by Katy Yocom
When he finished with his work, the veterinarian straightened and flexed his knees a few times and said that barring evidence of poison in the tissue samples, in his opinion the cause of death was starvation, resulting from injury leading to the inability to hunt.
Sarah let herself look then. It was horrid. Beautiful Akbar had been destroyed. What was left looked like meat. Four forest guards hefted the butchered body and settled it onto the stacked wood. Separately they placed the skin atop the carcass. The park director circled the woodpile, setting match to tinder. A tiger dealer would have paid thousands for the body, starved and diseased or not. Hence the fire, so the body wouldn’t be looted.
Within minutes the flames took hold, sending up a stench of flesh and burning hair. They bowed their heads. Some of the forest guards prayed aloud. Some held hands, as Indian men do in friendship.
Once, Sarah had written an article about a rescue operation back in the States that housed big cats confiscated from private breeders and roadside zoos. The animals arrived skinny and malnourished, and even after they regained their health, every one of them still bore scars from the old traumas. One particular panther spent the rest of his life pacing nonstop exactly fifteen feet in either direction, the length of the cage where he had been imprisoned for years, too damaged to adjust to his larger enclosure at the rescue. The tigers’ coats were a uniform dull brown, and it was impossible to tell Siberian from Sumatran because their various captors had bred them without any regard for subspecies. They were mutts. Quietly Sarah told the story.
“Your mutts will be the survivors when it’s all said and done,” Geeta said. “Behind bars, every last one.”
The fire spat and hissed. Seven vultures wheeled in a grimy sky. The wind died, and smoke hung like a pall. Akbar had been a successful tiger, siring something like two dozen cubs in his years as resident male. Many had lived to adulthood and successfully dispersed within this small island of wilderness. So he had his legacy. A whole generation.
William wiped his eyes.
Sarah’s throat ached. She wanted badly for Sanjay to hold her, but that was impossible. Instead he moved away and stepped toward William. They’d been avoiding each other the past few weeks. Now, though, they exchanged a glance. The eye contact took effort; anyone could see that. But Sanjay held out his hand, and William hesitated, then took it. They turned back to the pyre, hand in hand, and Sarah felt that what they were doing was good for all of them.
It was gritty work, burning a corpse. The forest guards prodded it with sticks and tools to break up the charred bones. The smoke carried Akbar’s body into the lowering sky.
.
Late that night, Sarah unlocked her door, and Sanjay slipped into her darkened flat. She’d been crying. She thought maybe he had, too. They clasped each other close and she pressed her face into his shoulder. For a time they stood silently, unmoving. She tugged his shirttail out of his pants and unbuttoned the top few buttons, and he pulled the shirt over his head without bothering about the rest. At her bedroom doorway, they stopped and looked at each other. The headboard.
“Back here,” Sarah whispered. At the far end of a darkened passage, she took off her clothing and stood naked before him. It wasn’t pleasure she wanted this time; it was his skin against hers, its reassuring warmth. In the dark he fumbled with the condom.
They kept silent except for their ragged breathing and the bump of their bodies against the doorframe. She wrapped her arms around his waist and clutched him tight.
Afterward, when they realized the condom had torn, Sarah paced outside the bathroom door, madly counting on her fingers and mumbling ohmyGod, ohmyGod. Sanjay stood by the sink, staring at nothing. Had they never realized what a catastrophe a pregnancy would be?
“I’m so sorry, Sarah,” Sanjay whispered. “I prayed to Ganesha to keep you safe.”
That stopped her. “Holy shit. I prayed to him to … ”
“To what?”
“To make you mine.”
His eyes widened. He looked at her full on. “I want to be with you, Sarah. I want to marry you. Have children with you.”
In the dimness she could barely see his face. The sudden turn in the conversation confused her. She wasn’t sure if Sanjay was proposing something or merely wishing aloud, and she had the feeling that if she said one more thing about their future, she’d be setting something in motion that she didn’t intend. Warily she said, “I’m not going to get pregnant tonight. I’m past the danger point.”
He stood silent. “My children would have been four, five, and six if they had lived. A little younger than Mohan and Jai.”
“You would have made a wonderful father.”
“You don’t want a family?”
She felt accused somehow. She hadn’t expected to have this conversation, certainly not tonight. “We’re not going to get that, Sanjay. The way we are together is the only way it can be.”
He didn’t respond. She stepped into his arms. Sweat slicked both their bodies. She nearly slid through his grasp.
In the bedroom she lay awake, feeling the weight of his arm curled over her hip, his fingertips resting on her abdomen.
“Hey,” she said. “Are you awake?”
“I’m awake.” His fingers traced the skin below her navel.
She grasped his hand and stilled it. “Sanjay, stop. I can’t be your vessel.”
Quinn
It was an unseasonably warm autumn day, and Pete had just finished mowing the lawn, the last cutting before winter came. Quinn stood with him in the fresh-cut grass, staining the bottoms of her bare feet. “I’ve decided something.”
He looked up at her, wary.
“I’m going to India.” It came out sounding blunt and confrontational.
The lawnmower stood between them, all grease and metal and incipient racket. Pete produced a rag from his back pocket and crouched to wipe cut grass blades off the casing. When he stood, he looked a little hurt and a little insulted and a little hopeful and a little like he didn’t believe she’d follow through.
“Please say something,” she said.
He gave her an appraising look. “Good for you, Quinn. I mean it.” He stuffed the rag into his pocket. “I’ll make sure Nick has his inhaler.”
.
After her first round of vaccinations, she drove to the eastern suburbs, where Mother lived alone in the house where the girls had grown into women. They sat facing each other on matching sage-green damask loveseats in front of the fireplace. When Quinn told her the news, Mother got up and poured them each a glass of pinot grigio, placed one in front of Quinn, and settled onto one of the loveseats. “Don’t go. It’s bad enough with Sarah there.” Her voice was a lake in thaw: warming, but edged with brittle shards.
It hit Quinn then that Mother had lost all three of her children. They had each found their own way to disappear from her, and from one another. Marcus had had no say in the matter, but Sarah and Quinn—they chose.
“I’m sorry, Mother. I need to do this.”
Mother gave her a flinty look and took a good-sized swallow of pale wine. “You know, I’ve always hated it that you kids call me Mother,” she said. “Your father was Daddy. Why couldn’t I be Mommy? Or just Mom?”
Quinn didn’t know what to say. Mommy? She couldn’t picture it. “Why didn’t you ever tell us?”
She waved a manicured hand. “You can’t tell your kids what to call you. But honestly. Mother. It sounds like someone you hate.”
“We didn’t hate you. We just lived different lives. Most days it was us and Ayah.”
“That was my fault.” She exhaled a self-mocking laugh. “That miserable little expat community. Sometimes I felt like I was living in a John Updike novel.” She shook her head at some memory Quinn couldn’t imagine. “That country was no place for children. I should have taken the three of you back to the S
tates. The hell with your father.” She sipped her wine and frowned as if it hurt to swallow. “Don’t go back there, Quinnie. There’s nothing in that place but heartache.”
“There’s something there for Sarah,” Quinn said.
Sarah
October 3, 2000
Machli’s daughters are growing bigger and hungrier all the time. She has begun to let them hunt with her, but they’re clumsy and clueless, and for every time they manage to scare a boar or a chital into her path, they must botch five other attempts. It’s the only way they’ll learn how to judge the precise moment to pounce, the difference between a prey animal just close enough to capture and one just out of reach.
Today when we see them, Lalit stalks past Machli, grumbling to herself. They are resting on the lakeshore, and their sides look caved in, as if they haven’t eaten in a few days.
Machli rises and leaves her daughters, veering away from the lakeshore and prowling into the deep forest. “She’s not letting them come with her,” Sanjay says. “She can’t risk a mistake.”
None of us say it, but I suspect we’re all thinking the same thing: Something needs to change soon if the cubs are to survive.
As quietly as possible, we move to a good vantage point. Machli hides beneath the leafy cover of a bush, where she waits until a family of boars wanders into view. For a long time, they root beneath the spreading branches of a mature tree, just out of reach. She can’t steal closer; there’s no cover between her and them.
She holds herself immobile for more than an hour. At last the boars begin to move in her direction. When the moment is right, she explodes into attack. The forest shrieks—but the boars scatter. She stops and stares after them, breathing fast.
She returns to her cubs at the lakeshore and lies down between them. Light is fading. They will all spend a hungry night.
I wonder whether she thinks about last year’s cubs, the ones who didn’t survive the drought.
I know there are plenty of animal behaviorists who’d like us to believe that animals are like machines, doing whatever is necessary for survival in some sort of robotic, emotionless fashion. I can’t make myself believe it, though.
Last week William finally told me the story, albeit reluctantly, after I asked. Survival (he said in his inimitable way) is always a matter of a steady stream of kills; too long a gap between meals and a tiger will grow too weak to hunt, and once that happens, the end is inevitable. For weeks last year, Machli managed to capture just enough prey to keep herself and the cubs alive. But a moment came when she must have realized she had crossed the line. The hunting was too meager, or she’d grown too weak, and she could no longer sustain herself and her three cubs. She didn’t have the choice to make some sort of noble gesture, sacrificing herself to save her children. She was the family’s sole breadwinner. Without her, the cubs could not survive.
So she had to make a decision: Let her cubs starve to death, or kill them herself. She chose to spare them the suffering of a lingering death. She crushed the vertebrae at the back of their necks. I try not to picture what that must have been like for her. First one, then the next, then the next. Then walking away, leaving her children’s bodies behind her.
The forest guards found them beneath a banyan tree.
Machli lived to have another litter, Lalit and Dil. But I have to think she remembers her other children. I have to think she grieves for them.
Quinn
Quinn returned home from her visit with Mother. It was early morning in Rajasthan. She pictured her sister moving about her kitchen, boiling water for tea and thinking about the coming day. Peeling an orange as the air filled with woodsmoke from ten thousand breakfast fires.
She picked up her phone.
Alaina sat at the table, drawing. “Tell Auntie Sarah we think it’s really cool that she foiled a poacher.”
.
That night, Sarah emailed her.
Quinn! I’m so excited! So what if you’re missing Diwali? You’ll be HERE.
You won’t need to bring much. Fit it all in a carry-on if you can. Plug adapters, Cipro, earplugs for the flight. A camera but no binocs. I have an amazing pair you can use.
For the park, no bright clothing, especially red. Khakis and natural greens are best. (If you have dust-colored clothes, all the better. You’ll get covered.) What else? Money belt. A luggage padlock and a bicycle-type cable lock so nobody can walk off with your bag in case you have to leave it alone for a minute. A whistle on a lanyard. And if you bring a purse, it should be small and cross-body style.
Bring pencils for the village kids, too.
I hope the tigers come out for you. We’ve seen Machli and Lalit and Dil, so we know they’re still alive, but what happens next, no one knows. Either the new male will kill the cubs, or he won’t. It’s his decision.
Diwali is coming. Remember what it was like when we were kids? Lights everywhere. Colored powders. Firecrackers. For me it’ll just be a warm-up for the real celebration—your visit.
Love,
Sarah
P.S. We have so much to talk about, Quinn. There are things I’ve never once said to you.
So it would be a trade, Quinn thought. One sister’s secrets in exchange for the other’s.
The DeVaughan Sisters
Quinn stepped, exhausted, into the bustling arrivals hall, and there was Sarah, beaming like a tall blond lighthouse. They hugged and exclaimed and took each other in. Quinn looked around the bright, modern airport. “Things have changed around here.”
“India is starting to boom,” Sarah said. “But wait till we get to Old Delhi. We’re staying there tonight. You’ll recognize it.” She turned to the stocky man standing next to her. “Hari, this is my sister, Quinn.”
He namaskared with a touch of amusement. “Two of a kind,” he said. Quinn and Sarah laughed. There was no denying it.
Delhi’s old city walloped Quinn. The smells of street food and brick dust, woodsmoke and diesel, the nonstop movement of traffic and pedestrians that made her realize her memories had gone stripped-down and static. A commercial truck with multicolored pom-poms jouncing at the roofline rumbled past a wooden oxcart, a wandering white cow, and three weaving bicycles, each with an extra passenger. Shops spilled merchandise out onto sidewalks: racks of pointy-toed slippers, glinting foil packets of tobacco for sale in coiled streamers. Women wearing saris and salwar kameez shopped and worked and walked their babies in strollers; men went about their business in Western clothes or kurta, some with turbans, some with henna-dyed beards. Everywhere, the past showed through the overlay of the present, right down to the successively fading layers of signage on buildings: The electronics shop used to sell men’s underwear and, prior to that, had housed a leatherworks. Quinn had forgotten the density of it all. It made the U.S. look flat and shiny.
At their hotel, she took a twenty-dollar bill from her wallet and held it out to Sarah. “It’s from the twins,” she said. “To help the tigers. They saved it up from their allowance.”
Sarah took the bill. “They’re good little people, those two.”
“They’re at an age where everything seems so clear,” Quinn said. “Sometimes I envy them that.”
“You and me both,” Sarah said. “Nothing is simple over here. There’s no doing good in one way without doing harm in another. I wish … ” She shook her head. “I just wish, you know?”
“So do I,” Quinn said. She watched Sarah move around the room. “You know, I thought you were crazy, coming back here.”
Sarah had opened her suitcase to dig for something. She looked up at Quinn. “I’ve never blamed India for Marcus. Bad things happen to people, even in the States. You can’t write off a whole country because of it.”
Quinn considered that. “Did you know that when Daddy first told Mother he wanted to move here, she thought it was going to be like something out of Kipli
ng?”
“Was it really that different?”
“It’s not colonial anymore. I guess that’s what she was imagining.”
“And yet she got her big house and her personal driver and cook and nanny and security guard and housekeeper,” Sarah said. “She wanted to be a memsahib, and she pretty much got it. Do you remember how she used to complain how hard it was to run a household staff?”
“Yeah. But think of all we had when we were kids. We benefited plenty. And anyway, you have a driver.”
“Not like Ravindra. But you’re right. I’ve failed to figure out how to subvert the colonial hangover.” Sarah sat on her bed and wrapped her arms around her knees. “I tried to go back.”
“What?”
“To Cornwallis Road. I couldn’t get there. The roads were shut down.” She rocked a little, lost in thought, then looked up at Quinn, her face bright. “Do you want to go?”
Quinn laughed in surprise. “I kind of assumed we would.”
She called home to say she’d arrived. The conversation with Pete held more warmth than they’d shared in months. It panged her. She recognized that kind of tenderness, which felt like connection but wasn’t really. More like a wistfulness at feeling the weight of the planet between them and knowing that maybe they wouldn’t be able to close that distance again.
They said their love-yous, and she asked him to put the kids on. She heard the click as he turned on the speaker.
“Hi, Mommy,” the twins sang.
“Hi, babies,” she crooned. “It’s nighttime here.”
“That’s so weird,” Alaina said, and Nick said, “That’s because of the way the earth rotates,” and Alaina said, “I know, but it’s still weird.”
The twins reported their news. Quinn made sure to comment on everything they said, and then, when it was her turn, gave them a few impressions of India. At a lull in the conversation she said, “Okay, you two. I have to go now. Listen, I’m not going to be able to call you every day. Remember we talked about that?”