“Or, I could ask Vivek to recommend someone.”
“No!” I couldn’t stand him, a stranger, my uncle, knowing.
“Or I could take you somewhere myself.” She waits, patiently. I get up and start pacing. Back and forth, back and forth. I can put this decision off for another month, if I want. If I said so, she would pick up her shopping list, and we’d go off, and nothing else would be said, and nothing would be decided. I think I could love Raji Aunty very much, but right now, I almost want her to be more like my mother, just to have someone who would tell me what to do. Finally, I stop pacing and face her.
“You want your baby, don’t you?” I ask her quietly, knowing what she’ll say.
“Very much. We’ve been trying for a while.” Her dark eyes are steady, and I know that she knows what I am about to say. I bite my lip, then speak.
“I don’t want this one.”
“Okay, then. I don’t see any need to tell your mother. I’m here to take care of you.” Her voice is firm, decisive, and with that last decision taken out of my hands, with everything over, finished, I sink down into one of her kitchen chairs and bury my face in my hands, and do not cry.
Dear Amma,
I am very sorry to write you like this, but I must tell you that I do not want to have an arranged marriage right now. I am busy with my studies, and still have many years of school before I become a doctor. Please thank Bharati Aunty for me, and send my regrets to the young man in question. I will visit you this summer, but do not plan to set me up with anyone then either. Raji Aunty will be coming for a visit then too, so you will get to see us both at once…
I AM MODELING FOR MY AUNT UNTIL THE HOLIDAY ENDS. THIS IS A LITTLE strange, but she promises that my face will be turned away in the picture. The family in Sri Lanka knows she paints, but nothing of the subjects. They undoubtedly think it is a pleasant hobby for a doctor’s wife, and that she paints wildflowers, or sunsets. She will be exhibiting her paintings in New York next month. I will be in one, with my body thin and bare, with my arms outstretched, with the snow surrounding me. She is painting me a tree in winter, barren and brown, waiting for spring. It isn’t as cold in Massachusetts as it is in Chicago. It is easier to believe, here, that spring will come.
I can stay quite still while she paints, but the muscles get tired and eventually start to tremble. The trembling is interesting.
I am glad that she does not need to paint me and the snow at the same time. Her studio is warm and steaming, and there is always hot tea on the kitchen stove. My uncle knocks before entering, so that I have time to dress in an enveloping robe, and we have been having some very interesting talks about medicine, about muscles and sinews, electrical synapses and rushing blood. I think I am going to like being a doctor. Bodies are fascinating.
I will talk to Diego when I return. He deserves to know. He probably also deserves to have a say in this, but I don’t think I am strong enough to give him one. Hopefully he will be all right. I’d like him to be happy.
Perhaps I can set him up with Rose. She likes him, I know.
As for me—the world is wide, and there are many possibilities.
Snow falls outside my aunt’s window, quietly blanketing the ground, lacing the trees.
It’s really quite beautiful.
Wood and Flesh
Berkeley, 1999
SAVITHA TEASED HER COUSIN THAYALAN EVERY TIME HE CAME TO VISIT WITH HIS PARENTS. SHE SAT WITH HER KNEES APART, SHE BENT over to pick things up, she blew kisses at him with wet lips as he was driving away. Thayalan wrote her long letters full of the small details of his life, slipped them into her books at school. Savitha didn’t write back, but he was patient, and faithful. It wasn’t hard not to look at other girls, not with a cousin so reckless, strange, and endlessly fascinating. The pale blondes who occasionally let their hands rest on his strong arms held no interest for him.
The first time the cousins had sex was when they were both fourteen. Savitha was a few months younger than Thayalan. His mother was visiting her mother; Savitha’s sister Chaya had moved out by then, gone off to grad school. Savitha took him up into the attic; Thayalan was trembling with uncertainty, eagerness. He had heard the rumors by then; the boys all knew about her.
Thayalan was fascinated by her slim, light-skinned beauty, by the air of danger that surrounded her. He had written Savitha a love letter on his mother’s pink stationery, had slipped it into her locker at school.
That day, Savitha closed the door, led him to a sheltered corner where her mother had piled old blankets and sheets, neatly folded. She pulled out a sharp knife—the big butcher knife that her mother used to chop chicken bones in half before dropping the pieces into the bubbling pot of curry. Thayalan’s eyes widened, but he didn’t say a word. Savitha told him that he had to swear a blood oath, to tell no one what they had done—and that he had to promise to love her forever, to always be faithful to her. Thayalan was silent for a long moment, and Savitha almost turned and left the attic then. There were plenty of boys who would have done exactly as she asked, without hesitation. But something held her there as he gazed at the knife. Finally Thayalan nodded his head in agreement, holding out his open palm for her cut, his eyes open and steady. Savitha found herself glad that he had waited until he was sure.
Afterward, they lay down together on the old blankets. She pulled her clothes off, quickly, and he followed. His bony hips moved against hers; his hands pressed hard against her small breasts, her flat stomach. Thayalan’s bloody palm left blurred lines on her brown skin.
Savitha didn’t touch him again for years. When she came to him and asked him to take her away, he was ready. He’d been waiting.
THEY FOUND A HOUSE OVERLOOKING THE BAY, FACING WEST TOWARD the ocean. Just the two of them there, though it was large enough for a real family. The yard was overgrown, overtaken by wildflowers, crabgrass, one corner swallowed in a fierceness of blackberry bramble. When they first moved in, Savitha went out to attack the bramble, enthusiastic, armed with a sharp pair of clippers. Hours later, Thayalan found her kneeling there, arms scraped bloody and the mass of bramble still overwhelming. Savitha’s eyes were bright and wet, but she was hacking away, blindly determined until he knelt down, wrapped his arms around her, stilling her. Later, he promised her. They’d deal with it together, later. Thayalan took the clippers away, led her inside to wash and bandage her arms.
The house itself was barely furnished—desks and PowerBooks, bookshelves and a bed. Even after two months, they hadn’t bought pots and pans. Neither had ever learned to cook. They bought mediocre Indian takeout instead and added raw red chili powder to make it palatable, eating one-handed, hunched over their computers. Savitha programmed for a small gaming company; Thayalan was writing a historical novel about Sri Lanka, set in the early 1950s, right after the British left. He hadn’t sold it yet.
In early summer, Thayalan asked her to see a doctor. She was sure it would be useless, but agreed. Savitha chose a doctor recommended by an online referral service; she specified someone older. He turned out to be kindly, patient. He examined the suppurating sores on her belly; he was sure that he had seen this sort of thing before. The doctor prescribed bland food, less work. Savitha nodded politely and thanked him. She didn’t say that the work was what kept her sane. She didn’t mention that the sores had been with her since childhood. He gave her soothing cream, ice packs for the sore tendons in her arms. He sent Savitha home with a cherry lollipop and told her to call if the condition persisted or worsened.
The condition had improved since their arrival in Berkeley, but it did sometimes worsen. Those nights, she almost cried from the accumulated pains of the day. Savitha would curl in on herself, naked under the pale sheets, and Thayalan stroked her hair, her shoulders, until finally her muscles loosened and she fell asleep. He cried then, silently, for her. His body was long and loose on the bed, his face peaceful, and the tears slid down the line of cheekbone, pooling in the curve of ear, soaking into the she
ets. Savitha would wake and kiss the tears away, licking the salt skin dry.
SHE HAD NEVER CRIED MUCH HERSELF, THOUGH HER CHILDHOOD had been complicated, full of pain. Falls and scrapes, bumps and bruises. Savitha had forever been injuring herself—cuts on her elbows and knees, sores on her back, along the column of her spine, a bloody gash on her forehead, two inches of raw abraded flesh on her upper arm. First bicycles were forbidden, then climbing trees, then running. And still the wounds kept appearing. On her twelfth birthday, Savitha woke to blood on her sheets, cramps in her belly, and a raw sore across her stomach, another on her right thigh. She washed her own sheets that morning and all the ones after, rising often before sunrise, hating the sun, the dawn, the morning—everything that wrenched her from sleep. She washed the sheets because she had no choice, until the day Thayalan took her away from her mother’s house.
Savitha tried to talk to her sister about the sores, once. But Chaya was going to be a scientist, like their grandfather; she believed there were rational explanations for everything. Chaya was certain that Savitha was doing it to herself—cutting herself, scraping herself, rubbing her own skin raw in the deep hours of night. Chaya pointed to the blood under Savitha’s fingernails; she dismissed Savitha’s explanation that she had woken and instinctively felt for the new wounds, pressing her fingers into the scrape, feeling the welling beads of blood. Perhaps Thayalan believed that as well, that his wife was secretly injuring herself. Savitha couldn’t prove otherwise, not even to herself. But she didn’t believe it.
At least Thayalan didn’t try to convince her of that theory, if he did believe it. He kept his own counsel and took care of her as best he could.
SAVITHA CAME TO HIM THE NIGHT SHE TURNED EIGHTEEN AND SAID, Take me away.
He asked, Where?
She said, As far as you can.
A friend of Thayalan’s helped them rent a U-Haul, and while her mother was out, they loaded the van with the carved bed frame, with black trash bags full of the pale shimmering saris Lakshmi compulsively bought her daughters, though they never wore them. They filled the van with blue jeans and T-shirts, with their computers, wrapped carefully in old blankets from her mother’s attic. They left Chicago on a Monday, and by Saturday they were in Berkeley, and married.
It was true that he was her first cousin, but that wasn’t so unusual, back in Sri Lanka. It seemed better than the alternatives.
SEX STARTED IN FIFTH GRADE, THOUGH HER MOTHER REFUSED TO believe it. When Savitha asked Timothy to meet her in the gym, up on stage, near the light board, he went. They skipped lunch and created a nest out of old stage curtains, frayed blue velvet. Her muscles were taut, her body was aching; perhaps he could give her body what it wanted. Savitha didn’t dare remove her uniform—just helped Tim push the blue plaid up, out of the way, pull aside her cotton panties, far enough so that he could sink first fingers, then penis, inside her. It hurt just enough, just exactly enough. It quieted her.
After the first time, they brought their lunch to the gym, ate quickly just before the bell rang. Tim lasted almost a month. She spent the next two years with Tim, with Bobby, with Matthew, with Jeff. They did what she told them to, gave her exactly what she asked for. They would have given her anything. In seventh grade, Katharine Swenson told her about condoms. Savitha found out later that two girls in her class had had abortions by then.
She didn’t sleep with South Asian boys, though there were a few in her class, and more in high school. That would have been much too dangerous, even though none of them were Sri Lankan. Savitha didn’t bring any of the white boys home, either. She met them in the gym, under the bleachers, in the basement music room, in their parents’ houses, in their parents’ beds, in the woods, and once, actually up in a spreading maple tree. Her spine pressed against the broad support of a branch, her skirt pushed up to her waist and her legs wrapped around Jeff’s sweaty waist. Two things grounding her—the bark scraping against her bare back, and the pleasure sheeting through her, pulsing waves from her center, a sharp incandescence. For those few minutes, Savitha knew exactly where and who she was.
That was one of the few times she climbed a tree and didn’t fall out of it.
BY OCTOBER, THEIR FAMILY HAD TRACKED THEM DOWN. HER MOTHER wept on the telephone, her words a blur of Tamil and English, sliding back and forth, swift castigations, entreaties. Savitha listened for half an hour, forty-five minutes, an hour, her eyes fixed on the computer clock, watching the numbers shift. She took as much as she could, then handed her husband the phone. Thayalan listened patiently, murmuring softly. Yes, Lakshmi Aunty. Yes, I know. Don’t worry. She’s fine.
It was the first call of many—several times a week, Savitha’s mother called. She asked if they were eating well, if they were healthy, if they were sure they didn’t want to come back to Chicago, to the family. No, Aunty. No, not yet. Maybe for Thanksgiving, Christmas, in the spring. Savitha’s mother asked if she can come to visit them, at least. Thayalan looked at Savitha, who shook her head. Not yet, Aunty. Later.
Savitha didn’t like to leave the house. Thayalan did leave, though—he went out into the world, he met people. He signed up for evening classes—wood carving, rock climbing, sailing. Thayalan had always learned things quickly; he was used to being effortlessly good at almost everything he tried. He was good at making friends too—though Savitha was paid well enough, the only way they could afford to sublet the house was through friends Thayalan had made online, friends who knew of secret rent-controlled houses, leased to generations of students, passed down in the dark through grubby hands.
The only thing he was not good at was healing his wife, though he did as much as he could.
Thayalan coaxed her outside at night, and they walked the deserted streets of Berkeley. From their house on Solano, they headed down to University, then east to Shattuck, down to Dwight, east again, as far as Telegraph. They wandered the campus, silent beneath the moonlit shadow of the campanile. When Savitha tired of walking, Thayalan took her sailing under the stars, out on the bay in a tiny Sunfish. The expanse of water was huge, and dangerous. It calmed her.
Once, Thayalan persuaded her out in the early afternoon, but that was too much for her. The sun was too bright, and she fled to their little house. Savitha wished then that they had curtains, so that she could pull them closed and shut out the world.
SHE TOOK A KNIFE TO HER BELLY WHEN SHE WAS NINE—CAREFULLY. She wasn’t stupid.
Savitha knelt in the bathtub with her father’s pocketknife, her small face intent as she planned her design. There was a sore just below her belly button, a little to the right, an oozing eruption of pus, slightly smaller than her palm. Savitha was tired of washing and bandaging and had decided to try something new—she would make it into a flower. The stem was easy enough, a single clean line, cut just deep enough to break the skin. It almost didn’t hurt. The petals, though—she managed two curving petals around the flower’s rough center before her hand started to shake, her determination wavering. Savitha rested, cut one more, and decided it was enough. Already, in the cutting, she knew—this wasn’t going to help.
The flower faded long before that first boy, Tim, would have discovered it.
THEY BOTH WORKED HARD MOST DAYS, WORKED UNTIL THEY WERE TOO tired to think. Savitha turned to computer games after work. She built elaborate cities, beautiful gardens, systems of water pipes and sewer lines. Cities linked together to form countries, entire civilizations. She added element by element, building to a crescendo, a climax of beauty and harmony—and then tore them down again. Savitha lost herself in the games for hours, days, but in the end, they did not satisfy. Eventually, always, she deleted her constructed worlds and went back to work.
Thayalan walked away from his computer instead. Most nights, he read history books, thick tomes on India with perhaps a single slim chapter on Sri Lanka, research for his novel. When he grew tired of reading, he turned to carving. Thayalan went alone to the kitchen for a sharp knife and sharpened it further o
n a smooth stone. He pulled out a piece of wood from a pile stacked by the door. He opened the back door onto a night heavy-scented with jasmine; the owners of their house had planted jasmine vines by the kitchen door, trained to climb over the trash cans. The sweet scent of the flowers couldn’t quite cover the smell of rotting garbage. But it helped.
He sat down in the doorway and started to carve. Thayalan liked the sharpness of the knife, the careful pressure he had to exert. Too little and the cut was weak, ineffectual. Too much and the wood was sliced through. Although even then, he could usually turn it to something else, find something of grace in the mauled fragment.
Thayalan carved small animals, flowers, fish. What he liked best was the long history of the art, the sense that men had whittled forever, since knives were first made sharp enough to cut through wood, coaxing beauty out with clever hands. He had learned a lot in a few months of practice, but sometimes he still sliced through his finger or palm, staining the wood a darker brown. It was the price he paid for learning, unavoidable.
THEIR BED FRAME WAS CARVED AS WELL, THEIR ONLY TREASURE. Tree branches climbed up the tall pillars, leaves and flowers, heavy fruit in impossible combinations: mangoes, bananas, coconuts, jackfruit—all on the same tree. Birds nested in the canopied frame; small creatures hid in the dense foliage of headboard and footboard. Elephants thundered along the base of the frame, and monkeys chittered just above their heads. It was a cacophony of nature, unbearable in its liveliness. Savitha had loved it her entire life, although at times it overwhelmed her. It was once her grandmother Shanthi’s bed; Grandfather had ordered it for her when they settled in Chicago, had had it shipped all the way from Sri Lanka. Savitha knew her mother would never have given it to her—Lakshmi had never learned to part with anything. So Savitha had stolen it from her mother when they left Chicago.
Bodies in Motion Page 24
