“I’m sorry to cause you so much trouble,” I say.
“Nonsense. Aren’t you our daughter, tied to us not only by blood but by all the years of your life?” Gouri Ma’s eyes hold mine. I know what she is really saying. No matter who your father was, you are you, and you belong here. As will your daughter. Because ultimately blood is not as important as love.
I breathe out in a deep, satisfied sigh and snuggle into my pillow. Long after she has turned off the light, I feel Gouri Ma’s soft touch on my hair, like a blessing. Next door I can hear the mothers talking, their voices rising and falling in argument, trying to figure out what they should do. The sounds relax me. Even a sudden burst of anger from Gouri Ma, or my mother’s extravagant wails, are familiar as childhood lullabies, with their plaintive refrain of concern. I know the beat underlying them so well, I could tap it out on my bones.
“It’s the beat of the caring heart,” I whisper to my daughter. And together, soothed, we sleep.
The next morning, because my mother insists, Gouri Ma calls my mother-in-law. She tells her I am here, that I am well, that I want to keep the baby. Could she possibly work out a compromise, so both families can save face and be happy?
My mother-in-law is gracious, with the graciousness of someone who knows she cannot be persuaded. If I return at once and go through with the scheduled abortion, she will consider my foolish act of rebellion forgotten. If not, she is afraid she will have to set the divorce proceedings in motion.
But what does Ramesh say to all this? Gouri Ma says. She asks if she can speak to him.
My mother-in-law informs her that he is not available. He agrees with her, of course. She sounds surprised that anyone would even need to ask.
After she hangs up, Gouri Ma takes my hands in hers. “I didn’t have much hope concerning your mother-in-law,” she says, “but Nalini made such a fuss that I made the call. We should contact Ramesh, though. I’ll send Singhji to his office—”
I think for a while of his soft silken eyes, his hesitant hand cupping my belly. The way his mouth wavered into weakness when his mother raised her voice. The way he held his hands over his ears and begged, Sudha, please, let me be.
“He knows where I am,” I say finally. “If he wants us, he can get in touch with us easily enough. And if he doesn’t want her”—I touch my stomach—”then I’m not for him either.”
We do not hear from Ramesh. The next week a peon delivers divorce papers to our door. Under “Reason” is typed “Desertion.”
I take off my wedding bracelets later that day, wipe off the sindur powder in spite of my mother’s lamentations.
“O Goddess Durga! What will people say?” she cries. “A pregnant woman without sindur on her forehead! What shameful names will they call your child?”
I offer her a nonchalant shrug, but I’m pierced by a shaft of guilt. Is my audacity laying my daughter open to condemnation?
Surprisingly, it is my usually diffident Pishi who comes to my rescue. “Why should she care anymore what people say? What good has it done her? What good has it done any of us, a whole lifetime of being afraid of what society might think? I spit on this society which says it’s fine to kill a baby girl in her mother’s womb, but wrong for the mother to run away to save her child.” She’s standing now, her chest heaving, her face flushed. I’ve never seen her this impassioned, nor, by their expressions, have my mother or Gouri Ma.
“When I came back to my parents’ home as a widow, how many of society’s tyrannical rules I followed! How old was I then, Gouri? No more than eighteen. I packed away my good saris, my wedding jewelry, ate only one meal a day, no fish or meat, fasted and prayed—for what? Every night I soaked my pillow with guilty tears because I was told it was my bad luck which caused my husband’s death.
“Men whose wives died could marry as soon as a year had passed. They didn’t stop their work or their schooling. No one talked about their bad luck. We even have a saying, don’t we, ‘Abhagar goru moré, Bhagya baner bau, the unlucky man’s cow dies, the lucky man’s wife dies!’ But when after three years of being a widow I begged my father to get me a private tutor so I’d at least have my studies to occupy me, he slapped me across the face. I considered suicide, oh yes, many times in those early years, but I was too young and too afraid of what the priests said—those who take their own lives end up in the deepest pit of hell. So I lived on in my brother’s household. What else could I do? But though he was kind—and you too, Gouri—I knew it was charity. I had no right in this house—or anywhere else. My life was over because I was a woman without a husband. I refuse to have our Sudha live like that.”
A stunned silence follows her outburst. Gouri Ma wipes her eyes, and even my mother bites her lip and looks down.
“You’re right, Didi,” Gouri Ma says finally. “What do you think we should do?”
“Sell the house,” says Pishi without hesitation. “Like that Marwari businessman has been asking us to do for a long time.”
Both Gouri Ma and my mother breathe in sharply. I too am shocked. This from Pishi, the upholder of family tradition!
“What is it but a heap of stone anyway?” Pishi continues. “The true Chatterjee spirit, if there is such a thing, must live on in us. Us, the women—and the little one who’s coming, whom we must be ready to welcome. For heaven’s sake, Nalini, don’t look so tragic. You won’t be out on the street. The money we get from the sale of the land alone will be enough to buy a nice little flat somewhere convenient, Gariahat maybe, and pay for Sudha’s delivery. We must make sure she goes to a really good doctor. And, Gouri—I don’t want any more excuses from you—I want you going for a checkup next week, and if the doctor still says you require surgery for your heart, I want you to get it done right away. Sudha and our granddaughter will need all three of us through the hard times to come—you most of all, because you know the most about surviving in the outside world.”
“Yes, Didi,” Gouri Ma says with a new meekness. A smile begins to form on her lips.
“And you, girl,” says Pishi to me, “go take a nice bath and shampoo the last of that red from your forehead. The Sanyals are the ones who have lost out, not you. You’ve got a whole life in front of you, and it’s going to be such a dazzling success that it’ll leave them gaping.”
I too can’t help smiling. When Pishi pronounces it with such gusto, my future seems a possibility. I bend to touch her feet, then Gouri Ma’s and my mother’s.
“Ah, but what kind of blessing shall we give you?” Pishi says with a wry smile. “To say that you should be the mother of a hundred sons seems hardly appropriate, isn’t it, when a husband is no longer in the picture?”
And suddenly I know. “Bless me that I might be like the Rani of Jhansi, the Queen of Swords,” I say. “Bless me that I have the courage to go into battle when necessary, no matter how bleak the situation. Bless me that I may be able to fight for myself and my child, no matter where I am.”
“We bless you,” say the mothers.
In the shower I scrub until the last vestige of red is washed down the drain. I am washing away unhappiness, I tell myself. I am washing away the stamp of duty. I am washing away the death sentence that was passed on my daughter. I am washing away everything the Bidhata Purush wrote, for I’ve had enough of living a life decreed by someone else. How easy it seems! What power we women can have if we believe in ourselves!
My optimism’s temporary, I know that. The next months will bring many troubles, many doubts. Still, my heart is filled with lightness. I open my mouth and let the sweet clean water flow into it. In my womb, my daughter pirouettes with joy to hear me sing.
ALL WEEK I toss and turn on the lumpy sofa to which I’ve banished myself. Sunil came over the first night and asked me to go back to bed with him, but when I told him to leave me alone, he didn’t ask again. My uneasy sleep is punctured by dreams like wisps of torn clouds, where Sudha’s face fades in and out, sometimes entreating, sometimes weeping, sometimes wide-eyed in f
ear. Each morning I wake with a backache and a sinking in my chest. I’ve spoken to Sudha twice since she came to Calcutta, and both times she’s been in good spirits. Still, I can’t stop thinking of what Sunil said. Did I make the wrong decision for Sudha, misled by my American-feminist notions of right and wrong? Have I condemned her to a life of loneliness?
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 as
tonishment 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.