In the Convent of Little Flowers (22 page)

Five minutes after she leaves, Prakrit and his parents come. My mother calls out to them aloud, loud enough for the street to hear. She leans out into the sunshine hoping Laila’s mother has not reached her house yet.

We twitter around them, as my mother blooms again. Prakrit’s mother does not smile; she is dour, assessing, her eyes cold. She does not have to smile to please; she has an America-return son for sale. There are many buyers.

I am deeply in love, uncaring how ill-mannered his mother is. I know it will be Prakrit and with him America and dollars. How I do not know. I just know. My mother, so anxious to please, lies that I made the
bhajjias
and boiled the chai and pounded the cloves and cinnamon with my own two hands.

Prakrit and I do not look at each other. We are very solemn. I keep my eyes down, demure and bridelike; he talks intelligently with my father, filling our little drawing room with his so-American twang. I am in love.

The wedding takes place one week later. My mother comes into my room the night before I am to be married, sits
on my bed, and stutters. I hear vague words, woman’s duty, never deny your husband, touch his feet, rise before him, have his coffee ready when he wakes up, never raise your voice at him. She leaves, having satisfied herself that she has done her job as a mother in preparing me for a marriage that must last my whole life, unsaid, even in this modern age, is that if Prakrit (God forbid) dies, I must still keep faithful to his memory. A husband comes only once in a lifetime. All this, my mother teaches me in those fifteen minutes the night before I marry.

We honeymoon in Goa. The sun bleaches the sands to salt white, deepens the blue of the Arabian Sea. We sit under palm leaf–thatched umbrellas, go for walks at dusk. Prakrit searches out Australians and Americans and British and Dutch and French and speaks to them over drinks at the bar. They laugh together, the foreigners happy to find someone who speaks English a little like they do, Prakrit missing his job and his home in the Unied States. At night, he does things to me that excite me. And repulse me.

For two months I do not answer the phone. And when I do, if I hear Sheela’s voice on the other end, I put it down. I am filled with loathing. I am filled with want. Nights I lie awake, listening to Prakrit’s heavy breathing, and think she is six floors below. When she calls, the way she says my name sets me shaking. When she kissed me I did not pull away, did not scream in outrage. I kissed her back.

But how did I not know this about myself? All of my friends growing up were girls—we played together, slept in the same bed at times, kissed on the cheeks at others. We swooned over the same film star. Nothing in my life has prepared me for this. I was told that I would grow up to marry, to have children. I saw this all around me. I saw nothing else, I read of nothing like this as a child, or watched it in a movie. I know now, of course, have known for a few years, since I married and stepped out of the cocoon of my childhood home. And yet … I did not know this of
myself.

I wander around the flat after the children and Prakrit are gone, dusting the tables and curios. A green plastic Statue of Liberty Prakrit got from his New York trip. The photo next to it is of him standing in front of the statue. A smattering of rain on the camera lens blurs his face. I polish my silver teapot and six cups that came as part of my dowry. I buff the wood
almirah
where I keep my saris and Prakrit’s suits, also part of my dowry. The dining table, the chairs, the sofa, the carpet, all came from my parents. Prakrit’s mother brought a list during the meeting before the wedding. They gave my parents three days to get all this together, before the ceremony. Or else.

There are other photos on the walls. Us together at Goa. I am wearing a
salwar kameez,
Prakrit looks grim and red-eyed, weeping from a gust of sand in his eyes. But on the whole we look happy. Then I was thinking of four more days with Prakrit before he returns to the United States. We register our wedding and Prakrit sends the papers to the American
embassy for my visa. He is so solicitous, so caring. This is what marriage is supposed to be, where he will take care of me. Laila’s mother is shattered with envy that the dark girl down the street is going to America to live. That she will come back maybe once a year with a trunk full of perfumy soaps and shampoos, that my mother will flaunt these smells when they meet. That I will slowly, over the years, say
heere
and call myself Neetoo.

The phone rings. I know who it is. This time I pick it up.

“Nitu.” Her voice is soft. “Please don’t hang up. Please.”

I wait. I am trembling, suddenly longing to hear more of her voice.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

I shake my head. As though she is at fault. We both … we both. But she cannot see me, of course.

“Let me come to see you. I can take an hour off at lunch.”

“Why?”

“Let me come,” she says.

I put the phone down carefully and go and sit on the sofa, my sofa. One of the things I can claim in this flat, and my parents gave it to me.

The noon hour passes slowly. Each time I hear the lift doors open, I think it is her. Each time I stand, waiting for the doorbell to ring. I see her face in my mind. See her smile. Ache for that kiss. Then I know she is not coming, that somehow, in talking to her, I have driven her away.

At four o’ clock the children return home. They eat what
I make for them, they drink their milk. They go into their rooms and shut the doors, the flat is empty again. I wait for Prakrit. Every day these last two months he comes home and says, Ashok got promoted, Vivek got promoted, Shekar is going to the United States—this last with a shameful downward glance. We do not talk much of America anymore, not after …

The last four days we are to spend together after the honeymoon pass, then another four, and four weeks. Prakrit is still in India. We live with his parents, two kilometers from my parents’ house. My mother asks when he is going; she does this in soft whispers when he is not present. I ask him too, but get no real response. Soon, he says, when his visa comes through. There is some problem. Then he tells me he is changing jobs, so the new company has to process his papers. I wonder about my own visa, but I am not to worry, he will take care of everything.

The longer we stay in India, the more Laila’s mother starts to smile. She comes to visit my mother often, with news of Laila’s marriage to a boy from a very good family, much land and property in India and—the final insult to my mother—he studied for his MS degree in America and works for a software company. The months pass, Laila marries and leaves almost immediately for California. Her first parcel to her mother contains three bottles of perfume with bold-sounding names, all of which smudge the air in our house after Laila’s mother’s visits. Finally, six months after the wedding, Prakrit tells me the truth.

His visa had expired long before he came back to India to get married. There is no chance of his returning, but his parents would not let that become common knowledge before the wedding. It would have wrecked their claims to Prakrit’s eligibility, and demolished the dowry he could command. There is little I can do about the lies. At the beginning I am furious, but my father tells me to go back to my husband and not make any trouble, it was hard enough to get me married. I do. Prakrit looks for a job, and finds one on a probationary status in Mumbai. I am glad to move away from the city where I lived all my life to the anonymity and crowds of Mumbai. Fourteen years ago.

Prakrit comes home, pounding on the doorbell as usual. He looks tired and goes to sit at the table without a glance. He drinks his chai, eats his
pakoras,
asks where Sunny and Dinesh are. I watch in silence. He talks. Something about another promotion for someone else, not him.

“That color does not suit you,” he says.

I look down at the yellow
salwar-kameez
I am wearing. I fan the chiffon
dupatta
over my dark fingers. I am suddenly angry. For years he has told me what to wear, how to wear it, how to sit and talk. As though he lives inside my skin. For years I have let him do this. Because there is no other way. Because this is all I have, or so I have been taught. In the end, it comes down to this. If not an America-return boy, at least one who is fair of skin, who has a job, whose job gives us this flat in Mumbai. But it no longer seems enough. Ten, twenty years from now I see us at this table. The children
are gone to their own homes and families. I see us sitting here in silence. I see Prakrit telling me, as my hair grays and wrinkles map my face, what to wear.

“It suited me fine when you came to view me,” I say.

He smiles. “No, it did not. But I had already decided to marry you, so the color did not matter.”

“Why, Prakrit?” I ask. “Why did you marry me? There were others you could have chosen from.” It is the first time I have questioned the lie, and his face reddens in rage.

“Let me see if I can explain it to you in terms you will understand, Nitu,” he says, leaning back in his chair with a grin. “I had to choose—my parents and I had to choose— a girl without brothers who would kick up a fuss when I didn’t return to the United States, and a father who would ignore her. When did your father ever look up from that damned newspaper that he reads in his chair each day to see what was happening around him?”

“What a bastard you are, Prakrit,” I say.

He raises his eyebrows. “Don’t talk too much, Nitu. Where are Sunny and Dinesh? Why haven’t they come to say hello to me?”

He turns away, already dismissive.

“I’m leaving, Prakrit.”

His head whips around. “Where are you going? To visit your parents? Not this month. Perhaps later.”

Even this is familiar. He does not want me here because he
wants
me here. But because I am a fixture in this flat. A wife. A symbol of status.

“I’m not coming back.”

His eyes grow cold. “What?”

I am too tired to talk, to give explanations. And he is not worth it. A few minutes ago the music from Sunny’s room stopped, and she stands in the corridor, chewing that omnipresent gum. Dinesh hides behind her, his gaze steady on the two of us.

“What will you do, Nitu? Where will you go, to your parents? They will never take you back.”

This I know. My mother would be horrified and I will be told my shadow must never again fall across their front door. This I know. I am terrified, molten with fear, but so determined. So sure I must do this so twenty years from now I do not sit across the table from him. So I can live.

I put my hand out to the children and they come with a confidence they have never before shown in me. Sunny comes to beyond my shoulders, yet she leans her head on my chest. Dinesh puts his arms around my waist. I am almost suffocated by his grip.

“Get out,” Prakrit says. “Get the fucking hell out.” His voice is triumphant. Because he thinks I will be coming back.

Sunny clutches at my
dupatta,
wiping her nose on it as she used to when she was a baby. We move together to the front door, open it. I stand there looking at Prakrit, but he is pouring himself a whiskey from the sideboard, another requirement on the list his mother gave my parents. It took our carpenter two days to make and cost more than my wedding
saris. As we stand there, Prakrit comes up to us, and with one hand pushes us out just beyond the door. Then he shuts it gently. I hear him say, “Don’t come back until you are ready to beg forgiveness. On your hands and knees.”

I stand in the little landing with the three flat doors branching out. The lift light comes on and the door opens. Sheela steps out. She looks at us standing there, the children sticking to my side. Then she opens her arms. Sunny and Dinesh fly to her. I wonder why, they don’t even know her. But they step into her circle of warmth. She lifts Dinesh and straddles him on one hip. He is heavy. He is eight, not a child anymore, but now he suddenly is.

I am crying. Tears drench the collar of my
kameez,
my nose runs.

“Come,” Sheela says. “Come.”

I stare at her. How did this happen? How did one day’s worth of emotions, two months ago, change my whole life? How will we shatter two families, shatter every social code and more we have known? How?

“Come,” she says again.

I go.

Afterword