by Katy Yocom
“When will you call us again?” Alaina whined.
“I’ll call every three days,” Quinn promised. “Four at the most,” she added, suddenly struck with the fear that she’d lose track of time.
.
The next morning, Hari drove them in the direction of their childhood home, through some of Delhi’s better neighborhoods. Sarah wanted to recognize landmarks, but she couldn’t be sure if she did. Houses were smaller than she remembered, trees bigger.
When they turned onto their street, though, she knew instantly. The grand old brick houses, the bougainvillea-covered walls lining the street, punctuated by pretty iron gates. She remembered childhood Aprils when fallen bougainvillea petals would carpet the ground in rose red.
A block from where they’d grown up, she and Quinn got out of the vehicle and walked in the shade of mellow brick walls. Off to the left, a ribbon of woods still stood behind the houses, sheltering the creek that ran through the neighborhood in the rainy season.
At the gate, they stopped and wrapped their fingers around the sun-warmed iron bars. There it was: the house they’d grown up in. A circular driveway surrounded the peepal tree, the asphalt a bit crumbled but still neatly lined with pea gravel. No car in the driveway. A watchman came striding across the courtyard, stopped opposite them inside the gate, and inquired politely about their business. When they told him, he nodded, wished them a good day, and retreated to the far side of the courtyard, where he pretended not to watch them and they pretended not to notice his watching.
Their bodies knew that house: the bumpiness of the ivory-painted stucco, the way the sunlight poured through its tall, graceful windows and spilled onto warm hardwood floors, the view from that second-story window in the corner, where the nursery had been. The only noticeable change was that the landscaping around the house was different now, an assortment of small ornamental bushes where they’d had sprawling hibiscus.
The peepal tree had grown even more beautiful. Thick-bodied and muscular, its smooth gray trunk curved in and out on itself. To Sarah it looked like a gathering of people crowding close together, their arms raised high and spreading out to shade the courtyard. The tree had put down new prop roots since they’d last seen it, straight down from branch to earth, and some of those roots had merged with the trunk. Its heart-shaped leaves quaked subtly on slim petioles as if the tree were breathing.
“Ficus religiosa,” Sarah said. “It’s not hard to see why it’s called that.”
Quinn gave her a puzzled glance.
“That’s its scientific name. Didn’t you know that? Also known as the Bodhi tree, the tree the Buddha was sitting under when he gained enlightenment.”
“So everybody knows this kind of tree is special,” Quinn said. “All this time I thought it was just us.”
It was the best tree, Sarah thought: so clearly alive and full of friendly spirits. Someone had tucked a marble Ganesha into the incurving between two roots. The wooden bench was gone, but someone had replaced it with a wrought iron bench in exactly the same location. Roots bumped up through the dirt. The day Marcus had put a snake down her shirt, she’d taken off running, tripped over a root and fallen on her face. If she’d been bigger and heavier, she would have squashed the snake. As it was, the thing wiggled out her armhole and slithered away at top speed, hissing.
“Look how much bigger around it is,” Quinn said. “Twenty-six years.”
Sarah considered it. “We couldn’t get our arms around it then. I wonder if we could now, as adults. All of us, I mean.”
“Hold out your arms.” Quinn reached the fingertips of her left hand out to meet the fingertips of Sarah’s right, and as the watchman looked on, they both stretched out the other hand and tried to gauge the circle they could have made if they’d had Mother and Daddy, Marcus and Ayah to complete it.
.
That night, they bought the fixings for gin and tonics, then hit up the hotel bar for ice made from purified water. “The perfect medicinal drink,” Quinn said, mixing her cocktail with her finger. “With quinine for malaria!”
Sarah raised her glass. “Here’s looking up your old address.”
“Didn’t we just.”
They sat on Quinn’s bed, Sarah cross-legged with Quinn’s right foot in her lap, painting her toenails lime green and doing an increasingly sloppy job of it, thanks to the cocktails. “You and I have the exact same feet,” Sarah said. “Wide as bear paws.”
“Better that than Mother’s bunions.”
“You got her hands, though,” Sarah said. “Long and elegant. I got Daddy’s square ones.” She dipped the brush into the bottle and painted a stripe. “Do you remember Ayah’s last name?”
Quinn shook her head.
“Singh.”
“I wonder if I knew that,” Quinn mused. “All Sikhs are Singhs, but not all Singhs are Sikhs.”
“They always told us that, growing up, but guess what? It’s not true.”
“Are you kidding me? I’ve spent my entire life believing that.”
“Turns out all male Sikhs are Singhs. Female Sikhs are Kaurs. Though I don’t think everyone even abides by that tradition anymore.”
“But Ayah was a woman, and her last name was Singh.”
This was a difficult problem. They both thought on it. Quinn had almost drifted to sleep when Sarah said, “I think that means she must not have been a Sikh.”
“She was definitely not a Sikh,” Quinn said. “She was Hindu. I remember praying with her.”
“Mmm,” Sarah said. “I think I’m falling asleep now.”
“You’d better cap that nail polish.”
“Good idea.” Sarah capped the bottle and slid off of Quinn’s bed and into her own.
“Sleep tight,” Quinn said.
“Lala salama.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It’s Swahili. It means ‘sleep safe.’ Or ‘hope for tomorrow.’”
“Lala salama. That’s pretty.”
“Faire de beaux rêves.”
“Cut it out, show-off.”
Sarah responded with a loud fake snore.
In the morning, they ate fried potatoes and toast for their hangovers, drank French-press coffee, and downed bottles and bottles of water to dispel their headaches before leaving on their next errand: Mother’s request.
Marcus had been buried at a pretty site in the British cemetery, tucked into a hillside beneath ornamental trees. Quinn and Sarah stood side by side, staring down at the little granite marker. Quinn held a bouquet of yellow dahlias, the kind Mother had grown in the garden on Cornwallis Road. Marcus had once landed in trouble for decapitating a handful of them with a stick when he’d been practicing his swashbuckling.
Quinn knelt and settled the flowers at the base of the gravestone. Marcus Whitaker DeVaughan. His birthday, the same as Sarah’s. Then a dash, and the date of his death.
“I don’t remember the funeral at all,” Sarah said.
Quinn looked up, surprised. “You weren’t there.”
“Are you kidding? They made me stay home?”
“You were still sick, I think. Daddy stayed with you.”
Sarah stared at her. “Daddy didn’t go to Marcus’s funeral?”
It had rained that day. The mourners had huddled together under a canvas tent, Mother standing behind Quinn, clutching her like a pocketbook as they lowered Marcus’s beautiful white casket into the ugly red hole.
The house was quiet when they came home. Sarah must have been asleep. Daddy sat in his mustard-colored recliner in the den. He’d been crying. “How was it?” he asked through the open door. In the hallway, Mother stopped in the act of lifting off her black rain hat and glared at him.
“‘How was it?’” she said. “I buried our son. How do you think it was?” She threw her hat into the closet and stalked down the
hall.
“There was water in the bottom of the hole,” Quinn told him, and Daddy nodded, his eyes far away.
A breeze ruffled the cemetery’s ornamental trees. Quinn smoothed down her hair. “Do you remember how they fought?”
“I remember Mother yelling at him. ‘You think you’re a saint for helping the goddamned less fortunate.’ I’d never heard her swear before.”
“She kept saying the cook didn’t wash the vegetables.” Quinn tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. “I feel so sorry for Mother sometimes. She doesn’t have anyone.”
“She has you,” Sarah said.
Quinn looked out across the headstones. “I’m just the consolation prize.”
They fell silent, considering the little gravestone with the bright bouquet. Sweet Marcus. The empty space in the middle of all their lives.
.
They arrived in Sawai past dinnertime. A newspaper clipping lay on the floor just inside the front door. Sarah picked it up and read it, then handed it silently to Quinn. A handwritten note in blue ballpoint in the margin: Thought you’d want to see. Wm. And a circle around a small notice:
ARRESTED. Hemraj Meena, Vinyal Village, Sawai Madhopur District, on a charge of attempted poaching inside Ranthambore National Park. Police stated the arrest was based on photographic evidence showing the detainee setting a snare trap.
“That’s good, right?” Quinn asked.
“It is, except that I’m the one who took the photos. I won’t be the most popular person in Vinyal.”
In the kitchen, Sarah opened a bottle of beer for each of them. They stood at the counter while they drank. “It always drove me crazy,” Quinn said. “All the risks you took as a journalist. I always thought you were going to get yourself killed.”
“I know. You always said that thing about The Year of Living Dangerously. But do you remember who died in that movie? It wasn’t the white people, I’ll tell you that.” Sarah took a sip of beer. “There’s a certain level of protection that comes with being white in a non-Western society. People tend to treat your life like it’s worth more. Punishments are harsher for crimes against white people.”
“That’s not exactly a pretty truth,” Quinn said.
“Nothing pretty about it.”
They ate a cold dinner of leftovers out of Sarah’s refrigerator and afterward put down some blankets and pillows and stretched out on the floor. Quinn told Sarah about the state of her marriage.
“Crap. I’m sorry,” Sarah said. “I had no idea.”
They lapsed into silence. Quinn was floating somewhere smoky gray when Sarah said her name.
“Yeah?”
“What did Mother mean when she said you were lucky you didn’t kill yourself?”
Quinn stared at the ceiling. “I tried to, once, when I was sixteen. Pills.”
“How come I never knew about it?”
“You were away somewhere when it happened. Like, for weeks.”
“Camp. I would have been thirteen.” She fell silent. “You really went through hell.”
Quinn sat up and rearranged the pillows. “The good thing about screwing up as a kid is that you get therapy. You learn different ways to channel your feelings. But then, my painting’s gone to crap in the past few months.”
Sarah rolled onto her side to look at her sister. “Cause or effect?”
“I wish I knew.”
.
They got up before dawn for a drive in the park. Now Quinn felt the best part of her visit could begin. Delhi was too fraught. But Ranthambore! She remembered the family trip here vividly: the Jogi Mahal, the clifftop fortress, banyan trees so big you could drive a car between their aerial roots. They arrived in the dark and patrolled for ninety minutes without seeing much beyond boars and langurs, then stopped and spread out a picnic breakfast on the hood of the jeep: vegetable cutlets and hardboiled eggs and masala chai out of a thermos.
Afterward, they drove back to Rajbagh Lake just as the sun established itself over the trees, and there was Machli, lying at the lakeside, regal in repose. Shaggy and thin as she was, she was still glorious. She blinked lazily and elevated her chin as if contemplating her own magnificence. How satisfying, she seemed to say, to be so splendid. Quinn did a quick ink drawing of the tigress, her image reflected in the lake. Machli’s daughters lay nearby, gnawing on the remains of what must have been an enormous animal.
“Nilgai,” Sanjay said. “A feast.”
Quinn had been relieved to discover she liked Sanjay very much, though it felt odd sizing up a married man as boyfriend material for her little sister.
After leaving the park, they stopped by the hospital to pick up Nuri. Sarah walked with Nuri to the car, their heads close together, smiling and laughing about something. They settled into the Sumo. “Next stop Vinyal,” Sanjay said. “Are you ready?”
Quinn hesitated. “That man they arrested for poaching … ”
“You don’t have to go if you don’t want,” Sarah said. “We can drop you off at my apartment. Or we can go, and if it doesn’t feel right when we get there, we just leave.”
Not very reassuring. It seemed selfish even to take a chance, with the twins so young. But they need to see you do something brave, Pete had said. And she couldn’t tell Jane she’d gotten this close but hadn’t had the guts to finish the journey. She glanced over at Nuri, at her scarred face, and remembered Sarah’s words. There’s a certain level of protection that comes with being white. Hot shame flooded her. She had no right to her fears.
When they arrived, the atmosphere felt welcoming enough. The women and children seemed to find the sudden appearance of a duplicate Sarah highly amusing, and it was hard to stay tense in the midst of their laughter. In Anju’s courtyard, they sat on the ground, eating homemade chapatti. The women were shy around Quinn until she told them how she had unpacked the box of their handbags and seen each of their faces on the tags. “You saw our work in America?” Rohini asked.
Quinn brought out photos—the bags hanging on the wall, Jane smiling next to them. They passed the snapshots around, all looking a little dazed at the idea of their handiwork in such an exotic location as Louisville, Kentucky.
“How does it feel to be international businesswomen?” Sarah asked.
Nuri cried when she saw her photo. Padma, sitting next to her, patted her hand and whispered something into her ear, and Nuri smiled and wiped her eyes and sat up straight.
“We made something for your children,” she said. The other women watched her, seeming to radiate encouragement. Apparently Nuri had been appointed spokeswoman for the group. From somewhere, Nuri produced two small, bulging, hand-sewn bags. “Dolls for your little girl and animals for your boy. We made them from leftover fabric. Here.” She handed the bags to Quinn.
Quinn peeked into the bags at the toys inside. “They’re wonderful!” she exclaimed. “The kids will love these.” She looked up. “I brought you all something, too, but it’s already yours.”
Rohini pressed her hands to her chest. “Did you bring our money from America?”
Quinn nodded toward Sarah, who reached into her bag and pulled out a stack of rupees she’d converted from dollars before they left Delhi. In an instant, the women were on their feet in a tight circle. Sarah passed the earnings to Anju, who touched the notes to her forehead. “Every girl should go to school like Rohini did. Every girl needs to know how to read and do maths so she can run her own business.” She turned to Rohini. “You should do this.”
Rohini clasped the bundle of banknotes ceremonially in both hands. “We took some fabric and made it into bags. The bags turned into rupees. And now the rupees can turn into whatever we want. Pretty good magic, if you ask me.”
Quinn had never seen a happier payday. Rohini counted the money carefully and gave a stack of cash to each woman. “This is what happens when women do more t
han just work the fields and tend to the house and babies,” Anju said, raising her money and giving it a victorious shake. “It’s better for everyone.”
“Better for women, anyway,” Sapna said. “The men are going to have to watch out.”
“That’s long overdue.” Anju tucked her banknotes into her sari. “Sorry, Sanjay, but men have had it their way long enough.”
“Fair enough,” he said.
Padma gripped her cash in two hands, blinking back tears. “My cow.” She grinned so hard her eyes watered. “Now let that toothless old dog tell me I’m not worth anything!”
Quinn looked at Padma’s shining face and thought: This is what a brave woman looks like.
.
That evening, Sarah made chamomile tea, and she and Quinn sat on opposite ends of the sofa. Quinn studied the photo of Marcus and Sarah, then set it aside.
“I have to tell you something,” she said quietly. “The day I caught you and Marcus coming into the house all wet—” She paused.
Sarah watched her, guarded.
“I’ve never told you this, but I saw the two of you sneak out. I could have stopped you.”
Sarah’s face gave away nothing, which was almost more than Quinn could bear.
“I’m sorry. I think about it every day.”
Sarah frowned, as if puzzling something out. “I always wondered how we managed to sneak out without getting caught.” She looked up. “Do you even know what happened that day? I tricked him into going outside. I told him some made-up story to get him down to the creek, and then I pushed him in. It was a few days after he put the snake down my shirt. I wanted to get back at him.”
“But you both came back all muddy.”
“He held out his hand like he wanted me to help him up. I thought we were even, so I reached out, and he yanked me in. Which I deserved.”
So Sarah had been the instigator. Somehow Quinn had never asked herself which twin took the lead; she’d thought only of her own failure to stop them. “You were seven years old. You didn’t know any better.”