Sister of My Heart (25 page)

Brought up on the cynical tales of Mother’s friends, I had equated a mother-in-law with tyranny, with someone who would fight me tooth and claw for control of her house and her son. But my mother-in-law was more complex than that. Already I could feel, emanating from her, solid as a wall of fire, her loyalty to the Sanyal family. That was why she gave me those keys, symbol of shared power—not so much because she liked me—she hardly knew me, after all—but because I belonged to the family now. But God protect me if I let the Sanyals down. She would never forgive that.

In spite of myself, I felt the stirrings of a reluctant awe. When I married Ramesh, I’d told myself that I would not get close to any of the Sanyals. I would do my duty, and no more. But this was a woman worth admiring.

“I’ll try to do a good job for you, Mother,” I said, and touched her feet in the traditional gesture.

“May you be the mother of a hundred sons,” she responded formally, using the traditional words. But her hand rested for a gentle moment on my head.

For the first time since my marriage, I loosened my grip a little on the pain I had been holding on to desperately, a raft in my sea of stormy loss. Love’s grand passion was snatched from me, yes, but perhaps there could still be quiet affections in my life. Perhaps I could learn to think of this woman as a mother, and this place as a home.

So now I am the keeper of the household, its many cupboards and pantries, trunks and storerooms. All except the double-locked steel Godrej safe that holds the money and the wedding jewelry. Those keys are still kept by my mother-in-law. I do not
mind. I have responsibilities enough. It is so different to live in a household of men, not just Ramesh but his two teenaged brothers with their wild, coltish energy who have drawn me in with their artless demands. They burst into my room at all hours with small crises: a button to be sewed on, a lost schoolbook to be located. They keep me busy with requests for new snacks when they return each afternoon from school. They regale me with gory details about the cat cadaver in the biology lab, or the latest fight on the football field. I have happily accepted the job of making sure they leave for school on time. And though I am only a few years older than they are, something sweet and maternal opens in me as I straighten their lapels and make sure they have not forgotten their lunches.

But morning, before I am plunged into responsibility, allows me time to remember the Sudha I used to be. It seems impossible that I was the girl who ran panting to the terrace to wish on a falling star, who begged Pishi for stories of princesses and demons and saw herself in those stories. Who loved a man, once, so deeply that when she pulled him out of her heart, like a golden thorn—but no, I have promised myself I will not think of that anymore.

When I think of my past, I think most of Anju. There are so many images woven into the fragile filaments of my brain. Anju playing hopscotch with me up on our terrace, intent on victory, but always giving me a damp, generous hug if I won instead. Anju, her eyes dark with mischief, persuading me to eat onion piajis from the vendors. And later, her eyes dark with compunction as she held my head while I threw up in the bathroom. Anju flushed with anger, defending me from Mother’s scoldings. Anju with her dreams of college ended, weeping in my bed. Anju with her face like a starry night as she told me of Sunil. But always at the end I see Anju at our wedding feast. Behind her thin, gold-glittery veil, her eyes are chiseled from black marble as she looks from Sunil to me and back again.

That veil seems to have frozen into gold ice between me and
Anju. After Sunil returned to America and she went back to the mothers—she never did tell me why—I called several times to ask how she was. I would sense in her pauses and her broken-off replies that she missed Sunil, that she longed to talk about him. Yet if I asked how he was faring, all alone in America, she answered curtly, as though she did not trust me with the details of her husband’s life. We would end up speaking inanities—weather, food, films—the way we had vowed never to. After I hung up I wanted to cry. I wanted to hate Sunil with his easy American charm. Sunil who had whirled his way into our lives, as thoughtless as a tornado. But how could I when my cousin’s happiness was so intertwined with his? I wanted to demand of God if this was my reward for giving up my happiness for Anju’s sake. But that was a foolish question. I did what I needed to. Being rewarded had nothing to do with it.

But today as I lean into the window bars, I’ve put those old sorrows away. I am so excited I cannot sit still. A song rises into my mouth and I hum it softly, so as not to wake Ramesh. Yesterday, after a long silence, Anju called to tell me that her visa had arrived, that she would leave for America in three weeks. I could feel her exhilaration throbbing through the phone cord. A frost-knife twisted in my gut. My dear cousin, how far she would be going from everything familiar. From me. I prayed that she would be satisfied with what she found on the other side of the world.

“Please come to Bardhaman so we can be together one last time before you go,” I begged.

Anju hesitated. I could hear her thinking up an excuse, as she had done every time I invited her. But finally, uncertainly, she agreed. She is coming today. My heart shakes with the joy of it. But I am also a little afraid. What will she see when she looks at my new household with her clever, critical eye? At the new me?

ALL THROUGH
the train journey to Bardhaman I’m sweaty and uncomfortable and angry with myself. Why couldn’t I just have told Sudha I was too busy? It’s going to be terribly awkward, both of us trying to find safe topics to discuss, tiptoeing around Sunil’s name as if it’s a lake of drowning sand waiting to suck us in, like in Pishi’s stories.

The first-class compartment is stuffed to bursting with all kinds of people—passengers and beggars and vendors selling everything from sugar-dipped candy to magic cures. Most of them are traveling without the benefit of a ticket. This upsets my sense of justice and makes me feel put upon. I glare at the old woman squatting by my feet beside a basket of smelly, squawking chickens. She scratches her armpit and gives me a betel-juice-stained grin.

The mothers hadn’t wanted me to travel by train. They’d arranged for Singhji to drive me down, but I’d refused. I was old enough to travel by myself, I said. It was only a few hours by train. Singhji would drop me off at the station and Sudha would pick me up at the other end. What could be safer? And hadn’t they themselves said, all these years, that once I was a married woman, they’d no longer have to worry about my reputation?

“I’m concerned because you’ve never traveled anywhere alone,” Mother said. “And the trains get terribly crowded,” said Pishi. They looked so distressed that I was about to give in when Aunt N piped up, “There you go, being difficult as always, always
insisting on your own way. What’s your father-in-law going to say if he hears we bought you a ticket and put you on public transportation, like a common servant girl?”

Mention of my father-in-law put me into a foul mood, and I argued and argued (wasn’t I going to America in less than a month? And how would I learn to travel alone unless I traveled alone?) until Mother said, Fine, if that’s what I wanted I could have it. So now I sit here smelling like chicken droppings, with no one to blame but myself.

Finally the train lurches to a stop at Bardhaman. My clothes are stuck to my back, my eyes red from engine smoke. I step down, fully prepared to be disagreeble. But when I see Sudha, her face bright with a simple, generous joy, the walls I’d set up so carefully collapse around me like a house of cards. Inside my heart it feels wet, like new rain. I drop my bags and throw my arms around her. In spite of all my insecurities, in spite of the oceans that’ll be between us soon and the men that are between us already, I can never stop loving Sudha. It’s my habit, and it’s my fate.

I dislike the house as soon as I see it. There’s something ominous about the hulking brick structure that makes me shiver as I stand before a door massive enough to keep out whole armies of invaders—or is it designed to keep people in? I hear the grate of a bolt, the door swings open, and I’m face-to-face with Mrs. Sanyal.

Years later I’ll think back on this, our first real meeting, and try to reconstruct what I saw. It would be hard to keep the details from being colored by what came afterward, but this much I’ll be sure of: Though Mrs. Sanyal is most pleasant, when she looks at me I feel a focused intensity in her gaze, like a ray of sun through a magnifying glass, as if she’s trying to figure out whether I’m a good influence on her daughter-in-law, or a bad one.

“Come in, dear Anju,” she says. Behind her there’s an enormous wall panel carved with fierce-looking figures, clawed and weaponed. She sees me staring at them and smiles. “They’re yakshas. They guard our house. Come in, come in. I’m glad you’re finally here!” I’m about to thank her when she adds, “Ever since she knew you were coming, Natun Bau’s been so excited she hasn’t been able to concentrate on a thing!”

The rebuke beneath the pleasant words is quite clear. I cast a quick glance at Sudha to see how she’ll handle it and am baffled to see her smiling. When she replies, I hear only respectful affection in her voice. “I know, Mother. I’ve been no help to you at all. But now that Anju’s actually here, I’m sure to do better.”

As Sudha leads me upstairs to an oppressively large guest room crowded with oppressively large furniture, I wonder, didn’t she hear what I heard? Or have I grown overly sensitive because of Sunil’s father-in-law?

Below us, Mrs. Sanyal calls sweetly, “Natun Bau dear, once you settle your cousin, don’t forget it’s almost time to start rolling out the rutis for dinner.”

Throughout the visit, little things bite at me like ants. The way Sudha serves the family at dinnertime, even Ramesh’s younger brothers, cleaning up their spills and removing their dirty dishes. The way her smile doesn’t falter when one of the boys pushes away his plate, telling her—the cheeky brat—that the fish curry didn’t turn out right. The way, whenever Mrs. Sanyal calls her, she drops what she’s doing—even abandoning me in the middle of a conversation with an apologetic “Why don’t you rest for a while, Anju”—to go to her.

But what bothers me most is that Sudha’s so determinedly cheerful. It’s not that I want her to be unhappy. But this bustling young woman who does everything so well—from supervising
the maid as she milks the cows, to putting out quilts in the sun, to frying fresh singaras for Ramesh’s brothers when they get home from school—isn’t the dreamer I’ve admired and been exasperated by, loved and wanted to protect. Can she really have cut Ashok so cleanly out of her heart, like a cancerous growth? Or is she hiding something from me?

One afternoon, sitting under the neem tree in the courtyard while Sudha mends Ramesh’s socks, I ask her if she doesn’t get tired of all the work she’s made to do. “Why is it
you
that has to count out the dirty clothes for the dhobi and then count the clean clothes he brings back? Why is it
you
who has to make up the market list each day and hand out the spices for grinding and cut the vegetables for lunch and dinner? Why is it always
you
who runs up to the terrace to check on the—”