Oleander Girl (27 page)

There’s a cold silence. “No, he’s not,” Korobi finally says quietly. “He’s in his own room. Don’t you trust me?”

Of course he trusts her. The snowstorm is not her fault. What else could she have done? Still, suspicion eats at him.

It’s because he doesn’t trust the guy she’s with. Slick Vic. But, no. It’s really because he doesn’t trust himself. Because a part of him can’t rest until it discovers what Sonia wrote. Because a part of him is thinking, right now, of his final conversation with Sonia.

Before he can put any of this into words, they’re disconnected. He calls her back, but there’s no response. Is her phone dead, or did she hang up on him? He curses again, punches the seat, feeling Asif wince.

No time now. They’re at the warehouse gates; a large group of men swarm around the car, waving placards and shouting.
boses unfair to muslim workers
, the placards announce. Rajat’s palms are clammy. He has to wipe them on his pants. A concerned Asif asks if he should turn the car around. It doesn’t seem safe for Rajat-saab to go in there. The men have worked themselves up to such a frenzy, they’re incapable of listening to reason. Now they’re banging on the car windows. Not so hard that it’ll break the glass, but hard enough to show who has the power.

Rajat has seen these men regularly for the last few months. Has made it a point to speak pleasantly to them whenever the occasion arose. But today they glare at him as though he’s a stranger—no, not a stranger. A familiar enemy. One of them shouts through the window at Asif, “Brother, quit eating the salt of these Muslim-haters!” Asif wears his impassive chauffeur expression and looks into the distance. Against his will, Rajat must admire how calm Asif is. He himself is far from calm. But he thinks of his parents, who are taking a chance on him, and rolls down the window.

“Please permit me to speak to the union leaders.”

If his voice shakes, no one is aware of it in the din. Amazingly, the crowd parts for him. As he steps out, it surrounds him again and presses him toward the entrance of the warehouse.

I stare at the phone, stubbornly mute in my hand. It’s as though the universe conspired to cut off communication between Rajat and me at the most crucial moment, to further our misunderstanding. I punch the green button several times. Nothing. I long to fling the phone across the room, but I can’t afford to break it. So instead I fling myself on the bed. Why did the phone have to die at exactly this moment? If only I’d had another minute to explain—

But then the truth strikes me, shocking as a slap. The real problem isn’t the dead phone. Even if I could have talked to Rajat, what would I have said after he accused me—so crassly, so easily—of unfaithfulness? Where would I have found the words to convey how hurt I am that he could think I’d let go so lightly of my betrothal vows? If that’s what he thinks of me, he doesn’t know me. He doesn’t know me at all.

And maybe I don’t know him. The Rajat branded into my heart—who placed his steady palm on my back and taught my stumbling self to dance at Mimi’s party, who tried to pull me from the quicksand of depression after Grandfather’s death, who pressed his face against my throat one drunken night and said he couldn’t live without me—would never have had such a low opinion of me. Or would he? Had I rushed into this engagement too quickly, putting my trust in gestures?

Or was it that even the best of relationships withered if people were separated too soon? Did early love, which grew out of the body’s needs, require the body’s presence to nurture it? Without those wordless glances that made the heart race, without the touch of lips that sent electricity through the body, without a shoulder to lay the dispirited head on and arms to shore us up against the world’s cruelties, even the most affectionate words weren’t enough. But the cruel words—paradoxically, those gained power as they flew across the miles to stab at a listener’s heart.

Still, my mother had done it. She had kept faith with a husband half a world away, when she was pregnant and fighting with my grandfather. She had held my father in her heart until she died. And I was her daughter.

But what if my love for Rajat simply wasn’t enough?

All these thoughts tumble through my exhausted brain as I press my face against a brown motel bedspread that smells of the loneliness of strangers and give way to tears. My life feels too heavy for me to shoulder alone. I’d thought myself strong and brave, smart and adventurous—but I wasn’t any of those things. I was just a girl who needed someone to hold me.

I’m crying so hard that I almost don’t hear the knocking at the door. But the knocker is persistent; I realize he isn’t going to go away. Through the peephole, I see that it’s Vic, holding two steaming cups and some packaged sandwiches. I dry my eyes carefully. I don’t want the additional humiliation of his knowing that I broke down.

He sets everything down on the rickety bedside table—that’s all the furniture the room has, except for the bed.

“I got them from the machines downstairs. Sorry, they don’t have a diner. But the hot chocolate smells pretty good, and the egg-salad sandwiches look safe. It’s freezing in here! Why haven’t you turned up the heat?” He strides over to the thermostat, but even he can’t get it to work. Finally, he gives up and calls the desk to demand another room.

I drink the hot chocolate in huge gulps even though it burns my mouth. I can feel its welcome warmth traveling through my body. It’s the most comforting drink I’ve ever had. I’m touched by Vic’s caring, especially in the wake of Rajat’s suspicion. But that suspicion has made me newly awkward. I’m acutely aware of our situation: we’re in my motel room at night, sitting on my bed. It’s exactly the kind of compromising scenario Rajat had imagined. The irony of it makes me want to laugh.

I mumble my thanks into my cup, aware that I sound ungracious. But I can’t risk Vic’s mistaking my gratitude for a different kind of emotion. And he has a history. I remember Desai cautioning him to keep things professional, and it strikes me that he’d been cautioning me, too.

“Why were you crying?”

I look up, startled and chagrined. Loyalty to Rajat battles with my longing for sympathy.

“What did he say to you?”

“Please,” I manage. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

He’s silent. I feel my face growing hot. Finally he says, “It’s been a hell of a day for you. Let’s get you that new room. You’ll feel better after you take a hot shower and eat something.”

He leans forward. I feel his lips on my forehead, a moment’s touch, like a falling petal. Somewhere there’s a memory of a similar kiss, its sweetness now turned to pain. I push it away. I keep my eyes closed. It takes all my willpower not to collapse into Vic’s chest. I must be faithful. I will be faithful. Is it wrong for me to want this moment not to end?

S
arojini is supervising a cleanup of the temple in preparation for Bhattacharya’s visit tomorrow night. The gardener boy scrubs the floor, coaxes spiderwebs from corners, and changes a burned-out bulb while Bahadur instructs him vociferously. The wicker chairs used for Korobi’s engagement, carried from the main house, create an ache inside Sarojini. The brass lamps are taken to the outdoor tap to be scrubbed with tamarind paste. Where is the large copper plate on which fruits are offered? No one seems to know. Beokoof! Bahadur yells at the boy in terrifying tones. But the boy is used to Bahadur and merely scratches his head. Sarojini wonders if other things are lost or stolen, things she has forgotten about. She finds she doesn’t care. Far bigger things in her life have gone missing, and, look, she has survived them.

Their work done, the servants leave. Sarojini indulges her knee and sits on a chair to pray. The priest is late. Perhaps he’s late every day, and Sarojini hasn’t noticed. Since Bimal passed away, she only comes to the temple intermittently. The goddess, she feels, has let her down. It isn’t right, she tells her sometimes. After all the pujas I offered you, asking you to take me first, this just isn’t right.

Sarojini chants the names of the goddess, but her truant mind wanders. This visit of Bhattacharya’s, it’s like a rock heaved into the still pond of her life. She’s not used to guests anymore. Over the last years,
Bimal had grown reclusive and abrupt, so that only his oldest, most persistent friends ventured to visit them. After his death, Sarojini let even that fall away. She has made an exception for Bhattacharya because of the Boses. She has gathered, by interrogating a reluctant Rajat, that they need Bhattacharya’s assistance for their business to survive. Rajat, dear boy, would never ask for help, but Sarojini is determined to do what she can to further their cause.

She abandons the flowery Sanskrit mantras for homespun Bengali importunings. Goddess, Mother of Miracles, could you soften up Bhattacharya a bit? And while you’re at it, throw the shawl of your protection over Rajat. The boy’s in trouble of some kind, something serious, I can feel it, though he won’t tell me the details.

Sarojini thinks back on the dinner at the Boses’, tension hanging thick over that beautifully appointed dinner table like mist over the pond at sunrise behind her parents’ village home. Suddenly, a great homesickness comes over her. For her childhood, that simple, happy time when all her needs were taken care of; for her parents’ village, now across the border in another country she’ll never visit; for the dust from cattle hooves glowing in the setting sun as herds returned from the fields. As if to intensify her yearning, a car honks irately outside her gate, and other drivers join in the cacophony.

She claps her hands over her ears and makes a decision. As soon as the no-moon puja is over tomorrow, she will go to Bimal’s ancestral village for a fortnight. There’s no need for her to languish here while Korobi is in the United States. She thinks of the village home, the old brick bungalow set deep in a mango orchard that she hasn’t seen for seventeen years because Bimal refused to visit it, and is struck by resolution. She puts away her prayer beads and hurries to the house to make arrangements. Cook will come with her, like last time. And Bahadur—she’ll send him ahead, to clean up the house.

From the doorway, Cook shouts, “Ma, Ma. Come quickly. Something terrible has happened.”

Sarojini sighs. Ever since Bimal’s death, Cook has been skittery. The least little thing puts her in a panic. The other night, she awoke Sarojini, certain that someone was trying to break into the house, but when they
checked (Cook armed with the fish-cutting bonti), they discovered it was only a branch scraping against a window. As Sarojini walks to the house, favoring her bad knee, she considers what to pack. Will she need her heavy shawl? Quilts, certainly, because the nights are colder in the village. A set of dishes, complete with utensils. Mosquito nets. The village mosquitoes, superior in size and aggression to their Kolkata cousins, are not to be taken lightly. She remembers the palm trees in the back, how the leaves whispered when the wind blew. So many nights she listened to them as she paced the terrace, carrying a colicky Korobi, her own insides still raw from having Anu ripped away. Still and all, it had been a healing place.

But when Cook, wringing her hands, hurries Sarojini into one of the spare downstairs bedrooms, she sees that something terrible has, indeed, happened this time. Water is pouring down one of the walls. A pipe has obviously broken somewhere upstairs. It must have happened a good while back, because the water has pooled on the floor, too. She stares, aghast, at the Turkish carpet that has been in the family since before her marriage, now soggy and ruined beyond repair. Is this a bad omen? Finally she recovers enough to summon Bahadur to turn off the main water pipe and call a plumber. She paces in a fever of anxiety until the man arrives.