Oleander Girl

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

  My father breaks off, unwilling to enter that dark wood yet. Instead, he takes me to the building where they lived.

  We walk down Telegraph, past vendors and street people and leftover hippies, secondhand clothing stores jostling for space beside upscale eateries, and turn into a narrow street. The building is dilapidated, its stucco a disheartening, crumbly gray.

  “Ugly as sin, isn’t it? It looked just like this even then. We had that tiny studio on the top floor, in the corner, see? It was cheap because the elevator didn’t work. We were dirt-poor. Your grandfather had cut your mother off. Her scholarship covered her school expenses, but not much more. I didn’t feel I could ask my family for help. They weren’t well-off, and besides, they weren’t pleased about us getting together, either. They thought—”

  He breaks off, a pained look on his face.

  “I worked a couple of part-time jobs and Anu tutored. That’s how we managed to make ends meet. We had one secondhand mattress and one dining table with mismatched chairs that we used for eating and studying, both. Though we had no nursery for you, we were so excited for you to be born. I’d never been happier than I was there. Or sadder, when I received news from your grandfather that she had died, that you both had died. It seemed impossible that so much joy could vanish so quickly.”

  I wonder about his journey from grief to acceptance, to his present life with his new family that I’m jealous of. I wonder if my mother had been equally happy in that apartment. On the scales of joy, could even the best husband equal the weight of everyone you’d loved as far back as you could remember? But the gulf between 26 Tarak Prasad Roy Road and this building is so wide, perhaps joy meant something else here.

  But then I think back to the note I’d found. My mother had been equally happy with him, even if that happiness was tinged with loss. Sometimes we appreciate something more because of the price we’ve had to pay for it. I consider showing him the letter, but I’m not ready, not yet, to share the one piece of her that I hold.

  “She was a terrible cook, your mother. I’m the one who fixed dinner—I even learned some Indian dishes because she’d get homesick for them. But she made the best tea. We’d drink it in bed while we read each other snippets of what we were studying. Anu had a way of looking into you, of giving you her complete attention, that made you want to be the best person you could be. She’s the one who turned me on to poetry. I’ve kept a couple of her favorite anthologies. When I read certain poems in there, I hear her voice. Sometimes we’d just sit quietly, gazing at this jacaranda tree. That’s the best kind of silent, when you’re with someone you love so much that you don’t need to talk to them. And she loved flowers. It bothered her to be shut up in a small apartment. Her dream was to move to a little place with a patio—that’s the best we could imagine in those times—and get some oleanders in pots. Now I have a half acre where I’ve planted row upon row of oleanders. I had a struggle with my wife about those. She was scared that the kids, who were little then, might put the poisonous leaves in their mouths.”

  “Did she know why you planted them?”

  He looks down. “Selena doesn’t know about your mother. When I met her, about two years after Anu died, I wasn’t ready to rake up those painful memories again. I thought, ‘Let some time pass; then I’ll tell her.’ And one day it was too late.”

  Is he going to tell her about me? That’s another question I can’t ask.

  He says he must show me one final place, so we take the bus up the hill. On the way he describes his long-ago trip to India: how shell-shocked he was in the hot confusion of Kolkata, how Bimal Roy met him in the hotel lobby with the two death certificates and an urn of ashes. When Lacey asked how my mother died, Bimal Roy had turned on him in fury. It’s because of you they’re both dead, he said. He asked Rob Lacey never to contact them again.

  I wait for rage at my grandfather to wash over me, but there is only sadness. What he did, it was because of love. Isn’t that why most people do what they do? Out of their mistaken notions of love, their fear of its loss?

  We disembark, and suddenly we’re in the midst of roses, a multicolored, flowering amphitheater on the hillside. My father takes my arm as we descend to the trellises heavy with yellow blossoms. It’s the first time he has touched me. I clasp his hand as a child might. How many times have I longed for this! He limps a little. Will we ever know the injuries that lie in our pasts?

  “The Rose Garden was special to Anu. This is where we made our vows to each other.”

  “You got married here?”

  He hesitates. His face flushes, then pales. He squares his shoulders. “Your mother and I were never married.”

  For a moment, the words hover in the air between us, meaningless. Then I stare at him, aghast. “I’m illegitimate?” I whisper. Now it makes sense, why Desai was having such a hard time finding wedding records. “I’m a—bastard?”

  He winces at the word but forces himself to meet my eyes. “I begged her, again and again. Especially when she became pregnant, which we hadn’t planned on. But my asking only made her more upset. She took the promise she’d made in the temple—that she wouldn’t marry against her father’s wishes—very seriously. I couldn’t understand it, but there it was. That was one of the reasons she went to India—to ask her father to release her from her promise so we could marry before you were born.”

  The air is cloying, burdened with the scent of too many roses. I can’t come to terms with this new, shameful me. I feel a great, dizzying anger toward my parents, that they should have marked me like this. I don’t know a single person among all my friends, relatives, acquaintances, even servants, who is outcast in this way. I envision myself telling Rajat of this stigma. The news traveling to Papa and Maman. To Bhattacharya. I can’t even imagine the fallout from that.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, his face stricken. He comes toward me, but I back away.

  “Please. I need to be alone.” Something of the horror I feel must be in my face because it stops him short.

  In my motel room, I’m unable to remain still. I turn on my cell phone. Two messages from the Boses’ apartment. But how can I talk to Rajat while this new information burns inside me like a disease? The last number is Vic’s. I would ignore that, too, but he’ll keep calling. I dial his number and, thankfully, get a recording. I leave a message saying that my father and I had a long talk, and that I’m absorbing all the things I’ve learned. Please, I end, don’t call me again tonight. I need to think things through.

  I’m suffocating in the room. I need air. In the lobby, Desai’s cousin tells me, reluctantly, that an elementary school down a side road has a playground. But it’s not the best part of town. I should hurry back before dark.

  I walk around the deserted playground until I come up against the school building. I lean my forehead against the discolored stucco wall, its rough, nubby surface. Some kinds of success are worse than failure. It would have been better not to have found my father than to live with this profound shame. I’m furious with everyone—my mother, my father, my grandfather.

  When I hear footsteps behind me, I don’t turn. Whatever’s about to happen, let it.

  A hand grabs me, swiveling me around. It’s Vic, angrier than he’s ever been.

  “What are you doing here? What’s wrong with you? Didn’t Nayna tell you to get back before dark? Didn’t she tell you it isn’t safe? Get in the car.”

  In the car, he questions me until I let my shameful secret spill out. I keep my face turned away. I can’t bear to see the disappointment—perhaps even distaste—in his face. But he takes hold of my shoulders and swings me around.

  “I know you’ve had a shock, but quit acting like you committed a crime! It’s not as terrible as you’re making it out to be, not these days.”

  “It is, where I come from.”

  “People won’t judge you for something that you had no control over. Not the people who love you.”

  He’s thinking of Rajat, I know this.
What I don’t know is whether I can count on Rajat. He might stand by me—he’s too decent a man to let me down—but what would he be feeling in his heart?

  “And if they do fault you, maybe they don’t love you the right way. Better to know this sooner rather than later. Call Rajat and tell him. See what he says. You know my offer still stands.”

  I’m grateful that Vic has spread himself like a net beneath my fall. But I can’t hit Rajat with something so huge over the phone. Since I came to America, even my efforts to tell him simple things have been problematic, rife with miscommunication. When I give him this disconcerting information, I need to be in the same room, looking into his face. The truth of how he feels about the new me will be in his eyes, not his words. That’s the truth I need to know.

  “Let’s talk about your father instead,” Vic says.

  “There’s nothing to discuss.”

  “Aren’t you being a bit too harsh?”

  I stare stubbornly at the dashboard, but Vic keeps speaking in his easygoing, reasonable voice about how Lacey put his life on hold, took a big chance, and came all the way out to California to meet me. He didn’t have to do that. Then again, he could have told me a lie about the marriage, but he trusted me with the truth. In any case, it had been my mother’s decision not to marry him. That probably hurt him a lot. Vic talks until he can see, in my eyes, that my anger’s melting. That I admit the truth of what he says.

  “He’s waiting in the motel. Are you going to continue pouting, or are you going to go talk to him?”

  I have one more day, one more chance. I will not waste it on resentment. I will not add to all the wrong decisions my family has made.

  “Take me back to the motel,” I say.

  Sarojini distrusts the sunset hour, when the dying day collapses around 26 Tarak Prasad Roy Road. To stave off its melancholy, she lights the evening lamp. She must pray for Korobi, but what should she petition the goddess for? That the girl has a happy reunion? Or that the meeting is a disaster so that she returns home for good, having cauterized this folly from her system?

  The phone shrills, startling her so that she almost drops the lamp. She picks up the receiver with misgiving. She can’t remember when last the phone brought her good news.

  Mrs. Bose is on the line. It takes Sarojini a moment to recognize her voice, jerky with tears. Mrs. Bose, always so confident and polished, begging her to please come and be with her at the hospital, the children were both in an accident last night, she’s beside herself with fear because Rajat is still unconscious.

  “Of course, my child! I’ll come right away. You should have called me sooner. Which hospital is it?” But Sarojini knows already by the prickling on her skin. It is the Pantheon, once again the site of her family’s reckoning and loss.

  The hospital is a labyrinth of corridors stacked one above another. People in uniforms rush around importantly, their instruments gleaming in the blinding lights, too busy to address an old woman’s confusion. Finally a janitor takes pity on her, leans his mop against the wall, and leads her to the ward where Pia and Rajat have been admitted. Sarojini is shocked at Mrs. Bose’s wild, uncombed hair, the hollows gouged under her eyes. Her kurta hangs limp around her. A streak of salt is on her cheek, dried tears. Sarojini rubs it away gently with her finger.

  The children have been placed in separate rooms so that Pia, who is now awake, will not be upset by Rajat’s condition. Rajat’s left hand is fractured in two places. He had a concussion when he came in and is on oxygen. He moves in and out of consciousness, groggy from painkillers. Luckily, Pia’s injuries were minor—bruises and a dislocated shoulder. She’ll be released tomorrow, but the doctors want to observe Rajat a while longer. The concussion is bad. Mrs. Bose is exhausted from running back and forth between the rooms and updating Mr. Bose and staving off the police, who want to get statements. What is she going to do when Pia is discharged while Rajat remains here?

  “Don’t spare it another thought, Jayashree! Pia shall come home with me. She loves the house and has been begging to come and stay. She’ll sleep beside me. I’ll make sure she eats well and rests. . . . No, no, you must not thank me. What is this westernized formality? Aren’t we family? Now let me see the children.”

  Pia has a purple bump on her forehead and her arm in a sling, but she seems quite recovered otherwise. She complains bitterly to Sarojini because they will not let her see her brother—or Asif. An unwary attendant has let it slip that the chauffeur has also been admitted here—in the general ward, of course—and that he was banged up pretty bad, and since then Pia has been begging to see him.

  “He saved us, Grandma. We were on our way back from the restaurant when this horrible van suddenly rammed into us for no reason. At first I thought it was an accident, but then it kept hitting us. We almost flipped over. It was the scariest thing. I screamed and screamed for help, but the road was completely empty. Then A.A. came out of nowhere, just like a superhero, and crashed his car into the van to get them away from us. That made them mad, so they started ramming him. I didn’t see anything after that—we’d landed in the ditch by then—but I’m pretty sure I heard gunshots. I can’t tell you how horrible it was, being trapped in that car with Dada moaning and half-passed-out. If A.A. hadn’t scared them off, I bet those men would have hurt us much worse. A.A. must have called the police, too, because they showed up soon after. Grandma, please tell Maman to let me see him!”

  Sarojini assures Pia that she will do her best. Once outside, she asks for details. Is it not a simple road accident, then? Mrs. Bose shakes her head. The police have confirmed what Pia said. But by the time they arrived, there were only two cars, the Mercedes and the Rolls, both in the ditch. Broken glass and tire marks indicated the presence of a third, larger vehicle. They have no leads yet.

  Mrs. Bose wrings her hands. “I should never have let them go out that night. But it was Pia’s birthday and she asked so many times that I weakened. I should have known they were planning something.”

  “Who?”

  “Some of the workers at the warehouse are Naxalites. It must have been them. Two men had threatened me outside the gallery a couple of days back. Oh, why was I so stupid? The signs were all there. My children, my darling babies. Why didn’t I pay more attention?” Mrs. Bose’s voice rises hysterically.

  It takes Sarojini significant effort to coax her into calmness. People who seem most in charge, not a crack visible, sometimes fall apart totally in a mishap. It had been the same way with Bimal. Finally, she gets to see Rajat, who is sleeping fitfully, his arm in a huge cast. There’s a swelling above his left eye that makes Sarojini cringe; his entire forehead is discolored with bruises. She touches his unhurt hand and whispers a prayer.

  He stirs. His eyes fly open, dart from side to side, unseeing. “Korobi?” he whispers. “Cara?” The sedatives take over again.

  Mrs. Bose bites her lip, trying to control her tears. “He keeps asking for her. I wish she were here for him. She belongs here, by his side. I phoned her twice, but she didn’t pick up, and I was too distressed to leave a message.”

  “I’ll call her as soon as I get home,” Sarojini says. She bends over Rajat and whispers, “I’ll make sure Korobi comes home to you.” She hopes she hasn’t promised more than she can deliver.

  His eyes shift under his lids, but he doesn’t open them.

  With a sigh she asks Mrs. Bose, “Can I see your driver now?”

  Asif is down the hall in a double cabin. He’d been put into a ward in a cheaper wing, with a roomful of other patients, but when Mrs. Bose heard Pia’s story, she moved him here. Once in the room, Mrs. Bose stands behind Sarojini as though she doesn’t want him to see her. Sarojini is shocked at Asif’s appearance. He’s unconscious, a bloody bandage around his head. His face is a mass of bruises, far worse than Rajat’s. One arm is in a cast. Restraints have been placed around him. Mrs. Bose whispers that he has a couple of broken ribs and has to be kept from moving. His breath comes unevenly, noisily;
an oxygen tube is attached to his nose. He has not regained consciousness since they admitted him.

  “Thank God the police came on time!” Sarojini says to Mrs. Bose. “Did another motorist call in the accident?”

  Mrs. Bose shakes her head. Asif’s new employer had phoned the police. Apparently Asif had punched his number on his speed dial before his car flipped over.

  “New employer? Isn’t Asif working for you anymore?”

  “He quit a couple days ago.” Mrs. Bose lowers her eyes.

  There’s a story here, but Sarojini doesn’t have the heart to interrogate her. “Go home and get some sleep, Jayashree. Bahadur is downstairs—he’ll drive you. I’ll watch all three of them until you get back.”

  In the morning when I come out of the shower, more messages are on my phone. This time, I listen to them all. Yesterday’s messages from the Bose residence hadn’t been from Rajat, after all, but from his mother. The machine has distorted Maman’s voice, which sounds wobbly. “Korobi?” she says. “Korobi?” But she doesn’t leave a message. I wonder why she called. We’ve only spoken twice since I left India, stilted conversations about how my search is going, punctuated with awkward silences. She probably wants to discuss wedding preparations.

  The next message is from Grandmother. Again no details, just asking me to call. Her voice, too, sounds distorted. Waterlogged. I sigh. The wedding, which in India had felt like a gift box tied with a satin ribbon, waiting to be opened, no longer seems real to me. All its attendant busyness feels meaningless. Especially since there’s a distinct possibility that, after I divulge my double secret, there will be no wedding.