by Amrit Chima
Sacramento’s Greyhound Bus Depot
1985
Family Tree
Long fluorescent tubes running overhead on tracks lighted the bus terminal in Sacramento proper, washing out all shades and hues of color, leaving only a pallid surface spotted by shadow. Exposed steel beams supported the rectangular waiting area. In the corner a lone traveler cursed and kicked the vending machine that sold prepackaged snacks, candies, soda pop, and juice boxes. A ticket clerk chewed gum behind his glass-encased booth, snapping small bubbles through his teeth that echoed faintly through the loudspeaker. Manmohan tried his best to ignore the clerk, who had allowed them to use his phone several hours before. He could sense the young man looking at them, watching the old and abandoned Indian couple sitting stiffly in the plastic, cup-bottomed chairs, alone in the night.
Manmohan glanced around, the cold industriousness of the building depressing him. It is no wonder, he thought, how hard we must fight to be Indian here, how critical to uphold our customs: the clothing, the temple and prayers, marriages, the laws of patriarchy. The backdrop of this country is so ugly and barren, erected out of cardboard. It leeches us of our culture. It dilutes us.
Next to him Jai sniffled, a tissue squeezed in her fist, her purse clutched in her lap. He sympathized, but could not offer comfort. They deserved this. They deserved much worse, but she was having trouble accepting it.
In Taran’s car, before being left at the depot, she had discerned the raw, barely restrained fury in the atmosphere. “Are we not going home?” she asked over the infant seat where Livleen’s baby boy was sleeping, trepidation in her voice. The streets were not familiar, the route back to Berkeley markedly different than the one they had taken to the Sacramento temple.
Livleen said nothing, directing Taran left at the next corner with the flick of her hand.
“Are you sure about this?” Taran murmured to his wife, pulling into the empty parking lot of the Greyhound station. The daylight was thinning, the sky a phosphorescent rose.
“They are not children,” she muttered tersely. “Together they have traveled the seas and settled on new continents. It’s only a bus depot.”
Panic flitted across Jai’s face. “What are you d—”
Manmohan reached over the baby for her hand, and with a subtle shake of his head stopped her from protesting further. He looked regretfully at Livleen’s handsome profile. Wedding her to Taran had undoubtedly saved her from scrutiny, from the flood of inevitable questions that would have surely descended upon them all if he had allowed such an attractive, eligible daughter to remain unwed. But she had never wanted this life. Since she was eight years old, she had never wanted any life.
They had climbed out of the car in front of the depot with no money, not even change enough for the pay phone inside the bat-beaten, graffiti-tagged booth. They never needed to carry any. Since arriving in America, their children always managed such details, always shuffled them from place to place on command, brought them groceries, settled their medical bills. It seemed, as Manmohan watched Taran drive off, that from the beginning, even as he fought to maintain his authority, he had relinquished much more of himself than he realized. Arm around Jai, back bent, he had led her inside to wait.
Several hours passed before the glass doors to the depot’s waiting area finally flung open. Darshan rushed through them, noisily banging them against the inside wall. “Bapu, Bebe,” he said, kneeling before them, wiping his mother’s cheeks with the sleeve of his shirt. “How did this happen?”
“She left us,” Jai said, weeping.
“She made appointments for tea,” Manmohan said quietly. “She had friends to visit.”
“Why didn’t you stop her?”
Manmohan squeezed his cane in both hands, confused by the question. The idea had not occurred to him, but he knew by the surprised and puzzled look on his son’s face that this was wrong, entirely out of character. He bowed his head, unable to muster anger, not even to pretend. Instead he was grateful that in Livleen’s silent and passive fury, she had finally held him accountable for the thing that ruined and withered her when she was only a little girl. Manmohan again looked up, following the shifts in Darshan’s expression, traveling along the filament of emotions from concern to curiosity, followed by protective anger, and finally surrender.
Such a good boy.
~ ~ ~
A man needed a son. Taran had made that intractably clear over two years before that unfortunate night in Sacramento. He sat with Darshan over tea, brother to brother, expounding on the great traditions of India, of men’s role in those traditions, making the continuation of their line significant, imperative. “Now that Livleen and I are wed,” he said, “my chief priority is to produce at least one descendent who bears my name.”
He nodded soberly when, in response, Darshan reiterated the doctor’s warnings, the great risks pregnancy would pose to Livleen’s life, the childhood trauma of fever that had scarred her heart valves, making her system too weak to subsist under such conditions.
Still, a man needed a son.
“None of you ever told me she might not be able to give me one,” Taran replied. “I should be angry about it, but it is too late. I am not a bad man, only a practical one.”
Indeed, he had procured from her what was his right by marriage. Darshan thought that this must have been the point at which circumstances had shifted for her, that as her baby grew in her womb, the first seed of revenge also began to blossom. She told him once that even if she were required to suffer marriage, she would prefer to avoid the rest of it. “We all tread the same ground,” she had told him. “A cyclical repetition: first marriage, then babies, then grandchildren. None of us ever asks why. Not all of us are meant for it.”
Although she was fine in the end, the violence of giving birth—particular to her distressed body—had steeled and discontented her further. Perhaps that experience proved how alone she was, how isolated, that people would do and take what they wanted, that she must learn to do the same. That was the only rational explanation for her behavior, for the streak of spite that came to define her.
On the day of her delivery she had lain in a hospital bed in a disinfected, white-tiled room, machines beeping, her legs swollen and wrapped thickly in gauze, her color gray under the sterile lights, the skin around her eyes and cheeks taut. Taran did not come to her, would not watch. Instead, Darshan sat with her, peering helplessly over the impossible swell of her grossly distended belly. She was sleeping, her face clammy with sweat. The contractions had abated for the moment. Using a wet towel he wiped the beaded moisture from her forehead.
She stirred, her breathing heavy and irregular. Opening her eyes with effort, she lifted a lethargic hand to wipe her mouth and push the damp hair from her forehead. “Where’s Taran?” she asked, her tongue thick with thirst.
He searched for a water pitcher, but found none. “On his way,” he replied.
“And Navpreet?”
“She’s with a patient now but said she will be back soon to check on you. Bapu and Bebe are here. Elizabeth and the kids, too.”
She closed her eyes again. “Don’t you get enough of this hospital?”
“I don’t mind.”
He took her hand, but she pulled it away. “What about the restaurant?” she asked, a chill in her voice.
“Closed for the day. I would rather be here.”
She looked directly at him then, the fog lifting from her eyes, replaced by a sharp mistrust. “I did not think Bapu would ever give it to you. We all know him. He would not have done it willingly.”
Darshan exhaled. “Don’t say that. He has never accepted help willingly. But we were both tired of fighting.”
She turned away. “Just like that?”
“Not at first, but in the end, yes, just like that.”
“Navpreet thinks if you persist enough, you can take anything from anyone, if that’s how you choose to deal with people.” A contraction tensed her body,
and she gasped.
“Deep breaths,” he murmured, not sure if he should try and touch her again.
I know,” she said tetchily, breathing in through her nose and releasing from her mouth.
“Are you all right?”
She held her breath, then nodded and quietly moaned. “Tell Taran not to come in here. I don’t need his help.”
There was a sharp rap on the door, and it immediately swung inward. Displeased, Navpreet scowled. She held a medical chart and a plastic cup of ice chips. “Darshan, she didn’t want anyone in here.”
“She was alone.”
“Knowing the hospital staff doesn’t make it right to ignore Livleen’s wishes, or to abuse the rules,” she said, setting the chart on the foot of the bed and pulling a stethoscope from around her neck.
As he left, he saw Livleen’s face contort in pain and fear, but her contraction was over and another was not due for several more minutes. Navpreet bent over her, stroking her head, murmuring.
Out in the maternity ward waiting room, Elizabeth was dozing in a chair, Anand between her and Jai, head lolling as he fought sleep. He clung to his mother’s forearm with one of his meaty five-year-old hands and his grandmother’s salwaar with the other. One of Elizabeth’s coworkers from radiology had brought cake, and a half-eaten piece of it was on a paper plate in his lap. Sonya, frowning in concentration, sat on the floor where she had ripped up a page of a magazine and was trying to piece it back together. Taran was also there, several seats away, looking apprehensive.
“She is fine,” Darshan told him.
Taran nodded, hands clasped in his lap, nervous.
Anand rubbed the sleep from his eyes. Squirming out of his seat, dropping the cake to the floor, he looked up at his father. “Did the baby come?”
“No, son, not yet.”
“How much longer?”
“I hope very soon.”
Sonya abandoned her puzzle. “Everyone keeps saying that.”
Elizabeth threw some napkins on the floor and scooped Anand’s mess onto the plate. “Let’s go to my office for markers and paper,” she suggested, tossing the cake in the trash. “We’ll make something for the baby.”
She took their hands and led them away as Darshan slumped down into one of the chairs, letting his forearms rest loosely on the plastic armrests. The waiting room was quiet, nearly empty aside from the Toors, with only a young girl in the back row, an older couple one row up from her, and a pregnant woman in a wheelchair waiting to be admitted, her husband beside her. The pregnant woman took deep breaths. The old couple whispered to each other. The girl flipped the pages of a magazine.
A nurse poked her head through the check-in window and called out a name. The girl in the back row stood and followed the nurse. Soft music trailed down from overhead speakers in the ceiling.
“I heard it is nearly time,” a man said from the doorway, and Darshan turned to see Mohan.
Manmohan rose from his chair. “You cannot be here now. She would not like it.”
“I will not leave,” Mohan replied, resolutely selecting a seat and lowering his fat body into it. “You cannot banish me from the hospital.” He removed his sunglasses and tucked them into his shirt pocket, his tenebrous gaze fixed firmly in front of him.
Darshan gently took his father’s elbow, and Manmohan allowed himself to be led to the other side of the room where he remained with Jai, glaring implacably and hatefully at his oldest son.
None of them spoke.
Well into the night, Navpreet finally came out, wearily pulling a surgical cap from her head. She hesitated briefly at seeing Mohan, then said, “A boy. His name is Dhillon Attwal.”
Mohan took a sudden and deep breath, coughed once, then cleared his throat, pausing to collect himself. “Thank you,” he finally said to no one in particular. He slid his glasses back onto his face and crossed the room. Taking Taran’s hand, he murmured his congratulations. And then he left.
When he was gone, Darshan stared thoughtfully at the exit, then shifted his gaze to the maternity ward, remembering a time when he and Livleen were children. One day a swarm of bees had gotten caught in his shorts, a deep, terrifying buzz that stung and tortured his body and droned in his ears. She had laughed at him, at his flailing arms, his dance of desperation as he tried to shake them off.
It had begun with a race.
“It is a fair challenge,” he told her, assessing the winding path down the hill. It was one of those rare days when she came outside, when the residual aches in her bones from the fever that had almost taken her life abated enough to let her play.
“You know I cannot run very fast.” She smiled, as though she had already agreed to give it a try, as though she already knew she would win.
“Of course you can. I have seen you.”
Her smile widened, and she nodded. “Okay.”
“Okay,” he replied eagerly, rubbing his palms together. “No prisoners!”
Grabbing the folds of her sundress, Livleen kicked off her sandals. “I’m ready.”
“To the river!”
“To the river!”
“One…two…three…go!”
Taking off down the path, Darshan could see the corrugated iron roof of the main house below and his father’s garden of taro and onion in neat, planted rows, his memory now alive with detail; glimpses of the sparkling water through the foliage; the shadows of coconut trees; the fresh, dark mud squeezing between his toes. She had been in the lead, her two braids streaming like black, glossy ribbons behind her, tails like whips. She turned her head to look back at him.
Laughing, he ducked into the thick ferns and wild greenery to cut straight down. “That’s cheating!” he heard her shout. He leapt over fallen tree limbs and trampled through the underbrush. And then he felt something soft tear under his feet. A sudden angry vibration erupted from the ground, something like smoke circling him in dark tornado-like flashes.
He recalled his desperate swatting, his pumping legs, sprinting no longer to win the race, but to outrun the hive of bees he had disturbed. Trapped at the bank of the river, he began to jump like a feverish monkey, but still the bees swirled about with their discordant, incensed hum. In the distance, Livleen turned the corner around a bend in the path to find him whooping in the air and thrashing about.
She cupped her hands over her mouth to call to him, but he was not able to hear her, his ears filled with a rush of adrenaline. As she came nearer, he realized that she was laughing hysterically. She clutched her stomach and sank to the ground, unable to control herself, to contain that tumultuous outpouring of mirth.
“Help me!” he shouted.
“Take off your shorts!” she called out again, wiping her eyes, unwilling to come too close. “Jump in the river!”
As he threw off his clothes, she laughed harder at his naked bum covered in red fire-burning welts. Jumping, still swatting the air, he crashed into the water, the chaos finally silenced.
“Cheater,” she had said with a grin when he surfaced, his topknot undone and his long hair matted around his face.
No, he thought now. That day of the race, of the bees, that was the start of her withdrawal, the day she had begun to amass and harbor animosity. He suddenly knew this because he realized it was the last time she played, the last time he saw her laugh. She had been eight years old. There was a fire in the main house that night, and after, something had changed, for all of them.
~ ~ ~
The question remained unasked. It drifted above them, in what they would not say, caught behind boundaries of privacy and secrecy. Manmohan had seen the question, poised on Darshan’s lips before being swallowed back down. He regarded his son. So haggard with apprehension for his parents. He wondered how much the boy knew, about the night of the fire, about Penitentiary Hill, about the reason why Livleen had left them here, so many hours from home.
Looking over again at the vending machine in the corner of the bus depot, he felt a rumble in his stomach, sud
denly ravenous for one of those over-salted snacks, a bag of peanuts, perhaps a cracker sandwich filled with chemical cheese spread. Closing his eyes, he felt shame for this craving.
He longed for a meal prepared by Livleen. She possessed a clever skill with food, flavors strumming new points along his tongue. He would never admit this, not even to her. He had only to say the words, to tell her this one true and beautiful thing, but he could not. He would break, would choke upon his own greatly confused emotions for her.
When they spoke, he never said much and was always grim.
~ ~ ~
Elizabeth had been more aware of Livleen’s growing unhappiness than Darshan. “She doesn’t want to see us,” his wife told him a few months after Dhillon’s birth, assessing her reflection in the mirror. She held a brooch up to her salwaar, flicking her fingers through her short bangs, trying to give them life. Dissatisfied, she dropped the brooch in her jewelry box on the bureau and bit the inside of her cheek, thinking.
“Of course she does,” Darshan replied, selecting a tie from a rack behind the bathroom door. “She’s making us lunch.”
“They had a little party last month, for Dhillon. Your parents and Navpreet. His six-month party. That’s how long it’s been.”
“I spoke with my mom,” Darshan murmured, his brow pinched as he knotted his tie. “It wasn’t exactly a party.”
“They had balloons. A cake.” She selected a pair of earrings, cocking her head to the side, slipping one on.
He ran a comb through his hair. “She’s making lunch. She hasn’t canceled.”
“No, not today. A person can only cancel so many times.”
He handed Elizabeth her coat, then called out to the kids.
There was the sound of a scuffle down the hall, a game hurriedly being finished.
“She isn’t the same,” Elizabeth told him. “She’s a mother now. She’s angry.”
“It’s a lot to handle for some,” Darshan replied, heading upstairs, checking his pocket for his car keys.