Oleander Girl

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

  A cockroach scuttles from one box to another, startling me. I hadn’t thought there would be such creatures in affluent America! The roach rubs its serrated legs together and watches me from the edge of its cardboard fort. It’s a fitting emblem to end my first disconcerting day. I pull the quilt over my head, tucking it in carefully to prevent unwanted night visitors, and stifle a wild laugh against my knuckles. I’m afraid if I get started, I may not be able to stop.

  It is a beautiful afternoon, with a crisp, cool breeze unusual for Kolkata in April, but Asif is sweating. His ironed shirt is limp and dark at the armpits as he waits outside the closed gate of Miss Sonia’s mansion. He’s angry with the young woman for making him wait, but also with himself because after seeing the palatial mansion in which she lives—you could fit the Boses’ flat into this compound eight times over—his brain started calling her Miss Sonia.

  The gate is made of solid, black iron, embossed with some kind of family crest. It has a small window cut into it at eye level, which the guard on duty opened to question Asif, rudely, on his business. When Asif told him that Miss Sonia had asked him to come here, the man lifted a disbelieving eyebrow and said he would check. Asif took great pleasure in telling him not to bother, he had Miss Sonia’s mobile number and had called her already. But that was fifteen minutes ago, and his pleasure had faded, especially as the guard had just opened the window again and said, “You still here?”

  Bitch, he thinks. Forcing him to wait like a beggar outside her gate when she was the one who needed him. Because of her he’s wasted his off-duty afternoon, the only one he got all week. He could have been at the zoo, his favorite spot. Right now, he could have been sitting on a bench outside the aviary, munching on crisp, hot bhajias from the vendor, watching the bright birds flit from branch to branch inside cages so large that they probably didn’t know they weren’t free. They reminded him of his sister and of Pia-missy, the way they cocked their heads to look at him curiously. Often he found himself smiling back at them. From there he would go to the elephant compound, where he fed peanuts to the big, lumbering beasts, enjoying the feel of their raspy, inquiring trunks in his palm. It always put him in a good mood when the elephants trumpeted and salaamed him after the peanuts were gone. Animals were superior to most humans. Men would have turned away once you had nothing more to give them. If Asif hadn’t dropped out of school in sixth class, he would have written a shayari on the subject.

  Asif decides he isn’t going to waste any more time on Sonia. Let her go to hell. He strides down the street, shouldering roughly past other pedestrians. He’s almost at the bus stop when he hears the horn and knows it to be hers, slicing powerfully through the other street sounds, tempting him like a siren’s song. Against his will, he looks.

  The breeze from the open window has tousled her hair just the right amount. Or maybe there are things—shampoos, gels, he’s seen them on TV—that make her look this way. He has to admit that she’s attractive. The mocking expression in her eyes says she knows it, too. Look but don’t touch. I’m not for your kind.

  “Impatient, aren’t you?” she says casually. She gestures for him to climb into the passenger seat.

  He’d love to turn his back on her and keep walking, but he does as she says. He’s curious about what she’s planning—and about the Porsche. He’ll never get another chance to sit in a car like this. Owners of foreign-model two-seaters liked to show them off by driving themselves around. The leather is silken, the skin of a princess. She’s dressed for tennis in a tight blue top and a short, white, pleated skirt that exposes unseemly amounts of thigh and sends evil thoughts careening through his mind. The outfit is what he expected, but the perfume she’s wearing startles him, floating its light, flowery innocence through the cool air of the car. It seems like something Pia-missy might have chosen.

  Sonia weaves deftly through the unruly Kolkata traffic, one hand on the wheel. When she needs to honk, she uses her elbow, a fluid jab that Asif vows to try for himself as soon as he has a chance. Not that Memsaab would allow it. He can just hear her: Asif, what kind of crazy bug has got into your head? You want to land us in the hospital?

  With her other hand Sonia takes a sealed envelope out of her purse. “Give this to Rajat-saab. Today. Make sure he’s alone when he gets it.”

  She drops the letter in his lap and digs in the purse again. This time she takes out some rupee notes and holds them out for him to take. The three notes are each for a thousand rupees. His heart gives a jolt, as if the car had just hit un unexpected pothole. It’s almost a month’s salary. Does so much money mean nothing to people such as Sonia? How much more did she have in that purse of hers? A fantasy unspools with dizzying velocity through his brain. A lonely stretch of road—maybe near the river. He leans over and flings open her door. Grabs the purse and pushes her from the car. Maneuvers himself into the driver’s seat. Ah, the feel of that hard, gleaming steering wheel under his fingers. The acceleration smooth as butter. It was a big country. He could go far away, sell the car, start a new life. There were people who bought things like that. He was confident he could find them. Meanwhile he’d use the money in the purse, change his name, dye his hair, lie low like a wild animal. He’d never work for another rich bastard again.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Her voice, raspy with too many late nights in too many immoral places, jerks him back to the present like a fishhook. “Take the money!”

  The fantasy hangs around him like hashish smoke, which he tried when the other drivers prodded him, but only once because of how disgusted it made him feel later. He cannot quite reach past the haze to formulate an objection. So he takes the notes, though a warning jangles through his system.

  What could be in that letter?

  She gives a small, satisfied smile. Her teeth are white and straight. She pulls over smoothly to the curb, motions to him to get out.

  “Make sure you give it to him as soon as you can. Believe me, I’ll find out if you don’t. And don’t even think of double-crossing me.”

  “Oh, no, madam, never-never.” His voice is obsequious yet steady, a loyal, trustable voice. He has already resolved to steam open the letter and read its contents, then decide what to do.

  Late afternoon of my second day. I lie on the couch after lunch, gripped by the tentacles of jet-lag sleep. When I awoke around noon, to my dismay Mitra was nowhere to be seen. Seema told me he left for work, but I’m suspicious. Perhaps he never came home last night. She told me also that Rajat had called, but I was sleeping so soundly, he told her to let me be. I was furious with her for not waking me. I was starved for the sound of Rajat’s voice, for a word of love. But now it was too late at night there for me to call him.

  I’m dreaming of the Towers, which Seema talked about a little while ago. When I’d seen the disaster on Indian TV, sitting beside Grandfather in our living room in Kolkata, I’d felt only a mild sorrow. They had been icons of another world, tiny and distant and beheaded already. But in New York their absence saturates the air I breathe. In my dream they loom, bigger and bigger still, unharmed and shining in the midst of a perfect autumn day. The jaunty silver clouds are reflected on their thousand glass windows. I know I’m about to witness their destruction. I try to wake up, but though I thrash and moan, I can’t.

  The first plane is slender and graceful, arrow straight. It enters the building smoothly, pauselessly. Only a Medusa smoke, curling thickly everywhere, gives away that this wasn’t meant to happen. By the time the second plane hits, the screams are so loud that I can’t hear the crash. Floors crumble, one collapsing onto the other, a vertical domino set. Chunks of buildings fly at me, malignant comets. They set other buildings afire.

  Then the people start jumping. Aghast, I try to turn away, but I can’t climb out of my dream. Around me, white ash drifts like bitter snow. It coats my mouth, it makes me blind. I taste on my tongue hatred for those who could have done such a terrible thing.

  Afterward, Seema said, many South Asian bus
inesses were boycotted, especially those with Muslim names. Others were attacked. The Mitras had arrived at the Mumtaz one morning to find the plate glass cracked, paintings slashed, the floor filthy with urine and feces, threats scrawled over the walls in terrifying red letters. The shock had almost caused Seema to have a miscarriage. And worse: when Mitra went to the police to complain, not only were they unhelpful, but they detained him for two days for questioning. Seema had been in the apartment alone all that time, crazy with worry. No, she didn’t know where they’d taken him, or what exactly they did. When he returned, haggard-eyed, Mitra refused to talk about it. Those two days had changed him, made him bitter and silent the way he’d never been. That was when she developed her fear of strangers. When they had to move out of their Upper West Side apartment because they could no longer afford it, she insisted on living here, among her own kind.

  My dream shifts. In it, I hear Seema’s voice, arguing urgently.

  “It’s four p.m.! Where were you all this time? Why don’t you pick up the phone when I call? You know that makes me ill with worry. Especially when you stay out all night.”

  “I told you, I’m busy with a project. Can’t be disturbed in the middle of business dealings.”

  “Not gallery business, I can guess that much—”

  “Quit nagging! I’m doing this for you—you know that. Haven’t you been begging to go back to India to have the baby? Where do you think the money for that will come from? You know Mrs. Bose has refused to advance us any more, the bitch!” His hisses the words, which reverberate in the small room.

  “Shhh. Korobi-madam will hear you.”

  “Are you kidding? Jet lag’s like chloroform. Just look at her, slumped over.”

  “Please don’t do anything dangerous! I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  Mitra gives a bitter laugh. “You’re like the cat in the proverb—want to catch the fish, but don’t want to touch the water. Everything comes with a price. Did you find out why she’s here?”

  “I asked, but all she said was she’s looking for a relative. She doesn’t want to talk about it. I’m sorry! I’m no good at things like that.”

  It sounds as if Seema is tearing up.

  He gives a sigh. “Never mind. Come here. Let me rub your back. Is it aching a lot? Did you have heartburn again?”

  Even in sleep, I can feel her snuggled up against him. My body aches with memory.

  “Remember how the baby wasn’t moving, the last couple days? Well, he kicked again today, thank God!”

  “He did? How about that!” A smile fills Mitra’s voice.

  In my dream, they kiss. Mitra bends over Seema’s stomach to whisper to the baby inside. After a while, she serves him lunch. He tells her everything tastes excellent.

  “Korobi-madam helped me.”

  “Don’t call her madam!” He’s angry again. “She’s not your boss. And you shouldn’t have taken her help.”

  “Why don’t you like her?”

  “Because she’s one of them. And because Mrs. Bose practically ordered me to put her up.” He puts on a posh, clipped accent. “ ‘Mitra, Rajat’s fiancée is coming to New York. I’d like her to stay with you.’ Not a single please, and certainly not a thank you.”

  “But Korobi-madam—uh, she—can’t help that. And she seems kind. She asked about the baby and my health, telling me to eat on time. I can’t tell you how nice it is to have someone to talk to.”

  “I hope you didn’t tell her anything important?”

  “What can I tell her?” Seema says petulantly. “It’s not like I know anything about what you’re doing.”

  “The Boses can’t be trusted. Anything they know, they’ll use against us. Have you forgotten how Mrs. Bose acted after the gallery was broken into? When the police took me away? Like it was all my fault. Then when I asked for an advance because you were pregnant and we hadn’t been able to sell any paintings, she wanted to know what I’d done with the earlier commissions. That’s none of her damn business!”

  Seema makes soothing sounds, but Mitra ignores her.

  “And how about when I said I wanted to quit and return to India because of your depression?”

  “She told you that we couldn’t leave now, because they’d have to close down the gallery.”

  “Is that all you remember? You’re such a simpleton, it’s good you have me to watch out for you. She said you needed to pull yourself together, and added that if I quit now, she’d make sure no one in Kolkata ever gave me another job again. For all you know, she’s put the girl here to spy on us.”

  “Okay,” Seema says in an abashed voice, “I won’t tell her anything else.”

  “There’s something fishy going on. This Desai, whom I’m supposed to take her to see, is a private detective. Korobi must be looking for someone important. Otherwise she wouldn’t have traveled halfway across the world on a shoestring budget—I saw how she counted out her dollars. Whatever her secret is, it’s clearly something the Boses want to keep private. If I can figure it out, maybe I can get some money out of them, and a good reference as well. Together with the deal I’m working on, that’ll be enough for us to get back to Kolkata and on our feet again. The Boses owe us that much, at the very least, for all the trauma they’ve put us through.”

  Seema whispered something I couldn’t hear, but Mitra answered vehemently, “Oh, they’ll pay! And if they don’t, I’ll make sure to crush that family reputation they’re so proud of. Trample it into mud.”

  His voice is so vicious, I cringe in my sleep.

  “Go wake her. I’ll take her to that detective now.”

  When the kettle begins to hiss, Asif turns off the gas burner and holds the letter in the steam billowing from the spout, as he had once seen in a spy thriller. In the film, the hero had peeled the flap open in one smooth move. This letter turns soggy and refuses to cooperate. He should wait for the paper to dry some, but he’s desperate to read what’s inside. He pulls the flap, and it tears. Asif swears. He’ll have to buy another fancy envelope for the letter. It won’t have Rajat’s name on it, but that would be believable, won’t it? It’s a secret letter, after all. He’ll just have to hand it to Rajat with the professional chauffeur’s expressionlessness.

  The single sheet inside is filled with English words. It takes him a long time to unscramble the bold handwriting with its slanted slashes, the unfamiliar vocabulary.

  Rajat,

  I need to see you—even if it’s for the last time. I need to sit face-to-face and talk things out. I made some mistakes, I admit it. I hurt you. And I’m willing to apologize—something I’ve never done for any man. That should tell you how I feel about you.

  Before you crumple up this letter and throw it away—see, I know you and your temper, because mine is just like it—I want you to remember all the things that were good between us. Remember when your company sent you to Delhi? When I flew up there without telling you and bribed that clerk to let me into your room, so I was naked under the sheets waiting for you when you came back from making that disastrous sales pitch? How magical those three days were. Those hours between meetings, and in the evenings, wrapped in the sheets . . . We hardly slept. You were afraid you wouldn’t get the account, you were so distracted, but I coached you, and it worked out. Remember how you said I was your lucky charm?

  But sex wasn’t the only thing that made our relationship special. We could talk to each other, express our anger and frustration with the world, or even with our families. We could show each other our dark sides and know that we’d be understood and not shunned. You told me things that you said you’d never shared with anyone. Can you do that with that bland pretty-face you have now? How soon before you get tired of acting the virtuous husband for her?

  I can help you, too, far better than she can. I know about your family’s financial problems, the failing gallery in New York. Yes, I’ve made it my business to know. My father would give me the money you need in a moment, if I tell him it’s fo
r the man I love.

  Understand, I’m not trying to bribe you. I just want to meet you once. Then you can do what you want.

  Call me if you have the guts to face who you really are.

  Sonia

  Asif lies back on his lumpy mattress, exhausted and shocked. He’s had to spell out some words and guess at the meanings of others, but he understands the gist of the letter. He’s surprised that Sonia would give him a letter with such private details in it. She must have thought he was illiterate, at least in English. Or maybe she couldn’t believe that a mere servant would dare to open her letter. His eyes burn as though he, too, stayed up for all those sex-soaked nights. When he read that part, he could feel himself hardening. He wanted to spit at Sonia for being a whore. He wanted to tear her clothes off. He was disgusted at her and himself. But then came that last part. The way she accepted Rajat’s shortcomings—and her own—with a shrug and didn’t try to pretend, as most people would, at a virtue she didn’t possess. There was courage in that. He could see the lure of being with such a woman. To be accepted not in spite of your vices but because you had them. The great relief of that.