Kalyana Page 8

  At exactly one o’ clock, Father summoned my mother, Manjula, and me. Raju, as usual, was missing, but Father said nothing. The three of us squeezed into our brown car and Father drove us to Nausori. The ride was rough and bumpy, the gravel road dusty. No one in the car spoke.

  Half an hour before the meeting, we came to Uncle Baldev’s small tin house. It sat alone in the middle of acres of farmland.

  Manjula chewed the ends of her sari. “Are Bhagwan. What to do?”

  “Don’t worry, he knows you walk with a limp,” said Mother. “Just smile and everything will work out all right.”

  Uncle Baldev’s living-room walls were cluttered with bygone calendars, fake silk roses, old photographs of people, and other knickknacks. I gazed upon a black-and-white photo of my aji, my father’s mother, a beautiful, plump woman, whose smile reached from ear to ear. She was holding my father in her arms and was standing loosely beside my aja. Uncle Baldev, looking miserable, was standing in front of her, holding her pinky. Like Uncle Baldev, my aji and aja both had darker skin and hair.

  “Why is Daddy the only one that looks like a gora, Mummy?” I whispered, nudging my mother’s arm.

  “Shush!” Mother hissed. She threw the picture a nervous glance and turned me away from it. Then she looked around to see if anyone had heard.

  To my mother’s relief, everyone appeared to be focused on the scheduled guests’ arrival and not on my curious inquiries. I was dissatisfied, but then the food arrived and I, too, forgot all about the faded old picture and the untold secrets it held.

  My uncle’s wife—the auntie without a name—had cooked up a feast. We snacked on sainas and barfies, drank chai and juice. We indulged in jalebies and sugar sticks. All except for Manjula; she sat nervously twitching and listening for the sound of another car driving up the dusty gravel path.

  At last the sound of the guests was heard. Footsteps echoed as they approached the stairs.

  “Oh, my God. What to do?” gasped Manjula, struggling for breath.

  “Shh,” whispered Mother. “Sit quietly, ladylike, and look to the floor. Don’t smile. They’ll think you’re too eager.”

  Manjula moved closer to my mother on the opposite sofa and lowered her eyes, staring firmly at the wooden floorboards. Uncle Baldev, sitting on a small chair placed in the open doorway between the kitchen and the living room, got up and opened the door. His wife, who didn’t have a place to sit, disappeared into the kitchen as the guests entered. My father leaned back in a single plush chair placed in the corner of the room. I grabbed onto his legs nervously, glad to be seated on the floor.

  “Welcome. Welcome. Welcome,” said Uncle Baldev, shaking all the men’s hands. Two of the men were tall and slender. It was easy to figure out that the third man, the chubby one with the mustache and the hideous mole, was Manjula’s suitor.

  All three men were brothers, and the woman was the wife of one of them. She walked pompously, her thin nose stuck high up in the air like the perch of a tree where fan-tailed cuckoos flocked. The two thin men straggled alongside her like frail branches. Manjula’s suitor, whose name was Rabir, walked behind sluggishly, a thick tree stump, wearing baby-blue bell-bottom slacks that were a little too tight by the crotch, and a green, flowered shirt that was half-unbuttoned. He seemed proud to show off the grisly sight of his chest hair.

  Rabir lit up a cigarette the moment everyone sat down. Instead of taking the seat directly opposite Manjula, as was proper, he sat close to the table that carried the food. The stiff woman sat in between the two other men, opposite Manjula, fixing her penetrating glare onto my aunt’s blushing face. As Rabir filled the air with a cloud of cigarette smoke, Manjula crinkled her nose and sneezed. Uncle Baldev yelled to his wife, who had been hovering around the kitchen doorway, to hurry and get an ashtray for the guest.

  The high-and-mighty woman rolled her eyes in dissatisfaction at the wall decorations, cheap wood frames, and old calendar pictures that hung all around her. My stomach churned when she momentarily caught me in her stern gaze. Unconsciously, I started thumping the floor with my left toe, evoking a disapproving glance from my mother. For Manjula’s sake, I almost wished that they would reject her.

  Manjula kept her gaze fixed to the floorboards. She didn’t flash her perfect white teeth. Her gold-bordered sari covered her shoulders modestly.

  Finally the woman nodded her head and looked at the other three men. “She looks beautiful. Yes.” One man smiled. The other hunched his shoulders.

  “I don’t know,” the second man grunted. “Good enough.”

  Rabir stared at Manjula, taking in her every curve and movement. He put out a second cigarette butt in the glass ashtray, leaned forward, and started piling food onto a small ceramic plate. The springs in the orange sofa creaked as he shifted his weight. Dipping the deep-fried goodies in mint and mango chutneys, he chewed with his mouth open and made loud, slurping noises. Manjula still remained with her gaze fixed to the floor. Mother and Father exchanged glances.

  And then, in between eating noisily and gulping his drink, Rabir said something shocking: He ordered Manjula to stand up and walk across the room. My mother pursed her lips and hugged her sari closer to her shoulders. Father sat quietly, hands placed gently on his lap. Manjula looked up. My mother patted her sister on the shoulder, and Manjula slid out of her chair.

  My aunt extended her left leg, then her right one, and then her left again. She limped across the small room. The heat of piercing gazes surrounded her. To my surprise, my eyes welled up with tears for my aunt. I blinked before they could run down my cheeks, soaking my dress.

  Rabir grunted. “Not good! Too much of a limp, Yaar!” The woman reached out and patted his thigh in consolation. She tousled the hair on his head.

  “Sorry, Bhaiya,” said one of the slender gentlemen to my father, nudging his shoulder regretfully.

  Manjula looked defiantly into Rabir’s eyes. Her nostrils flared and the blue veins engorged in the crease of her neck. She reached across the table and pushed the bowl of mango chutney onto Rabir’s lap, staining his baby-blue bell-bottom pants at the crotch.

  Rabir squirmed in his seat. The pompous woman leapt up, snorted haughtily, and motioned for the men to follow her out the door. Rabir regretfully put down the plate of goodies, noisily chewing what was left in his mouth. Then he took a napkin and patted the front of his pants. The sauce had left a glaring orange stain that I was sure couldn’t be scrubbed off even with soapy water.

  After a few minutes of futile mopping, Rabir shrugged angrily and stomped out of the house.

  Uncle Baldev ran after them, saying, “Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. The woman momentarily lost her mind. All women lose their minds. Sorry. Sorry. I hope there will be no ill feelings. I hope you’ll come back.”

  I heard the car doors slam and the engine putter, then roar to life. They had driven off without saying a word.

  Father sat there, leaning back in his chair, his hands interlocked behind his head. Mother sat there with her mouth open. I could almost see the faintest bit of a smile through the transparent yellow sari that covered much of Uncle Baldev’s nameless wife’s face. I said nothing, but I was certain that, if the four old women had been here, they would have rolled on the floor, laughing and holding onto their sides.

  Uncle Baldev stormed back into the house and towered over Manjula, who had repositioned herself on the floor in the corner. “Why did you do that? Now who is going to marry you?”

  Manjula started sobbing as Uncle Baldev raised his hand to strike her across the face. She screamed, “No!”

  My mother intervened as I sat hunched over on the pillow by my father’s feet. “Oh, Brother, let it go. She’s a fool. She’s a woman. She didn’t think.”

  Baldev lowered his hand. His eyes were protruding with rage. “Now everyone will say that it’s not only that you walk with a limp, but that you have a temper, too.
You disrespected a guest in my home. Unacceptable!” He slapped her carelessly on her head. Manjula drew further into the corner and squealed.

  Uncle Baldev looked towards his wife and shouted, “Why are you still standing there? Go clean the mess on the sofa. It’ll stain, and then we’ll have to buy a new couch. Do you think money grows on the trees?”

  His wife bit the corner of her veil as she scurried around the living room with a bucket of soapy water, urgently trying to clean the mess. She scrubbed the sofa furiously with a wet rag and polished the floors with an old torn towel. Panicking when the stain didn’t disappear immediately, she scrubbed still harder under the scrutiny of her husband’s eye. Circles of sweat formed under her armpits, exuding a musty smell in the room. She released a low sigh when the orange on the floor and the sofa finally began to fade.

  Father quietly leaned back in his chair, as he and my mother watched her work feverishly at the mundane task. Manjula remained huddled in the corner.

  My aunt had attracted misfortune from the start. Even her birth had been a difficult one. My mother said that my nani had retched by the wooden pole in the backyard for the entire course of her pregnancy with Manjula, turning the green grass brown. Even when the time came, things had been difficult; Manjula stayed in their mother’s womb for days too long on end, making her cry out to the goddesses above for mercy. The head midwife had stood around, helpless and confused. Eventually, she had bundled Manjula’s ailing mother in a white blanket and taken her to the local hospital, where a doctor took a knife and made a clean slash across my nani’s belly, scarring it forever. Rumor held that, when the doctor cut her belly, he accidentally sliced off the baby’s toes.

  Small wonder that Manjula’s ill luck had followed her through her life. Now word would spread that even a man like Rabir, one with fat cheeks, a swollen stomach, and a hideous mole, would reject her.

  When Uncle Baldev’s breathing returned to normal, he sat down, poured himself a glass of whiskey, and lit a cigarette and started to smoke. He noticed me hunched on the floor by my father’s feet. I pretended not to notice him. I hated the stench of cigarette smoke and the faint smell of whiskey in the air. After finishing his cigarette, he threw me another quick glance, and then he got up and left through the side door.

  “Where’s Uncle going?” I whispered to my mother.

  “Who knows?” she said. “It’s best to not ask questions. Just be quiet.”

  I looked over to Manjula. She was still seated on the floor, her eyes fixed on the knots covering the wooden floorboards on the ground. I couldn’t see the rise and fall of her chest. If she was breathing, it was barely.

  After a full fifteen minutes had elapsed, Uncle Baldev came back through the side door. He was carrying sugarcane in one hand and a big knife in the other. He sat back down on the chair, balanced the sugarcane between his legs, and with ease and grace began slicing the purple skin with the big knife. I saw the hard purple shell of the sugarcane fall to the floor around Uncle Baldev’s feet. It was a slow, rhythmic motion, almost soothing.

  After the shell was peeled from the cane, white flesh remained. My uncle sliced the remains into four equal pieces. He barked an order at his wife, who sprang to her feet and ran to the kitchen. When she returned, she was holding a white-coated steel plate, which she placed on the floor.

  “What are you doing?” my uncle said angrily. “Why are you putting it on the floor? We’re not feeding dogs.” He pointed to the side table. “Put it here.”

  She obeyed, her hands trembling slightly.

  “Not there!” he yelled. “Here, in the middle. If you put it on the side, it will topple over. Ah! Damn women. It’s like you all have no brains.”

  His wife rose to scurry back to the kitchen. “And who’s going to clean this mess from the floor?” he demanded. His eyes looked cold and hard.

  The wife bent down by his feet, picking up the purple shell. I glanced over to my mother and Manjula. Both of their lips formed a tight, straight line. It felt like watching Manjula chopping live crabs on our kitchen floor, except that here, auntie-without-a-name was the living crab.

  Uncle Baldev placed four even pieces of white sugarcane on the plate. He handed it to me.

  “There you go. Eat, Kali-yana, eat.” He always called me Kali-yana.

  “Thank you, Uncle.”

  He patted the top of my head. “Very pretty,” he said. “How old are you, now?”

  “Eight and a half.”

  “Eight and a half. Big girl,” he said, smiling at me. He made me feel confident, and superior to the likes of Manjula and the auntie-without-a-name.

  Then he turned his attention to my father and talked to him about the falling prices of grain as I chewed the sugarcane pieces, drinking the sweet juice. I spat the shredded dry fibre back onto the plate. Sugar was always delicious.

  11

  For the next two weeks Manjula maintained a stern silence. She completed her household chores without a word and then stalked down to the ocean, staying there for hours. The gossip in the village was that she spent her afternoons sitting on the cold, hard seawall, hugging her knees to her chest and staring out to sea. The wind rustled through her dark hair and the waves crashed against the stone wall around her.

  The second old woman, who possessed the fluidity and clarity of water, took to the stage in our small living room. With one hand on her hip and the other in midair, she said, “Manjula does not sit hugging her knees to her chest. She sits dangling her feet over the seawall. She sits still, letting the warm ocean waves caress her toes.” I told my mother this.

  “Who knows how she sits on the seawall!” my mother snapped. “It’ll pass. Give it time. Her sun will rise again and she’ll come out of the darkness. It’s inevitable.”

  I didn’t know how Manjula sat on the seawall, but I did know that she was reading. Each day, before she would sneak through the back door of the house, Manjula crammed a small book in the waistline of her lengha. When she returned from the ocean, she shoved the same small book under our mattress. I was curious. What was she reading as she sat alone?

  To my surprise, I discovered that it was a flimsy manual with pictures of roads and cars and turn signals and ignitions. Like the women in America, Manjula had gone mad. She had preoccupied herself with cars.

  I didn’t tell my mother about Manjula’s new obsession. I was afraid my auntie would be shipped off to the Mental Institute like Shilpa, strapped to a stiff bed, and electrocuted for the rest of her living days. Or worse, perhaps Manjula would completely go berserk. I didn’t want my aunt to be like the goras, shacking up with men like those sweaty Indian workers who poured concrete in our driveway. I didn’t want her to find her prince without the circling of the fire or the chanting of the priests. I let my mother go on believing what she wished.

  It was in the beginning of the third week that Manjula finally awakened to the reality of our life. She sprang out of her bed and went through the back door like she had been doing, but this time she strode into our overgrown yard. With a large knife in hand, she began slicing branches and trees. She worked hard, and for long hours. My mother, watching from the back window, said that now Manjula had completely lost her marbles.

  When the hanging branches and trees were cut and burned in the middle of the backyard, and thick, black smoke floated away to the cemetery nearby, Manjula grabbed a pitchfork and started digging. She dug deep in the ground, overturning earthworms that looked like little snakes. She formed even rows and plots. Then she summoned me and handed me a bag of seeds.

  Using her heel to form a perfect hole, she instructed me to drop two bean seeds into it. As soon as I dropped two seeds, she covered the hole. If I dropped in three or four seeds, she snapped, “Two only. I said two only, Kalyana. Listen.” She would growl under her breath, bend down, and pick up the extra culprits, handing them back to me as she shook her head.

/>   We planted long beans, green beans, and butter beans. We planted tomatoes and built vine supports. The seeds of potatoes, carrots, herbs, and onions were all placed in the ground, and then we planted flowers around our new driveway. Marigolds, roses, bougainvilleas, hibiscuses, and jasmine bushes created a natural hedge, separating our property from that of our neighbors.

  And then, Lord behold, we planted a lime tree at the right side of our house. Manjula dug the earth and planted a tiny tree with beautiful rich, green leaves. She covered the roots with dirt and said, “Lime tree, Kalyana. When it grows we can make sweet lemonade.” I smiled at the thought, imagining guzzling a chilled glass of fresh lemonade on a sweltering day. I pictured how it would slide down my throat with ease and smoothness, refreshing my very being.

  It took only two months of sunshine and rain to transform our back and front yards into a land of vibrant fertility. Manjula stood over the plots like the Goddess Kali Mata stood over her trembling disciples, tending the plants every evening.

  I think even Father had started to become proud of her. He never said so to her face, but one Diwali, when he brought the rest of us gifts from town, he also had a gift for Manjula for the first time in her life: red and plated gold bangles. They couldn’t have cost my father more than a few dollars, but it was a gift nonetheless. He gave them to my mother to give to her.

  Manjula wailed loudly in the middle of the living room when she received the gift on Diwali evening. All in one breath, she thanked Lord Vishnu and Rama and Brahmin and Shiva. Then she thanked my father, joining her palms together and closing her eyes as tears streamed down her hardened cheeks. Mother smiled and said that they were tears of joy, not sorrow. She said they were tears of love.

  Two days after the Diwali festival had passed and the oil in the diyas had evaporated into smoke, Manjula, with her head held high, stood in front of her brother-in-law. “Jija,” she said tentatively. My father didn’t look up or acknowledge her in any way. “Jija,” Manjula repeated. “I was thinking that I could learn how to drive.”