Secrets We Kept

by Krystal A. Sital

  A mind that would think to shoot at its own child is certainly lost. Shiva shot with every intention of killing. In my grandfather’s world, where he held his family against their will, was nothing sacred? Was human life, the lives of his wife, children, siblings, really so expendable? What happened to this man as a young boy, as a baby? Did something happen, or did he enter the world this way? The unsettling feeling of never being able to know burned in us all.

  GLINT

  UNABLE TO TAKE ANY MORE TIME away from work and school, I fall away from the hospital visits after the third surgery and leave my mother to go by herself each day, even on the weekends. There is freedom, a lightness, in returning to a semblance of routine. I go back to my waitressing job, where no one really knows or cares about what’s going on.

  Hey Krystal, someone says, you okay? I heard someone might’ve died in your family?

  And after a little explanation and an awkward silence, the moment is gone, sucked into the vortex of the past. We are free to lounge and laugh around the soda machine in our downtime. Here, I am able to breathe.

  At home, my mother continues to empty herself into me, a nightly cleansing ritual. Away from my grandfather’s bedside, my mind is less cluttered. As I learn about the men in my life—my father, my grandfather—men I’ve been enamored with and admired, they take on dimensions I’ve never imagined. I can no longer see them as just my father and grandfather; they are ­Dharmendra and Shiva. Fathers, yes. But also husbands. Perpetrators.

  Yuh know wah appen wit dis lass surgery, Krys? she asks me.

  The doctors had removed the cranial bone on the left side of my grandfather’s head. She’d told me this countless times already. I look at my mother’s gaunt face, her eyes sunken above black crescents, her hair unkempt and clothes disheveled. I search for a trace of her effervescence and am frightened to think it hasn’t just diminished but has evaporated altogether. I also realize I’ve been staying away from the hospital because I am afraid to find my grandfather broken, the conqueror of snakes already gone.

  I know I have to return, so we start going to the hospital together again. My mother warns me he no longer has a private room, and griefs clash in the limited space.

  From outside the room, I notice the shades are drawn, though I can’t see in with my mother in front of me. We have to walk past the other occupant, a woman lying unconscious on a bed, with a man weeping over her chest. My strong, sturdy mother deflates before me; I see the strength drain from her neck and down through her arms. Her broad shoulders tremble and curve inward. She hugs herself before she walks into the room. It is always awkward, tiptoeing past someone else’s pain, ignoring theirs to tend to our own.

  In the weeks my mother and I spend in that room, we draw back the flimsy curtain that separates us from my grandfather’s roommate, Valentina. They’re a Spanish couple in their forties with no children and no family, only each other. She was his life. Mi vida, he screams. This man pours his heart out to us, complete strangers, because he has no one else.

  Valentina, he tells us, was fond of slipping her dainty feet into the slippers he calls chancletas. They were the only shoes she ever wore. These netted slippers, in 2006, were the most popular footwear for little girls, teenagers, and adult women in New Jersey and New York. Made of fine mesh decorated with sequins and beads, they were backless and had smooth rubber soles. They were being sold everywhere, from street corners to department stores, and could be found everywhere I frequently shopped. Because they were stylish, but more because they were cheap, I owned a pair in every color and stored them in a large container underneath the bed I shared with my sister. One day, as Valentina hurried across the street, her fingers loosely intertwined with her husband’s, the smooth bottoms of the slippers slid on the concrete and she fell, hitting her head on the sidewalk. It had been months since she’d last awoken.

  The sight of that man wailing over his wife makes me hesitate before I sidle over the threshold, clinging to the walls to get past them. His anguish spills into the hallways. That feeling of pain sticks to me as my eyes land on my grandfather.

  A feeding tube vanishes into one of his nostrils; his breathing is raspy through the transparent oxygen mask over his mouth, which clouds as he breathes out and clears when he breathes in. His cheeks and lips quiver. The stench of his breath is thick and heavy, musty from abandoned teeth and foamy saliva buildup. Thin lips hang loosely around his toothless gums. They are cracked and dried with spit. His body, like death, is ominous and still beneath the austere whiteness of the crisp bedsheets.

  I stumble backward but keep my reaction in check when I see my mother’s eyes on me; I step forward again. I need a breath, some air, my freedom from this image of him, but I feel imprisoned in that room. From deep within his throat, his breathing continues to rake the silence. It is intense but hollow, summoning death. Wisps of breath escape his oxygen mask and wilt my nose hairs; I can help it no longer and turn away.

  My mother nudges a copy of the Upasana into my hands. I thumb to the most popular bhajan, and when I start singing, my voice is slow, unsteady, like wings flitting, attempting to stay airborne. Om Jaya jagdeesh hare, svaamee jaya jagdeesh hare / Bhakta janan ke sankat / Kshan me door kare / Om, Jaya jagdeesh hare / Maat-pitaatummere, sharan gahoo kiskee, svaame sharan . . .

  I follow the transliteration of the Sanskrit; the language itself, though beautiful to behold, is foreign to me. I sing these words to my grandfather without knowing their meaning. I cantillate a rhythm instilled in me from when I was young, the melody of a sacred song, one—I was told—that was supposed to remedy, revive, sustain.

  I had only used and seen this bhajan performed at the ends of events. When prayers were done, to signal we were finished, we fed the fire with everything leftover from the ceremony—ghee, samagree, parsad—while intoning the Aarti bhajan. This chant was indicative of the end. My mother felt in her heart that my grandfather should go peacefully now. She regretted having forced my grandmother to let the doctors perform brain surgery. It had only tortured him.

  A doctor enters and scrapes the bottom of my grandfather’s feet with a pen, saying out loud, Mr. Singh? Mr. Singh? Mr. Singh, but the only response is the haunt of his hollow breathing echoing in the narrow room. When the doctor unveils his feet, their suppressed stink rises into the air. His yellowed toenails are long and curled, and fungus cobwebs his heels and toes.

  —Meh kyant believe e own chilren leh im get like dis, my mother tells me. We was suppose to take turns takin care ah im boh not one ah dem do dey share aftah me.

  Garish staples hold the collapsed side of his head together; hacked hair grows unevenly along the incision’s edge. The cranial bone removal had left behind too much skin; it sagged and settled, a pocket in his skull.

  Instead of my grandfather’s rehabilition bringing him back to his former self, his progress is now marked by his screaming the word no. If my grandmother enters his hospital room, his glassy eyes slide over her and he howls NO! NO-NO-NO-NO-NO-NO-NO until, unable to take it anymore, she leaves and sits in the waiting area. I refrain from asking him any questions, especially everyone’s favorite: Yuh recognize meh? He shrieks no at everyone, and no is his answer to every question. But he is awake now and will continue to heal, so the hospital begins the paperwork to get rid of him.

  There are two options now—home with my grandmother or a nursing home.

  E hah toh stay wid Mammy is the consensus their children reach without consulting Rebecca. Not one of his children offers to take him home. Though it is culturally expected of them to take care of their parents when they’re ill, this isn’t even an option; he is my grandmother’s responsibility. After hearing horror stories about nursing homes from friends and family, they can’t bear to put their father in one. But that isn’t the truth. Thinking of nursing homes make them uneasy, forces them to consider their own uncertain futures.

  He needs round-the-clock help, a nurse informs them, but they don’t think about what t
his will do to their mother; they make the choice that allows their consciences to rest the easiest. My grandmother sits outside the circle of her children. I know she doesn’t want to take on yet another burden from this man, but no one else cares. They don’t ask her what she wants, what she’s thinking, how she feels. Her husband will be thrust upon her once again, stealing whatever life she has left.

  Rebecca sits by for weeks while the doctors monitor her husband and her children fill out paperwork for her, acknowledging her presence only when they need a signature. All talk of the nursing home has long since been laid to rest.

  The day of Shiva’s release, Rebecca tells no one. She travels to the hospital because, without her signature, they can’t do anything.

  I’m changing my mind, Rebecca explains to a nurse while looking around her, checking for her children. I would like my husband to be taken to a nursing home instead, she says in a flawless ­American accent, so there is no mistaking the words coming out of her mouth. I’ve already taken care of everything. Here is the paperwork from the nursing home right by my apartment. They’re expecting him today. Just give me what I need to fill out from the hospital. I would like to get this over with as quickly as possible.

  The familiar nurse is taken aback. This is the first time she’s seeing my grandmother assertive. With everything already arranged, she says, He’ll be well taken care of there, Mrs. Singh. It is very difficult to take care of someone in his condition.

  My grandmother nods. This stranger understands, and wants this freedom for her too.

  What my grandmother doesn’t know is that Pooja decided to take some time off from her job of cleaning houses and is on her way to the hospital with her three young girls in tow. It was time for them to visit Grandpa now that the worst was over. When they arrive, Shiva is already on his way down to the ambulance that will transport him to the nursing home.

  We din know it was today, Mammy, she says. Yuh ready foh im hwome? Yuh need we help? My grandmother says no, the whole time praying nothing will slip about where she is taking her husband.

  They wheel his bed over to the back of the van.

  Come Katie, Meghan, and Ellie, gih yuh grampa kiss, says Pooja to her girls. Tell im yuh goh see im soon. E goin hwome now.

  Shiva is loaded into the van. The driver comes around the back of the truck with his clipboard. He speaks with two medics who will travel with Shiva, then shuts the doors and clamps a lock into place. The driver checks some things off on his paperwork and says, Okay, we’re all set, Mrs. Singh. Pooja and her daughters start to go.

  Just one more thing, the man says.

  Pooja stops to listen.

  Goan, Pooja, Rebecca said, ahgo see yuh latah.

  The driver flips through a few pages. I just need one more ­signature here, please. This just says you know he is being transported to the nursing home instead of—

  Pooja shrieks.

  After that, Rebecca is attacked by one unified force. All of her children band against her, brutal and unrelenting. Rebecca’s children bring her to tears for wanting her freedom from a man she hoped to escape her entire life. With no strength left to fight, Rebecca gives in.

  Oh Gawd Krys, my mother says later that day, wah she do today is what yuh call unbelievable.

  I listen to her without comment, and when she is done I say, None ah allyuh eh tinkin bout Gramma. Ma, allyuh eh gih Gramma ah chance, ah choice. Not one. E beat she, yuh fohget dat? E beat she till e tawt she was dead. And not once oh twice, countless times. She sacrifice everyting.

  Krystal, my mother says, e is meh faddah.

  Ma, Rebecca is e wife. Puh yuhself een she position foh once. Yuh goh take care ah mahn who beat yuh yuh whole life?

  I want to kill Shiva myself when I think of how he’d beaten everyone. But his image flickers before me again, and I try to ­reconcile the two images I have of him: Shiva my grandfather, and Shiva the man.

  E is meh faddah. E was good toh we no mattah wah he do. E put clodes on we back and food een we mout, is all my mother can say. Dere was people woss off dan we. E was meh faddah no mattah what.

  We leave the table, neither one of us willing to capitulate to the other’s perspective. With his children entangled in their ­history, my need to defend my grandmother is strong.

  Because in the end, the only person who can be forced to have him is his wife.

  I MEDITATE ON MY GRANDFATHER’S LIFE and the question of how he came to be this way. My mother and I drive to my grandparents’ apartment in Jersey City. I am reluctant and anxious to step inside once we get to their door. It is 2008, two years since my grandfather was well enough to welcome me himself, two years since his procedures. After the last surgery, we’d all given up hope of him ever truly coming back to himself. I’d never again make him laugh at the memories of me playing with the baby chickens. We’d never again share a hearty Sunday lunch of rice, dhal, and stewed fish with boiled figs and plantains, spoonfuls of watercress salad bordering the rings of our plates. I can’t even remember our last games of checkers. In all the years I played him, he never let me win. And now my chance is gone.

  When I arrive that day, my grandmother bustles over from the couch to welcome my mother and me with a hug. She is warm and soft. Looking around her neck, I glimpse my grandfather ­sitting in his hospital chair in front of the television.

  The last time I visited, what I saw struck me all at once: my grandfather in a gated bed, the left side of his head caved in, white sheets slipped off his black body. He was naked, and his hands clawed his crotch; his face was sunken, eyes wild and crazed, black birthmark on his left cheek, his eyes vacant and rolling in all directions; his mouth had no dentures and it hung open, a dark hole.

  That birthmark on his left cheekbone beamed behind my ­eyelids. I thought of how I used to point at it as a little girl and laugh, Grampa, it look like shit. Ewww. No one else seemed to zero in on it except me, but to me it marked him as different, distinctive. He would join in my laughter and move my hand from in front of his face. Now his eyes are subdued and glazed. I can’t bear to stay in the room with him.

  In the bathroom, various contraptions line the sink, the toilet, and the inside of the bathtub, things to help my grandmother with the tedious processes of caring for my grandfather: helping him to use the toilet, to wash his hands, and to give him a shower. I lean against the door, incapable of holding myself up, and close my eyes. I press my cold fingers to my eyes and slide to the floor.

  It takes me some time to collect myself, but when I emerge from the bathroom, the apartment seems even more cluttered with apparatus to help my grandmother help my grandfather. With all of her added responsibilities, there is no decadent Sunday spread of curried peas and oxtail poured over rice, mountains of dasheen chunks sautéed with smoked herring and onions on the side. I rummage around the fridge, surfacing with a sandwich and some forgotten strawberry ice cream. I eat while watching my grandfather.

  His body is buckled to the chair. My mother sits on the arm of the couch next to him. On his child’s tray she places a sippy cup and two bowls of food, both mashed into mush. I try to convince myself he looks better than the last time I visited, but other than his incision healing and hair growing back, he remains the same: reduced to a child in an elder man’s body. His hands are of no use to him, and his legs can’t hold him up. He is gaunt. A shade of the person he once was.

  Every time my mother tries to spoon food into his mouth, he writhes and twists away from her.

  E too damn stubborn, my grandmother says, even when e like dis. E eh eatin nutten lately.

  Rebecca takes the spoon from my mother. With her left palm, she pushes his chin down, and with her right hand, she pries his gums apart. My grandmother shovels food into his mouth with the mechanical emphasis of a person who hates that she has to do this for so long. She then holds him by the jaws and forces him to chew. Satisfied, she barks, Swallow. Swallow now. And he swallows.

  My grandmother glances at his side
of the living room, where she’s jammed as many of his things as can fit, and joins me back in the kitchen. My mother, much gentler, resumes feeding him, coaxing, Pappy, come nah. Yuh hah toh eat. Open yuh mout nah Pappy.

  I came with questions about my grandparents, and my grandmother is the missing piece. I see how tired she is of taking care of her husband. I want to know stories my mother can’t tell me: How did my grandparents meet? Were they ever in love? Why did my grandmother stay with him? How could she stand to take care of him?

  Gramma, I ask, how yuh takin care ah dis mahn aftah all e do toh yuh?

  My grandmother clasps her hands and looks down before she answers.

  Krys, de mahn ah always beat meh, you know. Some days was foh e spray kyan. Uddah times it was foh ah hose, ah pump, ah rope. E hunt meh like ah animal foh it. Din matter wah, e di always fine someting toh beat meh foh.

  My grandmother’s story begins with the same beating my mother had described, from when she was eight years old.

  Gramma, how you di meet Grampa?

  Her hands fly through the air as the words gush from her mouth. She grabs my face with both hands. Her eyes glint alongside the golden edges of her glasses. No one has ever asked her before. This is the release she’s been yearning for.

  Mistah Shiva was a tall mahn. Ah rheal tall mahn. De day ah meet im e was someting toh watch. If yuh di evah see im den, Krys, Mistah Shiva was someting toh watch.

  In the narrow space between us, she conjures her life for me, repeating a single haunting phrase she’s held fast to for decades. E hah house, lan, and motocah and foh ah young gyul like me een dem days ah couldn’tah dream ah nutten bettah dan house, lan, and motohcah, chile.

  COFFEE

  THEY’D GOTTEN THE NEWS about Rebecca’s uncle, her ­mother’s brother, from a messenger who arrived in the middle of the night, and her mother had wailed until she’d awoken their entire small village, Coal Mine, deep in the hills of Trinidad. The funeral would be later that same day. But grief had no place in the homes of the poor, and they would have to venture to work as normal. At eight in the morning, they were late to leave.