by Amrit Chima
“I can take it if it’s too heavy,” he offered, nodding at the jug of milk she carried.
“It’s only milk,” she said, smiling.
“You’re a little pale.”
“Just light-headed.”
“Then I’ll open up the bed—”
“Darshan,” she said, looking at their stoop, at the luggage sprawled up and down the length of the stairs. Navpreet sat mournfully in the center of it. She trembled against the cold, toes pointed inward, elbows digging into her knees, chin in her palms.
She rose as they approached, carefully wiping her trousers with the tissue she had laid on the cement beneath her bottom. “I forgot my umbrella,” she said.
Elizabeth warily assessed the number of bags piled on the landing. “Navpreet…”
Balling the tissue in her fist, Navpreet said, “I’m getting divorced. I moved out.”
Darshan hesitated, absorbing the implications of this latest drama. Slowly, he waded past his sister up the stairs, stepping over the luggage.
“So soon?”
“Three months too late.”
“You should have called first,” he said, unlocking the door.
“I don’t have to call first,” she said, piqued. “I’m getting a divorce.”
“You can’t stay here.”
“Of course I can—”
“There isn’t room.”
“I can’t stay with Bapu and Bebe. They will hate me when they hear. I have nowhere else to go.”
Elizabeth clutched the milk jug with both hands. “It isn’t a good time.”
“How can you say that? This is important.”
Elizabeth glanced momentarily at Darshan, her lips pinched inward. He nodded in resignation to tell her she might as well share the news. “I’m pregnant,” she said.
Navpreet’s mouth parted in astonishment, and then she groaned.
“This is a chance for you to start over,” Darshan told her. “Focus on your medical studies. You’re nearly done.”
“Don’t make me go to Bapu and Bebe,” Navpreet mumbled. “They don’t want me. They never wanted me.”
“That isn’t true.”
“Please,” she said, her head hung. “Please can I stay?”
“Just for tonight.”
“It wasn’t my idea,” Navpreet admitted morosely. “Sarabjit kicked me out. They won’t forgive that. They can’t forgive divorce. It’s much worse than what you did.” She pushed her hair back away from her face with both hands. “Forget it.” She grabbed two of her bags and heaved them down the steps.
When Elizabeth, concern creasing her brow, moved to follow her, Darshan pulled her back. “She is always carrying on. I’ll call her a cab, but the rest is her problem. For once she should sort out her own mess.”
~ ~ ~
There was a house on the coast, large and flawless, its edges tight and beautiful. Babies would be born there, an endless line of generations secured within its walls, warmed by the fire crackling in the hearth, the auburn light reflecting the curvature of tiny sleeping bodies. A mother and father would pass time in cushioned chairs, legs tucked snuggly under throws, watching these babies grow, laughter in their eyes as the little ones danced and messed about with their games and whims. The bathtubs would be playgrounds where creatures of rubber would float as the children spun stories, splashing and puddling the tiled floor. Forts made of sofa cushions would be erected in the great expanse of bedrooms and living rooms, and would then crumble under a new game, a new discovery of imagination. The smell of savories would rise from the kitchen stove, pots glowing with the warmth of nourishment. There would be gifts and parties in this house, celebrations of first teeth and first steps, graduations and farewells.
Outside, from the west, a summer fog rolled in off the Pacific in a massive, low-lying spool. It unfurled down the hills to the east, inching nearer to the house, absorbing sound and claiming sight. In the driveway a station wagon huddled underneath the oppressive, hanging mist, its rusted metal shape blurred as the fog crept nearer, thickening. Condensation seeped into the wood at the edge of the driveway, but the house was insulated against such chills, protected by the skilled hands that had built it.
This was their house.
It was slightly visible in the distance from where they stood on the beach, the fog finally dissipating for the day. Darshan regarded it, this labor of his, his back to the ocean, the setting sun warming his neck as the soft but bitter winds chilled his body. The sensations of hot and cold gave him life and made him proud. In his arms he held a baby, wrapped against the elements. His baby. He called her Sonya and kissed her wrinkled head as her face contorted in tears because the world outside the womb was harsh.
She had been baptized in the Irish Catholic tradition, anointed with the sacred oils of Christ, assurances of heaven crossed upon her forehead. Her Indian grandparents had been sobered by the experience, skeptical of Christ’s oils, of biblical prayer and blessing. Nonetheless they had risen to stand beside their Irish relatives, called upon to recognize this infant as one of their own, the progeny of their progeny to be saved in the eyes of the Lord.
“My mother is grateful,” Elizabeth told Darshan.
“That’s important,” he replied.
“It’s not easy to believe that way. Such unconditional conviction.”
“And a kirtan?” he asked. “For my parents?”
Tenderly massaging her sore and full breasts, Elizabeth sighed. “Sonya belongs to all of us. You can’t argue with faith. It is a waste of breath.”
They continued to wander the beach, exploring the new territory around the house that Darshan had built, noting subtle changes in the air, the resonance of peace, the distance in miles from the city and from their families that would keep them sane in the future, whenever more of such compromises were necessary.
The days thereafter pulsed rhythmically, the rise and fall of each like the tide they could see from their living room window caressing the gray and jagged stones. In Kaiser’s laboratory, blood samples needed analyzing, their cell counts and hemoglobin levels to be assessed and noted. Tenants at Howard Street left their units in disarray, a tumult of cigarettes and rotten foods. A frenzy of repair and then new tenants took their place, and the cycle continued. Fights ensued at the Lion of India. It fell from its briefly held peak of popularity, and Darshan strained to keep it from sinking under his mother’s fragility and his father’s arrogance. His father uttered threats. Darshan then offered appeasing capitulations. The old man’s rage so often fostered defeat, and the burden was unrelenting. Sonya was walking. Darshan had missed her first steps. Still, he had seen her second ones. This balance was always a game, an exigent race.
San Francisco had finally grown wearisome, too, for Manmohan and Jai. The apartment on 24th Street had been a place of transition, of adjustment and too many concessions. They found a new home in Berkeley where they moved with Livleen. The soil in the backyard was fertile, freshly churned, flowers and dust thick in the air, as it had once been in Fiji. Back bent, Manmohan looked downward toward the earth, and from it, he drew life, patches of strawberries and tomatoes, trees bearing apples, lemons, almonds, and pomegranates. Watering his infant garden, the hose tight with pressure as turbid streams of water flowed down the side of the house, he said, “It is no use anymore. I am done with it.” He was speaking of his restaurant. He was speaking of selling. “Your mother will grow plums.”
“It is a very good thing,” Darshan said.
“But we have lost money. We will need to solve this first.”
“That will not be possible.”
“Make it possible.”
Squatting beside the mud, jamming his finger into the soft surface, Darshan replied, “I will do my best, Bapu.”
A new decree, a new set of problems and worries, and the landscape of the family continued to shift.
Navpreet married again, impulsively and without warning to a man named Pravinder whom none of them had me
t, whose family was still in India. He insinuated himself into her life, his handsome, brown face insincere, his smile disingenuous, hers so smugly satisfied by his good looks. For a time, she wore him proudly and defiantly on her arm, giving the whole of her community the opportunity to look upon her with desire, admiration, and envy, ignoring the shame so evident in her parents’ expressions. She and Pravinder made many friends together, Navpreet’s impending career as a doctor holding the couple in high esteem. Wealth and beauty. It elevated them greatly.
But soon they retreated. Many months would go by before they would fleetingly emerge from the house they had bought far to the southeast. Navpreet would smile haughtily at her family during those brief encounters, eyes dark and dangerous, until again she and Pravinder would slink away to their den of conceit.
And as Navpreet disappeared, Mohan returned, paying the Toors another unannounced visit. “I have sold everything in Fiji,” he told his parents, even as they refused to acknowledge him. “I am staying here in America,” he called after them as they again walked away, taking Livleen with them. “I would like you all to know it.”
“When will this end?” Darshan asked his brother.
“Perhaps when they finally see me.”
It was all he said.
Mohan adapted quickly, governing minimarts and gas stations on the outskirts of Sacramento, his new domain. He often made an appearance at the gurdwara, Lehna and his two children scampering closely behind him as he shook hands and kissed babies, charming mothers with compliments and priests with donations.
“Won’t you say hello to them?” Darshan once asked his father.
“I will not encourage him,” Manmohan replied.
“Not even to Amandev and Dal? They are your grandchildren.”
Manmohan stared firmly across the prayer hall to where Jai and Livleen were sitting. “We do not know them,” he said. “You do not know them. They are not a part of this family.”
And so Darshan sat back and listened to the prayer, as he did every Saturday with his father, riding the wave of days that seemed to escape him, powerless against such deeply rooted grudges. He glanced at Elizabeth sitting close behind Jai and Livleen, stoically resigned to the cultural obligations required of her even if she was not acknowledged for them. He breathed in deeply. The tabla drums beat metrically. Soon they would be home again, down on the coast, protected within the curtain of fog where their own changes were taking place, Sonya petting her mother’s nascent belly, whispering encouragement to the new life within, saying his name: Anand. A brother. A son.
~ ~ ~
Darshan had never been invited to the home where Navpreet had been living with Pravinder for nearly two years. He imagined it to be a dishonest place where socialites and intellectuals of European descent gathered to discuss politics and previous tours to Paris, a place where Navpreet could be exotic and lovely in her Indian-ness—with her handsome husband who had learned to minimize his accent and laugh jauntily at empty jokes—yet still be American. But it was not at all like that, at least not today, not anymore. It had become much worse, and Darshan went there now with trepidation. The drive through the East Bay was long, the highways stretching for eternity, and his heart pumped wildly with fear.
She had been weeping when she called. “He won’t stop,” she sobbed into the telephone.
“Where are you?” he replied without thinking, already reaching for his car keys.
“In the closet. I pushed something under the knob and he can’t get in.”
He hesitated then, realizing he did not have her address.
“Darshan,” she whispered, her voice steadier. “Pravinder is very angry. Please hurry.”
He heard banging of some sort, hollow and indistinct, then a rustling of material through the receiver. “Tell me where to find you,” he said, rummaging around for a scrap of paper.
“Go,” Elizabeth had told him, seeing the panic on his face as he hung up the phone. “Don’t think. Don’t waste time.”
The directions were on his dashboard now. He checked them again, then watched intently for the exit, his sweaty palms wrapped around the steering wheel.
But Pravinder had already left when he arrived. Navpreet was positioned stiffly on an expensive-looking suede couch in her living room. Pricy neo-renaissance-like paintings decorated the walls. Knickknacks were arranged throughout—a varnished, wooden camel with a rhinestone on its hump, a jewelry box, an oversized set of dice next to a vase stuffed with artificial silk flowers. A large mirror hung over the fireplace mantel, and a framed picture of Pravinder and Navpreet was on the coffee table.
“You’re too late,” she said, her mouth set in a sharp line. Her blouse was slightly ruffled, open at the neck, exposing her choke bruises. Her left eye was swollen. “He’s gone.”
“The drive was long,” he replied, focusing his eyes on the sharp, ironed line down the front of her trousers. It made her seem otherwise untouched. Her feet were bare, her toenails red.
“Tea?” she asked with a hint of sarcasm.
“We should go,” he told her.
She laughed harshly. “To your place?” Her eyes narrowed knowingly. “To Bapu and Bebe’s?”
“You cannot stay here. Pravinder will come back.”
She looked as if she was about to refuse, but seeming to think better of it, stood. “Let me get some things.”
“How often does he do this?” Darshan asked, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, not wanting to sit.
“Sometimes.”
“You never said anything.”
“No. I didn’t.”
She disappeared down a hallway, leaving him to wander about the living room. He found only the one photo of Navpreet and Pravinder. He thought of the family portraits he had hung on the walls in his own home, of Elizabeth’s aunts and uncles still in Oregon, of Colleen, Victoria Quinn, Manmohan and Jai, and Sonya. He lifted the picture from the coffee table. Navpreet and Pravinder were outside somewhere, a mountain in the distance. They smiled and held one another, posed. He put the photo down and saw Navpreet’s medical school degree reflected in the mirror, hanging near the hallway next to a tall plant.
She returned with a suitcase.
“You finished this year,” he said, indicating the degree.
She ignored him and pointed at the bag. “Help me with this.”
He shoved the suitcase in the back of the station wagon, then held the door for her before getting in. He started the engine.
“You sure you have everything? We won’t come back.”
She nodded.
“All right,” he replied, heading down the street, turning left toward the highway.
After a moment she pulled the sun visor down. “Pravinder shit on me,” she said. “He just wanted a green card, and after that he wanted money.”
“Shat,” Darshan told her. “Past tense of ‘shit.’”
She looked at him, eyes contracted and tight with anger.
He glanced at her apologetically. “Elizabeth told me that. I never knew.”
She was suddenly glum. “Livleen is getting married.” She prodded the bruises on her neck and winced.
“I know.”
“I told her not to do it, not to throw away her beauty and goodness to someone who will never really know her.”
“Do you talk to her often?”
“She tells me things.”
They were silent for a time. The radio was off. Wind whistled through the edges of the windows.
As they neared Manmohan and Jai’s, dusk a heavy purple-orange above them, Navpreet said, “I don’t remember his name, the man she will marry.”
“Taran,” Darshan told her.
She nodded toward the house as they pulled into the driveway. “Bapu picked him for her. How does he know Taran is the right one?”
“Livleen agreed. Maybe she knows it.”
Navpreet unbuckled her seatbelt. “She has never said no in her whole life.”
&nb
sp; Manmohan was reading in the kitchen when they entered the house. He removed his spectacles, eyes widening slightly at the sight of Navpreet’s swollen face. Jai was rinsing dishes. A soapy bowl slid from her hands when she saw them.
Livleen looked up from the raw chicken she was massaging with tandoori paste. She released the meat, her hands stained red. “What happened?”
Navpreet pulled out a chair and sat opposite Manmohan. “It has been a very long day.”
Jai wiped her hands on a towel. She collected herself, her expression flattening. “Did you leave him?”
Pointing at her face, Navpreet said, “Should I have stayed?”
“He is your husband. If he has ugly teeth, you make yours ugly. If he beats you, you let him.”
Her words silenced the room. Manmohan stared at his wife in shock.
“Bebe,” Darshan said softly. “She is your daughter.”
Livleen paled. She clung to the edge of the counter.
Darshan reached for her.
She put up a hand, refusing his help. “It’s nothing.”
He regarded her carefully for a moment, conceding this next loss. Exhaling slowly, he went to the wall phone by the refrigerator and dialed home.
“I have to stay for a while,” he told Elizabeth.
“I thought you might.”
“How are you?”
“The baby kicked. Sonya felt it.”
“I missed it.”
“He’ll kick again, just for you. He knows your voice.”
“Does he?”
“Of course he does,” she said. “It’s okay.”
“You’ll wait up?”
“I’ll be here.”
He hung up the receiver and turned to his family. They were looking expectantly at him, his mother offended by the lack of respect so rampant in the lives of younger generations, Manmohan’s expression an odd mix of disdain and sorrow, Navpreet’s neck bruise darkening, the print of fingers now visible, and Livleen, pallid and frail.
Slowly, he returned to the table and pulled out a chair, the legs chafing along the linoleum. Sitting, he braced himself.