“She locked herself in her room,” Saroj said, concern lacing her voice. “They wanted to ask her how she was doing and—”
“Why did you have to take her with you?” Avi demanded angrily. “Does the entire Indian population of the Bay Area have to interrogate her?”
“Avi,” Saroj protested, “she has to get out of the house sometime. How many days will you keep her locked in?”
Vasu was relieved that she decided to stay for another few weeks. As crude as she was, Shobha was right. Geeta was eighty years old, so close to death anyway. Devi was young, vibrant, depressed, needy.
She left her daughter and her husband to bicker in the living room, knocked gently on Devi's door, and then tried to open it. The door swung open easily and Vasu's heart clenched when she heard Devi's sobs muffled against the pillow, her body racked with a combination of despair and fury.
She sat down beside Devi and stroked her hair. “Come here, beta,” she said and Devi shifted to lie on Vasu's lap. Tears were still flowing but the sobs had quieted.
“People will not forget it for a long time,” Vasu said when the last of Devi's tears had seeped into her yellow cotton sari. “They will wonder. They will be fascinated.”
Devi shook her head and then more tears rolled down her cheeks.
“What you did is very juicy, Devi,” Vasu reminded her. “Gossip-wise, it is so interesting. If I were a lesser woman, I would want to call India and tell all my friends about it and hear them go, No, really.”
Devi let out a watery laugh and a fresh sob went through her and fresh tears blossomed and fell on Vasu's sari.
“Oh, beta, it is okay,” Vasu said and rocked Devi to and fro. “Life never turns out as we plan. People will talk, they always do, but you have to ignore that and live your life.
“That is what I had to do. You think if I cared I would have had those beautiful twenty-five years with Shekhar? And then when he died, I was no one to him, not even his widow. That was hard, so difficult. I gave him so much, took a lot in return, too, but in the end, he was someone else's husband. I was aware of it. The people around me were very aware of it.
“Every station I got posted to, there would be whispers and talk. When Shekhar would come for a visit, they would all gossip and make rude comments. I lived with it because I knew this was the price I had to pay for Shekhar.”
Devi looked up at her grandmother and for an instant Vasu thought that Devi would speak. She would talk, open up, the mystery of her attempted suicide would cease to be an enigma.
“Yes, beta}” Vasu asked hopefully, but Devi just shrugged and closed her eyes.
“You will be fine,” she said softly. “People will eventually forget, but until they do, you have to be strong and overlook them and their opinions. You are alive now, and that is all that matters.”
Death had become a friend to Vasu in the past few years. So many of her friends had passed away. Shekhar had left her, too, and now she was looking forward to dying. She was needed by Devi and that made her feel jubilant, but she also knew she was ready. Since Shekhar had gone she had been counting the days, waiting to leave as well.
Without him the world didn't make much sense. She wished Devi had someone the way she'd had Shekhar. He had been her anchor, her life. If only Devi had an anchor, someone who would keep her rooted, this would never have happened.
Maybe it was time to look for a suitable boy for Devi. It could be done differently. It didn't have to be a conventional arranged marriage. Vasu could just introduce Devi to the boy and then let them find out if they wanted to be together. Isn't that how a lot of young Indians were getting married in the States?
As Devi lay on her lap, Vasu started to make a list of people she could call in India who would know of a suitable boy in the United States.
Vasu always liked Avi. He was a good man, an ambitious man who had come so far in his life despite losing an arm.
As she sat across from him waiting for him to make a move on the chessboard she looked at the large pictures resting on the mantel on top of the never-used fireplace. Saroj had set off the pictures in brass antique frames, which she polished regularly.
There were four pictures, four events that Saroj probably considered important ones. One was of Avi and her on their wedding day. They had married in a registrar's office without the usual fanfare. Saroj had been disappointed, there was no doubt about that, but Avi had been so averse to marrying in the conventional way that Saroj had given in. Now when Vasu looked at the past she realized that Saroj seemed to have always been giving in to Avi.
Saroj looked bright and beautiful in the picture, nothing like the dried-up bitter woman she had become. She wore a red-and-white silk sari with flowers in her hair and a ruby necklace wrapped around her neck. But her eyes shone the most. They held bright expectation of the future. Avi looked disreputable in a gray suit. He hadn't shaved that day and there was a laconic look in his eyes. But he was smiling, and looking at that picture no one would doubt how much this couple loved each other. Now when Vasu looked at Saroj and Avi she wasn't sure if there was any love left.
Her heart constricted at that thought. No, her daughter deserved a happy marriage. After all that she had done and sacrificed to ensure a happy union, God wouldn't be so unfair as to mess up her marriage, would he?
The second picture was of Shobha and Girish's wedding. Saroj had pulled out all the stops for this one. This wedding had been the one she had wanted.
Shobha was dripping with jewelry in the picture, and it looked as if she were getting ready for third-degree Chinese torture instead of a happy future with her new husband. Girish looked uncomfortable in his south Indian wedding attire. The panchi was askew, his kurta completely wrinkled, and the red tilakam on his forehead seemed to be in his eyes. They both were smiling, but their eyes and smiles were empty.
Vasu remembered Shobha saying, “Thank God the ordeal is over,” when the wedding celebrations ended and she was ripping off her sari to wear something more comfortable.
How could it be that all three generations—grandmother, mother, and daughter—had been in unhappy marriages? How had fate twisted their lives to bring about this triple tragedy?
“Your move,” Avi said, leaning back and putting his pipe in his mouth.
“Hmm,” Vasu replied as she rested her chin on her hands, leaning forward toward the chessboard.
“She looks better,” Avi said with a broad smile when they both heard Devi's small laugh from the television area of the living room.
Saroj had divided the living room into three parts. There was an antique table with two chairs near the French windows where Vasu and Avi played chess. Sofas were ensconced around a large-screen television, music system, VCR, and DVD player in a separate area.
A third section, next to the kitchen and dining area, held another sofa set where the family entertained formally. It was only used rarely.
“What is she watching?” Vasu asked, looking over to see her granddaughter dip her hands into a bowl of popcorn as her eyes glinted with humor.
“Some movie,” Avi said and smiled contently. “She'll start speaking soon.”
“Is that why you're always at home?” Vasu asked as she moved her rook so that in the next three steps she could threaten Avi's queen.
“Hmm,” Avi said, wrinkling his nose and then looking at Vasu. “What do you mean?”
“No golf, no lunches, nothing. When I first got here your social calendar was too full, now you are always at home,” Vasu explained, and when Avi shrugged she put her hand on his. “She is not going to slip away if you get back to your life. You don't have to watch her all the time.”
“The last time I stopped she almost died,” Avi said, shaking his head. “Golf can wait, and why should I eat out when I have a master chef at home?”
The girls had always been important to Saroj and Avi. Sometimes Vasu felt that they had given up their lives for their children. She saw it all the time back home where couples f
orgot to be couples because they were busy being parents. Is that what happened to Avi and Saroj?
The third picture on the mantel was of the four of them, Avi, Saroj, a fifteen-year-old Shobha, and an eleven year-old Devi. Saroj wore a heavy brown-and-ivory-colored silk sari, Avi was in a dark suit, Shobha wore a classic green-and-red half sari, while Devi wore a maroon blouse with puff sleeves and a silk skirt in maroon and gold. They looked like a typical south Indian family. The picture was taken in India at a friend's wedding in Madras. In the background of the picture was the yet-to-be-used marriage mandap, decorated, ready for the bride and groom to sit in and be married.
This was the family Saroj always hoped for. Her daughters dressed traditionally, with white jasmine in their hair, a handsome husband by her side, and India in the background.
The happiness that was so evident in Saroj's wedding picture was not there in this one, though. The picture showed a contrived family. The happiness on their faces seemed fake.
The fourth picture was of Saroj, Vasu, and Ramakant. It was a black-and-white picture. Whenever Vasu looked at the picture she felt a pinch inside her. Is that what Ramakant used to look like? He was ordinary looking, just as Vasu was. They held hands while a three-year-old Saroj stood in between them, leaning slightly on her father. Vasu remembered how Saroj had hunted for that photograph when she was packing up to leave for the United States the first time all those years ago.
“I want it.” Saroj had been adamant.
“I don't know where it is. I don't even know which one you are talking about,” Vasu had said.
“I want it. That's the only picture with all of us,” Saroj had said, tears brimming in her eyes. And then she found it, hidden in a book along with other black-and-white pictures of Ramakant and his parents and family. She didn't take the rest, just that one where she leaned on her father's leg and her parents were holding hands.
Saroj was a pretty little girl. Her hair used to curl up when she was young. Now it was wavy. Vasu had always thought she had the brightest eyes and the prettiest smile.
How the days had flown by, Vasu thought fondly and sadly. Her little girl had her own little girls.
Devi laughed again, and Vasu felt some relief from the past. Even though she had never been able to have a sound relationship with her daughter, she had one with her granddaughter.
“Check, Vasu,” Avi said triumphantly and drew his opponent's attention back to the board.
“Not so fast, mister,” Vasu said and got to work on saving her king.
The Good Mother
Devi was a closet feminist.
Shobha was not in the closet. She wished things were different and accused feminists for screwing up her lot in life. “Some bitch burns her bra and now all of a sudden I have to work for a living and keep house. If it were the good old days I could happily sit at home doing nothing while Girish brought home the money.”
When Devi pointed out that Shobha could still do that if she wanted to, Shobha flared up. “But they already burned the bra and I'm already a different woman because of it. I can't go back and change how I feel about women who sit at home and don't work.”
That Devi concurred with. Because Saroj never worked, both her daughters had developed a healthy disrespect for homemakers. Devi didn't voice her opinion as loudly as Shobha did, but she didn't appreciate women who gave up lives outside their homes to be wives and/or mothers. It was women like that, she believed, who made it hard for career women like herself to break the glass ceiling. No matter what, every man who hired a woman thought about the woman going away on maternity leave and then not coming back to work because she didn't want to leave her child in day care.
Devi had seen it many times. And each time she saw someone do it, she was furious. Everyone has to have a role in society, and in her book of definitions a homemaker was defined as a lazy woman who sat home pretending to have a full-time job.
So it seemed ironic to Devi that she was spending most of her time in the kitchen, chopping and baking and stirring. She, who had never cooked, never been part of the kitchen militia, was a general now. She loved it. And she realized that she owed her culinary epiphany to her mother.
Even now as Devi started to pick out the spices to splutter into the hot oil for the masala lima beans, her fingers automatically went through the ingredients she had seen her mother pick up. Some black mustard, a little jeera, a little coriander, a little red gram dal, and she immediately started to stir, in exactly the same way as Saroj always did, to ensure that none of the spices got burned.
Her food tasted different from her mother's but she had learned to cook from Saroj and that made Devi feel closer to Saroj in a way she never had before. Silence and the kitchen had brought them together, and it was a time and place that Devi had started to relish.
Since Devi wasn't talking, Saroj followed suit and just asked nod-or-shake questions whenever needed.
“Is this some kind of masala dal variation?” Saroj asked as Devi put a bunch of coriander leaves in front of her. “Chopped small?” Saroj asked Devi, who nodded.
“I still don't know why you won't just talk,” Saroj said as she cut the coriander with a sharp knife. “It is okay that you made a mistake. You can talk … why are you adding Tabasco? Why can't you add apna homemade chili powder?”
When Devi just shrugged, Saroj sighed. “I should keep my mouth shut, I know. You are cooking as if you have been cooking since you were a little girl. God knows I didn't teach you, so where did you learn?”
Devi smiled and pointed to Saroj.
“From me?” Saroj asked, surprised. “Really?”
Devi nodded with a smile and Saroj smiled back, her pride shining in her eyes.
Life had fallen into a pattern for Devi, for whom patterns had never been relevant. She enjoyed waking up at the same time every day, cooking lunch, then dinner. She went grocery shopping after lunch to buy ingredients for dinner and the next lunch. There was comfort in monotony.
Vasu accompanied her to the supermarket, and Saroj helped her cook. Shobha and Girish showed up every evening for dinner. She knew her family was rallying around her and she knew why. Devi wanted to thank them but the words had disappeared. How could she just say thank you for what they were doing? How could that ever be enough? Since she couldn't think of a way to show her gratitude, to explain what she realized was the biggest mistake of her life, she decided to continue her silence.
It helped that Dr. Mara Berkley, whom she had visited three times since the “incident,” didn't find her not talking strange or insane.
“It's okay, you don't have to talk,” she had said in their first session, and after that had not pestered her to speak. She simply asked questions that could be answered with a nod or a shake.
“You'll speak when you're ready,” Dr. Berkley assured her. “But until then you still have to try to tell me how to help you. Your father tells me that you're cooking up a storm.”
Devi smiled shyly.
“Have you always enjoyed cooking?”
Devi shook her head.
“So, this is a new thing?”
Devi nodded.
“How did you learn to cook?”
And as she thought of the answer she realized that she had learned to cook from Saroj. She had watched her mother mix spices, grind ingredients, splatter oil, and burn dishes. She had seen her mother serve simple Indian food that tasted fabulous. Was she creating her own identity by cooking her own kind of food? She didn't know.
No matter how much she resented her mother's interference in her life, now she was starting to realize that every part of her life was touched in some way or the other by Saroj.
Pesky, annoying Saroj, who was always such a nuisance. A woman with no career and no self-respect, a doormat, had given her so much. She birthed her twice, once after thirty-five hours of labor and again in that bathtub when Devi slit her wrists.
Talking, or rather listening to Dr. Berkley forced Devi to assess her life,
past and present, and she had come to the conclusion that her mother had always tried her best, given all that she could. And slowly, but steadily, Devi stopped resenting Saroj. If only Saroj could see this as well and if she did, maybe she would stop being angry with her own mother. It was obvious to Devi that Vasu had shaped Saroj's life; influenced her in countless ways. A mother always touched her children's lives no matter what the children thought. In good ways or bad, the influence would remain.
And then Devi wondered if she would have made a good mother. If her baby, if she hadn't lost it, would have loved her or hated her. It had become easier to think about the baby now, to remember it with some joy and some sorrow instead of feeling like an utter failure each time she thought of little flailing hands and feet.
She had told Dr. Berkley about the baby. She hadn't meant to but she slipped up and her secret had spilled out. Dr. Berkley gave her a lump of Play-Doh in their second session together, so that Devi could start communicating using shapes and images. Devi hadn't thought she could conjure up anything with her fingers, but when Dr. Berkley asked her what she felt she had lost the most, the clay shaped itself into a baby.
“Was it a miscarriage?” Dr. Berkley asked.
Devi nodded, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Is that why you wanted to die?”
Devi nodded again and then shook her head and then nodded again. That was one of the reasons, but there were so many other reasons, one tangled up in another.
“Are you scared of telling your family about the baby?”
Devi nodded. It was not just simple fear, it was a mountains-big fear.
“Was the father of the baby an old boyfriend?”
Was he ever her boyfriend? No, he wasn't, so Devi shook her head. And then because she didn't want to talk about this anymore, she dropped the clay she was holding into the sparkling glass ashtray in front of her. And as she realized that she had dropped her clay baby into an ashtray her eyes filled again and she started to cry. When she came home after that session, she felt some peace, and felt clean for the first time since she'd almost died. Something inside her told her that it would all work out and that she would eventually heal. She would soon start finding the words again, the right words that she needed to tell her family about the baby, its father, and the “incident.”
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