Kalyana Page 2

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  I could see the sun rise from our kitchen window. It always started with a speck of deep orange far in the distance. Slowly the speck would become larger and larger, at last spreading across the sky in a brilliant fan. Then it seemed as though all of Fiji would light up. Birds would chirp. Caterpillars would awaken, stretching and yawning, wriggling their little bodies along leaves and twigs. Frogs would croak to clear their throats. Butterflies would spread their wings as the lizards disappeared into their holes. And the newspapers—they would lay claim that theirs was the first newspaper published in the world that day.

  When I was younger, I thought this meant that The Fiji Times was the first newspaper ever published in the world. Mother had always said, “News reporters, Kalyana, have the best job in the world. Through the mighty power released from their pens, they can bridge the gap between solace and pain.” Because of mother, I never doubted that news reporters were important people who were granted the duty to change humanity and erase its suffering. It made me so proud to have been born in a country that had discovered the business of printing news, the trade of exchanging stories. As I grew older though, I began to realize that I was terribly wrong: The Fiji Times did not discover the business of printing news; it was merely insisting that Fiji was the place that saw the first light of day.

  Worse, years later, when all the timekeepers joined together to measure exactly which place on the globe saw the first morning light, a small island by New Zealand took the centuries-old title. The Fiji Islanders wept and scrambled to modify their timekeeping sheets, but alas! The truth was clear: Fiji was not the place where the first day of the entire world began.

  It was like the Fijians had believed in something all their lives and then had it snatched away from under their feet, leaving their hearts and minds in chaos. Pillars supporting them had crumbled, toppling them unfeelingly toward the ground. My mother shook her head and clucked with disapproval as I devoured chocolates to bring the light back into my days.

  First or second, however, the sun inevitably did rise upon Fiji. So did my mother, always the first to awaken in the household; none could contest that.

  Manjula, my aunt, awoke second. My father rose third, and my brother, Raju, always woke last, whether it was the weekend or mid-week or a special occasion like Diwali or Holi or Raksha Bandhan. I would awaken mostly after Manjula, but sometimes after my mother.

  Manjula was a great help to my mother. If my mother turned flour into dough and made rotis over the open fire, Manjula swept the floors or soaked and cooked dhal and rice for lunch. If my mother pounded the clothes on the rocks and hung them outside on the line to dry, underwear, brassieres, and all, Manjula chopped the wood and heated drums of water for bathing. While my mother sprinkled spices over the chickpea and masala curry and stirred onions into a pot of tomatoes for dinner, Manjula gathered crisp garments from the clothesline outside and ironed them without a crease.

  Occasionally there were other chores. The concrete stairs had to be scrubbed to rid them of the green mildew that kept appearing in the warm humidity of our island nation. The brass and steel pots always seemed in need of shining. My father’s black leather shoes had to be polished every week to keep them sparkling and clean; I could see my reflection in them when Mother was done.

  The drapes must be washed and the comforters put out in the sun to air. The doormats had to be beaten on the side of the concrete wall until they released a cloud of dust so thick that I sneezed ten times in a row. Sometimes, my mother or Manjula would take the green leaves of a coconut branch and gently slice them, leaving the mid rib intact, so that a cluster could be bundled and used as a broom. The remaining leaves would be woven into the baskets where my mother kept potatoes, onions, garlic, ginger, and eggs.

  Then there was the food for storing. Roots must be pounded into masala, and dried coconuts grated and soaked in a large pot. When I had small feet, I was allowed to foot-crush the mixture so that all the goodness was squeezed out of the coconut. The milk would sit in a pot overnight, the oil and water slowly separating.

  Manjula could not wait to pour the coconut oil into long-stemmed bottles and line them up on the windowsill. She would rub oil on her body, her hair, and her scalp. If I even approached the bottles, she would watch me closely as I poured a tiny pool of oil into the palm of my hand. “Enough. Enough. Enough. What are you doing?” she would rasp. “You don’t need that much. It’ll spill all over on the floor and leave a stain.”

  I would dart a furtive look toward her and linger around her precious bottles yet a little longer. Standing there, the tiniest smile playing around my lips, I would uncork this one and unscrew another. I would inhale the pungent aroma of the clear, yellowish oil, letting the scent pass through my body as though it were the last breath I would take on this earth.

  Manjula would stand close to me and keep an anxiously watchful eye. Perhaps she feared that the bottle would slip from between my hands and crash to the ground, breaking glass and creating yet another chore for her. Or maybe she was simply afraid that all of the world’s coconut oil would somehow evaporate into the atmosphere, leaving her vulnerable to her constant headaches.

  Often Manjula would say that only coconut oil could cure a woman’s pounding headache. My mother had laughed then. “Why would you need to develop a headache?” she said. “You sleep with Kalyana, fool!” Sometimes Manjula would roll her dark eyes and playfully slap my mother on the back. On darker days she would storm out of the house and head for the ocean.

  I did not understand this talk of headaches and sleeping. But even as a small child, I could see that Manjula’s temper was like the waves of the mighty Pacific. It rose and fell as the tides came in and out.

  Our house was a one-level wooden dwelling on stilts, complete with a concrete porch and a tin roof. It had only three bedrooms: my mother and father occupied one together, and my brother Raju slept in another. The third room was the one Manjula and I shared.

  Manjula did not want to share a mattress with me. When I turned four, my mother had removed me from the bed she shared with my father and placed me in Manjula’s—to the absolute dismay of my auntie. For three whole months, my mother told me, Manjula had walked around the house with a long face and puffed-up cheeks, refusing to acknowledge my mother’s stories or my brother’s requests for almond milk and chai. In the end, though, it did her no good. My mother never even considered relenting, and Father was similarly determined to ignore her shameful protests.

  Manjula would frequently tell me that she wished I had been born a boy; that way, Raju would be the one sharing his room with me. Then she could continue to spread her legs and arms wide in the middle of her thin foam mattress and moan in the solitude of night. I never understood then what she meant, but during those years with me she must have yearned for her imaginary midnight lover.

  Our room was filled with toys that my father had bought for me: stuffed animals and dolls with golden curls, crystal-blue eyes, and pink cheeks, and real china, toy trucks, and a red tricycle. Then there was the magnificent wooden dollhouse that my father had built for me himself. My most prized possession, however, was a miniature stove. I have never forgotten how I acquired it.

  I was only five years old when, in the midst of shopping for food with my mother, I spotted a tiny model of a gas stove. It was stainless steel, with black plastic burners and golden plated plastic knobs. It came with its own matching pots and pans, though I no longer remember the colors.

  The moment I set my eyes upon it, my heart fluttered and butterflies sprang around in my tubby belly. I dreamed of mixing marigold flowers with frangipani in those tiny pots, pretending that they held an array of Indian curries, and I pictured myself preparing mud pies and changing the knobs on the stove while squatting in front of it, just like my mother. I could even set it in my dollhouse, in the miniature cupboards right beside the sink.

  I started off
with a direct request to my mother. “I want this, Mummy.”

  “No.”

  I unleashed a series of pleas in varying tones and pitches. She batted her long eyelashes and rolled her large Indian eyes. I told her that if she got me the stove, I would wash all of the dishes after dinner. Her reply was quick: if I washed the dishes, she would have to rewash them. I told her that I would never, ever, ask her for anything again. She told me that she didn’t believe me. I told her that I had been a good daughter since the time of my birth and was entitled to this baby stove. She turned around and started talking to the cashier.

  Then I loosed my final strategy: I started wailing loudly in the middle of the store. People stared more at my poor mother than at me, though I was far too wrapped up in my own anguish to know or care.

  My mother lifted me up from the ground as I thrashed my legs like a two-year-old child, and she and I left the store—me huffing, puffing, and screaming like the wolf in the story about the three little pigs. My mother was the brick house that wouldn’t fall down.

  I came home and went to bed. It was as though my mother had taken a sharp knife and made a small slash on the center of my soul, her first offense. But then again, who was keeping score? I was sure that because she, my protector and my giver, couldn’t see blood, she must have thought that I was not in pain. But oh, my merciful gods, I was suffering. My tears were an endless river. My eyes were reddened, swollen, and hollow, and the beat of my heart was dull and muffled. There was no longer a fluttering rhythm in my chest.

  When the clock struck five, I emerged from my room like one raised from the dead. I paced in front of the door, eyes to the ground and hands behind my back. When at last my father arrived home from his wood-carving shop, I let out my loudest wail and rushed towards him. He lifted me in his strong arms while I told him all about my mother and the miniature stove. He then did what I think all fathers should do: marched right back out to the store and bought the toy. I think that at that time my father’s biggest fear was that the store would close before he could reach it.

  When he saw the package, my brother shook his head. Manjula had no comment, but she pounded the dough more fiercely than usual; I was surprised that the rotis still rose and came out soft and tasty that night. And my mother, well, she fell angrily silent for the remainder of the day. But I loved my stove, and I think after that it was hard not to love Father best of all.

  From time to time, Manjula would hide my miniature stove. I would find it in the strangest of places: underneath the mattress or behind the old dresser. Buried deep under petticoats and hemmed skirts in the wooden drawers. I would often catch Manjula kicking my toys around the room, too. She would always claim that it had been an accident, although I was fairly certain that there had been no accident at all. Over the years I grew to know every hiding place of Manjula’s during the hours spent searching for my beloved stove.

  Manjula also had a prized possession in the room we shared, a framed photograph of bees and birds flying around each other. My mother had given this to her on her thirty-first birthday, and it hung over the old brown dresser in our room. Manjula would stare at this picture often, the corners of her lips strangely turning upwards, while a glazed look would come over her eyes. It seemed as though she were entering a foreign land in an ultimate dream. It was engaging and entertaining, because I knew what she wanted: she was wishing that the bird would mount the bee. Or is it the bee that mounts the bird?

  Lust’s gripping thirst was palpable on her reddened lips. Its hunger was evident in her small, dark eyes. It was a great wonder that the men of the village didn’t flock to her, considering the aura that she exuded with each mincing step and flirtatious flip of her hair. Even though my mother and she did not share physical similarities, she had a pretty face and enough dips and valleys on her body to make any warm-blooded man’s heart stir.

  Yet Manjula’s one flaw seemed to mask everything else: Her left leg was shorter than her right, and she walked with a noticeable limp. Neighbors snickered and whispered whenever Manjula tramped down the gravel road leading to the ocean, and they were not discussing the flutter of her dark hair as the warm breeze floated through it. It was said that not only were her legs two different lengths, but that she was also missing both her big toes. Everyone was certain that she would die an old maid, untouched and innocent.

  The ruthless neighbors weren’t far from the truth. Gray hairs were already making an appearance around the edges of her square face, and fine lines had begun to grow at the corners of her eyes. For a woman, the thought of dying unwed and childless was next only to the thought of dying alone. Both were undesirable conditions. But I was more concerned about my auntie dying without a last name.

  In those days, Indian women received only a middle name, awaiting marriage to begin using the surname of their husbands. My mother had only a middle name until she married my father when she was just sixteen. Sumitri Mani married her twenty-eight-year-old husband and became Sumitri Mani Seth. I also carried just two names, a first and a middle: Kalyana Mani.

  If Manjula never found a husband, she would die only as Manjula Mati. Even then, this was unthinkable to me. For of all the possessions in this world, your name is the one thing that is yours alone. It is that which separates you from another, something respected, something to protect. To carry only an incomplete name? What a tragedy!

  Manjula, however, did not seem concerned about her lack of a last name or even about the neighbors’ snickering and whispering over her missing big toes. Every evening she would hobble down the dusty gravel road to the ocean with her head high and her torso straight. She always wore long, colorful petticoats that she sewed for herself on the old wooden Singer sewing machine that my father had bought for my mother and that my mother had never used. I can still remember the sound of the machine rumbling deep into the night as Manjula sat in a tall chair in front of it, pedaling with her longer leg, her hands feeding yards and yards of fabric under the bobbing needle.

  Sometimes Manjula would sew things for me, too. It might take some bribing, but eventually she would succumb to the feel of a crisp bill in the palm of her hand. My indulgent father would easily hand me ten dollars, and Manjula almost always settled for five out of the ten to finish the task of sewing me a dress of my choosing. She could sew cap sleeves, half-sleeves, high collars, low collars, or V-necks. If it was a more complicated project, like a frill at the collar or a flare at the arms or even a pleated skirt, she would demand seven dollars, to my utter dismay. Yet I would almost always lose negotiations, as she would refuse to lower her rate, knowing that I wanted that dress far more than the extra dollars I had to pay. I would consider my expenditure worthwhile when later I twirled and paraded around the village in my new frock.

  News of her talents traveled far and wide, and soon every month Manjula had a new villager bringing printed and plain material, asking her to sew this dress or that skirt. I never understood how she did it without patterns or instructions, just exact measurements. She never forgot to charge a minimal fee to everyone and demanded payment up front. Although I discovered many of her hiding places over the years, I never found out where she stashed her money or what exactly she did with it. But she always delivered.

  Though Manjula constantly kept her legs and feet covered with long petticoats, I always wondered whether the rumors were true. Could she truly be missing both her big toes? I often would try to stay awake until she fell asleep at night, hoping for the chance to lift up her lengha while she slept. I needed only the quickest glance at her feet to satisfy my curiosity for all time. But long before she would close her eyes, mine would become heavy with sleep, and before I knew it I would be lost to a world of dreams.

  I never dared to ask Manjula about her toes, for I knew well what she would do if I did. She would backhand me across my face, leaving a red mark across my cheeks and making them swell. It would be done in haste, without thought to t
he consequences. Then I would need to lie to my father, saying that a hornet had stung me on my cheek, making it balloon like a pufferfish.

  If my father came across the truth, then he must take a belt and beat Manjula as she huddled in a corner of the house, screaming and wailing for mercy. None would be bestowed on her, I knew, for I had once already seen my father beat her like this. Even though there was no blood, I was sure that there was pain. And I somehow knew that this suffering was unlike the one of which my mother frequently spoke.

  The day Manjula was given her beating was the one day I remember my mother had no more stories left to tell. A heavy kind of silence fell upon our thatched-roof house, a brooding blankness so thick that at times I could almost feel the room stand still. I don’t remember Manjula’s crime any more. But I have never forgotten her punishment.

  It made me think of Tulsi across the street and the suffering she endured at the hands of her husband, in front of her old widowed mother-in-law and her three grown boys. Her screams begging him to stop would vibrate through the village, and my father would turn up the news on the radio to drown out her cries. Manjula would disappear into our room for hours. My mother would bang pots and pans, heaving and cursing under her breath. She would slap the dining table and shake with fury. I was sure that she wanted to cross the street and stride into the neighbor’s house, pulling the husband out by his ear and dumping him in the ocean, throwing the sharks a glowing feast.

  But it never happened. Not at the hands of my mother and not from anyone else. The whole village would see Tulsi’s bruises and black circles of horror around her eyes and yet turn away. To interfere with a man who was in the midst of disciplining his wife—regardless of her crime—was a distasteful concept. It was unthinkable.