As Sweet as Honey

by Indira Ganesan

  “They gave you life so you spin this way and that. Sideways and upside down, like an astronaut, so you can see the world.”

  “I want to be an astronaut!” shouted Sanjay at once.

  “An astronaut?” said Rasi.

  I was mad because I wanted to be one too but Sanjay said it first. In our games, he would get to do it then.

  (“You dolt, Mina—of course, you could have been an astronaut,” he said years later. “What were you thinking?”)

  Meterling spoke again:

  “Your parents are the people who let you dream. Your parents are the ones who taught you how to fly. Spin. See the world. Come home and report, then fly out again.”

  I dreamed of an enormous cow walking through a field of grain. From the cow’s belly grew stalks of grain and rice mixed with barley. The grains mixed freely as the cow swished her tail. She wore a yellow headdress, with rows upon rows of bells, sewn with green and red thread. The cow’s feet danced, and I dreamed of anklets tinkling silver with sound. The cow’s eyes were unfathomable and reminded me of Meterling’s (which is strange, because, of course, her eyes were always dancing or deep or dark) and I woke up.

  12

  Meterling, our goose. Our giant. She sat in the sun and looked at the ocean. First she climbed up the banks of shifting sand, where fragrant pink roses bloomed. Beach roses. Then, there was the sight of the sea. The sea, the sea, it slid toward us, then slid back. All that water, all that rain. Meterling drank in the ocean, lay back on the sand, and felt the sun’s heat. The water roared and sounded, crash after crash in the soft broken swish glass shatter of water. “Auntie Meterling,” we cried, “come splash us with the water, come play with us!” But Meterling lay on the beach, and took in the sun full blast. Only for fifteen minutes, because we were all warned against its rays—all the aunties told us again and again to stay out of the sun. It will darken us and burn us to a crisp, make us faint, and create vomit, headache. Go to the ocean when it is dawn, evening, they say, soft twilight, the in-between hours. For the most part, we listened, but there were some times when we sneaked off to play in the sun, wanting to turn darker and darker, and Meterling once in a great while joined us. She splashed her feet at the water’s edge, but brought out an umbrella when the sun became too intense. In truth, our aunties were right, we could only stay a short while before the sand painted out feet with fire and we ran for the shade of the trees, laughing and screaming all the while.

  Grandmother spoke:

  “I remember when Meterling was born. Her mother was a scrawny thing when Tharak married her. Quiet and abashed by our noisiness, she still found ways to assert herself by wearing jangling earrings instead of heavy wedding gold. We so love gold, don’t we, in our culture? Melted down and reshaped—how often has Roshanji come to our house to remake us new jewelry? But Asha wore jangling earrings, and was always abreast of fashion in the cut of her choli sleeves, in the fabric of her saris. That was the way she had her voice among us, I suppose, in her clothes.

  “And Tharak. My middle child, who was always reading and working. A great scientist, they said, readying for the Nobel, but who knew his life would be so short? Thirty-nine only, and a car crash got them both. And Meterling only six years old.

  “It was Tharak who named her, and yes, we all protested. ‘What kind of name is that,’ we asked, ‘and for a girl?’ But he said it was special, it would give her strength. We thought it was a name from one of those German textbooks he was reading at the time, about fissures or fixtures or something. Something about test tubes. ‘Meta’ we knew, there are so many families named ‘Mehta,’ after all, and someone said it was a diminutive, like the way we shorten ‘Shubashree’ to ‘Shuba,’ ‘Shobhana’ to ‘Shoba.’ But this ‘ling’ had a German sound to it, or Malaysian, perhaps. And then the r. I never could understand what Tharak was doing with the name. Asha said it had come to him in a dream. She was eight months gone, and he woke her up, shouting, ‘Meterling!’ But sometimes I think that’s just what she told us. Meterling. We got used to it, you know, and of course, it fits. Meterling. Sometimes I swallow it, so it becomes ‘Meta-ling.’ And of course, we all call her ‘Meti’ now and then.

  “My Tharak. A joy, you know. An absolute joy.”

  And we kissed our granny’s tears away just then.

  There were many beaches on Pi. The most popular were crowded, with “Hot peanuts!” and “Lassi here!” sellers and fruit vendors, carts full of pinwheels and streamers, beaches full of kurta- and pajama-clad women, or women in saris, fully clothed men, all walking arm in arm, chatting and laughing, and children shrieking. The sea! The sea! Everything happened at the sea.

  There was the Gandhi statue, just like in Madras, garlanded with fresh roses and chrysanthemums. Across the Pacific, on a beach in California, it was a Hawaiian surfer so garlanded, and farther on, in Rio, Gandhi again, only not at the beach. Elsewhere, on beaches around the world, there are statues of Madonnas, some who weep real tears, and Imanjas, gods and goddesses to herald the power of the earth and water. But on Pi, at Madhupur Beach, Gandhi’s eyeglasses merely glinted as the sun sank into the water, and all around, children cried out in joy at being at the beach.

  But there was another kind of beach on Pi as well, the private beach, where only the privileged could wander, where wealth or status opened the barred gates, where miles of smooth soft sand folded toward the sea line. Once a beach pass was in hand, pure bliss awaited the lucky who walked on its sand.

  Oh! The sea! The sea as it shines on the horizon, the sea as it leaps toward the shore, the sea as it sucks back, all foam and spray and salt and wind.

  And here is Meterling at the shore, piling small pebbles into a circle. Sometimes she takes twigs and sticks them straight upright near the stones on the sand. She is building prayer circles, she is building miniature Stonehenges, she is creating rock gardens, tiny, small, temporary memorials to Archer. Little shrines to her large, overpowering loss. Her hands work ceaselessly, blue-green pebbles and glittery rocks shaped into circles and left on the sand.

  Rasi and I like to build castles. We like to pile sand into soft mounds and dig under them to form tunnels, so that our hands can meet and shake hello. The wet sand sometimes fills with water and we shout with glee.

  But Meterling makes circles to track her tears, makes small sculptures to declare her loss.

  13

  Meterling was twenty-eight when she lost everything she could lose in losing Archer. And yet at twenty-eight, she had everything she could hope for as well. Three short months, that was the entirety of their courtship, their desire, their hope. Twenty-one, that shiny age, had passed her, then twenty-three. By twenty-five, she was treated tenderly, assumed to a life of spinsterhood. At twenty-five, Meterling became a warning for marriageable daughters as well. It happens, the elders mused. If, as the gossips say, a daughter can only be so dark, or so poor, she certainly could only be so tall as well. That golden promise of a perfect bride required golden skin, golden height, and the golden means of proportions. And Meterling had nothing—her skin was dark, like amber gone opaque, and she was so tall. Meterling was a beauty in a school all her own, and that’s why we flocked to her. She was not film-star material, our Meterling, she was no universal beauty. But she was our standard.

  I told her I did not plan to marry, ever. I would be a famous scientist who had no time for cooking and husbands. I would live alone with lots of animals, including a horse, like in the storybooks where children rode on horses and lived with cats and big shaggy sheepdogs. “Beti,” Meterling would say, using Hindi, because sometimes in Hindi, the tenderness required to cut through an excess of emotion with a perfectly pitched honesty was available—beti, which means “child”—“beti,” she’d say, “don’t worry. All is possible; all is good in this world.” And Meterling would smile. She who had lost her love, her joy, at twenty-eight. She’d smile with tenderness, hoping to ease our pain, even as her back ached.

  When someone
dies, everything dies as well. At least it seems like that. It seems like the gods are punishing you, and no matter what treasure you might have amassed, it all becomes rot, becomes meaningless. Death changes everything. It changes everybody.

  Meterling changed, becoming clouded, becoming worn, withdrawn. A light was quenched in her as her sorrow took seed. But Oscar, growing inside her, moved the seed around somewhat. He didn’t let it settle. Life, life, life, he whispered, this voice coming into being, this child, shouting at Meterling not to give in. No, live! he must have shouted, this child in being, live so that I may live as well. And we responded to Oscar, this child in being, as well. We responded to his light, as did the aunties, as did everyone who flocked around Meterling. “Live,” we told her, “do not give in to this sorrow, do not succumb to this pain. Let it out, yes; let it out so we can carry it for you.” Because that is what people do when they care deeply about someone: they shoulder their pain, put their heart to work, put their mind to the grief. And they carry the burden. And that is how some people live. That is how some people—whose time to die is not yet, because of whatever grace is granted in their life—this is how some people survive.

  At twenty-eight, Meterling had discovered the one person she realized she had waited for her whole life.

  “No,” said Meterling. “That’s not entirely true. I just met Archer by accident. All that drama came later, because I lost him. But meeting him was accidental. Loving him was the crux of the matter, a choice I made. I was happy before I met him, though. I wasn’t pining for something missing. How could I be, with all of you loving me so?” Her eyes filled with tears. The baby was due in four months, twenty-one days.

  Rasi and I listened, and Rasi agreed with Meterling, but then she turned to me. “Sanjay stole my transistor,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I left it out and it was gone.”

  “How do you know it was Sanjay?”

  “He had it this afternoon.”

  “Oh.”

  “He said he didn’t.”

  “Did you tell Grandmother?”

  “Don’t worry; I’ve got a plan.”

  Rasi went to confront Sanjay over her transistor.

  But Sanjay had found a kitten.

  Sanjay found a kitten that was hiding under a banana leaf. Scrawny, white, with pink-tipped ears, it cried when Sanjay removed the leaf.

  “C’mon here, kitty,” he said, but it tried to scurry away. Its paw was caught in a trap. It lay bleeding, and without thinking, Sanjay reached in, pulled away the leaf, and pushed apart the trap’s jaws.

  The kitten nestled onto his lap, and that is how the kitten named Scrap and Sanjay became fast friends.

  We went to ask Uncle Raj, who was a doctor, what to do next. Uncle Raj tidied up the kitten, and gave a lecture, but Sanjay wasn’t listening too much. He was wondering how he could keep the kitten, how to convince everyone to let him have a bit of milk or water—what did kittens eat anyway? As it turned out, it was easier than he thought to keep the kitty and feed her as well.

  “I want to pet it, I want to pet it!”

  “How come you got to keep it when we couldn’t keep the puppy?”

  “I still see that puppy in the street sometimes.”

  “I think Mrs. Shankar takes care of it.”

  “I wish we could keep a puppy. Who needs a cat anyhow?”

  “Look at its little nose.”

  “Look at its eyes.”

  “It likes you, Sanjay.”

  “Let me see, let me see!”

  “I want to feed it.”

  “Not an ‘it.’ Her name is Scrap.”

  “Scrap?”

  “How do you know it’s a girl?”

  “Yes, it’s a scrap of a kitten.”

  “Did you think it was a scrap of paper when you found it?”

  And Sanjay admitted that he had, that he had been looking for some paper to jot down—

  “Jot down what? Jot down what?”

  “Nothing. Anyway, you see, it isn’t a scrap of paper, it is a kitten.”

  “Can I pet it again, Sanjay?”

  “You don’t have to ask permission.”

  “Don’t scare it!”

  “Look, it’s sleepy.”

  “Maybe we could sing to it.”

  “Okay, okay—just take turns.”

  14

  Intelligence, my girls, is how you maintain yourself in independence,” said Aunt Pa one day, out of the blue. “Year after year,” she continued. “It’s knowing how much to spend at the market so you have something left over to spend again. It’s making sure all the channels of cash flow are open, that nothing is caught, creating blockage, creating snags. It’s making sure that as well as a way out, there is always a way in. Entrance is as important as that Exit sign that’s got you so fixed—oh, I know all about it, how at the movie theater, you spot that sign first. And why not?—it’s so lit up, so red, so bright. It’s for emergencies, after all, for fires and power outages, for stampedes, any unforeseen circumstances. But the Entrance sign is important, too. That one is green, green for ‘go,’ green for ‘hello.’ The entrance sign that lets you in, no matter what color, what class, the thumbs-up in our lives. You girls don’t know how hard we fought for your independence. You don’t know how it was back then, with the British. You don’t know.”

  And it was true what Auntie Pa was telling us: we didn’t know. Rasi and Sanjay and all of us, girls and boys both, we just felt so free and lucky those days. We were nine, and ten, and eleven. The world really was our oyster, ours for the taking. We did like to run, we liked to shout, and we liked to sing at the top of our voices. Grown people like Aunt Pa were mystifying. They liked to drink tea, they liked to talk, they had eyes so creased with tears and fears and trembling. It made no sense to us. But at one time, Nalani says, they were young too, all of them, in braids and rag-tail hair, screaming and running and shouting for the sheer joy of it. But the years made one quieter, in our family anyway, it made for a steadier gaze, a firmer walk. And all at once, we hugged Auntie Pa, who batted us away, like she was annoyed, and told us to stop making ourselves pesky, so we ran off to find Grandmother.

  We found her in the garden, Grandmother, watering her plants. A new one had bloomed. She called it Chandra, for the moon, and indeed its white, round bloom looked so soft and heavenly, just like the full moon. But softer than the moon, too, which can appear harsh sometimes, all silvery and cold in the sky. This flower was more yellow, creamier, like we could cuddle into it as if it were a pillow and coverlet, and sleep quite soundly, if we were small like Thumbelina, say, or Tom Thumb.

  “There is a saying,” said Meterling, “that the gods rain down gifts and tangle up our brains.” Why else (she thought but did not say, as did we) would the gods give me such a man as Archer, only to take him away? Again and again, all over the world this happens, this suffering. A baby dies, the parents overcome by grief, overwrought by pain.

  Grandmother takes in all of this hurt, all of these questions, and shrugs her shoulders. In that shrug lies the way of compassion, of not knowing. But when one is in the throes of emotion, a shrug is hard to come by. A shrug is ancient; it is a way of acknowledging the pain, of moving past it while acknowledging it, of recognizing that many things are out of our control, that the world is impermanent, that love and loss go hand in hand.

  As children, our tradition dictates that we be sheltered from all this pain and suffering, sheltered, as it turns out, from the human condition itself. But kids are smart. We figure it out soon enough. We know the grown-ups don’t tell us everything, that their ways and methods are baffling, but they are kidding themselves if they think we don’t know about suffering. We see it all the time. But as children, perhaps, at least outwardly, we recover more quickly.

  Sanjay, Rasi, and I were a team of sorts, a triad of playmates who took turns helping each other to figure it out. When you grow up in an extended, stretchy family, the mothering and fatherin
g is done in batches, but there is also a great deal of freedom. When there are only two parents and one or two children, the attention can be focused, but on the island of Pi, we just ran around like rowdies, like we were free.

  Nalani saw Meterling’s suffering differently, more tangibly, like a shard of steel or glass in her heart. For Nalani, Meterling’s heart was embedded with this sliver, and the sliver, like a splinter, needed to be dislodged. Inside her heart, Nalani believed, Meterling carried her grief, and it was up to us, her family, to help her both carry the pain and dislodge it.

  But it was hard to deal with Meterling’s pain those first few months. It came and went like a flame on a matchstick. With us, she would be happy, or pretend to, and then when she thought she was alone, it would come pouring out. We knew people who suffered from sadness. That sadness twisted in and out like a knife, making the person double in pain sometimes, and sometimes it was like a path that pointed down. Sanjay, Rasi, and I felt bad for Meterling when we saw her doubled up in pain.

  What could we do for Meterling?

  “Should we make her presents?”

  “A boat that she could use?”

  “A boat?”

  “A wooden boat.”

  “What would she do with a boat?”

  “Everyone wants a boat.”

  “You want a boat—not everyone does.”

  “Maybe she’d want to play with Scrap?”

  “Rani Mami says Auntie should stay away from Scrap until the birth.” Rani Mami had come with Dr. Kamalam to examine our aunt. She would help her when it was time.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe we should just bring her tea and biscuits.”

  “That’s what Grandmother says.”

  Our aunt had a lot of tea and biscuits.

  Nalani practiced yoga. Nalani practiced deep breathing and dancelike asanas to help her float and ground, energize and stay rooted. One hundred and eight sun salutations was her goal, but usually she did just ten. Sometimes she asked us to join her, but Rasi and I were not very interested. But Sanjay sometimes stayed with her as she rolled out her mat on the roof, and practiced with her, side by side. Afterwards, Rasi and I would tease him, but usually, we noticed, for an hour or so after yoga, he remained fairly oblivious to our teasing.