Secret Keeper (11 page)

Asha didn’t look up. Her armpits were starting to itch, and the space between her shoulder blades felt damp.

“Raj, get up,” Uncle said grimly. “Sumitra, sit down.”

Raj stood up and held out his chair. Ma landed in it with a thump. It wasn’t proper for a woman to sit at the dinner table with her older brother- in- law. But Uncle had issued a command, and Ma couldn’t disobey him. It was even stranger that he’d called her by name. Now Asha and Ma were sitting beside each other, across the table from Uncle, as though they were on trial. The whole family was silent, even the small cousins.

Uncle started talking. Asha tried to tune out his voice as he recounted the details of her afternoon’s activities. But even as the sweat poured down her back, she was impressed by the accuracy of the gossip chain. The length of Raj’s stolen shorts was described as
reaching only to the middle of the thigh,
which was exactly right.

“Why did she do this terrible thing?” Uncle demanded. “Haven’t we taken your daughters in and treated them as our own?”

Ma’s face was blank. She didn’t answer.

Uncle turned to Asha. “What do
you
have to say?”

Asha’s chair felt like a gas burner with the flame turned up high. She fought the urge to empty the entire pitcher of water over her steaming head. “I—I wanted to stop that fellow from marrying Reet,” she said.

“
I
am in charge of this household,” Uncle said fiercely. “Don’t you think
I
know what’s best for your sister?”

No, I don't,
Asha wanted to respond. But she didn’t; it would seal her fate forever. And Ma’s, too. “Reet doesn’t want to get married,” she said instead. “At least, not yet.”

“What? She hasn’t told me this. Shona, is this true?” Uncle asked.

Reet looked at Ma, whose face was a stone. The Jailor was fully in charge now, and Asha could almost hear a malicious chuckle.

“Well?” Uncle asked again.

Reet reached across the table for her sister’s hand. “Uncle, I’m not ready to get married,” she said, quietly at first, but her voice gained confidence as she kept on. “Not yet, anyway. When I’m a bit older, I know you and Grandmother and Baba and Ma will find me a wonderful husband.”

Uncle frowned. “I was told you were ready. I certainly wouldn’t have started this conversation otherwise.” His expression softened. “But you
are
growing into a lovely young woman, Shona, and the proposals will begin to come whether you’re ready for them or not. We have to start thinking about the best possible match for you before too long.” He sat back in his chair and shook his head. “As for your sister, I’ve never heard of such an unwomanly, disrespectful act in all my life. As though we couldn’t handle this situation without her humiliating every boy in town!”

“It’s Bintu’s fault,” Auntie added, dragging Baba’s name onto the list of the accused. “He’s always treated her like a boy. Teaching her tennis and whatnot. Now my own daughters will have to live in the shadow of this ridiculous behavior. People will think our whole family is mixed up.”

Grandmother entered the fray. “Bintu was never the one who taught her how to dress like a boy. Bintu never tried to pretend they had a son. Bintu is not the one to blame for Asha’s behavior. Unless you blame him for choosing his wife.”

Everybody gasped. Grandmother had never expressed her disapproval of Ma and Baba’s unarranged marriage so vehemently. Ma stood up, but Grandmother wasn’t finished. “You treated her like a son,” she said, blocking Ma’s exit. “It’s your fault. Look! Just look at how you dressed that poor girl for years.” She lifted her hand and made a sweeping wave at the wall behind her.

The framed photos on the dining room wall were so familiar that nobody ever really looked at them closely anymore. But now Asha scrutinized them along with everybody else, wondering what in the world her grandmother was talking about. Slowly, the truth dawned. In most of the photos taken when they were small, Reet was always dressed in frocks and frills, while Asha was wearing shorts. Reet’s hair was in braids, but Asha’s hair was cropped like a boy’s, shorter even than she had just cut it herself. In fact, to a stranger’s eyes, those younger versions of her looked much more like a boy than a girl.

Asha had always known that Baba used to treat her like a son. Now, thanks to Grandmother’s outburst, it finally dawned on her that it had been Ma who had cut her hair short, Ma who had dressed her in shorts and pants, Ma who had obviously been trying to camouflage in public the fact that she hadn’t produced a son for her husband.

The room was quiet; by now everybody had taken in
Grandmother’s meaning. Slowly, as though they’d rehearsed it, every head swiveled to Ma. She endured the scrutiny for only a few moments, and even then the Jailor didn’t let her run, or weep, or shout. Gathering her saree around her, she climbed the stairs with a slow, heavy tread.

“Poor thing,” Auntie said, but her voice didn’t sound sympathetic. “She’s never recovered from not giving Bintu a boy.”

“It’s not surprising,” Grandmother added, still angry. “She came from such an uneducated background. I
told
Bintu so many times.”

“And now look what’s happened to their daughter.” Uncle snorted, flicking his head in Asha’s direction. “Still pretending to be a boy, after all these years.”

“Eesh,” said Auntie, wrinkling her nose in disgust.

“Bas!
That’s enough,” Grandmother said, ending the discussion.

Asha was a shrieking kettle on the verge of exploding, a fire about to send flames into their faces. She opened her mouth, but Reet’s groping foot found hers in the nick of time and pressed down, hard. Asha clamped her lips, repeating the promises she’d made to Baba in her head like a mantra.
Take care of Ma. Take care of Reet. Don't dishonor Ma.
Pushing her chair away from the table, she excused herself and left the room.

Up, up, and up she climbed, out to the darkness on the roof. A few stars were shining feebly in the smoky sky, the heavy air promising another storm. There was no sign of Jay; his room was dark.

Asha let her hands travel across her slim hips and
waist, curving up her body to the small rise of her breasts. She knew she wasn’t half as beautiful as her sister, at least not by Gupta standards, but she had always secretly liked her shape, the way she was blooming slowly, like a lotus flower. Now her flesh felt as stiff and unyielding as wood.

She fingered the bones of her face, her slim neck, the outlines of her skull.
Nothing feminine about my head,
she thought.
No wonder it was easy to fool everybody.
Next, she touched the jagged ends of her hair. It had taken a year and a half to grow that braid. She’d be eighteen, almost nineteen, by the time it was that long again.

The tears came, flowing freely. Asha knew why. It wasn’t her hair she was mourning. She was grieving the losses of a small girl, disguised so well that nobody recognized her. Not even herself.

SIXTEEN

A
SHA CREPT DOWNSTAIRS ONCE THE HOUSE HAD QUIETED
for the night, slipping under the mosquito net and retuck-ing it under the mattress. Reet and the cousins were already asleep, but Asha found her corner of the hard bed and tossed restlessly.

She was even more furious now about the changes she’d had to endure once her period started. Both of her parents had treated her like a boy, and then in one day expected her to let go of the freedom that came with boyhood. It wasn’t fair. They should have readied her for womanhood from the start. Reet had seemed to survive the transition from girlhood just fine; for Asha it had felt like a death sentence.

Asha turned again and again, trying to find a more comfortable place on the mattress, her thoughts racing. The next thing she knew, Reet was stroking her hair to wake her
up. “We need to talk,” she whispered. “Come into the bathroom for a minute.”

“The bathroom?” Asha said, blinking furiously as she crawled out of bed. Her eyes were stinging and puffy; she must have finally fallen asleep just before dawn. “Why do we have to go in there?”

Reet handed her sister a bag of chanachoor. “Privacy. Here, Raj got this for you. If you want to skip breakfast, I can tell them you’re not hungry and you’re not coming down. You can eat this instead.”

“Not in that bathroom, I won’t.”

It was too smelly in there to eat crunchy peanuts and fried lentils. Grandmother thought it was Auntie’s responsibility to supervise the woman who cleaned it. Auntie figured it was Grandmother’s. Meanwhile, the stink grew, and the girls usually ducked in and out as fast as they could.

Asha reached under the bed, pulled out her bag, and tucked the chanachoor inside it. She felt a surge of gratitude at Raj’s kind gesture.

Reet was waiting at the door. “Hurry, Osh. The twins will be back upstairs any minute to wash up before school.”

Asha followed her sister to the bathroom. She leaned over the sink and splashed water on her face to get rid of the salty taste on her lips. The cold water felt good against her hot cheeks and burning eyes. She dried her face and took a deep breath.

And almost passed out.

“Let’s get out of here, Reet,” she urged, fanning the air in front of her face.

“Tell me why you cut your hair. Whole story.” Reet was
trying to hold her breath and talk at the same time, so her words came out sounding choppy.

“I cut it off so I could beat him. So he would hate us. And not want to marry you.”

“Oh, Osh,” Reet said, ending her breath- holding efforts with a huge sigh. “Thanks. But don’t you think I could handle getting him to hate me? Why’d you have to get yourself in trouble? And cut off your gorgeous braid?”

Asha looked into her sister’s kind eyes. How could anyone ever hate Reet? And besides, she
hadn't
been sure that her sister could handle the situation. “At least I got to play tennis in India one last time,” she said, trying to grin. “And you got the chance to tell Uncle that you’re not ready for marriage.”

The girls abandoned the bathroom and headed downstairs. Thankfully, the dining room was empty. Only the photos on the wall greeted them. Overlooked for so long, they seemed prominent now.

Reet handed Asha a slice of bread. “Are you angry at her?” she asked.

Asha gripped the knife hard as she spread butter on the bread. “Wouldn’t you be?
You
didn’t have to live a lie for her sake.”

Reet shook her head. “I’m not too sure about that,” she murmured.

Her sister’s words hardly registered with Asha. The hurt of the night before had hardened into something worse. She never wanted to talk to her mother again. And what about Baba? Why had he just stood by and let Ma dress Asha like a boy-until the Day of First Blood, of course, when all of them
had to face the truth? Asha Gupta was a girl, and there was no more hiding the fact from anybody, including themselves.

She swallowed the last bite of the bread and butter and washed it down with tea. “It’s a miracle I didn’t get ruined. At least I think I didn’t.”

“You’re the opposite of ruined, Osh,” Reet said. “In the long run, I think you’re better off, actually. You’ve had a certain kind of freedom to be yourself first, while I…”

Her unfinished sentence dangled in the air. She stood up and fingered what was left of Asha’s hair. “Anyway, you’re creative, sister of mine. Nobody can argue with that. Guess what? You accomplished your mission: I’m not going to have to marry the Y.L.I.! Hooray! When it grows out a bit, I can fix your hair in a new style I saw the other day-pulled to the side with a hairpin. It’s perfect for shorter hair.”

Asha stayed upstairs for the rest of the day, wishing the room had a door to close and trying to ignore Auntie’s “eesh- es” when she walked by the curtain. Ma didn’t come up and neither did Grandmother. After a couple of hours of sleep, Asha woke and stretched across the width of the whole bed. It was the first time she’d had the bed to herself in the four months they’d been there, so for once she risked taking out her diary in her room. She needed desperately to confess exactly what she was feeling.

Someone knocked on the wall beside the curtain. “Come in,” Asha called, stashing her diary and pen under her pillow, even though she knew it was Reet. Who else would take the time to knock instead of barging in?

Her sister brought in a tray of luchis and potatoes and cauliflower, along with a couple of slices of fresh lime. “I told them you weren’t feeling well,” she said. “So don’t eat all of it. Ma fixed the tray.”

“I’m not really that hungry anyway,” Asha said, but she sat up and took the tray on her lap. The luchis smelled delicious, and she squeezed the lime juice over the potatoes and cauliflower as she always did.