Sister of My Heart (14 page)

The night limps on. The grandfather clock downstairs chimes, and its hollow echoes fill my skull. There are flapping sounds at the window. A bird, seeking shelter. Or is it something else? I know the old stories: When someone is very ill, spirits who were close to her in life come down to earth to take her back with them. For Gouri Ma this would be her husband, my uncle Bijoy, that gentle, trusting man who came to a premature, watery end. Would his spirit look like his body had at death, bloated and trailing river weeds? Would it glare at me, accusal-eyed? I glance guiltily at Anju to see if she knows what I’m thinking. But her face is as wooden as the chair she is sitting on, her eyes like black holes gouged into her face. I am afraid to touch her, to pull her back into this fear-filled corridor from wherever it is that she has gone.

The flapping noises have grown deafening. I can’t stand them any longer, though no one else seems to hear them. Shivering, I stumble to the window, fling it open.
Please
, I whisper, though I among all of us here have the least right to ask.
Please don’t take
her yet. We need her so much
. There’s an answering sound like a cry. A wet wind slaps at my face—or is it the ghost, displeased that the daughter of the man whose madcap scheme led them both to their deaths dares to speak to him? Is there a swamp smell, a phosphorescent streak in the outline of hands swirling away into the darkness?

Anju doesn’t notice—she’s still gone—but my mother says in annoyed tones, “Sudha, what’s wrong with you? Look what you’ve done. Now the passageway’s wet again. Close that window at once.”

Is it then, or hours later, that the door to Gouri Ma’s room creaks open? I hear the doctor’s low voice giving Pishi instructions. Diet, he says. Temperature. Tests starting tomorrow. Give her these tablets if there’s more pain. Call me if there are any sudden changes.

Pishi turns to Anju. “Your mother wants you.”

“Make sure you don’t excite her,” admonishes the doctor as he hands his bags to Singhji. “Her condition isn’t good at all. I’d rather she didn’t have any visitors at this time, but she insisted.”

Anju’s eyes reach for mine, entreating. I can feel her fear in the salt taste in my own mouth. But when I rise to follow her, Pishi stops me. “Alone, Gouri said.”

That’s how it is sometimes when we plunge into the depths of our lives. No one can accompany us, not even those who would give up their hearts for our happiness.

My cousin opens the door to her mother’s room. The odor of phenol and urine seeps into the corridor, the heartbreaking smells of the shamed, powerless body, and Anju walks in.

I lie awake in Anju’s high white bed, waiting for her. After the doctor left, Mother ordered me to my room, but I crept from it as soon as she fell asleep. I couldn’t bear the thought of Anju having to face the rest of the night alone.

I imagine the sickroom, the way the bedside lamp must have thrown a little light onto the mahogany fourposters so they glinted red-black, the pulse’s erratic beating in Gouri Ma’s throat as she lay propped against pillows. She would not have struggled to sit up. She would not have wept. An intelligent woman, she would have saved her energy for the important things. Her voice would have been soft as tearing silk.

What words did my aunt use to admit failure and fear, to unravel the dreams she had woven around Anju since her birth? I don’t know. When Anju finally staggers in, and I ask if she’s all right, she gives in to laughter, a hysterical laugh that goes on and on, spiraling upward until, afraid that someone will come to check on what’s wrong, I put my hand over her mouth.

Anju is silent now. Only a small shudder shakes her from time to time. I make her lie down. She turns on her side to make space for me, and I lie down too, as we’ve done so many times. I cover us with the bedspread and stroke her hair until her limbs let go a little of their tenseness. Just before she falls asleep she gives a great sigh. “Remember how I used to laugh at Pishi’s sayings? Well, I’ve just learned not to.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, my throat tight with dread.

“Remember how she used to say, be careful of the words you speak for they might come true? Remember how I promised you, the night your mother decided to shut you up at home, that I’d make sure the same things would happen to us both? Well, they have.”

“What do you mean?” I repeat, stupidly. My cousin’s words make no sense to me.

“Don’t ask me any more tonight. I can’t talk about it.”

I hold my cousin as she sleeps and try vainly to decipher what she said. But I cannot imagine Gouri Ma, even in illness, speaking like my mother. Finally I give up. It is too late, and I am too tired. Or perhaps fear has short-circuited my brain. Anju’s head fits into the curve of my shoulder as though she were a child. Her eyes dart beneath their lids. I pray for her to have sweet dreams,
Anju, whose waking life has fallen in shambles around us. The storm passes, the wind transforms itself into a morning breeze, the ghu-ghu birds begin their cooing. Slowly the sounds of the waking household surround us, strangely soothing. A sweeping broom, water being pumped from the tube-well, the clatter of milk cans. After a while, even though I hadn’t thought it possible, I too drift into sleep.

And thus for a few hours I am spared the news that what Gouri Ma suffered last night was a mild heart attack. When the doctor warned her that the next one might be far more severe, she decided she must get Anju married as soon as possible.

THE BRIDAL
preparations are in full swing, and since my mother is too ill, she’s turned things over to Aunt N.

Aunt’s created an entire regimen for us. Each morning we start by eating almonds which have been soaked overnight in milk. (This, Aunt has declared, will cool our systems, calm our minds, and improve both our dispositions and our complexions.) Then we have to do a half-hour of yoga and calisthenics (to give us endurance, which we’re sure to need as wives, and prevent the sagging of various body parts, which might be offensive to our future husbands). Then we must apply turmeric paste to our faces (more complexion improvement) and keep the pungent, itchy mask on for half an hour while Ramur Ma rubs warm coconut oil into our hair. (Long, well-oiled, obedient hair symbolizes virtue in women.)

At bathtime we scrub ourselves all over with pumice stones. (“Nothing enhances a husband’s affections like silk-soft skin,” says Aunt. She’s taken to startling us with these nuggets of Kama Sutra–like wisdom. Earlier Sudha and I would have shared a good laugh over them. But nowadays I’m too heartsore.) After lunch we lie in bed with eau de cologne–soaked cloths over our eyes. Sometimes I can’t believe this is happening to me. Surely it’s a dream, this slight damp pressure on my lids, this sweetish smell that settles in my clothes. This stunned lassitude that keeps me from rebelling.

Soon it’s time to get up for our afternoon lessons. A kerosene
stove’s been set up on the upstairs balcony and a middle-aged Brahmin woman whom Aunt has hired demonstrates elaborate desserts such as gopal-bhog and pati-shapta, which I know I’ll never be able to duplicate. We help with the preparations but stay away from the stove: One of Aunt’s friends has told her a story about a bride who got burned a week before her wedding, which was, of course, immediately canceled. The Brahmin lady also gives us lessons in the intricate laws of orthodox Hindu cuisine: milk and meat products mustn’t be mixed. Nonvegetarian items must be cooked in separate vessels. The left hand must never be used when serving food. Once I asked her what the point of all these rules was, but she looked at me uncomprehendingly.

Finally, when the seamstress comes to teach Sudha sewing, I get an hour off. I’d like to get away to the terrace, but Aunt has declared that on no account are we to expose ourselves to sun. Nor are we to cry—baggy red-rimmed eyes would undo an entire month of her efforts. So I try to focus on a book and not think of my mother.

The doctor says my mother needs to undergo bypass surgery, but she refuses. She says she knows too many people who died from the infection afterward. She can’t take such a risk, not until Sudha and I are married. She’s doing everything else the doctor wants her to—going for short, careful walks, working fewer hours, cutting out fats. But all it’s done is make her lose a lot of weight, so that her cheekbones press up sharp as mountain ridges through her skin.

Mother’s often angry nowadays, mostly because her tiredness forces her to stay in bed when there’s so much to be done. She’s moved downstairs into an annex off the main hall because climbing stairs has become too difficult. I wonder if she wakes up sometimes in the middle of the night, disoriented to find herself, after thirty years, in a new bed. Does her hand reach for the familiar bedpost carved with grape leaves and find itself closing on dark air?

She’s also decided to sell the bookstore. We just don’t have
enough money otherwise, she’s explained to me, for two weddings. Two dowries. Dowries are a slippery issue, I’ve come to learn. A good family never demands a particular amount of money, or a certain list of items. That would be too gauche. And so the bride’s party has to anticipate their wishes and go beyond them, because if they don’t, it might affect their daughter’s future.

I can’t imagine the bookstore not belonging to us. Maybe Mother can’t either. Maybe that’s another reason why she’s so angry. She’s nursed that store fiercely all these years, spent more time with it than with me. It must be awfully hard for her to think of some stranger sitting at her little desk in the back, ordering trashy romances and potboilers to fill its shelves.

At first I tried to get her to reconsider. “I can help you run it while I go to college,” I pleaded. “I’ll take care of all the details—I know a lot of them already, and Manager-babu can teach me the rest.”

Mother shook her head with finality, as though the papers had been signed already. When my face fell, she took my hands in hers and said, “I’m sorry, Anju, I’ve let you down, haven’t I? All your plans for college—and now the bookstore. I was going to leave it to you—in your name, not your husband’s—to run as you wished. I guess there’s a lot we hope for that never happens.” She paused for breath, then said, “But I’ll promise you this much, Anju Ma. I’ll arrange your marriage with a man who lets you go to college—and lets you work too, if you want it.”

“But
why
must I get married in such a hurry?” I cried angrily. “Why can’t you just get the surgery done instead? Why are you so scared? The doctor said it isn’t that dangerous anymore—”

I could tell by the way Mother pressed her lips together until they turned white that I’d made her angry. But all she said was, “I can’t take such a big chance. What if I die? Who else is there to take care of you and Sudha? To make sure you get a good match?” Then she lay back, eyes closed, and Pishi, who’d come in with a glass of lime sharbat, motioned worriedly for me to leave.

In the evenings when the terrible June heat ebbs a little, we gather around my mother, making a special effort to be cheerful. Pishi turns on the radio so Mother can listen to the songs of Tagore, which she loves. Ramur Ma brings in the tea tray, and Aunt Nalini pours. We use our good cups on these evenings. At first Mother protested. But when Pishi said, “What are we saving them for? What can be a better occasion than this, while the family’s still together, before the girls go off to their husbands’ homes?” she didn’t argue. Perhaps she was thinking that pretty soon she might be gone too.