Trail of Broken Wings

by Badani, Sejal

  When you lose someone there is a grieving process. Shock, anger, despair, among a multitude of other emotions. Every one of them wrapping around you like a vise. No room to breathe, to think, or to understand. But what about when someone is alive yet wants nothing to do with you? Is there a mourning process in place then, or do you hold on to hope like a life raft in the abyss? After the fight with Sonya, Ranee’s emotions swing erratically. Like a pendulum with no gravity, they shift minute to minute, until she is exhausted from nothingness.

  She straightens out the bed covers, smoothing wrinkles she knows Trisha must have attended to once already on her daily visit to Brent. It is past midnight. The hospital halls are eerily quiet. For Brent, it must make no difference; his mind is living in complete solitude. Lost in a world that is void of sense.

  In Marin’s first year of school in the US, she told Ranee that she’d learned in science class you could tell a tree’s age by the number of rings on the stump. Marin yearned to take a trip to Yosemite to learn the ages of fallen trees but Brent refused. Ranee wondered if there was any way for someone to tell her real age—or could people only see the one that the multitude of worry lines on her face indicated?

  Ranee learned how to speak proper English from the soap operas on television and how to read it from the newspaper. Since arriving in America, she often thought what it would be like if she brought home pay equal to Brent’s. Would that have changed the dynamic of their relationship, or was she destined to live in battle with him as the guaranteed victor?

  “I envy you,” she said quietly, making sure no one could overhear. The nurses were constantly in and out, as if their noise could be the jarring he needed to awake. “There is no one you have to face for your deeds.”

  An outlawed practice in India, sati, required a widow to throw herself on her deceased husband’s burning body during cremation. The assumption was that no woman would want to live without her husband to support and love her. Ranee had seen the practice as a child. Children were not allowed at funerals, but she had sneaked into one. As smoke billowed into the air and sobs were heard, a young widow in a white sari threw herself onto her husband’s pyre. Her screams silenced the group as they watched her burn to death. Ranee had covered her eyes, praying for someone to rescue the woman from her demise. But everyone stood in place, watching the widow do the right thing. When the village folk told the couple’s orphaned children the news, they fell to the ground sobbing. An uncle pulled them into his arms and explained that their mother had died with honor and they should be proud. They could now hold their heads high because of her actions.

  “I won’t die with you,” Ranee says to Brent’s still body. “So many years I wished I were dead that now I choose to live.” The argument with Sonya replays in her mind. Her belief that she was a burden. “But she was never a burden, was she, Brent?” The ticking of the clock echoes in the hospital room. Her husband remains the silent companion in the conversation. “None of our girls were. But I believed you when you said you knew what was best. When you told me that I was stupid and you were smart.” She lowers her head in shame. “I believed you when you said the stress of our new country was too much to bear. That because you had to stand silent in our new world . . .” She pauses, a sob building. “I convinced myself that in our home you had the right to be strong.”

  Despair and regret grip Ranee. He was not strong but instead the weakest of them all. Her children were pawns in his game. A voice in her head that sounds eerily familiar to his reminds her that he provided her with a home and food. That he gave her everything when she had nothing. She dismisses the voice, her own finally strong enough to hear.

  “But I never knew the full story, did I? Maybe I didn’t want to see.” In the belly of a whale, Ranee knows she is drowning but is helpless to save herself. “But it was past time for me to save our daughters. I—we owed them that much.”

  She lays her head on the bed, next to his like she has for all the years of marriage, and weeps. Her mangalsutra, the sacred necklace she wears of gold and black beads, falls forward, intertwining them. A symbol of love and marriage, he gave it to her during their wedding ceremony as required by tradition. Slowly, she brings her hands around to the clasp and undoes it, dropping the necklace between them before wiping her tears and walking out.

  SONYA

  When I left home after graduation, my first stop was Kentucky. I had loved horses as a child, and the song “My Old Kentucky Home” during the Derby always made me feel like crying. Maybe it was the huge hats, a welcome cover from the world, or the sight of the horses running as fast as they could only to end up right where they started, but it was my first choice for escape. I arrived in Lexington and was welcomed by endless miles of thoroughbred farms. White picket fences and grass so green it looked blue. Smiles graced everyone’s faces.

  I rented a hotel room and car for a week. With no clear direction about what I was doing or planning, I assumed seven days was enough time to figure it out. After researching various options, I started my adventure. Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, I spent hours hanging off freshly painted fences photographing horses grazing on the grass. At the world famous Keeneland horse track, I snapped pictures of thoroughbreds in flight. Their powerful legs propelled them forward, while their chiseled bodies stayed in perfect alignment with the track. Stall cleaners started recognizing me. At first it was daily waves, but soon they offered me unrestricted entrance to the stalls. With their permission, I was able to capture the horses in peaceful repose, waiting until it was their moment to shine.

  Seven days turned to fourteen. I had hundreds of photos, but I still took more. My camera offered a safety I hadn’t known before. For the first time in my life, I was in control. But my refuge proved temporary. A horse owner’s son noticed me. A few years older, he was handsome and kind. He offered to show me how to ride the ones I admired. English versus Western. We began to spend our days together. When he kissed me, I expected it. The first time we slept together, I told him I was quiet because it was so beautiful. When he told me he loved me, I was lost, falling off a cliff with no parachute. I struggled to say the words back to him, but images of my father strangled any hope. That night I left without saying good-bye. Drove until I found a motel off the highway, hundreds of miles from nowhere. Turning on my computer, I searched the Internet until I found what I was looking for. I read from sunset until sunrise, each account filling an unspoken need within me. Exhausted, I laid my head down on the cheap wood desk and cried.

  After leaving Kentucky, I had no idea what to do with the hundreds of pictures I had taken. With no formal training in photography, I had no concept of how to create a career in the industry. Searching online, I found a website where amateurs uploaded their pictures for anyone’s viewing pleasure. I did so and thought nothing of them until I received a call from an agent a month later. Linda was with a large management company that represented some of the premier photographers in the country. She asked to see a portfolio. When I told her I didn’t have one but was currently in Turkey and could send her pictures I had recently taken, she laughed. “You do that,” she said. She signed me, and I’ve been with her ever since. Through her contacts, I’ve been hired to work all over the world.

  I call Linda days after promising Trisha I won’t leave. When I reach her answering machine at the agency I call her cell phone.

  “Sonya, sweetie, how are you?” My name has come up on her caller ID.

  Linda is quintessential LA. She drives a convertible with the top down; her house sits on the bluffs of Malibu though she hates to swim in the ocean. She has two dogs, Pinky and Princess. She dresses them in identical sweaters, like twins, but somehow is able to tell them apart. Though she sleeps with the dogs nightly, she is a sworn germophobe. Nearing fifty, Linda dresses and looks like she’s in her thirties. Swearing that green tea is the fountain of youth, she devours gallons a week. The Botox remains unmentioned.

  Linda started her career as an intern at t
he agency. Over drinks one night she confided that she only had to sleep with two partners before climbing the ranks. That one of them was a woman barely fazed her. When I asked her if she had ever demanded the same from underlings, she winked and told me she would never tell. Linda changed her hair color by the decade. Currently a redhead, in the nineties she was a blonde, but she decided they really don’t have more fun. A brunette before that, she has forgotten her natural shade. And since she keeps her weekly Brazilian wax appointment, she said, she’ll never find out.

  “Good,” I answer her over the phone, our connection clear. She was also the first one I called when I decided to come back home. I needed to let her know that I wouldn’t be available for any new assignments for a while. Not a religious person, she had nonetheless wished me Godspeed and the best for my father.

  “And your daddy? How is he?” she asks me now.

  “Still sleeping,” I reply, the only answer I have at hand.

  “Excellent,” Linda does not miss a beat. “The rest will do him good. And your family? How are they holding up?”

  “As well as can be expected,” I answer. As close as we are, I have never told her or anyone about my past. “Did you get the last set of pictures I sent you?” I ask, eager to change the subject.

  “Of the Nor’easter that hit New England? Storm of the century? They were fabulous. I have three papers that made bids for them. We’ll play them against each other for a bit.”

  “Thanks.” The money has never excited me much. With no one to spend it on, it sits in the bank. Linda, however, is continually frustrated with me when locale trumps payment for my choice of assignments. She is sure my talent can bring in the big bucks, plus, for her, every assignment’s worth is dependent on the commission it pays her. “That’s why I’m calling. I need a job.”

  It is usually the other way around: Linda contacts me with a slew of new projects. She runs down the list until one sounds appealing. I am her favorite client because there are no limitations on where I will go or when. It is easy for me to drop everything since I have nothing to hold me. No husband or children whose schedules will be interrupted by mine.

  “Excellent! I have an online magazine that wants pictures of Russia.” She pauses as she consults her iPad. Linda has very few attachments in her life but if her tablet could be surgically connected to her, she’d be thrilled. “A paper in London wants to follow up on the rape crisis in India. An in-depth exposé. May require three to six months of time, but that hasn’t stopped you before.” She sounds pleased. “Which one should I schedule you in for?”

  I pause, considering her offer of India. My heritage, my ancestral home. “No,” I murmur, keeping my voice light, the panic at bay. Though we went once when I was a child, I’ve never felt the yearning to return. “Not India. Actually, I need something closer to home.” I glance out the window of the café I have been sitting in for the last few hours. With a cup in hand, I have watched as the diverse population of Palo Alto has found the one thing they have in common—the need for expensive coffee. “The Bay Area, in fact. No traveling.”

  Linda falls silent, as I expected she might. A question remains unspoken. I wait to see if she will ask it, but in the end I know her decision. Even if it were to save her life, she will not pry into yours. I imagine she has secrets of her own that she holds dear, and she therefore understands others’ need to keep their own counsel. Whatever her reasoning, I appreciate her restraint. “Let me see what I find.”

  Days have passed since I called Linda. Needing an escape, I drive toward the city and park, deciding to walk along the Golden Gate Bridge. A low fog hangs over the bay, with the sun barely peeking out from behind the clouds. The water is clear but choppy, crashing against the rocks as sea lions cavort nearby. I cup my palms together and blow into them, trying to ward off the chill. Tourists with cameras hanging off their necks bustle past me, pointing and snapping pictures of Alcatraz Island, situated in the middle of the frigid water. Raising my camera, I glance through the lens to see the prison as they do—a fortress that held some of the most notorious criminals of its time. Without taking a picture, I lower it and see it for what I believe it to be—a building that sits empty, with too many ghosts to tell the full tale of the lives that inhabited it.

  “Excuse us,” a small Chinese man says in stilted English. “Would you mind taking our picture?” he asks, pointing to the large group standing behind him. A mix of young and old, clearly a family that has traveled together. The children are pushing one another while the men and women watch me expectantly, hoping I will capture this moment for them.

  “Of course.” Taking his camera, I motion for them to stand closer together to fit in the frame. “A little bit more,” I say, glancing into the LCD panel. Behind them, the hills of Sausalito rise up, creating the perfect backdrop for their memento. I begin to snap the picture when a young girl, I would guess her to be eleven, starts to step away from the group. Only now I notice tears have streaked her face, and her lower lip is trembling. I lower the camera to motion her back in, but before I can say anything her mother wraps her arm around the young girl’s shoulder. Lowering her head, she speaks softly into the girl’s ear. In seconds, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, a smile and laughter fill the girl’s face. Nestling into her mother’s arms, she lights up for the camera, all her sadness gone with just a few words from the one she loves.

  I arrive home after dinner. Since our argument, I have rarely been home, choosing to drive around for hours, taking pictures wherever I can. I have visited Dad a handful of times. Each time I enter the room, I expect to see him walking around, prepare myself for his reaction upon seeing me. But every time he still lies there, silent, and I leave, waiting until the next time.

  “Sonya?” Mom calls out, though there is no one else she is expecting.

  “Yes?” I drop my camera bag by the front door. Mom and I have reached an equilibrium. She does not demand to know my comings or goings or what time I will arrive home. For giving me the freedom of my own time, something I am used to, I offer her the security of my presence. They say there is a sixth sense a mother has regarding her children. If Mom has such intuition, she has never used it before. Now, however, it almost feels like she knew I was planning on leaving. Since I decided to stay, she seems happier, relieved.

  “The hospital called . . .”

  I flinch. Before she can say more, I whisper, my throat convulsing with the words, “Is he awake?”

  “No.” She is matter of fact, devoid of any emotion. “You left your cell phone in the hospital room. The nurse called me to let me know.”

  I glance back at my purse. It must have fallen out when I gathered my things. “Thanks. I’ll pick it up tomorrow.” I start to walk away, toward my room, when she stops me.

  “I didn’t realize you visited him,” she says softly.

  I hear the question but don’t know how to answer. If anyone had told me I would choose to spend time with him, I would have laughed, assuring them they had no idea who I was. Now I wonder if I know who I really am. “That’s why you called me home, right? For me to be with him in his final days?”

  “Is that what you thought?” She seems surprised. “I asked you to come home because it had been long enough.”

  “Not for me it wasn’t,” I admit quietly, shuttering my eyes when I see her recoil. “I’m sorry.”

  “Then why did you come?” she asks, begging me for something she may not want to hear.

  I pause, trying to find the words to explain to her why I made the decision. How do I tell her I almost didn’t come home? That I had ignored the message, even gone so far as to call Linda to set up an overseas assignment. But at the last minute I decided against it and booked a flight home. “To say good-bye,” I admit.

  I start to leave the room when she asks me, barely a whisper, “To whom?”

  I walk away without giving her an answer, leaving her to find her own.

  When Linda calls me back, she does
not sound happy. “I came up with three jobs. Three. None of them paying anything near what you are used to.”

  “It’s a short-term thing Linda,” I assure her. “I just need something to stay busy while I’m here.”

  “One is in San Francisco. The local zoo wants to do some damage control after one of their animals got loose and attacked a patron. Pictures of the pretty animals as they are being fed, bathed, etcetera. For a media campaign.” Linda is not a fan of zoos, flies, bugs, or anything related. I can hear the disgust in her voice and cannot help my smile.

  “Sounds tempting.”

  “Really?” She sighs. “The next one is in the vineyards north of you. Napa, Sonoma, etcetera. Another media campaign.”

  “I’m surprised the wineries don’t have their own photographers.”

  “It’s from the city councils. For a brochure to attract more tourists during the off season. Again, the pay is not so impressive.” I am sure her mind is already calculating the lost commission over the next few months and does not like the numbers. “The last one is at the local hospital. Stanford. They are looking for a photographer for a therapy-type project. Working with patients—sick ones.” An edge I have never heard before from her enters her voice. “When I put some feelers out through my contacts they responded immediately, but I told them you would not be interested. Last thing you need is to deal with other people’s tragedies when you have your own to handle.”

  It is early evening. I can hear the crickets that are always chirping. The Stanford campus is still alive with students attending late classes. I wander near the library, dipping my feet into the fountain in front. Students are seated on the low concrete steps, earphones blaring with music while they study in the warm breeze.

  Watching them, I envy their hopes and dreams. Their belief that anything is possible. That the future is theirs to determine, to create. They are invincible; they are sure. I don’t remember feeling like that ever. Even when I had hopes for the future, I knew my past would always walk alongside. My companion for a lifetime.