by Kamala Nair
“Um, by the corner of the road where… I don’t know, I don’t remember.” I buried my face in my hands. The lie tied itself into a knot at the pit of my stomach.
“Corner? What corner?” She didn’t believe me.
Amma stepped in. “Leave her alone. Think what she’s been through.”
“She—” Sadhana Aunty began to say, but then clenched her jaw and turned away.
Amma knelt down in front of me and took my hands away from my face. She squeezed them tight and looked at me.
“Molay, you must promise me you will never wander off like that by yourself again. Ever. Do you hear me? There are bad people out there, even in a small village like Malanad. It’s simply not safe for a young girl like you to go off by herself. Will you promise me never to do this again?”
“Okay,” I said, averting my gaze.
“Say, ‘I promise never to wander off by myself again.’ ” Amma squeezed my hands even tighter.
“I promise never to wander off by myself again,” I said, but in my heart I was crossing my fingers. No one could keep me away from Tulasi, not Sadhana Aunty and not Amma—especially not Amma.
I took my sketchpad out onto the verandah and sat next to Krishna.
“Want to draw together?” I asked. I knew that she was upset that I had chosen not to share my mysterious afternoon’s adventure with her.
She shrugged and knitted her fingers into an elaborate web.
“Well, I’m going to draw,” I said. “You can do whatever you like.”
Krishna watched me for a minute, then finally extended her hand. “Me too,” she said.
I smiled and tore out a piece of paper for her and placed my box of colored pencils in between us.
For a while we drew side by side in silence. I was sketching a hibiscus flower, but in my head I was planning out my portrait of Tulasi.
I decided I could not draw her as she was, with her misshapen mouth and discolored face. Beauty was so important to her, she had said so herself: I couldn’t bear to be ugly. I just couldn’t reveal this particular truth to her. So I would draw her as she would look had she been born without deformities. Where there was a strawberry splotch on her face, I would draw smooth, even skin. Where there was a gash in her lip I would draw a full, fleshy Cupid’s bow. I would make her as beautiful on the outside as she was on the inside.
“Rakhee, you said you went to the market?” said Krishna, interrupting my thoughts.
“Yes.” My face grew hot. Lying to the grown-ups was one thing, but lying to Krishna was another.
“But I saw you coming from behind the house,” she said in a quiet voice. “Why is that?”
I did not know what to say, so thinking quickly I slammed my sketchpad onto the verandah ledge and exclaimed dramatically: “Why is everyone always interrogating me? Can’t you all just leave me alone?” I stalked off to my room and closed the door, feeling instantly awful about how I had treated my cousin. I stayed in my room for the rest of the evening, refusing to come out even for dinner.
I crept outside earlier than usual the next morning, knowing I could no longer afford to be careless, and slipped over the stone barrier into the forest like a nymph dissolving into the dew. The sky, hovering between night and dawn, was both light and dark at the same time.
Holding my sketchpad between my teeth, I climbed up and over the wall, and landed in the garden, where Tulasi and Puck were both waiting for me.
“Come,” said Tulasi, leading me with a solemn air down the cobblestone path and into the cottage.
Filled with excitement and anxiety, I drew back the curtains and positioned her in the window seat where an arrow of light fell across her face, giving her skin the same ghostly sheen it had had in my dream.
Two thick candles burned on the table.
“I thought you might need more light,” Tulasi said.
“Thank you.” I felt very proud and serious, like a real artist.
I settled down on the sofa, took a deep breath, and examined her face—the curve of her cheek, the point of her chin, the wave of her hair, the darkness of her eyes. My pencil began to move across the page. I had the sensation that my mind had detached itself from my body. Afraid of this new feeling, I struggled to yank myself back to reality and looked down at the indecipherable tangle of random lines I had created. Tulasi sat still and regal in the dawn light. She trusted me. It was in my power to make her happy. I bit my lip and made a few more tentative strokes. The outline of her face began to emerge. I let myself swim back into that feeling of detachment, and my hand grew more confident, darting back and forth across the page like a curious insect.
I cannot remember much else. Letting my hand do the work, guided by instinct, I entered a kind of trance. Gradually from within the mess of pencil strokes, a face came to life—a perfect, unmarred face.
As my thoughts drifted back to me, my heart began to pound so viciously I feared it would explode right through my chest.
“Rakhee, what is it?” Tulasi stood up, a V of worry creasing the space between her brows.
My hand was shaking, so I set the pencil aside and stared hard at the portrait.
Was I dreaming again? If I pinched myself would I be spirited through the forest back to my room, back to my bed, back into Amma’s stifling embrace?
I closed my eyes and opened them again. This was not just any portrait. I had been introduced to this face for the first time only a few months ago, but I realized now that I had known it for my whole life, that it was as familiar to me as my own face.
“Rakhee, why did you stop?” Tulasi was watching me with a concerned and eager expression. “Are you finished? Can I see?”
I jumped up, holding the pad against my chest.
“Not yet,” I blurted. “I have to go.”
“But Rakhee, why can’t I see it? It is early still. Why must you go so abruptly?”
“I can’t explain right now, I just have to go.” I ran out into the garden and clambered over the wall.
I sped through the forest as the sun rose, beating its heavy rays down on the top of my head and my back. Crows were everywhere, hovering in clumps on the branches of the trees, on the rotting stumps rising up from the earth, on the blankets of velvety green moss, the spirits of my ancestors guiding me, provoking me, protecting me, judging me. Who was Tulasi, really? A door had been unlocked, but still I struggled to open it. Twigs and sticks snapped beneath my feet as I stomped through the trees, back to Ashoka.
I half-expected to find Sadhana Aunty waiting for me on the verandah, hands on hips, but I was able to slip back into my room undetected. Panting like an animal, I tore the portrait out of the sketchpad, went over to my suitcase, unzipped the inner pocket, and slipped the sheet of paper inside.
I lay down on the bed, facing the ceiling, willing my ears to stop ringing and my heartbeat to slow down.
“Rakhee, are you awake?” My bedroom door opened and Krishna poked her head in.
I sat up.
“I am sorry for int-int-interrogating you yesterday,” she said in English, pronouncing each word with practiced deliberation.
“I shouldn’t have shouted at you.”
Krishna grinned, “Let’s eat breakfast. We’re having dosas. Will you sit beside me?”
I smiled back at her. “Of course.”
My body settled into a momentary calm as I followed Krishna into the dining room and sat down next to her. Janaki placed a perfectly round, crisp dosa onto my plate, and ladled golden sambar on top. Amma was wearing her nightgown, moving her forefinger in a circle around the edge of her teacup, and staring off into space.
“Would anybody like some fruit?” Sadhana Aunty came out of the kitchen holding a brass platter with a ripe red mango balanced upon it. She was surprisingly cheerful.
“Mmmmm, mango!” said Krishna.
Sadhana Aunty sat at the head of the table, and made a clean slice through the mango’s flesh with a knife. Yellow juice oozed and trickled out through
the crack.
Why was she in such a good mood? My heart began its uncomfortable dance again.
“Mango, mango, mango, my favorite fruit!” Krishna chanted.
“Rakhee, would you like some?” Sadhana Aunty’s eyes met mine and flashed. The dance in my heart came to an abrupt halt; everything inside me froze.
The knife.
It was the same one that I had brought with me that first morning I had gone to the garden; it was the knife that had grazed my flesh and drawn my blood. It was the same knife that I had left as a guard buried deep within the roots of the banyan tree.
Sadhana Aunty didn’t look at me again, but she smiled as she peeled the skin off the mango in one long, endless stroke.
Chapter 19
The rain stopped. All summer long it had come down regularly, at least every other day, giving us respite from the sun, washing over the earth, making it new again. But now the sun reigned ceaselessly, blanketing the village in its cruel heat. Clay rooftops blistered and cracked, and sunstruck birds fell from the sky like charred stones.
I couldn’t get back to the garden. Sadhana Aunty was always around. When I woke up at dawn I would hear her pacing the halls, knitting on the verandah, or on her knees scrubbing the floor like a servant. To my surprise, she hadn’t confronted me, but she watched me the way bullfrogs in the river sat on their lily pads and eyed the black flies lathering just beyond the reach of their sticky tongues. Krishna and I were forbidden from leaving Ashoka unaccompanied by an adult, in case “that crazy man Rakhee encountered” was still lurking about, even though Sadhana Aunty and I both knew there was no crazy man.
When I wasn’t lying in my room thinking about Tulasi or squinting at her half-finished portrait, Krishna and I sulked around the house trying to occupy ourselves with reading, drawing, or coming up with ideas for mini-plays. But it wasn’t the same without Meenu, who, like Gitanjali, had taken to shutting herself up in her room, coming out only for meals, and I suspected even that was only because Sadhana Aunty forced her. Nalini Aunty could usually be found staring at the fuzzy pictures on the television screen, popping a chili-coated snack mix into her slack mouth, while Balu crawled around on the floor or whimpered until he was lifted into her lap. Vijay Uncle was down at the hospital more often than not, but when he was at home, I could hear him muttering to himself. He had not shaved since Muthashi died, and a growth of unkempt beard blackened his jaw. Amma went back to sleeping away the days in her dim room, sometimes not even getting up to bathe, except when Prem stopped by for a visit.
“Rakhee, where’s your mum?” he would ask, as he came swiftly up the verandah steps in his clean white shirt and khaki pants. The very sight of him brought the resentment rising up like bile at the back of my throat.
I would go into Amma’s room, dark and hot with dandelions of dust floating in the air. “Prem’s here,” I would say, trying my best not to breathe in the stuffiness.
Amma would sit up and regard me blearily as if I were a stranger for a few seconds before a light of recognition set her eyes aflame.
“Tell him to wait for me in the sitting room,” she would instruct before springing out of bed and vanishing into the bathroom. After emerging more than half an hour later, fully dressed, her long hair swishing behind her back like a horse’s tail, she would hurry to the sitting room, leaving behind a sharp scent and a trail of wet footprints.
One afternoon as Krishna and I sat fanning ourselves with comic books on the verandah swing, the sound of someone walking up the steps that led up to the lawn and opening the creaky front gate punctured the restless sobs of a baby goat alone in its pen. Slow, rhythmic footsteps, not fast and eager, so I knew it wasn’t Prem, who took the stairs two at a time, just like Aba, which I hated to acknowledge.
I got to my feet when I saw Veena Aunty walking across the lawn toward us. Veena Aunty hadn’t been around much since Muthashi’s funeral, so I still hadn’t had a chance to talk to her. I had a feeling Amma didn’t want me to see her. A few times I asked for permission to go over to their house for a visit and she said, “Why do you want to go and bother Veena Aunty? She hasn’t seen her family in a long time.”
“How are you, dear?” she said in a distracted tone, and then without waiting for an answer, “Where is your mother?”
“I’ll get her,” I told Veena Aunty, and started to go toward Amma’s bedroom. But she put a hand on my shoulder.
“No, let me,” she said.
She slipped into Amma’s room and closed the door. Of course I followed and pressed my ear against the warm wood, but they were talking so quietly that I didn’t hear much. Only at one point did I catch anything as Amma gave out a frantic yell:
“Don’t you call him, don’t you dare call him!”
“He needs to know, Chitra, he’s your husband. Let us help you.”
“No!” cried Amma, and then everything was silent again.
I tried to catch Veena Aunty on her way out, but she was even more distracted.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing you need to worry about, dear,” she said in a hurry, as she passed me by, but then she paused, came back, and gave my shoulder a squeeze. “It’s going to be okay, dear, I promise.”
One day Dev, Vijay Uncle, and Sadhana Aunty filed into the sitting room, shutting the door and locking it behind them. It was daylight when they went in, and the door didn’t open again until sunset, when Sadhana Aunty emerged with sweat on her cheeks and called for Janaki to bring them a jug of water. Taking the proffered jug, she went back in and closed the door.
Amma appeared after a while wearing a dingy white housedress, her hair loose and tangled, and, after grilling us about who was in there, began to pace back and forth outside the locked door.
“Why are they in there for so long?” she asked nobody in particular. Once or twice she tried to rattle the doorknob, but it didn’t budge, so she gave up and went back to pacing.
At nightfall I heard a loud crackle and the lights went out.
“The current,” said Krishna.
Janaki hurried around the dining room lighting candles, and everyone, even Meenu and Gitanjali, gathered around the table.
After the candles were lit, Janaki went and stood behind Amma and said: “The children must be fed.”
Amma squinted at her, as if she didn’t quite understand.
“The children,” said Janaki in a louder voice. “They need their dinner.”
“Oh yes, of course,” said Amma, her eyes widening. “Go ahead and feed them.”
“But madam.” Janaki looked down at her scuffed feet, then shifted her weight from one to the other, her anklets jingling. “I don’t know what to give them. Sadhana Chechi usually gives me instructions.”
Amma pressed her palm to her forehead and closed her eyes. “I don’t know, Janaki, give them whatever is in the kitchen, give them anything!”
Eventually we fed on the afternoon’s rice coated in a dal so bland and soupy I suspected Janaki had watered it down to make sure there was enough to go around.
“What in the world could they be doing in there?” complained Nalini Aunty, as she shoveled the tepid mixture into her mouth. “I understand that Dev and my husband have business to discuss, but why must Sadhana Chechi involve herself? It’s simply not ladylike the way she interferes with the hospital business.”
“Maybe they’ll sell the stupid hospital,” said Gitanjali.
“Chee, don’t talk that way, you silly girl. The hospital belongs with the Varmas. Think of the prestige it has brought this family. But I do wish I could convince that husband of mine to be better about collecting payment from patients. He is so lenient. At least Dev has some business sense. He doesn’t treat people for free.” Nalini Aunty’s mouth curved downward. “Though we still never seem to have enough money. ‘The Varmas are a prosperous family,’ everyone told me when I was a young girl, but look at me now.” She fingered the thin brown material of her sari and sniffed.
; A muffled shout boomed through the door.
Nalini Aunty clicked her tongue in annoyance, but I saw fear in her eyes. Amma didn’t say anything but she bit her lip so hard that a faint thread of blood trickled down from the edge of one tooth. Krishna and I exchanged looks.
A line of crudely crafted candles rose up from the center of the table like white fingers, and flames bloomed from their misshapen tips. Nobody spoke or moved. We sat glued to our chairs, waiting. There wasn’t anywhere else to go.
Finally Nalini Aunty spoke in a voice that sounded different—softer, shakier.
“Chitra Chechi, won’t you sing a song for us? I have heard stories about your voice. They say you sing like an angel.”
I turned to Nalini Aunty in surprise, and for a second I thought I caught a glimpse of the girl in the photograph, the one with the hopeful smile, the one who had long been erased.
“A song?” Amma stared uncomprehendingly.
“Yes, please, sing us a song. Won’t you?” Her eyes were wide and pleading.
Amma looked at Nalini Aunty and her face changed, as if, like Ashoka, the current had shut off inside her head for a while and then had been suddenly switched back on. “Of course,” she said, smiling. “Yes, of course.”
She took a deep breath, smoothed her hair, then folded her hands, like two pretty flowers, neatly upon her lap. As she began to sing, her sweet, clear tones wound a golden thread around the room, binding together its occupants, dissolving the thick tension, and replacing it with calm. She really did sing like an angel, my mother, and I closed my eyes, pretending it was like old times and she was singing only to me. Janaki emerged from the kitchen and crouched beside the table, her head cocked to one side. We all listened, entranced, until at last the door to the sitting room opened and the thread snapped. Amma stopped singing, Nalini Aunty stood up, and we all looked at Sadhana Aunty, who leaned in the doorway.
“Well, you are all still up,” she said in a ragged voice. “Gitanjali, I must speak with you privately. Come with me, please.”
