The Girl in the Garden (23 page)

“She can’t say,” said Prem, “or it won’t come true.” He smiled kindly at me and I averted my eyes.

Balu, who was so excited by all the activity, was squirming in his mother’s arms and reaching for the cake. Nalini Aunty came up behind me so he could get a better look.

He dove forward and plunged his chubby little hands into the center of the cake, came up, and crammed fistfuls of sugary yellow rose in his mouth.

“Balu!” Nalini Aunty cried out in horror, but then everyone started to laugh and we couldn’t stop, even though it really wasn’t all that funny now that I think about it. We laughed and laughed. Tears ran down Krishna’s cheeks, she was laughing so hard.

It was the last truly happy moment of that summer.

M
eenu, Krishna, and I went into Amma’s room to begin preparations for our performance. With her permission, we rummaged through her cosmetics bag, which sat in a striped case on the dressing table, and pulled out various bottles and compacts, like candy on Halloween. Amma rarely wore any makeup, but she owned a lot of it. She used to wear it when Aba invited his colleagues to our house for dinner, but I didn’t like the way the lipstick and powder made her look. She became more like the other wives, more common. I don’t think Aba liked it, either, because he asked her to stop wearing it.

With little idea of what I was doing, I blotted powder onto my face and streaked blush across my cheeks, then removed my glasses and traced the outline of each eye with a black kohl pencil. I applied lipstick, which was the same bright red shade as the flowers blooming on the Ashoka trees outside. I was only playing a boy, but still I wanted to look nice.

When I had finished with the makeup, I examined my new face in the mirror. My cousins, who were now bickering over the same lipstick, faded into the background. The makeup had the opposite effect on me than it had on
Amma. For a second I wondered at the vivid, exaggerated features reflected in the glass. They were not mine; they belonged to someone else. I touched my face and the jolt of sensation made me smile.

We busily arranged our props and donned our meager costumes, culled from a heap of Sadhana Aunty’s old saris.

I still have the photo that Amma snapped before we went onstage—my cousins and me with our arms splayed across each other’s shoulders, looking more like a trio of beggars than the epic heroes and villains we intended to portray.

I carried the newfound sense of power onto the stage we set up in the sitting room, forgetting who I was for the brief window that the first act of our innocent tableau occupied. I let the sight of Amma and Prem, sitting side by side with amused expressions on their faces, blend in with the shadows the darkening sky cast about the room.

Everything went smoothly until Meenu came onstage. As Ravana, the evil demon king, she had made herself look repulsive, drawing raccoon rings around her eyes with kohl and smearing lipstick all over her face. I watched from the side as she staggered into the scene, opened her mouth, and paused. To my horror, she spoke her first lines, but not as we had rehearsed them. Instead, she spoke with a distinct stutter, just like Dev’s. I looked into the faces of the audience.

Dev’s nostrils had flared. Amma was biting her lip and Prem was shaking his head, trying to get Meenu’s attention. But the look on Sadhana Aunty’s face scared me the most. A white sheet of rage had descended upon her features, and her eyes were hard and ice-cold.

She stood up and I expected her to shout, but her voice was soft. “That’s enough, it is getting late.”

Krishna looked at her sister. Meenu’s eyes filled with sudden angry tears. Her chest puffed up and she ran out of the room before it could deflate.

Balu, who had fallen asleep, began to stir and whine.

“I’ll put him to bed, Aunty,” said Gitanjali quickly, scooping him up and rushing out.

“Children!” Vijay Uncle remarked with a laugh. When nobody responded he wiped his hands on his trousers and went over to the table under the window. “Well, Dev, Prem, fancy a nightcap?” He picked up a half-drunk bottle of whiskey and began pouring out three glasses.

“One for me, too, Vijay,” said Sadhana Aunty, and Vijay Uncle looked at her in surprise.

“Of course,” he said, clearing his throat, and pouring the rich, brown liquid into a fourth glass.

Nalini Aunty made a disapproving shushing sound and covered her mouth with her hand.

The grown-ups sipped their drinks in silence.

“She’s only a child, Sadhana,” Prem finally said.

“She’s nearly fourteen. That’s old enough to have learned some respect.” Sadhana Aunty’s voice was cold.

“That’s f-f-f-funny, Prem,” Dev said, “that you should ththi-think her age so very childlike.”

“Why don’t you girls go and get ready for bed?” said Amma, her voice cracking.

“But—” I began.

“No buts, Rakhee.”

Krishna reached for my hand.

As we left the room together, she whispered into my ear: “Poor Meenu Chechi.”

“Maybe we should go check on her.”

Krishna nodded and we went and stood in front of Meenu’s closed door.

“Chechi?” said Krishna, knocking.

There was no response.

“Meenu, come on, open the door,” I said. “Please?”

We stood there for a long while, knocking and pleading, but Meenu neither responded nor opened the door, and eventually we gave up. Krishna, with tears streaming down her face, went to her room, but I lingered on the verandah in a pool of moonlight, thinking.

I knew Meenu shouldn’t have mocked Dev, but I couldn’t help feeling glad that she had. He was so unpleasant, and everyone was always fawning over and tiptoeing around him. I couldn’t understand why. But I hoped things wouldn’t be too awkward the next morning. I hoped the whole thing would be forgotten and we could go back to playing four-square and cricket as usual.

I began to feel sleepy, but my bed seemed so far away. I didn’t have the energy to go wash my face and change into my pajamas, so instead I sat on the edge of the verandah step and rested my cheek against a pillar.

Birds sang in the Ashoka trees, and a soft breeze played the loose strands of my hair like a wind chime. The cows shuffled their hooves on the hay-strewn floor of their pen. It was a peaceful, soothing sound.

I wondered what Tulasi was doing at that moment. Was she reading the Shakespeare plays? Was she still sick? I wondered if she saw the lights of Ashoka through the forest and felt lonely.

For a while I sat there, undisturbed, half-dreaming. A man’s voice interrupted my reverie.

“You were quite remarkable tonight, molay—a natural a-a-a-actress.”

I looked down at my feet. “Um, thanks.”

Dev came and sat beside me. I moved closer to the wall.

“B-b-b-but you envied your little cousin K-k-k-krishna, didn’t you? You wanted the role of Sita.” He chuckled, and I could smell the disorienting musk of alcohol on his breath. “At least you did not have to play Ravana, the v-vvillain.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“D-d-d-do not underestimate the v-v-villain, molay,” he said. “It is only for the s-s-s-sake of the story that he loses in the end. If it were r-r-r-real life, he would get what he wants. The villain always h-h-has the bad reputation, but in t-t-t-truth, he is the most misunderstood c-c-character of all.”

Dev didn’t seem to be talking to me anymore; his eyes were fixed on the front gates, and his body was angled forward as if he was poised and ready to take off on a race.

He was silent for a minute, then he hissed, “D-d-d-do you know, Rakhee, that you m-m-might have been mine? That you sh-sh-sh-should have been my child?”

“What are you talking about?” I recoiled. The man was not only drunk, he had also lost his mind.

I stood up and so did he.

“Of course your m-m-mother would never t-t-tell you, but she was once b-b-b-betrothed to me—she was to be my w-w-w-wife. He promised her to me.”

“Who promised?”

“Your g-g-g-grandfather, just before he died. B-b-b-but she ran away, she ran away from her d-d-d-duties and went to America.” Dev gritted his teeth. “Oh! To think how differently life would have turned out had she st-st-st-stayed.”

My head swam. “You’re a liar.” Amma could never have been engaged to Dev.

He swiveled to face me and grasped my shoulders. “You impudent child!” I squirmed beneath his painful grip. “How dare you talk to me in this way?” His stutter had vanished.

“Let go!”

He shook me hard. Yellow stars began to blink and flash in the space between us.

“Someone ought to teach you some manners. But then, I should not have expected much from the daughter of a h-h-h-whore.”

I stopped struggling and my chin drooped to my chest. Blood flooded my skull and I thought I might faint.

“Take your hands off my daughter.” I heard Amma’s voice, cold with fury, and we both turned in surprise to see her standing before us. Dev released me and I fell against the railing, breathless. “Get out of here,” Amma said, taking a step forward. Two wirelike veins stood out on either side of her neck.

Dev glared back at her. “I don’t th-th-th-think you’re in any position to tell m-m-m-me what to do, Chitra.”

“I don’t care who you are or what you know,” said Amma with a fierce look in her eyes and a calm resolve in her voice that unnerved me. “If I ever catch you near my child again, I’ll kill you.”

Still, Dev did not move. He just stared hatefully at Amma for what seemed like an eternity. Finally he turned with a bitter laugh and stumbled off.

When he had disappeared down the stairs, I turned to face my mother, who was still quivering.

“Amma…”

“Are you all right?” she said.

“Yes, I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Then go wash your face and change. I think you’d better go straight to bed,” she said without meeting my eyes, and led me to my room.

I was so tired by this point that I could not argue. When my face was clean and bare, I sat on the bed and allowed Amma to run a comb through my tangled hair. She turned down the sheets and I lay beneath them. I couldn’t remember the last time she had tucked me in. She tucked me in so tight I couldn’t move.

“Amma?”

Muthashan was watching me from his portrait on the wall, his eyes dark and inscrutable.

“Yes, molay?”

“Can you stay until I fall asleep?”

Amma turned off the light and sat at the edge of my bed. I couldn’t see Muthashan’s portrait anymore. She stroked the hair off my face and kissed my forehead.

“I’m sorry, molay. I’m so sorry for all this. But I promise, it will be better soon. It will be better soon.”

It would be better soon. For a moment I forgot where I was. Amma was my mother again and we were back in Plainfield. Aba was reading in his study, Merlin was snoozing at my feet, the stars were shining down on the cornfields.

Amma began to sing softly, the song about Lord Krishna she used to sing to me when I was a little girl, the one I had heard Vijay Uncle playing on the flute. I loved the story behind the song—the penniless scholar going to ask his prosperous childhood friend, Lord Krishna, for help and having nothing to offer him but a sack of puffed rice:

I am an orphan and I have only this humble gift to offer you, please accept this puffed rice which is soaked with my tears.

I fell asleep and dreamed that Dev was my father, and when I woke up my cheeks were wet, the sky was pink as a rose, and Amma was gone.

I got dressed and set out for the garden.

When I reached the wall I could hear Tulasi pacing back and forth. As I landed on the other side she hurried forward and threw her arms around me, pressing me close. She was wearing Amma’s shawl.

“I have been thinking all night, Rakhee,” she said. “I am sorry for not fully expressing my gratitude yesterday.”

I was embarrassed. “It’s okay, don’t worry about it. We don’t have to talk about it.”

“No, but we should,” Tulasi pressed on. “You are the only one I feel I can truly confide in now. Come inside.”

I followed Tulasi into the cottage, and she went into the kitchen to prepare tea. The china cups made a tremulous tinkling sound as she handled them.

“The thing is,” she said, when we had settled onto the wicker sofa and she had pulled the Shakespeare out from underneath a pillow, “the book is wonderful. It was the best, most thoughtful gift you could have possibly given. But it also shocked me. Why would Teacher have kept this from me? At first I thought maybe she hadn’t known that William Shakespeare had written anything else, but according to the book’s introduction, Shakespeare is famous in the outside world, and Teacher is an extremely learned woman. She must have known this. This means she deliberately lied to me, and I cannot understand why she would do such a thing. If she has lied to me about
this, what other lies has she told? I have not been able to stop thinking about this. I am dreading her next visit. How shall I even look her in the eye now? Rakhee, I am so confused and ill at ease.”