Silence and the Word

by MaryAnne Mohanraj

  Maybe it would be easier if they stopped talking, as some of her friends had suggested, but neither of them seemed able to manage that.

  After saying goodbye and hanging up the phone, she’d just climbed into the shower, turned the water on, scalding hot, and cried. It gave her less of a headache, when she cried in the shower. What had Jessica and her sister-wives done back then, before showers? Anjali would have to ask her, the next time she appeared.

  She got e-mail from Ravi, a few days before spring break. He had frequent flyer miles, and a week off from teaching. He was feeling lonely, sad about a recent break-up. He wanted to see her. Did she want him to come out?

  Anjali told him that she needed to think about it, but she’d let him know soon. She didn’t need to think about it at all; she wanted to see him. Anjali remembered what it felt like, the few times he’d touched her, so many years ago. She hadn’t loved him at all, but she had enjoyed him a great deal, and that was exactly what she wanted right now, to put emotion aside, to sink into her body and give it what it needed. At least that desire could be satisfied.

  Neil wasn’t happy when she called and told him; he’d never liked Ravi. He had hurt other girls they knew and Neil didn’t trust him. The conversation that night was long, and filled with uncomfortable pauses. There were too many things they couldn’t say to each other. After he hung up, she curled her body around the dead phone, her eyes fixed outside the bedroom window, on still-snowy mountains, not seeing them. Anjali told herself that even though she didn’t want to upset him, Neil had no rights over her body. She needed to start moving on. She felt her skin contracting with desire, with the need to be touched, and held.

  Anjali wrote back the next morning, telling Ravi to come. She felt a ghost of a breath as she typed in her lab, a shadow touch across her cheek, but when she spun on the stool, there was nothing and no one there. Perhaps the lab was too rational a place to accommodate a grieving ghost.

  The best part was when Ravi tied her down. Wrists and ankles, done with scarves and a single old tie Neil left behind. He blindfolded her too, a makeshift blindfold of a T-shirt, tied behind her head, covering her eyes. Blinded, bound, Anjali could finally relax, could send her mind away and let her body move as it would, responding to strong hands, to fingers that were alternately gentle and cruel. When the pleasure wasn’t enough, when she begged for it, he gave her the pain she needed, the physical pain mixed with pleasure that could take her away, could obliterate every thought, every memory. She was nothing but an exhausted, sweaty body, responding to the rake of fingers across her thighs, the heavy hand slamming down against her ass.

  When he finished, she asked him to do it again, and again, and again, until at last she could fall into a dreamless sleep.

  They walked in the cemetery before he left. The last of the snow was melting, and flowers were coming up everywhere. Spring crocuses, a few early daffodils and irises. Anjali felt strangely at peace, there, among the Mormon patriarchs. Perhaps she should have feared their stern morality, but it seemed that the morality of 1800 was not the morality of today. Somehow she suspected Brigham Young would have understood, might have kept cords attached to his bedpost, and a horsewhip tucked under his bed. As she walked beside Ravi, listening to him talk about the woman he’d just lost, the woman he still loved, it pleased her to imagine the Elders of the church, dozing in their graves, dreaming of the girls they married and the ones they left behind.

  Jessica paced them in the distance, under pine trees still dusted with snow, but she didn’t come near.

  “You should talk to him,” Jessica said. They were up in the mountains; Anjali had driven up to Big Cottonwood Creek that morning, feeling a need to be among trees and silence. But her ghost had come with her, and wouldn’t leave her alone. Jessica had been saying the same things for hours as the sun slid lower in the sky and the air began to chill. “You haven’t talked to him in weeks.”

  Anjali didn’t look at her—she kept her eyes fixed on the trail ahead, her feet steadily moving up the dirt path, a hand occasionally reaching out to brush aside an errant twig, festooned with bright red berries. “He hasn’t called me. He doesn’t want to talk to me.” Anjali had come up here because she wanted to get away from the city, from people—but this was part of the city, too, these mountains.

  Her students were always skipping classes to come up here, to hike in the autumn and spring, to ski in the winter. This city wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the valley it sat in, sheltered by the Wasatch Mountains, bordered by the Great Salt Lake. Sometimes when she had stayed up all night, unable to sleep, Anjali would sit on her bed with her arms wrapped around her knees and watch the sun rise over the high mountains, impossibly beautiful, spreading gold light across the bright blue sky. For a few minutes then, she could believe in God.

  The pioneers coming across the desert had thought they’d found the promised land—most had stopped here, gladly, and only a few had continued on to California. What if they had all continued, found the gentle coast and thrived there? Would California be Mormon country now? Or would that prime coastal property have attracted enough people that the poor Mormons would have been wiped out? Maybe it was only their choice to build a city in the desert that had let them survive at all.

  Jessica sighed in visible exasperation. “Men don’t know what they really want. You have to tell them.”

  It was just like having an irritating little sister who wouldn’t leave you in peace. All Anjali wanted was to be left alone to find her own damnation. Was that too much to ask? She turned to Jessica and said sharply, “If you know so much, why are you here?” It was the forbidden question, the one her grandmother would never have asked a ghost. Some great grief or anger, that was what bound them to the earth. It was dangerous to probe into that; an angry ghost could kill you. Anjali asked anyway. “Why aren’t you with Matthew? Don’t Mormons get to go to heaven?”

  Jessica stopped still in the middle of the trail, her cheerful expression wiped away, her face blank and stricken. “Good Mormons do.” Late afternoon sun shafted through the trees, sliding right through her. She looked utterly insubstantial.

  “And you weren’t good?” Anjali knew the answer—she was only twisting the knife. Though she was also curious; what had this innocent young girl done that could be so bad as to bar her from her heaven? Had jealousy risen up in her, sending her to attack one of her sister-wives? Jessica might even have killed one; there were many graves in that graveyard.

  “I was wicked.” Jessica’s voice was quiet now, matter-of-fact.

  “What did you do?” Anjali pushed at it, like pushing at a sore tooth, halfway hoping that it would simply fall out and stop hurting. All she wanted was for it to stop hurting.

  “I killed my baby—and I killed myself.” Jessica’s hands moved to cradle her stomach, protectively.

  Anjali was startled; she’d assumed, from the dates, that she knew what had likely happened. It could have been illness, of course, or an accident, but so many young brides had died in exactly the same way… . “You didn’t die in childbirth?”

  “I didn’t want to be a mother—I wasn’t ready.” Jessica’s voice grew louder, more distraught. “I loved him so much, and I couldn’t believe he loved me back. He made the sun rise for me.” She was trembling now, her blue skirt shaking as if in a strong breeze. “I was never so happy as I was after I met him; I didn’t know it was possible to be so happy. And then there was the baby, who would want me to be its mother, to take care of it and pay attention to it and turn into someone else. I’d seen what happened, with my sister-wives. They forgot all about their husbands; all they cared about were the babies. I didn’t want that, don’t you understand? I just wanted to be with Matthew!” Jessica shouted the last words, but she wasn’t substantial enough for shouting—her words thinned, dissipated into the air.

  Anjali sat down heavily on a fallen log, her mind resolutely on the scratchiness of the bark, the small white flowers bursting up from th
e ground. She didn’t know why she had pushed the girl—didn’t even want to know all these details. Didn’t want to imagine Jessica at sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen. Head over heels in love with her man, still little more than a child herself and terrified of having a child. The poor, stupid kid.

  Jessica’s voice went quiet then, once again matter-of-fact. “I mixed together everything we had in the kitchen, and I drank it all down, but it didn’t make me sick enough. So when we went to Brother Brigham’s house for dinner a few nights later, I threw myself down the stairs, from the fairy window he built for the children, all the way down.”

  Anjali had been to the Beehive House, had taken the tour and stood at the fairy window, looking down into the front hall. She’d admired the extensive collection of books, so impressive for a pioneer household, and had enjoyed the beautiful French furniture, the elegant grand piano. She’d listened as the missionary woman had shown them Brigham Young’s bedroom, and his wife’s, and his children’s—never mentioning the other wives and children who had lived in the Lion House next door. Anjali had felt superior, listening to the whitewashed history, felt pleased that she knew the real story. But that wasn’t the real story—this was. The real story, the crazy things people did for love.

  The girl was crying now, translucent ghost tears. “I was just trying to lose the baby; other women did it! But I did something wrong, and I broke my own neck. Everyone said it was a tragic accident, such a shame, to have such a terrible thing happen to a young, pregnant, godly wife.”

  Anjali felt a stirring of anger, an emotion she hadn’t felt since the day Neil left her, saying only that it wasn’t working, that he needed to be alone, to have space. She’d been furious for a little while, but the emotion had dissolved into grief, and then numbness. The anger was back now, warming her chest, clenching her hands into fists. How many years had this poor girl been walking in this cemetery, these mountains, the sanctimonious city, suffering for a single mistake? “For that, your God would condemn you to be a ghost forever?” Could people really love a god that cruel?

  Jessica shook her head, wrapping her arms tightly around her body. “No—no, you don’t understand. I could leave here anytime; I could be resurrected, and my spirit united with my body. You mustn’t blame God for my sin.” She was earnest, pleading. After all these years, she maintained her faith.

  “So why don’t you go?” Anjali felt bewildered. If you were married in the Mormon church, you were supposed to be married forever. Why hadn’t Jessica flown to rejoin her beloved husband?

  Jessica hesitated a long moment, her eyes wide and haunted. Then she said, quickly and quietly—”I did such a terrible thing. What if he doesn’t love me anymore?” And she’d gone again, dissolved, leaving emptiness behind her, and a faint chill.

  Anjali wondered if she’d ever see her ghost again.

  When she came home, the phone was ringing. She let it ring, and ring, until finally it stopped. Anjali made herself some dinner, chicken curry over rice, and forced herself to eat it. She’d always loved food, but ever since the breakup, it had tasted like dust to her. She drank a big glass of water, put the leftovers away, washed the dishes. And then, when there was nothing else to do, she picked up the phone, called voicemail, listened to the message. Maybe all her recent contact with a ghost had given her some ESP—although he hadn’t called for weeks, she knew who it had to be, and knew what he would say.

  Neil wanted to see her. He thought he might have made a big mistake.

  No, really? Anjali could almost laugh, listening to that message.

  She listened to the message over and over, just pressing the number one on the phone, not letting it get to the end. She knew that if she stopped listening, she’d have to decide what to do next. But there was only so long you could hold a phone to your ear before your hand started to go numb, especially if you were gripping it too tightly. Anjali deleted the message and hung up—then picked the phone up again and called him.

  She didn’t know what she was going to say until Neil answered, but as soon as she heard his voice, she knew. Maybe she always had, and was just waiting for him to figure it out. It didn’t seem to matter that he’d hurt her, that it had taken him a year to figure out what he wanted. It didn’t matter that her friends would think she was nuts, and his probably would too—it didn’t even matter that Neil was still scared, and unsure, just like she was. They had no guarantees; there weren’t any. Jessica was nineteen, too young to know that it didn’t matter if you were scared. You just tried, and kept trying, even when anyone with any sense would have given up and walked away.

  Anjali told him to come, to take the next flight in. She’d be waiting upstairs, and he should just let himself in.

  Anjali never did see Jessica again. Sometimes she and Neil would take walks in the cemetery, in the evening, and she’d look, under the pines—but there was nothing. Maybe Jessica just didn’t want to talk to her, but Anjali hoped that there was another explanation. That once the girl had said the words out loud, had said what she was so afraid of, that she might have found the courage to face her fears, to go on and find out what awaited. To find the man who made the sun rise in her sky, and learn if he still loved her.

  Even after all those years, that would be worth waiting for.

  Spinning Down

  It’s dark again, and we have searched for quite

  some time for that still center, that space

  where you and I can co-exist. Your face

  these days is hard to bear, your eyes so bright…

  I’ve filled my room with candles, to keep the night

  away. I’ll step to a more measured pace;

  resist the fruitless urge to simply race

  in spinning endless circles, locked in might-

  have-beens. Speed will not save us. So brace

  yourself—it’s time to slow things down. Hold tight

  to what you know. The fragile tree of light

  you gave to me—the still and shining lace

  of silver branches, falling glass. Its slight

  geometry holds something true, and right.

  the sock tray

  folding your socks

  to insert into a plastic tray

  a sock-organizer

  I purchased

  an item

  you will never use

  it is partly compulsion

  a distaste for disorder

  the same urge that leads me

  to alphabetize

  your fiction

  it is partly a pledge

  a hope

  a desire

  that I will be here

  folding your socks

  when you return

  from Zurich

  and after

  Seven Cups of Water

  My brother’s wedding day. The feasting lasted long past dark, and I went to bed exhausted. I first peeled off my sweat-soaked sari, rinsing my body with cool well water before changing into the white sari I wore to sleep. The old women had consulted the horoscopes of my brother and his young bride, had pronounced that this day, in this month, would be luckiest, in fact the only day that would not bring down a thousand curses on the young couple — never mind that it was also one of the hottest days of the year. There was no flesh left on the old women’s bones, nothing that could drip sweat; I am sure they enjoyed making the young ones miserable.

  I thought that for once, I would be able to sleep. I’d been allowed a little of my father’s whiskey, to celebrate Suneel’s wedding; I had danced with the other unmarried girls. My sisters’ friends giggled and preened as they danced, flashing their dark eyes and slim brown bellies at the young men who lounged by the door, drinking. I just danced; I had no interest in catching a man. Not that any would have spared a glance for me, too-tall, dark Medha with coarse hair and flat chest. I danced for myself, not for them. I danced until my feet were aching, until my arms and legs were lead weights. I danced until Suneel and his lovely Su
shila were escorted to his bedroom, until the last piece of rich wedding cake was eaten, and the last guest had gone. Only then did I bathe and change, only then did I lie down on my bamboo mat, a few feet from my peacefully sleeping sisters. And still I could not sleep.

  It might have been the heat. Our house is near the ocean, and usually cool breezes fill the small rooms, but that night it was so hot that it was hard to breathe. I kept thinking it would get cooler, but instead it got hotter and hotter. Sweat dripped in uncomfortable trickles from my neck to my throat, from my breasts to the hollow between them, pooling in my navel. My mouth was dry as dead leaves, and I finally rose to get some water.

  The house was silent. I left my sisters sleeping, passed my parents’ room, and my brother’s. I passed the main room, where dying flowers and bits of colored foil testified to the day’s happy event, and finally entered my mother’s huge kitchen. We weren’t rich, but we did have one of the largest houses in the village. We needed it; I was the youngest of eight, and cooking enough food for all us took many hands and pots in the kitchen. The moonlight streamed in the window, illuminating the rickety table where my mother chopped, the baskets of onions and garlic and ginger and chilies, the pitcher of water that was always kept filled. It was one of my mother’s rules — if you drank from the pitcher, you refilled it from the well. With five daughters and three sons, she needed many rules to keep peace in the house. Not that we always obeyed them.