The Mango Season (8 page)

“Neelima?” Sowmya persisted, and Neelima threw the last piece of mango down forcefully.

“Just that,” she retorted angrily. “Your parents treat me like garbage and mine treat him so well. If things don’t work out and if Anand persists on making his parents happy, what choice do I have?”

I was shocked. Divorce! Was she talking about divorce and being a single mother?

“But I am pregnant now,” she added, and then shook her head. “Anand and I are very happy together.”

Sowmya was pleased with that answer. “My parents will come around.”

It was a hollow promise. They would finally, someday, accept her, but she would always be the woman who stole their sweet, little, innocent boy.

“Let us get out of here before one of us gets a sunstroke,” I advised the duo, and we went downstairs to cook lunch.

Lata and Ma were already in the kitchen chopping vegetables, talking about a wedding they had attended a couple of weeks ago.

“She was fat . . . so fat,” Lata was saying. “And he . . . What a catch!”

“I heard that they gave thirty
lakhs
in dowry, and that was just hard cash, plus a new Honda,” Ma said conspiratorially.

“Thirty
lakhs
. . . So much money they have and they bought her a nice husband with it,” Lata shrugged, and they both looked up at us when we entered the kitchen.

“Can I help?” Neelima asked politely, and was immediately shooed away. She didn’t cry this time; just twirled around and asked Sowmya to show her the new saris she had bought at a sari sale last week. I sat down on the floor next to my mother and looked at the vegetables in steel containers that were strewn around.

“There is half a coconut in the fridge,” Lata informed me. “You will need it for the
avial.
”

I got the coconut out and attached it to the coconut scraper and churned the metal handle. Thin coconut slivers started to fall into a steel container.

My mother got up to leave. I knew she was not happy that my grandfather wanted me to cook. I didn’t know when I joined a race with my mother, but I felt like she charted everything that
Thatha
said on a scoreboard and the score today was: Priya—one, Ma—zero.

“My back hurts,” Ma complained unconvincingly, even as she rubbed her hand on the small of her back. “I will go rest with your
Ammamma
. You can take care, can’t you?”

I made an assenting sound but didn’t look up from my coconut.

“She is unhappy with you,” Lata said, as she brushed an errant hair from her perfect, heart-shaped face.

“She’s always unhappy,” I said sulkily, and she laughed.

“You have to eventually get married,” Lata said. She pulled a flat block of wood toward her and tugged out the folded blade that sat on it. She leaned her perfectly pedicured right foot on the block and started slicing potatoes on the sharp knife. Her gold toe ring and the bright red nail polish glimmered against the worn wood.

“Eventually, I will get married,” I said. “I never figured out how to use that knife. I was always scared that I’d walk into it.”

“It is easy,” Lata said, and sliced another potato with a flourish. “So, do you have a boyfriend? Is that why you keep saying no to marriage?”

Was she being perceptive or merely voicing a popular familial opinion that my mother had failed to tell me about?

“I’m just twenty-seven, plenty of time to get married,” I evaded. “And please don’t tell me how when you were twenty-seven you were married with kids.”

Lata dropped another sliced-up potato into the big steel bowl of water to keep it from changing color. “I won’t tell you that because you already know it. But twenty-seven is late. When will you have children? The sooner the better, otherwise . . . you may not be able to have children.”

“Maybe I don’t want any children,” I said annoyed. Was there no originality among the women of my family? One aunt said I should learn to cook so that my husband won’t starve, while the other wanted me to get pregnant in case my reproductive organs gave up on me. And adding insult to injury was my mother who wanted me to marry any man who made what she considered “good money.”

“All women want children,” Lata said negligently. “So, my brother who lives in Los Angeles told me that nowadays Indians— not those foreigners, but Indian girls and boys—live together . . . do
everything
when they are not married. Why can’t they simply get married?”

“Because they want to live together for a while, not spend the rest of their lives together. Maybe they just want to test the waters. Marriage is serious business. You don’t marry the first guy you sleep with or live with for that matter,” I said for the sole purpose of scandalizing the living daylights out of her.

From her shocked facial expression, I knew I had succeeded. But I knew she would mention this to my mother, or worse, to
Thatha
, and then there would be questions galore.

She looked at me sharply. “Would you live with a man without marrying him?”

Talking to Lata felt akin to walking into enemy territory where booby traps lay everywhere. “Does everything have to be about me?” I commended myself on the poker face I wore.

Lata continued to chop potatoes. “You know, Anand and Neelima . . . they did
it
before marriage. I think that is why they got married.”

“Because they had sex?” I stopped scraping the coconut and then started again.

Lata picked up a bottle gourd, as green in color as the cotton sari she was wearing, and started to cut it into big chunks to make it easy to peel and then chop for the
pappu
.

“We are not like all those white women who have sex with hundreds of men. We marry the man we have sex with. Neelima trapped him,” she said.

“Why would he marry her because he had sex with her? How should that matter?” I knew it was pointless to discuss Neelima or the institution of marriage with Lata, but my mouth ran away before I could put a leash on it.

“Anand is a nice boy,” Lata explained her twisted logic. “Neelima seduced him and he had to marry her.”

“So they’re not a happily married couple?” I asked over the sound of the scraper rolling inside the now bare shell of coconut. I discarded the shell and ran my fingers through the white slivers of coconut lying in the steel bowl.

Lata placed a yellow pumpkin lying next to her in front of me. I put it on top of the elevated wooden chopping board my mother had been using. I then rose to pick out a large, smooth-edged knife from the knife holder standing by the sink.

“Anand seems happy,” she remarked. “But you can never know for real. You can’t, you know, judge a book by its cover.”

I agreed with her. But if I were to go by covers, Lata and Jayant appeared to have a lousy marriage. They were perpetually at each other’s throats. There was no blatant fighting; it was more the bickering, the constant animosity. One look at Jayant and Lata was enough to put anyone off of arranged marriage. Their marriage was obviously not working but they were still together in what appeared to be a stifling relationship, while baby number three was on the way. I wondered whose decision it had been to have another baby, Jayant’s or Lata’s. Who had given in to the pressure I am sure
Thatha
had firmly put on the couple?

“How are Apoorva and Shalini doing?” I changed the topic to her children as I cut through the large yellow pumpkin.

“Very well,” she said with pride. “Shalini started
Bharatnatyam
classes and she dances with so much grace, and Apoorva is learning how to play the
veena
. I always say it is important for girls to know some classical dance or music.”

“How do they feel about getting a little brother or a sister?”

She raised her eyebrows holding a piece of bottle gourd in midair. She slid it on the blade and put two pieces of the gourd in the steel bowl by her side. “Who told you? Neelima?”

“Not Neelima,” I lied, as I started parting the peel of the pumpkin from its flesh.

Lata picked up the pieces of peeled pumpkin and sliced them on the blade jutting out of the wooden board and dropped them in another steel bowl.

“They made me,” she said. “First, it was just
Mava
and then it was
Atha
and then Jayant started. What could I say? I have some duty toward my husband’s family.”

“What if you have another daughter?” I asked what was probably the most taboo question.

“I won’t,” she told me with fervor, as if even thinking about it would make it happen. “I know I could, but I hope I won’t. All this for nothing, then.”

“What will you do if it’s a girl?” I persisted.

Lata smiled softly and met my eyes without flinching. “I love my children. I don’t care if they are girls or boys. And I will love this baby, too. I only want it to be a boy so that
your Thatha
will be happy.”

I didn’t believe her.

“We will find out next week whether the baby is a boy or girl,” she added. “They can tell in the sixteenth week itself these days with that amnio test.”

“And then?”

“Then we will know.”

I didn’t care to ask her if she would have an abortion at that point; somehow, I didn’t want to know the answer.

All this for nothing, then,
she had said, and her words echoed in my brain for a long time.

Lunch was served at the large dining table that filled the entire dining area next to the kitchen. Steel plates clinked on the Formica table and steel glasses tried to find a foothold. The table was in disharmony with its surroundings. The Formica clashed with the red and yellow window frame against which the table leaned; it took up too much space and didn’t really match with the cane dining chairs that
Thatha
had bought years before he had the table.

The Formica itself was lumpy, marred by errors of placing a hot pot directly on it or spilling water that seeped in between the thin vinyl layer and cheap wood.

The new dining table had replaced a sturdy old wooden table, which was just a few feet high and required us to sit cross-legged on straw mats to eat. But that table had to be put away in storage when
Ammamma’s
arthritis demanded something that would be easy on her knees.
Thatha
bought the table at a small furniture store in Abids that specialized in gaudy TV stands and sold other assorted items of the same low quality as the dining table.

Thatha
had liked the size of the table and the shining top had appealed to him as well. It had taken only six months for the shining top to become dull and lumpy, but by then the small furniture store had closed down and
Thatha
got stuck with the table, lumps and all.

A mound of hot rice settled in the center of the table and around it dark bobbing heads joined steel utensils filled with
avial,
bottle gourd
pappu,
potato curry, and cold yogurt.

Two jugs of ice-cold water were emptied in little time and the ceiling fan rattled endlessly, providing little surcease from the interminable heat. But I was getting used to it.

“Have you been to
Noo Yark
?” my grandmother asked as she attacked her food, her mouth open as she chewed.

“Yes,” I said, and dropped my eyes to my plate where my fingers danced with the rice and the creamy bottle gourd
pappu
. How easy it was to eat with my fingers again. I had forgotten the joys of mixing rice and
pappu
with my fingers. Food just tasted better when eaten with such intimacy.

“Very good
avial
,
Priya-Amma
,”
Thatha
remarked, and I nodded, pleased with the compliment.

“
Noo Yark
is a dangerous place, it is,”
Ammamma
said, smacking her lips together and mixing the rice with
avial
on her plate with her fingers.

“The white people are just . . . crooks,” she continued, and my head shot up. “And the black people . . . those
kallu
people are all criminals.”

My eyes widened with shock.

“And how do you know this?” I asked, unable to completely submerge my instinct to get on my antiracism soapbox. Nick would love to be in on this conversation, I thought.

“I see Star TV,”
Ammamma
said proudly. “All black people are doing drugs and they kill on the street. Vishnu . . . you remember him?”

I didn’t, but I nodded.

“His son was mugged by a
kallu
person in
Noo Yark
. A black man”—she dropped some food into her mouth—“put a gun to his head.” She spoke with her mouth full and I grimaced at her words and the half-chewed visible food. “All black people . . . dirty they are.”

And what had my grandmother done—smelled their clothes? Frustration warred with the reality of the situation in front of me, and reality won.

“That is right,”
Thatha
spoke up, and exhibited his ignorance. “All white people do is exploit the others. And the black people kill. That country is just . . . no family values, nothing. All the time they get divorced.”

“They have a moral structure,
Thatha
.” I could hardly sit silent in front of such blatant disregard for the facts.

“What moral structure?” Ma glowered. “Your friends . . . what, Manju and Nilesh, they were fine when they were here and they would have been fine if they had not gone to America.”

Manju and Nilesh were classmates from engineering college in India. They started their romance in the first year of college and survived as a couple through four years of engineering college, two years of graduate school in the United States, and a year or so of working in Silicon Valley before getting married. But happily ever after had evaded them. They had recently divorced and I made the big mistake of telling Ma about it. She immediately decided that it was because of the evil American influence.

“These friends of hers got married,” Ma explained to the others. “Same caste, same . . . real good match. They went to America and now they are getting a divorce after four years of marriage. What happened? If they were in India, it would have never happened.”