“You!”
“Yes, sir.” The man was only a few years older than him, but Nalan suddenly felt like a schoolboy.
Kandiah stared at him, steam not quite visible from his nostrils, his chest heaving. When he spoke, the words weren’t the ones Nalan had expected. “At least you aren’t a whitey. And you’ve had the courtesy to tell me beforehand, instead of just running off. Apparently, these days, a father should be grateful for such small blessings. Daughters! The woman gave me six daughters!” And then he turned, stomping down the hallway, leaving Mayil to come to the door, beckon Nalan inside.
“I’m afraid we’ve been upstaged,” she whispered, smiling as she closed the door. It was set with stained glass, deep reds and purples that caught the sun and sent it refracting across the hallway, their bodies. “Kili’s gone and married a white boy.”
“You’re joking!” Nalan was astonished. Not that he knew Kili at all, but still—he couldn’t think of a single Tamil woman he knew who had married outside her caste, either here or at home.
Mayil nodded firmly. “And to make it even better, she did it two years ago! She kept it a secret until she’d graduated. Didn’t want Appa to stop paying the bills, I suppose. His name’s Michael. He’s inside.”
Kili was the eldest, premed if Nalan remembered correctly.
“What about med school?” He was rather appalled at the girl’s nerve. Were all of the sisters so determined, so bold?
“Appa says he isn’t going to pay a penny. Kili says she’ll take out loans—and maybe she will, but I think Appa will back down. He’s all roar and fuss, but it never lasts. You’ll see.” Mayil reached out a hand to him, smiling. His diamond glinted in the stained light, suddenly crimson, a bloody ruby.
Nalan felt like a character inside a play, a story full of sudden reverses, shifts of fortune, revelations of identity mistaken, loved ones deceived. He wanted to turn, to run, but he had made his decision, months ago. He had cast his lot with her, to walk by her side. So he took her hand, followed her down the hall, to the kitchen where her family waited.
“Just a few questions, if you don’t mind. Your wife was how far along?”
“Eight months.”
“And is this her first pregnancy?”
“No.”
THEY HADN’T PLANNED ON GETTING PREGNANT SO QUICKLY. MAYIL had only been in grad school a year; they’d celebrated the successful completion of that first year with an endless night of sex. It should have been safe—she was conscientious about keeping track of the days, knowing which ones were safe, which risky, which downright dangerous. If it had been up to him, he would have taken further precautions, but Mayil had surprised him with a firm devoutness in this regard. The Church said it wasn’t acceptable, and so. Nalan wasn’t religious himself, and hadn’t really realized how religious she was, but there was little he could deny her.
The pregnancy had gone well enough, and she’d managed to work straight through fall semester without trouble. By December, Mayil was positively lumbering, irritated with him, with her body—all of her old grace disappeared. And yet, when she smiled, Nalan still couldn’t take his eyes off her.
He came home with roses that day, bought on impulse at the grocery store, a rich profusion of crimson petals, an exuberant two dozen. Because they reminded him of her, the curve of the petals like the curve of her breasts, her swollen thighs. Because he couldn’t remember what his life had been for, before she came into it. Nalan put his key in the door, almost dropped a bag of groceries, and shifted to catch it. He heard a woman weeping—he put down the groceries, the roses, put his ear to the door.
“What is it, what’s wrong?” His wife’s voice, gentle and soft. Nalan let out a breath in relief and put his hand on the key, ready to turn it. Then he heard her sister’s response:
“I lost the baby.” Kili’s voice harsh, rough with many tears.
He sat down on the steps, heavily, fear rising up to smother him. The two women had become pregnant within a few weeks of each other; Kili was due only a few months from now, a month after Mayil. It was disastrous, to lose a baby so late. Nalan bent forward, pressed his forehead against his knees, taking deep breaths. He had been waiting for such a disaster—waiting, it sometimes seemed, since the day they met.
It was foolish to worry, he knew. Most pregnancies went smoothly, by far. There were doctors, and hospitals and procedures—and women had been giving birth in barns, in open fields, for millennia. He told himself this, again and again. But the curse of being a good student of antique literature, and therefore, by necessity, of antique history, was that Nalan couldn’t comfort himself with the thought of how many women had survived. He knew just how often medicine and biology failed. He lifted his head, pressed it to the door again. The voices seemed more muffled, but still distinguishable.
“Shh…shh…oh, don’t cry, kunju. Don’t cry. There’ll be others.” He could imagine Mayil, leaning across the dining table, stroking her sister’s hand.
“No, no…there won’t be any others.” The crying stopped; Kili sounded certain, sure.
“Don’t be foolish—Amma miscarried too, and look at us. Six children!” Mayil’s own voice, usually so solid and certain, was shaken, cracking. Nalan pressed his palms flat against the door, his chest aching. He relied on his wife’s surety.
Kili paused, then said, “This isn’t the first time. I was pregnant my second year, not long after we married.”
“You never said anything.”
He could almost hear the shrug in the pause this time, and now her sister’s voice was very dry and cold, almost clinical. “I wasn’t ready to tell Appa; I got rid of it. Apparently, I damaged myself. I knew it was a risk, trying to get pregnant again. I knew the risks…” And the coldness failed her, the tears rising again.
“You’re sure?” Mayil asked.
“I’m sure. It would be…unwise. To try again.” And that desolation Nalan couldn’t bear. He stood up abruptly, left the groceries and roses by the door, and started walking, blindly. Mayil would find them; she’d understand. Nalan could do nothing now but walk, and wait. And if a small, ancient part of him hoped that it was the mixing of the races that had gone awry, the miscegenation that had led to calamity, then his conscious mind was properly appalled, and stifled the thought before it could surface.
“And that pregnancy…”
“It was fine. We had a daughter, Shefali. She’s thirteen now.”
“No other children?”
“No, none.”
MAYIL HAD WANTED OTHER CHILDREN, AND HE DID FIND IT HARD TO resist her when he looked at their daughter. Tiny, delicate, perfect. After her birth, Nalan had cooked for them both, cooked richly, until, over the years, both he and Mayil acquired a comfortable weight on their bellies. The soft flesh reassured him. But he couldn’t seem to feed his daughter enough—however much she ate, she stayed small, slender. It didn’t seem to hurt her, though—Shefali was full of energy, a dancing sprite of a child, an active young teen. She had, with her aunt Leilani’s encouragement, joined the track team, had gone to state championships. Shefali talked loudly, laughed prodigiously, and would, with no provocation, sometimes burst into song. Nalan’s own movements felt more solid, more slow, with each passing year, and he found himself bewildered that somehow he had engendered this flighty Puck, this delightful Ariel.
Stranger still were Shefali’s other interests—the child could not have cared less for her father’s books, her mother’s history; she dismissed it all as unreal, boring. Instead, she begged for a computer all through her last year of grammar school; he’d finally gotten her one, an Apple II Plus, for her birthday. She’d spent the next three months engrossed in it, programming, of all things. Who’d ever heard of a girl-child wanting to spend all her free hours programming? It was absurd. It was just as well, though—neither he nor her mother had had much time to spare for her.
They were sufficiently busy with a second unexpected pregnancy, one that had somehow managed
to slide by every barrier placed in its way. Nalan had overruled his wife’s Catholic objections after Shefali’s long and difficult birth, and she had, surprisingly, given way. Nalan still didn’t know how the second pregnancy had happened—God’s will, was all Mayil would say. And if there was more of the hand of his wife in it than of God, well, Nalan didn’t want to know. As the pregnancy progressed, he continued to cook, more and more dishes, to tempt her stomach. Again, he ate too much crushed red pepper, endless tomato sauces. He ate them in place of religious belief, as his own private prayer and pledge, a silent bargain with the universe, to keep her safe.
“When did you first suspect that something was wrong?”
HE HAD WOKEN IN THE DARK TO WET SHEETS—THAT WAS WHAT HE had first noticed. A dampness around his hips and groin. He’d put his hand down to feel the sticky wet; his first thought was that he had somehow returned to the embarrassing days of nocturnal emissions—his second, that Mayil’s water had broken. Early, but not impossibly so. He’d said her name as he reached for the light, twisting to find the switch—and then it had come on, and he had seen his fingers, stained a ridiculous, shining red. Turned in the bed, yanked back the covers to see blood, covering her thighs, pooling under her hips. And her face clammy, her ears deaf to his entreaties. He felt for the pulse with red fingers, felt and found it, then, his mind abruptly cold, logical, sending him up to get a towel, to press it between her thighs. And then the phone, the three digits quickly dialed, the address recited. The phone again, to call a sister to come stay with the child. And then he was wrapping a clean blanket around his wife, lifting her up—he didn’t know if it was wise, but he couldn’t just wait. Couldn’t just sit still. Somehow he lifted her up, and she was heavy but not impossibly so. He carried her down the dark hall; the child was still sleeping, undisturbed. Carried his wife to the front door, to the end of the walk, talking to her all the while, saying her name, whispering nonsense words. Anything she might respond to. The names of Shakespeare plays. Historical dates. Then the siren came, red and screaming, and they were taking her out of his arms, they were loading her into the back, and he went, leaving the child alone in the empty house. A sister was coming, and he, he had to go.
They had let him clean up at the hospital, had packaged up his clothes and given him patient pyjamas, a robe. Eventually, her parents had come, her sisters. Leilani, sensible, solid Leilani, had brought clothes for him, and he had changed again. She had told Kili to stay with Shefali, been wise enough to spare her this; Leilani knew about the miscarriages, knew all their secrets. He would not have expected a poet to be the most sensible one of the set, before he’d gotten to know them. But it was true. He was, distantly, grateful for her. And furious with her too, with all of them, every single sister—this one with Mayil’s eyes, that one with her hair, her slender hands. He could have strangled them all, and gladly, to simply turn the clock back six hours, knowing what he knew now. It might have been enough.
The clock ticked from four to five. At five-fifteen, the nurse called him into a small room. The doctor came in, in his white coat, unspattered. Nalan wondered if the man had changed before coming to see him. If that was hospital policy in this sort of situation. Because he knew—he knew when he saw the man’s face. Exhausted. And already abstracted, thinking ahead to the next patient, the one he might be able to save.
“I’m sorry to tell you…”
“I know. I’ve always known.”
And he is walking away, leaving the doctor standing there, the family in the waiting room, he is walking away, her small, slender hand in his, so fragile, so easily lost.
Marry in Haste
Chicago, 1964
CEYLON IS EVERYWHERE IN THE TINY HYDE PARK APARTMENT—IN KILI’S BRASS CANDLESTICKS ON THEIR TINY BLACK-AND-WHITE TV, IN the demon masks and batiks of sari-clad dancers hanging on the wall. Michael’s great-grandparents were immigrants, but their blood was already mongrel, a mix of English and Scottish. His counterpoint lies in the scattered papers on the pine table, in the sink of dirty dishes, the clothes piled on the bedroom floor. Michael works at home most nights, as does she. Kili rustles pages, committing to memory an endless stream of medical terminology. His pen scritches across long sheets of yellow lined paper. Med student and physics student, they work in companionable silence. He often fills pages of the yellow paper without a single word, living in a world of jumbled letters and symbols. When Kili pauses in her work to peer over his shoulder, her long hair brushing in a black curtain against his cheek, she will not understand a word he has written. But it is only fair—her own languages are equally impenetrable.
“Why didn’t you marry someone from Ceylon?” Michael asks one night as they lie in bed; he is at his most talkative at these times. They have only been married a few weeks and it is perhaps not the best time for such a question—but he has been wanting to ask it, or something like it, for years. Only now, with her naked, vulnerable beside him, has he found the courage. She twists in his arms, looks up at him, smiles. “I fell in love with you.” It is a true answer; he lets it stand for the night. But it is not the only truth.
KILI DIDN’T FALL IN LOVE RIGHT AWAY; HE HAD TO PURSUE HER. Michael had been sitting on the grass under a tree in Hutchinson Commons, unfolding a peanut butter sandwich from its paper wrapper. He was intent on the task at hand, and it was laughter that first drew his attention, the sound of several girls laughing together. He’d looked up to see them coming out of Ryerson, mostly voluptuous undergrad blondes, not so different from Kate, the girl he’d been with for the last two years, the girl who had dumped him a few weeks previous. At the periphery of the group was a small, slender brown-skinned girl, conspicuous because she was the only one not laughing. She was smiling, though, with a sweet indulgence evident in her expression—she was not actually amused by the joke, he understood, but she was glad that her friends were happy. Her hair was pulled up into a neat coil at the nape of her neck, unlike the short bobbed styles of her friends; the skirt of her dark dress was long, and her arms were covered to the wrist. Among the brightly patterned sleeveless shifts of her friends, she stood out, a dark rose in a field of daisies.
He took to having his lunch there, at that time, regularly, until he had determined exactly when she came out of her class. It gave him time to gather his courage. He had only dated white girls up until now. But even though Michael knew his parents wouldn’t understand it, he couldn’t think of any good reason not to ask her out—not a real reason. Weren’t they all the same, under the skin? Eventually he walked over and asked her name, and she admitted it was Kili. Then he asked if she’d like to have lunch with him sometime, and she looked up at Michael, flustered, and stammered a No, sorry, while her friends giggled and his face flushed red. As he walked away, he heard one of the blondes whispering, Can you believe that? Are you okay? As if his words to her had been an insult, an assault.
Perhaps he should have given up, but what would have discouraged him with a girl like Kate somehow enflamed him coming from Kili. Her eyes were large and dark; on her thin face, they seemed indecisive, persuadable. Michael courted Kili—picked stolen flowers from Botany Pond and brought them to where she sat, surrounded by the intimidating bevy of girlfriends who laughed and teased and, eventually, encouraged him. He paid her extravagant compliments, even went to the library and memorized lines of poetry to recite to her. Michael compared Kili to a summer’s day and surprised a laugh out of her; her face opened up then, a lotus unfolding. Or so he imagined—he had never seen a lotus.
Eventually, he charmed her; Kili allowed him to sit by her side, still surrounded, guarded by her friends. She tried a bite of his peanut butter sandwich. Kili didn’t like it. But she agreed to meet him again, and again. Her father didn’t allow her to date at all, and certainly not to date white boys, so when they met alone, they met secretly. The first time Michael kissed her, in a dark stairwell in Eckhart, she froze for a moment. Then Kili’s lips moved, soft under his; her hands slid up to rest ag
ainst his chest. He could feel his heart, pounding, under her fingertips.
KILI SITS, HUNCHED, ON A CORNER OF THEIR NARROW BED, LEGS pulled up under her long, dark skirt, the phone handle pressed tight against her ear. Michael sits cross-legged behind her, his hands gently massaging her shoulders through the fabric of her thin white blouse. The voice on the line is loud enough that he can hear every word.
“Rasathi, I called your room last night at eleven-thirty! Where were you?” Her father has a strong British accent, but he is otherwise not hard to understand.
“Appa,” she says softly, “I work late at the library sometimes. I’ve told you that.”
Kili does, sometimes. So that is true. But last night—last night they were otherwise occupied when the phone rang, and she chose to ignore it. Michael, of course, never answers the phone. It is part of their agreement.
Her father is talking louder now, faster, and Kili hunches in on herself, shrugs her shoulders away from his hands, impatiently. Michael lets his hands drop, fighting back a sudden impotent fury, an urge to snatch the phone from her hand, to tell everything. Michael has seen her father, a pudgy math professor who strides quickly across the Chicago campus; he has even sat in on one of his lectures, and cannot believe that the man is as old-fashioned, as unreasonable, as his daughter insists. But Kili has begged Michael not to say anything, has made him promise to wait. She folds in on herself when they discuss it, fades and withers, like a flower deprived of water. Michael will promise anything then to make her smile.
Michael entertains brief fantasies sometimes, listening to her father’s British inflections; he wishes they lived in Ceylon a few decades earlier, when the British were still in charge. Then, he could have loved Kili as he wanted to, could have seen Kili as often as he wished, without her father daring to interfere. He pictures Kili in a thin sari, perhaps drawing water from a well, and himself striding into the courtyard, a white man rich with power, authority. Pictures the older man forced to sit silent, while Michael takes his daughter boldly in his arms, kisses her for all the world to see. Kili would have never allowed it.
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