The Girl in the Garden

by Kamala Nair

  A surge of regret dulled the sharp edges of my anger. What had I done? I considered going back out and apologizing to my cousins, but pride still tinged my remorse and I couldn’t bring myself to move.

  Instead, I curled up on the bed and closed my eyes. My head sank deeper and deeper into the pillow, my glasses fell askew, and soon, lulled by the rhythms of the rain, I drifted into sleep.

  I began to dream. I was standing outside the door that led into the garden with my hand on the knob. Just as I had in real life, I fiddled with the knob and pressed my weight against the door but it would not open. The vines that covered the wall began to unlatch from the cold gray stone and slither down onto the ground, where they coiled at my feet. Soon they were creeping along my body like green snakes, winding around my ankles, my legs, and finally my throat, binding my mouth, hissing. Their forked tongues flickered at the insides of my ears. “Trust us, Rakhee, trust us.”

  I was airborne. The snakes were carrying me, lifting me like a feather high above the garden wall, and I was floating across the tops of the magnolia trees, then dropping down, down, down. The snakes were loosening their grip. In a panic, I flapped my arms in the air, but my descent continued in that same slow manner. The softness of the leaves brushed against my skin, the sweet smell of roses relaxed me, and I succumbed to the fall. The flowers enveloped me in their silky embrace and I lay among them, safe as an embryo. A feeling of supreme belonging settled over me.

  The Ashoka flowers above shone like rubies, radiating warm rays down upon my face. I stared up at them in a daze until, gradually, my sense of calm turned to horror. Those were not flowers or rubies in the Ashoka tree—they were eyes. Dozens of sets of eyes burning red as blood against the branches. I opened my mouth to scream, but only a pitiful noise emerged, and when I tried to stand, I couldn’t budge. The red eyes throbbed and glared at me, and with a terrifying certainty I knew I would never leave, that I was fated to remain within the walls of that horrible garden forever.

  “Amma!” The sound of my choking sob jerked me back into consciousness. My palms were sweaty, my face hot. The rain pattered on the sand outside my window.

  I stood upon my weak legs and stumbled into the bathroom. The floor was still wet from the last person who had bathed, and the fusty water against my bare feet brought me back to reality.

  The dream was a warning sign. Whatever was in that garden, I did not want to see it. I had to squash my curiosity and stay away. I looked at my pale face for a long time in the mirror and concentrated. You have to forget, you have to forget, you have to forget.

  I went out into the hall, determined to make up with my cousins. Only Gitanjali was on the verandah, swinging on the bench with her eyes closed.

  I started to turn around, but she said, “Rakhee.”

  My oldest cousin rarely addressed me, or even Meenu and Krishna, her own sisters, so although she had clearly said my name, I looked around for someone else.

  “Rakhee, I heard about this play you and my sisters are doing,” she said. “Did your mother ever tell you how the story really ends? It is not as happy as you think.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “After Rama saves Sita, he publicly rejects her because he is humiliated by rumors that she may not have stayed loyal to him throughout her captivity. In order to prove her innocence, Sita pledges to walk through fire. ‘If I emerge unscathed, then you will know I am telling the truth,’ she says. But even after she successfully performs this act, Rama sends her away, and she ends up pregnant with his twin sons and abandoned, living out the rest of her days in exile in the jungle. Eventually, she asks Mother Earth to open up and take her back into her womb. Mother Earth takes pity on her and swallows her up, finally putting an end to her suffering.”

  Gitanjali gave me a hard look. “I just thought you should know,” she said casually before closing her eyes again and resting her head against the swing’s chain.

  Trying to shake off the uneasy feeling, I resumed my search for Meenu and Krishna. I found them sitting in the dining room eating fruitcake and sipping milk from steel tumblers. Sadhana Aunty was at the head of the table, going over some papers covered in handwritten numbers.

  She looked up from her papers when I entered the room. “Rakhee, I do not know what you usually do when you are at home, but Meenu and Krishna study for two hours every day during the summer holidays. I’ve been lenient since you just arrived, but it’s time for them to start again. It’s important to keep young minds sharp and not waste the entire day in play.”

  Meenu and Krishna both had miserable expressions on their faces and drank the milk as if their cups were filled with poison.

  “Once you are finished eating, I want you both to fetch your books and sit here for two hours. I shall be back by that time.” Sadhana Aunty stood and put her papers inside a folder.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “I have some business to take care of. You girls needn’t concern yourselves with it.”

  After Sadhana Aunty had left the room, I turned to my cousins.

  “I came to say… I’m sorry. Can I still be in the play?”

  “Of course,” said Krishna, grinning with her mouth full of crumbling cake.

  Meenu pouted for a few minutes but eventually agreed to let me back in. “We’re on the verge of finding someone else, but I suppose you can come back. We’ll get back to rehearsals tomorrow morning.”

  While my cousins were studying, I wandered out onto the verandah and sat on the swing, watching the rain cascade from the roof.

  Closing my eyes, I inhaled the fresh scent. I always hated the way it smelled when it rained in Minnesota—like worms and wet grass. Here there was something pure and cleansing about a heavy rain, washing away the filth of everything that had preceded its arrival, leaving behind only pinpricks in the sand, like fairy footprints.

  “I’m tired of studying. I hate mathematics.” Krishna emerged from inside the house after about half an hour and sat beside me on the swing.

  “Won’t your mother be angry if she finds out you didn’t finish studying?”

  “She won’t find out…. If Meenu tells on me, then I’ll tell about how she tried to put Cutex on the cat and that’s how she got that scratch on her arm. It’s the summer holidays, I can’t believe—” Krishna stopped talking and I realized Nalini Aunty had joined us on the verandah, bouncing Balu on her plentiful hip.

  “Balu, don’t you have any pity for your poor mother? Can’t you ever sleep?” she was muttering.

  She placed Balu on the ground and eased herself into Muthashi’s rocking chair. Balu joyfully crawled over to Krishna, who scooped him up and began cooing into his ear. I watched them play, self-consciously aware of Nalini Aunty’s eyes trained on me.

  “Rakhee, what are those spots on your face?”

  “What?” My fingers moved to my face.

  “You know, those spots—all over your nose and cheeks.”

  “Oh, freckles?” I said. My face had become peppered with them since arriving in India, due to the long hours I spent under the hot sun.

  “Is that what they are called? It must be another thing you inherited from your Sardarji father.” She curled up her nose. “You know, I’m sure Dev could find some sort of remedy for that—you would be a much better-looking girl with a clear complexion. No one will ever marry you covered in those spots, not to mention those thick specs.”

  I picked up a pebble that was lying on the floor and pretended to examine it, hoping that she would not notice the tears that had sprung to my eyes.

  Nalini Aunty, having successfully plunged in her sword, rose almost as quickly as she had sat down. “Well, what am I doing here chatting with little girls? This is what my life has come to,” she chuckled to herself. “Let me see what those useless servants are getting up to in the kitchen.” She collected Balu from Krishna’s arms and plodded away.

  Once she left, unable to control myself, I hurled the pebble into the rain. �
��Why does she have to be so mean all the time? I hate her.”

  Krishna didn’t say anything; she just stared down at her toes. After a few moments of silence, embarrassment about my outburst crept in. Maybe Krishna thought I was being disrespectful of my elders. But then she turned to look at me and said in a conspiratorial whisper:

  “Come with me, I want to show you something.” She took my hand in hers; it felt hot and moist, and she seemed unusually excited.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Ssshhh, just come.” Krishna pulled me down the hallway and into a bedroom I had never seen before—the door was always closed and I had never dared open it. The walls were painted an uncompromising yellow. The bed was neatly made with a dark green spread, and matching curtains that looked as if they were made from burlap covered the window.

  “This is my mother’s room,” Krishna said.

  “Won’t we get in trouble?”

  Krishna shrugged. “She won’t be back for some time now—not until the rain stops, at least.” My mind immediately went to the walled garden, and for a second I allowed myself to indulge in a vision of the drenched flowers enclosed within, before I pushed the image away.

  Krishna went over to the closet and opened it. A row of monochromatic shawls and kurthas hung in a tidy row on one side, and a modest stack of saris sat piled on the shelf beside it. Crouching on the floor, Krishna stuck her arms into the closet and began feeling around.

  “Ah, here it is,” she said, and with some effort pulled out a dusty cardboard box.

  “What’s in there?” I was intrigued and impressed.

  “Family photos—old albums. My mother hid them in here, but I found them one day,” Krishna lowered her gaze. “Sometimes I come in here when no one is looking and open her closet. I like the smell of her things.”

  I kneeled down beside Krishna; she glanced up and smiled. “Anyway, you will never believe this.” She picked up the top album, placed it in her lap, and began flipping through. When she found what she had been looking for, she pushed it over to my lap and pointed to a formal black-and-white portrait of an attractive young woman who seemed familiar. Her petite frame was wrapped in a silk embroidered sari, and she wore a hopeful smile on her delicately rounded face.

  “Who is that?”

  “Guess,” said Krishna with a cheeky smile.

  “I have no idea. She seems so familiar, but I can’t figure out who it is.”

  “It’s Nalini Aunty.”

  I turned to face my cousin and laughed. “I can’t believe it, look how pretty she is, she’s so… so… skinny.” But it was true—when you factored in a double chin and sour expression, the face was undoubtedly Nalini Aunty’s.

  “I think this was taken just before she was married to Vijay Uncle. This is the picture her family sent to our family when the marriage was being arranged. She still looked like this when she first came to Ashoka, I remember. And she was even kind of nice back then, too.”

  “So what happened?”

  Krishna closed the album. “Living here has changed her.”

  I leaned forward. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s a feeling. There’s something not quite right about this place.” Tears filled her eyes, and she wiped them away with an efficient gesture that reminded me of Sadhana Aunty. “It’s a hard life here, Rakhee, and you don’t know, you’re only here for one summer. Then you get to leave. You’ll forget all about us.”

  “No, I won’t. I may have to leave, but I’ll never forget. I can come back, too, and you can come visit us in Minnesota. Have you ever been on a plane before?” Krishna looked so sad that I wanted to cheer her up by changing the subject.

  She sniffled and gave me a halfhearted smile. “Do you want to see some more?” She rummaged through the box and pulled out another album. Passing her palm across the cover, she cleaned off the layer of dust that had collected upon it.

  “This is our grandparents’ wedding photo.” The picture was printed on a thick cardboardlike material that had faded over the years of heat and neglect, but I could still make out Muthashan’s high forehead, the aquiline nose, the deep-set eyes that I knew so well. Muthashi looked incredibly young—she couldn’t have been much older than Gitanjali—with a face still soft with baby fat and eyes full of acceptance.

  “But why would Sadhana Aunty hide these photos? Why aren’t they kept out where everyone can see them? Why are there so few pictures hanging on the walls?”

  “My mother doesn’t believe in remembering the past. Anytime I bring it up or ask questions, she gets angry. She says we should just focus on what God has set before us in the present, and take care of what happens in the future.”

  “Who’s this?” I pointed to a picture of a lanky young man with curly black hair. He was sitting cross-legged on what appeared to be the verandah of Ashoka, smoking a cigarette.

  “My father,” Krishna said in a soft voice. “Sometimes I wonder if that is the reason why my mother never wants to look back… because she misses him. I don’t remember anything about him, but from his pictures I can tell that he was a nice man. My mother says he was always sick and that he just sat around reading all day, but I don’t believe her.”

  She began flipping through the pages again. “You’ll like this one,” she said, stopping finally, and passing the album back to me. “See, our mothers are still young here.”

  In the photo, a band of children stood in a haphazard cluster before a backdrop of trees. I examined the picture and determined that the children were in fact Sadhana Aunty, Veena Aunty, Amma, and Prem, and they were standing in front of the forest that grew behind Ashoka. The stone barrier had not yet been erected. My two aunts posed primly in their half-saris; Amma and Prem, who looked to be about my age, appeared decidedly more disheveled. Prem was smiling and poking Amma’s arm, and Amma, with a patch of mud on her skirt, was beaming from ear to ear. Judging from the picture they looked as if they had been the best of friends.

  “Let’s keep going,” said Krishna, flipping the page. “Here’s a family portrait.”

  Muthashan, Muthashi, Sadhana Aunty, Amma, and Vijay Uncle were all assembled on the sepia-colored front lawn of Ashoka. In the background everything appeared unchanged—the Ashoka trees lining the stairs, the cowshed, the goat pen.

  Muthashan sat in a chair beside Muthashi in the center of the lawn, and the children looked older than they had in the previous picture. Sadhana Aunty, who must have been about sixteen at the time, posed in a long skirt and blouse behind her father. Although she still wore the same serious expression, she seemed somehow lighter, softer than she did now. A roly-poly young Vijay Uncle, looking very much the same as his present incarnation, grinned complacently at Muthashi’s knee. Amma stood a bit away from the rest with her arms folded across her chest. Her chin was tilted toward the ground, but there was a flicker of defiance in the eyes that glanced up to meet the camera lens.

  I scrutinized the picture for a long time, searching Amma’s young, unmarred face for any resemblance to my own. As I stared, a spot at the edge of the photograph caught my eye and I brought it closer to my face. The spot, I realized, was actually the unfocused profile of a young woman captured unwittingly by the photographer. I ran my finger lightly across her face, mesmerized.

  I pointed out the woman to Krishna. “Who is that?” The woman’s features, though not quite beautiful, were arresting. But her eyes were what gripped me—huge, dark, and glowering. She seemed to be watching the scene with unfiltered hatred.

  “I never noticed her before,” Krishna said, taking the album and squinting into the photograph. She examined it for some time before dropping the album with a start. “Rakhee, it’s Hema.”

  “Who?”

  “Hema, you know, crazy Hema, the servant woman.”

  We looked at each other, unsure of what to make of our discovery. Meenu’s footsteps came thumping dramatically down the hallway.

  “Where is everyone?” came her i
mpatient call.

  “Quickly, we must put this away,” said Krishna.

  I nodded and helped her push the cardboard box back into the closet, understanding that as much as we loved Meenu, some things should be kept just between us.

  That night after dinner we all gathered around the television to watch the latest installment of a popular Malayalam serial. Amma seemed distracted and kept fidgeting and glancing at her wristwatch throughout the first half of the show. Eventually she got up and slipped out of the room, unnoticed by anyone but me. I hesitated at first—maybe she was just going to the bathroom or to get some water—but curiosity got the better of me when Amma did not return after a few minutes, so I, too, slipped out of the room.

  Amma was in the front yard. I hid in the velvety dark of the verandah. The trees surrounding the house stood out like inkblots against the sky’s deep blue, and the leaves were flocks of black bats lying in wait upon the branches. The low hoot of an owl sounded from somewhere above.

  Amma looked unearthly in her pale, rustling sari. The night air felt lovely and warm upon my skin, but somehow I was afraid. She was walking across the lawn, wringing her hands, her steps light and deliberate, her eyes rapt. She moved with purpose, as if she had a specific destination in mind, although she was simply pacing, treading across the same white streak of moonlight over and over again.

  Another figure emerged from the darkness of the front steps, another silent, unnoticed observer. I squinted through my glasses trying to identify the intruder.

  It was Prem.

  I knew then with utter certainty that it had been Prem who had been sending those letters to Amma. It was Prem who was taking Amma away from me and Aba.

  “Chitra,” he said, and Amma froze. Then she went to him, stumbling over the edge of her sari, wrapping her arms around his neck, and leaning her head against his shoulder.

  He tipped her chin back and began to talk to her, softly, intimately—I could not make out the words. His fingers caressed the rope of her braid. I crouched in my hiding spot, transfixed, as if I were watching two actors in a play.