Sister of My Heart (37 page)

As the week passes, I work myself deeper into depression, certain I’ve ruined Sudha’s life. This morning I hand Sunil his coffee in moody silence and won’t return his good-byes. When he tries to kiss me, I turn my face away. “Oh, Angel!” he says, throwing up his hands. But when he comes home in the evening, he hands me a bouquet of irises in that deep blue color which I love, and when he hugs me, he holds me to him for an extra moment.

All this only reminds me of the little tendernesses now lost forever to Sudha. Still, I bring my pillows back to the bedroom.

We make love that night after a long time. It’s wonderful, but afterward I’m caught in a strange restlessness. I toss and turn,
then finally sit up. “I can’t stop thinking of Sudha—I hope she’s okay.”

Sunil acts like he’s sleeping, but a telltale furrow springs up between his brows. He probably doesn’t want to hear any more about Sudha—I’ve been going on and on about her all week—but I can’t seem to stop.

“I wish I could do more than just call her once in a while.”

“You’ve already done too much.” Sunil sits up too, abandoning all pretense of sleep. “You’ve made the kind of decision for her that you should never make for someone else. What if things don’t work out, and ten years down the line she blames you for all her troubles?”

“Sudha’s not like that!” My voice is shrill, eager for a fight. That’s what I need—to attack someone, anyone. Maybe that would still those doubting voices inside my head. “You don’t know how it is between the two of us—I don’t think you’ve ever loved anyone the way we love each other. Sudha’s like my other half—how could I just sit back and let her mother-in-law and that jellyfish of a husband force her into an abortion she didn’t want?”

“Don’t get so worked up,” Sunil says, mildly enough. “It’s not good for you.”

“Worked up!
Worked up!
You’d be worked up too if people were trying to kill—no, murder—your baby niece.”

Sunil doesn’t comment on that. Instead he says, “But how’s she going to live now? You’ve told me that the mothers have money troubles of their own. Surely she wouldn’t want to be a burden to—”

“Of course she won’t! She’ll get a job.”

“Doing what? She has no training, no experience.”

“She could—” I press my fingers to my temples and will a solution to come. “She could supply the local boutiques with needlework. You don’t know how talented she is—”

Sunil gives me an ironic look. “You really believe it’s that easy, don’t you?”

“Not easy, perhaps, but not impossible either,” I say. I
have
to believe in possibility. How else can we bear the enormous weight of life?

“What about the social stigma? Just like Aunt Nalini said, there’ll be a lot of talk.”

I sigh. “There’s always talk. You have to ignore it.”

“That’s easy for you to say, Anju. You’re safe here in America. Sudha’s the one who’ll have to face it every day. What kind of life will it be for her, alone with her daughter for the rest of her days—for who’d want to marry her after this? A social pariah—” There’s an odd harshness in Sunil’s voice, a raw, grating note under the cruel words, as though it hurts him to say them. I press my knuckles into my eyes—I must figure out that note, what it means—but all I can see is my cousin walking down a street holding her daughter’s hand, while the neighbor women whisper from verandas and the neighbor children run behind, calling out wicked names.

“Maybe her mother wasn’t so wrong after all,” Sunil says. “Maybe the abortion would have been the lesser of the two evils.”

I stare at my husband. At the dark, heavy shapes of the words he has just released into the air between us. How little I know of this man. How little we ever know of the men we rush into loving.

“Why don’t you come out and say it was okay for Mrs. Sanyal to demand an abortion,” I finally whisper. “Why don’t you say Ramesh did the right thing, siding with his mother. Maybe
you’d
have wanted me to have an abortion too, if we’d been in India and my baby hadn’t turned out to be a boy.”

“Anjali—” says Sunil angrily, but I don’t wait to hear any more. I stalk from the room, slamming the door behind me. I know what I just said is unfair—or is it? Questions riddle me until it feels as if I have pins and needles all over my body. How can Sunil be so unfeeling toward Sudha’s plight? Does it mean he’d be the same way toward me, if ever I got into trouble? Does he love me at all? What if something happened to our baby—
would he love me still? Pregnant-woman fancies perhaps, the kind that come to us all when we’re alone, but I can’t stop them.

And Sudha, who’s going to be alone all her nights—what fancies are taking sudden flight in her mind, like a flock of frightened birds? Does she put out her hand in her sleep, searching for Ramesh’s familiar shape? Does she miss the way a body molds itself against another in bed, fused by need and familiarity? Is she already regretting the path I’ve made her take? Will she, as Sunil warned, look back on this day and curse me?

I can’t think straight anymore. I’ve lost all sense of perspective.

I curl myself onto the couch, shivering a little because I’ve left my blankets in the bedroom.
Please
, I close my aching eyes and pray.
Please, just let me sleep
.

Then the memory comes to me, so intense that I can feel again the cold slimy jelly which the nurse rubbed onto my skin. She’s sliding the monitor back and forth over the mound that is my stomach as she prepares for the ultrasound that will show me my baby. At first he’s a vague blob on the screen. Then as the image is enlarged I see the delicate curl of his perfect fishbone spine, the small bump of his penis. He waves his arms and legs in a graceful underwater dance, though as yet I don’t feel any of it. The green radium blip on the screen, not unlike the stars Sudha and I used to watch on those long-ago summer nights, is the beat of his heart.

That ultrasound had changed everything, made my baby real in a whole new way.

I know it must have been the same for Sudha.

I go to the coat closet and get out a bunch of jackets. I put a couple under my head and cover myself with the rest. I still can’t say, for sure, that I gave Sudha the right advice. Nor can I tell what its repercussions will be. But my breath steadies, and my heartbeat. And when I feel the idea leap up inside me, I know my baby has thought it into being. And like my baby, it’s perfect.

I’ll bring Sudha and her daughter to America. Why not! She
can sew clothes for all the Indian ladies here and maybe—finally—open that boutique she dreamed of. She can live in her own studio apartment down the road—that way she’ll have her independence. Every afternoon I’ll take my son over to play with her daughter, so the two of them can grow up together, as dear to each other as we were. We’ll give them matching names: Prem, god of love, and Dayita, beloved.

Prem and Dayita, I whisper aloud. Prem and Dayita, children who’ll be loved like no child has ever been loved before.

Tomorrow I’ll think of all the prickly details, how to get them here, the kinds of visas, how much it’ll all cost. I can get a job and save for their tickets. That way I won’t have to ask Sunil for a single penny. Tomorrow I’ll go to my college library—I know they’re looking for an assistant. I won’t even tell Sunil about it. It’ll be my secret, mine and my baby’s.

Tomorrow, I say to myself, smiling in the dark.

There’s something I’m forgetting, some crucial element of the equation without which the answer will turn out wrong. Something that tinges my triumph with misgiving. But I’m too exhausted to figure it out.

The last thing I imagine before I sink into a viscous sleep is the astonishment on Sunil’s face when he sees the airline tickets.

I BEND
awkwardly over the steel trunk to stuff in two more towels, then press down on the lid with all of my pregnant weight. When it creaks to a reluctant close, I straighten up with a relieved sigh. I wipe my sweaty face and rub at my lower back, which has been one constant ache all week. There’s an ache inside me too, a desolation as I watch the movers dismantle the last of the furniture we’re taking with us—two fourposter beds, the smaller of the dining tables, a cupboard—and load them on to the lorry. Today is the day we move to our flat. It’s also the day the construction company starts tearing down the house—I can’t call it our house anymore—so they can begin building the twenty-four-story apartment complex that will take its place.

The end of an era, of a lifestyle. The end of sitting on the mossy roof while Pishi oils my hair and tells stories of her father’s time. The end of picking jasmines from the garden bushes to make garlands for our puja altar. The end of opening the door to a long-unused room and smelling, in the dust, the yearnings of those who lived here ages ago.

If I feel desolation, how much more must the mothers be feeling. And I, Sudha, breaker of homes, am the one who has brought it into their lives.

But when I come out on the corridor, I’m faced not by tragedy but drama. Mother rushes down the stairs, calling out to the movers to be sure to use the proper padding before they load her mahogany almirah. “Singhji, Singhji,” I hear her shout. “Are you
ready? I’ve got to get over to the flat before the movers get there, or else they’ll surely put everything in the wrong place.” A truck from the Sisters of Charity rolls up and Pishi and Ramur Ma carry out armloads of household goods we’ve decided we no longer need. There’s a phone call for Gouri Ma. The auctioneers who took our antique furniture held a successful sale and will be sending her a check soon. They might even be able to get us some money for the car. A gentleman at the auction was interested in vintage models. Yes, yes, says Gouri Ma and jots down figures. Years seem to have fallen away from her face. Some of it is due to the successful surgery she had two months back, but a lot of it happened after she made up her mind to sell the house.

“I think we’ll be very happy in our new place, don’t you?” she tells me as she hangs up. “Be sure to rest well in the afternoon. We’ll put you to work decorating it this evening.” She waves her notes at me as she hurries off. “There’s going to be enough money to buy a very nice cradle for our baby, and you’ll have to decide where to put it.”

Isn’t it funny, I tell my daughter—for she and I have taken to having long conversations nowadays—how we spend so much time holding on to the old ways, not knowing how refreshing change can be? How, like a wind from the Ganga, it can sweep clean all the dust we’ve accumulated in the crannies of our mind?

She nods wisely inside me—already she is wiser than I, this child whose life was almost torn in two in the tug of war between change and the old ways. Isn’t it funny, she adds, that sometimes the thing we’ve feared most, year after year, turns out to be the best thing that could have happened to us?

I think about last week, when the final divorce papers were delivered to me from the court. I looked at the wax seal, colored an ironic sindur-red, scared of how I would react. This was the final disgrace for a woman, the final failure. That was what I had been brought up believing. I waited for despair to break over me like a flood wave—but it didn’t. There was a sense of great tiredness, yes, and some sorrow. I had worked so hard at loving
my in-laws, at being a good wife. I felt as though I’d spent years of my life pushing a rock uphill—and the moment I stopped, it rolled right down to the bottom. But there was also a huge relief, and a small hope. I signed my name at the bottom of the form with a flourish, and was surprised to find my mouth curving in a smile. We were starting anew, my daughter and I, and because there were no roles charted out for us by society, we could become anything we wanted.

It’s from moments like this that history is made, I tell my daughter, as much as it is from wars and treaties and the deaths of kings. But most times we don’t realize it.

She begins to reply, but at that moment Ramur Ma shouts from downstairs, “O Sudha Didi, Gouri Ma wants you to come to the living room. Someone’s here to see you.”

How inconvenient, I say to my daughter, wiping my hands on my dust-streaked sari. Just when I was about to go for a bath. Who do you think it could it be?

I have no idea, she says, sounding as irritated as I at the interruption.