Queen of Dreams

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

  “Auntie Belle,” Jona calls. “See, I’ve finished my picture of our camping trip.”

  She holds up a brightly crayoned drawing. Purple sky, orange trees, yellow grass, two polka-dotted tents. And four people.

  “Who are they, sweets?” Belle asks.

  “That’s Paul, that’s Sonny, that’s me holding Sonny’s hand, and that’s Eliana, holding Sonny’s other hand.”

  I crane my neck over Belle’s head to see better. I recognize Sonny’s picture right away. Jona has drawn him as she always does, with his blue-black hair shiny as a bird’s wing, his sharp, distinctive nose—and sun rays emanating from his head like a halo. Sonny-the-angel. Another item to add to the long list of unfair ironies that made up my life. Next to him is a tall woman in a blue dress with brown hair all the way to her waist. She has what looks like a crown of feathers on her head.

  “Tell me about Eliana,” Belle says, sitting down next to Jona. “I don’t think I’ve met her before.”

  “Of course you haven’t,” my daughter replies. “I just met her during this trip myself.”

  “Where does she come from?”

  “Czechoslovakia,” Jona says without missing a beat. Over her head Belle and I exchange a look.

  “Is she a friend of your dad’s—or Paul’s?” Belle asks.

  “She’s everyone’s friend. But most of all, she’s my special friend.”

  “Um—what do you mean, special? Is that like an imaginary friend?”

  “Really, Auntie Belle!” Jona says with dignity as she rolls up her drawing. “Only babies have imaginary friends. She’s special because she sings me songs, and tells me stories of how she grew up.”

  “In Czechoslovakia?” I ask.

  Jona nods. “She told me how there were witches—good ones—in the village where she used to live.” Then she loses interest in our conversation and goes over to check out the puppets.

  In the car, as we drive home, I send covert glances Jona’s way. She is examining her drawing, her dark head bent over the stick figures. It strikes me suddenly that I don’t know her as fully as I thought I did. She who had come out of my body, tiny and crumpled and containable—even she now has parts to her life that I can’t enter. It doesn’t matter whether they’re real or imagined. I feel excluded all the same. Like the rest of my family—my mother, my father, Sonny—she too has become an enigma.

  Later that night, lying sleepless in bed, thinking of all the things that were going wrong in my life, I’d realize I’d included Sonny in my family list. And with chagrin I’d admit that he was still family, much as I wanted to disown him. Because only family filled you with such exasperation. Only family could irritate you like a hangnail that you couldn’t chew off, no matter how much you tried.

  When we turn into the apartment’s parking lot, Jona is singing something under her breath. They sound like nonsense words. But who knows, maybe they’re Czechoslovakian.

  10

  She has been trying for days to complete the painting, but she hasn’t had any success. She’s pleased with the foliage, the sky, the quality of light. It’s the man that’s giving her trouble. His body seems stiff and posed; there’s something fake about the angle of his neck. And his face—she’s been unable to draw it at all. Sometimes, frustrated, she’s tempted to cover him over with a rhododendron bush. But that would mean a major defeat, and she isn’t ready for that, not yet, even though the show opens in three days.

  Things are getting worse at the Chai House. Stragglers wander in every once in a while. But it seems to her that they look around in surprise, as though taken aback at finding themselves in this place. As though they had meant to go somewhere else. They buy take-out coffee and leave as soon as they can. Even Belle’s offer of free Dietbusters (they’ve stopped stocking other snacks) isn’t enough to hold them—or to entice them back.

  Where are their regular customers, Rakhi wonders. What has happened to Mrs. Locklin? To old Professor Rogers? To the Laurel Street Book Club members, who used to come in every Wednesday and fill the corner nook with the intense electricity of their arguments? She thinks of them all with bafflement and concern—and a sense of betrayal.

  Last evening she walked into the store to find Belle poring over the accounts. Belle beckoned her over to her laptop computer and jabbed at the screen, at the column with the minus numbers. They’d been running at a loss for weeks. Now there wasn’t enough left to pay for next week’s supplies.

  “Rent’s due in two weeks,” Belle said. The skin around her eyes looked raw, as though she’d been rubbing at it. In the weak well of light from the laptop screen, her lips were blue. “Where are we going to get the money?”

  They weren’t savers; their own bank accounts were too slender to last them more than a month or so. They couldn’t go to the bank. They already had an outstanding loan. Their parents, never wealthy, had helped them as much as they could already.

  “I guess we couldn’t ask Sonny, huh?” Belle said. “He is the richest person we know. Doesn’t that nightclub pay him an obscene amount of money—?”

  “Belle!”

  “Okay, okay, forget I mentioned it.”

  “Give me a little time,” Rakhi said. “I’ll come up with something.” But all she had managed to do as she lay in bed that night, staring at the crisscrossed pattern of light and shadow thrown on her ceiling by the streetlamp, was to dislodge the rock she’d positioned so carefully over the snake hole in her memory.

  She is back in college, in the classroom with large, green-shuttered windows where she first met Sonny. It’s a literature class on modern Indo-Anglian writers, and by this she knows she’s in a dream, for the university had never offered such a class when she was there, and she’s not even sure what the term means.

  (But perhaps this is something else, a not-dream that we choose to misname because we all love dreams. Dreams that are like kites cut free from cause, from the ground-glass-dipped string of guilt.

  Also: she hasn’t had a single dream since her early teenage years, since those recurring nightmares that her mother finally bought from her with a dollar and a string of Bengali words she didn’t explain to Rakhi.)

  She’s sitting in the back of the classroom, near the window, her usual spot. She looks out on the confetti of humanity on Sproul Plaza—old hippies with guitars and bandanna-necked dogs; earnest students in Birkenstocks handing out Earth Day flyers; people queued up at the burrito stall; evangelists, fervently sweaty in black, describing with relish the torments of hell that await unbelievers, among whom, surely, Rakhi is included. Spring is in the air, a faint throbbing, like the drums people sometimes play in front of Zellerbach Auditorium. She thinks she smells hot-and-sour soup from the Chinese cart on Bancroft Way and decides she’ll go there after class.

  She doesn’t see him come into the room, but she feels it—a tingling at the base of her spine. Though why should this be? It’s the middle of the quarter already; he must have entered the class many times before this. Still, with her shoulder blades she senses him checking out his seating options. There’s a chair next to a blonde in the second row, and there’s one next to her. He makes his choice, and her life changes.

  Even in her not-dream she is amazed at how exactly she remembers certain things about him. He was wearing a faded black T-shirt with Carlos Santana’s face on it. His hair fell over his forehead as he bent to write in his notebook. Good Indian hair, thick and glossy and true black. It was clear he had not combed it that morning. A little shock ran through her as she realized this. In all her sheltered life (the adjective rises in her, unexpected—already he’s started unpacking her so she can see herself better) she hadn’t known anyone who came to class so unashamedly uncombed. He wrote without stopping through class, but when she sneaked a look over his knuckles—solid and a little battered, like a carpenter’s— she saw that he’d filled the page with squiggles from a green fountain pen. Later he would tell her they were notations for a bhangra remix he’d been heari
ng in his head. He was taking the lit class to fulfill a requirement, but he was really a musician. He couldn’t afford to be interested in anything else.

  “Not even me?” she’d say, greatly daring, her heart beating fast. She wasn’t used to flirting—she’d always been a serious girl. And he would dip his face toward hers—. But all this would be much later. Weeks? Months? Time blurs into Before and After when she thinks of Sonny.

  Sonny is the one who made her take her art seriously. Until then, she’d puttered around. But seeing his passion made her want to have something like that of her own. And he’d encouraged her. He’d been the first person she believed when he said she had something special.

  But she’s jumping ahead. On that first day, he didn’t even notice her, caught up in the web of sound in his head. Or maybe he did. Because he sat in the same place next time, and the next, and the next, and then he asked her what she was doing for lunch.

  Dreaming, she wonders what it was that drew them to each other. Was it their similarity? They were both of Indian origin, though he never spoke of his past—parents, hometown, high school, habits. (In this he was like her mother. Was this core of secrecy the reason they’d taken to each other right away when Rakhi introduced them?) She didn’t even know if he’d been born in America, like herself, though she could tell he’d lived in it long enough to be uncomfortable anywhere else. (She wanted to ask him if he longed for India like she did—India, which she’d never seen but had every intention of visiting next year. She didn’t know then that next year would turn into the next, that she’d never go.) They both loved spicy food, preferably Asian. They’d drive his car (a battered Mustang at the time) up to Tilden Park and eat takeout with their fingers from bright cartons. They’d watch the sun set over Angel Island and feed each other pad thai noodles or Szechwan beef with extra red chilies. The stars would come up one by one; he would worry an old tune out of a guitar, a song she’d heard on her father’s record player. But in his hands it became something quite different. Listening, it was hard for her to breathe. She loved watching his face, intent, oblivious, as though she weren’t there. No, as though he weren’t there. It was the way she hoped her own face might be when she was painting.

  Or was it their differences, the opposed poles of their longings that fascinated them? He was a night spirit, with impulsive, uneven, boyish generosities. He loved the smoky camaraderie of clubs, though he didn’t smoke (not cigarettes, anyway). He’d have bought the whole world drinks if she didn’t stop him. He loved to be in crowds, jostled by strangers. Loved the desperate trust of raves. He understood how people needed to have a good time, and what they were prepared to do to get it. Understood the complexity of the enterprise. He scorned Valentine’s Day, then brought her flowers for no reason. Nothing trite like roses. Instead: bearded iris, anthuriums, snowdrops, even orchids, though he wasn’t rich, not by any means. He loved late-night jam sessions with the band he played in sometimes. He kept loaning his musician friends money. (They never returned it; he never expected them to.) Playing made him restless. I’m high from the music, he’d say. (Later, she’d wonder if that was all he was high from, and later still, she’d begin to get angry. But that was in the future, a lifetime away.) They went to a bar or an all-night café to talk, and even if she was bleary-eyed next day in class, or had a hangover and missed class altogether, even if sometimes her hand shook from all that unaccustomed caffeine when she painted, it was okay, it was fun, artists grew as they had new experiences, he was her new experience, and she was growing.

  After she’d passed from that life into a different time, something spackled and gray, like the inside of tunnels, she’d realize you couldn’t build a relationship on a new experience. Because one day it wasn’t new anymore, and what were you left with?

  In the classroom, months have passed, maybe years. Sonny leans toward her—they are studying Borges, or is it Bauhaus architecture? He wears a Pan-like beard now, and an earring. You loved me because of the dimple just below my lower lip, he says, speaking loud enough to make the professor raise her eyebrows. You loved me because I was the first one. You loved me because I was as risky as jumping off a speeding train. He takes off his earring and reaches for her hand—he’s going to slide it onto her finger, and it will become her engagement ring, her favorite piece of jewelry. (When he starts making big money he’ll buy her a diamond ring, but she’ll put it in the bank and continue wearing the thin hoop on her finger.) Things will speed up after this day, will blur like a film that’s being projected too rapidly. She’ll bring him to meet her parents—her mother, really, who was the one that counted—but no, that had happened already, hadn’t she already gathered him to her as though he were her long-lost firstborn? They’ll be married in a month, in a year they’ll move into the beautiful pink Victorian house in Oakland, bought for (literally) a song, under circumstances that she’ll begin to question—but not until it’s too late. Jona will be born. The American public will learn what a bhangra remix is, and it will electrify their souls. Sonny will make more money, and more. More than she can imagine at this moment. His name will snake its way up the charts. His fans will adore him, men and women both. Oh, how they’ll adore him! And then—

  But the movie reel has stuttered backward somehow. She’s in the classroom again, Sonny holds out the ring. She’s going to say yes, but first she wants to ask him why he loves her. She who has no dimple under her lip, she who isn’t his first, she who’s as risky as instant oatmeal. But he’s frowning, impatient. Everyone in the room is frowning at her, even the professor, they’re all waiting for her to put on the ring that will brand her as his. Never mind, she thinks, extending her left hand. There’ll be time enough later to ask him everything she wants to know.

  Wait. Something is wrong with this dream-or-not film—a defective frame, maybe. Because in this scene she has no hand—no arm, even. She looks around, baffled, then apologetic under the glare of the class’s eyes.

  It’s okay, Sonny says. Give me the other hand.

  But that too is gone. She’s only a torso now, a chipped piece of statuary, cracks spreading at temples and collarbones, pitted scars along the column of the throat. Surely no man would want to marry her now, maimed as she is. Tears flow from her stone eyes as she thinks this.

  But look: Sonny leans forward, a glittering that might be compassion in his eyes. He slips the ring between her parted stone lips, gives her torso a shake. She feels the ring begin to slide into her mouth, her throat, down, down, until it gets lodged in her chest somewhere. She’ll never be able to return it to him now, she thinks, and feels a moment of despair. But perhaps she shouldn’t be despairing. Doesn’t this mean she’ll be his forever? That he’ll always take care of her?

  He nods at her as though he’s read her mind, and leans forward. He kisses her. It’s a long kiss. The class applauds and whistles, the professor quotes Marx, What man most loves about woman is her dependency on him, and someone throws rice grains for luck.

  In the morning, it is raining. She drops Jona off at school, then stares dispiritedly at her half-finished painting. No solutions have come to her in the restless night. She has roughly seven hundred dollars in the bank, and a few pieces of jewelry. (Not the diamond ring, which she returned to Sonny a long time ago even though he said, Keep it.) In any case, jewelry never fetches much— she knows this already, from things she’s had to pawn. Just like the equipment in the Chai House will not fetch much if they shut down.

  She decides to walk to the eucalyptus grove. It’s unlikely that the man in white will be practicing in all this rain, but the walk might clear her head. And who knows—maybe he will be there. Maybe she’ll walk up to him and ask if he’d like to invest in a café. The ridiculousness of her daydreaming makes her laugh out loud. She’s shrugging on her blue poncho when the phone rings.

  It’s her mother. “I haven’t seen you in a long while,” she says. “How about I take the BART up so we can spend a little time together.”


  Rakhi feels a warning buzz along her daughter antenna. Her mother rarely comes to Berkeley (she calls it Berserkley)—and never on the train, because the station is a long way from both the shop and Rakhi’s apartment. Then she remembers her mother mentioning she doesn’t like to drive as much, now that she’s getting on in years. (Her mother’s words had depressed Rakhi. Somehow she’d believed that a dream teller’s powers would have protected her from the banal infirmity of aging.)

  “Are you sure?” she asks. “It’s so rainy today—and you’ve been fighting that cold. Why don’t you wait till Friday—you’ll be coming up then anyway for the opening of the show—”

  “Don’t worry!” her mother says. “I took a megadose of vitamin C. Besides, the rain’s going to let up in just a while.”

  How can she know that? Outside Rakhi’s window, the rain beats down in determined, opaque sheets. It doesn’t look like it’s intending to let up anytime soon. Do her mother’s powers extend to the interpretation of meteorologic phenomena?

  “I heard it on the Weather Channel, silly!” her mother says. “I’ll be at the Chai House around noon. Don’t rush if you get busy painting. I’ll be happy to chat with Balwant until you come.”

  “Painting!” Rakhi gives a snort. “I wish!” Then, impulsively, she blurts out, “Mom, we’re in big trouble.”

  “Yes, shona,” her mother says. “That’s why I’m coming.”

  As she walks to the eucalyptus grove through rain that has obligingly reduced itself to a drizzle, a new uneasiness pricks at Rakhi. Their situation must be far worse than she has gauged; otherwise her mother would never involve herself in it.

  11

  FROM THE

  DREAM JOURNALS

  NOTES, LESSON 17: THE MEANINGS OF THINGS

  If you dream of a closed door, you will ultimately be successful in gaining what you desire, but it will take much effort.