Song of the Cuckoo Bird: A Novel (20 page)

Manasa pursed her lips and looked at her mother expectantly. She waited for almost five minutes for her mother to say something, to at least look away from Charvi. Then she just rose and ran to Kokila.

“Is it coconut
ladoo
? I don’t like
boondi ladoo,
” Manasa said belligerently.

She knew her mother was too engrossed in whatever it was Charvi was saying. Her mother was always engrossed in what everyone was saying. Why wouldn’t God just give her a baby boy?

Manasa didn’t really want a brother but tried to want one because her parents wanted one so much. Her father would yell at her mother and call her a no-good wife and they would fight all the time. Ananta Devi might bow her head in front of
sadhus
and
gurus,
but at home she fought with her husband with great passion. He would then storm out of the house while Ananta Devi would cry and yell at Manasa for being a girl. So whenever her parents would have a fight, Manasa would hide someplace where her mother wouldn’t be able to find her.

Whenever Manasa complained about anything her mother scolded her very harshly and even slapped her out of frustration. After all, didn’t Manasa get the best clothes, the best earrings, the best bangles, the best everything? Why couldn’t she be happy with all of that?

“Coconut
ladoo
with raisins in it, that’s what I like,” Manasa continued. “Do you have that?”

“Yes, we most certainly do,” Subhadra said, and pulled out two
ladoos
from an aluminum tin.

Manasa sat on the floor next to Kokila, who was cutting
brinjals.
“Are we having
brinjal
curry tonight?”

“Hmm,” Kokila murmured.

“I don’t like
brinjal,
” Manasa said. “Can’t you make anything else?”

“Well, there will be sweet
pulusu,
plain
pappu,
and curds you can eat with ripe bananas,” Kokila said.

Manasa wrinkled her nose.

“This is a coconut
brinjal
curry, it’s very tasty,” Kokila continued.

“I don’t like
brinjal,
” Manasa repeated. “My father doesn’t like
brinjal.
”

“Oh,” Subhadra said, and sat down on the floor as well. “Have you eaten
brinjal
before?”

Manasa nodded and then shrugged. “I don’t remember. But if my father doesn’t like it, I don’t like it too.”

“You have to make your own choices,” Kokila said. “Everybody likes different things.”

“My parents don’t like me,” Manasa said in the same tone she had used to tell them that she didn’t like
brinjals.
“Amma says that Nanna would love me if I were a boy. But I can’t be a boy. I have long hair and I wear frocks.”

“Your parents love you just the way you are,” Subhadra said as she looked through the doorway at Ananta Devi with disgust.

“No.” Manasa shook her head as she bit into a
ladoo.
“But that’s okay. Once Amma has a boy, Nanna will stay at home more and he’ll be happy. They won’t fight so much. I don’t really want a brother but I think I might just have to get one to get some peace in the house.”

She spoke with a precociousness that brought a smile to Kokila. “If your mother allows, would you like to come to the beach with me?” Kokila asked. “We can collect seashells and you can make something with those shells for your father.”

“Like what?”

“Like . . . a greeting card,” Kokila suggested. “You can stick the shells on a piece of paper and make a card. What do you think?”

Manasa shook her head. “Amma doesn’t like it if I go anywhere. Nanna doesn’t like it. He thinks girls should be at home and go to school and nothing else.”

“I’ll ask your mother,” Kokila said, and looked at Subhadra sadly.

When Manasa ran back to sit next to her mother, Subhadra sighed. “Poor little girl.”

“I feel so bad for her,” Kokila said as she cut the last of the
brinjals.

“You think Bhanu will be like her?”

Kokila shook her head. “Bhanu has all of us and . . . Chetana will get better too. She’s just depressed and she’ll—”

“She’s just like her mother. Ambika left that little girl without ever hugging her or kissing her and Chetana is doing the same. I should’ve known this would happen,” Subhadra said bitterly.

Away from her mother, Manasa was a lively girl with a vivid imagination. She filled the plastic bag Kokila gave her with seashells, some shaped like conchs and others flat, all in vibrant colors. When the bag was full they sat down on the sand and Manasa started to arrange some of the seashells on the sand.

“This is a peacock,” she said as she put shells together to form a bird. “I like peacocks. Amma has many peacock feathers. They are so beautiful, blue and violet and shiny. Do you like peacocks?”

“Very much,” Kokila said. “But I like swans best.”

“I have never seen a swan,” Manasa declared.

Neither had she, Kokila realized. “I’ve seen pictures in books,” she said with a smile. “Which flower do you like the best?”

“Roses,” Manasa answered immediately. “I like big red roses that smell so wonderful. Amma makes rosewater with the roses in the garden and we spray it on everyone when we have a
puja
at home.”

“I like roses too,” Kokila said. “I like yellow roses best.”

“They’re nice too,” Manasa said as she put the finishing touches on her peacock. “Isn’t my peacock pretty?”

“Very. But we can’t take it back with us like this,” Kokila said regretfully. “Back at Tella Meda, we can find you some paper and you can make a new peacock on it.”

Manasa shrugged. “It’s okay. Will the waves come this far and take the peacock into the water?”

Kokila nodded. “During high tide the waves will come all the way here and beyond. See that mark there?” Kokila pointed to a scar on the rocks behind them. “The water sometime comes up to there.”

“Will we drown then?” Manasa asked, stricken.

“No, no,” Kokila assured her quickly. “High tide happens at certain times only. And it won’t happen now.”

“How can you be so sure?”

Kokila picked up a seashell and drew a big circle on the sand. Then she drew another little circle over the big one. “This is the earth,” she said, pointing to the big circle. “And this is the moon.” She pointed to the small circle. “The water rises because the moon pulls it up. So when the moon is directly on top of the earth, it pulls the water away from the earth. But the moon is not on top now. So there is no high tide now.”

“Then the water rises at night only,” Manasa said thoughtfully, “because the moon is out in the night only.”

Kokila sighed. “Not exactly. The water rises every twelve hours. Even if we can’t see the moon during the day, it’s still there, just hidden by the light of the sun. The sun is very, very bright and even though the moon is in the sky, the sunlight blocks our view of the moon and the stars. It makes the sky blue and gives us light.”

“And in the night the sun hides and the moon can be seen,” Manasa said, then squinted to look at the evening sky. The sun was still up, the sky was still blue. “So, the moon is hiding,” Manasa said, smiling suddenly. “Maybe my father’s love is hiding too and once the sun is gone, I will be able to see it. Once the sun is gone he’ll be nice to me.”

Kokila pulled Manasa close and hugged her tight.
No,
she wanted to tell the girl truthfully.
Your father is a bad, bad man who will never be
nice to you, no matter how many sons your mother has. He will be nice to his
sons but he will always ignore his daughter.

When Kokila and Manasa came back a woman was sitting in the temple room, talking with Charvi. She looked so much like Subhadra that for a moment Kokila thought she was Subhadra. But this woman was younger, slimmer, and just a little different.

“Kokila, this is Chandra, Subhadra’s sister,” Charvi introduced. “Can you go talk to Subhadra and bring her here?”

Chandra smiled uneasily at Kokila. “She refuses to come out, you see, and . . . I would really like to meet with her.”

“I have tried,” Charvi said, raising her hands defensively. “She won’t listen. Maybe she’ll listen to you.”

Manasa went to look for her mother, while a curious Kokila went into the kitchen. Why would Subhadra not want to see her own sister?

Subhadra was cooking dinner, as she usually did at this time. Her movements were brusque and efficient and lacked the smoothness she usually had in the kitchen. She closed the lids of the aluminum pans sharply, banged harder with her spatula, and in general was making quite a racket as she cooked.

For an instant Kokila thought of not saying anything. Why should she involve herself in Subhadra’s problems with her sister? Kokila hadn’t even known that Subhadra had a sister and in the ten years or so she’d lived at Tella Meda, this was the first time the sister had come to visit.

“What?” Subhadra demanded of Kokila, who was standing at the kitchen doorway. “What do you want?”

“Do you need some help?” Kokila asked as she came inside.

“No, get out of here,” Subhadra said curtly. “I don’t need any help.”

“Okay,” Kokila said. “Where’s Bhanu?”

“Renuka took her up to the terrace to put her to sleep,” Subhadra said. “And Chetana, that stupid girl, is still lying in your room, doing nothing. She was a bad wife and now she’s a bad mother.”

“Okay,” Kokila said, not sure what Subhadra was talking about.

“That Ananta Devi, she might be hurting her daughter by wanting a boy, but she’s a good wife. She abides by her husband’s wishes and is trying to fulfill his heart’s desire,” Subhadra said, anger brimming in her voice. “Chetana’s not a good wife at all. You too are a bad wife.”

“I’m no one’s wife,” Kokila said.

“You should have gone to your husband’s house,” Subhadra responded, now really sounding angry. “You stayed. Why?”

“Because I was young and foolish. Now he’s married and is living a happy life. What has this got to do with you seeing your sister?”

“I was a good wife,” Subhadra said, all the anger suddenly draining out of her. “A very good wife.”

“I didn’t know you’d been married,” Kokila said, realizing that she knew very little about Subhadra. Even Chetana knew nothing. And they had never bothered to ask or find out. Subhadra was Subhadra, not all that interesting to know about.

“I was married for three years. He wanted children but I couldn’t have any,” Subhadra said, and then shook her head. “That’s not true. Actually . . . I couldn’t sleep with him.”

Kokila cleared her throat, feeling the embarrassment a child feels in knowing that his or her parents have sex.

“What? I’m human, I have needs,” Subhadra cried out. “What?”

“Nothing,” Kokila said, feeling very self-conscious. “What happened?”

“I . . . he couldn’t do anything with me. The doctors said that I was too small and that I needed surgery but that didn’t help at all,” Subhadra said. “He was frustrated . . . I was frustrated. It was not a good marriage, but I was a good wife.”

Kokila tried to stem her curiosity. She’d seen Chetana and Radhika push out babies from their small vaginas that seem to have expanded to allow the passage. It seemed improbable that any woman couldn’t have sex.

“So, you’re just small?” Kokila asked, not liking the image of Subhadra’s tight vagina inside her mind.

Subhadra shrugged in exasperation. “Yes, just small, too small. I don’t want to talk about that. I didn’t want to talk to him or a doctor but I did both because I was a good wife. And then he married my sister. I was still a good wife. I didn’t divorce him, just gave him permission to marry again. That’s supposed to be enough. I was a good wife.”

Kokila nodded. “Is that why you don’t want to talk to your sister? Because she married your husband?”

Subhadra didn’t reply and kept her face wooden.

“It was disloyal of her to marry your husband, I understand,” Kokila said. “I can tell her that you don’t want to speak with her. Is that what you want me to do?”

“Yes,” Subhadra said, but as soon as Kokila turned to leave she put a hand on her shoulder to stop her. “She didn’t want to marry him. I made her. I knew he’d marry someone else but I wanted him to marry my sister, not some other woman. I thought I’d feel better if he married my sister . . . if I arranged the marriage. But after the wedding, I left my job as a schoolteacher and came to live with Charvi.”

“So you insisted that your sister marry your husband?” Kokila was confused. If Subhadra had arranged the marriage herself, how could she be against it?

Subhadra nodded. “She didn’t want to but I made her. I was a good wife, Kokila. I wanted my sister to give my husband what I couldn’t. They have two children now. One boy and one girl. The perfect family.”

“So why don’t you want to see Chandra?”

“Because she married my husband,” Subhadra said, biting her trembling lower lip.

Kokila blew out air in exasperation.

“So what if I wanted her to marry him? I still hate her for taking my place,” Subhadra said tearfully. “She writes regularly, I never write back. Now it’s her daughter’s marriage and she wants me to be there. How will that look? The old wife and the new wife at the same marriage
mandap,
blessing the bride? I don’t want to intrude in their life.”

“I don’t understand,” Kokila said finally. “She’s nice to you, she invites you to her daughter’s wedding, and she didn’t want to marry your husband until you forced her to. What is the problem?”

“As long as I don’t talk with her then she will always be a little sad about marrying my husband,” Subhadra revealed. “If I have to live like this, she can bear a little pain for me.”

Kokila raised her eyebrows and then shook her head. Subhadra, who had always seemed so selfless, was after all a normal woman with the same emotions that governed all humans.

“This has gone on long enough,” Kokila said softly. “Come on, talk with your sister. Don’t you think she has borne enough pain? Why make her pay penance for something that was not her fault to start with?”