‘Where is my sister?’
The wise woman sighed, a deep, weary exhalation and at that moment, she looked her age. ‘I don’t know. Your ma had given her some gold bangles. I sold them for her. She took the money and left.’
‘Why did you let her go?’
She sighed again. ‘I tried talking her out of it. But her mind was made up. And it was not my place.’ Looking pointedly at me.
‘What would you have wanted me to do?’ I snapped. ‘I didn’t even know she was pregnant.’
She raised her eyebrows. Exactly.
‘You expected me to find her and beg her to come home after she had betrayed me so horribly?’
The wise woman did not say anything but her eyebrows stayed raised.
I was glad I was holding Kushi, as I was beset by a sudden urge to walk up to her and slap them back in place.
‘Why did she leave her child to me?’ I held Kushi close, breathing in her pure, clean, new baby scent to chase away the anger, the upset.
How dared this woman blame me? When Puja was the one who claimed Gopi from me, destroying our family; Puja who shamelessly went to the landlord, asking if she could marry Gopi; Puja who slept with him, Gopi who was meant for me.
Kushi, the miracle blooming out of this chaos, sighed contentedly in her sleep, her little chest heaving up and down. Strips of light sneaked in through the gaps in the mat that masqueraded as the front door of the wise woman’s hut and played on her face.
I wouldn’t want it any other way, but I have to know why Puja left Kushi with me. I don’t want Puja to change her mind again, to come and snatch Kushi away, having decided she wants her child back, after all, when this child is the reason I’m able to survive, go on in a world where I have lost everything and everyone who mattered: you; Da; Puja; Gopi—my unsullied version of him, that is, a sensitive boy beneath the brash façade he presented to the world; and my dream of becoming a doctor.
The wise woman picked up a coconut shell ladle and stirred the conjee. She sighed again and sat down, joints creaking.‘She did not trust herself with her child. She was convinced she was cursed, unworthy of Kushi. She thought her love was not enough, and she could think of only one person to whom she could trust her child, only one person who would give her child everything she herself yearned to, who would bring Kushi up the way she wanted to but didn’t believe she could.’
When it mattered, Puja, I let you down. And yet you did not hold that against me.
I already love Kushi more than life itself. I will not let you or Kushi down in this regard, Puja, I promise.
The wise woman came towards me and extended a shrivelled hand to my cheek, her palm cool against my burning skin. It came away wet with my tears.
‘She thought you would make a wonderful mother. She told me that with you, Kushi would never want for love.’ The wise woman nodded at Kushi slumbering peacefully in my arms. ‘She was right.’ A breath, then, ‘This child is incredibly blessed, to be loved so profoundly. Puja loved her so much she gave her away. Giving Kushi to you was penance for her perceived sins, her attempt at redemption and at securing the best possible future for her child, at the cost of her own happiness. And for you, this cherub is salvation: for allowing a man to come between you and your sister; for wilfully breaking the bond you promised to cherish; for abandoning your sibling whom you vowed to protect. Isn’t it?’ The wise woman’s penetrating stare was like being skewered by light which shone directly into my soul and found it accountable.
I ignored her question, and asked one of my own.
‘Will Puja come back?’ The words trembled as they fell out my mouth.
Since she loves this child so much, how will she be able to stay away? What if she comes back to claim Kushi—this babe I already think of as mine—as easily as she gave her to me?
The wise woman shook her head, enveloping me, once more, in her piercing, silver gaze. ‘I don’t think so.’
I believed her.
I let out the breath I had been holding, feeling ashamed and guilty that I was awash with relief.
Despite my worries about Puja taking Kushi away from me, I do try and honour the promise I made to you on your deathbed and attempt to look for her, Ma.
I try.
But it is as if she has disappeared into thin air.
No-one knows her whereabouts, least of all Gopi, whom I corner, one dozy cardamom-and-ginger-scented afternoon, at the spice sorting warehouse which I have heard he is managing for his father. I leave Kushi in Gangamma’s care when I go to see him.
I am directed to his office, passing mountains of spices, the zesty fragrance assaulting my nose, a heady potpourri.
Gopi stands up when he sees me, his cowardly gaze not meeting mine, resting instead somewhere in the region of my feet.
He looks older, more serious.
‘Sharda.’ He holds out his hand to shake and I think of this same hand offering a chocolate that began a friendship, that in my mind had developed into so much more.
Silly girl.
I feel nothing for him now, except a faint revulsion. I look at his face and try to link it with Kushi’s features. I cannot. Kushi is her own person.
I think of the soft black locks of hair on her delicate head, her wiggling body, her rosebud mouth and I am beset by an ache to be with her, innocence and light, not here with this man I never expected or wanted to see again.
I do not take his hand. He lets it drop to his side.
‘What can I do for you?’ His tone business-like. A stranger making a polite enquiry.
‘Do you know where Puja is?’
And just like that, his impersonal mask crumples and I see the needy boy yearning for affection who I discerned a few times, way back when I used to teach him maths.
‘I haven’t seen her. Since . . . since . . . ’
Since you slept with her.
I hadn’t really expected Gopi to know where Puja was. I don’t know if what I feel is relief or disappointment.
I do want to find Puja.
And I don’t.
Selfishly, I want to carry on being the centre of Kushi’s world. I want to be the one she will toddle up to when she is hurt, the one to kiss her bruised knee better. I want mine to be the neck around which she will throw her small arms, the shoulder into which she will snuggle when she is sleepy, and the face she sees when she wakes from a bad dream.
‘I. . . I heard that you have a baby now.’ He gulps, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously in his throat.
He has lost weight, I realise. He seems to be shrinking into himself.
That is what guilt does to one. I know the feeling.
‘Yes.’ I look right at him, my voice cool as the wind that warns of a storm.
‘It’s . . . it’s Puja’s isn’t it?’ His voice as faltering as the first shaky steps of a toddler.
‘You know?’ Heat colours my voice hot chilli-powder red.
‘She came to me one night asking . . . ’
‘You knew about the baby, your baby, and did nothing?’ My voice is quivering with rage.‘What could I do?’ he shrugs helplessly.
‘She carried the baby to term. She gave birth to it. She was all alone. She must have been terrified.’ My whole body is trembling. ‘You are a cowardly, cowardly man. We are both much better off without you.’
I don’t know if I mean me and Puja or me and Kushi. I am all feeling, a hot ball of surging anger.
‘Didn’t you “love” her?’ I throw over my shoulder.
‘Didn’t you?’ he counters and I turn.
He looks at me, eyebrows raised, a challenge in his eyes. He has recovered his composure, is standing tall, shoulders pushed back and in his swagger, I can see the cocky boy he was back then. ‘You call me cowardly. Ha! She was all alone. Whose fault is that?’
I walk out of his office shaking, unable to control the fury heaving through my body, mingling with throbbing guilt, the knowledge that what he’s said is true.
I
want to break something. Anything.
I pick up a stone and hurl it at the window of the warehouse, made of glass unlike the wooden shutters of the villagers’ huts. It smashes into a thousand kaleidoscopic shards, and the trapped aroma of a multitude of spices escapes in an intoxicating gush of savoury air.
There is uproar.
‘Aiyyo, what is she doing? The slut! Has she gone completely mad? Why on earth did Saar agree to see her?’
Two men come up and apprehend me, not daring to touch the tart, of course, just crowding me so I cannot escape.
‘Saar, the whore broke the window.’
Gopi comes rushing out, halting to a shuddering stop when he sees me. He runs a hand through his thinning hair.
‘It’s okay. It’s nothing. Let her go and get back to work,’ he says not looking at me.
Coward to the last.
Week after week, I bundle Kushi in a sari tied snugly around my waist, close to my heart, and trudge into Nilamma’s village in order to look for work.
Every morning, I go out into the world boldly and every evening I return defeated, trying to hide the disappointment, etching lines into my face, from Nilamma.
I stand outside the doors to the smaller houses I have been doing the circuits of—none of them are locked, nobody shuts doors in the villages, there’s nothing to steal—and call.
The owners come and shoo me away saying there is no job going.
‘Anything, I will do anything,’ I plead.
‘There’s nothing here for the likes of you, whore. Do you think we’re silly enough to let you steal our husbands? We know how you work, you women with no morals.’
The standard reply I have been getting used to.
In desperation, I decide to try the bigger houses at the other end of the village, the houses I have avoided thus far, knowing that if the lay villagers do not want me, these posh people will want me even less. They are, after all, in cahoots with the landlord—even though he resides in the village across the river, he has made sure to spread slander far and wide. And after my antics at the warehouse, news of which has also circulated, why would they offer me a job?
But, I have to feed this lovely bundle of joy hugging my chest, this diminutive mouth that roots around for milk, somehow.
Gangamma sold your karimani for me, Ma, and we have been surviving on that cash. Once it runs out, there’s one more necklace to fall back on. After that . . . I shudder to think.
I need a job, any job. I will beg, if necessary, swallowing my pride and hoping for the best.
I am turned away from the first three houses. Shadows are swallowing the red earth, imbuing it the lacklustre grey of dwindling hope and my precious bundle is getting cranky after having been so patient all day, moving this way and that inside the constraints of the sari sling, trying to bite at my shoulder, at my breast, hoping for sustenance.
‘One last house and then we will go home, love,’ I whisper.
At the sound of my voice, Kushi looks intently up at me, blinks and then, as if she has understood what I’ve said, sticks a thumb into her mouth and settles into me, resting her head trustingly on the pillow of my chest. I bend down and press a kiss on her delicate head, breathing in her pink, happy smell: flowers and earth and innocence. She emits a soft coo in response.
The evening air that brushes my cheeks is sweet, fragranced with roses and hibiscus and aboli. I turn the corner and chance upon a little house, set away from the mud path, sitting snug among the fields. The house is encircled by a crumbling moss-embroidered brick wall, and it appears to sprout from a garden busy with flowers, a messy profusion of red, yellow and apricot. Once painted the bright green of new life, the walls are now faded to a weary olive, and it looks for all the world like a fairy-tale cottage set in the midst of a verdant wild wood. And in the soft fuchsia mellifluence of the setting sun, the gloom of early evening lurking up its sides, it gleams a magical, velvety gold.
I walk up to the front door and knock. The door is not as polished as the bigger houses’. In fact, it is going a bit to seed, with evidence of wood lice at the corners.
No answer. I have grown to expect this. I decide to try one last time.
‘Hello?’ I call.
No answer but my little babe opens sleepy eyes and squints up at me. I plant a kiss on her cheek smelling of sleep, tasting of faith, her whisper-soft skin untouched by the depredations of life.
‘Hello?’ I call again loathe to go back with nothing to show for a day’s worth of job hunting yet again. Kushi starts to cry and I dance from one foot to another to try and soothe her, distract her from the calls of her hungry stomach. When that doesn’t work, I move close to the fragrant rose buds and bend down, so her nose is almost touching the smiling magenta blooms.
Kushi breathes the smell in and opens her eyes wide in surprise. I laugh. I am dead on my feet, defeated by the day’s losses, worried about how we’ll manage when the money runs out. And yet this tiny bundle can make me laugh; make me appreciate the small wonders of daily life.
I think of Puja, of what she is missing, all these small milestones.
Where are you?
So many slip-ups, Puja, culminating in this little miracle who is the manifestation of your immense sacrifice. This angel who is my salvation. She has cleansed my heart of hate, made me whole again.
Thank you, for giving her to me.
In loving her, I love you. In loving her, I repent daily for what I did to you, to us. In loving her, I have learnt to forgive myself.
Have you?
I hope you are happy. I hope you are well.
‘Are you enjoying the flowers? They smell wonderful, don’t they?’ a deep masculine voice says and I almost fall backward into the rose bush in shock.
A strong arm rights me before Kushi wails.
The owner of the strong arm is a small man, with a bushy beard that obscures his face, and crinkly laugh lines that radiate from the corners of his eyes.
I know this man. He has a god-like status in this village. Everyone for miles around has heard of him and looks up to him. He is the teacher who distributes most of his salary among the villagers, the one who educates the slum children in his spare time.
‘And who have we here?’ he says and smiles down at my babe who peers drowsily up at him. ‘Aren’t you the cutest sight to behold, more divine even than the flowers?’
I am so surprised that I cannot help it showing on my face. I have never seen a man so natural with babies before, so very at ease. The other village men avoid babies (even their own, especially their own), as they would venomous snakes; infants are, after all, their women’s privilege.
And nobody in this village with the exception of Gangamma has talked to me like this up until now, as if I am an equal and not lowly scum from the back of the beyond.
‘Is this your house?’ I ask when I find my voice.
His eyes shift from the baby to me and I am encompassed by his intelligent, kind brown gaze.
‘Yes,’ he says.
‘I-I . . .’ I gulp, and the words come all at once. ‘I’m looking for work, do you by any chance need . . .’
‘Ha,’ he booms, a huge voice for a small man, and claps his hands. ‘I have been looking for a housekeeper, as it happens. Providence. Come inside, see if it suits.’
It takes a few minutes for what he has said to sink in. Surely it can’t be happening like this, so easily after all that desperate searching. Where’s the snag?
Since you and Da passed, Ma, I’ve become an expert at reading faces; I’ve had to, in order to survive. Every inch of this man radiates benevolence. And yet, even though I know I cannot afford to turn down this job, I am wary, especially now I have this cherub to care for and protect.
‘Your wife, is she in need of a housekeeper?’ I ask, more to determine what he is really asking of me.
‘I lost my wife last year,’ a shadow clouds his face. ‘One of the village women comes and cooks for me, but what I would really
like is a housekeeper to look after the house, do the cleaning and tame this garden while I’m at school. I am a teacher, you see.’
I know, I want to say. But I keep mum and ruminate on his offer instead.
It sounds ideal. I can picture Kushi sitting in the garden while I hang the washing out to dry, a beautiful bloom among beautiful blooms.
But first . . . I had better tell him. For he must have heard the rumours, surely? Nevertheless, this kind of thing is better out in the open. The words stick in my throat but I force them out. I do not want him finding out and throwing us out, just as we are settling in.
‘I . . . I have to tell you . . . ’
He smiles at me and his eyes are warm as he waves my words away. ‘I’ve heard all the gossip. News travels fast in this village.’
I’ve heard about you too. Are you really as good as the stories I’ve heard make you out to be?
He is party to the rumours. Is he taking them at face value? He’s lost his wife. He sees a woman with a baby and no husband. What exactly does he want?
‘Then why are you giving me the job?’ My voice is belligerent, scarlet as a heart not daring to hope, or to clutch at a lifeline in case it turns out to be poisonous ivy.
He scrunches his face in puzzlement, and then, when my meaning sinks in, his eyes grow wide with understanding.
‘Please,’ he says, looking right at me. ‘Your honour is safe with me. All I want is a housekeeper.’
‘Are you really the god the villagers make you out to be?’ I can’t help but ask.
What is the matter with you Sharda?
After the experiences I’ve had since Kushi, I’ve learnt the hard way not to trust people so easily, lest they bite when my back is turned. They look at me and see the lowest of the low: a woman with a child and no husband, a woman of easy virtue, a woman who will stoop to anything. They treat me the way they wouldn’t their mothers and sisters and children and that isn’t saying much. You can’t be too careful, is what I’ve learnt.
A Sister's Promise Page 23