The Girl in the Garden (37 page)
I fold up Prem’s letter and sit for a long time, thinking.
This story that I am writing for you has almost come to an end, and I am still so confused.
I am not sure I have it in me to do what he asks. I am not sure I am strong enough. I am not sure I can forgive. I am not sure of so many things. It would be so much easier to crumple Prem’s letter up, to throw it in the trash, to burn it, to keep running. But what would I be running toward? I close my eyes and think of you. If you were here right now, you would tell me to calm down and stop worrying about all the things I am not sure of and start concentrating on the things I do know.
I open my eyes. I do know I no longer want to hide. I do know I want to fill up that empty space I have carried inside me ever since that summer day my father and I drove away from Ashoka. I do know that I want the chance at a future with you.
I unfold Prem’s letter and read it one more time.
I
step off the plane in Trivandrum, and the shock of heat makes my billowy dress stick to my limbs. As I move across the tarmac with the other bleary-eyed passengers, through customs and immigration, through baggage claim, and finally through a set of glass doors marked Exit, it occurs to me that after a series of delays in New York and London, and a long layover in New Delhi, three days have passed since I left home. Three days since I slipped out of my fiancé’s sleeping arms in the dead of night. I have stayed awake most of that time, thinking about him and also about what lies ahead, but now that I am finally here, adrenaline takes hold and propels me forward toward the teeming throng of friends, relatives, and drivers holding up signs.
I scan the sea of faces, afraid at first that I will not be able to find her. But I immediately pick out the pregnant, flush-cheeked young woman standing at the front of the crowd waving her arms in the air as my cousin. Her wide, sweet smile puts me at ease right away.
“Krishna.”
“Rakhee.”
I find myself breaking into a run and throwing my
arms around her. We embrace, and then she pulls away and links her arm with mine, grinning.
“You didn’t tell me.” I nod toward her round belly.
She blushes and shrugs. “I wanted it to be a surprise. And I had a feeling you would be coming back here soon. Come, let us get out of here. The driver will take your bag.”
Trivandrum is frantic. The roads are packed with people—in cars, on bikes, on motorcycles, pulling rickshaws. Horns blare, cows moo, men holler, dogs bark, but inside the car with Krishna it is peaceful. I am nervous, yet relieved. For the first time in years, there are no secrets, no façades. I can be myself.
Krishna has the driver stop and buy us lime sodas from a shop at the side of the road. We sip our cool drinks through straws and talk about married life, about school, about Meenu’s new dental practice in Bangalore, and about Tulasi’s students. After a while, the subject turns to Amma.
“She is really excited to see you, Rakhee,” Krishna says. Over the years, Amma has been a topic we have generally avoided. “I have never seen her like this. She has been cooking nonstop ever since she found out you were coming, and she has even bought new curtains.”
These details are so mundane, so normal, as if I am a child coming home to see her mother after being away at school for a few months. A lump forms in my throat.
“Do you… see her often?”
“Only once or twice a year before, but ever since Sunil and I moved here from Cochin two years ago, I visit much more often. Mostly so I can see Tulasi, who I know feels badly that I am always the one to make the trip—it takes some time, you know, since my house is on the other side
of the city, and you can see the traffic for yourself—but whenever Tulasi visits me she is so timid and uncomfortable, I just hate doing that to her if I can prevent it.”
“How has my mother been? Does she seem lonely?”
“I don’t know, Rakhee, it’s funny. In some ways, she does seem lonely. Terribly lonely, and of course that makes sense, considering her situation…. She lost you and your father, and she has always been fragile. But in other ways, she seems strangely at peace and confident with the life that she leads. The people here, they talk. They do not understand why such a vibrant, attractive woman would choose to live by herself like this, like an ascetic. She has had her share of suitors, but she turns them all away, never giving anybody a chance. And Prem Uncle, too. The three of them—Chitra Aunty, Tulasi, Prem Uncle—they all keep to themselves. They are a bit of a mystery to the people here. The story going around is that Chitra Aunty and Prem Uncle were once married and that they have since divorced but remain on good terms, and while I have not corrected it I will never understand why they have remained apart all these years.”
My stomach begins to churn. “But Prem, he looks after her?”
“Of course. He has been as attentive as a husband when it comes to making sure she is safe and has everything she needs. But they both seem sort of sad around each other, and I cannot quite put my finger on it.”
The driver says something over his shoulder in Malayalam. Krishna turns to me. “Would you like to go straight to your mother’s house, or shall we stop at my place first so you can freshen up?”
“Let’s go straight there,” I say automatically.
Krishna gives instructions to the driver, then leans
across the seat and touches my arm. “It will be okay, Rakhee. I will be with you.”
I try to respond, but when I open my mouth nothing comes out, so we sit in silence for a while. I rest my head against her shoulder, absorbing the fact that I am not only about to see Amma but Tulasi, too. For all these years Tulasi has been a disembodied voice at the other end of the telephone or words on a page. Now for the first time since that summer, she will be a flesh-and-blood person again, my sister.
“We are getting close,” Krishna says after a few minutes, and I straighten up. She smiles at me, and again I get that warm, safe sensation.
“Krishna, are you happy?”
“So happy,” she says, beaming. “Sunil is wonderful. He has been very good to me, and he is so sweet about the baby. I came home the other afternoon to find that he had converted his office into a nursery. Imagine that! I do not know of a single other husband in Trivandrum who would do such a thing.” She flushes and then her face darkens. “Rakhee, sometimes I feel so guilty, though, as if it is wrong for me to feel such happiness. Perhaps it is because of our family. My mother, she is such a sad woman, and she has been that way for as long as I can remember. And my sister…”
“But Meenu is doing so well—”
“Not Meenu. Gitanjali. Sometimes I think about her, about the life she should have had, and I feel guilty that I am living it instead. Sometimes I wonder if I deserve to be this happy.”
Now it is my turn to touch her shoulder. “You do deserve it, Krishna. You deserve happiness more than anyone else I know.”
“And what about you, Rakhee?” she says. “Are you happy?”
The lump in my throat rises, hovers, then subsides, and I smile back at her. “I will be.”
The car turns onto the road where Amma lives, and I am suddenly short of breath. “Let me out here.”
“But you will not know which house is hers,” says Krishna.
“Yes, I will,” I assure her.
“All right. I will meet you there later, then. Good luck.” Leaving my bag with Krishna, I make my way down the quiet road, tucked away from the jam-packed buses and graffiti-splashed walls of the city, guided by the invisible thread that connects me and Amma still, even after all these years and my desperate attempts to sever it.
I smell her garden even before I see it, and I quicken my pace to a run, stopping, breathless, at the entrance gate. I lift the latch and step inside.
Amma’s touch is everywhere, in the swarms of flamebright lilies, in the rose-dappled vines creeping along the side of the house, in the parrot-green bushes growing wild over the gate.
“Rakhee.”
At first I think it is Amma, but then I realize the radiant woman with tears in her eyes coming toward me is Tulasi. I take in the long black hair and the lovely face with only a slight scar on her upper lip and a faded pink cloud on one cheek to hint at the girl she once was. I am so nervous and happy my entire body is trembling.
She must be nervous, too, because she stops in front of
me and bites her lip. We cannot stop staring at each other.
“You look so much like her,” I manage to say.
“So do you,” she responds, reaching out to touch my hair.
Now I have tears in my eyes, too, and I can feel my face collapsing and my shoulders beginning to shudder. Tulasi closes the space between us and puts her arms around me. We stay like that for a long time.
I separate from her only when I see a face appear at the window, and vanish just as quickly behind the curtain. My heart is racing.
How will Amma look? Will she be old? Will she be fat? Will she have white hair, like Sadhana Aunty and Hema? Will I even recognize her?
“Come, wipe your face, Rakhee,” says Tulasi in a tender voice, drawing a handkerchief from her pocket. “We will have plenty of time to catch up, you and I. And she is waiting.”
I pat my face dry. Tulasi extends her hand. I pause and look over my shoulder at the road, which is illuminated by the sun, caught in that fiery red moment just before it sets and everything goes dark.
This is it. My chance.
I turn back to Tulasi, take her hand in one of mine, and close the gate with the other.
“Ready?” she says, but I am no longer looking at her. Amma has come out onto the verandah and is leaning against a pillar, watching me. Just like in my dream, she is dressed in the white cloth of a widow, but her figure is full and blooming with health, and her face, though older and tinged with sorrow, has lost none of its beauty.
“Come, Rakhee,” says Tulasi.
I allow her to guide me forward through the garden
and up the verandah steps. Only when I am standing directly in front of Amma does Tulasi release my hand and move aside. Amma and I gaze at each other for a few seconds before she reaches out, grasps my shoulders, draws me forward, and presses her nose against my forehead. She takes a slow, deep breath, the way Muthashi used to do.
Then she lets go of me and reaches over to pick up a yellow plastic package and a pair of scissors from the verandah ledge.
“This just arrived for you,” she says in the voice I remember. “It looks important, I think you should open it.”
I cannot believe that at this moment, of all moments, Amma is concerned about something as practical as a package. I take a step back, but Amma thrusts the package and the scissors toward me, and only then do I notice the handwriting and the Connecticut postmark. Shaking, I tear it open and pull out a tiny blue velvet box. I know this box.
Tulasi nudges me. “Open it,” she says, smiling.
I do as she says, and inside I find the diamond ring I left behind.
My ring.
Our ring.
“Well, aren’t you going to put it on?” Amma says.
I slip the ring back on my finger, where it belongs.
“Let me see.” Amma takes my hand in hers as if to examine the ring, but then she curls her fingers around mine. With her other hand she reaches for Tulasi, and soon both of our heads are buried in Amma’s shoulders, and she is smoothing our hair with her hands and murmuring, “My daughters, my daughters.”