Rebel Queen

by Michelle Moran

  But I suspect Grandmother suggested opium when I was born—a favorite trick for getting rid of daughters. And when neighbors ask what’s become of the infant they heard crying the night before, the reply is always that the wolves have taken her. When I was young, wolves took so many girls in Barwa Sagar that many of the beasts must have died from overeating.

  So when Grandmother said, “Let me tell you something about childbirth, beti,” you can be certain it wasn’t because she wanted to enlighten me. It was her way of making sure I knew how much trouble Mother had gone through to have me: a useless girl. As the light of the window framed my grandmother’s high cheekbones and long, thin neck, I was reminded of a bird I’d seen on the lake behind Barwa Sagar’s fort. Father called it a swan, and said that what made it special was its ability to move through the water without getting wet. And this, it seemed to me, was exactly what Grandmother did in life. She floated through the house but nothing touched her; not my tears, and not Mother’s cries from the back of the house.

  “Bringing a child into this world is the most dangerous journey a woman will take,” she began. “Your mother is in there with the midwife, but it could just as easily be the priest. When I gave birth, I labored for two days. Do you know that means?”

  It wasn’t a question; it was a cue for me to shake my head, which I did.

  “It means I didn’t eat or drink for two days. They shut the doors and closed the windows and I suffered like an animal until I thought even Goddess Shashti had abandoned me.”

  I knew this must be true, because I had seen the midwife arrive and heard her instruct Grandmother to be sure that neither fresh air nor light was allowed into Mother’s room. I thought of Mother trapped inside and tears clouded my vision.

  “Are you listening?” Grandmother’s voice rose.

  “Yes, Dadi-ji. But the water—”

  She followed my gaze to the pot. “So why are you standing there? Bring it!”

  I took the boiling pot from the heated bricks and followed Grandmother down the hall. Our lime-washed walls and mud-brick floors might not have been beautiful, but we had more than two rooms, and we always had enough food to eat.

  Grandmother knocked sharply on the door, and when the midwife appeared, I caught a glimpse of Mother: she was covered in sweat, as if the heavy rain outside had fallen over her body, but left everything else in the room dry.

  “The water,” the midwife said.

  I held up the pot, hoping she would say something about Mother’s condition, but the old woman simply took the hot water and shut the door. Perhaps it’s mean to call her old, since she was the same age as Grandmother. But truthfully, there couldn’t have been a greater difference between them than if you were comparing a cat with a lion. The midwife’s face was round and soft, with deep creases around her mouth and eyes; Grandmother’s was tight and full of angles. My aunt once said I had inherited these angles. Then she added, “It’s a compliment, Sita! Don’t make such a grimace. The sharpness of Dadi-ji’s face is what makes her so beautiful, even at sixty-three. You have the same striking features.”

  We stood for a moment, listening to the cries on the other side of the door, then Grandmother said, “Go and tell your father to fetch your aunt.”

  Father’s workshop was my favorite room in our house. It had four windows facing onto the busy streets and the ceilings were as tall as our peepal tree. As soon as I approached, I could hear the sabjiwalla outside, pushing his cart past our neighbor’s fields despite the rain, and calling out the names of the vegetables he was selling: onions, tomatoes, cucumber, okra. If Mother was well, she would have been bargaining with him through the window, concealed behind the lattice in order to keep purdah.

  Inside, Father sat with his back to the door. Wood shavings covered the floor around him, making me think of orange peels, and the room was filled with the woodsy scent of teak. When Father was carving the image of a god, the air would be thick with incense; he would light a stick of sandalwood on our altar, then lay a long jute mat across the floor as a place to work. But on the days when a villager placed an order for a weapon, the room smelled only of woods and earth.

  I approached him slowly, since Father didn’t like to be surprised. I suppose it’s the same with others who’ve lost their hearing.

  “Pita-ji,” I said when I was standing before him.

  He searched my face for some sign of distress, then his shoulders relaxed. He put aside the bow he was carving to offer me his palm.

  “Grandmother says to fetch Esha-Masi,” I traced above the calluses of his hand.

  “Now?”

  I nodded.

  He stood, and the wood shavings fluttered from his dhoti like small brown moths. I’ve heard the English call these dhotis kilts, and I suppose they are similar. But unlike a kilt, a dhoti is white and worn without a shirt. Father left to change into pants and the long cotton shirt we call a kurta. When he returned, I was still staring at the half-finished bow he was making.

  “Bartha,” he said aloud, letting me know the bow was for our neighbor, Partha. Father could speak when he was in a great hurry, but now that he was deaf, he had lost the ability to tell the difference between letters like p and b.

  I still understood. I looked at the bow—which Father might have been making for me if I had been a boy—and tears filled my eyes.

  “Afraid?” Father wrote.

  “What if it’s another girl?” I traced.

  “Then I will consider myself twice as blessed.”

  It took twenty minutes to reach my aunt’s house at the other end of Barwa Sagar—where she lived with her husband and two young sons—and then return to ours. I watched through the latticed window as the rain now fell slantways through the streets. In our neighbor’s field, even the buffalo looked sorry for themselves; they had taken shelter under the trees, and their tails hung between their legs like wet rope.

  When Aunt arrived, the bearers lowered her palanquin in our private courtyard, then opened its curtains. As soon as she stepped outside, she shielded herself from the eyes of the bearers by wrapping her dupatta—or scarf—around her head. Father escorted her to our door.

  “Where is Dadi-ji?” Aunt asked when I greeted them. It occurred to me how similar she was to Mother: her tiny bones, her small lips. No one who saw them in a room together would fail to pick them out as sisters.

  “The midwife needed Grandmother’s help,” I said. “She told me to stand here and wait for you.”

  “Nothing bad has happened?” she whispered. But she needn’t have bothered; Father couldn’t hear her. People often forgot this.

  “No.”

  She hurried down the hall. After two knocks, a door opened and closed.

  With so many people inside our house at one time, it should have been cheerful. Instead, I could feel anxiety building inside of me the same way you can feel the slow coming of a fever. Father must have felt the same way, because he went quietly back into his workshop, though I suspected he wasn’t interested in his work.

  I remained in the hall and watched as our maid, Avani, poured mustard oil into each of our brass lamps. Then she lit them in the small stone niches along the wall. It may sound strange that a family as modest as ours should have had a maid, but this wasn’t uncommon back then, and still isn’t today. Unless a person belongs to the very lowest caste, they will likely employ someone to help with cooking and cleaning. The wealthier the family, the more maids they will have. In our case, we could only afford one.

  Like most girls, our maid Avani had been married as soon as she turned ten, still young enough to be molded by her mother-in-law. Her husband, who was fifteen years older, was a kind man who allowed her to remain with her family until she came of an age to bear children. But three years later, when she went to live in her father-in-law’s house, her husband suddenly took ill and died. Now in India, despite Britis
h rule, there is still a terrible practice called sati. I suppose I could explain to you where this came from, and how our goddess Sati built her own funeral pyre and then walked into the flames for her husband, Lord Shiva, only to be reincarnated as his second wife, Parvati, but it wouldn’t help to explain this practice, since it has less to do with the goddess Sati and more to do with unwanted women. And so, every day, in every city in India, a woman can be found ascending the steps of her husband’s funeral pyre. Refusing to commit sati by burning in your husband’s flames brings dishonor to your family. But even worse than this, it brings great disrespect to your father-in-law’s house.

  That Avani’s father-in-law—and her own father—were both against sati was highly unusual, especially at that time. Of course, it was understood that she could never marry again, and that all of the joys belonging to wives would never be hers, but at least she was alive.

  Which is not to say that she had escaped a cruel fate entirely.

  Many years later, I learned from Father that of all the families in Barwa Sagar, none were willing to employ Avani except ours. It was the only act of charity I’d ever heard of Grandmother performing—perhaps because she, too, had been saved from the flames when she was widowed. And for an unwanted woman whose family refuses to take her back into their home, where is there to go? Where can she work if no house will employ her?

  At the time, I was unaware of these things. I simply knew that I liked watching Avani work—the way her dark braid swayed from side to side when she was lighting the lamps, and how her skin took on a deep amber glow in the flickering lights. She was feminine in a way I imagined I’d never be, with an older person’s knowledge that seemed unattainable to me as a child.

  “Do you think it will be much longer?” I asked.

  She lowered the jar of mustard oil she was carrying. Her face took on a thoughtful expression. “I don’t know. I’ve never had any children of my own.”

  I should have nodded silently and gone back to my room, but I was nine, and I could be incredibly thoughtless. “Why not? Dadi-ji told me that every woman wants children.”

  Her lips turned down. “Because my husband had the misfortune of dying six years ago.”

  I knew she wore the white sari of a widow, the same as Grandmother, but it had honestly never occurred to me that in order to have children, a woman needed a husband.

  Avani must have recognized my embarrassment, because she crossed the hall and took my hand in hers. “Don’t worry.” In the golden light of the lamps, she looked to me like Lakshmi—the goddess of beauty. “It will all be over soon.”

  But Mother’s cries went on for two days. By the second night, Aunt was called home by her husband; he felt she’d been with us for long enough.

  “Sita,” she said to me from the doorstep before she left, her voice low, like the rain clouds behind her. “You must take good care of your mother. Do whatever the midwife says. Without questions.”

  “Can’t you stay, Esha-Masi, just for one more night?”

  “I’m sorry, Sita.” Her eyes teared. She didn’t want to go. “If I can, I will come next week.”

  Father walked alongside her palanquin. He would do so to the other end of Barwa Sagar. I watched them leave, and when they were out of sight, I could feel Grandmother standing behind me the way you feel the presence of a threatening animal. She grabbed my shoulder.

  “Go into your mother’s room and don’t come out until she’s had the child.”

  If she had asked me to do anything else—anything at all—I would have gladly done it. But the idea of going into that dark closed space made my chest constrict as if someone were sitting on it. “But what if something happens, Dadi-ji? Aren’t you coming?”

  Her face looked as if it were carved from teak. I told this once to Father, and instead of reprimanding me, he laughed. Then I told him how Mother’s face looked to be cedar, since that wood is soft and easier to carve. He, however, was cypress. At this Father looked puzzled, since he knew I had never seen a cypress tree. I reminded him of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew and told him, “Gremio says he stores his most precious belongings in cypress chests. Well, you’re my most precious belonging.”

  Father looked quite surprised—as if what I’d said was a very original thing.

  The day after this conversation took place, I found a book on my bed. It must have cost a small fortune, for the leather cover was painted with an image of Saraswati, our goddess of the arts, and the pages were all very carefully trimmed. They were also empty.

  “Of course they’re empty, Sita.” His eyes creased at the sides. He was trying not to laugh. “They’re for you.”

  I didn’t understand.

  “To write your thoughts. In England, they call it a diary,” he traced over the flat of my palm. “You’re a very clever girl.”

  I would have been less shocked if he had gifted me an elephant and told me he expected me to become its trainer.

  “Perhaps no one will ever read what you write except for your children,” Father went on, “but you are a kalakaar, Sita.”

  In Hindi, this means artist. It was the greatest compliment he ever paid me.

  I thought of these words as I walked down the hall to Mother’s chamber. But what good was a kalakaar? I had no real skill, like the midwife or like Father. I knocked on the door and I could already smell the stench of sweat.

  “Where is your grandmother?” the midwife asked as soon as she opened the door.

  “She told me not to leave this room until the child is born.”

  The lines deepened between the midwife’s brows, but she didn’t say anything. I shut the door and approached Mother’s charpai, a wooden bed whose woven top is made from rope. She reached for my hand, but when I gave it to her, she had no strength left to squeeze my fingers.

  “Sita,” she said softly. Her pretty face was creased in pain and a single white blanket clung to her damp skin. “The baby doesn’t want to come. Where is your grandmother?”

  The midwife glanced at me, which I took to mean that I should be silent and let her answer.

  “She has gone to the temple,” she said. “Concentrate on your pushing.”

  Mother’s braid trailed out over her pillow; it looked like a long black snake curling over the bed to strangle her. I stood at her bedside and did as the midwife instructed. When she needed hot water, I fetched it. When she wanted help rubbing primrose oil onto Mother’s stomach, I did that, too. But when Mother’s breathing grew more labored and the midwife turned to me and said, “Go and get your grandmother,” I hesitated.

  “Now!” she said forcefully. “This child won’t come without a doctor.”

  I turned and rushed to the puja room, where we kept our altar and statues of the gods. I thought I would find Grandmother praying there. Instead, she was sitting in the kitchen, eating chapatis.

  “Dadi-ji, the midwife has asked that you come.”

  She lowered the chapati onto the table. “What did I tell you?”

  “That I should only come to you when the child is born. But Dadi-ji, the midwife says the baby can’t come into the world without a doctor.”

  Grandmother’s eyes widened, and suddenly, she jumped up. She washed her hands in a bowl of lemon water, then went down the hall and opened the door. Inside, she covered her nose with the edge of her sari. The smell was overwhelming.

  “Dadi-ji,” the midwife addressed Grandmother respectfully. “Your daughter-in-law is in desperate need of a doctor. There’s nothing more I can do.”

  Mother’s eyes were closed. The only sound in the room was her heavy breathing.

  “We will not have a man delivering this child,” Grandmother said.

  “Your daughter-in-law will die without a doctor, and the child will die with her. I would fetch him now, before it’s too late.”

  But Grandmother was
as still and immovable as a tree. “My son would never compromise the dignity of this house by allowing another man to touch his wife.”

  “Dadi-ji!” I felt myself becoming hysterical. “You’re wrong. I know Pita-ji would want—”

  “Out!”

  “Please! Pita-ji will come home and you’ll see—”

  “Do not make me fetch the stick!”

  But I can tell you, at that moment, I didn’t care. What did a beating matter if Mother died? I turned to the midwife, but her head was lowered in the shame of having to witness such a scene. I ran from the room and—for the first time in my life—out the front door and into the street. I had no idea which roads Father might have taken to bring my aunt home to her husband and family at the other end of Barwa Sagar, but I ran as if the demon Ravana were chasing me. It was only when I reached a fork in the road that I realized what a terrible idea this was. First of all, Father had warned me that it wasn’t uncommon for children roaming the streets to go missing. And secondly, I probably don’t need to tell you what awful things can befall a girl in the middle of the night.

  I stopped where I was and looked around me. The full moon cast a silvery light over our neighbor’s fields. I watched the tall stalks of rice sway in the breeze. Even if I screamed, our neighbor’s house was so far away that no one would hear me. What had I been thinking, leaving the house like this? My heart began beating so loudly that when the sound of someone’s sandals against the gravel grew near, I wondered if it was coming from inside my head. I was frozen in terror.

  “Sita!”

  “Pita-ji!” I ran to him. In my excitement, I started to speak, then I took his hand and started to write. “Dadi-ji is refusing to get a doctor. Mama-ji is dying!”

  Chapter Three

  The shouting went on for some time before a doctor was sent for. Of course, it was Grandmother who was doing the shouting, and the horrible words she used against Mother made me thankful for once that Father was deaf.