by Kamala Nair
I felt a rush of wind as something streaked past my head.
Krishna.
She grabbed my sandal in one hand and my wrist in the other. “I know where we’ll be safe.”
My body came back to life.
The road veered off to the right and tapered into a thin pathway. I recognized it immediately.
The temple.
The iron gates of the temple were unlocked. We pulled them open, hurled ourselves into the courtyard, and pushed them shut. The barking grew louder, then faded just as fast.
We paused, leaning our backs against the gate, letting the relief wash over us.
“Come.” Krishna led me through the courtyard, past the goddess, past the shrines, and toward the brick wall.
“What are we doing here?”
“Rakhee, there is nowhere else to run. We will be safe under the Ashoka tree.”
I limped after Krishna, following her to the end of the brick wall, through the long grass, and to the tree, where we both collapsed against its trunk.
As my breath came back to me, I reached for my cousin’s hand.
“Thank you. You saved my life back there with the shoe. I don’t know what happened to me.”
“You are welcome.” Krishna gave me a wan smile.
After that we were quiet for a long time, huddled together, watching and waiting. For what, I don’t know.
Neither of us could sleep, but I was so exhausted that everything seemed distorted and exaggerated. The thrum of insects, the crying of birds, the faint breeze singing—they were all sinister sounds, and the grass was so green under the moonlight it hurt my eyes to look at it.
The well loomed in the near distance. The lair of the yekshi. I tried to pretend it wasn’t there, but my eyes kept falling upon its smoky gray silhouette.
“Krishna, do you think that story about the yekshi is really true?” Just saying the word made my skin prickle, and yet I couldn’t help asking, as if talking about it would somehow make it less scary.
“There have been stories,” said Krishna, “of strange things happening near the well. People say they have seen… her.”
“What does she look like?” The air was warm, but still my teeth chattered.
“I don’t know, Rakhee. I don’t want to know.”
“It can’t be true,” I said.
A soft wind began to whistle in my ears. It ruffled the branches of the Ashoka tree, which showered us with red petals. I held out my arms and caught them in my palms and Krishna sat up and gazed at the curtain of petals, her mouth hanging open in awe.
I closed my eyes, consumed by a sense of peace. “Nothing can touch us here.”
Krishna did not say anything.
I opened my eyes. Awe had been replaced by an expression of horror.
“Krishna?”
She pulled me so close to her that I could feel her breath on my cheek and her ribs bearing into mine.
“What is that?”
“What is what?”
“The yekshi.” Krishna was shaking so hard that my body, too, began to shake.
“Krishna, stop it, you’re scaring me!”
“Rakhee, it’s her. It’s the yekshi!”
I saw her, too, then. A figure dressed all in white running through the field toward the well.
“It’s real, she’s real.” The words fell from my dry lips, and the song of the wind turned back into a terrible drumbeat.
Beside me I felt Krishna slump over and fall into the grass.
Let me faint, too, I begged. Or let me be dreaming. But I was awake and I could not look away.
The yekshi reached the well and paused before climbing up on the stone rim, where she crouched like an animal. Slowly she rose, stretching out her arms on either side of her willowy figure. I watched her hovering there, a faceless form with a black flag of hair. Her body began to sway back and forth. I opened my mouth and tried to scream, but no sound came out. At the same time that her knees buckled, my breath caught in my chest. The yekshi let out a great, throttled cry, then lurched off the edge of the well and plunged down into its depths.
Chapter 23
I was drifting.
My entire body ached. I was cold and wet, but my head was nestled against something soft and wonderfully strong.
A light rain misted my cheek, the sort of drizzle that follows a downpour.
I tried to open my eyes a crack and saw a slender crescent of light. I lifted my lids a bit further, even though it hurt to do so. Up ahead, a man was carrying a limp rag doll in his arms.
My eyes fluttered.
Then came a voice, concerned and questioning, close to my ear. “Rakhee?”
Hope, radiant as morning, filled my chest.
“Aba!” I tried to call out, but I could not get the sound to rise up past my throat. My eyes closed again and I had no choice but to continue drifting.
The next time I awoke, I was lying in bed, clean and dry, with a bandage across my foot. Amma and Aba were sitting in chairs on opposite ends of the room.
“Krishna?” My throat was so parched that I did not recognize my own voice.
Amma came forward with a glass of water and held it to my lips.
“She’s fine. But she has a high fever. She’s asleep in her room. Thank God Vijay and your father found you when they did.”
“Aba,” I said next, and water dribbled out of my mouth.
He came over to the bed, sat down next to Amma, and put his arms around me. He had finally come. I could not help myself. I started to cry.
“Rakhee,” he said, stroking my hair.
I tried to choke out the story of Tulasi and the garden, but it came out more in a jumble of senseless words strung together.
Aba shushed me. “I know. Amma has just now told me everything.”
“Where is she? What have you done with her?” I turned to Amma and felt my strength coming back, along with my anger.
“Tulasi is safe,” Amma said. “She is with her father. She is with Prem. We went together to fetch her from the garden. We told her the truth. She’s very confused but she’ll eventually understand. We’ll get her the help she needs.”
Aba flinched. I started to speak but Amma interrupted me.
“Rakhee, Aba and I need to talk to you.” She paused and we both turned to Aba.
Now that the initial excitement had died down, I was able to really see him for what he had become over the course of the summer—a shadow of the man we had left behind in Plainfield. Thin with hollows in his unshaven cheeks and tortured eyes.
Amma bit her bottom lip. “Rakhee, I’m so sorry that I haven’t been honest with you and that I let things go as far as they did. I will never forgive myself for that. When I saw that you had run off, when I thought that I might have lost you—” Amma’s voice cracked and so did something inside me. Bringing my knees up, I hugged them to my chest and buried my face. I could not even look at her.
“I never wanted you to find out about Tulasi in the way that you did. It’s just that I’ve been so confused and so sad. It was only when I heard what they were making Gitanjali do that I realized I had to make things right again. I can’t keep running away from my past. Rakhee, your father and I, we both love you very much, but—it simply isn’t working between us anymore. And if we stay together unhappily, it will be even more miserable for you. Rakhee, molay, won’t you please look at me?”
I shook my head and Amma sighed.
“Aba and I have decided to separate. I want you to come to Trivandrum with me. We can start a new life with Prem and Tulasi. And you can visit Aba whenever you want and spend the summers and holidays with him. I’ve already promised him I’ll go back on my medication. Things will be better, I swear to you.”
The mattress shifted and I raised my head. Through the screen of my tears I saw that Aba had stood up and strode away. His back was facing me and he was leaning against the wall with his head bowed.
Amma kept talking, though her voice wavered. “Prem
has built a house for us. And he has found a doctor who can help Tulasi, and a great school for you. We can send Merlin over on a plane. I know it will be a huge change, but I think you’ll grow to like it. I know we can be happy together. I can’t erase my past mistakes, but I can at least try to make up for them now.”
As Amma spoke, the horror of the choice I had to make became increasingly clear. If I went with Amma and Prem I could be with Tulasi, and we could grow up together, side by side, as we were meant to. I could never get back the years that Amma had stolen from us, but at least we could have a future. This possibility sent a surge of indescribable happiness through me. I could handle moving to India; I could even handle Prem, if it meant Tulasi and I could be together. But could I handle leaving Aba behind and becoming a part of Amma’s betrayal? For a fleeting moment, the prospect of a life with my beloved sister hovered in front of me, a glittering bubble of temptation. But even though it felt as if I were severing a limb in doing so, I knew I had to turn away from it. In truth, I had no choice. Whether Aba knew he needed me or not, I could never abandon him, even if it meant that I had to give up Tulasi.
A numbness began to spread through me. I had expected that if the moment of our family’s separation ever came I would shout, stamp my feet, sob, and make a fuss, but my body seemed to understand that it had outgrown such tantrums. I looked into Amma’s eyes and said: “No.”
“What?” Amma took my hand but I pulled it away.
“No, I’m not coming with you. I’m going back to Plainfield with Aba.”
“Rakhee, I know you’re upset, but that’s not possible. Aba can’t take care of you by himself, and I need you. I need you with me.”
“Aba, I can come back with you, can’t I?”
Aba turned around; a light had entered his eyes. “Of course you can, Rakhee, if that’s what you want. I just assumed you’d choose to stay with your mother. I mean, I don’t have much to offer you. Are you sure you’ll be happy with just me?”
“Yes, I will, I know I will. I want to stay with you.”
“You don’t mean that, molay.” Amma’s lips trembled.
Before I could tell her that yes, I did indeed mean that, Sadhana Aunty came into the room.
“Good, you’re awake,” she said crisply, as if all of what had passed between us had been a bad dream. Her face was paler than usual. “Rakhee, where is Gitanjali?”
I wanted to turn away from her, to ignore her, but I found that I could not do it. She looked too sad, too broken. I was not the only one, after all, who had lost Tulasi.
“I don’t know. Isn’t she here?”
“No, if she was here, I would not be asking you this. She disappeared last night. Did she not run away with you and Krishna? I expected all three of you to be found together.”
“No, she wasn’t with us,” I said.
Sadhana Aunty’s face went a shade paler. “Now that we don’t have to hide Tulasi anymore, there is no need for the wedding to go on. Vijay and I have seen to it that any evidence of her existence has been destroyed. And Dev is gone. He took all the money and ran off to God knows where. But I cannot tell her that because she is nowhere to be found.”
Gitanjali had disappeared.
As I processed this fact, the previous night replayed itself across my mind with the clarity of a film.
The temple.
The tree.
The white figure running through the field.
Her long black hair.
Her piercing cry.
In the light of day it was so clear. How could I not have known? There was no yekshi. There never had been.
At that moment, with everyone looking at me, I wanted nothing more than to shrink under the sheet and stay there forever.
But I could not.
“Rakhee, what is it? Are you feeling sick?” said Amma. I swallowed the nausea and cleared my throat.
“Is there something you are not telling us, Rakhee?”
Sadhana Aunty stepped forward and I took a deep breath.
“Yes,” I said.
They fished Gitanjali’s body from the old well that same day, and almost immediately the stories began to spread. The villagers said that her spirit had come back to haunt them, that she had returned in the form of a white peacock and had been seen in the forest, roaming and wailing. “They say it was a suicide,” they whispered.
The funeral was simple and private. Mourners left parcels of food at the front gate, but no one dared venture beyond. After the funeral, Sadhana Aunty went into her room and did not come out for two days. Vijay Uncle shut down the hospital and spent hour after hour in the toddy shop. Nalini Aunty and Meenu watched television as if their lives depended on it, and Krishna was still too sick to get out of bed. A few times I tiptoed into her room hoping we could speak, but she was always tossing and turning in her bed, and even though it was a fitful sleep, I did not want to wake her.
Because things were so strained with Amma, Aba was staying in the spare bedroom at Veena Aunty’s sister’s house. He tried to convince me to stay there, too, but I refused. Despite everything that had happened, I could not bear to leave Ashoka.
I floated through those last days alone, bereft and empty. Aba came and visited me every day but we did not talk. He would bring his work along and sit on the verandah for a few hours each day. During that time, Amma would make herself scarce. I sometimes sat with him, but other times I retreated to my room where I would lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling. All summer long I had yearned for his presence, and now that he was here I did not know how to talk to him or be with him. Even though he was trying, I sensed that he felt the same way about me. Without Amma there between us, everything was different.
This was not how I thought it would end. I had vowed to spend the summer bringing our family together and we had never been more separate.
I found my sister, then lost her. Gitanjali was dead. Amma and Aba were getting a divorce. And I was too tired to fight anymore.
On the afternoon before we were scheduled to leave—Aba and I back to Plainfield, Amma to Trivandrum—I found Amma in her room, packing.
“We’ll take the first train tomorrow,” she told me with tears in her eyes, refusing to believe that I was not coming with her.
I slept badly that night, and in the morning I rose early, bathed, and dressed. I packed the rest of my clothes, zipped up my suitcase, and dragged it out onto the verandah, where Aba was already waiting.
“We have to get going soon. The driver is here,” he said. “Let’s go see your mother.”
Amma, too, had finished packing, and she was sitting at the dressing table in a yellow sari, her hair in a braid, staring at her face in the mirror. She looked like a young girl. I saw two train tickets lying out on the table.
“Chitra,” said Aba.
Before any of us could speak, Sadhana Aunty entered the room.
She was completely different from the queenlike woman I had first encountered a few short months ago. Her face, stripped of its pride, was haggard and had never looked so old.
“You all are leaving now?” she said, her voice hoarse.
Amma blinked up at her sister. “Yes, I’m afraid we must.”
“And you are going to him?”
Amma paused. “Yes.”
Sadhana Aunty looked at Amma. “You cannot.”
“I have to. He’s waiting for me. Vikram and I have talked about it, and we agreed it’s the best thing for us both.”
“Chitra, you cannot go to him,” Sadhana Aunty repeated.
Amma stood and her cheeks reddened. “I have to. It’s all been decided. He’s waiting for me.”
“No,” said Sadhana Aunty, “he is not waiting for you. I have already telephoned him.”
I felt Aba’s hand tense up on my shoulder.
“What are you talking about?” There was an hysterical edge to Amma’s voice.
Sadhana Aunty passed through the doorway and sat down on the edge of Amma’s bed. She began t
o smooth the coverlet with her fingers.
“Our father told me something before he died. He told me in the strictest confidence. Only I and one other living person have known about this, all these years. Prem is not who you think he is.”
“What are you talking about?” Amma repeated.
“His parents adopted him as an infant. He really belongs to Hema. Many years ago, when she was a servant in this house, she became pregnant but refused to name the man responsible. Prem’s parents, who were themselves childless after many years of trying, took pity on her. She was young, low-caste, and penniless, with no husband. They agreed to take her in and raise the child as their own. They have kept her on as a servant out of pity, but they never told Prem he was not of their blood and they never let her take on any sort of role beyond that of a servant. And even they never knew who the father was. Hema may have lost her mind, but she never lost her loyalty, I will say that much for the woman.”
“Where is this going? Why are you telling me this?”
Sadhana Aunty paused and turned to me, as if she had forgotten I was in the room until now. “Rakhee, why don’t you go and wait outside? We will be out in a moment,” she said.
I started to protest, but Aba patted my back. “Do as she says, Rakhee.”
He steered me out of the room and closed the door.
I stood outside for a long time, scuffing puffs of dust around with my foot, unable to hear anything but muffled voices coming from the other side of the door. Finally Sadhana Aunty came out and peered down at me. I had seen many emotions whirling in those sharp black eyes—hatred, disgust, contempt—but now I saw something new and confusing: triumph. Sadhana Aunty’s lips curved up into a smile.
“What happened?” I wanted to sound nonchalant, but my voice betrayed me.
“Your mother won’t be going to Trivandrum after all,” said Sadhana Aunty before she turned and walked away, leaving me alone.
A swell of unbridled hope consumed me. I did not know what had caused this sudden change. But all I could care about in that moment was the thought that if Amma did not go to Trivandrum, then she could come back to Plainfield with us. And maybe Prem would let Tulasi come and live with us, too.