by Kamala Nair
“Come on,” cried Meenu, and we ran even faster.
As I sprinted through that rain something peculiar happened. Even though the sky was still flashing and pounding with lightning and thunder, my mind went silent. I was filled with calm and a sense of purpose. The old woman was right. I couldn’t keep hiding from what was right in front of me.
Aba’s words drifted back: There’s nothing more thrilling than digging for the truth and finding it. All this time I had been giving in to fear. What would Aba say if he knew what a coward I had been? Yes, there was no question, I had to go back.
When we arrived at Ashoka, nobody was around to see us sneaking inside, drenched to the bone. We dispersed to our respective rooms and I stripped off my clothes, laying them across the chair in the corner. I went into the bathroom and filled the bucket with cold water. Once the bucket was full, I used the plastic cup to pour it over my body and rubbed my skin with soap until it felt raw and clean.
My decision to go back to the garden made me feel both exhilarated and lonely. An invisible wall had been erected between me and my cousins. This was not an adventure that I could bring them along for, not even Krishna. I had to do it alone.
Chapter 13
The next morning I awoke just as dawn began to fill the room with a pink glow. I slipped my dress over my head, combed my hair, and polished my glasses. Just in case Amma woke up early and popped her head into my room, I stuffed a pile of clothes under the sheets on my bed and shaped them into a long, thin lump.
The morning was silent and I felt lucky—even the birds still slept. Rummaging through my suitcase, I pocketed the mango wrapped in a handkerchief, which I had stowed in one of the zippered pockets the previous night. I had stolen it from the kitchen when no one was looking. It might be unwise, I thought, to show up empty-handed.
Then I went over to the bed and slipped my hand beneath the pillow, pulling out the other thing I had stolen from the kitchen—a knife. I held it up and watched the sun flash across the polished silver blade. Carefully I placed it in my pocket beside the mango. My nerves pulsed as if fireflies were flickering on and off just underneath the surface of my skin. When I tiptoed outside, I breathed in the cool, light air. Pearls of fresh rainwater clung to the trees, and the wet sand was black and smooth beneath my worn soles. At that early hour everything seemed changed, bewitched. Feeling energized, my legs carried me quickly, effortlessly, over the stone barrier, into the forest, and down the narrow pathway.
It felt easier this time. My body instinctively knew when to turn, when to dodge an errant branch or a rogue thorn. In the early morning light, the green of the jungle was so hectic and brilliant, I felt as if I were in a dream. By the time I reached the stone wall, I could hardly feel my legs. A large banyan tree grew a few yards from the wall; I knelt atop a mound of roots, which gathered like a tangle of ancient fingers just before the door and once again peered in through the keyhole. The garden appeared untouched. Everything was exactly as I had left it except the flower petals were dappled with raindrops. An overwhelmingly sweet fragrance seeped from the crack below the door. I pulled the knife from my pocket and squeezed the wooden handle in my fist. Putting my mouth against the keyhole, I called:
“Hello? Who’s there?”
The white peacock was sipping water from the pond. It raised its head at the sound of my voice and regarded me with a curious expression.
I waited, but when nothing happened I called out once more: “Please, let me in,” and then, because I didn’t know what else to say, “I come in peace.”
Immediately I regretted the words. This wasn’t a movie. I could actually be in danger.
Then—
“Who are you?” came a voice from the other side, and I lurched back as if the door had erupted into flame. The knife slipped from my hands, tumbling as it fell and grazing my shin before it disappeared into the mass of banyan roots. I pressed my finger against the bud of blood blossoming against my skin, cringing. But this was not the moment to back down in fear. I steadied myself.
“My name is Rakhee Singh. Who are you?”
“Why are you here? Who sent you?”
The voice was soft and feminine, yet tinged with hostility. And strangest of all, it spoke English. I had not expected this.
“Nobody sent me—I just decided to come here on my own.” I prayed that I had not roused any sleeping Rakshasis, drunk and drooling, waiting on the other side with their clubs.
“But why have you come? How do you know about this place?” said the voice.
“I found it. I’m visiting for the summer and I’m staying nearby. My mother grew up around here.”
“Are you alone?”
“Yes. Are you?”
“Does my teacher know that you are here?”
“Your teacher? I don’t even know who your teacher is.”
“I think she would be very upset if she discovered you here.”
“Can you at least tell me your name?”
“Why should I tell you my name?”
The more I spoke to the voice on the other side of the wall, the less afraid I felt. Whoever or whatever she was, I was fairly confident she was not dangerous. But I wasn’t getting anywhere by being direct, so I decided to try a new tactic.
“Okay then, I guess I’ll go since I seem to have bothered you,” I said, and turned. I walked only a few feet before the voice called out:
“Wait, don’t go!”
I wheeled around. “What did you say?”
“Please, stay. I’ll answer your questions, I promise. Just don’t go.” Now the voice sounded plaintive, almost desperate.
“All right, I’ll stay, but only for a little while.” I sat down on the ground and leaned my back against the door.
“My name is Tulasi,” the voice offered.
“Are you alone?”
“It is just me, my peacock, and the garden.”
“No one else lives there, then?”
“No.”
Could it be that the terrible face I had seen belonged to this pretty voice? I had, after all, been sick that day. Maybe I had imagined it. I wanted to look through the keyhole again, but I wasn’t sure how to do this without being obvious.
The voice put me at ease. I felt at home with it. The horror I had felt for so long was now all of a sudden laughable.
“May I come inside?”
“The door is locked from the outside and I do not have the key. My teacher has it,” said Tulasi.
“Your teacher?”
“Yes, she comes to visit me every day.”
I realized she must mean Sadhana Aunty. “You mean, you don’t go to a proper school?”
“No.”
“Don’t you ever leave, then?”
“Never. It is for my own protection,” said Tulasi.
“But don’t you want to leave?”
“Why ever would I want to leave?”
I couldn’t think of an answer. “Well, to see the outside world,” I finally said.
“I have everything I need here—my garden, Puck, and my books. Besides, I’m not like other people. I’m different.”
“Oh,” Again I was at a loss for words. “How old are you?”
“Sixteen, and you?”
“Almost eleven.”
“So was it you who came here before?”
“Before? What do you mean?” I knew exactly what she meant, but I felt ashamed about my hysterical reaction.
“You ran away screaming. You gave me the fright of my life,” Tulasi continued.
“Oh, that. Sorry.”
“For a long time after that I was terrified. I could not stop wondering who you were and where you had come from. But it is funny, I am not afraid anymore. In fact, I do not think I ever was truly afraid. I remember I saw something very sweet in your eye.”
I was embarrassed, but pleased. “Thanks.”
“You have a funny way of speaking. I have never heard anyone speak like you before.”
&nb
sp; “I’m not from around here. I’m American.”
“Do you have a mother and a father?”
I thought this an odd question. “Yes, but my father is back home in Minnesota. My mother and I are just visiting for the summer.”
“My mother is a plant,” said Tulasi in a matter-of-fact tone. “I’m named after her. She lives in a temple.”
I started to worry. Tulasi sounded like she might be out of her mind.
“I like talking to you,” she said. “I’m sorry that I was impolite. It is just that I have never had an unexpected visitor before. I did not know what to do. But I am so glad that you came. I feel very safe with you for some reason. I want to show you my garden and introduce you to my peacock.”
“Well, I can’t exactly come inside.”
“Perhaps you could wait for my teacher to arrive. She could let you in.”
“No, no, I couldn’t do that,” I said. “Listen, you can’t tell anybody about me, okay? We could both get into big trouble.”
“You are right. Teacher wouldn’t like it. But I do not understand why. I do not want to do anything bad. Why is talking to you bad?”
“No, it’s not bad. It’s just that I’m not supposed to wander this far away from the house. My mother would be worried. She doesn’t know I’m here.”
“It must be lovely to have a mother who worries.”
Maybe she was insane, this Tulasi, but she was also nice, and we did have one thing in common—loneliness.
“I guess so,” I said. In order to break the awkward silence that had sprung up between us I pulled the mango from my pocket. “I have a present for you. Can I throw it over?”
“Yes, please.”
Scrambling to my feet, I shuffled backward, then hurled the fruit and watched it sail over the wall. It landed with a thud on the other side.
“A mango. How kind of you. Thank you, Rakhee Singh.”
“You’re welcome,” I said, pleased that I had had the foresight to bring something along.
“You said you are from Minnesota? What sort of land is that?”
“Well, it’s not really a land, it’s more like a state. I don’t know, it’s not very interesting.”
“But what does it look like? What sorts of people live there?” She sounded like a hungry child begging for food.
I tried my best to describe Minnesota—our house, Merlin, the Plainfield Clinic full of doctors, the cornfields and how they went from green to gold to brown to white as the seasons changed.
“How wonderful,” Tulasi breathed.
She kept asking me questions, weird questions, and she barely took time to process my answers, just dove into the next question: “What does the sky look like in Minnesota? Is the moon white and does it change shapes? Can you see the stars from there, too?”
After a while I started to feel exhausted, and I realized by the distant crowing of the rooster that the morning was wearing on and my absence would soon be discovered.
“I’d better go now, but I’ll come back,” I told her.
“I have an idea,” said Tulasi. “Do you think you could find a rope? You could climb over the wall. It would be like the story of Rapunzel, except my hair is not long enough. Once I tried to grow my hair out but Teacher made me cut it.”
I wondered how she knew about Rapunzel. “Yeah, I think I could find some rope,” I said, feeling excited again. “I’ll have to come back tomorrow, though. Everyone will be waking up soon and they’ll notice I’m gone.”
“Will you vow to return?”
I hesitated only for a moment before I said, “I promise.”
“At the same time?”
I swore to return with a rope at the same time the next day. “See you then,” I said.
“Until tomorrow.”
I turned and ran back through the forest, light-headed.
I had done it—I had taken one step closer to figuring things out. There was no Rakshasi in the forest, only a sixteen-year-old girl; a nice girl who seemed like she could be a friend, even though she was kind of odd. But why was she there, and how did she get there? Why had Amma forbidden me from meeting Tulasi?
The longer I stayed at Ashoka, the more removed I felt from my regular life, from my regular self. Not long before, I had thought I was too old to believe in witches and monsters, but now I was not so sure. Part of me had wanted to laugh when Tulasi told me her mother was a plant, but another part believed her. What other explanation was there? The only reason I could think of as to why the grown-ups would keep her hidden was that Tulasi had some kind of magical powers. Either that or I was going crazy and had imagined the whole thing. I wondered if I would go back tomorrow and find that the wall, the garden, the cottage, the peacock, and Tulasi had all vanished.
I stole back into my bedroom, undetected, and changed into my nightgown. I walked into the kitchen a few moments later, yawning and sleep rumpled. Amma was sitting alone at the breakfast table, a satiny robe wrapped tightly around her shrinking frame, her eyes misty, and her hands pressed around a teacup, from which a thread of gray steam unraveled.
“Morning, sleepyhead,” she said, blinking like a doll and changing back into smiling Amma, as if a switch had been turned off, then on.
“Good morning,” I said, and slid into my seat.
Janaki appeared from the kitchen, carrying my breakfast.
“Now, Rakhee,” said Amma, “I’m feeling a bit better this morning—is there anything you’d like to do together today? It looks like it won’t rain for a while at least—we could go for a walk or something.”
“No thanks.” Why did Amma suddenly care so much about spending time with me, now that I actually had found something that interested me, something that I cared about? “We probably have play practice—Meenu’s been working us pretty hard,” I said.
“Oh, I see. Well, I’m glad you’ve found something to keep yourself busy and that you’re getting along with your cousins.” She fiddled with the chipped handle of her teacup for a moment, before saying, “You like it here, molay, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I guess so. I mean, it’s all right and everything, but I miss home. I miss Aba.” I emphasized the last part.
“Of course you do.” Amma looked sad.
“By the way,” I added. “Do you know where I could find some rope? We need it—for the play.” How casually the lies rolled off my tongue!
“Hmm, rope? Hari must have some—I’ll go and ask him for you.” Amma got up from the table and wandered off. She seemed eager to do something for me.
She returned a few minutes later with a long, thick piece of rope encircling her arm. “Will this do?” She gave me a hopeful smile.
“That’s perfect,” I said, my lips twitching.
After lunch, Meenu and Krishna wanted to play foursquare, a game I had taught them, and which we played using an old basketball that Muthashi had brought back from her visit to Minnesota years before. It clearly had never been used and barely bounced. But they seemed delighted to have discovered a new game and were deterred neither by the ball nor by the fact that we were only three people, since Gitanjali rarely agreed to be our fourth.
But this time my heart wasn’t in the game. All I could think about was that I would finally be meeting Tulasi face-to-face. It was only a matter of hours now. This thought thrilled me but also filled me with a sense of my own disloyalty. My cousins bounced the ball back and forth, laughing, talking, teasing, as if nothing had changed. But things were different, so different now that their companionship seemed suddenly stale.
I also began to wonder what my real reason was for not confiding in at least Krishna. Was it because I didn’t think she would believe me, or was it because I wanted to keep Tulasi all to myself? I had been angry at Amma for not telling me her secret, and now I was doing the exact same thing. But in spite of my guilt, I still knew I would not tell Krishna, not yet, maybe not ever. I was not ready to share Tulasi.
When it became clear that one-third of the par
ty was distracted, our game dispersed, and I retreated to my room where I would have the privacy to daydream. I had stowed the rope that Amma gave me under the bed; I pulled it out, sat down, and held it in my lap. I ran my fingers across the glossy, hay-colored bristles. The rope was heavy, and I imagined that it was not a rope, but a snake coiled upon my legs. I held it there for a second, then shoved it off onto the floor and slid it back under the bed with my foot.
I went to the window, leaned my elbows on the sill, and looked outside at the cloudless sky. A ray of sun shone like a spotlight through the tops of the trees, as if some rare gem was hidden deep inside the heart of the forest. I wrapped my hands on the window bars and pretended that I was in prison, a game I sometimes played when I was alone in that room. I was the prisoner and Muthashan was my jailor, watching over me from the black frame on the wall.
As I stood there, I heard Amma’s voice in the next room:
“Finally, we’re alone. I thought she’d never let us out of her sight.”
“Well, you can’t really blame her after what happened the last time we were left alone, can you?” said another voice that made me clench the bars so tightly my knuckles went white.
“Prem, don’t joke,” Amma said. “We only have a few minutes before she’ll notice I’m gone, and we have a lot to discuss. She’s been watching me like a hawk. I’ve been going mad.”
“Just tell me one thing: have you made your decision? I can’t wait much longer.”
“You’ve waited all these years, you can’t wait another week?”
“Chitra, why did you come here? If you were just going to toy with me, you shouldn’t have bothered at all. I can do this alone, you know, and I will, because it’s the right thing, and I’m finally in a place where I can do it. But it won’t be the same without you. I need your help. And you know how I love you. You say you’ve been going mad? I can’t even tell you what hell these years without you have been for me. I haven’t even really been living. With you, I could live again.”