Oleander Girl (15 page)

“Stop! You’re hurting me!”

His grip doesn’t slacken. “No more than you’ve hurt me. Why do you want to end our engagement? Don’t you love me anymore? I trusted you. I thought you would be different from—from the others.”

I pull at his hands, but he’s too strong.

“What is it? Have you found someone else? Have you?”

With each question, he shakes me so that my head snaps back and forth. Somewhere to the side, I hear Cook’s terrified whimpers. Why, I don’t know this man, don’t know him at all! Despair rises in me, a molten red wave.

Help!
I cry inside my head. I’m not sure whom I’m calling. I think it’s my mother. With that thought, time seems to slow down. How much courage it must have taken her to stand up to Bimal Roy, of whom half of Kolkata was afraid. She’d refused to be bullied into giving up the man she loved, though it eventually cost her her life. I’m her daughter. I can handle this.

I stop struggling. “I can’t talk to you unless you calm down,” I say, trying to keep the gasp out of my voice.

I must sound different because Rajat lets go and slumps onto the sofa. I tell Cook to bring a wet towel and some food. I wipe his face with hands that are still trembling. “Eat,” I say as though to a child, and like a child
he opens his mouth obediently. I feel tenderness rise in me as I feed him the Parle-G biscuits Cook has brought. When he buries his face in the towel, I rub his back.

I can feel our relationship shifting, plate by tectonic plate.

“There’s no one else,” I say when Rajat looks up again. “Only you.”

“Then why do you want to be free of me?”

“I don’t want that! But I also don’t want to bring financial disaster to your family. I refuse to be the reason for Bhattacharya backing off from investing in Barua and Bose. Your mother told me how crucial his support is right now—”

Rajat holds me tightly. “Bhattacharya can go to hell. But it’s not just my mother—I don’t want you to leave, either. I love you, Korobi. Don’t abandon me and go to America!”

I want to say
Okay
. I want it so badly, I can barely breathe. But I can’t. If I do, I know I’ll never feel complete, in his arms or anywhere else. I have too many unanswered questions to just let this go.

“If I can conduct the search from here, I’ll certainly do that. But if Desai says I need to be in America, I’ll have to go.”

“I’m afraid to be without you, Cara.” Rajat’s voice is muffled against my neck.

“I’ll come back as soon as I can. I promise.”

“I’m trying hard to change my life,” Rajat whispers against my throat. “I want to be a good person—like you. But I’m not skilled at handling temptation. What if I backslide? What if I do something stupid?”

An image flashes in my brain, Sonia in her silver dress at our engagement party watching us with her intense silver eyes, more glitteringly beautiful than I’ll ever be. My mouth goes dry. Is she the temptation Rajat is thinking of?

“I trust you.” I look into his eyes and want him to know I mean it. “Just hold on for a little while.”

Our kiss is long, passionate, laced with desperation. When he pulls away, his voice is sober.

“All right, I can manage one month without you. If we pull the right strings, it’ll take about three weeks for you to get your travel papers. That’ll give Desai enough time to do the groundwork. You can search
for one more month after that in America. If you don’t find your father by then, you have to promise to return. That way, we can still make the wedding date your grandfather set.”

Misgiving stirs in my heart. A month seems like too little time to find a father who has been lost for eighteen years. But Rajat’s making a compromise, and so must I.

“Very well.” In a way, it’s a relief, knowing that this will all be over, one way or another, in two months’ time.

Asif Ali drives the Mercedes up Nazrul Islam Road, taking the family to the airport. Tonight he has a full load, Rajat-saab up front, Pia-missy between her parents in the back. Usually when the family gets together, there’s laughter and jokes, teasing comments flung back and forth, but this time the car is silent. This is because they are going to the airport, to say good-bye to Korobi-memsaab. She’s going off to America, and no one is sure what will happen next.

Though the family is careful not to speak of such things in front of Asif, he knows more than they suspect. In fact, he might know a few things that they don’t. Madam’s maid, Pushpa, has told him, over samosas and chutney at a chai house, that the Boses’ financial situation is worsening. Their only hope is that fat, khadi-wearing politician who comes around late at night to discuss a possible business deal. Memsaab is polite to him, offering the imported Scotch they only take out for special guests. Saab and he have spent hours going over stacks of accounts, but he hasn’t bitten yet.

And, yes, the calls from Sonia continue.

From Bahadur, Asif has learned that Korobi-baby is going to New York City to look for someone—a long-lost rich uncle who can help the Roys out of their troubles, Bahadur guesses. Sarojini-ma must be anxious. She hasn’t left the house this last week, not even to cut oleander sprigs for the temple. Can you blame her for worrying, with all those terrorist bombs going off nowadays in America?

The night he’d been drunk, Rajat had let some things slip, too, as they drove to the Roy mansion. He had punched the back of the car
seat repeatedly, ranting that Korobi-memsaab wanted to break off their engagement. After six years of living in the city, not much surprised Asif anymore, but this had. Korobi-memsaab didn’t seem the flighty type. At the mansion, he admired the way she had come to the door herself, quite unafraid, and taken Rajat by the hand. It must have been a miscommunication, because by the time he left her a couple hours later, Rajat was calm and—thank Allah!—sober. Not that Asif was one of those fundamentalists who believed that alcohol was the gateway to Jahannam. Still, seeing Rajat so out of control made Asif give serious consideration to the offer that Sheikh Rehman’s man had made to him again recently.

“A solid young Mussulman like you, with a reputation for being discreet and loyal, can rise far higher with his own people. The sheikh is making you a better offer than last time. But he may not make another one. He doesn’t like being turned down.”

Memsaab’s increasing ill-temper in the last month has also made Asif consider a change of employers. He still thinks about the afternoon when he was driving her to the Park Circus cemetery. A truck carrying a load of furniture swerved suddenly into their lane, inches away from their car. Asif had to wrench the wheel to the side, slamming his foot down on the brake and barely missing a cyclist. Memsaab had slid across the seat and hit her head on the window. Not hard, but she’d gone on and on about his carelessness, though clearly it wasn’t his fault.

“I hope you don’t drive like this when Pia’s in the car!” she’d ended.

The unfairness of that had pricked him. As though he’d ever do anything to endanger Pia-missy. Why, that child was the reason he was finding it so hard to leave. She talked to him about everything and trusted him to keep it secret.

“A.A., I think Korobi-didi is breaking up with Dada. Why would she do that? They’re both such amazing people. I was sure she loved him.”

“Dada is always sad nowadays. He used to be such a good sport, but now he snaps if I ask him anything. Of course he won’t tell me why. Everybody thinks I’m too young to know what’s going on.”

“Is this what love is, A.A.? People are crazy for each other, then it’s gone, and you’re left feeling terrible? I don’t think I want it to ever happen to me.”

“Mama and Papa were talking about selling bonds. When I came into the room, they covered up the papers and asked me about school. As though I’m a moron!”

“Our class is going to Darjeeling over the summer holidays for a week. They’ll see the sunrise from Tiger Hill and ride horses and visit a tea garden. It’ll be such fun. But I didn’t even tell Maman. I know we don’t have the money.”

“Yesterday I was playing basketball in the schoolyard, and I saw Sonia watching me from across the street. I recognized her silver car. Why would she be there, A.A.? She doesn’t even like me, not really.”

Pia was the only person, other than Asif’s sister, who had ever asked his opinion, who listened to his halting answers with complete absorption. He wished he could solve all her problems. Recently, protectiveness rose in him like a wave when he had her in the car. He drove with extra caution, even though she complained that he was turning stodgy like the other adults she knew. When he heard about Sonia stalking her, his mouth filled with bile. Allah help him, if the woman tried to hurt Pia, he’d—he’d ram the Benz into her little car until it was a junk heap with her in it. Even now, driving, his hands clench as he remembers. He’d know how to find her, too, because a couple of days earlier, she’d stuck a note on his windshield giving him that information.

He had come back from lunch and discovered it.

Phone me—I’ll make it worth your while.

He wishes he had someone he could confide in as Pia does with him.

Memsaab leans forward. “Asif, why are you going so slow? The road’s not even crowded. Pick up the speed. We should have been at the airport by now. We’ll hardly have time to talk to Korobi before she has to go into the security area.”

“Yes, Memsaab.”

He’ll call Sonia tomorrow. Better to know what that Jezebel is planning than be ignorant of her schemes.

At the security gate, I turn for a last look. They stand in a line behind the metal barricade: Papa, Pia, Maman, Rajat, Grandmother—and Cook, who to everyone’s surprise threw a fit just as Bahadur was loading the car, insisting that she accompany us. I stare until my eyes burn, trying to memorize their faces. Three people stand out: Maman, Rajat, and Grandmother. In the last month, all three have surprised me.

After I had a long phone conversation with Desai and concluded that I must go to America, I informed Grandmother, hesitantly, of what I wanted to do. Now that my grandfather was gone, I was her whole existence. I felt guilty at the thought of her wandering alone through the big, empty house.

She wept a little when I told her, but when I asked if she would rather I didn’t go, she scolded me away from guilt. “Of course I’d rather you didn’t go. Of course I’m sick with fear because of how dangerous America is, especially for you. You don’t know much about surviving in the world on your own—you’ve never had to do it. But I understand how important it is for you to find your father—and that I have no right to stop you. I believe your mother’s spirit will watch over you, and that makes me feel better. Don’t you dare worry about me! You think I can’t manage this household on my own for a month? What am I, senile?”

When she realized how much the search was going to cost, Grandmother brought out the casket containing her dowry jewelry and handed it to me.

“We’ll sell them. Ask Rajat to help—he’ll get us a good price.”

“But, Grandma,” I said, at once grateful and aghast, “these pieces have been in the family for generations!”

She shrugged. “They’re only metal and stone, in the end. Less important than a living person’s happiness.”

Before we left for the airport, she kissed me on the forehead and said, “It’ll be a great adventure. Look carefully at everything. Feel. Enjoy. Remember.”

A great adventure! Caught up in the gravity of what I was doing, hobbled by Rajat’s reluctance and Maman’s disapproval, I hadn’t thought of my journey as an adventure. Grandmother was giving me permission to do so. “It’s so easy to let the days slip through your hands,” Grandmother
continued. “Sometimes I look at myself and wonder, how did I become this Sarojini, so staid and responsible, so different from that girl who liked to climb guava trees in her parents’ home and play tricks and burst into laughter for no reason? I don’t want that to happen to you.”

I felt a pang of regret. There was so much I didn’t know about Grandmother, so much that, distracted by Grandfather’s leonine aura, I’d never bothered to notice. If I come back, I promised myself, I’ll do it differently.

Then I was shocked.
If I come back.
Where had
that
come from?