Centuries of June

by Keith Donohue

  My father is old country. He came to America as a young man to study medicine at a time when this was a rarity for a Bengali. But he is a very smart man and hardworking and determined to make a success. The American dream, right? One day, when he was working as a young intern, a patient hobbled in with a broken foot. She smiled at the beautiful doctor. He lingered awhile at her bedside, beguiled by her accent. An immigrant who had escaped Poland, and when the cast came off, she asked him out on a date. I imagine the two of them, struggling with their own cultural differences and then the language and the strange customs of America, and it is still difficult to see what drew them together. Opposites attract and all that.

  So they marry, yes. Young Indian doctor and his fair-haired wife. Understand this was a time when such combinations were not as commonplace as today, but they were in love and did not care about stares in the street or the whispers in the grocery store. He had no one at all in the big city. She had room in her heart for every possibility of love. They had each other, and what difference did it make what others might say?

  Katya, that is my mother, yes, she was studying poetry of all things at the University of Chicago and Niren was happily in residence at a hospital nearby, and one fine day around Christmas, when all of the decorations are up, and it is cold, and people are bustling about with their shopping and preparations, she casually says, “I’m expecting.” “Expecting?” he asks. “What is it you’re expecting?” He had in mind a package, perhaps, for the holidays from her folks back in Gdansk, but of course, she beams at his cluelessness. “A baby, Niren,” she says, and later, when I was a little girl, he told me that moment he knew how wide the universe was, for it had filled his heart. They both were happiest, I think, in those months before the first child was born, when anticipation and joy and a little fear supersede the inevitable fatigue and reality of caring for a real infant. All the talk was of the coming event, and as such things go, they planned and prepared, found a bigger apartment, bought the necessary accoutrements. Time goes by, the matter of what to call the baby came up. Katya had told him that he was to decide upon the firstborn’s name and that she would choose the rest. A wise woman, my mother.

  Now my father is not a particularly religious man, not in any formal sense, and I have no real idea what his family back in the old country believes. I’ve never been to India except once, when I was all of six months old. Nana fell so in love with me that they all moved to Chicago by the very next year. Furthermore, he had by this time adopted nearly all of my mother’s customs. There was a Christmas tree in the new apartment. We never spoke of the matter, but I am sure he thought attending the Christian church and so on was part and parcel of becoming a full-fledged American. Or maybe he just wanted to please her. But to my knowledge, his upbringing was secular, so it was a surprise he found my name in the Ramayana. Do you know this story?

  • • •

  My brother shook his head. In his dark suit and tie, Sam looked incongruous sitting there upon the bed. By now I was more used to him as an old man in a bathrobe, and part of me wished I could speak to him and let him know how he would turn out in the future. The cat stood with an air of mild annoyance and then found his place in the moving patch of sunshine on the floor. I was curious to hear what Sita had to say, since she so rarely spoke about this part of her life.

  The Ramayana is the life story of Rama, the seventh incarnation of Vishnu, and I guess you’d call it one of the foundational stories of the Hindu tradition. It’s this long, multilayered epic poem about the exiled prince Rama and his wife. She gets abducted by the demon Ravana, a creature with ten heads and twenty arms, who tricks her and takes her to the kingdom of Lanka across the sea. This monkey-god, Hanuman, helps Rama rescue the girl, but Lord, it gets more complicated as it goes. But the point of me telling you this is that Rama’s wife is named Sita, incarnation of the goddess Lakshmi, and she is the epitome of beauty, virtue, and loyalty. Follower of the principles of dharma. The ideal wife. Some standard to live up to, eh? How’s that a proper name for a baby girl? What was the poor man thinking?

  My father used to tell me stories from the Ramayanas—for there are many versions—at bedtime when I was just a little girl, though I don’t know how much of it was true and what he may have invented. I don’t believe he was secretly trying to make a good Hindu of me, or even much of a Bengali. The bedtime stories were as much for his sake as for putting me to sleep. He seemed to be remembering his own childhood by telling those tales to me, and I enjoyed them for what they were—scary and funny and sad. In one, the monkeys make a bridge from India to Sri Lanka by joining hand to foot and holding on to the next one’s tail, and in another, old Ravana sets the monkey-god’s tail afire, and he just scoots through the kingdom spreading the blaze from building to building and destroying all.

  Whatever the stories meant to him, they were a kind of ritual between us, a private language and a personal bond despite the fact that they’re known all around the Hindu world. In that little corner of Chicago, the Ramayana was just ours. None of the other kids had ever heard of such an elaborate myth, and for sure I wasn’t going to mention the gods to the nuns at my grammar school. But I liked being the only Sita among all the Mary Margarets and Sean Michael Patrick Francis Joseph Aloysiuses at Our Lady of Grace, the only Sita in the whole neighborhood, or in all of Chicago for all I knew. Although there was a stretch as a teenager when I wished to be Suzie or Rita, but I outgrew all that when I left home for college.

  “It’s a beautiful name,” Sam offered, and Sita blushed at the compliment. She walked to the window and looked out upon the fair summer day. Too nice for a funeral. I was tempted to cross the room and stand behind her, put my arms around her waist, but as neither one of us could feel the gesture, it seemed pointless. In the glass of the windowpanes, her eyes stared straight ahead, not searching the exterior world, but locked upon some inner landscape far away from here.

  I began to forget my father’s stories and became instead just Sita, a girl with an unusual name. One of many strangers when I went to university in Philadelphia. A boy named Ayodeji from Nigeria. Michiko from Kyoto in my English Composition section. Josip and Baxter and a girl named Feather from Los Lunas, New Mexico. Nothing strange about me, nothing exotic. Just a girl, a little darker than some, but hardly unusual. What’s in a name? I was more American than many of these foreign satellites landed on campus, and I became more fully American away from my funny mixed-up parents and their mélange of food and customs, stories and memories.

  So in earnest I was determined to say good-bye to the past and become just American like everyone else. My boyfriends were all regular Joes. I hung around with my pixie blonde roommate and the ordinary Janes. In retrospect, it all seems a much more conscious decision, but I had no idea at the time just how much I longed to be just like everyone else. Another eighteen-year-old inventing herself. Funny story, though, I dated this guy a few times, sweet as pie, and one time we got all dolled up for a night on the town and he ends up taking me to an Indian restaurant for dinner, Bombay something or other. And we’re sitting there in the red room, the silver samovars and Ganesh and Siva duking it out on the wall, while we waited for our lamb rogan josh or whatever and I must have looked absolutely morose. “What’s the matter?” he asks. “Don’t you like Indian food?” And that cracks me up for some reason, and I just can’t stop laughing. Poor guy didn’t even know.

  I floundered around for a couple years like a lot of kids, but by senior year, I had decided to study urban design and was going on to graduate school. Ended up at Rhode Island School of Design, and that’s where my Americanization project became complete. Nobody blinked when I introduced myself as Sita. I was just one more competitor. We were so focused on doing well and landing a job after graduation, and everyone was so earnest and smart and superior. Lots of pressure to perform, and I felt completely out of my depth for the first time in my life. And just about the worst possible moment, when I’m struggling with school and
worrying about the future, along comes Matthew.

  • • •

  She had told me all about Matthew before. The inevitable dating conversation about our sordid pasts, the litany of exes. We were in the Sculpture Garden of the National Gallery of Art, waiting for a free summer jazz concert to begin, the big fountain spritzing in the middle of the plaza, the tourists staking out their spots along the circle of stone benches. A pair of mallards paddled about, and children of all ages dangled their bare feet in the water. A mob of sparrows hopped on the ground, begging for handouts. Among the dozens of idlers was a scruffy fellow in a black T-shirt and jeans, big hairy feet strapped into sandals, and sunglasses perched atop his head. He strolled along, yakking on his cell, and Sita gasped when he passed by.

  “Someone you know?” I asked.

  She bent her head and hid her face behind her long dark hair. “Not really. He just reminded me of someone I know. Knew. An old boyfriend.”

  “Oh.”

  The tale played out to the syncopated rhythms of the jazz ensemble, in between songs, and later on the Metro home. Not that I wanted the details, but my questions enabled her to sketch out an outline, and the matter over, he was never mentioned again. They had met in grad school at RISD, and apparently this Matthew was touched by the gods, some kind of creative genius, the most brilliant architect ever, and the first love of her life. They moved in together, made plans, but they were just a couple of kids. Months go by, and she told me that he wigs out for some reason and just leaves, and a long time goes by before Sita gets over him. I was surprised that she was bringing up this old flame to Sam at my funeral.

  The cat rose to his feet and hissed indignantly. “You’ve no room to talk, mate. Considering your own checkered past these many centuries.”

  “True, but still. Some decorum after all. The flowers haven’t yet begun to wilt, and the guests are still attacking the canapés downstairs.”

  “You fink you’re the only one wif a broken heart?” Harpo turned his back to me and lay down in the striped sunshine.

  Matthew was an architect, like Jack, but there the similarity ends. Where Jack was a dreamer, Matthew was a doer. He had a harder edge, more competitive, downright vicious at times, but he was head of the class, bound for glory at one of the big design firms in New York. We hooked up that first semester and moved in together that first year of school. I loved his manic energy and single-mindedness, and everything started out exciting and dangerous. And Matthew was a creative genius, but some demons often live side by side in such people. His was jealousy. The last few months he grew paranoid about everything I did. One of my partners in a collaborative project was just a nice, friendly boy, and we spent a lot of time together working on a design for a new model for public housing, but Matthew accused me of actually sleeping with this harmless boy, which was ridiculous, and despite my protests, he never truly believed my innocence. I would never do such a thing. And then one night, over the same old argument, Matthew hit me. “Tell me the truth,” he said, and I said, “But it’s only you,” and he hit me with the back of his hand. Have you ever been struck by someone you loved? There was the pain—yes, he drew blood from my lip—but the shock reverberated down to my soul. And the absurdity of the moment, all this because he chose not to trust me. He struck me just once, but that was the end. Somehow I finished up the semester, but that May I packed up all my things and went back to my parents in Chicago.

  At first I thought of just going home for the summer. Take some time off and mend. Get over the heartbreak of losing my first love. And what could be safer, more natural than home, for my parents to take care of me while I do nothing, like when I was a child? Do you know your brother’s favorite, Bachelard? Somewhere he writes, “All the summers of our childhood bear witness to ‘the eternal summer.’ ” That’s what I longed for, what I needed. Another June, another eternal summer stretching out before me and a chance to recover. Centuries of June, life by life, bring the promise of another beginning.

  But it did not turn out the way I had planned. Oh, my parents were extraordinary, just angels, really. They understood my anguish and allowed me this retreat, and for the first few weeks, everything was more or less fine. I would take a book and lie in the sun all afternoon, often as not falling asleep rather than reading. And that after lying in all morning long, waking late, and wandering around the old house like a zombie in pajamas. And then after doing nothing more strenuous than sunbathing, I would go to bed early, say nine o’clock, and sleep again for twelve or fourteen hours. My little sibs left me alone, went to their summer jobs, out to movies and so on, and they tried, too, to get some life into me, but I turned down all their offers for a night out. I was just so tired all of the time.

  It wasn’t just Matthew I was grieving, but something deeper, some fatigue of the soul. We had an old dog at the time, a kind of hybrid shepherd that may have been part wolf. For sure, he looked lupine, is that the right word? Sometimes he would sleep near me, at the foot of the bed or on the floor next to the sofa. Bhedi was an ancient creature, lived a thousand lives, and he knew something was amiss. He’d uncurl his body and poke his muzzle into my hand or just plead with me with those big brown eyes to get up, Sita, get moving, and I would walk him round the block, slowly in respect to his arthritic hips, but I could barely make it back home. So, sorry, Bhedi, and he would whimper when I lay back down on the couch, completely worn-out. Twenty-four and going to pieces.

  A month’s indulgence, that’s what my parents granted me, and come the middle of summer, they were encouraging me to get on my feet, to do something. How would you like to take up swimming? Or we could buy you a horse. Would you like to go out to Lake Michigan for a sail? But everything for me was still at half speed, quarter speed. I could not go when they proposed a vacation to Canada. I did not know the answer when they asked whether I would be going back to grad school in the fall. I hadn’t the energy to think about looking for even a part-time job. My mother eventually broached the idea of some professional help. “Not that we think there’s something wrong,” my mother said. “But just someone to talk to—”

  “I’m not crazy.”

  “No, not crazy. Hurt by that evil boy.”

  Of course, it wasn’t the boy himself, but what he represented, some greater imbalance in the cosmos. The very idea that I, of all people, could not be trusted. What kind of world is this? The notion that someone would strike me because he believed his suspicions over my truth. What sort of life have I stumbled upon? I was not depressed, but in a state of despair. And I needed something other than a therapist, so I refused to go, despite the anguish in my mother’s eyes.

  They were not looking at each other, Sam and Sita. Perhaps the moment was too raw and personal, and they were strangers to a degree that made her confession uncomfortable. During the time Sita and I were together, she and Sam probably met no more than a dozen times, so they knew each other primarily through me, and I am a poor vessel for understanding. I didn’t know half of Sita’s story, never knew the depths of her pain. She was framed by the window, the afternoon backlighting her features into obscurity, the sunshine through the silver leaves bestowing a kind of radiance. Sam sat quietly on the bed, studying his shoelaces. In the awkwardness of the conversation, I wished he could play the fool as he had before. Draw some tattoo upon her eyelids or entertain her with some trick hidden in the pocket of his bathrobe. But Sam had no magic to lighten the mood. And I could provide little comfort for her past. Her life before our life. The cat opened one eye and regarded me with some disdain. “A bit of curiosity wouldn’t have killed you,” he said. “For cripes’ sake, mate, you should have known before now.”

  As August ceased, and it became clear that I was in no shape to go back to school, my parents grew more worried about me. My mother kept insisting upon a therapist, and I could hear their arguments filtered through my haze. My brothers and sister were worried, too, not just about me, but about our mother as well, who was drifting away, lost
in confusion about what to do with me. One late summer night, with a hint of autumn in the night air, my father knocked on my door and asked if he might come in.

  A cool breeze blew off the lake, and I was already under my covers, though the sun had not set. He motioned for me to give him some space to sit on the edge of the bed. He has a kind of old-world formality, a starchy politeness that endeared him to patients and colleagues, but as a fully Americanized daughter, I found his manners puzzling. Relax, Daddy. He was not like the American dads and their easy ways with their children, and as he sat there beside me, I would have given anything just to have him hug me and say everything would be all right. But that’s just not in his makeup, though still, I was grateful for the gesture, and it had been years since we had been alone together like this since I was a little girl and he a young man. I bunched my pillows into a cushion and sat up to ask, “Do you remember when you used to come tell me the old stories?” Searching for words, he looked lost in the thicket, unsure of the means to rescue his child just beyond.

  “Rama,” he said, “had heard from the people of his kingdom rumors about what had happened to Sita while she had been kidnapped by Ravana. The demon insisted that she become his bride, and though Sita refused him, the people questioned Sita’s chastity during her long captivity. ‘She must have given in to him.’ Even Rama questioned her honor. So Sita asked Rama’s brother to build a huge pyre and set it ablaze, and she told Rama that to prove her purity, she would walk through the fire. If she had been true to him, then she could walk through unscathed. If not, she would perish in the flames. Now, you may think that just proposing the test would be enough, but Sita insisted, and of course, she passed through the fire whole and pure as she had always been.”

  That was all for the first night’s story. Over the next weeks, as summer gave way to autumn, my father would come into my room every so often and tell me more of the Ramayana, all the parts he had left out when I was a small girl. They had a trying marriage, Rama and Sita, predicated on doubt while trying to do the right thing, living the dharma. Rama took her back that first time, after the trial by fire, but he later sent her into exile again because of the persistent rumors in the kingdom. In exile, she bore him twin sons—Lava and Kusha. Sita, the original single mother, raising those children on her own. Years later, Rama chanced upon those boys and they sang to him the song of Rama that their mother had taught them, such was her loyalty, and only then did Rama realize his error and wish to welcome his sons back to his throne. And yet, still, Rama had his doubts about her, so in the end, Sita asked Mother Earth if she could return to her one true home, and Sita went down into an opening in the Earth, back to her Mother’s embrace.