Sister of My Heart (28 page)

What is hardest for me to understand is how Sunil feels toward Sudha. For the longest time we never brought her name up. He’d ask about the mothers from time to time—he’s courteous that way—but he wouldn’t say a word about Sudha, not even when he picked up the mail and there was a letter from her in the stack.

For a while I was happy to have it that way. Our wedding day was still too close to me. In spite of all the times we made love, all the sweet words Sunil whispered afterward into my hair, all I had to do was close my eyes and I could see the look on his face as he stared after Sudha, as he picked up the handkerchief that had fallen from her waistband. I’d never seen that wide-pupiled, out-of-control look on him again, not even at the height of our lovemaking.

But silence has its own insidious power. Because we wouldn’t speak of her, Sudha sat between us on the sofa as we watched TV. Her hand brushed ours at table as we reached for a jug of juice, a carafe of wine. Setting off on a weekend drive, we’d catch her eyes in the rearview mirror, and when at night we lay in bed, we’d have to reach across her phantom body to touch each other. I was afraid of this Sudha we’d created. She wasn’t the cousin
I loved, with her fears and fanciful imaginings, the girl who’d wanted so much and settled for so little. This Sudha, frozen in her bridal finery, remote and mythic as the princess in the snake palace—how could I hope to be her equal in any way? How could I claim my husband back from her?

And so I began talking, just a little at a time, telling Sunil about our childhood. The escapades, the punishments. Sunil never said anything, but his entire body would grow still as I spoke, like he was listening with every pore. Still I continued, telling him about Sudha’s reluctant love for her mother, her dreams of creating designer-label clothes, her belief in falling stars. I took special care to paint for him images of Sudha as a wife, how well she played that part, how cherished she was in her new home, and how happy. Perhaps I exaggerated a bit, but it’s only human, isn’t it, to want to protect what belongs to you?

As I spoke, I realized how much I’d been missing Sudha, how much I longed to tell her about my troubles. In my letters, I’d only presented the best and brightest parts of my American existence. Was it out of a desire to save her from worry, or out of a need to let her know what a wonderful marriage Sunil and I had?

Sudha’s letters were no more honest than mine. Sometimes I’d get one, full of a wonderful description of Durga Puja in her in-laws’ home, or telling me how exciting it was when Ramesh took them all to the inauguration of a bridge he’d designed. But these were only surface things, and reading them I’d want to shake her because she wouldn’t let me past them into her real life.

Mother’s letters were a little better, although she minimized everything that might worry me, not realizing that it only made me more anxious. She’d write that she hadn’t been well, and immediately I’d imagine her doubled over with chest pains. She’d write that money was a bit short, and I’d picture the mothers living on rice and water. I’ve asked her a hundred times to sell that white elephant of a house which constantly needs repairs—the land it’s sitting on is worth a great deal—but she always writes back that that’s unthinkable. It’s the only home Pishi knew, and Aunt
Nalini as well. She herself had lived there all her adult life, and wanted to die there.

Recently, though, mother’s letters have been mostly about Sudha, and they’re the ones I’m most worried by. That’s why I sit here holding the cream envelope, scared to open it.

The first hint that things might not be well with Sudha came from one of the teatime aunties whose sister lives in Bahrampur and knows Ramesh’s Aunt Tarini. Apparently Aunt Tarini had been going around telling people something must be wrong with Sudha, look how it was four years already and she didn’t have even one baby to show in all that time. Aunt N took the affront personally and was ready to write her a nasty letter saying there was nothing wrong with
her
daughter, how about
their
son, but Mother wouldn’t let her. Foolish gossip, she said, is best ignored. Surely if there were a medical problem, or her in-laws were treating her badly, Sudha would have told them.

When I read that, I sighed. My mother’s world was so bounded by the simple, angular lines of honesty that she’d forgotten how it was to be torn by conflicting loyalties.

But a few months later Mrs. Sanyal called Mother to say they were getting a little concerned, nothing to get anxious about, still, they thought they’d take Sudha to see one of the ladies’ doctors in Bardhaman. Mother asked to speak to Sudha, but Sudha answered in monosyllables, saying only, over and over, Don’t worry, I’m okay. But what else could she have said with Mrs. Sanyal listening?

What bothered me most was that all this time I’d been getting letters from Sudha as usual. They were cheerful as ever, and not one had mentioned a word about any of this. I could understand her not wanting to bad-mouth her mother-in-law, but why couldn’t she have written to me of how she felt about not becoming pregnant? Together we would have grieved and raged and thought up a way of coping, as we used to do as girls. The fact that Sudha no longer turned to me when in trouble, that instead she preferred to—there was no other word for it—lie, worked
itself deeper and deeper into me, the way Pishi used to say a broken needle tip would if it became embedded in our flesh, not resting until it found our heart.

The doctor in Bardhaman, writes my mother today, pronounced that Sudha was completely normal, and for a few weeks matters seemed to have settled down. But now Sudha’s mother-in-law wants a second opinion. So she’s going to bring Sudha to Calcutta to be checked out by a leading gynecologist.

I’m furious as I read this. I picture Sudha lying on an examining table, the awkward helplessness of her splayed legs, the doctor’s callous hands searching and prodding inside her. How violated she must feel. It makes me shudder with revulsion. For once, I agree with Aunt N—Sudha’s husband should be the one going to the doctor. My books fall to the floor with a thud as I stand up to pace restlessly around the room.

“What’s the matter?” says Sunil.

I tell him, my voice rising as the angry words tumble out. “It’s so unfair. Why is it that everyone always thinks it’s the woman’s problem? Why is it that the woman’s always guilty until proved innocent? And even after she’s proved innocent, as in Sudha’s case, she has to continue to suffer. Why?”

“There aren’t any answers to a lot of
whys
in the world, Anju. It’s just how things are done. Sudha’s mother-in-law isn’t as bad as some of the others. You must have heard the stories when you were growing up in Calcutta—all the things that happen to childless women—”

I glare at him. It isn’t just what he says—and the underlying insinuation of
childless women
that gets me. It’s his tone, infuriatingly calm, as if we’re discussing the ancient Christian martyrs instead of my cousin’s life.

Maybe it’s because I’m all worked up, but I seem to hear something else in his voice.
See how lucky you are to live in this free and easy American culture, to have a magnanimous husband like me
.

“You don’t care a bit about what happens to Sudha, do you?” I shout.

“You don’t know what I care about,” says Sunil, very quietly, his voice like a knife sliding from its sheath. But I’m too upset to stop.

“You probably don’t even see anything wrong in treating a woman that way,” I say. “You probably agree with all those Indian men who see a woman as nothing more than a baby machine.”

“Kindly don’t shout, Anjali,” says Sunil coldly. I can tell he’s really upset by the fact that he uses my full name. “Once in a while you should actually listen to what people are saying before attacking them. If you took a good look at your life, all the things you’re allowed to do, maybe then you’d be a little more—”

He breaks off abruptly, but of course I know the word he’s left out.
Grateful, grateful, grateful
.

Sunil grabs up his keys from the kitchen counter, shrugs on his jacket, opens the apartment door, and is gone almost before I realize it. Gone without kissing me as he always does when leaving, gone without saying he’ll be back.

I stand in the middle of the empty room, my lungs bursting with the words I haven’t yet had a chance to say, and feel the startled sting of tears. We’ve had some big fights before, but he’s never left me like this. I feel a prick of premonition, as though my life’s turning, like a boat in a gale. What if he doesn’t return? says a small scared voice inside my head.

“Of course he will,” I say, speaking aloud to calm myself. “See, the computer’s still on.” But when the voice asks, Now that he’s found out how easy it is to leave an argument in anger, what if he does it again? And again? I have no answer.

I pace some more, kick the furniture. End up in the kitchen where I gulp down mouthfuls of Rocky Road ice cream straight out of the carton. It’s not my fault that he can’t handle his temper, I mutter. He should have understood how upset I was about Sudha. I weep some more out of self-pity. It’s an unfair world where not only are we women expected to have husbands but we’re supposed to feel grateful for them as well.

Then I’m ashamed for indulging myself like this. Pull yourself together, Anju, I tell myself. This isn’t about you. Use the few brains you have to think of how you can help Sudha. Because you’ve got to help her, whether she asks for it or not. It doesn’t matter that she didn’t tell you what’s going on. She’s still the sister of your heart, the one you called out into the world, the one you’re responsible for.

I pick up a notepad and start jotting down ideas. I’ll make sure my mother insists on Sudha spending a few days with her in Calcutta after the checkup. I’ll call Sudha then and make her tell me the whole truth. How bad things are with her mother-in-law. What part her husband’s been playing in all this. What she herself wants. And when I’ve found it all out, I’ll know what to do.

WHEN I WAS
a child, I could depend on people being a certain way. All those I was closest to—Anju, Pishi, Gouri Ma, even my mother—I knew what angered them and what made them happy. Though their actions surprised me sometimes, their motives never did. In spite of their surface complexities, at their hearts there was a certain simplicity. I had believed that was how all people were.

Now, looking at my mother-in-law, I am no longer sure.

My mother-in-law is like a sunlit field of flowers. You are drawn into it, admiring, then suddenly you are caught in the stinging tangles of a hidden bichuti vine. The roots of the poisons in her run deep, beyond my powers of digging. What vindictiveness is stored in her from the days when she was a young bride, looked down on because of her parents’ poverty? How hard is the crust which formed over her heart in the early days of her widowhood, when her husband’s relatives turned against her? What terrible vows did she make during those sleepless nights and desperate days which taught her that she could depend on no one? How naive I had been to think what such a woman extended toward me was as uncomplicated as love.

On the way to the specialist in Calcutta, my mother-in-law doesn’t say much. Mostly she stares stoically ahead, past the front seat where Ramesh is sitting beside the driver, into the hot dusty glare of noon. From the slight movement of her lips I think she’s repeating the names of God. But I am wary of guesses where she
is concerned. Earlier while we waited at a level crossing for a train to pass, she told me, not unkindly, to be prepared for whatever the doctor might say. One of her friends’ daughter-in-law had to go into surgery right after an examination like this—they’d found something seriously wrong with her tubes—but then she ended up with two sets of twins.

Does she mean this as a warning, or a message of hope?

One thing I do know—she is upset that Ramesh is with us, and that he and I will stay on in Calcutta without her. She would have liked to finish my checkup, get the mandatory visit to the mothers over as quickly as possible, and take me back to Bardhaman—her territory—the same day. But when Gouri Ma had called last week, Ramesh was the one to pick up the phone. And when she told him how much the mothers missed me, and how much they would like a chance to have the two of us stay with them for a few days, he innocently promised we would do so.

Oh, what a scene there was when my mother-in-law learned what he’d agreed to.

“Am I dead?” she said to him—not shouting, no, that wasn’t her style, but her voice cold and crackling like snakeskin. “Am I dead that you think you can arrange whatever you want, do whatever people insist on without even asking my permission?”

Ramesh replied that it wasn’t just “people.” It was his wife’s aunt, whom he was supposed to respect like his own mother, wasn’t he?

My mother-in-law looked at him, her face expressionless. And Ramesh, who orders hundreds of men around every day, seemed to shrink. Who knew the history between mother and son, how long ago she had started staring him down like this? But whatever was in her glance, it worked on my husband like a nail does on a car tire. Although he did manage to say that he saw nothing wrong in us spending a little time with the mothers, his voice wavered unconvincingly, and in a few minutes he added that if she really didn’t want us to, he would call Gouri Ma and make excuses. Watching the Adam’s apple in his throat bob up and
down as he swallowed, I felt pity and despair squeeze my chest like a pair of burning hands.