The Vine of Desire (22 page)

“I guess he didn’t,” Lalit says dryly.

I’m so furious, I can’t trust my voice. How dare he!

“Sudha? You there?”

I briefly consider pretending that I forgot. No. Why should I protect Sunil? I don’t owe him anything, not after this.

“Is that a silence signifying unbelievable joy, or stunned horror? Let me assure you, madam, that I am a man of honorable intentions. However, if you still don’t trust me, we could take your delightful daughter along as chaperon.”

From the kitchen, a crash. Dayita must have thrown down her cereal bowl. Now I’ll have to clean the whole floor.

“You don’t have to get that excited about it!”

“I … well …” I abandon all attempts at wit. “I’ll have to check with Anju and Sunil.” I hate how defensive I sound. “After all, I am their guest here—”

I’m afraid Lalit will come back with a smart comment and then I’ll hate him, too. But all he says is, “That’s cool. Give me a call tonight after you’ve spoken to them.” Then he asks, “Did you ever hear the one about the surgeon and his rich patient?”

“No,” I say distractedly. I must confront Sunil about what he did. Soon. But where might such a confrontation lead?

“The surgeon says, ‘I think I’ll give you a local anesthetic before the operation.’

“‘Oh, no, Doctor,’ says the patient. ‘I can afford the best. Get me something imported.’”

Against my will, a laugh breaks from me.

“And now, a riddle,” he adds, sounding pleased. “What’s the difference between a soldier and a lady?”

“What?” I’m feeling a little better now. Saturday, I think. A tendril of excitement unfurls inside me.

“I’ll tell you when I see you.”

It’s time for Dayita’s bath. She wants me to fill the tub—she’s seen it on some
Sesame Street
show—but our tub looks too dirty, with generations of rust stains that won’t come off no matter how much I scrub. So I compromise by filling a bucket with water and putting her water toys in it. I pour in a little shampoo—we have no bubble bath—and stir it up. I put a small plastic stool in the bathtub for her to sit on. She makes her rubber duck nosedive into the foam with a terrific splash that wets my sari, but I stop myself from scolding her. So what if I have to change my clothes, and mop up the bathroom afterward. I’m tired of saying no, which seems to be the only word I’m capable of speaking to her nowadays.

When Dayita has played enough, I massage her with mustard oil. Usually she squirms away, but today she’s cooperative. It’s so rare, this moment of harmony between us, my hands gliding over her arms and legs. I marvel at their smoothness, their unexpected strength. “Do you know, when you were born, your whole hand was less than the length of my little finger,” I tell her. She grabs my finger as I lay it on her palm. I tell her to close her eyes so I can pour water over her head. She squinches them shut obediently, and I’m struck by love for her. Sharp as shrapnel, sweet as burning tea. I wish I felt it more often.

Anju drops her book bag on the floor with a bang, making me jump. “I’ve remembered! Wasn’t Mangala that pretty maidservant
who worked in the big white house on our street? The house owned by that rich old man, ex-king of someplace or other? Whatever made you think of her after all these years?”

She’s caught me by surprise. I’d forgotten that I’d brought up the topic—when was it?—on the night of the party. Now, thinking of what Pishi wrote, I feel a moment of unease. Maybe it’s true that it brings bad luck to dig into memories best left buried.

Mangala. Her slim, pretty figure comes to my eyes. Dark, glistening skin set off by a sunflower-yellow sari. A turned-up, impudent nose. She used to pass by our house on the way to the milk depot every morning. If we were at the gate, she would smile and say, Namaskar, didimonis, how are you? She wore anklets with small silver bells and lined her eyes with kajol. She swung her hips with frank exuberance. My mother said, darkly, That girl’s asking for trouble.

After the accident, she said, What did I tell you? Let this be a lesson to you two.

I shiver involuntarily. “Nothing—it was nothing,” I say to Anju. “Listen, we’ve run out of milk. How about walking down to the grocery with me?”

“Don’t try to prevaricate. You’re so bad at it, it’s pathetic! I’m going to keep at you till you tell me, so you might as well do it now.”

All through our childhood Anju’s been this way. If a puzzle caught her eye, she couldn’t rest until she solved it. If a situation intrigued her, she’d ask questions until the mothers, exasperated, sent her to her room. She had to get to the bottom of every mystery she came across. I’d thought marriage would have taught her more caution.

I sigh. “It was the Simpson trial. Something about the dead wife’s face. Do you remember how Mangala died?”

“She got run over. It was terribly sad. She used to be so pretty, so full of life—”

“There was more to it than that. The Rai Bahadur’s son fell in love with her and wanted to marry her. His father tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t listen. Nor would Mangala. The old man offered her a lot of money if she left, but she refused. That was when the accident occurred.”

Anju frowns. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” I say, though suddenly I’m not. Pishi might have pretended to forget Mangala’s story, but Anju’s perplexed face is guileless. “I overheard the neighborhood aunties talking about it a couple of times when they came over for tea. I’m positive I told you about it.”

Anju shakes her head slowly.

“Anju! How can you forget something like that?” My voice is wobbly, disoriented. I feel as if I’m suspended in space. No, not in space. Inside a giant, suffocating ball of cotton wool. There was a book we studied in class twelve, just before Mother took me out of school. It was about a future society where they’d remove all accounts of the past that they didn’t want people to know about from books, movies, songs, everything. They’d put what they wanted in its place, and after a while everyone believed that that was what actually happened. It was terrible because it was so deliberately done.

But isn’t it worse when such an erasure happens unconsciously?

“Anju, try to remember! People whispered that it was a setup—the old man had sent Mangala to the corner paan shop
to get some betel leaves. But there never was a trial. The old man was too powerful—he bribed all the right folks.”

“Sudha,” Anju says doubtfully, “are you sure you’re not getting this mixed up with a movie you saw, or maybe a story from one of those mystery magazines Aunt N. used to read all the time?”

If no one recalls what you remember, is what happened real anymore?

“I’m certain!” I’m angry now, and scared. How far we’ve moved from each other, my cousin and I. Even our memories are marooned on separate islands. “And then, just a few months later, the old man arranged a marriage for his son with some rich factory owner’s daughter. It was very grand—fireworks, a band, everything. The whole street attended the wedding feast—especially the whispering neighbors.”

“Now that part I’m ready to believe!”

“It was as though poor Mangala had never existed,” I say. “I can’t help wondering whether, if all this had happened here, she would have found some justice.”

“I don’t know,” says Anju. “You’re too romantic about what goes on in America. There are a lot of silenced women here. The
no-money, no-rights
rule works here, too. And bribery. It’s just not as blatant. The media’s making all this fuss about Nicole’s case only because O. J. was a celebrity, and it’s the kind of scandal people love to watch. It’s got very little to do with love of justice.”

Sometimes when I lie sleepless, trying to comprehend the shape of my life, I imagine how the dead might spend their nights. Would they be hovering over the beds of those they had loved or hated, emanating blessings or curses? Would they haunt their dreams? I think I feel something silvery,
nervelike, linking me to those who are gone, even though I knew them so slightly. Singhji, Mangala, Nicole, Prem. A breath on my forehead, sighed-out syllables I can’t quite catch. A movement, shimmery with impatience, glimpsed out of the corner of an eye. A gesture which might mean,
Listen harder!

“What are you thinking now?” asked Anju.

I say nothing. She’d just call me fanciful. In any case, how could I bear to tell her that the reason I long to connect with the dead is because she’s gone from me.

I wait until after I’ve served dinner. Then I tell them about Lalit’s call. I give Sunil a hard look as I speak. He looks back at me, all innocence, then goes back to cutting his chicken into neat, unperturbed cubes.

“I knew it!” Anju clasps her hands together theatrically. “Take her to one party, and already she has suitors knocking at the door!”

“Stop it! He just wants to show me around.”

“Yeah, sure!”

“I don’t think she should go,” Sunil tells Anju.

Speak to me directly, you coward!

“After all, we hardly know him.”

I’m not exactly asking for your permission, you know. I didn’t leave a marriage and travel halfway across the world so you could set yourself up as my guardian. Not that it’s my welfare you’re concerned with, you hypocrite.

“In that case we needn’t worry!” Anju says. “Didn’t we hear the other night, on one of those talk shows you seem to have grown addicted to, that women are attacked by strangers far less often than by people close to them?”

“Is that supposed to be a joke?” Sunil asks. “If it is, I must say you’re developing a strange sense of humor.”

“It’s better than not having any humor at all, like certain people I could name.”

“Excuse me,” I say, before the situation deteriorates further. “I’ve already decided to go with Lalit. I just wanted to let you know.”

Silence bristles around my announcement. Then Sunil picks Dayita up. “And what about her?” The two of them give me identical, accusing stares.

“I … well, I could …”

Anju comes to my rescue. “We’ll keep Dayu!”

“I might have to go in to work,” Sunil says frostily.

Anju gives him an exasperated, wifely look.

“I’ll keep her, then,” she says. “Don’t give it another thought! You go and have a great day with your amor.” She gives Sunil a wicked glance. “Oops, did I say amor? You guys will have to forgive me, this is only my first quarter of Spanish. I meant amigo, of course!”