The Story Hour

by Thrity Umrigar

  “It’s okay. Wedding is cancel. You not marrying that man. But for now—”

  “You lying, Didi. You trap me. You . . .”

  Lakshmi felt Dilip tense beside her. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him shake his head disapprovingly at Shilpa. Jyoti was at the far end of the room, as if hoping to be swallowed up by the walls.

  “Listen, girl. I see you the day you was born. I feeds you, change you, take care of you my whole life. When I ever tell you the lie? When?” Lakshmi narrowed her eyes. “Munni. It is good that you loves Dilip. He a good boy. But because you loving someone new, not give you permission to stop loving peoples you love your whole life.”

  “Cent percent correct.” They all jumped at the sound of Dilip’s voice. It sounded more firm than Lakshmi had ever heard it. “Didi is correct.” He walked over to crouch before Shilpa. “You won. And you too stupid to know. Didi say you not marrying that ugly giant. Bas, Didi’s promise enough for me. Should be enough for you, too, Shilpa.” Turning toward Lakshmi, Dilip folded his hands. “Maaf karo, Didi. Please to forgive. We make huge mistake. What to do, Shilpa say she going to swallow rat poison. I got scared, so I bring her here.”

  “Rat poison? Shilpa, have you gone mad? Is your Didi dead that you act this way?” Her eyes glittering with tears, she pulled Shilpa up to her feet, embracing her as she did. The younger woman held back for a second and then flung her arms around Lakshmi, sobbing.

  Shilpa fell asleep soon after they got home, and listening to her soft breathing, Lakshmi marveled at the callousness of youth. Shilpa seemed to think that, having extracted the promise from Lakshmi, the worst was over. Despite the fact that they had not awakened Dada to break the news when they reached home. Despite the fact that she knew Adit’s family had spent lakhs of rupees on the wedding and that the blot of shame of a canceled wedding would spread and cover not just their family but his also. Shilpa’s breath was as quiet and steady as a baby’s, and she was not tossing and turning in bed, as Lakshmi was. It was the wrong sister who was lying in bed drenched in sweat, staring up at the ceiling. It was the wrong sister who tried to think of a way to save face, to spare both families the humiliation that was undoubtedly coming their way tomorrow. It was the wrong sister who sat up in bed, her heart pounding, as an idea came to her. Because it was the wrong sister who was about to marry Adit Patil.

  And so it was:

  Adit’s father and sister wait at the entrance of the open-air reception hall for Dada and the bride to emerge out of the air-conditioned taxi. They inquire about Dada’s oldest daughter and are informed that she is home with the stomach flu. Adit’s sister is about to ask more questions, but they are distracted by the appearance of the groom, who looks resplendent in a gold-embroidered jacket and a saffron-colored head scarf. As per local custom, the bride’s face is covered by her sari, so that Dada has to steer her toward where the wedding mandap has been set up. Someone puts two heavy rose and jasmine garlands around the necks of the bride and the groom. They smell cloyingly sweet, heavy as a premonition. For a second, the scent of the flowers, the heat under the veil, the sheer duplicity of what she’s about to do, it all gets to her, and she thinks she is about to faint. But just then strong arms steady her—she’s not sure whose—and she feels herself maneuvered to sit in front of the sacred fire that’s burning in an urn set on the mandap. She fights a moment of panic. It is all happening too soon. Even though she knows Adit insisted on a simple ceremony—he arrived at the reception hall in a car instead of on a white horse, for instance—she had not expected things to move this fast. She had thought there would be more time. Even through her sari, she feels the heat of the fire around which they sit cross-legged. She hears the sonorous chanting of the priests. It is happening. She is getting married. In another moment, she feels him taking her hand in his. She tenses, wondering if he will notice anything, but as the seconds pass, there is only the chanting by the priests. When directed, they feed rice into the fire, still holding hands. She feels blind, being led into a new life by a force stronger than her will, and finds that she doesn’t mind the feeling. Next they walk around the fire seven times. They are now husband and wife. As proof of their life together, one end of the groom’s head scarf is tied to the bride’s sari. They take seven steps into their new life together. Each step symbolizes something meaningful—strength, prosperity, happiness, harmony, and the like. As the priest explains the meaning of each step, the sob in the bride’s throat grows larger.

  It is time for the bride and groom to feed each other a sweet, a symbol of the sweetness of married life. She breaks off a piece of ladoo and places it delicately into his mouth. It is his turn. Before he can feed his beloved new bride, he has to lift the veil. His hands shake slightly from the anticipation of seeing that beautiful face, a face he has told his sister he has been unable to forget from the first time he set his eyes on it. He raises the veil and sees a different face peering at him. Already, there are tears in the eyes gazing at him, and beyond the tears, a deep, dark fear. But he barely registers all this. The shock, the disappointment, the confusion is too great.

  A moment passes. Then another. Then someone screams. Maybe it’s the groom. Maybe his sister. In any case, it seems to the bride as if this scream will never stop. As if it will reverberate through time, through history, through the dark, dingy tunnel called her future, so that she will hear it every day, every minute of every day, for the rest of her life.

  28

  LAKSHMI HAD FINISHED her story, but they did not speak. As they walked around the lagoon, it was as if they were both hearing it, the scream that Lakshmi had described. Maggie knew she should say something, that Lakshmi was expecting her to, but she couldn’t. None of it made any sense to her—the deceit, the betrayal, the sheer chutzpah of it. Like something from a movie. Who in real life acted this way? But then she remembered this had happened in India, and India was not real life. The most heartbreaking, most desperate, most bizarre stories she had ever heard all came from India. It wasn’t just the poverty. Even among Sudhir’s middle-class relatives, such stories were legion. Every story was epic; every emotion was exaggerated; every action was melodramatic. Desperate love, mad obsessions, outbursts of rage, bizarre self-sacrifice, self-immolation. Young women eating rat poison, jumping off buildings, or burning themselves alive. Young men throwing themselves onto railroad tracks in the path of oncoming trains. It was as if they didn’t value their bodies at all. And all this self-destruction over issues that in the West would be solved by a simple elopement or estrangement from one’s parents or a move to a different city.

  Knowing that her distaste was showing on her face, knowing that Lakshmi was watching her carefully, Maggie forced her mind away from these thoughts. After all, there were more urgent matters at hand. Lakshmi had come to her with this confession because she needed absolution. Maggie could scarcely imagine the guilt that the woman had been living with. Well, yes, she could, but this was about Lakshmi, not her. She knew she should say something kind and reassuring to her client, but what? The honest fact was that her sympathies had changed. For almost a year, she’d seen Lakshmi as a victim, a semiliterate immigrant woman trapped in an inhospitable marriage. Lakshmi had just rewritten the narrative so that the villain now seemed like the hero. Well, not quite the hero, but at least a sympathetic character. It made Maggie question all the counsel that she had given Lakshmi, question the very foundation of her therapy. She couldn’t imagine staying married to someone who had pulled such a huge fraud. Why had Adit?

  “Why didn’t he just leave?” she asked. “I mean, he obviously sent for you, applied for your visa and everything. Once he learned the truth, why didn’t he just, you know, divorce you?”

  “That what I thinking will happen, surely. I marries him to spare gossip about Shilpa. This way, she can tell that unmarried older sister lie and cheat to be first to marry. Also, that way, divorce is my fault. Not the husband’s. That my thinking. But Maggie, what you know? So much commoti
on and upset at the wedding ceremony. And my husband shouting, shouting at my poor dada. Calling him a badmash, a chor—you know, a crook and thief. Finally, I say to him, any name you wanting to call, you calls me. Not my dada. So he call me a wicked name, but his old father go up to him and hold his arm. ‘Chup, beta, chup,’ the old man say. ‘You don’t talk to my new daughter-in-law in this manner.’”

  Lakshmi shook her head as if she could hear the old man’s voice. “Everyone become very hush, then. Husband’s father look to me and say, ‘Come, beti, come touch my feet and take my blessing.’ ‘Baba, you not following,’ my husband say. ‘This is not the woman I plan to marrying.’

  “‘No, this is woman God planning for you to marry,’ my father-in-law say. ‘In our family in a thousand years, no man ever leaf his wedded wife. Now you want to leaf this girl? What will happen to her if you do? All these people will bite at her flesh like wild dogs. I will not allow it.’

  “‘But Baba—’

  “The old man bang his walking stick. ‘You call me father but still you arguing with me? Is this your training in Am’rica? This is your kismet, beta. You cannot run from your kismet.’

  “And what you think, Maggie? Husband look down at his feet and say, ‘Yes, Baba. You correct.’”

  Again, Maggie felt that distaste. Was Lakshmi valorizing a crazy old fool who had sold his son’s happiness because of some antiquated notion of family honor? She had never felt as distant from Lakshmi as she did right now. “So that was it? Adit listened to his father?”

  “Yes. Of course, his sister still angry at us. Go up to Dada and asking back for everything they give us. I say to her she can have the gold jewelry right now, at the wedding, only. But for sari I’m wearing, she has to wait until tomorrow.”

  “What happened after the reception?”

  “Husband and I goes to hotel for honeymoon. He leaf me alone in hotel room and say he going to bar. Until then, I never stay alone even one day. He not return to room until three in the morning. He come in the room and go to sleep on the sofa.” Lakshmi stopped walking. “That was my honeymoon. Next day, he drive me to Dada’s house. Drop me near the house only. I wanting so much to explain, to say sorry, but it like talking to stone building. I’s so ascare, I say nothing.”

  “Well, you can’t blame him, I suppose.” The words slip out of Maggie’s mouth. “I mean, I can’t imagine his reaction . . .”

  Lakshmi looked at Maggie closely. “That only I’m trying to tell you, Maggie. That our marriage not his fault. I know you not liking my husband. And I explaining to you, he not a bad man. We has a paper marriage. Not real ones, like you and Sudhir baba. My husband love my sister, not me.”

  Maggie blinked, ashamed of her reaction, of the understanding she saw in Lakshmi’s eyes. It was a gamble Lakshmi took, she realized, telling her this sordid story. She had risked losing the only friend she had in America, so that Maggie would stop judging her husband harshly. This is another sacrifice in a long line of sacrifices. When will this woman ever learn to live for herself?

  “I . . . I don’t know what to say, Lakshmi,” Maggie said. “That is, I feel sorry for both of you. You know?”

  Lakshmi turned her head slightly to face Maggie and smiled. “I knows, Maggie. That’s why only I wanted to tell you.” She continued to look at Maggie in a curious manner, as if bracing herself for rejection but hoping for something different, some assurance, some gesture to show that nothing had altered between them. Maggie knew this but was frozen, unable to provide the absolution that Lakshmi wanted. She felt as if Lakshmi had told her a story from medieval times, something so primitive and ridiculous that she could not wrap her mind around it. She had heard scores of lurid stories from her in-laws, but she had never known any of the characters involved. Until now.

  Desperate to get away, she looked around the lagoon, hoping to run into somebody she knew. She longed to glance at her watch, wanted more than anything to be able to say, “I’m afraid our time is up for today,” but knew that would seem too obvious. As they walked, Maggie became aware that she was angry. She was slipping. Usually, this was the kind of information she would’ve coaxed out of her client by the third or fourth session. Had her distaste for Lakshmi’s husband blinded her to the situation?

  “Why are you telling me this now?” she asked. She could hear the cold, raw quality in her own voice. “I mean, why now, after all this time?”

  Lakshmi was quiet for so long that Maggie started to repeat the question. Then the younger woman spoke. “Yesterday, when I gets home, my feets is very tired. They paining me. The husband goes and gets the warm water for me to soaks them.”

  Maggie felt as if Lakshmi had presented her a riddle and expected her to solve it. So the guy gave her a warm soak. So what? “So?” she said cautiously. “What about that made you decide to tell me?”

  Lakshmi took Maggie’s hand in hers, an unconscious gesture that warmed Maggie’s heart despite the coldness she felt. “I is sorry, Maggie,” she said. “I know I should have told you sooner. But what to do? I was so ashame to tell. Also, I’s ascare that you would bump me if you knows.”

  This was the opening to reassure Lakshmi that she intended to do no such thing, that their relationship would survive this revelation, that she understood the social and economic pressures that had driven her to such a drastic solution. In fact, this could be a teaching moment—she could say something about patriarchal societies such as India (though she wouldn’t use the term “patriarchy”); could point out that it was Lakshmi’s lowly status as a woman that had led her to this end; could discuss the unfairness of a dowry system that penalized a woman for being born a woman, punished a father for having a daughter instead of a son.

  But she didn’t. Couldn’t. She opened her mouth, and no words of consolation, or solidarity, or empathy emerged. The moment passed. The silence between them stretched. In that silence, Maggie pulsed with awareness of their differences rather than their similarities. At their first meeting, she had been struck by how much they had in common: their marriages to Indian men, the early death of their mothers. Now she was aware of how superficial those similarities were. And how vast the chasm that separated them—education, language, nationality, race. It was laughable to think they could ever be friends. It was Lakshmi who had willed their friendship into being. As for Maggie, she had mistaken sympathy, affection, and pity for friendship.

  Lakshmi was looking at her expectantly, but this made Maggie even more unwilling to respond. Enough. She had done enough for this woman walking beside her. She had bent the rules of their professional relationship to such a degree that the rules scarcely existed; she had taught her to drive; she had permitted her into her home and allowed her to mingle with her friends; she had helped her earn a steady income. All this because she had seen Lakshmi as a victim, as a helpless immigrant woman trapped in a loveless marriage to a dour, domineering man. Now she understood that it was Adit Patil who was the true victim, that it was he who was trapped in a marriage to a woman he was not attracted to, all because of his father’s twisted sense of honor. And now Lakshmi was seeking absolution, as if it were Maggie’s forgiveness to grant, as if she could dispense grace as easily as a Catholic priest.

  No. In the church where she had spent her childhood, grace was neither cheap nor free. It had to be earned, and the earning was not easy. She came from a hardy, stoic, marginalized people to whom nothing was given for free, not even forgiveness. Although Maggie seldom thought of that little storefront church where she had spent so much of her childhood, she thought of it now. She had been much too lenient with Lakshmi. She had allowed the younger woman to blithely break down the professional barriers between them; had allowed her to set the ground rules; had gone along with her strange requests. And in the process, Lakshmi had taken her for a ride over an entire year.

  She was dimly aware that her reaction was a little extreme, that it had deeper echoes than her conscious brain was registering. That beneath her outrage at
Lakshmi, there hid another outrage—at her own betrayal of her husband’s blind faith in her. Perhaps, buried even deeper, was an older, more potent emotion—the helpless, unexpressed outrage of a little girl, too young to articulate or understand her father’s violation of her trust.

  She was too comfortable in her anger to process this. It felt good, this clean, undiffused anger, so much easier than the heavy combination of sympathy and responsibility that had colored all her interactions with Lakshmi. She had spent so much of her professional and personal life trying to understand people, to make excuses for bad behavior, her life governed by what Sudhir termed her “on-the-other-hand-ism.” It was freeing to step out of the gray and into the black and white.

  “What you thinking, Maggie?” Lakshmi asked. There was a trembling quality in her voice, and it pulled Maggie out of the vortex of anger she was slipping into.

  “I was thinking . . .” she began, but then her left hand involuntarily raised itself, and she glanced openly at her watch. “. . . that it’s time to get home. I can’t be late for my other clients,” she added unnecessarily.

  “Yes. Of course. Sorry.”

  They walked in silence up the trail that led them away from the lagoon. Seven more minutes and we will be home, Maggie thought. Thank God I have some time to myself before the next appointment.

  Beside her, Lakshmi spoke so softly that Maggie didn’t hear what she said. “Excuse me?” she said. She glanced at Lakshmi, and despite herself, her heart pinched at the sorrow she saw on the brown face.

  “I saying that the worse part of all this is, it take my Shilpa away from me,” she repeated.

  “You mean because you left for the U.S.?”

  Lakshmi shook her head. “No. I means even before that. When I was still living in my dada’s house, waiting for the visa to come.”

  Maggie hated herself for asking but she did. “Why? Where did Shilpa go?”