Queen of Dreams

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

  According to Jona, my mother is not inside the urn but sitting on the back seat beside her. She adds that her grandmother has described to her exactly where she wants her ashes scattered. She trusts Jona to do it right, but she wants to come along for fun.

  I wasn’t going to encourage Jona by commenting on any of this, but Sonny asks, “Can you see her?”

  “I don’t need to,” Jona says with disdain. “I know what she looks like.”

  The urn is surprisingly small, surprisingly heavy, made of a dark metal I don’t recognize. It clinks when we move it. Those are the teeth, Jona states. She speaks with a calmness that I find admirable and gruesome.

  Jona cried for her grandmother continuously for the first few days after the accident, then stopped all of a sudden. She says my mother has told her not to waste energy on such an unprofitable activity. I refuse to believe her, though it sounds like the kind of thing my mother would say. Am I jealous that my mother would choose to appear to my daughter and not to me? Jona says that her grandmother is going to stay near her for seventy-seven days; then she has to go. She says each day her grandmother teaches her one wise thing.

  My father is not with us. I’d been sure he’d want to come. I’d dreaded the thought of having to drive him from Fremont to Sonny’s house. In a car, there’s no place you can escape to. In a few minutes, you could be suffocated by conversation.

  I’ve resumed speaking to my father because he’s translating the journals. A payment of sorts. But our talks are painful, stuttery, like learning to walk after your bones have been broken. The journal he’s started on—we think it’s the earliest one, because the cover is worn, falling apart. But we have no way of knowing. The books are not dated, and the entries, he tells me, meander from subject to subject. The one piece he’s translated so far, a list of meanings for things you might dream of, made little sense to me. I was disappointed there wasn’t anything personal about my mother in it. My disappointment made me suspicious. I wondered if my father was leaving out things he didn’t want me to know.

  When I asked my father if he wanted to accompany us, he said he’d rather not. I should have been relieved; instead, I was angry. Why not? I asked. He said scattering ashes was too final; he wasn’t ready for it. I walked out of the room in the middle of his sentence. I wanted to slam the door but I didn’t because I needed him—and hated the fact that I did.

  We drive through the Marin Headlands. The late afternoon is beautiful in that foggy, Northern California way, budded poppies appearing suddenly through mist like orange periods. We pull into a couple of empty parking areas close to the cliff edge, but each time Jona shakes her head. I’m about to make a sharp, motherlike remark when she yells excitedly at us to stop. Sonny parks the car illegally on a narrow embankment and we scramble up the scrubby hillside, heads lowered against a strong wind that has started up. At the cliff edge, the ground falls away dizzyingly. Below, the Pacific hurls itself against black, gleaming rocks. My eyes are drawn to the sloping red cables of the Golden Gate Bridge, and beyond it, to the silver city, glowing against the day’s late grayness. If I’d died, I, too, would want my remains to become part of this land, this water, because there’s a way in which the geography of one’s childhood makes its way into one’s bones.

  Then I think, perhaps this is how my mother felt about the landscape in which she grew into girl, woman, dream decipherer. Would she have wanted us to take her ashes there?

  I don’t even know where she was born.

  Jona unscrews the lid of the urn and throws out the first handful. Sonny follows. There are tears in his eyes. I’m surprised and envious. When I’d left him, he’d shouted and threatened, begged and sulked. But he hadn’t cried. What had my mother meant to him that he should cry now? And stitched into that, another question: what did my mother mean to me that I cannot?

  Then it’s my turn. Gingerly, I put in my hand and touch the rough, gritty dust. I can’t stop a small shiver from going through me. Less than a month ago, she had cupped my face in her hands and told me how beautiful I looked. Lives and cars—how quickly they can flip over.

  I throw the handful of ashes out as far as I can, but the wind blows most of it back at my face. Dust in my nostrils, making me cough. At least now some of her is in me.

  We drive back to Oakland in silence. Jona has fallen asleep in the back seat. I feel drained, though when I try to figure out why, I come up only with unsatisfying clichés. Sonny stares ahead into the dusk, chewing on his lower lip, an old habit. Hosts of unspoken longings hang in the air, invisible as stars in daytime. I can’t quite grasp them, can’t say, This is what I want for my life. In the driveway, he invites me to stay and have dinner with them, but I say no. I start toward my old Taurus, waiting in the driveway, then hear footsteps running behind. Jona catches hold of my sleeve. Mom, she says, I want you to see my paintings.

  I haven’t been inside the house—his house now—since the night I left, carrying her in my arms. To anyone else I would have said no. She tows me behind her like a rudderless boat. There are dried streaks of tears on her cheeks. Who has she been crying for?

  This is the only house I ever loved.

  There’s something I want to show you, Sonny had said as he drove very fast along the temperamental roads that lead into the Oakland hills. But you have to close your eyes.

  What are you up to now, you crazy man? I’d said, laughing. But I did as he said. We liked playing such games then.

  When I opened my eyes, the house was in front of me, like a woman kneeling with her arms open. There was a weathered wooden gate with a metal bell hanging from it that you had to ring. When you entered the courtyard, you smelled sage and lavender. Moss, cobblestones and a front door with a small stained glass window set in it. You could open the window from inside to see who had come to visit.

  I fell in love even before I walked in and saw the scarred rafters, the large window through which San Francisco glittered on the northwest horizon, the wisteria draping the balcony. Living beside the interstate in Fremont, I’d never believed that houses like this existed. No. What I hadn’t believed was that people like me could live in them.

  Sonny smiled when he saw my face.

  It’s yours if you want it.

  You’re joking, I said. We can’t afford a place like this.

  Don’t worry about it, Riks, he said, and kissed me.

  I let the kiss enchant me, I let the house wrap me in its charm. I had questions, but I told myself they weren’t important. I obeyed him and made myself forget. All these mistakes I made on that day, which I believed to be the happiest in my life.

  I walk up the staircase to Jona’s room, a tiny doll’s house of a room with a window ledge wide enough for a mattress. I had it built so she could wake to a view of bridge and water, could fall asleep to the sun setting over the Pacific. I put in the skylight above the bed so she could look up at the redwood tree that spreads its branches over the roof. I put in—but enough of that! It isn’t my house anymore. What use to remember the care I’d lavished on it?

  On the paneled wall are Jona’s new paintings, the ones she’s done since my mother died. They all depict fires. Some are simple wood fires; others show homes burning. Still others show birds with women’s faces diving into flames. One is a painting of the earth glowing like a coal, chunks of it breaking and flying off like meteors.

  They scare me.

  “What do they mean?” I ask. “Why did you draw them?”

  She shrugs. “Just wanted to. Do you like the colors?”

  I do like the colors. Lemons and purples and greens—not what you’d expect of a fire, but when you see them, you know they’re perfect. She has true talent, my daughter. I tell her that.

  I wonder what Sonny makes of the paintings. Does he think (as I do) that they’re her efforts to come to terms with my mother’s death, that body she is descended from, burned to ash?

  At least she isn’t drawing any more pictures of Eliana. I guess I shou
ld be thankful for that.

  I come downstairs to find the table carefully laid for dinner: a real tablecloth, blue willow–pattern china, a vase of lilies, covered dishes. In spite of myself, I’m touched. I can’t remember the last time someone decorated a table with such care just for me. It would be churlish to leave now. Besides, I owe Sonny. He’s been unusually considerate since my mother’s death, taking care of Jona, bringing her over to Fremont to see her grandfather every other day, helping me handle the complicated paperwork that accompanies tragedy. I don’t know what to make of it. Maybe he’s still in shock.

  We sit down. Sonny uncovers each dish with a flourish. A grated-carrot salad seasoned with cilantro and lemon juice, a rice-and-chicken-kurma casserole. Jona carries in glasses of mango juice. I stare at the dishes, which look surprisingly good—and suspiciously familiar. I hadn’t known Sonny’s repertoire extended past hamburgers.

  “I fixed them this morning,” he says. He looks almost shy as he waits for me to take my first bite.

  As soon as I do, I know.

  “They’re my mother’s recipes!” I glare at him. “How did you get them?”

  “I asked her.” Seeing my face, he adds, apologetically, “Just a few simple ones—”

  I’m so angry I could explode. “You had no business asking her for them!” My anger is really aimed at my mother. How could she betray me like this? If anyone has a right to those recipes, it’s me! How could she give them to him—to him, Sonny-my-rival, whose favorite recreational activity is ruining my life? “You never even set foot in the kitchen all those years I was married to you,” I say bitterly.

  “People change,” he says. “Why do you have such a hard time accepting that?”

  “You haven’t changed! You always tried to worm your way into my mother’s good books, to win her over to your side, to—”

  Anger flushes Sonny’s face. “That’s the real problem, isn’t it? You can’t stand the fact that your mother loved me. You never could. You’ve always wanted to control everyone in your life, what they do, how they think, who they love. That’s why you left me— because I wouldn’t let you control my whole existence.”

  I draw in an outraged breath. “That is such a lie—” But then I see Jona watching us, her eyes moving from face to face, her forehead furrowed with anxiety. Her lower lip trembles. I control myself and push my chair back.

  I’m exhausted, I say, addressing myself carefully to Jona. I have to get back to Fremont.

  “You shouldn’t drive if you’re exhausted,” Jona says, pronouncing the word carefully. “Why don’t you stay here? You can sleep in my room.” She looks from me to Sonny. “You don’t have to talk to Sonny if you don’t want to,” she adds.

  Sonny holds up his hands in truce, his eyes amused. “Jona’s right. You shouldn’t be driving. Exhaustion and temper, that’s a bad combination. Stay over. I promise I’ll stay out of your way.”

  That’s the other thing about him that used to drive me insane. He’d be livid with anger one moment, creating the biggest scene, making me furious as well—and the next moment he’d act like nothing had happened. The worst part was, he expected me to snap out of my bad mood (the bad mood he’d put me in) equally rapidly.

  Well, it didn’t happen then, and it isn’t going to happen now.

  “No, thanks,” I snap. Suddenly I am exhausted—and irritated with them both. I want them to leave me alone to sort through my confusions. I grab my purse and start for the door.

  They abandon their half-eaten dinners and follow me, identical worried expressions on their faces.

  “Mommy, be careful,” Jona says in a small voice. I can tell she’s thinking of that other night drive, the one that changed all our lives.

  Suddenly contrite, I kneel down and give her a hug, feeling the fear in her shoulder bones.

  “I will,” I say. “I’ll be very careful.”

  And I am. It is foggy tonight, too. The freeway lights have yellow aureoles around them. Cars loom up and fade away like sharks in cloudy water. Luckily, there isn’t much traffic. I’m on 880 south, an ugly freeway if ever there was one, but straight as a gash. In thirty nondescript minutes, I should be in my father’s house.

  I’m still stewing over the fact that by having her recipes Sonny now possesses a part of my elusive mother, leaving even less for me. To console myself, I think of the journal, something I’m determined Sonny-the-snooper will never lay his eyes on. I hope my father has finished translating another entry by now. He’s slow. He tells me it’s because they’re more complicated than they appear to be, that they use a lot of archaic Bengali words that he has to struggle with.

  I looked over his shoulder at the journal once as he turned the pages. The entries were fairly short. Written in my mother’s neat, looped handwriting, they didn’t seem complicated or archaic. Maybe he was exaggerating so I’d be more grateful.

  “What are they about?” I asked, wishing I could read them without his mediation.

  “A lot of different things,” he said. “Lessons, stories from old books, famous dreams, clients, people she knew.”

  “Isn’t there anything about herself,” I asked, “about her own life?”

  “Don’t you understand?” he said, craning his neck to look at me. “That’s what they’re all about.”

  I feel its appraoch before I see it—like a heavy-metal vibration, an earthquake gathering its forces underground. I’m expecting a truck, one of those monster semis that are always jackknifing across lanes, spilling chemicals, holding up traffic for hours. But the car, when it appears, is slim and black, an ebony arrow whizzing past me. And though it looks nothing like the vehicle my father described, suddenly I’m certain it’s the one my mother followed into the end of her life. I’m not able to see who’s driving before fog shrouds it, but I catch a glimpse of the license plate. EMIT MAERD, it says, and then I’m left with the red pinpricks of taillights, fast receding into gray.

  Am I going crazy, or is the world? Or maybe it’s a dream I’m inhabiting, a déjà vu dream I’ve pulled up from somewhere. Once I heard my mother say that each of us lives in a separate universe, one we have dreamed into being. We love people when their dream coincides with ours, the way two cutout designs laid one on top of the other might match. But dream worlds are not static like cutouts; sooner or later they change shape, leading to misunderstanding, loneliness and loss of love.

  I’ve known for a long time about dream worlds that don’t match. But tonight, for the first time in my life, I’m having a coinciding dream. Somehow I’ve entered my mother’s world. I must stay in it as long as I can.

  I don’t know when I speeded up, but I find I’m going fast— faster than my old Taurus is accustomed to. The car shudders in protest, but I can’t afford to slow down. I’ve got to keep the black car in view. I’ve got to see who the driver is. (Was there a moment’s gleam of white in that dark interior?) I’m not sure what I’m hoping for, if and when I catch up with him. If I make him stop. Answers?

  I’m not even sure about the questions.

  The black car changes lanes without warning, moving to the extreme right. At the last minute I realize that it’s getting onto Highway 92. I swing after it, almost hitting a somnolent U-Hauler who honks furiously. My heart is thudding. I haven’t traveled in this direction for some years, but I recall that the highway goes over the San Mateo Bridge and continues all the way to the Pacific. In the coastal hills it will turn into a dark, winding two-laner edged by treacherous drops. I should stop this ridiculous car chase and go back to my father’s house. But I know I won’t.

  20

  She approaches the bridge. On the other side of the tollbooth the fog is thick as sludge, but she has no time to worry about this because the black car is going through the permits-only lane. She follows even though she doesn’t have a permit, even though she’s always been the most law-abiding of drivers. (Will they take away her license? Will they make her do community service? But a part of her loves
this recklessness.) Then she’s in the slushy fog, navigating by feel, unable to see the railings that must be sweeping by her, dangerously close. Surely she will lose the black car now. But no, she sees the taillights only a little ways ahead. EMIT, she reads in relief and some puzzlement. Has he slowed down on purpose?

  Along the flat, unending length of the bridge, so close to the water that she can hear the fat whisper of waves. Balanced on the highest point of the arc, where for a moment the fog parts and shows her the city, glowing as though on fire. But it is not a metaphor. She sees flames licking the TransAmerica tower. Can the dampness of fog warp itself into mirage, as desert heat does? The curtain falls, folding into it what she saw.

  The black car is leaving the bridge, leaving the freeway. Here? In the heart of suburban Foster City, onto a road marked Fashion Island, deserted because all fashionistas are in bed now? The signal light ahead turns red. The brake lights of the car wink three times in rapid succession, as though the driver is sending her a message. Then it roars into the intersection so fast that she realizes the driver has been playing with her all this while. It makes a fluid left turn and is gone.

  She goes through the red light, too, amazed at how easy it is to keep breaking rules once you’ve started. Amazed at the jolt of excitement it sends through her. Was this how Sonny felt, and his friends, when—? She forgets the question halfway because she’s looking down a long one-way road with no offshoots and no vehicle ahead of her.