair, waiting for the mother’s return. How unimaginable it was that when the mother did come back, her smile of thanks to Jani turned into a shriek; the baby’s face was purple, its body still. It was one of those things that have no explanation. The mother, mad with grief and shock, grabbed Jani and shook her violently, screaming, “What have you done to my baby?”

Grandmother had first told me the story while combing my hair, shaking her head with the sadness of the world. Jani had never mentioned it, but I vaguely knew she was uneasy about babies.

Once, when an aunt unthinkingly offered Jani her baby to hold, Jani ran from the room. My grandmother had said that Jani was a delicate soul, a little different from the rest of us, having witnessed tragedy so young.

But to become a nun! I never imagined that Jani would leave us. Up to the very moment of her departure, I kept on thinking that something would prevent it. I
watched, desolate, while she packed a suitcase. Her closet was full of brightly colored saris and blouses she no longer had any use for, gauzy scarves that she bequeathed to me.

“You’re not taking your shawl?” I asked, fingering the violet and pink cashmere I loved.

“God will keep me warm,” she said, surveying her sandals.

“But Grandmother gave it to you.”

“I know.”

“But she’ll be offended. You can’t leave it,” I said, packing it into her bag.

She took it out, whereupon I fiercely put it back.

“You’re being a pig,” I said, ready to cry.

“No one asked you,” she said, pleading.

We looked at each other.

“So you don’t want to marry C.P. So what? You can be an unmarried teacher. You can take a job,” I said.

“It wouldn’t work. I want to get away from everyone.”

“Grandmother’s heart will give out—bang!”

“I’m trying to pack peacefully,” Jani told me, exasperated.

“Sure. You think you’re running away to sanctuary, but it’s all a big lie. You’ll be surrounded by a lot of fat old cows who’ll make you scrub the steps and wash the pots and pans,” I said.

“You’re smarter than that.”

“Well, C.P.’s going to get hurt. He’ll probably shoot himself, like Heathcliff,” I said, finally.

“Heathcliff never shot himself.”

“Don’t go, Jani,” I whined.

“I have to.”

“But I’ll be so unhappy.”

“You’ll survive. It’s not like in your books—life is not romantic. Grandmother will survive, C.P. will survive, and I will, too,” she said.

That was the way Jani left us. That day the world looked bleak and awful, and I thought I would go mad. But she was right, of course. We would survive this crisis, only I didn’t know it then. How hard it was for my young heart to hear it, I who believed that life was full of climaxes and conclusions, dramatic excess that could shatter or build like Shiva’s terrible eye. According to Jani, few were burned by the eye; the world was made up of those who lived, those who picked themselves up after the crossfire, who got on with it.

Jani was declaring her lot with the common man, but I’d have none of it. I was fifteen and still wanted to believe that things were more exciting, that life was a brilliant and gorgeous jewel.

Grandmother and I consoled each other. We were both in tears.

“It’s those nuns who put such foolish ideas in her
head,” she said to me. “If only she would get married, see that there is more to life than sadness and sighs to waste and while away the hours with.”

“But Jani explained once to me that religion is beautiful. That there is no difference between many gods and one god,” I said.

“Of course there isn’t. But to waste time with such philosophical notions instead of just tending to life itself. If you have a schedule, and my girl, you can learn from this too, if you have a schedule for your days to get up and receive the milk from the milkman, to make coffee for the household, to watch the servants who come to clean house …”

“What if you don’t have servants?” I asked, remembering Jani had once told me that having servants was immoral.

“Okay, no servants, then you do the work yourself. You go to the market and buy vegetables and make a meal or two or three at once. You sweep the house, you cut some flowers to bring in, you wash the clothes.”

“But all that is work,” I said.

“Work is what will get you through the days.”

“I’m going to college,” I said. “I’m going to hire many servants or live in a fancy hotel when I’m grown.”

“And what about me?”

“You can live with me.”

“We were talking of Jani.”

“What about her?”

“How it is necessary that she not throw her life away. Well, maybe this is a good thing. Maybe she will learn something from the convent.”

“Maybe,” I said, doubtful.

My mother’s sari rustled ominously nearby. I wondered why
she
hadn’t chosen a convent.

Nine

Jani’s departure left me with almost no one to talk to, so I began to go to the market frequently. Often, I saw Richard there. We would talk lazily about our childhoods and mutual interests. He told me how he had once longed to be a space explorer, and I told him how I had wanted to scuba dive. One day, when I was especially feeling Jani’s absence, he took me to visit his friend Maria. “She’ll cheer you up,” he promised.

We set off for the northern part of town, which was just encroaching on the suburbs. The lawns had a very manufactured look: short and clipped identically.

“Maria rents from an old dance instructor,” Richard told me. We passed through the gates of a handsome house, and went down to a side path edged messily with rose bushes. We came to a small bungalow with green
shutters and a door framed in jasmine. The plaster was peeling, making large splotches on the walls. A stone Buddha was placed near a potted banana plant near the door.

A woman with dark hair streaked with grey answered the door, her smile widening when she saw Richard and me. She greeted us warmly; evidently, Richard had spoken of me to her, a fact that gave me a curious thrill.

She led us to a room that was cluttered with things: little curios of dancing Shiva, images of Laxshmi, smiling Buddhas, plants that trailed, three or four fishbowls, shawls tossed over chairs, pillows studded with mirror work, everything speaking of a woman who had traveled quite a bit. There was too much furniture: armchairs and sofas crowding one another, coffee tables that were piled with large books and trinkets. There was a clash of color permeating her home, chintz righting with plaid, stripes overlapping flowered fabric. I was used to a more streamlined look from my family’s houses, but I supposed Maria’s place was very cozy to her, warm, with red and orange colors. One table held a typewriter and paper, an oasis amid the mess.

She fetched us a tray loaded with sweets and savories and a tall pot of tea. She urged us to eat and helped herself as well. I couldn’t stop staring at her. She had an air about her that seemed to encompass freedom, and this wasn’t just because she didn’t wear a bra. She seemed more comfortable with herself than the women I knew.
Only my mother had her air of carelessness, but while in my mother there was an undertone of defiance, in Maria there was only generosity. She had lived on Pi for four years and had known Richard for three. She and her daughter had traveled all over the map before setting off for Asia. Now her daughter was in London with her father, while she continued to write “silly romances” on the island.

I felt privileged to meet her, I liked her because to me she seemed at once like someone you could trust. She told stories of meeting Richard when he looked bedraggled and carried a backpack.

“And look at you now, terribly respectable.”

Richard blushed, and I felt happy.

Richard told Maria that I wanted to go to Radcliffe.

“You want to leave the island? And India itself! How can you?”

“I want to try someplace new,” I said, realizing after the words were out that I sounded like Jani.

Maria seemed to think it was like running away. She told me that America might not hold such a sweet life.

“Do not put your life on hold, or wait until you escape to another world to start living your life as you want. While it is true you might start another stage, another phase, you cannot ignore the life you are in. I say this because I used to put my life on hold constantly. I used to say, when I get a car, I can enjoy the museum in the next town. This instead of merely taking a bus to the
museum. After I lose weight, I’ll buy the red dress. It’s a Western notion, this idea of punishment and reward. Guru-ji tells us what the hippies used to say: Be here now. But enough lecture,” she said, sitting back.

“No, go on,” I urged, wanting to hear more.

“People always think they can start anew in some new town. But every time you move, you are either running toward something or running away from something.”

Then she stopped and began to laugh.

“I should talk, look at me here.”

“Were you running from something?”

“My husband, yes, my old life, my old friends. I thought Pi could answer my need to launch a new life.”

“Has it done so, do you think?”

“It is different, yes, and I don’t tire of it. At least, not yet.”

“Maria is the most contented woman I know,” said Richard.

We ate more snacks and drank more tea. Maria described her books, fairy tales retold as romances set all over the world. Essentially girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl and boy find each other in the end. The same theme as found in the Tamil and Hindi popular films. She showed us the galleys for her latest, called
Last Hope, Last Time.
It was scribbled over in blue pencil, accompanying her editor’s notations.

“I’m wildly successful. It’s so odd because I came to
Pi to simplify my life, and yet I’ve had fortune beyond my expectations.”

She told me that she had begun writing in the eighth grade, that she had tried her hand at protest plays in Oklahoma and then New York, but the audiences were small and there were always squabbles among the actors. She taught drama for a while in a community college but gave that up when her daughter was born. She was writing romances when her husband asked for a divorce, and two years later, she moved to Pi. Friends of hers had recommended it to her as a restful tropical island and had told her also about Guru-ji, a meditation leader and a follower of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. At first I thought it was the same guru that Richard had spoken of, but I soon realized my mistake. This guru just led Yoga and classes on breathing and also performed some religious functions.