The Hindi-Bindi Club (21 page)

“We really do,” I say, and Patrick nods.

She crooks a lopsided grin and inspects her fingernails—short and ragged with chipped polish. “Well, it’s not rocket science.”

That draws chuckles all around.

“You would know,” Bryan says, draping an arm around her.

Yes, she would. In case no one told you: Our celebrated artist holds an advanced degree in aerospace engineering, not art. In fact, Rani has little formal art education. Before pursuing her lifelong passion full time, she worked for NASA. A rocket scientist turned artist. Or, as she puts it, an artist masquerading as a rocket scientist.

I must admit I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of her quitting her day job, abandoning a well-paid, respected career. I didn’t understand why she couldn’t continue to do her hobby on the side. But this was an issue where my vote didn’t count, especially with Bryan’s steadfast support and encouragement.

Patrick was Switzerland—neutral. She can always go back, he said.

I thought for sure she would. Especially when the bottom fell out of Bryan’s company in the Silicon Valley dot-com bust. And now I find myself wondering again…

Last night we stayed up late chatting, just the two of us. Rani told me she’s burned out.
Burnt to a crisp,
to be precise. Understandable, I said. She worked so hard that her creative well’s run dry. Even as these words left my lips, alarm bells sounded.
Is it more than creative burnout?

“Have you seen the doctor?” I asked. “Checked your meds?”

“Yes,” Rani said. “No changes yet, but we’ll follow up in another month. We agreed it’s situational this time.”

This time, as opposed to two previous times when she slipped into clinical depression—the first in high school, the second in college—due to chemical imbalances in her brain. The hereditary disease she inherited from me.

I always told her:
Look for the signs. Pay attention. No one will think less of you. This isn’t India.

“Good girl.” I gave her hand a squeeze. “I’m so glad you went. You did the right thing.”

“On that score. The jury’s still out on this artist gig.”

“Meaning?”

She shrugged. “Maybe you were right. I shouldn’t have put all my eggs in one basket.”

“Why do you say that?”
What’s changed?

She confessed that when her hobby became her career, it put a lot of pressure on her creativity she didn’t have before. Art became more perspiration, less inspiration. And all this recent attention had been a mixed bag. Flattering and validating, yes. At the same time stifling.

“I feel people looking over my shoulder now, heaping more pressure, more expectations on top of my own,” she said. “It’s not just
me
and
my art
anymore. Right now, it’s just me. No art.” She slouched in a corner of the couch, hugging a cushion to her chest. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I actually miss rocket science. A job where I could Just Do It. Instant gratification. Clock in. Do my work. Pass GO. Collect two hundred dollars.”

I let her talk. I just listened.

“There’s no certainty in art,” she said. “You can spend your whole life working and reworking something, and never get it right, never pass GO, never collect two hundred. There’s no surefire methodology you can follow. No process works every time. Success is
never
guaranteed. Even if you taste it once, that’s no assurance for the future. Every day, every moment, you’re back to square one.”

Then she said it. The surrender I’d awaited.

“I don’t think I’m cut out for being a full-time artist,” she said. “My self-esteem can’t handle the uncertainty, the constant failures. I think maybe I should go back to rocket science. It was a lot easier.”

I should have been overjoyed. I wasn’t.

I felt a strange apprehension, like indigestion churning in my stomach. Now I know why. Looking around the gallery, I see so clearly into my daughter’s heart, her soul. The same way I did when I read my mother’s journals, the poetry she scribbled and hid away from critical, judging eyes.

There’s a reason God gives us the gifts we have, obstacles that test us and force us to grow; our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. For the first time, I can see enough dots to connect them. I realize I don’t want Rani to go back.

I want her to go forward.

I
often wonder what unknown fallacies today’s societies accept as truth, what cultural norms our future generations will dispel as backward rubbish. Today I understand the science of sex determination and postpartum depression. It infuriates me that society automatically blamed the woman for not conceiving sons, when the man’s sperm carries the Y chromosome. And for clinical depressions, as with most baffling illnesses before scientists discover a cure, it’s heartbreaking to think:
One little pill might have saved Ma.
That is, if they could have gotten past the social stigmas of “mental illness” and “pill-popping” Western medicine.

I’m thankful to live in a different time and place now, thankful I married a man like Patrick. Though it cost me my father, I believe things happen as they are meant to happen. Everything happens for a reason. Patrick was meant to be my husband, and Rani my daughter.

I remember feeling so helpless watching
Ma
suffer, being powerless to do anything to help. Today I realize: I couldn’t help my mother, but I
can
help my daughter.

Another chance for me.

And for her.

W
hen we get home to our townhouse in Old Town Alexandria, Rani goes straight up to bed. Her room is exactly the way she left it. Aside from occasional dusting, vacuuming, and airing out, we don’t touch it.

On the wall opposite the bed, she painted movie-screen-sized brown eyes, lush eyelashes, upper lids lined with black kohl, and a ruby
bindi
set between arched brows. Depending on the angle (and my mood), the eyes appear happy or melancholy, hopeful or despondent, seductive or innocent. But always, the eyes watch me. Wherever I am in the bedroom. Wherever I move. It creeps me out at times. I don’t know how Rani—or Bryan!—can sleep, or do anything else, with those eyes watching.

“I feel like such a loser,” Rani says, pulling the covers up to her chin.

I sit beside her on her bed, my back to the Enigmatic Eyes. “You’re
not
a loser. You’re drained. That’s all.”

“Uh-huh. I couldn’t hack it as a full-time artist.” She forms an
L
with her thumb and index finger and drops her hand over her forehead. “Loser.”

“Stop that.” I tug her wrist. “You’re way too hard on yourself. Do you remember all the times I told you depression isn’t some indulgence of the weak? A chemical imbalance is a chemical imbalance? That big, clever brain of yours needed to get recalibrated, and it
would
? The same concepts apply here. Your battery’s dead. Out of juice. It happens. You need to recharge, and you
will
.”

“I don’t know…”

“Okay, tell me something. A genie pops out of a bottle and grants you one wish for the career of your choice. The opinions of others, talent, money—none of that matters. There are no obstacles. Success is guaranteed. Now, what career would you choose?”

“An artist,” she says without hesitation.

“There’s your answer—”

“In an ideal world.”

“So art isn’t the easy road you thought it would be. So what? If it’s the road you want, make it work. Fight for it. Easier said than done, I know. But I also know you can do it. You can, Rani. I have faith in you. Have faith in yourself.”

My daughter looks at me as if I’ve grown two heads. “I don’t believe you’re saying this.
You
.”

“I had an epiphany at the gallery.”

Hope and fear war in Rani’s eyes. “Mom…?” she says in a small voice. “
You
tell
me
something. What if it doesn’t work? What if I try and try, and the magic’s gone forever and never comes back? If I’m a washed-up artist, a
has-been
? Will you still love me?”

I don’t reassure her those things aren’t going to happen. That’s not what she needs to hear. I smooth her hair from her forehead. “Yes, my Boo-Boo. I will love you, no matter what.”

“Even if I don’t go back to rocket science?”

“Even if you don’t go back to rocket science.”

“If I don’t have kids and just stay home and eat bonbons all day?”

I smile. “If that’s what you want to do with your life.”

She smiles, too. A crooked grin that makes my heart turn over. “Thanks, Mom. You’re the best.”

“No, just Top Ten,” I tease. We hug. “Come down,” I say. “Grab a bite. I’ve made your favorite
shorshe salmon maachh
.” Salmon in mustard sauce.

“Thanks, but I’m not hungry yet.”

“Not even for
chingri maachher malai
curry?” Prawns in coconut curry, another of her favorites.

“Not yet, thanks.”

This is her standard answer, and it worries me. “Rani, I understand that you don’t have much of an appetite, but you’re losing too much weight.”

“Not this again.”

“Yes, this again. You know the drill. You have to eat. Put something in your stomach. Not a nine-course meal but at least a little. Even if you aren’t hungry.”

“Later, please.”

“How about a walk, then? It’s a gorgeous day. Sunny and—”

“Mom.” She groans—long and loud—and rolls away from me. “I’m tired.”

“You can nap
later
. Come on, let’s get up. You’ve slept enough. It’s almost noon now.” I pat her bottom. “Let’s get some fresh air.”

“Let’s not and say we did.”

“Rani.” I use my sternest voice. “Do you want me to get your husband and father up here?”

“Moth-er! That is
so
not fair, calling in reinforcements. You play dirty.”

I’ll play any way I have to for you.

“Up. Up.” I tug the covers off her, step back, and cross my arms. Good thing Bryan and Patrick aren’t here. Her kicked-puppy whimper could bring the strongest man to his knees. But a mother endures what she has to for the sake of her children.

Rani gets up like an arthritic old lady. When I hug her, she sags against me. “Did I mention how much depression sucks?” she says into my shoulder.

“I know, sweetie, but we’ll get through it. Together as a family. I promise you it
will
get better. Just don’t give up.” I pull back, raise Rani’s chin with my curved index finger, and hold her gaze. “Don’t
ever
give up.”

“I won’t,” she says, her eyes solemn. “I’ll never do that to you again.”

Oh, my sweet, intuitive girl. I hug her again, tightly. She, too, knows the reassurance
I
need to hear.

M
y daughter has my mother’s eyes. Undoubtedly you’ll think I’m crazy when I tell you it’s more than mere resemblance I see. But then, that’s what everyone thought about
Ma
.

It is said the eyes are windows to the soul, and from the moment I first held Rani, I glimpsed in the depths of her gray newborn eyes my mother’s soul.

I might have dismissed it, if that’s all there was to it. But that was only the beginning….

F
rom birth, Rani’s had an almost phobic aversion to anything around her neck, fear of strangulation. I’ve never told her how exactly
Ma
died, only that her death resulted from complications after childbirth.

As a teen, in addition to doodling, Rani jotted conflicted, suicidal verses in the margins of her school notebooks. One may find her scribbling reminiscent of Sylvia Plath—many phrases are verbatim from
Ma
’s tablets, written in Bengali script that Rani cannot read.

When Patrick and I awoke one Saturday to find our rebellious fifteen-year-old lying beside a pool of her vomit from swallowing a bottle of sleeping pills, I surrendered, opening my mind to
all
possibilities. Reincarnation. Clinical depression. Therapy. With my daughter’s life at stake, I no longer had the luxury to be a skeptic, to cling to false pride.

Though we don’t speak of this incident outside our family—it’s no one’s business but ours—inside our family, everything changed from that point on.

In family counseling, we learned that I was a significant contributing factor to Rani’s suicide attempt. Until then, I’d always reprimanded her for answering back. I come from a land where dissent means disrespect; therefore in the name of Respect to Elders, I conditioned my daughter to bite back any words that questioned my authority. I forced her into submission, the mold of a good Indian daughter and my duty as a good Indian mother, I believed. But the words I prohibited? They didn’t vanish into thin air; they accumulated, as voices trapped inside her head, screaming ever louder for release. Like
Ma
.

The guilt of what I caused, however unintentional, almost did
me
in. Our tiny family could easily have fallen apart that year. Instead, we pulled together. Forgave each other. Took pains to try to understand others’ viewpoints. We learned to communicate as a family. How to talk, how to listen, how to dissent, and how to accept dissent.
I
learned to guide Rani without gagging or straitjacketing her.

Meenal and Saroj were none too pleased with the drastic change in my child-rearing practices, and they weren’t alone. Disapproval came at me from both sides: Indian friends questioned my Western attitudes, and American friends questioned my Eastern beliefs. But none of them ever walked in my mismatched shoes—one
chappal
paired with one sneaker—and I refused to succumb to peer pressure. Society’s ignorance, closed-mindedness, killed
Ma
. I wouldn’t let that happen again, to Rani.

From the outside looking in, one might say—and many did—that I let my daughter go wild. Call it whatever you want, but from where I stand, I let my daughter express herself. As long as she wasn’t hurting anyone, or herself, I refused to trap her in her own skin. Never again did I want her to feel she had to escape the prison of her body and her only way out was to take her life. Never again would
I
be a contributing factor with my actions or inactions.