Sister of My Heart (36 page)

“O my God,” says my mother, who’s the first to arrive. Her hand flies to her mouth. “So you went ahead and did it, you stubborn, impetuous girl. O my God, what’ll we do now?”

It’s what I expected, but it still stings. I blink away the tears as though I were a girl of twelve. Can’t she tell, can’t she ever tell, that I need someone to hold and comfort me?

“What do you mean?” asks Pishi, who has followed close behind. “And what kind of way is that to greet your daughter who’s visiting you after so many months? Come, Sudha Ma, let me see how pretty you’ve grown now that you’re about to become a mother. Oh, how happy I am to see you! But Ramur Ma’s right, our son-in-law shouldn’t have let you come all by yourself. You look terribly tired.” She rubs my back and gratefully I let my head sink onto her shoulder.

Gouri Ma hurries in now, her welcoming smile a little perplexed. I can see her searching the room for my baggage. She’s wondering why Ramesh’s driver hasn’t brought it in yet from the outside.

This is the most painful part, having to go over all the sordid details again, watching the horror growing in Gouri Ma’s eyes, watching Pishi clenching a corner of her sari in her fists.

“I told her not to,” hisses my mother. “I told her to grit her teeth and put up with it, and try for another pregnancy. A woman can have many children, after all, but a husband is forever. But no, Madam had to do it her own way.
Now
what’ll we tell our relatives? Uff, she’s smeared kali forever on the Chatterjee family, to say nothing of my ancestors.”

I want to say something barbed about her ancestors, but it’s too much effort. My back aches dully, and all I want is to lie
down in the familiar room of my childhood and pull the bedcover up over my head.

“Enough now, Nalini,” says Gouri Ma. Her breath comes unevenly and I feel wretched for having added to her troubles. “Sudha’s old enough to make her own decision, and I can see why she’s made it. It’s up to us to support her—”

“There you go again, Didi,” my mother says, “encouraging her to be headstrong. No wonder she’s been having trouble with her mother-in-law—”

It’s like my childhood replaying itself. I would laugh if it were not so painful.

“Bas, bas, Nalini,” says Pishi. “The poor girl’s about to faint, she’s that tired, can’t you see? Let’s feed her and get her into bed, then you can cry and call on the gods all you want.” She takes me by the hand and guides me down a corridor. “Here, Sudha, wash up in this bathroom. There have been some changes in the house. We’ve had to close off the upstairs—there were a lot of leaks after the monsoons. I’ll tell you more about all that tomorrow.”

Dinner passes in a daze, a frugal meal of rice and dal and sautéed spinach, sadly revealing of the mothers’ financial circumstance. I brush away Pishi’s apologies—the unun has been put out for the night, she says, or else they’d send Singhji to the market for some fish to fry up hot for me.

“It’s delicious, just like this,” I tell her, and it is. I didn’t know how starved I had been for food served with love, food I could eat without choking on the strings attached to it. Food for Sudha, not for a receptacle for the heir of the Sanyal family.

After dinner I lie down in the makeshift bed the mothers have fixed in the pantry. Tomorrow they’ll have a bed carried down, Gouri Ma says. She bends over to ruffle my hair. “We’re all glad you’re here, Sudha,” she smiles. “Even your mother. It’s just her habit to complain—you know that.”

“I’m sorry to cause you so much trouble,” I say.

“Nonsense. Aren’t you our daughter, tied to us not only by blood but by all the years of your life?” Gouri Ma’s eyes hold mine. I know what she is really saying.
No matter who your father was, you are you, and you belong here. As will your daughter. Because ultimately blood is not as important as love
.

I breathe out in a deep, satisfied sigh and snuggle into my pillow. Long after she has turned off the light, I feel Gouri Ma’s soft touch on my hair, like a blessing. Next door I can hear the mothers talking, their voices rising and falling in argument, trying to figure out what they should do. The sounds relax me. Even a sudden burst of anger from Gouri Ma, or my mother’s extravagant wails, are familiar as childhood lullabies, with their plaintive refrain of concern. I know the beat underlying them so well, I could tap it out on my bones.

“It’s the beat of the caring heart,” I whisper to my daughter. And together, soothed, we sleep.

The next morning, because my mother insists, Gouri Ma calls my mother-in-law. She tells her I am here, that I am well, that I want to keep the baby. Could she possibly work out a compromise, so both families can save face and be happy?

My mother-in-law is gracious, with the graciousness of someone who knows she cannot be persuaded. If I return at once and go through with the scheduled abortion, she will consider my foolish act of rebellion forgotten. If not, she is afraid she will have to set the divorce proceedings in motion.

But what does Ramesh say to all this? Gouri Ma says. She asks if she can speak to him.

My mother-in-law informs her that he is not available. He agrees with her, of course. She sounds surprised that anyone would even need to ask.

After she hangs up, Gouri Ma takes my hands in hers. “I didn’t have much hope concerning your mother-in-law,” she says,
“but Nalini made such a fuss that I made the call. We should contact Ramesh, though. I’ll send Singhji to his office—”

I think for a while of his soft silken eyes, his hesitant hand cupping my belly. The way his mouth wavered into weakness when his mother raised her voice. The way he held his hands over his ears and begged,
Sudha, please, let me be
.

“He knows where I am,” I say finally. “If he wants us, he can get in touch with us easily enough. And if he doesn’t want her”—I touch my stomach—”then I’m not for him either.”

We do not hear from Ramesh. The next week a peon delivers divorce papers to our door. Under “Reason” is typed “Desertion.”

I take off my wedding bracelets later that day, wipe off the sindur powder in spite of my mother’s lamentations.

“O Goddess Durga! What will people say?” she cries. “A pregnant woman without sindur on her forehead! What shameful names will they call your child?”

I offer her a nonchalant shrug, but I’m pierced by a shaft of guilt. Is my audacity laying my daughter open to condemnation?

Surprisingly, it is my usually diffident Pishi who comes to my rescue. “Why should she care anymore what people say? What good has it done her? What good has it done any of us, a whole lifetime of being afraid of what society might think? I spit on this society which says it’s fine to kill a baby girl in her mother’s womb, but wrong for the mother to run away to save her child.” She’s standing now, her chest heaving, her face flushed. I’ve never seen her this impassioned, nor, by their expressions, have my mother or Gouri Ma.

“When I came back to my parents’ home as a widow, how many of society’s tyrannical rules I followed! How old was I then, Gouri? No more than eighteen. I packed away my good saris, my wedding jewelry, ate only one meal a day, no fish or meat, fasted and prayed—for what? Every night I soaked my pillow with guilty tears because I was told it was my bad luck which caused my husband’s death.

“Men whose wives died could marry as soon as a year had passed. They didn’t stop their work or their schooling. No one talked about their bad luck. We even have a saying, don’t we, ‘Abhagar goru moré, Bhagya baner bau, the unlucky man’s cow dies, the lucky man’s wife dies!’ But when after three years of being a widow I begged my father to get me a private tutor so I’d at least have my studies to occupy me, he slapped me across the face. I considered suicide, oh yes, many times in those early years, but I was too young and too afraid of what the priests said—those who take their own lives end up in the deepest pit of hell. So I lived on in my brother’s household. What else could I do? But though he was kind—and you too, Gouri—I knew it was charity. I had no right in this house—or anywhere else. My life was over because I was a woman without a husband. I refuse to have our Sudha live like that.”

A stunned silence follows her outburst. Gouri Ma wipes her eyes, and even my mother bites her lip and looks down.

“You’re right, Didi,” Gouri Ma says finally. “What do you think we should do?”

“Sell the house,” says Pishi without hesitation. “Like that Marwari businessman has been asking us to do for a long time.”

Both Gouri Ma and my mother breathe in sharply. I too am shocked. This from Pishi, the upholder of family tradition!

“What is it but a heap of stone anyway?” Pishi continues. “The true Chatterjee spirit, if there is such a thing, must live on in us. Us, the women—and the little one who’s coming, whom we must be ready to welcome. For heaven’s sake, Nalini, don’t look so tragic. You won’t be out on the street. The money we get from the sale of the land alone will be enough to buy a nice little flat somewhere convenient, Gariahat maybe, and pay for Sudha’s delivery. We must make sure she goes to a really good doctor. And, Gouri—I don’t want any more excuses from you—I want you going for a checkup next week, and if the doctor still says you require surgery for your heart, I want you to get it done right away. Sudha and our granddaughter will need all three of us
through the hard times to come—you most of all, because you know the most about surviving in the outside world.”

“Yes, Didi,” Gouri Ma says with a new meekness. A smile begins to form on her lips.

“And you, girl,” says Pishi to me, “go take a nice bath and shampoo the last of that red from your forehead. The Sanyals are the ones who have lost out, not you. You’ve got a whole life in front of you, and it’s going to be such a dazzling success that it’ll leave them gaping.”

I too can’t help smiling. When Pishi pronounces it with such gusto, my future seems a possibility. I bend to touch her feet, then Gouri Ma’s and my mother’s.

“Ah, but what kind of blessing shall we give you?” Pishi says with a wry smile. “To say that you should be the mother of a hundred sons seems hardly appropriate, isn’t it, when a husband is no longer in the picture?”

And suddenly I know. “Bless me that I might be like the Rani of Jhansi, the Queen of Swords,” I say. “Bless me that I have the courage to go into battle when necessary, no matter how bleak the situation. Bless me that I may be able to fight for myself and my child, no matter where I am.”

“We bless you,” say the mothers.

In the shower I scrub until the last vestige of red is washed down the drain. I am washing away unhappiness, I tell myself. I am washing away the stamp of duty. I am washing away the death sentence that was passed on my daughter. I am washing away everything the Bidhata Purush wrote, for I’ve had enough of living a life decreed by someone else. How easy it seems! What power we women can have if we believe in ourselves!

My optimism’s temporary, I know that. The next months will bring many troubles, many doubts. Still, my heart is filled with lightness. I open my mouth and let the sweet clean water flow into it. In my womb, my daughter pirouettes with joy to hear me sing.

ALL WEEK
I toss and turn on the lumpy sofa to which I’ve banished myself. Sunil came over the first night and asked me to go back to bed with him, but when I told him to leave me alone, he didn’t ask again. My uneasy sleep is punctured by dreams like wisps of torn clouds, where Sudha’s face fades in and out, sometimes entreating, sometimes weeping, sometimes wide-eyed in fear. Each morning I wake with a backache and a sinking in my chest. I’ve spoken to Sudha twice since she came to Calcutta, and both times she’s been in good spirits. Still, I can’t stop thinking of what Sunil said. Did I make the wrong decision for Sudha, misled by my American-feminist notions of right and wrong? Have I condemned her to a life of loneliness?