Years went by and I accepted my life: passionless and guided by routine. Every day I went to the vegetable carts, the only thing changing being what vegetables I would buy. One day, the same as the one before it, I chose a bundle of fenugreek leaves. In some places the sky was yellow and children chased marbles. In others places the clouds had smudged the sky into evening, and a chalky purple haze settled like a blanket over the market. Right at the centre of the vendor stalls, half of his body covered in light, and half submerged in the night, stood Jaspreet Maan Singh, his pink turban to the sky. The years had turned his chest into a barrel.
I myself no longer had any reason to care for my looks. I wore modest bangles, and my face looked like that of any other housewife in the market. Perspiring, I walked up to him, ready to be angry he abandoned me at our wedding.
Boldly, he took my wrists in his, the wrists he had kissed roughly many years ago in the musky storeroom. “How beautiful you look! My Raat di Rani!” ‘Queen of the Night,’ he called me.
He swept his hands over the vendors packing up. “Ah, Lucknow! What a beautiful sher! The golden city where one can be anything that they want. Take me, for instance. I build houses now!”
Jaspreet Maan Singh never did tell me he lived in a bungalow in Lucknow with latticed gates so delicate they looked like fine lace, with a watchman that walked tight circles like a car caught in a never-ending roundabout. I would learn later that his new wife, not the woman he had fled on the ox cart after, was blessed with something that would keep Jaspreet from ever leaving her: a rich father. Jaspreet had three well-fed sons who lived in the bungalow with him.
Jaspreet said the one thing that mattered most to me: that I looked devastatingly beautiful. He purchased steaming glasses from the chai boy selling them for pennies on the corner. I had the days to do with as I pleased, so I did what I pleased with Jaspreet Maan Singh. I started decorating the braid of my hair with tikka pieces, making like I was a starlet. I took to wearing the bejewelled suits meant for festivals and weddings. Jaspreet seemed to have endless amounts of money on hand to take me to carnivals where men made monkeys dance, and to the movie pictures. I would later learn his father-in-law had unknowingly funded our dates.
I can’t tell you how long our romance lasted — the days blurred together in such a way I could not separate my dreams from waking. Some mornings I would awake smelling the clay floors of my village farmhouse, imagining I was thirteen again. When I heard the traffic of Lucknow pouring through the tiny window in the bedroom, I wondered how it could be possible my mataji was not in the next room rubbing fresh ghee onto fried bread.
At some point I began gaining weight around my stomach. I blamed it on the restaurant food that Jaspreet was ordering, from hotels where men wore royal red turbans and white coats shining with gold buttons. Several stories below, white tourists floated on the pool while their fair-haired children danced between the landscaped bushes. They had every right to be there. I was just a sneaking spectator, nibbling on an English caramel dessert, crafted only for the pleasure of tourists.
I told Jaspreet I was pregnant. I found out the news at a time when he would rush through his enjoyment with me, as though I was a child’s toy passed down one too many times. I expected he’d walk straight out of the hotel room and leave me there alone to decide my fate. He had three mighty sons of his own; what did he need with me?
But Jaspreet grinned as if the news I gave him was favourable, ordering champagne from the front desk. He held his glass against the ivory bed sheets and toasted. I watched the bubbles crash into one another and implode. It was implied we would go over details the next time we met, for a discussion of such seriousness would surely spoil such remarkable news.
But no chance arrived to meet again before I delivered my baby. Managing to find out where Jaspreet lived, I wrapped up my baby and stood for a long time outside his monstrous carnation-pink house.
In the end, I never lifted a stick to the barred gates. After the watchman’s first approach, when he asked if I was there for the housekeeping position, even he lost interest in me.
For his part, Baba Dhillon loved my daughter like she was his, and he was not frugal in giving her an education. But Baba Dhillon was no idiot. On the night my daughter was born he whispered a breathy warning only I would hear: “I will accept this mistake of yours as a blessing. But if you should ever do something this stupid again, I will throw you into the streets without your child and without a cent; do you understand me?”
I thought I understood. Years went by before I would see Jaspreet again. Baba Dhillon moved us out of Lucknow and farther up north, to Amristar where there was a doctor who could strengthen his bones. Baba Dhillon’s attempt to keep the family safe from the reaches of Jaspreet Maan was in vain, for Jaspreet would never be interested in a woman who had become plump after birth and had sprouted grey hairs. Jaspreet, on the other hand, would only become more vibrant with age. His black beard became glossier, like a pool of ink that one could sink a brush into.
This time it was Jaspreet Maan Singh who would see me first. He walked toward me on a busy street where I was busy feeding my daughter some hot gol gappa balls from a street vendor. By now I was used to city life. I knew how to dodge the cows dunking their heads into the garbage. I knew how to be certain I was getting the best price on spinach leaves. Amidst the honking of urban traffic, Jaspreet grabbed my arm like he owned me, laughing. Once again, he made no apologies about the past. He grinned at me as though his home was the Harmandir Sahib, the golden temple of Amritsar.
“I cannot believe you moved away with our daughter!” Jaspreet’s voice was jovial. He squeezed my daughter’s cheeks — which at that time were chubby like two sweet milky balls of ras malai. Her nose and chin jutted out straight, showing she was indeed Jaspreet’s daughter. Jaspreet, recognizing himself in her immediately, said he could not let a day go by without seeing his sweet laddoo dessert. This time it was my daughter who received the benefit of Jaspreet’s attention, and this pleased me to no end. He bought her wind-up toy monkeys that played drums. He fed her syrupy raspberry crushed ice cones. Sometimes he held my hand while she ran ahead, and, for a few minutes, I imagined we were a family.
I was only able to meet Jaspreet a few times privately when my daughter was in school. This time around, Jaspreet was busy with work. He had me meet him right in front of the new building site he was managing. There were no more fancy hotels with uniformed bellhops or cocktail lounges filled with European tourists. Now, our affair took place in cheap motels stinking of cigarettes. The rooms were covered in white pigeon stools from windows that would not shut. I shooed the birds away but they stuck their greasy necks out at me, shining like oily pools of rainbow gutter water.
Not for one moment did I think that Jaspreet would ever leave his wife for me. But I had news that would keep me tethered to him, as a minor planet orbiting his world. I told Jaspreet I was pregnant again. Next to me, my daughter greedily ate her ice cream sundae, concentrating hard so she would not slip from the oily vinyl chair. The man at the front of the restaurant was selling confectionaries behind a glass display case. I stared at the fleshy pink desserts while I spoke. Jaspreet was looking out of the large store window, smeared with the smudge marks of children’s curious fingers and noses. I followed his gaze, wondering what was running through his mind as he stared outside. Every time I blinked, the people walking in front of the sweets shop made a new blurry snapshot.
I spoke of Baba Dhillon’s threat of taking my daughter away and putting me on the streets. I held my breath, imagining a man as great as he bursting like a volcano. As usual, nothing that resembled dismay came out of Jaspreet Maan Singh. Smiling, he ordered sweets for the entire restaurant. While the desserts, packaged in containers of gold and orange that looked like bridal jewellery boxes, were hastily planted on patron tables, Jaspreet Maan Singh cheerfully suggested I keep the pregnancy a secret and hide at a bir
thing hospital whilst pretending to visit my hometown. He spoke smoothly, like a politician used to convincing large populations to build shopping malls on the grounds of historical nature sites. I could not think past the idea of him visiting me alone at some faraway destination. I thought back to the starchy sheets of the Lucknow hotels beds. And of the movie theatres we used to go to — how sticky the floors were. Would he kiss my wrists like he used to in the old days? Would he fall in love once he saw me swollen with his child?
“What will happen to the baby?” I said, almost as an afterthought.
“I will take it, of course.”
“But what about your life?” I could never say wife, which is what I really meant.
“My wife,” he said, meeting the target of my eye, “will do anything I want her to. We can’t have you out on the streets. What will happen to this sweet laddoo here?” He took my daughter’s cheek between his forefinger and thumb, squeezing, “Another ice cream sundae for the girl!” he shouted to the waiter.
I wonder if things would have been different if Jaspreet had actually seen my body fattened up by the likes of his son. He arrived when my baby had already been removed from my body, and I looked like a saggy deflated balloon. The baby lay next to me, his hair still wet from being birthed, his face crumpled with exhaustion. The nurse packaged the baby for Jaspreet like a present. Jaspreet mentioned to her that of all his sons, this one looked most like him. My son hadn’t even had a drop of my breast milk yet before Jaspreet left with him. Perhaps this was best. Why give the baby a piece of myself when he was never mine to begin with? Somehow I ended up back at the house with Baba Dhillon again, quite a few pounds heavier, with an empty womb and breasts that leaked unused milk on the front of my kurta. If Baba Dillon poked around and asked his family back home questions, surely he would discover my lie. I felt so sick with grief I wanted him to ask; I wanted him to throw me out. But he did no such thing.
When Baba Dhillon decided to move our family to British Columbia during the seventies, I tried to put the memories of Jaspreet behind me. We moved to Surrey before settling here in Burnaby. I was surprised to find plenty of curry shops and uncles wearing turbans riding bicycles on the sidewalks. If I pretended, I could almost be in India. One morning, during my brisk morning walk, I saw an empty grassy lot with a sign: Purchased by Jaspreet Maan Singh and Four Sons. I began to see the signs often over the years. In the place of the signs would appear mini shopping complexes filled with sari boutiques and jewellery shops selling Indian gold.
I kept imagining the grizzly bear of a man that was Jaspreet Maan Singh to emerge from behind a construction elevator, but I never did see him. As I stood on the boundary line of the construction sites in my walking shoes, I knew Jaspreet Maan Singh would never recognize the grey-haired woman hunched before him, using her chunni to wipe the perspiration from her unkempt upper lip.
Five years ago I went to an Indian wedding. Already an old woman, I sat in a chair with a gold sash bandaging it. Candles and rose petals bobbed on top of the centrepiece goblets, reminding me of the bound dead bodies floated upon the Ganges River. I watched the young people dance. Their loud outfits made me think of colourful birds: flamingos, parakeets, peacocks, and macaws.
As the sun set and evening time settled in, the party kept on going. I bit into a spicy pakora and sipped the chai, which tasted a lot like the one I am drinking now. I thought then, and I think now, this tea could really do with a punch of ginger. And then I saw him. Why, Jaspreet Maan Singh, of course. He stood in the centre of the dance floor, both of his hands raised, bhangra dancing and kicking his feet to the beat. He looked exactly as he had the first day I met him. Jaspreet and I were clearly going in two different directions with time: while I grew old and grey haired, Jaspreet grew young and increasingly handsome. Just as it did on the Lohri festival years ago, his beard appeared to be made from the finest cut of black Chinese silk. All of sudden, Jaspreet looked right at me, smiling. I touched my hair and the back of my ear, thinking of the mustard flower he had once placed there. My face went white and I started to shake.
“Aré, Auntie, are you O.K.?” Jaspreet said, approaching me. “You look ill.”
The sound system shut off. I became surrounded by a circle of concerned people. They gasped and clutched one another as if I was going to drop dead right then and there. My daughter stood over me, weeping into her friend’s arms. But I couldn’t take my eyes off of Jaspreet Maan Singh. He looked back at me, his big cinnamon brown eyes mirroring mine. Why had I never noticed Jaspreet had the same eyes as me? But he was not truly concerned. Concern for me had never reached Jaspreet Maan Singh’s eyes. For the first time in my life I wasn’t filled with lust for Jaspreet. I only wanted to take him into my arms and hold him close, like a baby, and sob for a lifetime lost. But I didn’t move. Jaspreet kneeled down and touched my hand, and I shook harder.
“Jaspreet Junior, your older brothers are here! Let them look at Auntie,” a guest shouted out.
Jaspreet stood up, towering a good foot over his brothers. And just like that, the place that he had touched me, where fireworks had gone off, settled down. I felt ordinary again. “Auntie,” he asked, “do you need a doctor?”
I shook my head. His brown eyes, so familiar and yet not, implored me to say something, anything. But I knew I was to never to speak again. After all, no good has ever come out of my speaking to Jaspreet Maan Singh.
9
MEENA WAS TRYING TO pin a pickle between the legs of a male stripper cutout taped to the refrigerator. Round and round she stumbled, giggling. From the couch, her friends shouted at her between sips of pink drinks.
“Lower!”
“To the left!”
Meena hadn’t trusted me with anything related to her wedding except choosing the party games. When it came to bridal dress shopping, she said the clothes I liked were too revealing and trendy. She wanted something conservative and timeless. When it came to choosing items for the registry, she questioned what I knew about furnishing a home and china patterns since I lived out of a suitcase. I hadn’t been offended in the least — she was right. Her rosy-cheeked friends belonged to a tribe I didn’t belong to. Many already wore wedding rings, which they twisted around their fingers as they discussed their five-year plans. They had wanted to take Meena to a Chippendale show, and my games were falling short of their expectations.
“So what’s next?” Meena asked, pulling off her blindfold. Tucking her bobbed hair behind her ears, she examined the pickle on the cartoon stripper’s neck.
“Everyone gets a cherry. Then when I say ‘go,’ we see who can tie the stem into a knot the fastest.”
“For what purpose?” Meena asked.
“To see who the best kisser is!” When no one applauded my ingenuity, I pulled out a gift bag stuffed with tissue paper. “And I have prizes.”
A few knotted cherry stems and a lot of shots later, Meena sank down next to me on her friend’s couch. “You’re coming on the girl’s trip to Whistler, right? Sarah already printed you out a t-shirt to wear.”
I twirled the stem of my martini glass. “Of course, no problem. Dylan wanted to take me away that weekend, but I already told him I can’t go … ”
“Where to?”
“Whistler?” I smirked.
“You can meet him there, if you’d like … maybe stay the night with him instead of bunking with us.”
“It’s okay,” I said, registering the irritated look on her face. “It’s your girls’ weekend. I can do Whistler with him another time.” I wasn’t sure why I had even mentioned Dylan. Perhaps I wanted Meena to know I had other things going on in my life besides being in her wedding party. Or maybe I was still holding onto a small hope that I could get out of the trip. In any case, I knew for sure I’d never wear a veil on my head and stumble drunk through clubs just so I could scratch an item off my wedding bucket list. Should I ever get married,
that was.
“Can you believe we’re going to be living in the same city? I always thought you’d end up in Dubai married to some sheik and have a bunch of kids.”
I laughed.
“What? A sheik is so funny? You never know, with you.”
“I think I am laughing more so because you imagined me married with kids for sure. It’s like you have my life planned out better than I do.”
“I made a dream board before I ever met Shaan. I had my wedding colours picked out, style of gown, even what kind of flowers I wanted. You have to pick a guy that fits your plan. You’re always trying to fit the guy’s plan, Maya.”
Most of what Meena said drove me crazy, but long after I helped load her car with edible underwear and fuzzy handcuffs, I thought about what she said about always trying to fit someone else’s plan. That stuck with me.
10
AT THE CENTRE WE were making decorative mirrors. I had become kind of an expert at making the weekly crafts and figured I would gift Dylan the mirror. The mirrors lay like miniature lakes on our tables, tempting the women to examine every seasoned wrinkle. I caught a glance of Nanima’s eyes and saw they looked as yellow and bright as the lemon tart sitting in front of her. She took her first bite of the Canadian treat.
“It tastes like satin,” she said in Gujarati, smiling.
“She says it tastes divine,” I said to the ladies before they had a chance to ask me. “She’s never had a lemon tart before.”
Nanima squeezed my arm. I nodded and turned to the group. “My grandmother wanted me to tell you something. She said: Today she won’t highlight the most perfect scenes of her life, like she does for her friends from the community. Or sugar-coat her past as she does for the sake of her children. She wants to tell you true stories from her life.”
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