Sister of My Heart (31 page)

I close my eyes against the sharp pain of what might have been. I want to ask Singhji how Ashok looks. If he is well. Are his eyes the same? His blunt-cut, responsible fingernails? The smell of his hair, like sunlight and smoke?

But that is the way to only more unhappiness. And danger.

Outside I hear Pishi calling, “Sudha! Sudha! Where
has
that girl disappeared to?”

“Here,” says Singhji, handing me an envelope. “He sent you this. If you want to send back a message, I will take it.”

There’s no time to read, so I fold it up and thrust it into my blouse. So many words are whirling in my foolish, greedy heart. I push them all back. “Tell him to marry,” I say. “Tell him to forget me.”

“Might as well tell the ocean not to throw itself on the rocks,” says Singhji dryly.

Halfway through the journey back to Bardhaman, I cannot bear it anymore. I say I have to use the bathroom. In the ill-lit, foul-smelling toilet of a roadside dhaba, I tear open the envelope. There is only one line written on the sheet inside.
Come with me
. My heart hammers so hard, I have to hold on to the wall. I fold the sheet, hide it in my blouse, and splash water on my face. Still, my cheeks burn, and when I come out Ramesh asks in concern if I am coming down with something. I keep my eyes closed the rest of the trip, telling Ramesh my head hurts. The car lurches over potholes. Ramesh’s arm around my shoulders grows to an unbearable weight. Ashok’s words are searing themselves against my eyelids. I allow myself a small thrill of hope. I could run away, yes. My mother-in-law would be happy, Ramesh would forget me soon enough, and Anju is so far away that even the farthest ripple of my action cannot touch her, especially since—my mother gleefully informed me of this—Sunil and his father are not on speaking terms. Would my act be evil, or good? I am not sure, and I am not sure I care.
Live for yourself this one time
, my heart sings. And the child I long for so much, who is to say I cannot have that child with Ashok? Then it would be a doubly loved child, doubly precious, because it belonged to both me and him.

The car groans to a halt in front of my in-laws’ house. I am surprised when I open my eyes to find that the day has turned dark. Rust-colored clouds hang over the brick building. The ominous heaviness of the afternoon light—as though a storm is rising—
emphasizes the hard contours of the house and makes me reluctant to go in.

I must say something to Singhji—though what I have not decided. Maybe I can speak to him while Ramesh is supervising the unloading of our baggage. But before I get a chance, my mother-in-law comes bustling out. From the newly starched sari she’s wearing, I can tell she is about to go somewhere. I give an inward sigh of relief. That will allow me to take refuge in bed and think things through.

“Ah, here you are finally!” she says. “How is it you’re so late?” She throws an accusing glance at Singhji. “I’ve been waiting and waiting. I was afraid the auspicious hour would pass, but luckily you got here just in time.”

My brain feels stiff and cramped, like my legs. What is she talking about?

“Come on, Natun Bau.” It’s telling, I think, as she grabs my hand, that she still calls me New Wife, though it has been almost five years now. Perhaps to her I will never shed my newness to become a true part of this household. She pulls me to the other side of the courtyard, where I see the family car and chauffeur are waiting. “There’s no time for dawdling. We’ve got to start right away.”

“But, Mother,” Ramesh protests as he follows us. “Where are you taking Sudha? She hasn’t been feeling well. She needs to rest—”

I blush to hear the caring in his voice. If only he knew what I had been thinking in the car, while he held me so tenderly.

“She’ll be fine!” says my mother-in-law in a testy voice. “Stop fussing over her and go drink some cha. I’m taking her to Goddess Shashti’s shrine in Belapur.”

“What shrine is that? I’ve never even heard of it!” Ramesh is displeased too, and for a moment I think he will put out his hand and pull me away from his mother. “I don’t think Sudha should go anywhere right now—”

“There’s a lot you haven’t heard of, my boy. While you were wasting time in Calcutta, I’ve been making inquiries. The goddess is very powerful. All kinds of women have had babies after visiting her. I’ve already contacted the priest, but in order for it to do us any good, we must get there during the auspicious hour, before the sun sets.”

And before I can say anything to Ramesh or to Singhji, she’s pushed me into the car and nodded to the driver. The engine clanks to life, the car sputters, raising clouds of dust, and we are on our way.

Soon we’ve turned onto a mud road which winds through coconut palms and ponds filled with mosquito plants. It is a road I do not know, taking us deep into the rural landscape, bamboo forests and fields of mustard flowers, abandoned wells beside crumbling huts, taking us westward to where the sun glares at us from a tear in a black cloud.

“Pray, Natun Bau,” says my mother-in-law. “Pray to the goddess for a son.” She is still holding on to my wrist. Her nails bite my flesh, and her lips move feverishly all the way to the shrine of the goddess of childbirth.

I walk by myself down the dark, winding corridor to the inner courtyard of Shashti’s shrine. Only the actual supplicants—the childless wives—are allowed in here, for which fact I’m immensely thankful, because it means my mother-in-law must wait reluctantly on the stone bench by the main gate.

I am a little frightened as I walk, unsure of what to expect. A part of me wants this place to be fake—the product of greedy priests preying on superstitious minds—so my mother-in-law can be proved wrong. But the part of me which used to love the old tales longs to believe that this is a site of true power compared to which the most potent modern drug is less than dust.

The old priest at the gate pressed a handful of flowers into my palm along with a piece of string, but gave no further instructions.

“Go, go,” he said when I tried to ask. “When you get there, you’ll know what to do.”

I blink as the courtyard bursts upon me in a sudden blaze of heat and wailing sound, too much to take in all at once. There’s a shadeless, airless square paved with bricks that burn my naked feet, and when I squint upward, the clouds seem to have all disappeared. Each wall of the courtyard is painted with a shape—an eye, an enormous, white eye, which stares out with the goddess’s unblinking, all-seeing gaze. I find it hard to look away from. Is that a shallow pool in the center of the courtyard, edged with concrete? And in its center, not a deity, as I’d expected, but a small square of earth with a tree I cannot recognize. Everything hurts my eyes—the harsh white paint, the glint of water, the shimmering leaves of the tree. But they are not leaves, for as I watch, a woman—I realize, suddenly, that the courtyard is full of women, weeping young women—a woman wades across the pool to the tree and ties something to one of its branches. I walk closer and see it’s a pair of gold earrings. The tree is weighed down with such offerings—neck chains, bracelets, toe rings, armbands, a fortune’s worth. I’m amazed they have not been stolen. The goddess must truly be powerful to inspire such reverent fear.

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.