Marriage of a Thousand Lies

by SJ Sindu

  I wonder if Grandmother’s eyes are completely blue now, if the clear ring around them has taken over the burgundy. I wonder if her gums are still stained with betel leaf.

  Grandmother once told me about Hindu funerals. Loved ones shrieking, women rocking backward and forward, their unclipped hair keeping time with their movement. But this is New England, a white funeral home, and my mother swallows our traditions for theirs. She cries quietly, doesn’t let the grief swell out of her and settle over the room.

  They give us a half hour with Grandmother in the small room that seems to close in on us, then take the coffin to the main viewing room for the wake.

  An obscene blue sky shines through the windows. I sit at the front with Amma on one side and Shyama on the other. Kris and Rajesh sit behind us and pass little Varun back and forth between them.

  A man I don’t know sings nasal Hindu prayers into a microphone without taking a breath. His raspy crooning soaks into the walls. Thick carpet muffles footsteps and people seem to appear out of the sunlight, kissing me on the cheek and holding Amma while she heaves quietly. There are people I haven’t seen since my own wedding, or even since I was little. Amma’s friends, family friends who took Appa’s side in the divorce, Amma’s co-workers. Maybe I should have invited Tasha and Jesse to the wake. Maybe it would’ve been the polite thing to do.

  Death has washed us of color—everyone wears white and black and brown. No adornments, no jewelry.

  “She lived a full life,” they say. “It was a peaceful death.” No one comments on my buzzed hair, or the bruises on my face showing through my concealer.

  Flower wreaths line the wall, propped up on metal stands, each with a banner declaring who sent them. There’s one that says, “From Lakshmi, beloved granddaughter.” I’ve never seen it before.

  Nisha and her parents, all dressed in dull, worn gray, stand at the end of the line. Nisha has her hair up. She walks close to her parents like they’re all encased by the same invisible cage. They make their way to the coffin.

  Kris taps me on the shoulder. “Are you okay?”

  My head is too full to nod.

  Nisha’s parents walk toward Amma. Nisha’s eyes slide over me, refusing to look, landing instead on Grandmother in her coffin.

  Her parents murmur to Amma, who clasps their hands. Nisha walks to the coffin. She looks down into it, her ponytail fanning across her back.

  Kris taps my shoulder again. “Go talk to her.”

  I dry my palms on my thighs and stand up.

  Amma sniffs and wipes at her eyes. Nisha’s parents are distracted.

  I walk quietly to Nisha and stand behind her. “I fought with Tasha.”

  She turns around. “Why?” She doesn’t have her contacts in, and I love the darkness of her eyes.

  I run my hands over my hair, feeling the bristles slide under the pressure of my palm. “It was just for fun.” I show her the bruise on my arm that I haven’t covered with makeup.

  She presses a finger into the darkened skin.

  Grandmother lies still in her coffin. Amma said she asked for me. Not the me she thought was Vidya, or the me she thought was a boy. She asked for Lucky, the me she remembered.

  Nisha steps closer and tucks her chin down. Little bits of water hang on her eyelashes. With a look toward her parents, she whispers, “They won’t let me leave the house. They won’t let me leave.”

  My head is too light. Blood floats in me, up and up like it’s going to float away. “Do you want me to come get you?” That’s what happens in Tamil movies. The heroine is forced into a marriage but her lover arrives at the last minute and carries her off. The bride belongs to the man who brings her home.

  Nisha looks at her feet. “I don’t want to get married.”

  “You can back out.”

  “It’s too late.” She shuffles her feet closer to mine. The tips of her ballet flats touch the toes of my oxfords. “I’m sorry about Grandmother.”

  I nod at our feet. We slouch toward each other. She takes my hand and rubs my palm with her thumb. My blood wants to float away, to twist out of my skin and fuse with the air.

  Nisha pushes my bangs to the side. I sink and she catches me. For the first time she feels solid against me, like she can hold me up. She rubs her wet cheek against mine. Grandmother asked for me. All she wanted was to see Vidya, hold a baby.

  Someone pulls me away from Nisha. I stumble.

  Nisha’s mother’s face squeezes into the space between us. She leans toward me and whispers in Tamil, “Don’t you touch my daughter.”

  I put my hands up and step back.

  She jabs her finger into my sternum.

  “Don’t,” Nisha says weakly.

  Her mother whirls around. “You need to be a good girl.”

  Shyama walks up next to me. “Please, this is a funeral.”

  Appa and Laila Aunty appear on either side of me.

  Nisha’s mother looks around at us. “You should all be ashamed.” Sunlight pinches her face in shadow.

  Amma pushes her way into the circle. “You need to go.”

  “Do you know what your daughter did?”

  “You need to go.”

  Nisha’s hair swipes back and forth across her back as her mother grabs her by the arm and drags her away.

  Amma clutches her chest. Laila Aunty catches her before she falls. Shyama goes to them and puts her hands around Amma. The three of them stand there, holding each other up. A wail rises in chorus, wrung out of the air. The sound pulls at my skin. I walk toward them. Amma’s arms press against my face. Their wail surrounds me, crests over me. I hold onto Amma’s shoulders.

  •••

  The funeral ceremony is moderated by a priest who looks like the one from my wedding. A distant male cousin comes from Toronto to do the last rites for Grandmother because Hindus believe that women, givers of life, shouldn’t be the ones to send life passage from this world. His bare shoulders slope forward as he follows the priest’s instructions, repeating chants and prayers in a low rumble I can’t make out.

  Teenagers hold incense by the coffin. I stand with Amma and Shyama and watch Grandmother. The smoke washes over my face, into my chest.

  Grief is an impossible meal, so we cut it up into little pieces, dress it in ritual, and take it like a pill.

  When the funeral-home workers come to close the coffin, Amma drapes herself over Grandmother. Shyama and I pull her off. We walk with the coffin and the mourners to the crematorium, a procession of black and white under the clear autumn sky. Someone throws flowers that crush under my feet.

  Normally women don’t go to the cremation, but when the funeral-home workers say they’ll allow six people into the room, Amma puts a hand on the back of my neck and guides me in.

  Grandmother’s coffin sits on a conveyor belt. The priest says the last chant, then tells us to push a button.

  Amma ushers me forward, and I press the button that sends Grandmother through a set of black curtains. She should’ve burned on a funeral pyre of wood and cow chips, the flames and wild night dancing around her, but instead she melts quietly inside a box.

  Two days after the funeral, after Shyama and Kris go home, I get an email from Vidya. Meet me at the Winchester library at 2. By the pond. Today. No mention of Grandmother, or the funeral. At Vidya’s words, I seize up and sit there at the computer, unmoving for a hundred long days. I make up an excuse for Amma, say that I’m going to go get a book to read, that I need it to fill the time and the awful silence in my head. She tells me to get one for her, too. Something happy, she says. A happy story.

  I arrive at the library early, and spend my time looking for a book for Amma. My hands shake between the shelves. My mind runs through my fingers. I can’t hold a thought. I walk out empty-handed. Still early. I walk around the pond. A thin film of ice rests on the water. I
play the scene over and over in my head. I would say, “Why didn’t you come for the funeral? Grandmother asked for you. Amma misses you. Come home. Come see her.” What I imagine is a turnabout of the memory in which Vidya and Amma fight. A reversal. This time, Vidya would apologize. Amma would melt.

  Vidya sees me before I see her. I finally catch sight of her as I’m rounding the corner. She’s waving from the back door of the library. Her daughter is holding her hand. The girl chews on her fingernail and stares up at me. She’s older than in the photo I have, but not by much. There’s a pinprick in my sternum. I don’t realize the changes in Vidya until I get closer. She’s darker, her skin leathery like too much sun and not enough sunscreen. Her hair as short as mine used to be. The wrap of her coat shows a waist thinner than I remember. A crazy thought passes through me, and I wonder if she’s sick.

  “Look at your hair,” Vidya says.

  She hugs me. She smells unfamiliar, like peonies and something else I can’t place. She rubs a hand over my head.

  “You look great,” she says, and sounds like she means it. “This is Radha.” She kneels next to her daughter, points up at me. “Radha, this is your Lucky Chithy.”

  The girl smiles shyly at her own feet. I can tell she’ll look like Vidya someday, like Grandmother in the picture where I thought she was a princess.

  “She’s brought something for you,” Vidya says. “Go on.”

  Radha digs in a mirrored purple purse and draws out a bag full of clacking shells. She holds it out to me.

  “These are shells from all the beaches we’ve been to,” Radha says. I want to believe she even sounds like Vidya, but I can’t remember what Vidya’s voice used to be at four years old.

  “She’s been collecting them for years,” Vidya says.

  I take the bag from Radha. The shells are multicolored, some minuscule, some as big as my palm.

  “Are you sure?” I ask. “I don’t want to take away your collection.”

  “They’re just things,” the girl says. “I don’t need things.”

  Vidya kisses the girl on the forehead. Radha follows us while we walk around the pond. I think of all my questions. There are too many, cluttering up my mouth.

  “I’ve been following your artwork online,” she says before I can speak. “You’ve gotten quite good.”

  “It pays the bills. Why did you put that address on your letter?”

  “I don’t remember which address I put.” Her voice is light, almost uncaring. “I like your art.”

  “Kentucky. Louisville. I went looking for you.”

  She puts a hand on my shoulder. “I didn’t think you’d do that. I haven’t lived there in years.”

  “Where do you live then?”

  “Everywhere.”

  She tells me that she’s been traveling around the country with her daughter for two years in a minivan, driving coast-to-coast, teaching classes on papermaking.

  “It’s not so bad, Lucky. I’m free.”

  “Free from what?”

  “Expectations.” She stops to watch a young boy eating alone on a bench, ripping off bits of his sandwich and feeding it to the ducks. “I don’t like being told what to do.”

  I gently touch the shells in the bag. Their stripes, their curves.

  “Grandmother always talked about you,” I say. I watch to see if she’ll cry, but she seems smoothed out and serene like the iced-over pond.

  “I’m sorry about Grandmother,” she says. “I know you must miss her.”

  “Don’t you miss her?”

  Her smile is free of pain. “I miss all of you.”

  I form the question in my head but she answers before I can ask.

  “I can’t come home, Lucky.”

  “Amma misses you.”

  “I can’t come home. Maybe someday.”

  “But—”

  “Amma’s love comes with strings, Lucky. You know that better than anyone. I can’t deal with strings. I like my life. I have Radha. I’m happy.” She looks at me with pity. The longer I look at her, the less she resembles the sister I remember. “You deserve to be happy, too. I hope you know that.”

  “I’m happy.” I say it without thinking, an automatic response.

  She turns away. “I don’t want to pry. I don’t presume to know your relationship with Kris, or your sexuality.”

  “Then don’t. I could be bisexual.”

  “Are you?”

  I briefly consider lying.

  “Are you?” she says again.

  “No.” Nisha’s face looms behind my eyelids. Her wedding in less than a week. “Come home. Amma would be so happy if you came home.”

  She doesn’t consider it for even a second. “I made my choice, Lucky. I like my choice. I’m not going to muddy it up now.”

  “But you’re all alone.” I imagine leaving, getting in my car and driving until I can’t drive any more. Picking a place on a map, making a new home. Could I leave Amma all alone? She has no one else now. Or maybe she’ll bend. She has no one else now. Could she learn to live with the real me?

  “And anyway,” Vidya says, “I love traveling. We get to go all over the country. Wake up in a new place every week.”

  “What about Radha?”

  “Radha loves it. She’s learning papermaking, and she gets to make friends at every place we go.”

  “But shouldn’t she meet her family? Her grandmother?”

  Radha pulls on my coat. She’s wearing a flowered skirt over blue pants. I’d been too distracted to notice earlier. She shows me a book she pulls out from her purple bag. It’s an Atlas, and she flips to a map of the US. She tells me where she got each shell. Haulover Beach. Block Island. Saint George Island. San Luis Obispo.

  “They’re mementos,” she says, stumbling over the word.

  Vidya starts walking again, and Radha trots behind us, still looking at the map. “I wanted her to meet you,” Vidya says. “I wanted to make sure you’re okay. You were Grandmother’s favorite.”

  I don’t know why this is the thing that makes me cry, but it does. Vidya hugs me to her.

  “I was young, Lucky,” she says into my shoulder. “I made my choices and I didn’t think enough of you. I’m sorry.”

  “Come back, then. Come back and see Amma.”

  She wipes my face with her scarf and puts her hands on the sides of my face like she used to do when we were younger.

  “I only came to see you, Lucky. I left Amma behind a long time ago.”

  In less than an hour they’re gone, Vidya claiming she has to be in Vermont before nightfall to speak at an artist’s studio about letterpress. I walk around and around and around the pond alone, learning the shape of each shell.

  Nisha’s wedding day.

  Nisha’s wedding day and it snows, white shedding from the sky and floating in the air. The house turns cold. I can see my breath when I wake up.

  Nisha’s wedding day and I haven’t decided what to do. Indecision sits in my chest, something sharp when I breathe.

  According to Hindu rites of mourning, I’m not allowed to go to a wedding until a month after the funeral. I wake up, brew coffee and mix oatmeal for Amma. When I go back to my room, my bed’s already made and Amma has laid out a saree for me. The blue of it cuts through my eyes. I’ve gotten used to the colors of death: the pale creams, charcoal grays, inky blacks.

  “I can’t go,” I say.

  Amma holds herself up by the wrought iron headboard, thick rings under her eyes, her face sunken in and dusty. “Nisha is your best friend.” Even her voice is dusty. I’ve forgotten what it sounds like. “You should go.”

  “But the rules—”

  “—can be bent just this once. She wants you there. Go.”

  I dress myself while Amma waits outside the door. Once around and tuck. Pleat a
nd tuck. Twice around, pin.

  I paint my face, watching the layers go on one over the other in the mirror. Battle armor of powder and sequins. Amma has no idea what she’s dressing me for. Silence is the rule. Words are complications, sharp edges that cut up our tongues. We keep them in with walls of teeth, preserve the peace. Om shanti shanti shanti, as the prayer goes. Peace at any cost, as the prayer goes.

  •••

  The Sheraton hotel wedding hall is dusted with snow. I shiver in my thin saree and join the trickle of people going inside. A cave of plush filigree carpet and fake candle lighting. A Ganesh statue welcomes me. Sweet almonds, here have some more, take a lassi.

  I could throw open the wooden doors of the wedding hall, stride up to the altar, offer my hand to Nisha. I could lead her out to my car in front of five hundred guests, take her home, run away to Toronto.

  I wish I’d thought to tuck my flask into my saree.

  I could push up Nisha’s wedding saree, remind her what she’s chosen to give up, and leave her to her fate. I could go home to Kris and file for divorce.

  I sneak past the guests to the elevator. Nisha said she’d be in room 407. I haven’t told her that I’m coming. Will she be surprised? Will she have a bag packed?

  Room 407. Nisha’s wedding day. Silence behind the door. I knock.

  Nisha opens the door. Makeup frames her bloodshot eyes. Her red mouth hangs open.

  “I’m scared,” she says. She doesn’t move to let me inside.

  I push past her into the room.

  The door shuts with a metallic click. Snowlight floods through the window and over the room, lighting every edge a cold, clear white. Like Grandmother’s hospital room.

  “It’s my fault,” I say into the air.

  “What?”

  The rain. The soaked housecoat. The wheezing cough. The tubes. Pneumonia.

  “Grandmother. It was my fault.”

  Nisha’s arms wind around me. I want to melt at the knees.

  Instead I say, “You look beautiful.”