The Girl in the Garden (11 page)

“Well, I’ll be Rama, since I’m the biggest, strongest, and bravest,” said Meenu, immediately taking charge.

“Can I be Sita?” I heard myself say, unsure of from where I had drawn such courage.

“You can’t be Sita, Rakhee,” Meenu said bluntly.

“Why not?”

“Sita doesn’t wear glasses, and—besides, how can
you
be an Indian princess? You’re not even fully Indian. Can you imagine Sita with an American accent?” She let out a scornful laugh. Blood rushed to my face. For the first time it struck me that even to my cousins, whom I had grown to love, I would always be different. I would never be one of them. “It’s settled, then,” Meenu said. “Sita will be played by Krishna, and Rakhee, you will play Ravana, the evil demon king.”

Krishna glanced at me and shrugged.

Sadhana Aunty stuck her head in the doorway and ordered
everyone to bed, the stern lines of her face warning us against any attempts at protesting.

“Rehearsals will start tomorrow,” said Meenu. “You are all dismissed.”

I could not sleep. I kept thinking about everything that was happening, feeling more alone than I ever had before. I was afraid, with only a thin sheet and a stretch of trees separating me from the thing in the forest. Those eyes and that face kept blazing across the backs of my eyelids every time I tried to close them. I wanted to ask Amma about it, to confess my fears, but she seemed very far away from me, altered somehow, as if this place had possessed her and left behind only a pearly husk.

Amma knew about the creature in the forest. Amma had visited the creature in the forest, but she was not doing anything about it. And she wanted me to ignore it.

I lay on my back, listening to a June bug clicking its wings on the sill. Moonlight streamed in through the window bars. On the ceiling directly above my head, a lizard spread its fat green thumbs across the crumbling plaster.

Something wasn’t right. I began to wonder, deliriously, if whatever I had seen really
was
a Rakshasi, and the Rakshasi was guarding an imprisoned princess, like Sita.

My mind raced back to that moment, the moment when I had screamed and fled from the garden door. I had been so preoccupied with my own fear, I had not even considered what I heard coming from the other side of the door—screams, just like mine. Not evil, but scared. Someone on the other side of the door had been just as frightened as me.

My throat was parched as sandpaper. Water, I needed water.

I climbed out of bed, put on my glasses, and, gripping
my flashlight, tiptoed out of the room and down the hall. Light was coming from under the sitting room door, and I heard voices on the other side. As I got closer, I saw that the door was ajar, so I turned off my flashlight and flattened myself against the wall to listen.

“There is simply no more money,” Vijay Uncle was saying. “We have no choice but to sell.”

“Never,” said Sadhana Aunty. “The hospital will never be in anybody’s name but ours.”

“Well, what do you suggest we do, then?” Vijay Uncle sounded frustrated. “Tell everyone the truth?”

“Vijay, don’t talk like that, don’t be ridiculous. If our father could only hear you now. Think of what he sacrificed for the sake of that hospital, to fulfill his duty to his people, to this village. We made a promise to him, and we can’t let him down. Nothing is more important than honoring his wishes and upholding the Varma name. Nothing. Long after we are all dead and gone, people will still revere and respect our name. I’ll die before I see it dirtied.”

“Time is running out—Dev is breathing down my neck,” said Vijay Uncle.

“We’ll have to figure something out,” Sadhana Aunty said. “We need just a little more time to think.”

“This is all my fault.” Amma’s voice was shaky.

Sadhana Aunty sighed, either with sympathy or impatience, I couldn’t tell. “Don’t cry now, Chitra. Tears will not help the situation. Let me get you some water.”

I sprinted back down the hall and leaped into bed before anyone saw me. I lay on my side, panting for air, marveling at my luck at not having been caught.

I had become alarmingly good at secrecy.

M
eenu spent the next morning writing out a script for our play in a battered old composition book. After lunch she assembled Krishna and me, both stuck indoors by the steady afternoon downpour, on the verandah to rehearse. We were like puppets, flimsy and bendable to her will, woodenly reading out our lines and moving wherever she pointed her finger.

Amma had one of her headaches and was resting in her bedroom. I desperately hoped that the separation from Aba was taking its toll, and that soon she would forget this Prem person and realize this had all been a big mistake.

“What’s the matter with you, Rakhee? Pay attention!” said Meenu.

As the rehearsal wore on, my ability to concentrate waned. I had trouble focusing on anything but the conversation I had overheard the night before. I had spent all night awake, thinking. What had Amma done to cause the family the trouble it was in? And where did Dev fit into all of this? Perhaps it had something to do with whatever Amma was hiding from Aba.

“Rakhee, this is the part where you show up as the
thirsty beggar,” Meenu said. “If you are not going to be serious about this play, then perhaps we should find another Ravana.” She placed her hands on her hips and fixed me with a petulant stare.

A volt of irritation shot through me. “Fine, then, maybe you should!” I stormed off to my room, sat on my bed, and folded my arms across my chest. An ugly black crow was perched on the windowsill, his feathers slick as an oil puddle. We glared at each other for a moment before he cawed and took off into the rain, beating his wings and disappearing into the forest.

A surge of regret dulled the sharp edges of my anger. What had I done? I considered going back out and apologizing to my cousins, but pride still tinged my remorse and I couldn’t bring myself to move.

Instead, I curled up on the bed and closed my eyes. My head sank deeper and deeper into the pillow, my glasses fell askew, and soon, lulled by the rhythms of the rain, I drifted into sleep.

I began to dream. I was standing outside the door that led into the garden with my hand on the knob. Just as I had in real life, I fiddled with the knob and pressed my weight against the door but it would not open. The vines that covered the wall began to unlatch from the cold gray stone and slither down onto the ground, where they coiled at my feet. Soon they were creeping along my body like green snakes, winding around my ankles, my legs, and finally my throat, binding my mouth, hissing. Their forked tongues flickered at the insides of my ears. “Trust us, Rakhee, trust us.”

I was airborne. The snakes were carrying me, lifting me like a feather high above the garden wall, and I was floating across the tops of the magnolia trees, then dropping down,
down, down. The snakes were loosening their grip. In a panic, I flapped my arms in the air, but my descent continued in that same slow manner. The softness of the leaves brushed against my skin, the sweet smell of roses relaxed me, and I succumbed to the fall. The flowers enveloped me in their silky embrace and I lay among them, safe as an embryo. A feeling of supreme belonging settled over me.

The Ashoka flowers above shone like rubies, radiating warm rays down upon my face. I stared up at them in a daze until, gradually, my sense of calm turned to horror. Those were not flowers or rubies in the Ashoka tree—they were eyes. Dozens of sets of eyes burning red as blood against the branches. I opened my mouth to scream, but only a pitiful noise emerged, and when I tried to stand, I couldn’t budge. The red eyes throbbed and glared at me, and with a terrifying certainty I knew I would never leave, that I was fated to remain within the walls of that horrible garden forever.

“Amma!” The sound of my choking sob jerked me back into consciousness. My palms were sweaty, my face hot. The rain pattered on the sand outside my window.

I stood upon my weak legs and stumbled into the bathroom. The floor was still wet from the last person who had bathed, and the fusty water against my bare feet brought me back to reality.

The dream was a warning sign. Whatever was in that garden, I did not want to see it. I had to squash my curiosity and stay away. I looked at my pale face for a long time in the mirror and concentrated.
You have to forget, you have to forget, you have to forget.

I went out into the hall, determined to make up with my cousins. Only Gitanjali was on the verandah, swinging on the bench with her eyes closed.

I started to turn around, but she said, “Rakhee.”

My oldest cousin rarely addressed me, or even Meenu and Krishna, her own sisters, so although she had clearly said my name, I looked around for someone else.

“Rakhee, I heard about this play you and my sisters are doing,” she said. “Did your mother ever tell you how the story really ends? It is not as happy as you think.”

“What do you mean?”

“After Rama saves Sita, he publicly rejects her because he is humiliated by rumors that she may not have stayed loyal to him throughout her captivity. In order to prove her innocence, Sita pledges to walk through fire. ‘If I emerge unscathed, then you will know I am telling the truth,’ she says. But even after she successfully performs this act, Rama sends her away, and she ends up pregnant with his twin sons and abandoned, living out the rest of her days in exile in the jungle. Eventually, she asks Mother Earth to open up and take her back into her womb. Mother Earth takes pity on her and swallows her up, finally putting an end to her suffering.”

Gitanjali gave me a hard look. “I just thought you should know,” she said casually before closing her eyes again and resting her head against the swing’s chain.

Trying to shake off the uneasy feeling, I resumed my search for Meenu and Krishna. I found them sitting in the dining room eating fruitcake and sipping milk from steel tumblers. Sadhana Aunty was at the head of the table, going over some papers covered in handwritten numbers.

She looked up from her papers when I entered the room. “Rakhee, I do not know what you usually do when you are at home, but Meenu and Krishna study for two hours every day during the summer holidays. I’ve been lenient since you just arrived, but it’s time for them to start
again. It’s important to keep young minds sharp and not waste the entire day in play.”

Meenu and Krishna both had miserable expressions on their faces and drank the milk as if their cups were filled with poison.

“Once you are finished eating, I want you both to fetch your books and sit here for two hours. I shall be back by that time.” Sadhana Aunty stood and put her papers inside a folder.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“I have some business to take care of. You girls needn’t concern yourselves with it.”

After Sadhana Aunty had left the room, I turned to my cousins.

“I came to say… I’m sorry. Can I still be in the play?”

“Of course,” said Krishna, grinning with her mouth full of crumbling cake.

Meenu pouted for a few minutes but eventually agreed to let me back in. “We’re on the verge of finding someone else, but I suppose you can come back. We’ll get back to rehearsals tomorrow morning.”

While my cousins were studying, I wandered out onto the verandah and sat on the swing, watching the rain cascade from the roof.

Closing my eyes, I inhaled the fresh scent. I always hated the way it smelled when it rained in Minnesota—like worms and wet grass. Here there was something pure and cleansing about a heavy rain, washing away the filth of everything that had preceded its arrival, leaving behind only pinpricks in the sand, like fairy footprints.

“I’m tired of studying. I hate mathematics.” Krishna emerged from inside the house after about half an hour and sat beside me on the swing.

“Won’t your mother be angry if she finds out you didn’t finish studying?”

“She won’t find out…. If Meenu tells on me, then I’ll tell about how she tried to put Cutex on the cat and
that’s
how she got that scratch on her arm. It’s the summer holidays, I can’t believe—” Krishna stopped talking and I realized Nalini Aunty had joined us on the verandah, bouncing Balu on her plentiful hip.

“Balu, don’t you have any pity for your poor mother? Can’t you ever sleep?” she was muttering.

She placed Balu on the ground and eased herself into Muthashi’s rocking chair. Balu joyfully crawled over to Krishna, who scooped him up and began cooing into his ear. I watched them play, self-consciously aware of Nalini Aunty’s eyes trained on me.

“Rakhee, what are those spots on your face?”

“What?” My fingers moved to my face.

“You know, those spots—all over your nose and cheeks.”

“Oh, freckles?” I said. My face had become peppered with them since arriving in India, due to the long hours I spent under the hot sun.

“Is that what they are called? It must be another thing you inherited from your Sardarji father.” She curled up her nose. “You know, I’m sure Dev could find some sort of remedy for that—you would be a much better-looking girl with a clear complexion. No one will ever marry you covered in those spots, not to mention those thick specs.”