Oleander Girl (46 page)

Sarojini had remonstrated with her. Rajat was ill. He was in shock. They were both in shock. Korobi shouldn’t have reacted in such haste. “Let me ask him to come over, talk out the misunderstandings. I’m sure things would work out if you—”

Korobi lifted her face, blotchy from the tears she had shed in the car, but her voice was steady. “If you contact him, I’m going to leave.”

And she could leave. Sarojini knows she has options. Rob Lacey phones Korobi every couple of days. After finding out how matters turned out with Rajat, he invited her to come to America to study. Her grades are good enough for her to gain admission at his university. He’ll get her a campus job, help with the expenses. Vic, too, has phoned several times.
Korobi doesn’t tell Sarojini the details of those calls, but Sarojini can guess.

It is only love and stubbornness that keeps Korobi here, Sarojini guesses. Love for her grandmother, and a stubborn desire to succeed in spite of the Boses. To that end, she contacted the principal of her college. Sarojini listened to the conversation from the other room, marveling at the easy roll of Korobi’s voice—neither abject nor overly confident—as she explained her situation. The girl Sarojini had seen off at the airport could never have managed it.

The principal must have been impressed by this new Korobi because she said she would make an exception for her, taking into account her good grades and the sudden tragedy in her family. If Korobi can study, on her own, the material she has missed, she’ll be allowed to take the half-yearly exams. If she passes, she can return to class after the summer holidays along with her batchmates. So Korobi has been poring over her textbooks and phoning classmates, asking to borrow notes. If, in between, Sarojini catches her staring into the distance with a bleak expression, if at night she hears muffled sobs from the girl’s bedroom, she holds back and does not interfere. Sometimes—she knows this from her own life—to get to the other side, you must travel through grief. No detours are possible.

In the evening, they have an unexpected visitor—well, not so unexpected, perhaps, for Bhattacharya has taken to stopping at the temple each week. If he’s not too busy with election meetings, he stays over and has dinner. Each time he brings gifts—chocolate-filled sandesh from Ganguram’s Desserts, or hefty sprays of tuberoses, enough for the temple and for Sarojini’s bedroom so she can fall asleep to their fragrance. Sarojini has protested about such unnecessary lavishness, but he says, “Let me do it, Ma. My own mother died before I could afford to get her such things.”

This evening he dines with them on fried eggplants, gram dal, fine basmati rice, and the singaras Korobi made a little while ago. “Wedding fare!” he exclaims, turning to Korobi. “What delicious singaras! I can tell you have an excellent teacher. It does my heart good to see a modern young
woman taking the trouble to learn our traditional Bengali cuisine. So, when is the happy day to be?”

Sarojini tenses. The girl has such obstinate notions about honesty. But perhaps out of consideration for her grandmother’s feelings, or some residual loyalty toward the Boses, Korobi only says, “We don’t have a date right now.”

“Could you do something for me?” Bhattacharya asks Sarojini. “I’ve been trying to contact Mrs. Bose all week, but she hasn’t returned my calls. She’s probably preoccupied with that terrible accident. This city is becoming most unsafe—something I’m going to change if I’m elected. Could you tell her that I’ve decided that I don’t need to become a partner in their gallery? Too many complications. I’ll just loan the Boses the money they need—a private loan, with you as witness. No one else will know. They’ll have five years to repay it. Will that make you happy?”

For a few moments, Sarojini cannot speak, she’s so taken aback. Finally she manages to say, with a smile, “Yes, my son. It makes me happy.”

And it does. In spite of that last disastrous meeting between Korobi and Rajat, and the icy silence from his end since then, Sarojini finds that she still loves the boy. She misses him, especially in the evenings, when he used to drop by to check on her. If the phone rings, her unreasonable heart knocks about in the hope that it might be him calling. She cannot phone him—not even with this welcome news—because of the promise she made to Korobi. But tomorrow morning she will send the Boses a courier letter.

“Now you must let me do something for my own happiness,” Bhattacharya says. “Let me pay for the temple’s yearly expenses, as I mentioned earlier. And the repairs for this house. Please don’t say no. I’m doing it for myself, really, because I plan to visit you regularly, and I’m getting tired of having to use bucket water for washing up.”

Sarojini stares at him with such astonishment—her genie with a bonus wish—that he bursts out laughing. It is an infectious sound; after a moment, Korobi and she cannot help but join in.

It seems that the goddess has finally paid attention to Sarojini’s importunities
and turned her grace-filled eyes on them all, for next morning, while Korobi is at the library and Sarojini is composing the letter to the Boses, the phone rings. It is Rajat. He sounds defensive as he greets Sarojini with a formal namaskar, but Sarojini will have none of that. She scolds him roundly for having ignored her all these days. “No matter what happens between you and Korobi, is that any reason to cut yourself off from me? Is that all I am to you, Korobi’s grandmother?”

“No,” he says in a small voice. “You are my grandmother, too.”

“And don’t you forget that. You come and visit me, you hear! I haven’t seen you since that night I spent with you in the hospital. If you prefer, you can come while Korobi’s at the college.”

“Actually, I called to ask if I can come over this evening—to see her as well as you. Do you think she’ll agree to meet me? Will you ask her?”

“Just come. That child is too stubborn to say yes, even though I know she’s hurting for you.”

“I’m hurting for her, too, Grandma.”

They are the sweetest words she has heard in a long while.

When the doorbell rings, Grandmother is in the temple for evening puja and Cook has gone to the market, so I must interrupt my studies to answer it. My first impulse, upon seeing Rajat, is to slam the door, but he has inserted his cast—now decorated with Pia’s artwork—into the opening.

“Please leave,” I whisper through numb lips, but perhaps I’ve only imagined the words, because he steps in. I notice that he has lost weight. Stubble shadows his hollow cheeks. The look on his face is that of a first-time diver standing on the edge of a steep sea-cliff.

“I’ve come to apologize.”

“Not necessary,” I make myself say. “We’re done with each other.”

He swallows. He keeps his eyes on me. “Even so, I must apologize for my bad behavior. It took a lot of courage on your part to visit us, especially after Maman had asked you not to come. It took courage, too, to want to tell me your difficult news face-to-face. Phoning would have been easier. Or e-mail.”

I appreciate that he doesn’t make excuses for himself. He has some valid ones: his ill health, the sudden shock of the news, Mitra’s incitement, Maman’s pressure. I give a small nod, not knowing what to say. A part of me wants to fling my arms around his neck, but another part warns me that I’ve only just started to heal. Do I want to open up that wound again?

“I want you to know,” Rajat says, “that I do trust you. No matter what I blurted out the other day—or said in jealousy over the phone when you were in America—I trust you. I’m sorry that I gave you the impression that you couldn’t trust me to accept the news of your parentage. That it would matter more than my love for you.”

“It’s a big thing to accept,” I whisper. “Even I feel shocked, from time to time, when I think of who I really am. It’s so different from who I thought I was. Illegitimacy. A mixed-race heritage that might surface in our children. Most Indian families would have a hard time accepting these problems. How could I demand that of you?”

“Because of love. Isn’t that what we do for the people we care for? Accept their problems because there are so many other wonderful things we love about them? And in your case, these aren’t even your problems. They’re just the circumstances you were handed.”

He looks down, and I realize the next part is hard for him to say. “So, here’s my question to you. Will you forgive me for being such a brute? Will you accept me with my own sack of problems—the ones I hid all this time because I was afraid I wouldn’t be worthy of you otherwise? Would you be willing for us to try again to build a life together?”

In answer, I rub my palm along his stubbled jaw, the way I’ve been longing to ever since he entered the house. When I maneuver my way around the cast to kiss him, his mouth tastes bittersweet, like almonds and mint.

“Here’s what was really bothering me on that morning,” Rajat tells me, “though I recognized it only after you walked away. I didn’t know if you still really loved me, or if you’d returned out of a sense of duty—or even worse, pity—because of the accident. You seemed so distant while you were in America. I know how attractive life there can seem. Your mother gave in to it.”

I feel a twinge. I can’t deny that America’s siren song had pulled at me. But I came back, of my own choice. Surely that counts for something. “I love my mother. But I am not her. My journey has taught me that.”

“I was jealous of Vic, too.”

Vic. His name pulses warm in my chest. I can’t deny the attraction that bloomed briefly between us. I’ll always be grateful to him for being my friend when I didn’t have anyone else, for pulling me across chasms where I would otherwise have fallen. Someday I hope to tell Rajat more about him. But we’ve had enough doom and gloom for now. I mock-punch his cast. “Vic again! What if I tease you about Sonia?”

A dark shame flits over his face. “I have some things to tell you.”

“Let’s save our confessions for another time. Except this one: I should have trusted you with my news—you’re right about that.”

His lips find mine. For a while there’s no need for talk.

Later, as we sit on the sofa, my head on his shoulder, I say, “Your mother hates me now! How will we handle that?”

“Maman’s bark is worse than her bite. But I’m ready to stand up to her. I’m pretty sure Pia and Papa will take my side.”

“What if people find out about my background?”

“We’ll just have to live with the gossip, for there’s sure to be some. If we accept it calmly, they’ll lose interest. Fortunately, we need not worry about Bhattacharya—Grandma told me about his generosity when I called. Who would have thought! Speaking of Grandma, we had better go and release her from the temple—the mosquitoes must be destroying her. She’s been waiting there to hear our news.”

“She’s in on this? What about Cook? She’s been gone to the market for a suspiciously long while.”

“Actually, she’s in the gatehouse with Bahadur. Grandma instructed her to stay there until she called her. We might as well tell her, too. Maybe she’ll make us some of her special mihidana dessert in celebration.”

“Why do I feel like I’m the victim of a conspiracy here?”

“Because you are.” He grins. “A conspiracy of love.”

I aim my most ferocious frown at him. “I can see I was premature in declaring that I should have trusted you.”