Queen of Dreams

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

  T he caviar she is thinking of had been heaped in neat dark mounds over bread triangles and arranged on a silver tray. This tray was the first thing she noticed when the door opened, after Sonny had rung the bell several times and finally resorted to pounding. The tray bobbed up and down in the loud dimness of a hall crammed with bodies, moving toward her unsteadily, a drunken moon complete with craters. When her eyes got used to the dimness, she saw that it was carried by a pretty woman with dark hair. The woman wore a frilly white maid’s cap and apron, but Rakhi could tell she was no maid, even before she turned away and Rakhi saw that all she was wearing underneath was a black string bikini. That would come later, though. Right now the woman was smiling and holding out the tray, arms extended, the tray trembling slightly, until Rakhi felt compelled to take a piece even though she didn’t want to. And knew—even before they’d pushed their way into another, louder room in their effort to locate the host, a room filled with sweat and frenetic movement and surprisingly good music—that Sonny had been right. She shouldn’t have come.

  The host, whom they finally found in a corner sharing a joint with two women, owned the nightclub where Sonny worked. He was large, affable, and very loud.

  “Hey, Sonny, my main man,” he bellowed, handing the roach to one of the women and hugging Rakhi’s husband energetically. “Great you could make it! Like the sounds? Maybe you’ll spin some for us later, what d’you say? And who’s this lovely lady? New girlfriend? Oh, your wife, right, right. Delighted to meet you!” He lunged at her, arms open in hug-stance. When she quickly retreated behind Sonny, he looked startled, then laughed. “Enjoy the party!” he said with a malicious bow.

  Then they were at the bar, where Sonny got her a glass of wine and a whiskey sour for himself. She was still holding the piece of bread. It made her feel foolish, so she put it into her mouth. The black, congealed mass slid along her palate, making her nauseous. If she’d had a napkin, she would have spat it out. Later she thought she should have spit it out anyway. Just as she should have grabbed Sonny’s arm before he could order a second drink and asked him to take her home, or at least to give her the car keys. He could have caught a ride with someone else. It would have been easy enough; he seemed to know everyone there, and judging by their enthusiastic greetings, every one of them would have been delighted to take him back—to his home or theirs. But she was worried about appearing rude, leaving so soon. Would his boss be offended? Would he take it out on Sonny, who’d just been hired on as the new weekend DJ?

  And Sonny was having such a good time. She could see how he loved this crowd. (Why? They didn’t appear particularly lovable to her. Their pale faces, lit jaggedly in green and blue by the pulsing lights, seemed at once sly and exhausted with the effort of having a good time.) She watched him backslap and high-five and cheek-kiss his way across the room, smiling with genuine pleasure. She didn’t want to dampen that smile.

  He’d mentioned the party—he was always meticulous about letting her know where he’d be—but he hadn’t asked her to come with him. He was doing that more and more nowadays, going out alone while she stayed home with the baby.

  It’s part of my job, he told her. That’s how I make contacts, get more gigs.

  What nonsense, he said when she told him he was moving away from her. I love you just as much.

  When she insisted on going with him this time, he didn’t say no. But he hesitated.

  I don’t think it’s quite your scene, Riks. I’m not sure you can handle it.

  I’m a big girl, Sonny. I can handle more than you think.

  There was that also. She didn’t want to admit that she’d been wrong.

  So she waited awhile, and then it was too late.

  She places the photograph carefully on the carpet, as though it were covered with something more fragile than glass, and continues her search. Boxes of old bills. She would never have guessed her mother to be the kind of person who saves old bills. Skeins of embroidery thread to go with the scissors she found earlier. Cartons of videos, Sesame Street rubbing shoulders with Abs of Steel in 30 Days. (Had her mother wanted abs of steel? Had she spent hours on the worn carpet in front of the TV doing leg lifts and crunches to the rhythm of the instructor’s nasal commands?)

  It is only when she has given up hope that she finds the journals, tied together with a blue satin hair ribbon.

  All the air has been sucked out of the room. She kneels in the resulting vacuum, head pounding, to undo the bowknot. A rolling sound, like a giant stone door being pushed open. Or closing. She’s not sure if it’s in this world, or somewhere else. (Is there a somewhere else? The seesaw of her life balances on that possibility.) She opens the first book, the second, then all of them, riffling pages, tearing a few in her haste, her frustration. They are filled with her mother’s writing, the words in an alphabet she doesn’t know how to read.

  T he party had grown louder, more crowded, and she had lost Sonny. She felt panic, dry and scaly, slither through her body. Don’t overreact! she scolded herself. You haven’t really lost him— you just can’t see where he is. She tightened her sweating palms into fists and followed the music to another room. Tubes of black light lent her skin a ghostly sheen. Bodies gyrated wildly, slamming into each other. A man smiled at her, his teeth glowing like neon. His skin, too—he wasn’t wearing a shirt. He grabbed at her and tried to pull her onto the dance floor. She put her hands on his damp chest and pushed so hard that he went staggering across the room. Bitch! she heard him yell. She elbowed her way through the dancers to the turntables. Sonny was playing. Three records spun simultaneously, a fast Western song and, under it, a sound like waves, then some other music. Once she’d seen a group of Tibetan men in the subway, playing instruments that looked like long wooden trumpets. Was it that she was hearing? Sonny wore earphones. His head moved to the beat, a small, bobbing movement, and his eyes were far away. He didn’t hear when she called his name.

  She lies on her side, her back to the door of the sewing room, holding one of the journals. She isn’t crying, though she wants to. Perhaps she has forgotten how. To get this close, this close. She hears her father’s footsteps coming up the stairs. Since the accident, he moves lumberingly, lurching a little to the left, though there’s no medical reason for it. She hears his footsteps pause outside the door. She hears him call her name. She holds her breath and wills him away.

  She pushed her way back across the dance floor. She must have drunk the wine at some point—the wineglass was no longer in her hand. She was holding another kind of glass. It, too, was empty. Who had given it to her? What had been in it? Where was her purse? The air was blue with smoke and fear. She saw a door opening onto a balcony. Maybe if she could get there, she could breathe. But the balcony was full of couples. There were threesomes, too. The moon was pocked and concave. A man and a woman stopped touching each other and turned to her. Wanna join us sweetheart?

  But the footsteps don’t resume their usual shuffle toward the bedroom, the bed that is his, entirely and forever. He calls her name again, his voice rising a little on the last syllable, as though it were a question. Then he opens the door.

  Without turning she says, “Please go away.”

  “I can’t,” he says. “You need to talk to someone.”

  Not to you, she thinks.

  “I know you don’t want to talk to me,” he says.

  If I wait long enough. If I wait long enough without making a single sound or movement, he’ll go. He has to.

  “You didn’t eat anything all day,” he says. “Here, I made up a plate for you.” He advances into the room.

  Don’t come in here, into her space.

  “I think maybe you should go back to Berkeley,” he says. “I can manage on my own now. Being here is not good for you. It’s making you more depressed.”

  Jesus. My mother’s dead. I have the right to be more depressed.

  “She wouldn’t want you to be this way,” he says.

  What the fuck do
you know about what she’d want? What the fuck does either of us know?

  “You probably wish I had died instead of your mother,” he says. “I do, too.”

  She’s shocked into looking at him. She hadn’t thought he’d know. Wily old jackal. Or maybe it’s just her, being naïve, like Sonny had said when she’d tried to speak to him about what happened to her at the party.

  Her father smiles, if you can call something that sad a smile. “But I didn’t die, and we both have to accept that—and deal with it.” He takes another step toward her. She can feel the uncertain heaviness of his tread. A board creaks.

  “You found her journals,” he says.

  She was back inside the house of smoke and music. She wasn’t sure how much time had passed. The night was a blur, filled with things she didn’t remember, or had forced herself to forget. Her lips felt swollen, as though someone had kissed them roughly. Her throat burned. She was in a narrow passageway. She had found her purse. It seemed very heavy, dangling from the crook of her elbow. Had someone put something in it? It was too dim in the passageway to see.

  The music had changed. African drums, and a woman keening in Irish. It was interesting, but it wasn’t Sonny’s.

  Now she was in a long, narrow room filled with silk cushions. People were sitting around a low, lacquered table. There was a mirror, lines of white dust. She knew what that meant. Sonny looked up at her. His eyes were red, like a night animal’s. But how would she have known that, in this room lit only by candles? Hi sweetheart come on in.

  She isn’t sure which of the following actually happened, and in which order: She rushed at him, shouting. Hands pulled her down before she got far. Whoa sweetheart, here’s something to calm you down. She hit him, sending the white dust flying. Arms wouldn’t let her go. There were lips. Fingers on the buttons of her dress. She could feel each silk thread separately on her skin before it slid off. Later she would find a long scratch along the underside of her arm, crusted with dried blood. He offered her the mirror. She took it and lowered her face to it, because what else was there to do. Someone pulled her down on a cushion. There were hands everywhere. She cried out, Sonny, Sonny, help me, but he was busy smiling at someone else. Someone led her out of the room. Someone called a taxi. She was laughing. She was crying. She was very, very thirsty. She drank what someone put into her hand. She put her hand into Sonny’s pants pocket and found the car keys. She drove home, careful not to speed, flexing her legs to keep them from cramping. She didn’t throw up until she was parked in the driveway. She remembered to be thankful that Jona was staying with her mother. The only fact she’s sure of is this: at some point that night, she looked up at the sky. It was empty, the moon had been eaten up. She knew then that she had to leave him.

  Her father bends, strokes the cover of a notebook as though it were a face. “I can help you read them,” he says. The words hang in front of her, gossamer-winged as a fishing lure. “If you want.”

  18

  FROM THE

  DREAM JOURNALS

  LESSON 62: THE TALE OF

  NEEHAR THE UNFORTUNATE (AN EXCERPT)

  . . . and the elders saw that in Neehar the gift was strong, stronger than they had seen in their lifetime. Her body glowed with it, as if formed of phosphor, and there was distance in her eye, as though she were looking into the vastness of time. This made them afraid, for they knew the stories of other such gifted women, and what had become of them. They held a council and decided that they would share with Neehar the first nine levels of skill but keep from her the tenth and most powerful. It did no good. When Neehar dreamed, all secrets were laid open before her, even secrets that the elders themselves did not know. Thus Neehar grew stronger than the leaders of the council, but she was young and willful, and did not know how to use her power.

  When the training of the novices was ended, the elders, in a last attempt to save Neehar, asked her to remain with them in the caves and become a teacher. They promised that with time she would be given the leadership of the council. But to Neehar a life among old women in the depths of a mountain’s fastness seemed small and suffocating. The power that burned in her was restless to be known. It called to her to taste of the world and all that lay in it. She left the caves, but unlike her sister novices she did not settle in a town, as was the custom, and tend to its inhabitants. Instead she traveled through the land, reading the dreams of all who asked her. Though she had been warned that dream tellers must be secret in the practice of their craft, she scorned such caution.

  In full sight of the crowds that gathered wherever she went, she would place her hands on the temples of those that came to be helped, and tell them the meaning of their dreams. There was no dream so complex that she could not unravel it, no problem so deep that she did not have its solution. It is said that each day she saved a thousand lives and reputations, predicted victory and good fortune, gave hope to the despairing, and warned the luckless of disasters that lay in wait. But in the trance of seeing, with a care for nothing but the truth, she often spoke aloud of things that should have been whispered into the dreamers’ ears. Thus families were sundered, allies turned into enemies, and men and women in shame left their homes and were never seen again. In this way she angered many, though none dared to harm her, for it was believed that she had spirit protectors. People claimed to have seen a great gray wolf following her as she left one village at dusk for another, and some said that when she rested at midday, an eagle spread its wings above her head to shield her from the sun.

  A year passed, or a decade. Neehar the Unfortunate told more dreams, and more, working day and night without pause, for the power that burned in her had taken control and was not willing to sheathe itself. She grew gaunt and hollow-cheeked, and her eyes, sunken in their pits, glowed like coals. She became known as Neehar the Ember-eyed, and men grew afraid to approach her. But this did not matter to Neehar. By now she could look at a person’s forehead and tell if he had a dream worth reading. If he did, she told it to him whether he wished it or not. News of her doings traveled to the caves, and the elders sent a message reprimanding her for flouting the laws of dream telling and ordering her to come back. But Neehar did not obey. Perhaps it was no longer in her power to return.

  It was in this time that Neehar began to read the dreams of the dead. Perhaps she did so because she had read the dreams of all the living who resided east of the river Kaveri. (Strangely, she who had broken so many laws observed this one ordinance: that dream tellers should not cross water.) Or perhaps the dead, with their brains cooled and stiffening and their eyes sealed, presented a challenge she could not resist. She went from home to grieving home and kissed the newly dead on their foreheads, or sat with their heads in her lap, not caring if relatives protested against her coming. People who had the ability to see such things said that a current of white would leap from the forehead of the corpse to her forehead. After a time she would open her eyes with a sigh and say, “Ah, so it is.” But she never spoke of what she saw.

  Only once, at the home of a mother grieving for her drowned baby, she touched the young woman on the cheek and said, “See, there is no need to weep.” The woman grew quiet and dried her tears, but later, when asked what she had seen, she could only remember a sweet scent, as of lotus flowers.

  Then news came to Neehar that the great saint Vishnu-pada had announced that he was about to leave his mortal embodiment. She went to his ashram, where all his disciples were gathered, and asked the ascetic if she could touch him as he died. Vishnu-pada looked at her with compassion and said, “Child, the secret that you seek is not to be known this way. It is only by looking inward that you will find it.” But he gave her permission.

  It is said that when Vishnu-pada died, Neehar sat at his head, her fingers touching his skull. And when his spirit left his body, it passed through Neehar and exited from her head in the form of a shaft of lightning. Neehar fell to the ground, and for three days she remained unconscious. When she came to, she no longer sp
oke, though she laughed or cried often. Some said that the shock of such a powerful spirit passing through her frame had driven her mad. But others claimed that the light in her eyes was one of serenity. Be that as it may, from that moment onward, Neehar the Unfortunate did not tell a single dream. She sat by the Kaveri for days without moving, staring at the water. If the villagers brought food, she ate sometimes, but often she left it untouched. It seemed that she no longer needed such sustenance. When she disappeared—some say it was a few weeks later, some say it was years . . .

  Questions:

  1. What did you learn from the story of Neehar that might help you in your work as dream interpreter?

  2. Why is she called “Unfortunate”? Do you agree that she was indeed so?

  3. What is it that Neehar was searching for? What is it that you are searching for?

  19

  Rakhi

  We’re crossing the San Rafael Bridge in Sonny’s silver BMW, Sonny, myself, Jona and my mother, heading toward the Marin Headlands. Sonny is driving. Jona sits in the back, looking out at the bay and humming, under her breath, that song again, those words I don’t understand. My mother is in the back seat, too, Jona’s arm looped around her burial urn. The urn is wrapped in a towel because Sonny says it is illegal to scatter ashes on state property. I am occupying, reluctantly, the front passenger seat, where Jona has insisted I sit. (“Only adults are allowed to be up there, Mom. It has an air bag,” she stated virtuously. But I suspect she has a more devious motive.)

  When Sonny and I were still married, whenever we drove somewhere, Jona made us place her car seat so that she could see us both. From her vantage point in the back she would instruct us from time to time, a small, insistent Cupid. Mom, hold Dad’s hand. Dad, kiss Mom. I wonder now if it was anxiety that drove her, if she sensed something that I didn’t know yet. Can children smell trouble the way animals do? An earthquake about to happen, tectonic plates getting ready to separate? Mom, move closer and put your head on Dad’s shoulder. I feel the old words hanging between us like unfinished business, though they shouldn’t. Our business was finished long ago, and this isn’t even the same car. Sonny must have bought it recently. I wonder what happened to his Viper, about which we used to fight from time to time. (I felt that his refusal to trade it in for a “family car” was symbolic of his reluctance to be a family man.) Maybe he’s kept that, too, Sonny-the-chameleon, who can be anything he wants. But I’m not about to ask. He wants to waste his money, it’s none of my business.