by Veena Rao
“How far is your office?”
“Not too far, but it takes me longer in rush hour traffic. About twenty minutes.”
“What about breakfast? I can make an omelet if you have eggs.”
“Don’t worry. I had oatmeal.” He disappeared into his closet, then stuck his head out.
“Listen, see what you can fix yourself for lunch. There’s some instant noodles, or you can make yourself a sandwich.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I’ll find something,” she said.
“I’ll try to be back a little early in the evening. I’ll take you grocery shopping.”
“Okay.” Tara sat on the bed she had just made. And waited.
He came out of the closet fully dressed. He looked smart in a powder-blue shirt and khaki pants. She had heard so much about software professionals going to work in shorts and T-shirts. Apparently, this software professional was not one among them. She caught the notes of his cologne; they whipped up in her an alchemy of desire, fear, resentment.
When he left, Tara loosened up, relieved to have her space. She opened the glass French door in the living room that led to the balcony and stepped out barefooted. The sun had warmed the wooden floorboards, but the air was still cool and felt good on her skin. She inhaled deeply. How peaceful it was out there. The balcony overlooked a clean, empty road, on the other side of which was a serene red brick structure with a sparkling white steeple tipped with a cross. It was a church, no doubt. A sign near the entrance confirmed this. It read:
WEST HILL BAPTIST CHURCH
SUNDAY WORSHIP: 11 A.M.
BIBLE CLASS: 9:30 A.M.
ALL ARE WELCOME
Past the church, on the other side of the road, were red, brick-fronted homes with green manicured front yards and tall pine trees. One little house looked like a cottage straight out of Enid Blyton’s books. It had a white, wood-paneled exterior and a white picket fence that enclosed a green, grassy yard lined with red flower bushes. She absorbed the newness, the expansiveness of the panoramic view, and tried not to feel alone. Or trapped.
She spent the morning unpacking and arranging her clothes in the guest closet. It felt good to have something to do. She had left most of her Indian dresses behind. Not that she had too many of them. She had never been very interested in dressing up. Yvonne had said she would have no need for Indian clothes, so she had brought only pants, blouses, and tunics. Amma had tried to shove a couple of chiffon saris into her suitcase, but Tara could not be persuaded to leave them there.
When she was done with the arranging, and the closet looked a little fuller, she had exhausted her options for keeping busy. She peered at the stack of books in Sanjay’s study. They were technical manuals, every one of them. Does he not read at all? The manuals, of course, might as well have been in Greek. She was grateful for the copies of Time and Newsweek on the coffee table in the living room. She curled up on the sofa and began to read. The phone rang, its shrillness shattering the silence. It made her jump. She wondered if it was her brother, Vijay, and if she ought to pick up.
What if it was Sanjay? She picked up the third time the phone rang, around mid-morning. It wasn’t Vijay or Sanjay. She didn’t understand much of what the guy at the other end said. Only that he asked for Sanjay Kumar, although it sounded more like Saanjay Koomar.
“He is not at home,” she said. “I beg your pardon?” Did the American voice just ask her when he could call back? She wasn’t sure. She never had trouble following the American accent in the movies, but it sounded so foreign over the phone.
“After six o’clock,” she said anyway, and disconnected.
She made herself a frugal bowl of microwaved instant noodles for lunch and felt her eyes getting heavy thereafter. She shuffled into the bedroom and crawled under the sheets. She was out in seconds. The phone rang a couple of times, but she was lost in a deep stupor.
Somewhere, a phone rang. She was back in Mangalore, and back in her bed, asleep but awake. She was trying desperately to open her eyes. “Tara, phone!” she heard Amma call out. She tried to wriggle out of bed. But her body was immobile, it weighed a ton.
“Tara, that was Sanjay,” Amma’s voice sailed through her head. “You lost your chance.”
She tried to move her head side to side, but every bit of her was paralyzed.
“Still sleeping?” That wasn’t Amma’s voice.
She snapped her eyes open. He was in the room, at the foot of the bed, looming large before her. She got up with a start, but her head collapsed in her hands. She felt woozy.
“Sorry. I think I am jet-lagged,” she slurred, rubbing her face.
“Why didn’t you take my calls? Did you sleep all day?” He made no effort to hide his annoyance. “I tried a couple of times in the morning, too.”
“I didn’t know.” Even her embarrassment wasn’t waking her up fully.
“Didn’t know what?”
“I—I didn’t think you’d call.”
“Seriously?” He shook his head, and disappeared into the bathroom, leaving her to stare stupidly at the footboard. When he came out, the scowl on his face was even deeper.
“So, who did you think it was?”
“What?”
“Who did you think called you?”
“I took a call in the morning. It wasn’t you.” Her embarrassment was growing. She looked down at her hands.
“Who was it?”
“I don’t know. I could not follow the accent. Somebody asked for you, I think.”
“You think? Are you from the bush country? From some tiny, godforsaken hamlet? Aren’t you supposed to have a master’s in English literature?”
She fled to the bathroom, knocking about on unbalanced feet, locked the door, and sat on the rich blue cover of the toilet seat, blinking. She couldn’t let him see the tears. She felt so stupid. She had already rubbed him the wrong way. The tears flowed, hot and earnest.
“All right,” he knocked on the bathroom door. “Get dressed. Don’t you want to go to the market?” His voice had mellowed.
She splashed water on her face, trying to fix the ugly puffiness of her eyes. She felt a little more composed after she had scrubbed her face clean of emotional residue with bar soap. He was out of the bedroom by the time she came out. She could hear the TV blaring in the living room. She had changed into khaki cargo pants and a midnight blue T-shirt, brushing her short, curly hair until it was reasonably tame. She always sought the help of strong hair spray to keep her hair in place. She sprayed some now, all over her curls, and applied a light coat of plum lipstick to her dry lips.
The farmers’ market in Decatur was a surprise. She had never seen so many varieties of fresh fish or colorful vegetables and fruit in her life. Row after row of produce, some with names and forms and colors she had never even heard of. She looked for the familiar ones, running her fingers over shiny red apples, picking a large head of crinkly cabbage, and scanning the orderly line of jumbo-sized kingfish in their bed of ice, before pointing to the one she thought was the freshest one of the lot. Sanjay was happy to let her pick and choose, silently pushing the cart behind her.
They stopped at an Indian store on their way back, where she bought a sack of rice, a five-pound bag of split lentils, small packs of turmeric and chili powder, and whatever else she could think of that was essential to Mangalorean cooking.
Back in the apartment, she got busy in the kitchen. She put a cupful each of lentils and rice to cook in two identical containers, which she inserted into the small stainless Hawkins pressure cooker that Amma had insisted she carry. She marinated kingfish fillets for a while in Amma’s spice blend, and then fried them with a little vegetable oil on a hot griddle. She shredded one half of a cabbage head, and made upkari, a dry side dish, which she garnished lightly with grated coconut.
“The fish is stinking up the place,” he complained from the living room. She had the fan on; what else was she to do? She covered the griddle with a large lid and was relieved when the fi
sh looked brown enough to cut the flame.
She thought the plates looked pretty. It was not as if she had much experience with cooking. If she weren’t so anxious about his approval, she would probably have been proud of her culinary creations. The red-brown, spiced kingfish was a stark, inviting contrast to the white rice, yellow lentils, and the mild green of the cabbage. But he ate silently, scantly, setting his fork down again and again. Sweat beads formed on his dark brows. The fish lay largely untouched.
“You don’t like fish?” she asked, surprised. She couldn’t imagine somebody from the coast not liking fried fish.
He shrugged like an American. “Not much of a seafood lover. Besides, I can’t handle too much spice anymore.”
“Oh! Is it too spicy?” What was she going to cook tomorrow? It was a worrisome thought that she crumpled and stuffed into the back of her head for now.
They ate silently. After dinner, he accepted one laddoo that Amma had specifically sent for her son-in-law, and she ate three before stashing the box back in the fridge. She cleared the plates and loaded the dishwasher. He showed her how to run it. She set about cleaning the kitchen. When she was done, she took a shower and changed into her pajamas.
When she joined him in the living room, he was on the recliner, his back propped far back, in a gray T-shirt and khaki shorts, which were probably what he slept in. He had his laptop, but his attention was on the sitcom that was playing on TV. He was grinning from ear to ear. She had never seen him smile this wide before. His face was less granite-like and more handsome. But the smile waned a bit and turned plastic when he saw her. She sat on the sofa and tried to follow the antics of the TV family. It was much easier to follow the American accent on TV than it was over the phone.
“What show is this?” she asked.
“Everybody Loves Raymond. It’s quite funny,” he said.
She attempted to watch what he watched for the next hour, but she didn’t see much because her thoughts kept scattering here and there. She missed watching Kyun Ki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi (Because mother-in-law was once a daughter-in-law, too). She missed arguing with Amma that the soap saga was such a lowbrow, pedestrian insult to Indian sensibilities. She wondered whether they’d have had some conversation, if not for the TV. There hadn’t been much talking on their way to the farmers’ market or back. The guy on the TV show had an amiable nature, and his wife was pretty and dominating. But they talked and talked, like normal families—except when they paused for canned laughter.
Sanjay did not come in that night either. Sleep did not come to her aid quickly. She wished she hadn’t slept all afternoon. She lay still on her back, her focus on her breathing, on the small heave and fall of her chest. Many a time, this technique had helped relax her mind and put her to sleep. Not tonight. She wondered if she should get up and warm a cup of milk in the microwave. She was so used to the hot milk and banana routine every night. She decided against it. She didn’t want to wake him up, in case he had gone off to sleep in the living room.
No stray dog barked. If the moon was up, she did not see it, because it was eclipsed by the streetlight, thin strips of which slipped into the room through the blinds. The light was just enough to keep the room from darkness. Occasionally, she heard a car pass by. The TV was still on; it was his companion, she had learned.
Again, for the millionth time in three years, she wondered why he had married her if he didn’t like her. And he most certainly didn’t like her. She waited in darkness for the void of sleep. In the meantime, she wallowed in the larger void she felt suspended in. She put her hand over her chest, felt the rhythm of her heart. It was a beat she had known for thirty-one years, and yet, she felt, it was yet to assume meaning.
Tara had almost been engaged once, when she was twenty-four, to a doctor from Bombay, but the alliance had fallen through, because, after rounds of discussions over tea and snacks, and after the elders had planned out the nitty-gritty of a summer wedding, the groom-to-be’s father had demanded a fat dowry. Shaken though he was at being ambushed with the uncouth demand, Daddy had refused to give in.
Amma had cried herself silly, even threatening to go on a hunger strike if Daddy did not change his mind. But Daddy was not one to bow down.
“If the educated amongst us do not take a stand against this evil practice, what hope is there for this society?” he had said.
Amma, mortified at the thought of her innocent daughter being offered as a sacrificial lamb at the altar of social reform, had tried to touch Daddy’s emotional nerve.
“I don’t know of any boy who has refused dowry. Why do we have to be martyrs? Do we love our daughter any less?” She had wept.
“The right man will come. And he will marry my daughter for the right reasons.”
Daddy had his way, as always.
At twenty-four, with fresh-out-of-college idealism running strong in her veins, Tara had shared Daddy’s views. But the years wore on, and no match seemed to click. She had endured humiliating bride-seeing trips, a couple of them out of town—once in Bangalore and the second time in Hyderabad. Most families found her too tall for their boys, others found her too plain. For most young men though, or at least for their parents, Daddy’s no-dowry clause was a deal breaker.
“No dowry. Our son is very progressive,” Sanjay’s father had confirmed to Daddy over the phone the day after the bride-seeing high tea.
“Too progressive to even like his wife,” Tara whispered to the shadows. She turned to look at the digital clock on the bedside table. It was almost three in the morning.
When the birds started to chirp outside—she had no idea what birds, they were not crows or sparrows, but they were just as vocal—and the first signs of dawn filtered into the room, Tara was still awake. She heard the light rustle of footsteps on the carpet; then a light came on. The hallway outside the bedroom was faintly aglow, so she knew he had turned the kitchen light on. She lay still, her mind drained of its nighttime rush of thoughts. When the smell of freshly brewed coffee wafted into the room, rich and strong, it jarred her senses and caused a furor in her mind, a whirl of disjointed feelings. She shivered for no reason, so she pulled the duvet up to her chin. She wondered if she should get up and help. She did not. She kept her eyes closed as the footsteps made their way to the bedroom and then on to the bathroom. Melancholy, darker than black coffee, jabbed at her heart.
Silly me, silly me, she repeated to herself. Everything will be okay. She took deep, deep breaths.
“You don’t have to cook for me,” he said before leaving for work. “I am not much into Indian food anyway. I usually eat an early dinner right after work, with my coworkers.”
Tara’s face fell, even as a small part of her brain registered relief. Now, she didn’t have to worry about toning down spices or stressing over what to cook. But he was her husband. Wasn’t he supposed to eat with her?
“Oh! What did you take me to market for, then?” she asked.
“Because I don’t want to deprive you of the foods you are used to.”
“How thoughtful!” Did she just say it out loud? Was her voice laced with sarcasm?
“Are you mocking?” she heard him say.
She bit her lower lip. “No, no. That really was thoughtful of you.”
She was relieved when he let it pass.
“Oh, and you can use the internet on the home computer if you wish. The password is LizSan, L-I-Z-S-A-N,” he spelled it out.
“L-I-Z-S-A-N. Thanks.”
“And that was what I was calling you about yesterday,” he added.
Chapter 4
“Have you settled down? Are you over your jet lag?” Amma asked, on Tara’s sixth day in Atlanta.
Tara had finally learned to make long distance calls to India using a calling card that had eight numbers listed as Atlanta access numbers and a ten-digit PIN; a pretty Asian girl smiled against a red background on the other side.
“Time moves slowly,” Tara replied. “I have trouble sleeping at ni
ght, so I end up sleeping all afternoon.”
“Try to stay awake one afternoon. Your body will adjust quickly,” Amma suggested. “Is he okay with you?”
What was she going to tell Amma? “He is very quiet. Like me.”
“Everything is still very new for both, no? It takes time to get to know each other. Did he like the laddoos?”
“Yes,” she lied. He had eaten one laddoo, and she had polished off twenty-four of them, until only three remained. Each laddoo had made her feel good for a few minutes.
“How much of Atlanta have you seen?”
“He took me to the market one day, to the social security office two days later.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes.”
“Where is he now? Does he work on Saturday also?”
“I think so. He left a while ago.”
“What did you cook for him? Did you use my masala?”
“He said not to cook for him. He doesn’t like Indian food.”
“What?” Amma sounded shocked. “So, what do you do all day? How do you spend your time?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? What do you do, darling?”
“I don’t know, Amma. I don’t know. Let me go now. I don’t want to use up the calling card. I’ll call again soon.”
There was a sniff at the other end. “Keep talking to him, engage him in conversation. Everything will be okay, child. It might take a little time, but all will be well.”
“I know.” Tara had a sudden urge to take a jab at Amma, as if putting her in misery would magically make her feel better; as if happiness were a seesaw of inverse proportions.
“You are all the same, though—Sanjay, Daddy, and you.” She slammed the phone down before Amma had the chance to react.
The guilt came soon enough. It always did. It made her feel like vermin, a mean, little, black-hearted vermin. She called Amma back.
“Amma, I’m sorry.”
Amma’s hello was thick and nasal. She had been crying.
