Queen of Dreams

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

  She’s right. There are a few South Asians here, but our audience is mostly a mix of various races.

  “I guess good music crosses all boundaries, like good food,” I say.

  But I suspect that the listeners keep coming back because they’re drawn, like me, to the old men. There’s an enigma about them—where they’ve come from, why they left those distant places. What they’ve had to give up in order to survive in America. Watching them pulls us out of the cramped familiarity of our own lives into a larger possibility, once upon a time, in a land far, far away. It’s what I’d wrestled my mother for, even as she’d insisted that the only magic lay in now.

  But what comes across most powerfully as they make music is their joy at discovering, like an unexpected oasis tucked into an arid stretch of dunes, something they thought they’d never find here in America. It’s a pleasure to watch their pleasure.

  With business stabilizing, we rehire Ping to handle the easier morning shift. My father, buoyed by his dual success as chef and singing star, starts driving himself to the store. I return to my apartment. Jona goes back to time-sharing her parents.

  I’d expected to be delighted to be back home, but I’m surprised to find that I’m lonely. For all my irritation with him, I miss my father and our brief nighttime exchanges. He’s been too busy to progress further on the journals, and this, too, fills me with impatience. And though I’m delighted to have Jona with me, I guiltily admit that I’ve grown unused to shaping my day around the demands of a child’s presence. Being with her makes me restless. I miss my mother more when she’s around. When she throws a tantrum or stares at me with new pigheadedness, I want to call my mother for advice. A grudging respect for Sonny stirs in me, for all those days he took care of Jona without boast or complaint.

  My painting has reached a standstill. Even Jona with her fiery scenes is doing better than I am. Two more paintings have sold at the Atelier, but I don’t feel the surge of excitement I thought I’d experience. I feel detached from the work I did before—as if it were painted by someone else, and not someone I particularly admire. There’s a static feel, particularly, to my paintings about India. As my mother would say, they’re not authentic.

  I want to create something new, something different and magical, only I’m not sure what it will be. I can’t replicate the treescape with the man in white, I know that much. Some things you achieve in art are a one-time deal.

  Give yourself some time, Belle says. You’ve been through so much recently.

  How can I explain to her that each day that passes without painting has a hollowness to it, a sense of waste?

  I’m dreaming every night, but I remember nothing. It’s as though there’s a wall inside me, constructed (but by whom?) to protect me from something too painful to bear. My dreams take place on the other side of this wall. I wake in the morning with vague recollections of color, whispered laughter, smell of food or beaches, a sense of loss. I’m convinced the two are related, my not-painting and my not-dreaming. But I don’t know how to break down the partition, and in truth, I’m afraid.

  I worry about these things only in fits and starts. Mostly, I’m busy and grateful at the unexpected turn in the fortunes of Kurma House. Our audience continues to grow. An Asian woman has joined the musicians. She wears a black cape and plays a samisen. I haven’t had time to wonder how our rival across the street feels about our success. Maybe my father is right: I shouldn’t think of her as a rival anymore. At Kurma House, we’re doing something unique that she could never imitate. She has her space, I mine.

  Late at night we turn off the lights, lock the shop and walk down to the parking lot. Sometimes Jespal is with us. Or Sonny, if it’s one of his nights off. But mostly I walk between my father and Belle, carrying a sleeping Jona. My muscles ache satisfyingly. The streets are empty at that hour, for Kurma House stays open longer than all the other businesses around here. Sometimes my eyes are drawn to the unlighted square of Java’s window. Is it darker than elsewhere, a squid-ink darkness, seeping out to touch us? I’m being fanciful. If I rubbed my eyes and looked again, it would be a window just like any other. Besides, why should I be afraid? I get into my car and wave good-bye to my father and my best friend. A warm expansiveness comes over me, a sense of many blessings. I send a kind thought to the blond manager, wherever she may be, and start with my daughter for home.

  26

  She wakes in the middle of the night, the dream already unraveling around her, wisps of pulled-apart syllables, patches of fading color. She wakes to the jangling of the phone and feels her heart thudding dully, weighted down by the déjà vu of dread. She wants to burrow into her bed, ignore the noise until it goes away, but she remembers how such reluctance led her into tragedy once before. Had she not disconnected the phone that night, would she have been able to reach her mother before her death?

  Such are the questions that come to her in the dark. To silence them, she picks up the phone.

  It’s Sonny. This does not surprise her. She is surprised, however, to find that she isn’t angry. At some other moment, she’ll have to think about the meaning of this. Right now he’s telling her that Jona has a fever.

  “I gave her Tylenol and lots of water, and her temperature went down a little, but she’s crying and asking for you.” He ends the sentence on an upward note, as though it were a question, which it is.

  In response to that unspoken question, she gets in the car. Driving through the late-night streets, she repeats her daughter’s name, Jona Jona Jona, like a charm. Children always get fevers, she knows this. But loss has made her fearful in a whole new way. Her old companion, the whisper voice, elbows its way forward. You weren’t with her when she needed you—what kind of mother is that?

  But beneath all this is another woman who watches for a black car. What will she do if it appears? Would she be able to keep going on the road duty has mapped for her? There’s a strange attraction to the thought of swerving from all the problematic roles of her life (insecure mother, needy friend, blocked painter, stumbling businesswoman, blind dreamer, grudging daughter, possessive ex-wife) into an unknown space, an unforeseen being. But the universe, which only gives when it wants to, chooses not to tempt her tonight.

  Once again at the heartbreak house. He’s left the door unlocked, a habit they used to fight about when they fought about things, before she chose to leave because her life was not long enough to spend it trying to make him like her. Yes, that’s what they really fought about, she sees that suddenly, like the phosphorous flare of a match. For the first time the absurdity of that strikes her. I wouldn’t have liked it if he wanted to remake me in his image, would I?

  “I’m here,” she calls as she enters, mostly to remind herself that she doesn’t belong in this house, that her arrival must be announced and monitored. She follows his muffled reply up to the master bedroom. It’s hard for her to step across the threshold into a space where (she knows this the way once-wives know such things) Sonny has brought other women. Then she sees Jona curled up on the bed, flushed and shivering under a quilt, and forgets lesser things.

  Hours have passed, cold water brought in bowls, wet wash-cloths applied to the child’s forehead. The child sweats and shivers alternately, hugs her mother rib-aching tight, pushes her away, fretting. She asks for water but when it’s brought flails out with her arm, sending the tumbler flying. The Tylenol works for a while, the fever falls, then spirals up dangerously. The parents (fused into that role by anxiety) discuss taking her to the emergency room, but at this the child cries so bitterly, cheeks splotching with panic, that they abandon the plan. Finally the mother fills the bathtub with cold water and gets in. Only as the water soaks them does she realize she’s still in her clothes. The father hands her the child, the small body hot and limp and listless. She gives a cry of protest, then settles against the familiarity of her mother’s curves. The mother holds her and rocks, crooning. They make a strange tableau, this waterlogged madonna and child, their ski
n puckering as the minutes shiver past, their fingers shriveling like grapes. Finally, the child’s body cools enough for the father to wrap her in a bath towel and take her back to bed. The mother rises to her numbed feet, grasping the edge of the tub with stiff fingers. She peels off her wet clothes and dries herself as best as she can on the hand towel hanging on the rack. She remembers this towel—it is part of a set she bought at a basement sale in their student days. She remembers how pleased she’d been coming home, holding them up for his inspection and praise. The towel is old now, its edges fraying, the maroon threads that smell of his aftershave coming loose. She wonders why he hasn’t replaced it. Didn’t notice it, probably. Men are like that, their man eyes always focused elsewhere, never on what’s in front of them.

  She reaches behind the door, where his robe hangs on its usual hook. The hook, too, has a history: her fingers recall peeling off the protective backing, the smell of the adhesive, the day bright with—but enough with the memories! She’s here because she’s needed by her daughter, that’s her only reason, and she’s not going to let late-night nostalgia nudge her toward believing otherwise. Still as she pulls on the robe (a thin silk kimono already slipping off her shoulders, most impractical for cold Bay Area nights, and who bought it for him, she’d like to know) she can’t stop fragments of images from flashing in her head. That disastrous party, the drink in her hand, the several drinks, the woman in her mock-waitress outfit pressing caviar (had there been something in it?) on her, arms pulling her down, mouths she didn’t recognize, her shouting Sonny’s name, a blue bruise later on her thigh, the sense of falling upward, out of her body. Once again she has the sensation of watching a film dragged too fast through the projector.

  She’d tried to talk to Sonny about it a week later. That was when she could finally bring up what had happened without breaking down. Even then it was hard; she kept running out of breath, her mouth grew dry and her face was hot as though it was she who’d done something shameful. He’d frowned and said, “But are you sure? I can’t believe anyone there would attack you. Maybe you got confused—do you think you might have taken something—? Maybe without knowing it—?”

  His dismissal of this terrible thing that had happened to her as a bad drug trip infuriated her. They had a fight, he stormed out, and she never got to what she’d really been trying to say. That the worst part of the night wasn’t the assault but the fact that he hadn’t been there to rescue her from it. She’d called to him for help, and he’d failed her.

  She never brought it up again. Soon after that, she moved out.

  But now, with the uncertainty that she’s felt since her mother’s death, she wonders, What really did happen that night? Could she, indeed, have been confused? Are events and occurrences—indeed, history itself, which she always thought of as solid and dependable—no more so than molten lava? Is reconstructing a story an endeavor doomed from the start?

  All this flashes through her as she walks to the bed. And yet he should not have disbelieved her. He should have been more sympathetic, should have investigated, questioned, punished whoever was responsible. He should have been the protector she had expected a husband to be or, failing that, suffered in her suffering. But he didn’t. He went back to that club of his and made beautiful music as though she had never spoken.

  “Mom,” Jona says in a hoarse smoker’s voice, “I want you to lie down with me. Put your head on my pillow.” The girl’s eyes are a little clearer, and in thankfulness the woman obeys, though once she had promised herself she’d never lie in that bed again. The bed creaks under her weight. The sound is like a rusty chuckle, the house that she had abandoned laughing to see her pride brought low by parenthood.

  “Now you,” the child orders her father. “Lie down on my other side. Here, put your head on my pillow.” When he does, she takes their hands in hers and links them over her chest. She gives a sigh so deep they can feel her rib cage heave with it. The woman lies there, awkward and silent but not daring to let go because finally the child seems to be resting. She keeps her eyes carefully away from the man’s; with every nerve in her body she’s aware of their interlocked fingers. They haven’t touched except by accident since the night she moved out. What is he feeling? What is she feeling?

  The child’s heartbeats are less frantic now, her breath comes easier. Yes, she’s sleeping, though it’s a fitful sleep, eyes darting beneath her lids. Perhaps it’s contagious, perhaps relief makes the parents relax—or maybe they’re just exhausted after the night’s ordeal. In any case, their eyes close, and they, too, drift into sleep.

  She is dreaming. But she knows it isn’t her dream. Not since she was little has she dreamed in those bright, finger-paint colors. It’s Jona’s dream, and she’s dreaming it because in sleep their heads have shifted so that all three are touching. (Is Sonny dreaming this dream, too? But no, that man has no dreams inside him, only a cacophony of sound.)

  In the dream they are on a hillside, a woman and child. She guesses them to be mother and daughter. She is not sure if she’s seeing Jona and herself—their backs are to her, their silhouettes fuzzy in the predawn. It is a beautiful scene. There are wildflowers by their feet, poppies and lupines getting ready to open. The sun is coming up—they can see the glow, the edge of the hill growing brighter. They wait for it eagerly, holding hands. But when the sun appears, its light is too harsh, a white chemical beam. Too late the woman realizes that something is wrong. She barely has time to push the child down before the light hits her hair. And then she’s gone—just like that—vaporized. The girl is left on her knees, alone and crying.

  The mother calls out in her dream, trying to warn the girl, but she’s only able to make a strangled, meaningless sound. The light is going to hit the girl any instant now. But no, the sun seems to have paused in its climbing, and instead, from the other side of the hill, a different woman comes into sight. Backlit and beautiful, with long brown hair, she walks toward the child, and when she reaches her, she extends her hand. The dreaming mother creases her brow—there’s something familiar about the woman, the flowing, gauzy skirt, the flowers woven into her hair. The child looks up, uncertain, her tears forgotten for the moment. And in that moment the mother knows that the woman is evil—no, not evil, that’s too simplistic a word. But she’ll take the child and change her, transform her into something her own mother didn’t intend for her to be, and that’s a violation, isn’t it? She makes one last supreme effort and cries out, pushing the rage out of her throat, and with that cry she wakes up. Her scream still hangs in the air, though, anguished and prolonged. Then she realizes it’s Jona screaming.

  “No, no, no,” her daughter cries, her eyes still closed, flinging her body from side to side. “Someone help! Help them!”

  The father, jolted awake by the screams, stares dazedly. So the mother must put aside her own agitation (strange how deeply that dream, coming after so many blank nights, shook her; strange how vividly she remembers each detail, after so much forgetting). “It’s okay, baby,” she must say, gathering the child to her, kissing her back into this wakeful life. “It’s only a dream,” she must say, though she knows this is not true. It’s only a dream if you don’t know the connection between the moon and the sun, between water and air, between fullness and annihilation.

  Days later, the child will say, “It was terrible, Mom. They hurt so bad. They were so scared. I really wanted to help them.”

  “I know you did, sweetheart,” the mother will reply. “I did, too.”

  The child will look at her questioningly.

  “I dreamed the same dream,” the mother will explain.

  “Can people do that?”

  “Not always. Maybe it was because you were so sick, and I’d been so worried. It made a special bond between us that night, I guess, when I lay down with my head on your pillow. It was so sad for that child to be left all alone—I really felt for her. I guess I was imagining you in her place—”

  “But, Mom—”


  The mother rushes on, propelled by the weight of what she has wanted to tell someone for years. “You were so upset when you awoke, your temperature started going up again. I was really scared. I wanted to buy that dream from you, like my mother did with me. I even took the coins out of my purse. Did I ever tell you I used to have a nightmare, the same one, over and over, until your grandma bought it from me?”

  “I did, too, Mom! I dreamed the exact same thing before I got sick, only it wasn’t so clear. But—”

  “Then I remembered what happened when she bought it. Somehow it stopped me completely from dreaming. All the years of my growing up. And I thought, I can’t do that to you. Even if they’re painful, I have to let you have your dreams. Did that nightmare come back again, after that?”

  The child nods, her face pale. “It still does, every few days. But, Mom, there aren’t any girls in my dream. There’s a burning building, with people trapped inside, but they’re all adults.”

  That is how the mother learns that what she dreamed wasn’t her daughter’s fear. It was her own.

  27

  FROM THE

  DREAM JOURNALS

  The morning after we were accepted into the caves as novices, we received our first lesson. It was delivered by Elder Samyukta. Later we would realize that this was by design. She was one of the milder dream teachers, less intimidating than Elder Simhika, with her fierce mane of silver hair, or Elder Samahita, who had the habit of stopping newcomers in the dimly lit corridors of the caves and examining them with her steel-blue eyes.

  In her simple cotton sari, Samyukta looked not too different from the mothers many of us (but not I) had left behind. She put us at ease by asking if we had slept well, and if we had had enough to eat at the morning meal. But when she began her talk, her voice deepened, and she looked at us as though she saw things we did not know about ourselves. We realized then that living here, in these caves that were in the world but not quite of it, would change us beyond recognition. And some of us—including myself—were frightened and focused all our attention on holding back tears. Thus later, when I finally realized how vital this first lesson had been, I could remember only parts of Samyukta’s speech. I will set them down below as best as I can.