Purple Lotus

by Veena Rao

  A month after they moved, Tara found a job as a tester—through her QA training institute—at Alpha Tech, a software company in Suwanee. She didn’t enjoy bug testing, but it was better than the alternative: to stay in an empty home. Besides, at $25 an hour, the money was good. Over the weekends, she still made plans to hang out with Alyona or with her friends from QVision Tech. She still accompanied Ruth and Dottie on their church projects.

  Sanjay ate at home every weeknight. She wished he didn’t. Cooking every night was a tedious chore, especially after an entire day spent finding bugs in software, and then driving home from Suwanee. She had five standard Italian and Mexican recipes, which she rotated with little enthusiasm, one for each day of the workweek. On weekends, they either ate out or resorted to takeout dinners.

  At the kitchen table, they sat shielding their thoughts with small talk. Often, they gave in to silence, after struggling to find common ground. He had not once mentioned Liz in the time since she had returned home, but it was evident Sanjay still missed her—in the fine lines on his forehead, in the forlorn, faraway look that haunted his eyes as they watched TV or when he drove them around town. Three times a week, he worked out at the neighborhood LA Fitness. But exercise did nothing to change the brooding, solemn expression that had become his permanent feature, as if he had resigned himself to a loveless life with a woman who had dared take him to court.

  Sanjay had stopped using condoms, although starting a family was never discussed. Tara would have liked that too, starting a family, if only because that would give her some purpose in life. But she froze each time Sanjay kissed her, worked on her body. She still had trouble getting LizSan out of her head; when she managed that, Sanjay’s insult poured ice over her body: Hijra. That’s the first word that came to my mind when I saw you at Hartsfield–Jackson.

  As the year went on, they stopped having sex. Behind the shallow small talk, a dull silence hung over them like a shroud.

  “You have a beautiful home, a green card, a full-time job, and a husband who earns well. All you need is a baby to complete your life,” Amma reminded her happily from time to time. If only Tara could feel some of that charm; if only the dream-like quality of her life would percolate into her heart.

  Amma and Daddy came to visit when the white hydrangeas were in full bloom in the front yard. Initially, most evenings, Sanjay and Daddy sat watching TV, sipping their glasses of Glenlivet or Black Label, a bowl of nuts and minced goat meat kababs or chicken 65 on the coffee table, making small talk, which often centered around politics and corruption in India or the complexities of its rambunctious democracy, while Tara and Amma busied themselves cooking dinner. Tara cooked a dish that Sanjay would eat, because he now joined them at the dinner table; Amma cooked for the rest of them.

  Amma had fallen in love with the large kitchen, with its granite countertops, chocolate-glazed maple wood cabinets, the island that held a cooktop, the trendy stainless steel appliances, and she made the best use of them, cooking up a storm three times a day. Once a week, Tara drove her parents to the farmers’ market, where Amma, her face fuller but striking, the middle-aged spread more obvious in her faded denim pants and knit top, went berserk selecting vegetables and exotic fruit on sale. She was equally excited at the Indian grocery store in Decatur, looking for spices and condiments and frozen seafood to make Tara’s favorite dishes. Often, Tara came home from work to the robust aroma of rohu fish marinated in turmeric and fried in mustard oil for macher jhol, a recipe Amma had learned from their Bengali neighbor before they had moved to Shanti Nilaya. Amma would always remember to set some misthi doi, sweet curd, in a clay pot for Tara to relish after dinner every night.

  When they first arrived, Tara’s parents had been severely jet-lagged. Daddy was also bored. He had nothing to do all day and could not venture out on his own. By the end of the second week, however, he had acquired a new hobby and established a routine. He picked up a few books on gardening at the library and everything else that he needed from Pike Nurseries. He set about creating a little vegetable patch in the backyard, where he planted tomatoes, eggplant, green peppers, and squash in neat rows. Every morning, after a late, leisurely breakfast of omelet, buttered toast, and hot tea, he spent time nursing his babies, while Amma cut store-bought vegetables or marinated fish and set the pressure cooker with rice and dal on the stove for lunch. When he wasn’t gardening, he read the day’s copy of the Atlanta Journal Constitution from cover to cover. When Tara got home from work, the three of them went for a walk through the subdivision. Sometimes, if the weather was right, they ventured out of the subdivision to Morris Road and strolled up to the library a mile and a half down the road. They sauntered through the library, flipped through the magazines—it was a welcome, cool break before their return journey home.

  Tara’s parents had no trouble stopping to talk to the neighbors at Stone Crest, Amma more so than Daddy. Within weeks of their arrival, they had made friends with doctoral candidate Valentina Bernacki and their next-door neighbor, Susan Myers. Tara had never even seen her neighbors before her parents’ arrival. Valentina, who was from Colombia, lived in a larger house by the entrance. She was married to the head of the physics department at Emory University. Susan lived right next door to them, a stay-at-home mom to three little kids, the youngest one, a six-month-old baby girl named Samantha whom Amma carried and bounced and cooed to in Kannada.

  It rained sparsely during Amma and Daddy’s three-month-long stay. But every evening, the atmosphere thickened a little when Sanjay got home. Tara watched like an outsider as Daddy’s demeanor got stiffer, politer; as Amma hushed and relegated herself to the kitchen. In the morning, when Sanjay left for work, they shed the restraints, and Amma rushed to draw the curtains open to let the sun in.

  A month into their visit, Sanjay started staying out after work, and when he was in, he preferred to stay in the bedroom, watching TV there. He came down for dinner and made perfunctory efforts at conversation with Daddy alone, but the strain showed on everybody.

  Amma, like many Indian women of her generation, had mastered the art of dichotomy.

  “What a strange man. He acts like a paying guest in his own home,” she grumbled. “What to do, Tara. This is an Indian woman’s life. We have to accept what we cannot change. At least he is perfect in every other way.”

  Without a pause for breath, she added, “When my friend Savitha visited her daughter in San Diego, her son-in-law treated them with so much love, like they were his own parents. He even took them on a road trip to Seattle and Vancouver. Our ears grew ripe listening to her stories.” Then, shaking her head, she added, “Not that I want to travel. I’m just saying. Men of your generation are not like the old timers. They are more understanding. Your husband, he is still an old timer, no doubt about that.”

  Tara said nothing to Amma. Yet, every day, observing her parents’ behavior toward Sanjay, she was reminded of her own dysfunctional relationship with him. Like them, she was happier when Sanjay wasn’t around to stifle her spirit.

  At the end of their three-month-long visit, Tara dropped her parents off at Hartsfield–Jackson airport. They were flying to San Jose to spend a month with Vijay, before heading back to India.

  They said their good-byes at the security check line. Amma burst into tears, hugging Tara, mouthing gibberish, making Tara choke with frothing emotion. Surprisingly, even Daddy, who admonished Amma for creating a scene, gave Tara a long, warm hug.

  “Take care of my vegetables,” he said, eyes glistening, hands gripping her shoulders. “And take good care of yourself.”

  Tara was too late to stifle a sob; it escaped her throat and wet her eyes. She dug into her purse as the tears flowed, found a pack of tissues, offered one to Amma, whose nose had turned red, and dabbed at her eyes with the second one. She stood waving until she could see Amma and Daddy pass the security check; then she twisted her neck from side to side to catch a last glimpse of them.

  The emptiness hit her in the che
st on her way back home. Love, warmth, and companionship had quietly taken the place of pain, resentment, and reticence. She had not snapped at Amma, and there had been no awkward silences with Daddy. Her parents had never been on her team before, united against an opposing force. All her life, they had been the others, the abandoners. Now, with them gone, she was left stranded alone in the hollow space of her American dream.

  Her shoulders hurt from the simple act of driving back in thick, crawling traffic on I-85 north. By the time she reached home, Sanjay had reclaimed his spot in front of their family room television. She flopped on the couch, carelessly discarding her shoulder bag on the floor.

  He did not look at her or greet her. Perhaps it was the realization that, with her parents gone, he didn’t have to put on an act anymore. Perhaps her parents had reminded him of the lacerations to his ego when he had to grovel with them for Tara’s return. Perhaps he had reached the breaking point, like she had. The silence gnawed into her ears, despite the CNN reporter’s inflected summary of news from Washington DC.

  “God, I miss them already,” she said at last, to the ceiling, rather than to the man next to her.

  “They are not taking over my house again.” She hadn’t been expecting a response, any response. She looked at his hard face, stunned.

  “Your house, Sanjay?”

  He didn’t respond, save for the tightening of his jaw. They continued watching CNN: underwater shots of a Roman shipwreck found in the Mediterranean, an ancient wreck languishing on the ocean floor for centuries. She tried to make sense of the find, of the silence between them, of similar evenings that lay ahead of them. It was as if she were suddenly on the seafloor herself, the water filling her lungs. She couldn’t breathe. She rushed to the backyard, to Daddy’s little green patch, where life grew in neat little rows, taking in large gulps of air through her mouth. She bent over to pull a rogue piece of crabgrass out by its root, her eyes dripping large pearls over it. She had promised Daddy she’d keep his patch alive. But she was consumed suddenly with the need to find life for herself.

  She rushed back in, as suddenly as she had rushed out to the garden, and stopped a foot away from his recliner, hands balled into fists, nails digging into her palms.

  “It was a mistake, Sanjay.” Her voice was quavering from all that was churning inside of her. “How I wish I had never come back.”

  She watched his mouth harden into a thin line; heard the sharp intake of his breath.

  “You ungrateful bitch.” He jerked up from his seat and loomed over her in a giant stride. She knew what was coming—the savage fury she had seen before. She took his first blow calmly. The second one sent her sprawling on the floor again.

  “Sanjay, think of the consequences. I will call nine-one-one,” she part implored, part threatened, her eyes streaming with pain.

  “I’m beyond caring. I’m a dead man anyway.” She felt his foot in her abdomen, kicking again and again, then a series of blows to her face, her head, her arms, until she wished she would just pass out and feel nothing.

  “You are sorry you came back? I was kind enough to take your ugly ass back in, you worthless piece of shit,” she heard him bark through the fog in her brain. She looked around for her sling bag, remembering that her cell phone was in it, but her vision had blurred, she could see only a haze, and through it, a bare foot repeatedly and violently assaulting her. She closed her eyes and gave in to Sanjay’s relentless rage.

  He stopped when he had had enough. Or perhaps, when he realized that the physical pain he was inflicting on her did not assuage his bruised ego. She was alive, conscious, and free when he left the room.

  It was still dark when she emerged from upstairs into the family room, dressed in a bright yellow blouse and blue jeans, a small suitcase in her hand. He had dozed off on the recliner, a half empty glass of vodka on the side table. He woke up with a start when she called out his name. His face darkened, as recent events of the night flooded his mind.

  She hesitated, but only for a moment before she embarked on her short leap of faith to the garage door. There, she turned around to face him a final time. His eyes had been on her back, but he quickly looked away.

  Her voice was placid when she said, “I am not worthless to me, Sanjay.”

  She shut the door behind her, not waiting to see his reaction.

  Chapter 20

  Her new apartment was on the third floor, in a sprawling community of corn-yellow and green buildings called Sanctuary Hills that looked deceptively small from the road. Before moving in, Tara stopped with Ruth and Dottie at Target, only a quarter mile away, to pick up a single bed-in-a-bag in bright floral print, a shower curtain and toiletries for the bathroom, and basic necessities for the kitchen. Her car was already loaded with a new box mattress, knick-knacks from the Indian store, and a suitcase filled with her new clothes.

  Alyona was waiting for them in the parking lot when they got to the apartment community. They lugged the new buys to her apartment. Tara boiled milk in a new stainless steel pot in her small kitchen, and let it gush over the stovetop. An Indian housewarming tradition to signify the flow of prosperity, health, and happiness into the new house, she explained to her friends. She was careful to mop the mess with sheets of Bounty before sweetening the milk with some sugar and filling three cups a quarter full for her and her two friends to sip.

  Tara smiled brightly through the pain in the various parts of her body, and her utter exhaustion. The ivory walls of her own little space were bare, but when she opened the blinds to let the sun in, its dappled glow felt magical. She turned around to face her three dear friends, their radiant faces overflowing with happiness for her. For a moment, she felt like she were with Pippi, Leenika, and Runa, as if the first six happy years of her life had come back to her.

  She woke up the next morning on the box bed, glad to be able to turn her face this way and that, and yawn, and stretch her arms over her head with no rock sitting heavily on her chest. She remembered waking up on her first morning in America, realizing that her near stranger husband had never come in, weighed down with the burden of making her marriage work. She let it sink in, the awareness that she no longer carried that fear of failure.

  Every evening, after work and over the weekends, Tara scoured discount stores, flea markets and yard sales, Ruth or Alyona in tow, buying things for her apartment—a fawn plush sofa bed, a tiny oval dining table for four. She remembered her first purchases at a thrift store in Decatur, and Sanjay’s utterly vain reaction to her visit there.

  She felt liberated spending hours foraging for used stuff, choosing a large Picasso print of The Three Musicians or a vintage corner stool on which she placed Ruth’s beautiful gift, a dried fall foliage and wheat straw arrangement.

  She chose to tell her family she had moved out only when Amma and Daddy’s California vacation was coming to an end. Until then, she had kept up with Amma’s banter, knowing that her newfound solidarity with her parents would end soon, yet not wanting to ruin their vacation.

  “Why, Tara?” Amma cried, her disbelief rushing across the phone waves.

  “You and Daddy saw how bad it was.”

  “It wasn’t so bad, Tara. We women make peace with our circumstances,” Amma’s voice was breaking.

  “He hit me, Amma. He kicked me. Repeatedly.”

  “What will we tell people?”

  “Tell them, Amma, that your daughter also deserves a life.”

  “What life can there be without a husband?”

  Tara responded only with a deep sigh. She felt no urge to even snap at Amma.

  “I’ll ask Daddy to speak to Sanjay. We’ll make him promise he’ll never raise his hand to you again.” Amma’s distressed voice was making plans for her, as always.

  “I am not going back, Amma. Not now, not ever. Call me when you can accept the fact.”

  Amma called again from Mangalore two weeks later, after the shock of the news had dissipated somewhat, catching Tara during her drive to
work. She had found out that Sanjay hadn’t shared the news; not even with his parents. Her call to Sanjay’s mother had confirmed this.

  “Daddy says it might not be a bad idea to separate for a while. It might put some sense into Sanjay’s head, make him realize your value.”

  “I am enjoying my new life, Amma. My apartment looks really pretty now. I’ll email you some photos.”

  Amma ignored her response. “Just make sure nobody finds out that you moved out. We don’t want people to gossip unnecessarily.”

  “I was planning to invite all those gossipy people to my apartment for dinner.”

  Amma’s voice rose in anguish. “Don’t joke, Tara. People can be cruel; you have no idea. They are like wolves looking for a lamb to tear apart.”

  Tara was grateful that her social circle did not consist of wolves. Two weeks after Diwali, she found a day that was suitable for all her friends to celebrate the victory of light over darkness, of good over evil. She shopped for groceries and cooked a lavish Indian meal—chicken curry, sautéed spinach with paneer, garbanzo beans in light gravy, naan and biryani. She piled her new crystal bowl, a gift from Dottie, with sweet cashew and pistachio barfis, and lined packs of tealight candles on her new antique console table.

  In the end, only Alyona, Ruth, and Dottie came. Victor was in middle school and rarely accompanied his mother anywhere anymore. Anita, Shyamala, and Yasmin didn’t show up. Maybe it was Tara’s fault. She had expected her Indian friends, who all lived far up north, to drop everything to be at her party. They had their reasons—the distance, kids, tight schedules, something unexpected that had come up. She had received apologetic text messages from all three of them earlier that evening.