A People's History of Heaven
Page 24
the week that deepa gets married, Vihaan’s grandfather’s brother’s wife dies. Our mothers say that when an elderly relative passes away right after a wedding, it’s good luck. But then, our mothers tell us being a boy is good luck, and being a girl isn’t. So really, they don’t know anything about luck at all.
We watch the funeral procession from Padma’s roof. Deepa’s father drives his auto-rickshaw in the front of the parade. Honks to part the traffic of two wheelers and pedestrians, compact cars and goats. The nadaswaram players look and sound like honking geese with thin brass beaks. Everything and everyone is covered in yellow and orange and white geraniums, petals as soft and thin as wings.
“What do you think heaven is like?” Banu asks. Leans back on her scratched-up elbows, fingers the paint staining the inside of her sleeve. “I mean, not our Heaven. Actual heaven.”
“It’s one long wedding,” Joy says. “And I am always the bride.”
“Like anyone would marry you,” Rukshana says, but she doesn’t mean it. Joy hits her anyway. Just so something stays the same.
“Chee! Forget the wedding. The wedding night. Now that’s real heaven,” Deepa says. Laughs a laugh that quivers with a secret knowledge her body now holds.
“It’s a library full of big fluffy cushions,” Padma says. Janaki Ma’am’s gotten her a scholarship for eleventh and twelfth. Says Padma can keep it all the way through college.
Which makes us think that the scholarship is actually just Janaki Ma’am’s bank account, but we’re not quite sure.
“It’s a riverbank and a jungle and a farm,” Rukshana says.
“Wherever it is, there is always biryani, and there is plenty of music,” Deepa says. “And there are never any chores, so you always have time to dance.”
“If that’s heaven, then I might actually start being good,” Rukshana says, dangling her feet off the roof’s edge. She looks like she’s kicking the sky.
Heaven, our Heaven, stretches below us, its pathways buzzing with the histories we gave it. The tree where Rukshana fell in love. The church where Joy became herself. The thicket where Banu’s ajji found out the truth about her husband. The truth that would save us the first time the city came for us, but not the last.
The funeral procession winds toward us. We can see the body now, covered in a white sheet, carnations the color of fire. The air is dense with beating drums, bleating horns. Noise to let the soul know that she’s still home. That wherever she goes, this clutter and chaos will always be here. On the ground.
“What do you think, Banu?” Padma asks. “What’s heaven like?”
“This,” Banu says.
Our heads and legs are propped on each other’s laps, stitched together like a quilt of girls—or, maybe, now, of women. Raised above the sagging sofas, the dry summer hum. On this rusty roof, we feel a little bit closer to the tops of the trees. A little bit closer to the sky.
“Yes,” Joy says, “this.”
Acknowledgments
this book would have been impossible without the support of so very many people. Thank you to the Fulbright Foundation for funding the research behind this project, and to all the women and girls who allowed me to enter their worlds. Especially big thanks to the women of Kodihalli Circle, particularly Sumitra, Geeta, Sujata, Varalakshmi, and Yashoda. Thank you to Greeshma Patel, Perumal Venkatesan, and Devi Viswanathan for your help with Picturing Change and beyond.
Thank you to Chuck Adams, my editor, whose patience and insight made my first foray into literary fiction such a rewarding journey. Thank you to my early readers and friends Sally Campbell Galman, Zainab Kabba, Jill Koyama, Shabana Mir, Rohini Mohan, Cambria Dodd Russell, Lori Ungemah, and Bijal Vachharajani. Thank you to Ammi-Joan Paquette and Jacinda Townsend for judging early excerpts of the book for contests, and for their encouragement. Especially big thanks to Ishani Butalia and Maura Finkelstein for their repeated reads and support. Especially, especially big thanks to Minal Hajratwala, who gave me the professional, emotional, and literary support I needed to take this from a draft to a book. I couldn’t have gotten here without you.
Thank you to Leigh Feldman, who is technically my agent but is actually my therapist. Thank you for believing in me and for always telling me the truth. Thank you also to Ilana Masad, who pulled this manuscript off the slush pile, gave me fantastic edits, and continues to be an invaluable friend. The two of you changed my life, and I will be forever grateful.
Thank you to Jayanti Akka, Malli Akka, Padma Akka, Savita Didi, Sujata Akka, and, most especially, Velu Akka for your help with domestic work and childcare. Without these women, many of whom come from communities like the ones in this book, I would never have had the privilege to write.
Thank you to my mother-in-law, Prema Narasimhan, for giving me the space to write. Thank you to Bamini Subramanian and Ram Subramanian for always believing in me, and for all of your love.
Santhosh Ramdoss, you are truly the partner of my dreams. Swarna Narasimhan, your presence in my life is the greatest gift I have ever been given. I love you both with all my heart. This, and every story I have ever written, is for you.
Mathangi Subramanian is an award-winning Indian American writer, author, and educator. She is a graduate of Brown University and the Teachers College of Columbia University, and the recipient of a Fulbright as well as other fellowships. Her writing has previously appeared in the Washington Post, Quartz, Al Jazeera America, and elsewhere. This is her first work of literary fiction.
Published by
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225
a division of
Workman Publishing
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014
© 2019 by Mathangi Subramanian.
All rights reserved.
Two chapters previously appeared in slightly different form in the following publications: “Banu the Builder” in Hunger Mountain, and
“Half-Wild” in DNA India
This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA: https://lccn.loc.gov/2018028812
eISBN 978-1-61620-942-1