Oleander Girl (10 page)

The bed is filled with memories. Of Bimal, of Anu. But it’s the memory of Korobi that comes to Sarojini now. Born prematurely, she had been kept in the hospital incubator for weeks. How tiny she was, how frighteningly fragile when Sarojini finally brought her home, her skin like thin porcelain with the blue veins showing through it. Terrified that she would die, Sarojini had sent Bimal off to the guest bedroom and kept the baby in this bed, shored up by pillows. She checked on her breathing every hour, fed her milk from a dropper, held on to her as though she were afraid that any moment she’d slip away. With her eyes closed and hand cupped, she can even now feel that silky newborn skin. It comforts her, pulling her finally into sleep and thence into a dream.

It is late morning on the last day of her daughter’s life. Sarojini the dreamer knows this already, and unease pulls at her heart. The Sarojini in the dream doesn’t know, but she, too, is sad because she is getting ready to say good-bye. Anu has asked her mother for a head massage,
her last one before she returns to America tomorrow. She sits on this very bed, holding her distended stomach, while Sarojini fetches the perfumed hibiscus oil. Pregnancy has been good for Anu. Her hair is thicker than before, her complexion luminous. Except for the few times recently when she’s argued with her father, she has been as serene as the goddess.

“I wish you could stay until the baby arrives,” Sarojini says, but without much hope. She knows her daughter intends for the child to be born in America, in the presence of the mysterious Rob, the husband she never mentions, and that is a reasonable desire. But Sarojini the dreamer knows that her wish will come true, tragically, perfidiously, that very night. This knowing-yet-not-knowing is a strange sensation, like being split in two.

“Oh, Mother, let’s not think of all those complicated things right now. Let me just enjoy my head massage. It makes me feel like a girl again—and I want that so much today.”

Sarojini pours the fragrant oil into her palm and rubs it into her daughter’s scalp, feeling that beloved body relaxing against her with a sigh. She wishes again: if only she could be around to do the same thing for her grandchild as the baby grows up! She closes her eyes and imagines a beautiful girl—and look, hasn’t that longing been fulfilled, too? If she were wiser, thinks the Sarojini of the future, she would never wish for anything again. But the foolish heart doesn’t know how to stop.

Anu turns, tilting her head up at Sarojini, smiling without a hint of rancor. Looking at her, Sarojini remembers that she had always loved this quality about her daughter—this sweet quickness to forgive. To trust. Sarojini wonders if Anu would still be alive if she had been a little more hard-hearted.

“You must tell her everything,” Anu says in the dream.

“There’s so much I don’t know. So much your father kept from me.”

“Tell what you can. Imagine the rest. I’ll fill in the gaps.”

“But it’ll be so painful, Anu-ma. For myself and Korobi both.”

“Ah, pain,” Anu says with that heartbreaking smile. “Mother, who among us has ever escaped it?”

I stumble through the overgrown tangles of bramble bushes behind the house, pushing away vines that hang like snakes from the old trees. I throw myself down under an ancient banyan, barely missing a fire-ant hill, and press my knuckles into my eyes. How could Grandfather, to whom I’d given my entire child-heart, who had taught me how important it was to be truthful, have perpetrated such an enormous, criminal lie? All night I paced the temple veranda, trying to make sense of Grandmother’s confession. It couldn’t be true. I had my mother’s note, mourning her dead husband. But how did I know that? Could I have been reading it wrong this whole time? What if
impossibly far away
hadn’t meant he was dead, but only that he was in America? I tried telling myself Grandmother was confused. She was old and under a lot of stress. But deep down, I knew. It isn’t always possible to discern a lie, but truth has an unmistakable ring, and that is what I’d heard in her voice.

How will I ever trust anyone again?

I hear footsteps behind me and stiffen, but it’s only Cook, blundering through the bushes, carrying tea and biscuits.

“I’ve been looking for you all over the place! Oh, goodness, look at those horrible ants! If they get hold of you, you’ll be swollen like a balloon. And the itching—I’m telling you, you can’t even imagine how terrible it can be.”

She squats down, holding out the steaming cup of tea and my favorite cream-filled biscuits.

“Here, have some tea, baby. Tea always makes you feel better. And then tell old Cook what’s wrong.”

I’d expected to be too upset for hunger, but I find that I’m ravenous. I’m touched, too, by Cook’s efforts. I’m about to give her a hug. Then I remember that Cook has been in the family since before I was born. Was she, too, part of this deception? Each time she saw me, did she think,
Poor girl! She doesn’t even know her father is alive!

I turn my face away until Cook leaves the food on a pile of bricks and
goes back to the house. Then I dip the biscuits, innocent and delicious, in the tea, so they melt effortlessly on my tongue. A breeze blows through the neem tree, bringing me its clean, therapeutic odor. A dragonfly made of shimmery gauze alights on a bramble. Two crows are building a nest in the crook of a branch, their movements an intricate, precise dance. Yes, it’s terrible, what my grandparents did. It’ll take me a long time to recover from that blow. But the fact I learned last night—isn’t it also a miracle of sorts? A dead father brought back to life? And along with him, a way to finally know my mother, that silhouette forever glimmering at the edge of my mind, those few scribbles of love on a page?

Eighteen years lost already—I can’t waste any more time. The need to find out everything about my parents, suddenly, is like an ache in my bones, a deep deficiency. So much that I’ve been deprived of all this time. I run back to the house, ignoring the thorns that catch at my kameez.

I find her in her bedroom. She has opened the windows so the room is full of the wild, enigmatic odor of oleanders.

“Tell me everything,” I say.

“Sit down,” she says. “You’ll need it.”

“Your mother came late to your grandfather and me, after three miscarriages. The doctor had warned us not to try again, but your grandfather couldn’t bear the thought of the family name dying with him. When I got pregnant a fourth time, he was delighted—and terrified that something would go wrong again. At the delivery, he insisted on remaining in the birthing room of the hospital, something men never did in those days. When Anu was born, he took her from the nurse even before I’d had the chance to hold her. Maybe that was why they loved each other so intensely and later hurt each other so bitterly.

“Your grandfather brought Anu up as the son he never had. But he could never forget that she was a girl. Thus his two main passions—that Anu should excel in whatever she did, and that she should be brought up as befitted a daughter of the Roy family—crashed constantly against each other. When she was chosen for her school’s national debate team,
he took a week off from court so that he could take her to Delhi for the tournament. But if they were in a gathering of his friends, he expected her to be respectful and silent. If she expressed her views—and like your grandfather, she had strong views—he subjected her to a chill silence. His approval was important to Anu, so she learned to live a double life, assertive and competitive at school and college, compliant and voiceless everywhere else.

“When she was about to complete college, your grandfather found a match for her. It was not difficult. She was beautiful and accomplished and sweet-natured, and many people were keen to form a relationship with our family because of your great-grandfather Tarak Roy. Your grandfather was partial to the son of one of his colleagues. Anu didn’t say no, but she asked for time. She told him she had applied for an American scholarship. If she was lucky enough to receive it, could she please go? It would be only for two years.

“Your grandfather was angry that she had taken such a big step without consulting him, but I could understand her longing to see the world before wifehood bound her with its responsibilities. Finally he agreed to wait until the results were announced. It was a very competitive scholarship; we didn’t expect her to receive it.

“But your mother must have been even smarter than we realized—or perhaps a bird of ill luck had flown over her head on the day when she mailed the application. She received the scholarship, all expenses paid, to study international relations at the University of California in Berkeley. The delighted principal of Anu’s college announced her success to the newspapers. The phone wouldn’t stop ringing as friends and relatives called to congratulate your grandfather. How could he refuse to let her go after that? Still, he hesistated until she agreed to go to our temple with him and swear, in front of the goddess, never to marry without his approval. That put him at ease. He knew she wouldn’t make such a promise lightly.

“Anu settled into the university quickly, doing well in her classes. In Kolkata she had been reclusive, preferring to read or listen to music in her room. In America she grew adventurous. She would tell us in her letters about folk-dance lessons and plays she had seen in San Francisco.
She visited the giant redwoods and saw migrating whales. People in California, she said, were kind and friendly and very interesting.

“ ‘When does the child study?’ your grandfather grumbled. But Anu must have found time for that, too, because at the end of her first semester, she received As in all her subjects.

“ ‘One and a half years more,’ your grandfather said, sighing. He missed her even more than I did. ‘Then she’ll be back, and all this foolishness will be over with.’

“ ‘Don’t forget,’ I said, ‘she’ll be married soon after that, and no longer ours.’

“Your grandfather waved away my words. ‘She’s always ours, no matter whose house she lives in.’

“A week after that, we had just sat down for dinner when the phone, which was kept in his study, rang. I went and picked it up. You know how your Grandfather didn’t like to be disturbed at dinner. It was Anu.

“ ‘Are you all right?’ I asked, worried, because she only phoned us on special occasions—calls were too expensive. She said she was better than all right. She was in love. My mouth grew dry. I knew Grandfather wouldn’t like this.

“ ‘He’s a wonderful man,’ she said, ‘sweet and intelligent. You couldn’t have found a better person for me in all of India. His name is Rob.’

“ ‘He’s American?’ I said in horror. But before I could ask anything else, your grandfather took the phone from me, telling her how nice it was to hear her voice, and asking what was the occasion. Then his face changed. He gestured to me to leave the study and shut the door.

“I stood in the passage, petrified. After a few minutes he hung up the phone, but he didn’t come out. When I knocked, he told me to go to bed. The next morning, he sent Anu a telegram ordering her to return to Kolkata immediately. If she did not obey, she was not to ever contact him—or me—again. He would cut her out of his heart as though he never had a daughter.

“He insisted that I, too, swear not to contact her. When I protested that I couldn’t do that to my only child, he told me that in that case he would send me to live by myself in his ancestral village.

“ ‘I will have nothing to do with a wife who does not stand beside me in a crisis,’ he said.

“I begged him to reconsider, but he was adamant. Finally, I gave in. I wasn’t strong enough to stand up against his will. And though I asked, he refused to tell me anything more about the man Anu loved.

“I heard nothing more from Anu after that. Your grandfather opened a post office box, and all our mail went there. Any letters she might have written to me—and I’m sure there were several, at least in the beginning—did not reach me. He changed our phone number. About a month later, he came home in a cold rage. He took all her photographs out of their frames and burned them. I understood then that she had chosen love over duty, the American over her parents. Could I blame her for that? What she felt inside her as she made that choice—of that I had no idea.