Queen of Dreams

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

  Sometimes I speak to my mother. I ask what she was thinking of when the accident occurred, how she could have been so disgracefully careless. I ask how exactly it came about.

  I am angry with her, too, but it’s a more complicated anger. I don’t have words to articulate it. It is easier to allow myself to feel baffled.

  No one is sure of what happened that night. But this much the reports agree on: she went off of Highway 580 where the road lifts itself up and curls lazily against the San Leandro hillside. She plowed through the guardrail and over the purple ice plant that covers the hillside, the car’s nose pointed directly at the long, low flatness of the San Mateo Bridge, its floating fairy lights. Then the car flipped over. By the time the ambulances got there, she was unconscious. She died soon after reaching the hospital.

  The reports say there were no skid marks, no sudden braking. Nothing to indicate that she’d lost control of the car—or that she’d tried to stop it from going over.

  My father says he was asleep when the accident occurred.

  I don’t believe him. Somehow, he was responsible. I know it by the prickly coldness along my spine, the way my teeth hurt as though I’ve been sucking on something too sour.

  “Talk to me,” Belle said after she took me home from the hospital. “For God’s sake, Rikki, talk to me. Cry, scream, do something.” But every response I considered seemed clichéd. Meaningless. I knew I should save my energy for something more useful, even though I didn’t know yet what it was.

  I sat on the sofa in my apartment for a day and a night. From time to time I visualized the accident. Maybe my father had started an argument with my mother, distracting her. Had he grabbed for the wheel in his drunken state, sending the car over the edge?

  When I was too tired to sit, I lay down. I ate what Belle put in front of me. I knew starving myself wasn’t the answer. I closed my eyes and chewed, it was easier that way. I didn’t recognize what it was that I ate. My taste buds had gone AWOL. When Sonny brought Jona over, I held her, but absentmindedly, as though she were someone else’s child. Her hair was full of snarls, but this didn’t agitate me in the usual way. She was very quiet. Someone must have told her what had happened, must have instructed her not to ask questions.

  “I’m really sorry, Rikki,” Sonny said. He knelt in front of me and held my hands in both of his. I didn’t snatch my hands away. I would have, though, if I’d had the energy. What happened was Sonny’s fault, too. If he hadn’t shown up at the gallery and caused the scene, my father wouldn’t have started drinking. He could have driven home. Then they wouldn’t have had the accident. And even if they did (I couldn’t stop myself from thinking this, though I hated myself for it) perhaps he would have died instead of her.

  My whisper voice raised its serpent head to remind me that I, too, was to blame. I could have stopped my parents from driving home. I could have insisted that they spend the night with me. But I’d been too busy fantasizing about the man in white.

  Now that my mother is dead, the man in white has faded into irrelevance, along with words like romance and excitement, mystery and adventure. I can’t even dredge up his name from the muck of memory. Fitting payment for my selfishness.

  There’s another reason why I didn’t snatch my hands away from Sonny. For once he meant what he was saying. He had loved my mother, too, and he, too, was hurting. He used to say that she was his only true family. Don’t be melodramatic, I’d snap at him. But I knew he really felt that way.

  “I can keep Jona for as long as you want,” he said. “You’ll probably have to stay in the Fremont house until your dad’s well enough to manage on his own—”

  I stared at him. It hadn’t struck me until then that I’d have to go back to that house full of my mother’s absence to take care of the man who was probably responsible for her death. My face must have shown my horror, because Sonny asked if I was okay. A stupid question, which he normally would not have asked—whatever he was, Sonny wasn’t stupid. A question that I normally wouldn’t have suffered without a sharp retort. But we weren’t feeling normal, none of us. I gave a silent nod and tugged halfheartedly at Jona’s tangles. Behind me, I could sense Sonny and Belle, co-conspirators for once, exchanging glances.

  “She shouldn’t be left alone,” he whispered.

  “Don’t worry,” Belle whispered back. “I’ll stay with her.”

  It didn’t bother me to hear them refer to me this way. It was comforting to consider myself a she. As though I were a balloon floating at the end of a long, thin thread.

  Before she left, Jona asked, “What are you thinking of?” As an afterthought, she added, “Mommy?” She’d wriggled off my lap a while ago, as though she, too, felt that the woman on the sofa— this floating she—was a stranger.

  “Nothing,” I told her. I tried to construct my face so it would project sincerity. This must not have worked, because she threw me a doubting glance and clutched at Sonny’s hand, tugging him door-ward. Long after the door closed behind them, I could hear their voices in the corridor, hers high and agitated, his a placating murmur. Or maybe it was inside my head that I heard them. When the voices faded, I let my body do what it wanted. It slumped sideways onto the sofa, it closed its eyes. Even before I was asleep, the dreams started coming, spools of light and shape unraveling too fast behind my eyelids, the fabric ripping, making me twitch and cry out, making Belle rush over anxiously. Yes, all the dreams I’d been longing for. But in the morning, waking exhausted, I remembered none of them.

  I’d lied to Jona when she’d asked me what I was thinking. Keeping one’s mind on nothing requires self-control of a kind I’ve never possessed, not even under more conducive circumstances.

  I’d been thinking of the funeral.

  The funeral was held at the Valley View Funeral Home, a squat beige building off of a freeway. Someone had tried to beautify it by adding windows and a courtyard with a fountain, but it remained what it was: a place where people were forced to recognize how frail lives were, and how little we appreciated them until they broke. Sonny had made the arrangements. Although I hated the place, I didn’t hold it against him. It was better than what I could have managed on my own.

  I sat in one of the front pews with my scraggly little family, what was left of it: Belle and Jona and Sonny. My father was in the hospital, where they were still running tests on him because he tended to blank out from time to time. (I had two theories about this: 1. He was faking it; 2. It was a result of guilt.) There was a covered casket up front, an overpowering scent of flowers. They could have been gardenias, I wasn’t sure. My mother had disliked strong scents. At first I’d thought of complaining, having them removed. But then I figured it didn’t matter to her anymore. A hushed, churchy music was being piped through the intercom. We’d invited a mere handful of people—my parents didn’t have much of a social life. If there were relatives, I didn’t know of them. The priest from the Indian temple gave a brief speech about how my mother had been a virtuous wife, mother and homemaker, and an asset to the community. (It was obvious he knew nothing about her.) Sonny spoke in a choked voice of how much she had meant to him, how she’d guided him through tough times and loved him even when he hadn’t deserved it. Belle wiped her eyes as she talked about my mother’s generosity. And then it was my turn.

  I had decided to say a few words about how my mother gave me a sense of myself, how she never pushed me, like so many mothers do, to live out her dreams of success. It wasn’t profound in any way, and I would rather not have spoken, but I felt obligated. I couldn’t shake off the feeling that my mother’s spirit was hovering above us somewhere, listening in.

  But when I reached the podium and turned to face the audience, I was so taken aback that I couldn’t remember a single word I’d planned to say. The hall was full of people. When had they all filed in, so silent that until this moment I hadn’t been aware of their presence? I didn’t recognize any of them, but I knew at once who they were. People my mother had helped ove
r the years, people who were connected to her by their dreaming. Perhaps that is how they knew to be here now.

  Maybe I was dizzy from not having eaten that morning, but as I stood at the podium I saw that the faces of all these people were similar in some way, as though being touched by my mother had made them into relatives. There was—in the look in their eyes, in the way they held their heads, or rested a chin on a hand, or clutched a tissue in a fist—something that reminded me of my mother. From now on, I would know them by this sign wherever I ran into them—at a farmers’ market, a BART station, on the seashore. But I knew also that I would never see them again.

  I wanted to say something to them, something consoling and meaningful, for they were my mother’s true family, her orphans. Their grief was more legitimate than mine. But what could I tell them? They knew her better than I did; they knew her in her essence. Until now I’d held on to the hope that someday I would know her in this way, too—when I was old enough, when I was wise enough. But as I stood there in the mortuary hall, I realized that it was never going to happen. My mother’s secret self was lost to me forever.

  I stood there, frozen into silence by this fact, until Belle came up and led me back to my seat. She held me tightly when I started to shiver. Later, in the crematorium, when a conveyor belt had fed the casket into the huge metal jaws of the furnace, she tried to make me talk about what I was feeling. But how could I tell her that what ate at me more than my mother’s death was my exclusion from her life?

  On the way back, Belle drove while I balanced on my lap the square urn the manager of the crematorium had handed me. She tried to get me to cry, but I didn’t feel like crying. Instead, I wanted to ask if she’d been as surprised as I to see all the people who’d come to the funeral. But I was afraid. What if she said, What on earth are you talking about, Rikki? What if she said, What people?

  I plump the pillows and help my father sit up in bed. I place the tray of rice and banana squash on his knees. I pour him a glass of juice. He asks me, hesitantly, if I’d like to sit down. As always, I say I’m busy. He should ring the brass bell I’ve placed on the nightstand when he’s done.

  “Have you eaten?” he asks. I incline my head briefly, a gesture that could mean yes or no. There’s a fading yellow bruise on his left cheekbone that gives him the look of a boxer past his prime. I cannot remember a single instance in my life when I felt close to him.

  I’m at the door when he says, “You’re angry with me, aren’t you?”

  I don’t answer.

  “Don’t be angry,” he says.

  What a ridiculous request, as though it were possible to will away anger. But even if it were, I wouldn’t. I’m grateful to my anger; it fills up the pitted hollow inside of me.

  “We need to talk,” he adds.

  “I don’t feel like talking,” I say. I grab the door, ready to shut it behind me.

  “You blame me, don’t you? You think it was my fault, somehow.”

  I say nothing, but my mouth feels like I bit into a raw bitter gourd. I’m halfway through the door already. When I get downstairs, I’m going to call Sonny and ask him to arrange for a nurse, starting tomorrow.

  “If you sit down,” my father says, “I’ll tell you what happened just before the accident.”

  My entire body stiffens. Even though I’ve vowed not to let him engage me in conversation, I find myself saying, “I thought you were asleep.”

  “I lied,” he says, gesturing for me to sit on the bed.

  He has me in his trap, and knows it. As a compromise, I pull a chair close to the door.

  “How do I know you aren’t lying now?”

  And he, wilier than I’d credited him with being: “I think you’re enough of your mother’s daughter to recognize a true story when you hear it.”

  In this house of death what I dread most is when the phone rings. But each time I pick it up.

  Today there’s a woman at the other end.

  “Are you the dream teller?” she asks. There’s a catch in her breath, as though she’s been running. “I need help.”

  I tell her that my mother is dead.

  She is silent for a long moment. Then she says, “But you can help me, no? You’re her daughter, she must have taught you something? I can tell you this dream I keep having, and you can tell me what to do?”

  I tell her I can’t interpret dreams.

  “Please don’t say no,” she says. “I don’t know anyone else to ask. I’m so scared. Please try, please?”

  She’s still sobbing when I hang up.

  “It wasn’t a complete lie,” my father says, “when I told the doctors I’d been asleep. I had. But I awoke—and noticed your mother was going too fast. It surprised me because she was always a cautious driver, as I’m sure you know. I told her to slow down, but she didn’t. I asked her what was wrong. She was staring straight ahead. I mustn’t lose him, she said. I peered through the fog to look. There was a large black car ahead of us, I couldn’t tell what kind, also going very fast. I told her to be careful, to watch her speed, but it was as though she didn’t hear me. Who’s in that car? I asked. Who mustn’t you lose? You wouldn’t understand if I told you, she said. But I’ll tell you anyhow. He’s my only chance to get back what I’ve lost. I squinted, trying to figure out who it was, because she sounded like she knew him. All I could see was a silhouette.”

  Later I would ask, Do you remember the license plate?

  He’d shake his head. Didn’t think to look at it.

  Was he wearing white?

  He’d wrinkle his brows, wanting to help. But finally he’d opt for the truth. I’m not sure.

  “The fog grew thicker. I couldn’t make out the black car anymore. I shouted at her to pull over, told her I would drive—I was scared sober by then. But she—like always—paid my words no attention. I wanted to grab the wheel, but I was afraid that would cause an accident for sure.

  “When the bend in the freeway came up, she sailed into it without hesitation, as though it were the route she had intended to take all along. I think she was smiling.”

  17

  All day she has been packing her mother’s things, going through the bedroom closet, surprised at how little there is: a handful of T-shirts, two pairs of jeans, sweatpants for garden work, three cardigans, a stack of saris, some silver bangles. Surely there were other things her mother wore. She recalls a pink kurta embroidered with chickan work, a gold locket with a red stone embedded in the center. Where did they go? And the photographs. Surely there were family outings to the zoo, to Golden Gate Park, a boat trip on the bay. She remembers posing with her mother, arms around each other, the toothy smiles they’d later joke about. She remembers her father sneaking up on them with the camera and catching them with their mouths full of cotton candy. She throws a suspicious glance toward the bed, where he slumps against the headboard as though he could never have been that man. He’s rustling the newspaper, pretending to read, but really he’s watching the small, sad stacks she’s placing in cardboard boxes and labeling for the folks from St. Vincent de Paul to pick up. Should she believe the story he told about the black car? The skin of his arm, chafed by the edge of the cast, looks pale and dry. She should massage some lotion into it, but she can’t bear the thought of contact. She hadn’t consulted him before she decided to clear the closets. She feels guilty about that for a moment, then pushes the feeling away. He isn’t in charge, she tells herself with a new cruelty. Not that he ever was. Besides, these things are not her mother. There is no point in keeping them.

  She goes through the kitchen drawers, unearthing old recipes, unused garden gloves, several pairs of embroidery scissors, a silk shawl. From the garage she removes shoes, raincoats, a box of expired coupons. She lifts out, from the bathroom cabinet, toothbrush, comb, hydrating lotion, mascara, concealer, glitter. (Glitter? Her mother?) She considers the bookshelf. Her mother loved reading books about distant places—Machu Picchu, the Andamans, the Antarctic—though she never e
xpressed a desire to travel to any of them. She touches their spines lightly, trying to imagine what went through her mother’s mind as she turned their pages. How defenseless things become when their owner is gone! She leaves the books alone, at least for now.

  She has saved the sewing room for last, partly from a reluctance to intrude on her mother’s private space, partly from a hope that here, perhaps, she will find a clue to the mystery of who her mother was. (Is it excessive, this hankering inside her? Her mother would have had little patience with it. Ridiculous! she would have said, with some asperity. Didn’t you live with me for eighteen years? What more can there be to know?)

  When she opens the door, the room smells of cinnamon peel. But then she takes another, deeper breath, and there’s no smell. Did she only imagine the spice odor? She’s losing faith in her senses, their ability to evaluate accurately the world around her. When she slides open the closet door, she notices that her hand is trembling.

  Inside the closet it is disappointingly ordinary. Extra quilts, old clothes, rags for housecleaning. Catalogs for ordering seeds. But she remembers a time when she sifted through such quotidian items to find a box—what had been in it? Vials? She delves into the sad smell of unused things, things that suspect they’ll never be needed again. No box, no vials, but in the back under a pile of bank statements she comes across a framed photograph of herself and Sonny at their wedding.

  In the photo they’re standing outside the Hindu temple, he in a maroon turban spangled with gold, she in a green wedding Benarasi with a too large bindi on her forehead. They hold hands shyly, looking very young and very pleased with themselves. Grasping the photo, she lowers herself heavily onto the carpet, onto the spot where her mother spent so many unaccounted-for nights, and finds herself thinking of how much she hates caviar.