The Dowry Bride

by Shobhan Bantwal

  Chapter 23

  Brushing aside her memories of the walk by the river with Kiran, Megha forced her mind to return to the present and moved away from the window and the sight of the children in the park. She spent long moments observing the kids each day. As much as she liked watching them play and hearing their voices, it was painful, too. Her miscarriage still haunted her.

  That ill-fated night, after Kiran had bought her the flowers and escorted her home, she’d felt drained. The exhaustion was beyond ordinary fatigue. After eating a small meal at her mother’s coaxing, she had gone straight to bed, hoping the tiredness would diminish after a night’s rest. Maybe she was coming down with the flu or something.

  Megha remembered that night all too well. Just thinking about it made her stomach cramp up—even now.

  She was deep in sleep when the first stab of pain speared through her middle. She came wide awake in an instant. What in God’s name was that? She rolled onto her side and the pain eased a bit. She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Just as she tried to go back to sleep another vicious stab penetrated her abdomen.

  Easing herself into a sitting position, she took a few deep breaths. That didn’t help either. One sharp spasm of pain after another started to rack her body. She tried to rise to her feet, but ended up collapsing to the floor, feeling dizzy and weak. She frowned in panic. Something was terribly wrong with her. Was it something she had eaten earlier that night? But then, her parents had eaten the same things. They were sleeping peacefully in the next room. Her father’s snoring was unmistakable.

  Should she awaken her mother? When the next wave of agony washed over her, she had no doubt she was in serious trouble. She had no choice but to disturb her parents, so she knocked on the wall that separated her room from theirs. There was no response. She could hear Appa’s snoring continue uninterrupted.

  Waiting for the next surge of pain to pass, she knocked again—harder this time. In the next room she heard her mother’s startled reaction. “Ree, did you hear that?”

  Then her father’s sluggish voice responded, “Hmm? Someone…knocking on the door or what?”

  Realizing her parents were disoriented from their abrupt awakening, she desperately pounded on the wall once again. A second later her mother rushed into the room and switched on the light. She gasped in shock when she saw Megha sitting on the floor, clutching her abdomen. “Ayyo, Megha!” She sank to the floor beside her. “What is it, putti?”

  “I…I’m in pain, Avva,” she managed to whisper. Her face crumpled in agony.

  Her mother managed to help her up and move her back to the bed. But she looked at the sheets and stopped short. “Oh my God! You are bleeding!”

  Megha cried in pain again, but waited to let the cramp ease before she glanced at the blood. Good Lord! Where had all that blood come from? She drew in a ragged breath. “It—it looks horrible!” Dismayed, she frowned at her mother. “What’s happening to me, Avva?”

  Her mother looked too stunned to say anything. She was silent for a full minute before she spoke again. “Did you miss your monthly cycles recently?”

  Despite the pain, Megha tried hard to think. She recalled wondering why she had been so late this month. She calculated the dates in her mind. It had been several weeks since her last cycle. After a few moments she nodded. “I think I’m about six weeks late.”

  Mangala examined the sheets once again, still looking dazed. “Oh, God! I think you are having a miscarriage.”

  “Miscarriage!” Megha stared agape at her mother. “But…but how can I have a miscarriage when I’m not pregnant?”

  “It looks like that, no? I can’t think of anything else for this kind of bleeding.”

  Megha puzzled over her mother’s remark. Was a very late cycle a sure sign of pregnancy? She wasn’t sure. She’d felt extremely tired lately, and that was because of all that hard work…or so she had assumed. She hadn’t experienced any cravings or bloating or any of those other symptoms Harini had described to her. She had been getting lessons from Harini about what to expect when one got pregnant. But then, her mother was knowledgeable about these matters—much more so than young Harini. Avva was probably right. She gripped her belly as she felt the next cramp seize her.

  Visibly shaken and distraught, her mother rose to hurry out of the room. “I better get your Appa.”

  Megha’s father looked pale when he came into the room. His hair was sticking out in various directions and his nightshirt looked a hundred years old as he approached the bed to study Megha’s plight. “I’ll get dressed and walk over to Dr. Sanghvi’s house,” he murmured. “I hope he can come straight away.” He gave Megha a long, anxious look before leaving.

  While they waited for the doctor to arrive with her father, Megha rested her head in her mother’s lap. “Oh putti, this is all my fault,” Avva said ruefully. “I should have noticed you looked different when you arrived this afternoon. You were more upset than usual, your face was flushed. I should have guessed that you might be expecting a baby. I should not have allowed you to walk so much. I think you strained yourself, no?”

  “It’s not your fault, Avva. I’m the one who should have known. How could I be so stupid?” It wasn’t fair, this gut-wrenching agony. Damn it, it just wasn’t fair! She had tried to be a good person all her life. She had been taught by her parents and the nuns at school that being upstanding and decent always brought one good things. Except for a few minor lies, she had led an honest life. She said her prayers each day. To make sure she covered all bases, she said her Hindu prayers as well as the Lord’s Prayer and a Hail Mary. And what had she got in return? Grief! And more grief!

  Her mother pushed a damp lock of Megha’s hair off her face. “Don’t blame yourself. You are so young. How would you know how to recognize the signs of pregnancy? When I was pregnant with your eldest sister, I was only a teenager, and didn’t realize until I was almost three months along that something was different.”

  Megha glanced in disgust at the bloodstains on the sheet. She had waited so long to get pregnant. Her mother was probably right. She had walked a long distance—first the walk from her in-laws’ home to her parents’ in the merciless afternoon heat, and then the evening walk along the river. In the process she had inadvertently hurt her unborn child. Dear God, why had she not recognized the signs of pregnancy? Another cramp sliced through her just then, and she squirmed.

  Would Suresh even care if he found out? Or would he be furious with her?

  As if reading her daughter’s thoughts, her mother stirred. “Maybe I should go over to the neighbor’s house and use their phone to call Suresh.”

  “No!”

  “He should be here with you.”

  Megha grabbed her mother’s wrist. “Please,” she cried, “I don’t want Suresh here.”

  “But Suresh is your husband, dear. He should be told.”

  “No, it’s best that he doesn’t know. He’ll run to tell his Amma and she’ll blame me for this. She hates me. Now she’ll hate me more. She’ll say I’ve robbed her of a precious grandchild.”

  “But how can she blame you for something like this? It can happen to anyone.”

  Megha shot her mother a wry look. God, for a mature woman her mother was so incredibly naïve, almost pathetic. “Avva, believe me, I manage to get the blame for everything that goes wrong in that house. Amma sees to it. Suresh lets her see to it.”

  Mangala leaned back against the headboard and let out a deep sigh. “What kind of naraka are the Ramnaths giving you, Megha? Oh baby, you look so sad these days.”

  Megha knew naraka meant hell “Naraka is what it really is, Avva,” Megha said and closed her eyes.

  Dr. Sanghvi and Megha’s father arrived a while later. The doctor had treated their family for years. He was a small, bald, tired-looking man who should have retired years ago, but continued to work. He looked as if he would die healing people—he was that dedicated to his profession. He confirmed her mother’s suspicions after qu
estioning Megha about various things.

  “It’s my fault, isn’t it? What did I do wrong?” Megha asked him anxiously.

  He shook his head. “It can happen at times for no reason. That is why we call it a spontaneous abortion.”

  “Then it was not my fault?” she said, badly needing confirmation.

  “No,” he assured her. “Sometimes, if the fetus is malformed or abnormal, nature aborts it for a good reason. Occasionally a lack of the hormone progesterone can also lead to a miscarriage.”

  Megha sank back against the pillow, feeling the first wave of relief sink in. It wasn’t her fault. Thank God!

  Dr. Sanghvi then carefully examined her, the bunched-up sheets, and the undergarment Megha had been asked to discard. “Early stages of pregnancy. It looks like the fetus has been completely expelled.”

  “Are you sure, Doctor?” Megha’s mother looked at him with an uncertain expression.

  “Quite sure,” the frail doctor replied. “I’ll give her something for the cramps. The bleeding should stop within a day or two.” He rummaged through the contents of his well-worn brown leather bag, pulled out a sample of some tablets in a foil pack and handed them to Mangala. “Give her one right now. The pain should ease and she will sleep. She might be sleeping a lot, so don’t worry if she does. Let her stay in bed until the bleeding completely stops, okay? She needs to rest.”

  Megha quietly swallowed the tablet with the cold water her father fetched in a tumbler. At this point she was willing to do anything to get this over with. Then her mother helped her up and to the bathroom to get washed. After making the slow trip back from the bathroom, she changed into a faded kaftan that belonged to her teenage years and sank onto clean sheets that her father had spread over the bed. The simple effort left her feeble and shaky.

  Her eyes settled on the soiled sheets heaped in the corner of the room. All that she had hoped for during the past year was reduced to a tiny ball of bloody mucus, swaddled in old, faded sheets. How could a fetus, a living, breathing, baby-in-the-making be eliminated so easily? She had never given serious thought to conceiving and giving birth. It had always seemed like an easy and logical thing: one got married, had sex and then there would be a baby. Who would have thought of serious setbacks like a miscarriage? The sheets seemed to mock her even as they lay huddled on the floor. She couldn’t even carry a baby to full term.

  In that moment—Megha truly believed that nothing she did would ever come out perfect. Amma was right: her fate was flawed and her life would end in failure. Mistakes made in her past incarnations were catching up with her.

  She turned to her mother and found her shedding silent tears. At seeing Avva so grief-stricken, her own sobs erupted. She put her arms around her mother, both to give comfort as well as to receive.

  The two women held each other and cried. They wept for the baby that would never be, for Megha’s cursed fate that had placed her amidst the Ramnaths, for the complete waste of a young and beautiful woman’s life, and for the physical and emotional pain this episode had brought. They shed tears until there were none left, then Megha slid back down on the bed and lay down, exhausted.

  She sensed her mother sliding in next to her and pulling a sheet over both of them. She felt Avva’s arm come around to hold her. Avva hadn’t done that in years. Did she, too, need the warmth and comfort as much as Megha did? “Avva?” she said.

  “Try to get some rest,” whispered her mother. “I will stay here with you.”

  “Do you think God is punishing me for something I did when I was little?”

  Her mother was quiet for a long time. “You were a good girl when you were little, Megha. You are still a good girl. I think we all bring our punishment with us…you know…to make up for sins from our previous lives. It follows us through every life, again and again, making sure that we pay for everything, the good and the bad, until we have finished paying. Then we are free to become pure, and go to God…forever.”

  “Hmm.” Megha pondered that bit of deep philosophy for a minute. It was rather complicated to comprehend. “Do you think there is a lot more bad fate for me, or do you think this is it?”

  “Only God knows that.” Avva patted her hip. “Shh, go to sleep now. Perhaps things will get better after today, no?”

  “Do you think if I pray to Lord Ganesh he will remove all my hurdles, my bad karma?”

  “He may or he may not, but prayer is never wasted. Even if God does nothing, it always makes you feel better. Prayer is good for the atma. Soul.”

  Megha cuddled close to her mother and said a quick prayer. Her father must have taken care of the doctor’s fees, she figured, as she tried to block everything else out of her mind except the need to get rid of the physical pain. She would repay her father later. She didn’t want to be more of a burden to him than she already was.

  Then she closed her eyes. There would be plenty of time later to grieve the loss of her potential son or daughter. At the moment she just wanted to sleep and forget it ever happened. She was lucky this had occurred at her parents’ home. She needed her mother, now more than ever. If it had happened at her in-laws’ house she would have choked from the sheer lack of sympathy and their disdain. She preferred not to speculate about what Amma would have said and done.

  As the medicine started to take effect and the cramps began to ebb, she started to feel lightheaded, like she was floating in a white mist. Images began to dance across her delirious mind. Pleasant images…from her childhood…things she’d done when her father was a handsome man with a capacity for laughter…games she had played with her friends and sisters. Avva was even more beautiful then and so much happier.

  It felt good to let Avva hold her like this. Her mother was saying something in her soft, gentle voice, just like she had when Megha had been ill when she was a little girl. Yes, it was nice to be with Avva—she always smelled of talcum powder and spices. She smelled exactly the same now.

  Megha’s last image before she fell asleep was of herself reaching out to touch the cool water of the river, but what she felt in her hand was not the ripple of water—instead, it was a delicate string of fragrant jasmine and marva and miniature roses. A deep male voice said to her, “Consider it a small and insignificant anniversary gift.” She couldn’t remember who had said that. She tried to jog her memory. For some reason it was important that she remember it. But her mind refused to cooperate and she gradually sank into oblivion.

  The doctor’s prescription must have been potent, because the next two days passed in a haze. She spent them in a semi-awake state, hallucinating off and on. Her mother gave her more of that medicine each time she complained of discomfort and helped her to the bathroom. She vaguely remembered Suresh’s visit on the evening following her ordeal. Appa must have informed him.

  She recalled Suresh sitting on the edge of the bed for a while and staring at her thoughtfully. Then he said something that sounded like, “So, when do you think you will be well enough to come home, Megha?”

  She wasn’t clear about her exact words, but she believed she had said, “I’m not sure. Perhaps in a day or two?”

  Suresh had looked at her with very little sentiment in his insipid eyes. He could very well have been gazing at a rag doll. There was no physical contact, no apology for forgetting their anniversary, no mention of being worried about her, and no sympathy for her plight, either. All he cared about was her return home so she could go back to her daily grind of churning out elaborate breakfasts, lunches, teas and dinners for the family. In other words, he wanted the Ramnath family’s unpaid servant to get back to her job as quickly as possible.

  She longed for Suresh to hold her, tell her that he loved her, and assure her that she would get pregnant again soon. She would have settled for a mere touch. But she would never get that from him. She had to console herself by thinking she was lucky he had even bothered to visit her. He was probably convinced he had more than performed his husbandly duty by coming to see her and sitting bes
ide her for a few minutes.

  Maybe he didn’t even know she had a miscarriage. Perhaps her parents had made up some other malady to protect her from Amma’s wrath. She hoped they had concocted some credible story. Coming so soon after her defiant attitude towards Amma the other day, a miscarriage was not likely to make her popular with the Ramnaths. All at once she felt hopelessly tired and started to turn away from her husband.

  Suresh rose to leave. “I have to go now, Megha.”

  Even now, as Megha worked in the kitchen, listening to the children’s high-pitched voices across the street, her anger simmered. She had suffered a trauma the night she’d had that miscarriage, and all her husband could say was, “I have to go now.” Damn him! And then, to top it all, he had tried to kill her. She’d get even with him someday. By God, she’d teach that stunted, heartless bastard and his beastly mother a lesson! Their karma would catch up with them, too.

  Chapter 24

  Chandramma lay sprawled on the bed, her head cradled in her locked hands on the pillow. Vinayak cast a brief glance at her. His wife appeared to be deep in thought.

  The iron bed with its tall headboard and the four posts that held up the white mosquito net looked a bit cramped for her size. She occupied about two-thirds of it while he had to make do with the remaining one-third. Good thing he was a small man.

  Vinayak stood before the mirror hanging over the dressing table, massaging castor oil into his scalp, trying to coax every little nerve and follicle to respond to his nurturing touch. The massaging action, malish, was warm and soothing and made him sleep better at nights. He had learned the trick from a professional malishwalla or masseur. Even if it didn’t do much for his memory cells or his falling hair as the malishwalla had promised, it helped him sleep through Chandramma’s earsplitting snoring. The woman could blow a hole in the roof with her honking and hissing.