I had not seen many boys until then, only little flower girls. So I was fascinated by Mike with his blown-out front teeth—which he showed endearingly each time he smiled— and his spiky hair, and his dirty hands and face. Over the years that face has changed only slightly. I think I must have known I would marry Mike one day, because I don’t remember having seen anyone but him in all the years of my memory.
Are you married now, dear Padmini? Do you work? I hear that in America all women work. Do you have children of your own, Padmini? Who did you marry? Is he Indian? American? So many questions to ask of you. So many things I want to know. Not just for myself, child, but for another person who asks after you. I have told you of your mother, who wishes she might see you now that she is sick. She has uterine cancer and has undergone months of chemotherapy and radiation. She is very brave really; she bears her pain and her nausea with a strength I would not have attributed to her. She does not talk about you, but I know she thinks and wonders where you are. I know her well, your mother. I knew she always wanted you but could not keep you for various reasons. Reasons I will not go into here.
Why? I want to cry out each time I read that. She talks of knowing my mother, of being next to her and not hearing her ask after me. Why does Meddling Sister Mary Theresa care what has happened to me when my own mother—no, the woman who gave birth to me—does not seem to care? And why does she want to know if I have children? Mike and I have none, not yet at least. Somehow, my memory fills with pictures of little flowers who have no parents. But I think at times I would like a boy with spiky hair who fights ferociously for what he thinks is right … or a girl just like him—like Mike.
I called Mom when the letter came. They live in Bellingham now; Dad is retired from Boeing. They have a tiny cottage on four acres of land, spilling into the Pacific at the edge of the garden. I think it was living on Queen Anne that made them want the space. So they gave Mike and me the condo and went to their little house up north. Dad is still too young to be retired, but he wanted to stop working and potter about a garden, his own for once. Mom works now in the administrative offices of Western; she says it drives her nuts to have Dad home all the time, pestering her about something or the other. Dee, get me the wheelbarrow; Dee, are you sure the spaghetti isn’t overcooked? Dee, when is Padma going to visit? He won’t pick up the phone and ask me; he will just pester Mom until she does.
They called me Padma from when I came to them. When the letter came, I asked Mom why they did that, when my name was Padmini. Padma also meant lotus, Mom said, and they asked Sister Mary Theresa for a nickname, a shorter form of Padmini. They did not know Tamil well enough to do so themselves. Looking back, it was a peculiar conversation. We were almost like strangers with each other again, afraid to say anything outright, filling up silences with thoughts. We talked of my name, of Mary Theresa; I read out parts of the letter to her. To them both. Dad had picked up the extension as he always did when I called, but he did not say a word until the very last. I just heard his presence on the other end. Then gently, his voice cracking, he said, “Padma, are you going to India?” I had to say I didn’t know. Then he said, “I have to go now, sweetheart, the dandelions are growing even as we speak.” After Dad put down the extension, I asked Mom a question I had not asked for a long time. It had not been necessary to do so, but now it suddenly was. “Mom, was it me you wanted from the Convent of Little Flowers?” And she answered as she always did: “Only you, my dear, no one else. Ever.”
I used to be fascinated by my parents at the beginning. I would sit on Dad’s lap and stare into his eyes, blue as the midsummer sky on a breathless morning. Then I saw the lines around his mouth, which showed he smiled a lot. I hung from his arm with my knees swinging off the ground. Mom brought me milk in the mornings; no one had done that for me before. I learned to sleep in my own bed, without fleeing across the hall to theirs in the middle of the night, knowing I would wake them. And I learned to be fiercely protective of them, and jealous if they bent down to talk with the neighbor’s child. They were mine, I thought. And so I filled in pieces like a jigsaw, a history of my own with Mom and Dad, without the little flowers.
We do not usually keep in touch with our little flowers, dear Padmini, yet here I am writing to you. When the Merricks came to the convent looking for a little girl, I judged them very carefully. I was still very young then, perhaps I did not seem so to you, but I watched them, I listened, I heard the kindness in their voices and saw it in their eyes. I knew they would be good for you. Did I make a good choice, my child?
I should not say however that the choice was entirely mine. When Tom and Diana Merrick came to the Convent of Little Flowers they wanted a child younger than one year. Later, I took them out onto the verandah to show them the school and the mess hall and the playground behind. You were playing hide-and-seek with your friends between the arms of the banyan. You were the seeker and as you danced your way through the tree roots, you were singing. I cannot remember anymore what the song was; it was in Tamil. Even for a child you had a haunting, lilting voice. Diana Merrick wanted you then, just as you were, your hair sticking to your head in sweaty strips, your arms and legs dusty to the elbows and knees, your bare feet the color of mud.
It wrenched my heart to give you away. But they insisted. No other child would do, not even the one picked out ahead of time. I said yes after four weeks of pleading from them. Four weeks when I watched and listened and decided they would love you as much as I do. Have they been good to you, my dear?
Why the hell did she give me away if it wrenched her heart? And yet how could anyone but Tom and Diana be Mom and Dad? It has been a month since the letter came, but they have not come down to visit. Every week, Mom and Dad used to pop by on some pretext on Sundays for lunch. Oh, we were in the neighborhood. Your dad wanted to shop at a downtown store, nothing else would do. (Dad has, to my knowledge, never been in what he calls “fancy stores,” and neither has Mom.) Or the fresh vegetables at Pike Place beckoned to them all the way from Bellingham, where they grow at least half an acre of vegetables in their garden—and give away crates of carrots and cauliflowers under a FREE sign at the top of their driveway.
But they have not come down in four weekends. I have been on call, at work; that was my excuse. They rapidly grow old waiting for me to do whatever I want to do. If I could burn the letter and flush the ashes and it would all disappear in the toilet water, perhaps I would do that. But then I would not be here at SeaTac, waiting for the flight to arrive from L.A. I looked up the route. Chennai to London, London to New York, New York to L.A., and then here. Exactly twenty-four hours in flight. The least I could do was come here two hours ahead of scheduled arrival. I sit at the gate now, staring through the Plexiglas as the cleaning crew, the catering crew, the refueling crew, the baggage-handlers, the tire-pressure-checking crew all buzz around some airplane, swarming into it and then popping out at odd places.
The letter is folded inside my jeans pocket. I wear pants now.
Tom Merrick showed me his citation for the Vietnam war. He said he was wounded in it and decorated for bravery. I don’t quite remember what the incident was, dear Padmini, no doubt you do. He must have talked to you about it. But when he told me, I wasn’t listening to his words, just the tone of his voice. Here was a man who would be kind to my little Padmini, I thought. Have they been kind?
It has been twenty-three years, yet I feel as though I know what you look like. You must have your mother’s looks. She has always been a beautiful woman; even now, when the cancer has ravaged her, she has an ethereal beauty, a charm of manner. Her children think so, and I agree with them.
That kills me each time I read it. She had time for other children, not just one more, mind you, children. Why did she not keep me? Sister Mary Bloody Theresa.
Yes, I know your mother well. As well as I know myself. You see, we were born to the same house, the same mother. Your mother is my little sister. She has always been somewhat young, somewhat pet
ted. Your birth was unexpected. Enough said. I had found my calling before you were born, if I hadn’t I would gladly have taken you. As it turns out, I did take you, in another capacity. And perhaps you would have known me well these last twenty-three years if the Merricks had not come that day to the convent. But, everything happens for a reason. If the smallpox had not visited me and left its mark, I might have married … I might be married anyway, there was a man. But … things did not work out. I changed my name from Chandra to Sister Mary Theresa. When I was converted, they asked where I would like to do God’s work and I said it would be at an orphanage, at the Convent of Little Flowers. A year later, you came to me as a baby. But do not worry, your mother married well. The indiscretion was forgotten, not made public, anyway.
This is when I hate her the most. Bloody Sister Mary Theresa. How easily I was forgotten. How easily I was made an “indiscretion,” how well my mother married because she was young and pretty and fair, Mary Theresa tells me. I don’t feel sympathy for the woman lying sick on Chinglepet street. She has her other children. I have never been her child. Even now, it is Sister Mary Theresa who writes.
In another world I would be your perima. Your Chandra perima. It means “Big Mother.” As your mother’s older sister, I am your mother too. Oh, Padmini, have I done right by you? Do not ever think I forgot, or didn’t know where you were. I knew. Just as I have known where to write now. And I write to ask this. May I come to see you? There is a conference of Catholic nuns in Seattle, imagine me coming to your hometown! I am not very old yet, but life tires me now. I cannot even look after your mother very well, for the duties at the orphanage weigh me down. But I do want to see that I fulfilled the responsibility your mother gave me. Would you like to see your perima, my dear Padmini?
A brief, stunning thought comes now. The frock in cheap cotton that came every birthday, was it Sister Mary Theresa who sent them? I have a sudden vision of a nun in a dimly lit shop, peering nearsightedly over bales of garish cotton, giving away two or three ill-afforded rupees for a few square centimeters of cloth. Then she would have gone to the tailor and put out a hand from the floor, measuring me for him. This tall. Only this thin. The frocks never fit. For her, I was always taller and fatter than I actually was. She saw me as a mother would. And she let me go to a better life, away from her, as only a mother could.
I have wondered why Mom and Dad went to India. I asked Mom once. It was Vietnam, she said. Dad had done his tour of duty three years before India, but it stayed with him. So they went back for a vacation to that corner of the world, drawn to the mysticism, the history, even the peace in India, in search of something … and came back with a daughter. They never had more children. I did not ask why.
I have come alone to SeaTac. Now the terminal is hissing with muted conversation. It has started to rain. Again. The lights have become brighter inside; outside the tarmac glistens wet, and airplanes have their windshield wipers on. The little girl with the sand bucket and her mother are long gone, where I do not know. I did not notice them leave. I think only of her.
I wonder what she will be like. My perima. I am to find out in two minutes. The plane landed and nosed its way to the gate a short while ago. As the people pour out of the doors I stand at one corner and look for her. And I see her. I had not realized she was so short or that a nun’s habit could look the same after twenty-three years. I should have known she would even travel in her habit. Perima. I roll the word around in my mind. No, to me she will always be Sister Mary Theresa. But I am suddenly glad we belong together. I stare at her. Fatigue creases her skin, and she walks a tired walk. Just then, she sees me too and smiles. It is a shy smile, a wonderful smile. She will meet Mike today. Tomorrow, I will take her to Bellingham to meet Mom and Dad. I think they will like her. I do. Already.
She comes up to me and holds out her hand. I clutch it wordlessly; even tears will not come now. Padmini, I am so glad you kept your name. That smile again. I think I have always known this beautiful woman with her smallpox-marked face.
It is just like my face, after all.
Three and a Half Seconds
At first there is no sensation, no feeling at all, not even fear. Just an intense, heart-filled longing for freedom. Then strangely it is peaceful, no remorse at leaving behind the old life and stepping into the new. Meha laughs out loud, listening to the sound of her voice echo down the well of balconies. But no one wakes in the flats. No lights come on, no heads stick out of windows, no fists are shaken in disgust. They all still sleep. Tomorrow they will know, Meha thinks. Tomorrow they will see what Chandar and she have done. Time enough for that.
This really started when Bikaner had formed as a bud in her forty-one years ago. Meha had been married six months, her tummy was still flat, she did not yet gag at the sight of food or run out into the fields to retch, and as each additional month passed the questions rose around her in a forest of whispers, buzzing louder every day.
“What, no good news?” or “Are you not being a good wife?” or later, more boldly, “Lie back and let him do it— think good thoughts and a son will be born.”
No one dared talk with Chandar, of course. As Meha told him of each question, as worry drew lines on her young forehead, Chandar would take her slim hands in his, kiss the upturned palms, and say, “Ignore them, jaaneman, what do they know? What do we care?”
Six months and a tiny shiver still thrilled her spine when Chandar called her jaaneman. She was his life, his very mind. They knew each other better than anyone else in their lives. It was as though their childhood, their adolescence, all those who peopled their lives—parents and village teachers, uncles and aunts and cousins—had vanished in this haze of marital love. Yet a month before the wedding, they were to each other just names on horoscopes that matched perfectly.
The stars had decreed that they were ideal mates before they even met. At night, when the small kerosene lamp in the corner burned low and pungent, they talked as though they were children learning to talk; they touched as though seeing through blind eyes. A hundred different forms of love, all hidden from the outside world. In the other room—the only other room of the two-room hut—lived Chandar’s parents and his younger brothers.
Meha’s hands still glowed with the honey-orange whorls and curls of henna; her mother-in-law had told her to not let the colors fade for a whole year. So one evening each month she sat by the lamp and piped little lines of henna paste over her wedding design. The in-laws watched approvingly—here was a daughter-in-law who did not expect to sit around all day while her henna dried; instead she wore it at night. They did not know what Meha knew: although she could not touch Chandar for fear of smearing the patterns on her hands, he could touch her.
Half a second.
When Meha came to the family as a bride she was first ushered to the room that was to be theirs, freshly added to the hut. Four mud walls, a swept-earth floor, and a dry palm thatch on the roof through which in the mornings a sun mosaic beckoned her to rise. The walls were slathered with cow dung, and the sweet-sickly smell, mixed with the aroma of hay, still drifted around in slow circles. There was no furniture other than a new charpai, its knitted jute bed taut in the wooden frame, a printed handloom sheet thrown over it. Both were part of Meha’s dowry. The charpai was newly strung, its ropes springy. Over time it would sag in the middle, scooping out the shapes of their bodies. On that single charpai she sat and waited, watching her hennaed hands clasped around her knees, tinkling the gold and red glass bangles around her wrist, something much like anxiety gripping her body. What would he be like, this man she had married? It seemed like a long wait for a man who was to share her life from now on, from whom she would never be parted, whose face she had barely seen.
Chandar had come to her in exquisite kindness, lifting her veil, touching her face with gentle hands, saying simply, “Welcome to my life, jaaneman.”
It was a line from a Hindi film song that Meha herself used to hum. She had not seen the movie, but t
he chai shopkeeper’s transistor blared the music every day. When he used those words, her panic fled. Still she could not lift her head to look at him. But she knew then that they would always be together, that they were meant to be.
It is strange what events come to mind after forty-two years of marriage. And now of all times, when there seems to be so little time, she remembers a girl from her father’s village who had been married before her. She cannot remember her name, but she remembers other things about her.
That girl had gone to her maikai in a bullock cart, head bowed under her wedding veil, face wreathed with fearful smiles in anticipation of her new home. She had come back to visit her parents a month later. She had grown thin, sullen, though she still smiled, proud of her new status of wifehood. Yet no one in Meha’s village failed to see the welts that swelled in vertical lines where her back was bared between her blouse and the bottom half of her sari.
* * *
But it had never been like that for her, Meha thinks. There had never been scars to cover … until now.
Chandar’s family, like Meha’s, owned land in the southern part of the state. Five acres. And from that land came sustenance for them all. Each spring, the two white bullocks painstakingly plowed up great big clods of earth, a minor eruption from beneath. The lumps of earth were then hammered into smaller pieces with wooden mallets and stones. The whole family worked in the merciless sun: the men, bareheaded—for their turbans would slip off as they bent—and the women with sari pallus drawn over their foreheads. Each spring the dry, cracked overwinter fields powdered beneath their hands. Five acres can be large to mere human hands. But this did not deter them. This was their work, this was their life. The bullocks, their neck skins pendant like an old woman’s jowls, were hitched to a wheel in the well. With each turn, buffalo-hide buckets brought up water and tipped it into a channel. The water swirled through its muddy walls to the fields—at first soaking through the thirsty earth; then, as though sated, the earth spewed up the water, flooding the fields. Rice saplings toted in reed-woven baskets were planted in this standing water.
In the Convent of Little Flowers Page 2