Oleander Girl

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

  I’m suddenly exhausted. Why was everyone in America convinced that I was out to deceive him? After so much searching, was it too much to have expected a little excitement in my father’s voice? A spark of cautious joy at the possibility that I wasn’t dead?

  “All I wanted was to meet the man my mother had loved. In a letter she never got to send to you, a letter I found by chance, she had written that you made her feel complete. I wanted to ask you about that, about her. There’s so much I don’t know—”

  “How did you find me?” he interrupts, his voice hard.

  I’m speechless for a moment, trying to find the words to describe the shock of discovering that my beloved grandfather had lied to me all my life. Grandmother’s sad retelling of my mother’s last days. Rajat’s unwillingness to let me go. Maman’s anger at what she saw as my fickleness. My American odyssey, with all its expenses, insults, and assaults. How my engagement—and my future—is at breaking point.

  “Trying to come up with a convincing story, are you?” Lacey taunts.

  What’s the use of baring my heart to such a man? Whatever disappointments he’s experienced over the past eighteen years, in addition to the deaths of his wife and daughter, have made him distrustful. He has closed himself away. He’s no longer the man my mother had loved so fiercely. I have no future with such a father.

  It’s oddly freeing to have nothing left to lose. “Never mind,” I say, surprising myself. “Go back to your wife and children and your comfortable job. You won’t hear from me again. I’ve wasted enough of my life on you.”

  I press the end button and drop to my knees. The wind has turned; the sun has disappeared behind clouds. It’s freezing. My teeth begin to chatter. The ocean roars and roars in my head. I fling the phone down and squeeze my eyes shut. When I feel an arm around my shoulder, I hit out in all my fury.

  “Ow! You’re more dangerous than I thought!”

  It’s Vic, come to check on me. He sees right away how things went and sits beside me on the sand. He lets me weep because sometimes that’s the best thing a friend can do. He’s the one who hears when my phone begins to ring. He’s the one who scrambles in the sand and hands it to me.

  The food at El Jadida is as superb as the reviewers have claimed and worth the long wait, though more expensive than Rajat had expected. He hides his concern and passes his charge card to the waitress with a flourish that makes Pia giggle. He has only one sister, and she has only one birthday a year. He’ll practice frugality elsewhere. Although what’s the point? The strike has sunk its teeth so deep into the Boses’ bank account that no amount of personal frugality can staunch that wound.

  It’s late by the time they leave the restaurant, the parking lot three-quarters empty. Pia is in high spirits. She cradles a bag of pastries that she has bought to take home. She’s telling him a joke. He loves how she’s so amused by it that she cracks up before the punch line. Suddenly she comes to a stop.

  “Dada, Asif’s still here. Look, he’s standing next to that black car.”

  “Ignore him. If he couldn’t bother to give us even a day’s notice, he doesn’t deserve our attention now. You know how much trouble he caused us, disappearing just like that. If I wasn’t home because the warehouse is closed down, how’d you even be getting to school?”

  “It’s not like Asif to behave that way. You know it. He’s been with us since”—she counts on her fingers—“since I was in class four. I have to find out what happened.”

  “Pia! I forbid it. Pia! Maman’s told me to be extra careful with you. You know what happened to her outside the gallery just the other day. Those men—”

  “This is our Asif! He would never hurt me. Please? For my birthday?”

  She makes use of his hesitation to run across the lot. He follows close behind. Maman described for him, in graphic detail, the kidnapping of the Deorahs’ grandson, and though he doesn’t want to admit it, it’s made him nervous.

  “A.A.!” Pia’s smiling, Rajat can tell. An answering grin spills across Asif’s face. They’re completely focused on each other, oblivious of Rajat’s presence.

  She goes right up to their ex-driver, her voice plaintive. “A.A., why did you leave us? It’s horrible with you gone. Dada is so grumpy in the morning when he drives me to school. He gets irritated if I say even two words. And he hates my music.”

  “Sorry, Pia-missy. I had no choice.”

  “Maman said it’s because someone offered you a lot more money.”

  Asif swallows, his face pained. “It wasn’t the money, Pia-missy. I would never leave you for money. You know that. But I couldn’t stay on.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s—complicated.”

  “It’s because of Shikha being in the car with us, isn’t it?”

  He says nothing.

  “I’m sorry, A.A. I’m so sorry! That wasn’t right of Maman.”

  “Pia!” Rajat’s voice holds a warning. She should know better than to criticize a family member to a servant.

  “Please don’t be, Pia-missy. You never did anything to be sorry about. Never in all these years. You were always so kind.”

  “Maman’s really anxious right now, with Papa gone to America and the problems in the warehouse, so you mustn’t hold it against her.”

  Rajat doesn’t like the way this conversation is progressing, as though between equals. “That’s enough, Pia!” he says sternly. “It’s almost midnight. Time to go. You have school tomorrow.”

  “Coming, Dada.” She reaches in the bag and hands Asif a pastry.

  “Happy birthday, Pia-missy.” Their ex-driver sounds choked up.

  “You didn’t forget!”

  “Forget? Never. I got you a gift, but I don’t know how to—”

  This drama has gone far enough. Rajat starts the car. He honks and throws open the passenger door. “Get in the car, Pia. Now!”

  She gets in, flinging him a mutinous glance. She waves at Asif while Rajat swings the car around.

  “You didn’t have to be rude like that. Half a minute to let him complete his sentence wouldn’t have hurt.”

  Rajat’s surprised at how grown-up she sounds. Guilt twinges through him. To quell it, he says, “You don’t know your boundaries. He’s a servant—and not even our servant anymore. Left us for some Muslim highflier. You’re a girl from a good family. You’re growing up now. You need to learn how to behave in society.”

  “He may be a servant, but he’s a person first. A good person. Better than a lot of society people I know.”

  “That doesn’t matter. He’s not of your class.” She gives him such a withering glance—his little sister who’s always adored him—that he’s stung into adding, “And giving him that expensive pastry was completely unnecessary.”

  “I don’t care about class. He’s my friend. I’ll give him a pastry if I want. I’ll give him ten pastries.”

  He’s about to remind her that Asif can never be her friend. But he sees that she’s overexcited and on the verge of tears. He doesn’t want to ruin her birthday treat, this evening that has gone so well, by arguing about that damned driver. It’ll do no good, anyway, when she’s in this stubborn mood. He sighs. Why has God chosen to fill his life with headstrong females? He turns the radio dial until he finds Pia’s favorite station, even though he dislikes the mindless pop it plays.

  “You’re tired out, Sweet P. Sleep for a bit. I’ll wake you when we get home.”

  Asif takes a small, appreciative bite of the pastry, then rewraps it in the crinkly gold paper it came in and places it delicately in his pocket. Paper-thin layers of crispy dough, soaked with honey and studded with crunchy nuts. It’s delicious and different, the best thing he’s ever eaten, mostly because Pia-missy gave it to him. She’s probably being scolded for her generosity right now—he’d seen them arguing in the car as Rajat took off, tires screeching, driving too fast as usual. The pastry looks as if it won’t spoil soon, not like the soft milk-sweets Bengalis favor. Asif has a sm
all fridge in his room, empty so far because he eats in the servants’ kitchen; he’ll save the pastry in there and eat it a tiny bit at a time.

  The last sweetness melts on his tongue. His eyes idly follow a dark brown Maruti van driving across the lot, also going too fast, also screeching at turns. What is it with these rich people? Midnight seems to bring out the crazy in them. The van disappears in the same direction as the Boses’ car. Loud laughter and off-key drunken singing as a group of revelers exit the restaurant. Asif peers at them. No Rehman yet. It’s getting cold, a fog coming in from the river, obscuring the stars, so he gets back in the car. Then it strikes him: the Page 3 types who frequent this restaurant would rather be boiled in oil than caught driving the stolidly middle-class Maruti.

  His heart begins to thump. Stop it, Asif! It’s a coincidence that the van left the parking lot right after the Mercedes. That it turned in the same direction. A lot of people live in South Kolkata. It could be some celebrity’s backup vehicle for when his Jaguar is in the shop. But even as he thinks this, Asif has already wiped his sweaty palms on his pants and turned on the engine, he’s already on his way, driving just as fast, though he’s too proficient for his tires to squeal. He’ll follow the van for a few minutes, just to make sure he’s wrong. Then he’ll hurry back to the restaurant. Rehman will never know.

  In a couple of minutes he sees the van and, ahead of that, the Mercedes, which is no longer going fast. Rajat must have cooled down. The van could easily overtake him if its driver wished to. The road is wide-open, no other traffic in sight. But for some reason it has slowed, too. Something else is not right. It takes Asif a moment to figure it out: the van’s headlights are turned off. Has Rajat noticed? Probably not. He’s not the most observant of men. The scene reminds Asif of a movie he’d seen about an underwater adventure, a shark swimming up silently behind an unsuspecting diver.

  Perhaps the van’s occupants—two of them, Asif can see their silhouettes—can be deterred from whatever they’re planning if they know someone’s aware of them. He speeds up until he’s close behind the van, switches on his brights, and honks. Maybe the noise will alert Rajat, too. The man on the passenger side turns to look. Asif tries to see his face—does he know him? Is he from the warehouse?—but it’s too dark. The driver unrolls his window and signals impatiently for Asif to pass, but Asif remains where he is, leaning into the horn.

  The maneuver has had one positive result: Rajat realizes there’s trouble of some sort behind him and speeds up. But the van speeds up, too. Then, without warning, it rams the Mercedes from the back. Asif hears the thud and clang, sees the car shudder, and winces. That car—he’d taken care of it as if it were his own body. No, better than he’d ever taken care of his body. Rajat is honking, too, sticking his arm out the window, shaking his fist while trying to speed up. A bad idea. The Mercedes weaves wildly, almost going off the road. The van rams the Mercedes again, from the driver’s side now. Asif hopes Rajat was able to pull back his arm in time. The bastards are trying to force him into the ditch that runs alongside the road. Asif imagines Pia-missy clutching the dashboard, her mouth open in a scream.

  Asif has to act, he has to do something. If he calls the police, he knows they wouldn’t arrive in time even if they hurried. And it’s doubtful that they’ll hurry, because Asif is a nobody. For a wild moment he thinks of calling Sheikh Rehman—the number is programmed into his mobile, which is in his shirt pocket—and asking him to send help. The van rams the Mercedes again. There’s a terrible scraping sound. A bumper has come loose and is dragging on the road. Sparks fly. One of the car’s wheels goes over the edge of the road. Rajat is struggling to get it back on the road, but the car’s on the verge of flipping. The van readies itself for one last collision.

  Asif grips the steering wheel of the Rolls as hard as he can. He’s bathed in sweat. Crazy, crazy. He slams down on the accelerator and hits the van from the back at an angle, propelling it away from the Mercedes. Again. Forgive me, Sheikh. The front of the Rolls is dented beyond redemption; the hood tents up; the headlights are smashed so that he can’t see too well. Or is the problem with his eyes? The back of his neck is on fire. Something thuds into his windshield, and cracks sunburst across it, further obscuring his vision. Now the van is teetering, too. The man on the passenger’s side leans out of the window, his mouth open in a yell, pointing a gun. He hits something—is it the front grille of the Rolls? There’s a sound like an explosion. Asif attempts to maneuver over to the driver’s side of the van, but the Rolls wobbles uncontrollably. He must have blown a tire.

  The van’s to his side now, getting ready to pound him. I’ll take you with me, you son of a pig. He smashes into the van as hard as he can and feels the impact go through his spine. Then he’s weightless, airborne. It’s like flying. No, it’s like being dead. He gropes for the mobile. Come on, A.A., you can do it, press the 1. His fingers clench. His head strikes the dashboard. All turns black.

  FOURTEEN

  That seat in the front-left corner,” Rob Lacey says, pointing, “was—for some reason I never understood—your mother’s favorite. She’d come in early so she could claim it. And where we’re standing in the corridor right now, this is where I used to wait for her to get done with class. I’m afraid I was a terrible distraction. She’d complain later that she missed half the lecture because she kept glancing at me and trying not to smile. But she was a terrible distraction, too. Some days I wouldn’t even go to my classes—my university was all the way across the bay, in San Francisco—because I couldn’t bear to be away from her for so long.”

  I peer through the oblong of glass into the room, where a lecture is in progress. The wooden desk-chairs are old and gouged. I long to sit in the chair my father has pointed out, to place my hands where my mother’s had been, to learn through osmosis what she would have taught me had she lived. Ironically, I’d walked through this very building a few days ago. But it had no more meaning than when one leafs through a book in a foreign language, intrigued by the strange shapes but mostly frustrated. Now I had a translator, and it made all the difference. I want to tell my father this, but I’m still shy with him, although I’m beginning to like him a great deal. Perhaps too much, considering we haven’t yet discussed the future.

  When he called me back on the beach, he’d said, calmly, “You shouldn’t hang up on people like that. Your mother used to do the same thing when she got mad at me. Where are you staying? I’ll fly out tomorrow to meet you.”

  Vic and I picked him up him from the airport yesterday evening and took him to our motel—he’d opted to stay there, though surely he could afford fancier lodgings—and then on to Mystic City. Sid, a tall, thin man with an earring and a shaved head, shook my father’s hand and welcomed me with a hug and a knowing grin: So you’re the one! He settled us in a quiet corner with drinks and steered a protesting Vic away.

  Alone with this man, my father, I felt excruciatingly awkward, a gangly teenager again. Under the pretext of sipping my drink I glanced at him from under my eyelashes. He looked older than in the photo, his hair grayer than I had expected. Twice he ran his hands over it and said, “Damn! If someone had told me yesterday morning that I’d be sitting today with a daughter I didn’t even know I had!” His skin was, indeed, light. He had big, beat-up knuckles. Did that mean he liked working with his hands? There was so much I needed to know about him, and so little time. In two days he’d have to return to his other life, where people continued their activities in blithe ignorance of my existence.

  We spoke stiltedly, courting each other with little, likable pieces of ourselves, delaying our difficult questions, our subterranean, complicated truths. By unspoken consent, we turned off our cell phones, not wanting anything to encroach upon our brief moment together. He handed me an envelope full of old photos: my mother outside a tall, domed building, mock-curtsying in a bright, frilly skirt; laughing in an apron in a tiny kitchen, flour dusting her cheek; looking doubtful under a sign that promised her a hap
py birthday; and finally, thinner and sadder, with shadows in her eyes, cradling her curved belly.

  “You can have them. I made copies.”

  I wanted to laugh and weep, both at once. I remembered Mariner’s apartment, my hunger for a single glimpse of my mother’s lost life that had nearly led me to disaster. And now, unlooked-for, this treasure trove! The universe had a strange sense of humor.

  We walk across campus to the domed building I had seen in one of the photos.

  “This is the International House, where we met, in this hall, at a folk-dance class. She was standing right here.”

  I imagine her in a red, frilled dress, a world of anticipation in her eyes.

  “It was a difficult time in my life. I’d recently switched majors from engineering to history, which upset my family. They’d worked hard to put me through college, and they felt I was reneging on an unspoken contract. They were particularly displeased with my area, ancient civilizations, not even something meaningful like African-American history. I was going through a lot of soul-searching, a lot of guilt. I’d never have come here—I’m a terrible dancer—if a friend hadn’t forced me because she thought I needed cheering up. Your mother wasn’t that great a dancer, either, thank God—because otherwise I’d have been too intimidated to approach her. What I liked about her right away was that she was enthusiastic and unafraid, laughing at herself when she messed up. She had a mass of beautiful hair that flowed all the way down her back. Later she told me she’d never cut it—it was a family tradition. I kind of thought you’d have long hair, too.”

  He looks at me for a moment, and I return the gaze. I want to tell him how much I’ve given up to find him, but that’s a story for another time.

  “I kept going back to that class because of her. I’d maneuver my way around the room so I could be her partner. We started talking. She wanted to know where I came from, what I liked to do, what books I read. She had a genuine interest in people, your mother. And she was arrow-straight. When I asked her out, she told me right away we could only be friends. She explained the promise she’d made. When love ambushed her, she fought it every step of the way. But finally she had to call your grandfather. We both knew by then that it would be wrong for her to marry someone else.”