Rebel Queen

by Michelle Moran

  I went into my room while Grandmother was still raging and lay on the bed. The rain had started up again, and if I listened to it falling against the windows, I could block out the sound of her voice.

  “Sita?” Avani appeared at my door. It was late and she should have been at home, but she had chosen to stay with us these past three nights. “I thought you might like some milk,” she said.

  I sat on my bed and swallowed the terrible pain in my throat. “Is she going to die?”

  Avani crossed the room and sat down next to me. “I don’t know.” She passed me the milk, but I couldn’t bring myself to drink it.

  “What do you think?” I watched her face carefully and saw her lower lip tremble.

  “That there are some storms that can be weathered,” she said, “and others that simply wash everything away. Only the gods know which one this will be.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “Build the strongest ship we can. Your father has sent for the best doctor in Barwa Sagar.”

  But the strongest ship sailed too late.

  Several hours later, Avani woke me in order to tell me a child had been born.

  “A girl,” she said. “Beautiful and healthy. Your father has already sent for a milk nurse. But Sita—” She didn’t say anything else. She didn’t have to. It was there in her eyes, just the same as if I was reading it from a book.

  I ran from the room to Mother’s chamber. Father was lying on her bed, his arms wrapped tenderly around her body.

  “Maa-ji!” I cried.

  “Get her out of here,” Grandmother said. But even though he couldn’t hear her, Father held up his hand to keep me from leaving.

  If you have ever witnessed something unspeakably painful, then you know what I mean when I say that everything stopped: the rain falling in buckets outside, the cries of my newborn sister in the midwife’s arms. Mother was lying motionless on her bed, and the sheet that twisted around her was stained with blood. I looked at her face: how could it be possible that someone so beautiful could be gone from this world?

  “Maa-ji?” I whispered, and fresh tears pooled in Father’s eyes.

  “Sita, your mother is dead,” the doctor said. “She’s not going to wake.”

  I reached out and caressed Mother’s cheek, but the skin was cold and I drew back my hand.

  “Until the milk nurse comes tomorrow,” the midwife said, “I will take care of Anuja.”

  This was the name Mother had chosen, in case it was a girl.

  The midwife came to me and put her hand on my shoulder. “This is the way of all things,” she said. “Birth and death. Samsara. Change is the only constant in this world.”

  I looked down at Mother, who looked so lonely there, even with Father’s arms around her. How would life in our house go on without her? Who would teach my little sister her favorite hymns, or how to dress her hair in jasmine blossoms? “But why does it have to change for the worse?”

  The midwife blinked back her own tears. “I don’t know. But these will be difficult days for your family.”

  The midwife was right: the days that followed were terrible and traumatic.

  Yet when I think back to this time, I remember very little. Perhaps this is the mind’s way of protecting us from events that are so devastating we would otherwise lose all reason. The same way a lizard, if its body is threatened, will drop its tail, providing a distraction to the predator in order to escape with its life. And grief, for anyone who has ever experienced it, is exactly like a predator. It steals first your happiness, and then—if you allow it—everything else.

  There are some things I do recall, however, and my hatred for Grandmother is one of them. It’s interesting to think that in all of Shakespeare’s plays, there are almost no grandmothers. If I could have taken up a pen and written her out of my life, I would have done it. I was certain that if a doctor had been called while Father had been escorting my aunt to her home, Mother would have survived. Grandmother had chosen death, and for this I was determined never to speak with her again if I could help it.

  Over the days immediately following my mother’s death, neighbors came to visit, and Grandmother made a show of taking them to Mother’s body. She walked each woman slowly through the house, dabbing her tears with the edge of her white sari, and every time she reached the chamber where Mother was laid out on an open palanquin, she drew in the same long staggered breath. She would have made a very fine actress.

  I visited Mother only once in the three days her body lay in our house. It was when the priest arrived to make my newborn sister’s Janam Kundli, or natal chart. A person’s natal chart determines nearly everything in their life. What that person will do as a career, what kind of luck they will have in business, even who they will marry. This last is the most important, because if a prospective couple’s Janam Kundlis don’t agree, the match will not go forward, no matter how eager the couple or their parents are to proceed.

  When Avani came into my chamber to help me dress for the priest’s arrival, she sat at the edge of my bed and watched me read King Lear.

  “Do you understand all of those words?”

  I nodded, since I believed that I did. Before Father and I read any play together, he explained it to me, writing out the summary so that even if I did not understand every word in English, I would know what was happening and what to expect.

  “The king was betrayed by two of his children in this story. His own family,” I said, and I knew that Avani was clever enough to understand the point I was trying to make.

  “I know you are very angry,” she said, and before I could form a reply, she added, “but you should understand something about your grandmother’s life.”

  Then Avani told me something my own mother had kept secret from me.

  “Your grandmother came from a very wealthy family. She had more servants than she could count, and half a dozen women to help her dress. She was also very beautiful. They say that men would try to sneak into her garden just to steal a glimpse of her face.”

  This, I believed. Even though meanness had hardened her eyes into sharp pieces of onyx, Grandmother was a stunning woman.

  “When she married your grandfather, her family gave him the highest dowry ever paid in Barwa Sagar. Everyone expected it to be a successful marriage. And why not? They were young and wealthy with beauty and good health. Then your grandmother fell pregnant and gave birth to a girl. Over the next five years there were two more girls.”

  “But Father has no sisters.”

  She nodded quietly, letting the implication of this sink in. “I suspect the wolves took them,” she said finally.

  The answer was so terrible that I was silent for several moments. I couldn’t imagine looking into the perfect face of a child, then tainting its milk with opium. It seemed too cruel, even for Grandmother. “Does Father know this?”

  “Yes.”

  “So he was her fourth child?”

  “No. After giving birth to her third child, your grandmother’s sister died in childbirth with a boy. By then, your grandfather despaired of ever having an heir, so when your grandmother suggested they adopt her nephew, he agreed. Her sister’s husband preferred drink to work. So the adoption benefitted everyone.”

  I fell silent again, trying to absorb this. Grandmother wasn’t my grandmother, but my great-aunt. My real grandmother was dead! I fantasized about all the things my real grandmother must have been: beautiful and sweet and patient and kind. This was why Dadi-ji didn’t love me.

  “It was two months after the adoption,” Avani continued, “that your grandfather took sick and died. Your grandmother went from the most envied woman in Barwa Sagar to one of the most pitied.”

  “But she didn’t have to commit sati,” I pointed out. “Her father took her back.”

  Avani folded her hands in her lap. Her eyes look
ed very tired. “It’s a hard life, Sita, with no friends, or money, or anyone to love you.” She was speaking of her own experience.

  “But I love you.” I wrapped my arms around her as tightly as I could. She smelled like jasmine blossoms, the same as Mother, and I felt an overwhelming need to go on hugging her. Still I pulled away. If Grandmother saw us, there would be trouble. Avani was a maid.

  She wiped away her tears with the back of her hand. “I pray to Durga that you will never understand what it’s like to go from great wealth to poverty, Sita. It was very devastating for your grandmother.”

  “Buddha was a Hindu prince,” I said. “A Kshatriya, like us, and he found freedom in casting off his position and embracing poverty.”

  “Because he chose it. And—more important—he was a man. A man can change his life anytime he wishes. A woman can only change her appearance.” Avani stood and handed me a white sari. Now she and I would look the same. Except I would only wear white for thirteen days. Avani was forbidden color for the rest of her life.

  I wrapped the white sari around my body, and Avani made sure it fell in neat folds to my feet. Outside, the sun had already risen, and a flock of birds were making noise in the rice paddies. It was terrible to realize that life was simply carrying on while Mother lay on her funerary litter. It made me think of the scene in King Lear when the king discovers his beloved daughter’s body. He asks the gods how it’s possible that a dog, a horse, even a lowly rat can have life, and thou no breath at all. It felt like a betrayal to Mother that the birds outside should still be singing. Shouldn’t Lord Brahma silence them in sympathy?

  I stood at the window and looked out over the rice paddies. The priest was coming not just to write my sister’s Janam Kundli, but also to bless my mother’s spirit, which was already on its way to Svarga, where souls go before their next reincarnation. I tried to imagine her there, as a spirit, but since her body was still lying in the next room, I found it difficult.

  Eventually, Grandmother came to the door and demanded to know why Avani hadn’t brought me to our puja room, where we made our daily prayers. “The priest is already here,” she said.

  “Sita’s feeling upset,” Avani explained.

  “We’re all upset,” Grandmother replied. “And we’ll be more upset if this baby girl ends up manglik.”

  Avani and I both gasped.

  Manglik is the worst thing a person can be. If a priest determines that you are manglik, it means you are cursed. There are all sorts of repercussions for people whose natal charts read this way, and marriage becomes extremely difficult. Most mangliks marry other mangliks, so that the bad luck can be canceled out.

  But even Grandmother could not control the stars. It was up to the priest to read them.

  I followed Grandmother to the puja room, where the priest would pray for guidance in reading my sister’s Janam Kundli. I sat down cross-legged with Avani on fresh jute mats. Father must have bought them that morning. I looked across the room at him. He was sitting near the priest in front of our mandir, the wooden temple that housed the images of our gods. I tried to catch his gaze, but even though he was looking at me, he was somewhere else. Next to him, the priest was speaking with our new milk nurse about my sister and how she had come into the world. It was the first time I had seen the baby properly. She was a pretty baby, and I could see at once her resemblance to Mother. She had the same small nose, thick black hair, and a pair of dimples on either side of her cheeks. The midwife had wrapped her in a swath of yellow cloth. I felt a heaviness in my chest because I wanted Mother to be the one cradling her.

  “Beautiful, isn’t she?” Avani said. “Coloring like your grandmother, but darker eyes.”

  “I think she looks like Mother,” I said, to be defiant.

  The priest took his place in the center of the room and we waited in silence while he prepared the puja. A puja is a prayer, the same as you might make in any church. To perform the ceremony you need incense, flowers, ghee, and a round bowl for making a small fire. If you want it to be elaborate, you can add painted oil lamps and large brass bells. With the exception of the priest and the fire, this puja for my sister’s Janam Kundli was not so different from what my family did every morning, when—after our bath—we entered our puja room to stand before images of our gods. I’ve learned over the years that Catholics and Hindus have similar rituals: Catholics light a candle before statues of their saints and repeat a mantra they call Hail Mary; Hindus light a stick of incense and repeat mantras to the gods.

  A puja can be long and intense, or it can be quite simple and short. That afternoon it was long, and since eating is prohibited until the ceremony is finished, it seemed to go on forever. After the priest finally stopped chanting, he turned to me. “Have you seen your mother’s body?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  “The child should see her mother before the body is taken away,” he announced. “When is the cremation?”

  Since Father couldn’t respond, it was Grandmother who told him.

  “Tomorrow. My son will go today to make the necessary arrangements.”

  We followed Grandmother into the spare room. Mother was laid out in a new yellow sari, her litter illuminated by a ring of oil lamps. Women from the village had scattered marigolds at her feet, and when the priest kneeled above her, he added roses. Then he spread sandalwood paste across her forehead and intoned another mantra. I glanced up at Father, but his eyes were focused on some distant point, like a sailor who’s seen the ocean for so long that he’s lost all hope of spotting land.

  The priest handed me an orange carnation. It was my turn to lay a flower on Mother. I approached the litter as slowly as I could. She looked cold and lonely. In life, I had rarely seen Mother sleeping. She had always been in motion; if her feet weren’t moving, then her arms were moving—as well as her lips, since she loved to sing. I laid the flower in her hands, then stood there and waited for her to move. It was childish, but I believed that if I concentrated hard enough, Brahma would take pity on me and bring Mother back to life. But no such thing happened, and I wondered yet again what I had done to so offend the gods that they would take my mother away.

  We moved into the front room to eat rice and lentils, then the priest finished interpreting my sister’s Janam Kundli, which was favorable.

  “Tell me,” he said as he was about to leave. It was only Grandmother and me at the door. “What arrangements has your son made for this girl?” He looked down at me, and I immediately looked away, so he wouldn’t think I was shameless.

  “Now that there’s two of them, there’s no money for a dowry fortune,” Grandmother said, “if that’s what you mean.”

  “She’s already eight, is that right?”

  “Nine,” Grandmother corrected.

  “And very pretty. But if there’s no money for a dowry—”

  “We are dedicating her to the temple,” Grandmother said. “She will become a devadasi.”

  At the time, I had no idea what a devadasi was, except that it meant “god’s servant.” Now, of course, I can understand the horror on the priest’s face when she said this, since a devadasi is really no different from a prostitute. Many years later, I came across an English translation of a poem written in the fifteenth century about devadasis, “sacred servants of god”:

  I’m not like the others. You may enter my house.

  But only if you have the money

  To step across the threshold of my main door, it’ll cost you a hundred in gold. For two hundred you can see my bedroom, my bed of silk, and climb into it.

  But only if you have the money

  To sit by my side and to put your hand boldly into my sari: that will cost ten thousand. And seventy thousand will get you a touch of my full round breasts.

  But only if you have the money

  Three crores to bring your mouth close to mine, touch my lip
s and kiss.

  To hug me tight, to touch my place of love, and get to total union, listen well, you must bathe me in a shower of gold.

  But only if you have the money

  The priest stared at her for a moment, and his mouth opened and shut, as if he had lost the words he’d meant to say. “Does her father know this?”

  “Not yet. But it’s the sensible thing to do with two girls and no heir.”

  The priest looked at her in a way that would be of great comfort later on when I was able to think back on these events with a clearer mind. I wasn’t the only one who recognized Grandmother’s cruelty.

  Late that afternoon, Father found me in the garden, twisting the wildflowers into a crown the way Mother had taught me. He sat on the grass and waited for me to offer him my hand, but I had nothing to say. Finally, he took my hand in his.

  “Someday,” he wrote on the flat on my palm, “when Dadi-ji and I are both gone, you will be the only one who is be able to tell Anuja what her mother was like.”

  Tears obscured my vision, but I could sense that this wasn’t the time to cry.

  “Do you still have empty pages in the diary I gave you?”

  I nodded.

  “Perhaps you can list all of the wonderful things you remember about your mother. Before you forget.”

  I was still writing that list when he left with our neighbor, Shivaji, to arrange for Mother’s cremation. I watched from my bedroom window as they crossed the rice paddies together; anyone who saw them would have thought they were still soldiers. It was something in the way that they walked; tall, muscular men with shoulders like oxen. Aunt said there was nothing bigger in Barwa Sagar than Shivaji. I didn’t know if this was true, but I could certainly believe it of his wide mustache, which he waxed and curled at both ends. With his long dark hair, Shivaji reminded me of a character in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights.

  “Get dressed,” Grandmother said from the door, although I hadn’t heard her approach. “We’re leaving.”