Sacred Waters

by Meira Chand

  ‘We’ll feed her before you take her away to the orphanage,’ another woman offered.

  All the time the women talked, the baby continued to scream and Sita wondered again how so much distress could be voiced with so much gusto by something so small.

  ‘Poor thing, she is so hungry. Ramaiah does not care and refuses to feed her. Let her starve to death, he shouted at us when we tried to help,’ the woman with the scarred eyebrow remarked.

  Another woman came forward with a bowl of water and, picking up the baby, began to sponge her. Yet another appeared with some oil to soothe her inflamed skin. Held against the warmth of a body and hushed and petted, the child quietened, the occasional sob still choking through her small frame. The women fussed about the baby, cleaning the fetid crust from her buttocks, finding a cloth to wrap about her hips. Sita hurried to untie her carrying bag, and gave the women the small dress and the shawl she had bought for the child.

  ‘That Muniamma was strange. Went to war to fight for India like a man. Thought she was so clever, but what did she get, the British back here, and Ramaiah for a husband? Now she is dead, not like a soldier, but in childbirth like any other woman.’ The plump woman gave a humourless laugh.

  ‘A woman cannot escape her fate,’ another sighed.

  ‘We’ll get the child ready, and make up the milk. That pitcher is full of boiled water. Muni always kept clean water ready. She’s gone, but the water she boiled is still there for her daughter.’ The plump woman sighed sadly.

  Sita stood straight and still, swallowing each shock the women threw at her. She wanted to tell them she was not the woman from the orphanage, but something held her back. Instead, she moved to the where the earthenware water jar sat on a stool in a corner of the room. When she had worked in the first aid tent at Farrer Park there had been plenty of babies who had needed feeding, and she knew what to do. As she turned the tap on the water jar, diluting the evaporated milk, filling up the bottle, she was acutely aware that it was Muni who had filled the water she now drew, that the screaming child behind her had grown from Muni’s own flesh and blood. As she straightened up, she caught sight of a pile of folded clothes in a corner, and saw the edge of the pink sari Muni had worn on Sita’s last visit to the estate.

  ‘This is what you want,’ the plump woman laughed kindly, picking up the child, pushing the teat of the bottle into the baby’s ravenous mouth. The child quietened immediately, sucking as if her life depended upon it. Sita stood behind the woman, and looking down at the child’s tiny face searched for a glimpse of Muni, but saw only the squashed features of a newborn, its jaws clenched tight around the teat of the bottle. She put out a hand, and immediately the tiny fingers curled around her own with a determination that surprised her.

  At last the baby would drink no more and fell asleep, and the woman thrust her into Sita’s arms. The child slumped against her shoulder, replete, its slight weight resting in the palm of Sita’s hand as she held its tiny body against her. The women were packing up the remaining bottles of milk, and the small squares of cloth to wrap about the child’s tiny hips that Muni had cut and prepared.

  I am not from the orphanage. She knew she must tell them now, but the words would still not form in her mouth. Against her neck she felt the dampness of the child’s wet mouth, and heard the gurgle of a belch as she rubbed its back.

  As she changed the child from one shoulder to another, there was the sudden sound of hurried steps outside, then the wild shout of Ramaiah’s voice.

  ‘She’s not from the orphanage,’ Ramaiah flung open the screen door and burst into the room to stand before Sita, fury bristling from him.

  ‘Take the child from her,’ he ordered.

  The plump matron, her face filled with confusion, hurried forward to lift the child from Sita’s arms.

  ‘Why are you here? Come to steal my child from me? Get out.’ Ramaiah ordered, his voice roaring in Sita’s ears.

  He advanced towards Sita as the women cowered helplessly to one side. The baby began to whimper again, the noise quickly rising to a scream.

  ‘I know who you are. They told me at the guardhouse. You’re that INA friend who filled her head with no-good ideas. An army is for men, not for women. Get out of here.’

  Sita backed out of the door, stumbling down the steps. Ramaiah stood above her in the open door, a tall thickset man in his fifties, throwing the gifts and food she had brought for Muni after her down the steps.

  ‘I told her to give me a boy. What use is a girl, a rope round your neck waiting to hang you, with her need for dowry? I told her, if it’s a girl, I don’t want to see her, make sure she dies at birth.’

  In her haste Sita tripped on the bottom step, and would have sprawled on the grass if she had not clung to the splintered wooden rail. Above her Ramaiah continued to shout, and behind him the baby screamed.

  ‘Stop it, stop it screaming,’ he yelled at the women, turning back into the house.

  Sita scooped up her belongings, tying them together in the carrying cloth, and hurried away, her eyes blinded by tears, unable to control the sobs that rose up and burst from her. In her hand the bundle of food and gifts bumped against her knee. Her arms still carried the memory of Muni’s child, the small head, the fragile bones. She walked forward in a daze, past the guardhouse and then out of the rusty gates, arriving at last at the bus stop. The road was deserted, and she sat down on a rough wooden bench to wait, not knowing or caring now when the next bus would arrive. The heat of the day pressed upon her. An emerald green tree snake moved sinuously across the road towards her, and she stared at it unmoved, feeling nothing as it slipped into the undergrowth behind the bench.

  30

  SINGAPORE, 2000

  Sita dared not ask her daughter the exact nature of all she had just experienced, but clearly she had had a miscarriage, or even an abortion. This knowledge released such a rush of buried emotion in Sita that she gripped the chair to steady herself. The past swung powerfully before her, and she knew she could not ignore where it was leading her. Obeying an inexplicable impulse, she started up from the chair and hurried out of the room. Amita stared after her, already regretting the things she had disclosed, and filled with discomfort at her mother’s own revelations.

  From Sita’s bedroom Amita heard the sound of drawers opening and shutting. Soon her mother returned with a small, shapeless brown paper package held loosely together with string, and placed it in Amita’s hands. The package was soft, the wrapping paper old and creased, limp from a life of repeated use. Amita frowned, impatient with whatever game it was her mother now wished to play. She had had enough for one day; all she wanted to do was sleep.

  Sita waited in apprehension, listening to the rustling of paper in her daughter’s hands. Everything was whittled away before her now, only the truth was left to tell. And she must tell it now, before courage deserted her again.

  ‘What’s this?’ Amita demanded in exasperation, pulling the limp string off the package, too exhausted to humour her mother any further.

  ‘Open it,’ Sita ordered, her voice breaking as she spoke.

  The paper fell apart to reveal a soft knitted article, and Amita lifted up a tiny white crocheted jacket, yellowed with age. A sudden spurt of rage rushed through her. This must be a jacket she, Amita, had worn as a baby, or something Sita had knitted for her own miscarried child. Her mother had no sense of timing. At this moment it was enough just to process her own experience; she could not carry the pain of others. She turned to her mother, her mouth full of harsh words, but fell silent before Sita’s stricken face.

  As she held the jacket out before her, trying to make sense of its tiny arms, the flared skirt and the ribbon threaded round the neck, something slipped from the paper onto the bed beside her, and fell to the floor at her feet. Amita bent to retrieve a small drawstring bag, and held it out to her mother, but Sita shook her head.

  ‘Open it.’

  Amita pulled apart the string and tipped out from th
e pouch a thin gold chain with a tiny pendant. A fleck of a ruby, no bigger than a teardrop, sparkled at its centre.

  ‘What are these things?’ Amita turned to her mother in frustration.

  The chain lay weightlessly in her palm, and she looked down at it with foreboding. Yet, she thought at first that she misunderstood the words her mother breathed out with such difficulty.

  ‘These things were left for you by your mother.’

  ‘My mother?’

  Sita sank back into the chair, feeling suddenly weightless. Her voice drifted from her, the words she spoke almost soundless after the painful compression of years. The secret they carried floated free in the room and hung suspended, birthed and immovable, lodged openly at last between herself and her daughter. All Sita had dreaded would happen when Parvati began her interviews was happening now. Layer by layer, the cruel unwrapping of experience had brought her to the thing she had so carefully buried, the one thing she wished Amita never to know. Once the unravelling began, she had sensed there would be no way to stop until the end was reached and Amita knew the truth. Perhaps this was what she had wanted all along, to tell Amita the truth.

  As Sita began to speak her voice grew stronger, and Amita listened, her eyes locked upon her mother’s face.

  Sita was not sure how long she sat on the bench at the bus stop before Ramaiah arrived. He stood a few feet from her in his green lungi, his shirt hanging open, his dirty cotton vest sodden with perspiration, sweat glistening on his muscular limbs from his hurried pursuit of her. She drew back on the bench before the raw urgency of his expression, apprehensive now of what he might want.

  ‘Come back to the house,’ Ramaiah demanded. He appeared calmer, his anger dissipated.

  She thought she heard a plea in his voice, and meeting his eyes, was surprised at the distress in his face. Reluctantly, she rose from the bench to follow him. In the distance a bird shrieked, and the sound of Ramaiah’s laboured breathing filled the silence between them as they walked back into the estate. When they reached the house he went before her up the steps, to where the baby lay quietly in the room, sleeping now in her box. He motioned Sita to a chair.

  ‘Whatever I could do for her, I did,’ he pushed out his lower lip defensively. He was a balding man, grey haired and with round, fleshy features and deeply pouched eyes.

  ‘You beat her,’ Sita reminded him, her eyes settling again on Muni’s pink sari folded up in a corner. The baby began whimpering once more in the box.

  ‘What man does not beat his wife? I told her to be sure to make a boy.’ Anger spat out of him again.

  ‘You killed her,’ Sita shouted, unable to control her rage.

  For a moment Ramaiah appeared about to lunge at her in his fury, but as suddenly as it welled up, his anger evaporated and he sat down abruptly on the remaining chair, gazing down silently at his bare feet. From the opposite chair Sita sat staring at him. He was not a bad man, she saw the sadness beneath his anger, and her own rage died as she observed his contrition.

  ‘The child took too long to come. She was not strong.’ He spoke in a low voice, his head bowed, his gaze still fixed upon his feet.

  ‘Did she see the baby? Did she know it was a girl?’ Sita asked. Ramaiah nodded, his face creasing in unexpected grief.

  ‘Yes, she saw her, held her. I am not a bad man. Sometimes I get angry, but it is only when I am full of toddy.’ The words barely rose above his breath.

  For a while they sat in silence, Sita twisting her hands in her lap, not knowing what was expected of her, yet all the while aware of the child stirring restlessly in her box.

  ‘She often spoke about you.’ At last Ramaiah lifted his head to stare curiously at Sita.

  ‘She knew I could not manage a child on my own. She knew because it was a girl, I would put an end to it or send it to the orphanage. If I die, give her to Sita, she told me. That was the last thing she said, the last thing. So, now I must give her to you. Bring her up with your family, with your own children.’

  ‘I have no children. I am a widow.’ Sita told him stiffly, meeting his gaze, her heart beating.

  ‘Then keep her for me, for her. I will pay you; I have some money.’ His voice was heavy and tired.

  ‘I do not need money.’ Sita’s head was a whirl of disconnected thoughts.

  ‘Then it is all right. The orphanage woman will come soon. They will take care of her.’ Ramaiah sighed, shrugged and stood up, nodding his acceptance of Sita’s decision.

  Sita rose from her chair and faced him squarely, knowing suddenly the words that now left her mouth had shaped themselves at the moment she first saw the baby, when she realised Muni was dead. The dream on the bus came back to her and she saw again Muni, breaking free of the water, laughing and dripping, the child in her arms. This was all Muni’s doing. It was Muni’s wish that she should take the child. The knowledge that she must grasp this moment before it slipped away flooded through her.

  ‘If I take her, I will adopt her. She will be my child, to bring up as I wish.’ Sita announced.

  Ramaiah nodded his agreement, his face already filled by growing relief that this dark episode might soon be behind him, and he would be free. He bent to pick up the milk bottles and the nappies the women had earlier packed in a jute bag, pushing them towards Sita.

  ‘Go quickly then, before that orphanage woman arrives,’ he said, walking towards the door.

  Holding the child and the bulging jute bag, Sita descended the steps of the house, the child cradled in her arms, holding her close, careful not to put a foot wrong. Ramaiah stood at the top of the stairs and watched her, and she was conscious of his eyes upon her.

  ‘Wait,’ he called suddenly, and disappeared into the house as she turned to look back up the steps.

  Soon he reappeared, climbing down towards her, his big body filling the narrow stairway, his grubby white vest stretched tight across his loose paunch. He stood before her and seemed lost for words as he thrust a small soft package towards her. Still gripping the child, the weight of the bag pulling on her arm, Sita freed her hands to pull apart the string on the brown paper wrapping.

  ‘She knitted it for the baby.’

  His voice broke as he stared down at the tiny white crocheted jacket Sita now held, as if moved by the sight of its smallness and delicacy. Sweat collected in the folds of his neck and dampened the rough grey stubble of his unshaven cheeks. Staring into his face, she was surprised to see his eyes were moist with tears. Extending an arm towards her, he opened his closed fist to her gaze. In his fleshy palm lay Muni’s good luck pendant on its thin gold chain.

  ‘It is right that her daughter should have this. Keep it for her.’

  Sita took it from him and gazed at the pendant, no heavier than a drop of water, the fleck of ruby sparkling uncertainly in the sun. She closed her fingers around it, holding it tight in her hand.

  ‘Go quickly now, before that orphanage woman comes,’ Ramaiah urged, turning to climb back up the steps.

  Once free of the house, Sita walked as quickly as she dared, afraid of falling on the uneven ground, surprised at the weight and solidity of the tiny sleeping bundle she carried. It was as if she walked in a dream, nothing seemed real. Fate had pounced suddenly upon her, sweeping her up in a way she was powerless to resist. She tightened her grip on the child, aware all the while of the light rise and fall of its breath beneath her hand.

  At last she reached the gatehouse. Through the open window she glimpsed a stout woman in a navy blue sari, whose stance was full of officialdom, and knew this was the woman from the orphanage. A Sikh guard was already directing her to Ramaiah’s house. Sita slipped through the rusty gates of the estate, walking quickly to the bus stop a short distance away. As she waited for the bus she rocked the baby gently. Above her the sky, empty of cloud, arched over the green mesh of the jungle. A group of Brahminy Kites wheeled up, soaring higher and higher, gliding seamlessly on the wing, far above the world. Then, at last, in the distance the faint ru
mble of an engine was heard. Already the outline of the bus could be seen, drawing nearer, becoming clearer as it broke free of the hot haze of the surrounding vegetation.

  Sita climbed up into the bus and found a seat. The baby slept on her shoulder, unknowing of the journey they took together now, away from the ancient griefs of the past. The future waited, as yet insubstantial, but Sita knew it would be a future of her own making. She had already decided she would call the child Amita, for it meant boundless; without a limit, and would set her firmly upon the path she must follow if she were to fashion her own special universe. Sita leaned back in the seat and drew a deep breath. Beyond the window a flock of green parrots rose from the trees in an emerald cloud, forging patterns of mystery in the deepening light of the afternoon. Upon her shoulder the child slept.

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Amita pushed out the words, numb with shock.

  ‘It is not the right moment to tell you. But if I do not tell you now, I may never tell you. I was wrong to keep it from you for so long,’ Sita whispered.

  ‘Then my father is also not my father?’

  The thick-haired man in that cherished photograph, who stood beneath the tree with his students at the Ramakrishna Mission, was not the man Amita thought he was; he was not her father.

  ‘Shiva never knew you, he never saw you. He died in the war before I returned to Singapore. I saw him last on that day before we left for Burma,’ Sita admitted.

  ‘Are you telling me that my father is the man who tried to drown me in a bucket of water?’ Amita stared at Sita, trying to comprehend.

  There was nothing left of her that was still intact. First, they had sucked out her innards with a vacuum cleaner, killing her child, and now her mother had taken a pickaxe to her to shatter her soul and mind. She was locked into a nightmare, and any moment now she must wake up. There was the sound of the fan turning above, round and round, the same small precise revolution, on and on; on and on.