The Girl in the Garden

by Kamala Nair

  “But is it safe to keep her around here?” Amma’s hand was at the base of her throat.

  “She is too old and sick to be turned away. I will keep an eye on her. She will do no more harm to this family.”

  I left the room to find Krishna so I could tell her about what had just happened, and found her on the verandah steps, holding a striped cat in her lap, and watching something.

  I sat down beside her and followed her eyes to Hari, who was holding an axe and standing in front of a mango tree near the well in the corner of the yard. The tree had a giant gash in the side of its trunk and was beginning to droop. Hari was shirtless, and his thin, dark chest was glazed with sweat. He twisted his palms around the handle of the axe, pulled back and struck at the gash with all his might. The trunk swayed and dipped.

  “What’s Hari chopping down that tree for?” I asked.

  “They’re going to use it to make a pyre for Muthashi—you know, for the cremation,” Krishna said, stroking the cat’s bristled fur. I had never seen Krishna, or anyone for that matter, holding that cat. It stalked around the yard, the fur along its spine raised in a perpetual mohawk of disturbance, its eyes wide, yellow, and unblinking. Occasionally it would turn its head to look at you and hiss. As far as I had known, it was feral. The servants fed it out of pity and the family tolerated its lurking presence, but nobody ever touched it. Now here it was, snuggled in the crook of Krishna’s arm, its ears flattened against its head, meek as a gurgling baby.

  “I pluck mangos from that tree every spring. They are so delicious,” said Krishna. She nuzzled the cat against her cheek and it purred lethargically.

  “Chee, get rid of that thing and wash your hands.” Nalini Aunty was standing behind us. “You both must come with me. We are about to start.”

  Villagers began to arrive, moving up the stairs, across the lawn, and into the house. Eventually a single-file line of mourners snaked from the sitting room all the way to the lawn, spilling down the steps and onto the road. Krishna knelt in the doorway and I crouched above her. Amma, Sadhana Aunty, and Vijay Uncle were all standing near Muthashi’s body and watching as one by one mourners stepped forward, each placing a magenta and gold cloth over Muthashi’s head until a massive heap had accumulated, obscuring her face.

  A miracle seemed to have occurred in the few hours since I had last been outside. Someone had strewn multihued petals—orange, white, red, pink—all along the ground from the edge of the verandah to the bottom of the steps of Ashoka, forming a pathway that was surrounded on either side by a border of lamps in full flare. Flames shivered and blazed, and the smell of smoke rose into the air, choking, intoxicating.

  Women were not allowed to be present at the actual cremation site, so the last time I saw Muthashi she was being carried out of the house on a bamboo stretcher by Vijay Uncle, Prem, Dev, and another man whom I did not recognize. I ran after them as far as I was allowed to go, across the lawn, through the wrought-iron gate, and down the steps, where I halted, slightly out of breath, watching as the men carried Muthashi through that path of flame and flowers as though she were a bride on a palanquin.

  They brought her across the road and vanished into the grove of trees behind the hospital. Krishna had told me the land our family owned stretched far beyond the perimeter of the hospital, and that the cremation would take place about half a mile away from the house.

  I stood at the bottom of the steps for a long time, even after the final scarlet streaks of sun had been erased by a shimmering blue twilight. In the distance I could see a thin plume of smoke curling through the treetops and into the sky like a sinewy black finger.

  Veena Aunty came outside to join me. “Rakhee, are you all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why are you still out here, why don’t you come inside? It’s been a long day,” Veena Aunty took my hand, but I resisted. I had been waiting to talk to her and now was the perfect opportunity. She was the one, out of all the grown-ups, who I could rely upon to tell me the truth.

  “Veena Aunty, it’s been a weird summer,” I began.

  “I’m sure it has been,” she said with a laugh that struck me as uncomfortable.

  “I have so many questions—”

  But Veena Aunty interrupted me with a sorrowful expression. “Hush, not now. We’ll talk about everything soon, I promise, but I just can’t do it today.” She wiped away a few tears that had begun to pool in her eyes. “You know, I loved your Muthashi like she was my own mother. When I was a kid I was over here even more than I was at my own house. It’s different for my sister Valsala; she was too young, so she never really hung around with our group as much. It was always me, Sadhana, Chitra, Vijay, and Prem, and your grandmother treated us like she had given birth to us all, there was no difference.” Veena Aunty sighed and rubbed her chest as if she were in pain. “Now that she’s gone this place doesn’t feel the same. She was the heart of this family. Even in these last years when her mind was starting to go, she never stopped being the heart of this house.”

  We began to walk back up the steps, but at the top step Veena Aunty paused. “Before we go in, let me ask you something, Rakhee. How has your mother been? Has she seemed—okay?”

  “What do you mean, ‘okay’?”

  “Has she been acting differently, you know, from what you’re used to?”

  “She cries a lot now, and she gets these headaches,” I said, “really bad ones. And one second she’ll be happy and the next second she’ll be sad.” I didn’t mention anything about Prem or about what I had seen that afternoon back in Plainfield when Amma had flushed all her pills down the toilet.

  Veena Aunty’s jaw clenched, and relaxed. “I’m sorry, this must be hard on you. But don’t worry, it’s going to be okay,” she said, and then her tone went from anxious to playful. “Now let’s get you something to eat. I thought a summer in India would fatten you up, but you’re still way too skinny.”

  At dawn Vijay Uncle went into the backyard carrying a silver platter covered in newspaper. He placed the platter on the stone barrier that divided the yard from the forest, and bent his head down low. I saw him from my bedroom window and ran outside in my nightgown.

  “Vijay Uncle, what are you doing?”

  “Oh hello, Rakhee, aren’t you up early,” he said with a sad smile. “Just watch and see.”

  We stood there side by side in silence. Vijay Uncle kept acting like he was on the verge of doing something, but he’d suddenly chicken out. Finally, after a few minutes had passed, he leaned forward and whipped the newspaper off the platter with a quick motion, as if he were ripping off a bandage as painlessly as possible.

  The platter was adorned with round, white balls made out of rice.

  “Now”—Vijay Uncle took my hand—“we wait.”

  “What are we waiting for?”

  “Sssshhh.”

  I was beginning to wonder if Vijay Uncle was going crazy, or if maybe he had been drinking, but then I heard a flapping sound coming from all directions. The sound grew heavier and more oppressive, and fear began to burn like a marching trail of fire-red ants up and down my spine.

  “Ah,” said Vijay Uncle, “they have arrived.” He took my hand and guided me back toward the house.

  We stopped and turned around when we were a safe distance away. A cloud of cawing black crows, larger than any bird I had ever seen before, had congregated on the stone barrier, wings beating, attacking the rice balls with a fierce appetite.

  “This is good, very good,” said Vijay Uncle. “This means that our ancestors are blessing us, they are blessing this house even though Muthashi is gone. They are pleased with us.”

  He gave my hand a happy squeeze, but something in his voice made me think he wasn’t at all convinced.

  Chapter 18

  Rakhee, where are you?”

  It was Tulasi’s voice—there was no doubt about it.

  I opened my eyes and sat up. The room was soaked in moonlight.

  “I
waited and waited, but you never came, so I left the garden to find you.” Her voice was floating in through my window, delicate and mournful. “Now I’m dying. Please let me in. I don’t want to die alone.”

  Tulasi’s face, ghost-white, was gazing in at me, and her two translucent hands gripped the window bars.

  “Let me in, please,” she said again.

  I reached out to touch her hands, to reassure her, but they were icy and wrinkled, like Muthashi’s hands. I recoiled and flung myself facedown on the bed, pulling the sheet over my head.

  “I’m sorry, I couldn’t come, it wasn’t my fault,” I sobbed into the pillow.

  She moaned and rattled the bars. “Let me in, let me in, let me in.”

  I lifted the sheet; all the flesh had melted off Tulasi’s face and she was a skeleton.

  “Now see what you’ve done! I’m dead, I’m dead,” the skeleton shrieked and stuck its arms, thin as tuning forks, through the bars, straining down toward me.

  I cowered under the sheets. “Please, go away, just go away, I’ll go to the garden tomorrow, I promise, just don’t touch me.”

  I would do anything as long as those horrible hands didn’t come near me.

  The next thing I knew, I was being rocked back and forth, my head pressed against Amma’s breast.

  “Ssh, wake up, molay, you’re having a bad dream,” she crooned into my ear. “That’s all it is, a bad dream.”

  I broke away from Amma and leaped to the window. There was no one there. The moon had ducked behind a murky bank of clouds, and the sky was black as a bat’s wing.

  “What happened?” I asked, climbing back into bed.

  “I heard you shouting,” said Amma. “Do you want to come and sleep with me?”

  “No,” I turned my face to the wall. Amma hesitated before leaning over to kiss my hot, wet cheek.

  “As you like,” she said, and left the room.

  I was afraid that if I let myself fall asleep again the skeleton would come back, so I took a book out of my suitcase and began to read it under the covers with my flashlight. But despite my best efforts, sleep drew me back under its net. When I finally surfaced it was late morning and the house was alive.

  All morning the skeleton danced a crazed jig in my head. I needed to go back to the garden, to see Tulasi and to explain my absence. So after lunch I made a lame excuse when Krishna asked me to play with her, and I recklessly slipped around the back of the house and through the forest.

  “Tulasi!” I called, when I got to the wall. I waited for a few moments, but when I did not hear her usual rustling about on the other side, I climbed over, ripping open the newly hardened calluses on my palms.

  The grass crunched beneath my feet as I landed in the garden, which appeared to be shrinking; the flowers were beginning to shrivel and sag; rotting fruit and dead leaves littered the ground.

  I called my friend’s name again with greater urgency in my voice. I walked up to the cottage door and knocked, but there was no answer, so I put my hand on the knob and turned. It opened with a low creak.

  “Tulasi?” My weak voice echoed back at me.

  I moved through the sitting area, the kitchen, the bed. I yanked back the mosquito netting and found the bed neatly made and empty. Even Puck was nowhere in sight.

  I coughed and put my hand to my throat. She was gone. It was too late. I knelt upon the hard, cold floor.

  “Rakhee,” said a familiar voice.

  My stomach lurched and I looked up to see Tulasi standing before me with Puck resting upon her outstretched arm as if it were a branch.

  “You scared me,” I said.

  “I wasn’t expecting you. I haven’t seen you for days. I thought you had forgotten about me.” Tulasi’s voice was flat. She appeared to have lost weight.

  “I’m sorry. I wanted to come, I really did, but something happened and I wasn’t able to.”

  “What happened?”

  “Somebody,” my voice cracked, “somebody died.”

  Tulasi’s eyes grew wide. “Oh, how wretched! Pardon my selfishness, Rakhee, that is terrible. Who was it that passed?”

  “Actually, I’d rather not talk about it,” I said.

  Tulasi regarded me for a moment before letting Puck flutter to the ground. Moving to the kitchen, she began to boil water for tea, as if nothing had changed between us.

  When we had settled down on the sofa, Tulasi bit her lip and said: “Rakhee, I have been thinking, and there is a favor I must ask of you, if it is not too much of a bother.”

  “What is it?” I said, my ears pricking up. “I’d do anything for you.”

  “Really?” she smiled, “Well, you see, I have been pondering a great deal over the last few days. I have learned so much about the world since you came into my life, and I realized—I cannot believe this never struck me before, but…” She paused, then continued, “I have no idea how I… look.”

  My mouth went dry.

  “I mean, I have a general idea—I know the color of my hair and my skin. But I have only ever seen myself in the pools of rain that puddle in my garden, and the reflection is so distorted and blurry. I long to know how I really look. I asked Teacher if she could bring me a mirror, and she scolded me and delivered a lengthy lecture on the perils of vanity. I was so despondent because I feel awful going on without having a clue how I look. I mean, I know being vain is a deplorable quality, but I must know, Rakhee—am I beautiful?” She looked at me with expectant eyes.

  “Yes, you are,” I said automatically.

  A glow of happiness lit up her face. “Really, you really mean that?”

  “Yes,” I said, “yes, I do.” And I really did mean it. The first time I saw her I had been shocked and revolted, but the more I got to know Tulasi, the more her looks ceased to matter. In fact, I hardly noticed her deformities anymore. A teacher at school had once told our class, “Looks don’t really matter, it’s what’s on the inside that counts,” and I had scoffed at her. Of course looks mattered. I would have given anything to trade places with Lindsay Longren, to look into the mirror and see her long, flowing golden locks and blue eyes pure as the sea. But since meeting Tulasi, I understood for the first time what my teacher had meant. Tulasi was the most beautiful person I had ever seen, and I had never felt closer to anybody else. Sadness at the thought of leaving her consumed me, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell her about my impending departure.

  “I am so happy to hear you say that, because you are the only person I truly trust now and I simply could not bear to be ugly. Teacher has deceived me once. I do not know what else she may have been deceitful about. But still, as much as I trust you, I must know for myself. Would you please bring me a mirror? Teacher never has to know.”

  It would have been easy to bring her a mirror. I could swipe Amma’s compact from her makeup bag and stash it in my pocket. But I did not want to be the one to show Tulasi the truth about her face.

  “Um, there aren’t really any mirrors where I’m staying,” I said.

  For a moment Tulasi’s chin trembled. Then she brightened and said: “You have always talked about how much you love drawing. Perhaps you could draw my portrait?”

  I wrung my clammy hands, not knowing how I could get out of this one. “Sure.”

  “Wonderful!” she exclaimed, and reached out to hug me. “You are my best friend.”

  “I’ll be back tomorrow with my sketchpad,” I said, worried about what I had gotten myself into. “I should go.”

  “I shall be waiting for you tomorrow.”

  When I got back to the house, Krishna was sitting on the verandah step.

  “Where were you?” she said, her lips plumped to a pout.

  “I just went for a walk,” I said a little too quickly. “To the village square.”

  “Everyone’s been mad with worry. You’ve been gone for two hours. They sent Hari out to search for you. You’d better go tell your mother you’re back. She’s in the dining room.”

  I ran to
find her.

  “Rakhee,” Amma sprang out of her seat and clutched me to her breast as soon as she caught sight of me. “My God, where were you?”

  I didn’t answer. The material of her sari wadded and bunched up in my mouth. I couldn’t speak.

  Amma’s face was red. She shook me by the shoulders. “Answer me, where were you?”

  A dam burst inside me and I began to bawl. I wasn’t expecting that. Neither were Amma or Sadhana Aunty. Amma let go and looked at me in shock. My body quaked and it felt so good that I couldn’t stop.

  “Rakhee, where did you go, what has happened?” said Sadhana Aunty, getting up out of her chair and taking a step forward.

  Knowing I was in deep trouble and could not offer any ordinary excuse, I grasped at a story I had once overheard a girl surreptitiously telling another on the playground, a story that had haunted me for weeks afterward. I seized at the memory, which I had never mentioned to anyone, and made it my own. The words tumbled out, clear as if I had rehearsed them beforehand: “I just wanted to get some chocolate, so I went to the market. But on my way home I saw a tall shadow behind me. I turned around and there was a man standing there, a weird man. He pulled down his pants and showed me his thing.” At this, I sobbed so hard I could barely speak.

  Amma’s face went white. “Oh my God,” she whispered. “Oh my God, my darling, my poor darling.” She hugged me and started to cry.

  Sadhana Aunty pried us apart, sat me down on a chair, and gave me a handkerchief. “Yes, and then what happened?”

  “I was scared, so I ran and hid behind a tree. I hid until I was sure the man was gone. I didn’t know what else to do.” Bringing the handkerchief to my nose I blew loudly and noisily.

  “What exactly did this man look like?” she said, after I had wiped my face.

  “I don’t know. He was tall, he had curly dark hair and a moustache.” I sniffed uncertainly. “He was missing some teeth,” I added.

  Sadhana Aunty made an impatient sound. “That could be any man in the village. Where exactly did this happen?”