The Girl in the Garden (15 page)

She looked at us. “Jump!”

Both my cousins laughed, tossed off their sandals, and left their dresses behind, as they leaped into the water with two great splashes.

“Come on, Rakhee!” Meenu doused me with a flush of water. “Don’t be a baby.” I peeled off my skirt, folded it, took off my glasses, and laid them down on top. Curling my toes, I hesitated at the edge of the bank.

“It feels so good, come in!” said Krishna.

I took a deep breath and jumped into the water, my limbs flailing as I fell. My long, loose T-shirt billowed out around my waist.

I ducked my head beneath the surface, ashamed of the tender nubs on my chest that the shock of cold water had exposed beneath the cotton.

I opened my eyes and even without my glasses I could see the perfectly rounded stones at the bottom of the river, the clouds of mud that puffed up through the cracks between the stones, the schools of miniature fish that flashed by like zippers. I thought I saw the white whip of a water snake, but when I blinked it was gone. I rose to the surface with a sense of panic growing in my chest.

“Are there any snakes in this river?”

“Don’t be silly. Of course not,” said Meenu.

I let myself relax, floating on my back and flapping my arms at my sides to prevent the current from carrying me off too far. The water lapped in and out of my ears; every now and then it covered my face. A network of spindly branches fringed with tapering leaves stretched out overhead like a swath of lace. The sky was a searing blue.

It reminded me of the feeling I got one summer afternoon when I ate two cartons of blueberries in a single sitting even though Amma had warned me not to. They were so juicy, so sweet as they slid down my throat, and even though I knew that they would cause me pain later, I couldn’t stop sucking them down, one after the other, until my mouth was stained a grotesque purple and my stomach was full of pins and needles.

I wished I could stay in that moment, that I could drift like that forever, and that the sick feeling would never come. If I could somehow preserve it, then Aba would set
all his mice free in a field and Amma would kiss
him
in a patch of moonlight. If I could lie like that on my back forever, staring up into the spotless cape of sky, then the cottage in the forest behind Ashoka wouldn’t exist; there would be no garden, and most of all, there would be no monster inside it for Amma and Sadhana Aunty to hide.

“Rakhee, come back here.” Meenu’s distant voice broke the silence. “We want to have a contest. Who can stay underwater the longest?” Wheeling around, I found my footing on the river bottom and paddled back toward my cousins. It was harder than I expected, making my way through the water, swimming against the thick current, and I felt a twinge of fear about what we were doing.

We formed a circle of three, grasped hands, and plunged beneath the surface, sinking downward together, our cheeks puffed out, our hair flying upward like black jellyfish. Krishna did not last very long—I saw her pop up out of the water after about ten seconds. Meenu released my hand and stared me down. Her eyes and cheeks bulged, fishlike, and her hair swirled around her head; she looked like an underwater Medusa. I squeezed my eyes shut. Soon I began to feel light-headed, but I didn’t want to give up. I tried to think of something other than my choking desire for air.

1,2,3,4,5, I counted in my head. Everything was still and quiet.

I opened my eyes and Meenu was gone. Again, I saw something white rippling through the water, past my head, and then brushing its slimy length against my arm.

I shot out of the water, my skin crawling. “Snake! It’s a snake! Get out!” I yelled to Krishna, as I struggled through the water and pulled myself onto the bank. Gasping and with a spinning head, I scrambled toward
where our clothes lay and heard Krishna, out of breath at my heels.

“Where’s Meenu Chechi?”

We looked around. She was nowhere in sight.

“Meenu! Meenu!” We ran up and down across the exposed stretch of riverbank, the grizzled grass that poked through the sand nicking at our ankles. The current seemed even stronger now that I watched it flow furiously from above.

“Oh my God, she’s drowned!” Krishna began to wail.

“Meenu!” I called once more. Even amid the sound of rushing water and Krishna’s whimpers, an eerie quiet pervaded the air. Just as I was about to slink down beside my cousin, my body limp, I heard a loud splash and a gasping for air, followed by a triumphant laugh.

“I win! I win!” Meenu emerged from the river naked and dripping wet, waving her white slip in the air like a banner. “Rakhee, you should have listened to me. I told you there were no snakes in this river.” She flashed her mischievous grin once more, and I realized that what had appeared to my impaired eyes to be a snake had actually been nothing more than Meenu’s petticoat.

“Chechi, it’s not funny! You frightened us—I thought you were dead!” Krishna’s bottom lip quivered.

“Oh don’t be so upset, it was just a joke,” said Meenu, squeezing the water from her petticoat.

Now that we were over our immediate shock, Krishna and I became aware of Meenu’s nakedness. We looked down at our feet, embarrassed by what we saw—the full, round breasts that she hid so well under her dresses and the thatch of dark hair between her legs. She was suddenly not Meenu Chechi anymore, she was a woman, like Amma, like Sadhana Aunty.

Meenu grew self-conscious and pulled her sopping wet petticoat and dress over her head.

“I’ll give you one more chance to win,” she said quickly, “How about a game of hide-and-seek?”

“No, I don’t feel like playing any more games, I’m going back home.” Krishna let out a sob, turned abruptly, and ran back toward Ashoka.

“How about you, Rakhee? Are you going to be a coward as well?” She arched one brow.

“I’ll play. What are the rules?”

We agreed that Meenu would have ten minutes to find a hiding spot back at the house, and I had half an hour to find her.

Meenu ran laughing into the forest.

At first I thought about following her in stealth, discovering her hiding place right away, and humiliating her. But then I remembered how Aba always told me, “Never fight fire with fire.” So instead I found a shady spot under some trees to wait. I examined my arms and legs, noticing that they had browned significantly over the course of the day; I hoped Sadhana Aunty wouldn’t notice.

After the swim and Meenu’s brush with death, my seat under the trees was as cool and comfortable as a bed. I pushed the pebbles that sprinkled the dirt out from under my bottom and leaned back against a tree trunk, resting my head against it. I closed my eyes.

When I woke up, the sun was already hanging low in the sky, an angry orange ball preparing to sink. Meenu was going to kill me. I started to get up, ready to run back home, hoping to make it before Amma returned, until I realized I was not alone. A group of servant women from Ashoka had gathered by the river and settled on their haunches next to heaps of clothes, some of which I recognized as my own.
They were washing the clothes in the river, roughly and efficiently, then standing and slapping them dry on rocks. Each time they brought a piece of cloth down upon the rock it made a resilient
thwack
. It was almost a dance: the women in their stained, monochromatic saris, their prematurely graying hair pulled back into frazzled buns, crouching, washing, standing, and beating, the rhythm of their movements imbued with a surprising grace.

There was no way I could slip away without their seeing me, so I settled back into my spot in the shadows, which was now no longer so comfortable. For a while they washed the clothes and folded them in tidy piles, quiet and intent in their work. When they had finally finished, streaks of pink and purple bruised the sky.

“Leave, leave,” I said under my breath.

But instead the women sat down on the ground with their knees up and began chatting, so I had to remain in hiding until, finally, as it grew darker they stood, gathered up their stacks of clothing, balanced the piles upon their heads, and began to make their way back to the house, winding through the trees in a single-file line. I was about to slink away after them when I saw a lone figure still standing at the edge of the river. The color of the sky was now so deep that the figure was nothing but a forlorn silhouette. But I knew right away that it was Hema. I knew her by that wild white hair and those long, praying hands that trembled in the windless air. A brown sack lay in a puddle at her feet. A thrill of fear and excitement shot through me.

She remained by the banks for only a few moments before she picked up the sack, turned around, and began heading back. Quietly I followed, now no longer concerned about Meenu’s being angry or Amma’s getting home before me.

Hema made her way through the shadowy thicket of trees with unexpected agility, clutching the sack against her sagging breast. I was out of breath from the effort of trying to keep up with her without making too much noise. She paused at the front steps of the hospital, looked both ways as if she were a child about to cross a busy street, then went inside to the office where Dev usually sat, the office that had once belonged to Muthashan. She went in with such familiarity that I got the feeling this was something she had done before. I huddled in the long, unlit hallway and poked my head into the office. Hema’s back was toward me, and she was standing before the portrait of my grandfather that hung high up on the wall, gazing up at it with such reverence in her eyes. There was something so alive, so piercing, about that look that she suddenly didn’t even seem all that crazy to me.

She began muttering something under her breath, a prayer, perhaps. All the while muttering, she tucked the sack into the waist of her sari, and went over to the heavy wooden chair where I had seen Dev once sit. She dragged it over to the wall, removed her sandals, and stood upon it so that she was at eye level with the portrait. A garland of faded brown flowers encircled the frame. Hema removed the old garland and tossed it down upon the desk. Then out of the sack she had been carrying, she pulled a fresh garland of white jasmine buds, so fragrant I could detect their perfume from where I stood. Carefully she hung the garland around the frame, climbed down off the chair, returned it to the desk, and swept the old, crumbled blossoms into the sack. She was so wrapped up in her own private world that when she left she didn’t even see me flattened up against the wall. For the first time I felt truly sorry for her.

A
fter Hema left, I went into the office and sat down at the desk. I felt very small behind it. An old phone—the only working one in the village—was perched on top of some books.

A few days before, Amma had overheard me asking Vijay Uncle if I could use the phone to call Aba and she had chastised me. “Rakhee, do you know how expensive it is to make phone calls to America? And besides, the connection is terrible. I told your father that we wouldn’t be calling unless it was an emergency…. He’ll worry if you go phoning him now. Why don’t you just write a letter instead?”

A letter was not enough. This was not exactly an emergency, but I wanted to hear his voice so badly, and I knew he would be happy to hear mine. I began dialing the number on the old-fashioned wheel.

“Please be home, please be home,” I whispered. After several rings he picked up.

“Hello?” His voice sounded scratchy from disuse, but my heart leaped at the sound of it.

“Aba, it’s me,” I blurted, and to my annoyance, tears filled my eyes.

“Rakhee, is everything okay? Hello?” The connection was fuzzy and he sounded so far away.

“Yes Aba, everything’s okay, I’m fine. I just wanted to talk to you.”

“Thank goodness, you had me scared for a second. How are you? I can hardly hear you.”

“Actually, Aba,” and the tears really began to flow. I wanted to remove this burden I had been carrying around, to tell him all that was happening because he would know what to do. “It’s Amma—” I stopped then because I heard my own voice bouncing back to me in an echo and Aba’s voice saying, “Hello? Rakhee? Hello? Hello?”

“Yes Aba, I’m here—”

“Hello? Hello? Rakhee?”

“Aba? Aba?”

The line clicked and went dead.

I put my head down in my arms and was about to give in to my urge to sob, but the phone immediately rang again.

It was Aba.

“Rakhee, what is going on? I’m concerned. Are you sure everything is fine? Your mother, she is well?”

I paused. This was my big chance, but I choked. The words would not come and I heard myself saying, “Yes, Aba, everything is fine. Amma’s doing great. I just got bored and thought I’d call.”

“I’m glad you did, Rakhee,” said Aba, before the line grew fuzzy again and finally went dead.

I clenched my fists, furious at myself for chickening out. Maybe I
should
write him a letter, I thought. Maybe it would be easier to explain everything that way.

Opening the top desk drawer, I searched for paper
but found only a few chewed-up pens and pencils. The next drawer was full of notebooks, but all the pages were covered in small numbers written in a meticulous hand. I took the notebooks out of the drawer, hoping to find some blank sheets underneath, but there was only bare, dingy wood.