The Forgotten Daughter

by Renita D'Silva

  Rohan picks up my bag and starts down the hillock and I follow, my new blue sandals (I deliberately bought plain blue sandals eschewing the patterned gold ones you wished me to) acquiring a sheen of red dust with each step I take, the ends of my jeans becoming vermilion stained. The arrack shop is deserted this time of the afternoon, the man running it snoring happily, sleeping off his cashew-feni-induced stupor so he will be ready to imbibe more with his customers as the late afternoon wanes to dusk. He is framed by the snacks of yellow tubes in transparent bags dangling from the ceiling, his hand resting protectively on the glass bottles of sweets in case children walking home from school try to nick some. Small bursts of air escape from between his half-open lips, disturbing his magnificent moustache, which reverberates with each burst. A fly buzzes, incessantly, angrily and his nose twitches in response every so often. Nobody else is about. The neighbours are all inside, having their siesta. Doors stand open to let the barely there breeze circulate, the power being out as usual, and I spy the occupants of the house above Rohan’s lying on mats on the veranda, the man’s dome of a stomach rising above his stripy green lungi, obscuring his face, the pallu of the woman’s turquoise sari slung carelessly across her face, rising into the air with each gigantic snore she produces, the folds of flesh of her stomach beaded with sweat, her feet bare and very small compared to her husband’s hairy, dirt-encrusted ones, the skin cracked and sore. Cows squat beside the road, lethargically chewing cud. Hens cluck. A crow caws.

  Rohan’s mother appears at the door, yawning loudly. She stops mid-yawn to stare at me, eyes wide. ‘What’s that rubbish you’re wearing?’ she mocks. ‘Couldn’t your mother send you with proper clothes, were boys’ garments all she could afford?’

  The anger is red hot, all-consuming, like the time I ate ten green chillies for a dare. I will fight with you all I like, but I cannot bear for anyone else to mock you, make fun of you, Ma. An image of you flickers before my eyes, your lined face, your soft eyes: ‘I will give you away in style.’

  ‘Ma…’ Rohan begins, but I cut him off. ‘I will wear what I like; you have no right to comment on it and please do not insult my mother.’

  ‘Rohan,’ my mother-in-law screeches, shattering the drowsy peace of the afternoon, causing my father-in-law to come running outside in his lungi, shirtless and nervously worrying the wiry grey hairs on his chest, his spectacles awry, eyes bloodshot, his sparse hair standing on end. ‘Control your wife. Tell her to watch her mouth. We have allowed you to marry her, but I will not take this… this talking back in my own house.’

  Shutters creak as windows are opened and faces peer out. The grumble of gossip rumbles down the hill. ‘Aiyyo, look what she’s wearing the new bride. No sari, no karimani, no covering with a shawl. They are in for big trouble—what did I say?’

  ‘Ma, shall we go inside?’ Rohan says, leading his mother in.

  I follow, so angry that I am trembling. Before I step inside, I turn and stare at each window in turn until the mass of crowding faces disappear and the shutters close in my face.

  I lock myself in Rohan’s room for the rest of the afternoon. When I hear a knock, Rohan’s voice, I fling the door open, ‘I will not apologise, Rohan. I hope you are not expecting me to.’ He looks tired, defeated and my anger dissipates. He collapses onto the bed, ‘I can understand where you are coming from,’ he says wearily, rubbing a hand across his eyes. ‘I do know how it must be for you. But it is going to be a long two weeks.’ I lie down next to him, ‘Tell me about it,’ I say and he smiles, pulls me close, and for a brief while we forget the world and lose ourselves in each other.

  It gets better after that. Whatever magic spell Rohan has weaved on his mother, it works. Both his parents are remote, they let me be, they do not comment on my clothes or anything else, which suits me perfectly. I like that my mother-in-law’s considerable energy is focussed on her son, on what to pack for him, what to feed him, how to spoil him in the two weeks that his parents have left with him.

  I endure mass with the in-laws every morning. Since they are being so accommodating, I have decided it would be churlish to refuse. Sitting in the church, listening to the monotonous drone of prayers I cannot understand, kneeling and standing up and sitting down and standing up again, the mournful sound of the hymns designed to put even someone who hasn’t woken up at the crack of dawn to attend mass to sleep, trying to smother yawns, my mind wanders. I think of my future: England, that land of McDonald’s and boutique stores, of parks sporting endless swathes of green, of shameless people who kiss and do whatnot in public. Just me and Rohan. No interfering in-laws spouting religion and suffocating mothers offering doses of tearful love. I can be shameless if I want, wear short skirts if I please; there will be nobody to judge me. My mother-in-law pokes me in the elbow, a sharp dig. ‘Pay attention,’ a harsh whisper, ‘the priest is looking this way.’ I put on a suitably pious expression, fold my hands, close my eyes, bow my head, and imagine biting into a burger, meaty juice running down my chin.

  After church, I walk to the shop for groceries with my mother-in-law, another command couched as a request I cannot refuse: she needs help carrying the bags, she says, as Rohan and my father-in-law are not around. Everyone we meet stops for a chat. ‘Oh, so this is the daughter-in-law. Quite fair for a Hindu. Can see why Rohan fell for her, especially if she was wearing these figure-hugging clothes. A bit forward, no?’ I bite back the retort hovering on my lips, thinking, one more week. You would be shocked at my restraint, Rohan, I tell my husband in my head. I am becoming positively demure!

  A drunk weaves past, stumbling and yelling obscenities. A woman strides behind him wielding a broomstick. She screams at the top of her voice, hitting him when he stumbles, and he cowers and yelps much like a scared dog.

  ‘She’s converting as soon as they reach England,’ my mother-in-law says shortly in her staccato voice, gruff like a duck’s quack, as if converting to Catholicism will automatically make me less ‘forward’.

  ‘Where’s Rohan, then?’ they ask, eyes narrowed in curiosity, nostrils flared to sniff out lies, casually spitting frothy red dregs of paan smelling of sick onto the dust by the side of the road, staining it a bloody maroon.

  ‘Sorting out visas and all the other paperwork. There is so much to do when one is going abroad,’ my mother-in-law sighs self-importantly.

  ‘Greasing palms more like,’ they say and guffaw, their yawning mouths the amber of tree bark.

  Standing there, I count down the days until Rohan and I can get away, sweat pooling down my back and soaking my T-shirt. I can smell my armpits, the reek mixing with the pong of weeds and decay drifting from the lake. The banyan tree bends down as if to drink from the water and I wish I could be anywhere but here, stuck with my mother-in-law making insipid conversation with strangers who judge me. I cannot even summon the energy to ask the toothless old man who is staring right at my breasts if he has found what he is looking for. I am ready for England, for the cold. Anything but this.

  In the evenings, as I sit on the veranda and feel myself gradually getting coated in dust, scrunching my eyes against the grimy particles swirling in the ochre-tinged breeze, trying to worm their way into my pupils, beside my strident mother-in-law who is reading the Bible out loud to me, my mind wanders and I think of you. What are you doing now? You would have come home from work, heated the water in the urn in the bathroom with kindling you picked that morning. Then you will feed Bobby scraps from last night’s dinner and then you will cook something for yourself. Are you eating properly? I picture you lying on that hard mattress, lonely and missing me, and feel a pang.

  Every alternate evening, as twilight chokes the oomph out of daylight, that sullen yellow time when birds call plaintively as they rush home to their nests, I telephone you, Ma. You sound determinedly cheery and that too-cheery voice grates on me. I know that you are grieving and trying to hide it. It intensifies the guilt eating away at my insides, pouncing when I least expect. Most of the villag
ers have chastised me at one time or another, have wondered how I can bear to treat you so badly, to insist on marrying outside my religion and going so far away, leaving you all alone. An only daughter at that. Isn’t it my duty to look after you? How can I be so callous? Aren’t daughters supposed to be more caring? I flinch at the hard-edged vicious incision guilt carves down my abdomen, inducing nausea, making my tone sharp with you.

  ‘Are you happy?’ you ask, the hope naked in your voice.

  ‘Yes, Ma,’ I sigh.

  Outside, it has started to rain. Big drops land with a thud, displacing dust, drawing concentric circles in the mud. Plop, plop, plop. The circles spread outward gradually, blend with others, disintegrate into slush the orange of sadhus’ robes.

  ‘I have made lime and mango pickle for you to take, and I am starting on the sambar and rasam powders now,’ you say.

  Children playing hopscotch in the dust dance in the squishy mud, revelling in the sudden shower, their hair bedraggled and sticking to their faces in wet tendrils, their arms open wide, twirling. I want to do that, I want to be out there.

  ‘Not too many, Ma. There’s not enough space in the suitcase.’ Rain-lashed coconut trees are silhouetted briefly by a sudden flash of lightning.

  ‘Bobby misses you.’ I know that this is code for I miss you. Irritation. Bitter like biting into mustard seeds. Why can’t you come straight out and say it? But I know that if you did, I would be annoyed at that too. I would read it as a blatant attempt on your part to hijack my happiness. Be kind, Devi. You are going away in a few days. I make a conscious effort to tone down my voice. ‘Yes, I miss him too.’

  ‘Okay, then,’ you say. ‘When will you call next?’ You try and fail to mask the need, the desperation in your voice.

  ‘Soon. This is not my phone, so I have to be careful.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ you say. Defeated.

  ‘I will call the day after tomorrow, Ma.’

  ‘Okay. Bye.’

  Through the open front door, a spray of rain drifts in on a gust of scented, slightly bitter breeze, smelling of mango, guava, guilt, freedom.

  * * *

  You and the in-laws stand in a subdued line waiting to say goodbye, like children about to be chastised. I look at you, Ma, your slight stoop, the wiry grey hair escaping your bun, your familiar yellow sari, your lined face that has been the last thing I’ve seen before drifting off to sleep and the first when waking up for so many years, now obscured by tears. I cling to you and breathe in the smell of you, sweat and talcum powder, the smell of my childhood, the smell of comfort. Then Rohan’s hand is in mine. ‘Time to go,’ he says softly. Gently, I extricate myself from your grasp, and it is as if I am finally letting go. Of my childhood, of the person I have been for so long: someone who is never really sure of who she is, always struggling against the constraints of what she can and cannot do, what she feels and what she should feel but doesn’t. I plant a soft kiss on your papery cheek, ‘Bye, Ma.’

  ‘Wait.’ You fumble with the pallu of your sari and I notice the knot you’ve made. This is where you keep your money when we go to market together. I have always admonished you about it—‘What a silly place to keep your money, Ma; all the change will fall out.’ Your trembling fingers finally manage to get the knot undone, just as I reach to help. Our fingers touch for a brief moment and you hand me a packet. A sheaf of lined notepaper. I can see your busy handwriting on the pages. This is her way of keeping a hold of you even after you are gone from her grasp. Stop this, Devi, you are all she has in the world and now you are abandoning her too. This is what I hate, the two parts of me, constantly in conflict, especially when it comes to you, Ma. I tuck the packet into my purse. ‘Bye, Ma.’

  I take Rohan’s hand and walk away from you, away from my old life and towards independence and a new persona—the person I have waited all my life to become.

  * * *

  England is like everything I imagined and like nothing I imagined.

  Heathrow Airport. While we queue up at Immigration, I watch the other passengers yawning, stretching, chatting, smiling, frowning. Black, brown, white, pink, gold. Fat, thin, small, big. Some so weighed down by coats and scarves, their faces are barely visible. Others wearing shorts and vests scarcely covering their bodies. I look at all of them and I think, Where was I all this while? In a little village in the corner of the world, hemmed in by narrow-minded people and their small opinions. I haven’t lived, I think. My life is just beginning.

  We inch up the line and reach the Immigration official, a glowering Sikh who studies our passports, asks Rohan a few questions and then lets us past with a nod of his navy-blue turbaned head. I squeeze Rohan’s hand and he looks at me, his face etched by lines of weariness. And I kiss him right there, full on the lips, and he laughs, a burst of surprise erupting out of him, and no one exclaims. No one says, ‘Arre, look at them, the shameless couple.’ No one bats an eyelid. My grin extends from one side of my face to the other despite not having slept a wink during the nine-hour flight, determined as I was to enjoy every single minute, staring at the map as it took me, irrevocably, finally, farther and farther away from home, from you, Ma, and with each jump of the tiny airplane on the minuscule screen in front of me, I felt lighter, so much lighter, and somewhere over the Middle Eastern desert, I shed my load of guilt.

  This is freedom, I think. At last.

  The flat we are renting is poky, in the middle of nowhere. The cramped lift smells of urine, is autographed with graffiti. Arguments and the sounds of other peoples’ televisions echo through the brittle, peeling walls. But I don’t care. This is our house, only ours. No one telling us what we should do, how we should do it. ‘Go to mass.’ ‘Wear something suitable.’ ‘Don’t talk to boys.’ ‘Why do you not do anything I say?’

  And so we settle into a new country, a new marriage, a new life.

  Rohan starts his course, leaving at the crack of dawn to escape the rush-hour traffic and coming home only when the shadows lengthen, dancing patterns on the dirty yellow walls of the flat. I find a job babysitting and I am happy.

  All my life, I have wanted to escape, to see the world, to live a little, to experience life, not be stuck in our little village being the fodder of gossip, dying of claustrophobia. And now I am. And it is fantastic, it is brilliant. But… at the most unexpected times, I am struck by a wave of homesickness. I miss you, Ma. I never thought I would say this, but I do. I miss you and I miss home. Not so much that I want to go back, not so. But now that I am far enough away, I am able to remember the good times, times when I was happy. And I was, a lot of the time. And slowly I am beginning to appreciate just how much you did for me.

  Some evenings you call. I picture you, squashed into that little booth, the glass cloudy with dust, the inside cramped, sweaty and reeking of blood from the butcher’s shop opposite. You sound as you always do—your voice breathy, slightly hesitant. And I imagine how your touch feels, Ma—comfortable like a pillow shaped to the contours of my head and neck; how your chicken sukka tastes: spicy, with the tanginess of tomato, the sweetness, the crunch of coconut; I picture how you look when you laugh—your eyes disappearing into slits, your cheeks flushed, the lines charting the life you’ve lived radiating outwards and upwards like crisscrossing paths on a busy map.

  And so, time passes. Filled to the brim with new experiences, spent creating new memories and… a brand-new life.

  I call home to tell you the news. It’s been a fortnight since I called last, a fortnight that has flown by on wings with visits to the chemist, the doctor, the joy of discovery.

  You do not pick up.

  Outside, a helicopter’s drone, getting louder. It swoops low, its invasive beams intruding into my thoughts, drawing a curved yellow track the length of the dark wall, painting a halo on my head. Can they see me, I wonder, hunched over a telephone, in the middle of a murky room populated with lengthening shadows and the ghosts of regrets, willing you to answer the phone. The air tastes inky
. The blue-grey smell of words hovers, words that are poised to spring out of me, words that will trigger a smile in your voice, words that will bloom happiness, blossom hope like the first lemon-yellow daffodils of spring evangelising the promise of sun.

  Your phone rings and rings like a baby’s plaintive cry gone unanswered. A worm of worry wiggles up my spine, manifests as a lump in my throat.

  I try calling Jalajakka. No one picks up there either.

  ‘Ma’s not answering the phone,’ I tell Rohan as soon as he comes home from work, bringing with him a nippy draft of frozen air, smelling of other people’s cologne, tasting of ice and borrowed smoke—a legacy of travelling by tube at rush hour.

  ‘Have you tried calling Jalaja?’ he asks.

  ‘She’s not answering either.’

  ‘When did you last speak to your Ma?’ he queries.

  ‘It’s been two weeks,’ I whisper.

  ‘Try again now,’ he says.

  ‘But it is midnight in India.’

  ‘All the more reason to call; if she’s there she’ll pick up.’

  You do not pick up.

  ‘Try Jalaja,’ Rohan says, and in his eyes I see the worry that is refusing to let me breathe, swallow. Jalaja doesn’t pick up either.

  ‘That’s good,’ Rohan says, his hunched shoulders relaxing a little.

  ‘How?’ I ask. The glass door leading to the kitchen is chipped in two places. I concentrate on the chipped glass—one in the shape of a heart, the other a bruise.