A Sister's Promise (31 page)

The dog is circling the mango tree, ears cocked, emitting soft whines. I have never seen him like this before. Does he have an inkling of what’s happened, and that his owners are no more?

‘What’s the matter, eh?’ I ask, squatting down to scratch the itchy spot under his neck.

And that is when I see it. Shimmering through a curtain of rain, a basket like the one the fisherwomen use, is set down at the base of the mango tree. It seems to be filled with blankets, and the mewling sound issuing from within.

The dog bounds away from me, towards the basket and stands guard.

And that is how I find her, Ma, a mewling, squirming package under the mango tree—the tree from where I watched Puja being kicked out of our family and life. Its wide branches shield her from the rain. The dog watches over her, somehow knowing that she is precious.

She enters my life at its lowest point, and turns it around, transforming me for the better.

I breathe in the tart smell of raw mango and wet leaves and soggy earth and something else, something fresh and new and green, as I pull away the blankets to find the source of the noise.

A tuft of dark hair, a pointy face, a cherub mouth puckered in a wail.

A baby.

I blink and rock on my haunches. I look again. It is still there. It emits a sorry little excuse for a cry that wedges right into my heart.

I pick it up and hold it close. It snuggles into me. It smells of innocence and milk and miracles and faith.

‘There, there, sweetie, shush,’ I whisper, rubbing the baby’s delicate comma shaped back, soft as lambskin, fragile as fairy wings, and in the process of dispensing comfort, the part of me that has been flailing since I lost you and Da, Ma, fractionally settles.

In the corner of my eye, I catch a flicker of someone running across the fields. I look up in time to see a woman, a lined face, a tangle of silver hair, disappear over the knoll beyond the stream, which had dried up but is now surging again. Before I can cry out, ask if she’s the one who left the baby, she’s gone.

The baby’s cries subside into hiccups.

Cradling the babe, I squat down beside the basket under the fragrant, moisture stippled branches of the mango tree. The dog comes up and crouches beside me.

That is when I see the note in Puja’s bold, curvy script, peeking from between the dislodged blankets.

It says:
‘Sharda, when I am down, it is your face that flowers before my eyes, that offers relief. Your gentleness, your kind smile. You, who used to heft me everywhere on your hip, breathing in my ear, “You are very special, Puja. The most special girl in the world.”

‘
I did not mean to hurt you. I am sorry for everything. I am sorry.

‘
Please. Can you find it in yourself to love her like you loved me?’

And at the bottom:
‘Could you call her Kushi—happiness, so her name is the harbinger of good things to come for her? And they will—for she has you.’

The baby has fallen asleep in my arms.

She has you.

I take comfort from its miniature features, peaceful in repose, its little hands clasped in tight fists as if clutching hope in one hand and serenity in another, its lips flickering upwards in sleep as if stroked by an angel that has bestowed it with happy dreams despite what is happening in its immediate world.

I am sorry too, Puja. Sorry that you had to go through all this alone. Sorry that it had to come to this. What did you have to endure to get to this point, Puja? What was going on in your head that you felt you had no recourse but to give up your child?

I open my mouth and the tears I did not even know I was shedding flood my throat and mingle with rain and regret.

We move to the my aunt’s hut at the top of the hill, Kushi, the dog, (who won’t leave Kushi’s side) and I, the hut that offered Puja shelter while she was pregnant with Kushi, the hut where she lived until she disappeared on the day of the fire.

And it feels as if we are at the very top of the world, far away from the village and its ash permeated heartbreak, where a hesitant new layer of familiar saffron mud hides the scorch marks, the charred earth, the bloody evidence of the conflagration that has taken place.

Whenever I think of it, (which is almost all the time), I catch a whiff of smoke and heartbreak. I see Da’s body, unflinching as the rain battered his poor, charred face. I picture the ghost of our stall where we had such wonderful times and I close my eyes and wish with all my heart to go back in time to how it was before, with Puja safe and happy with us and with the addition of Kushi too now, of course.

And every single time, I open my eyes and hope against hope that my wish has come true, that you and Da are squatting in front of baskets of papayas and guavas as usual and shaking your heads at my fantastic claims of fire and death.

What a romantic fool I am sometimes, eh, Ma!

I suppose this is why I love cooking so much, because while I do so, I feel you are there, somehow, cooking alongside me like you did that very first time, the day you told me the important news that I was going to have a sibling, that I was going to be a big sister.

I imagine telling you and Da about Kushi. I picture the two of you with her. How happy you both would be to have a grandchild! How blessed!

Aunt Nilamma is ill. She is suffering from smoke inhalation from when she went to the market looking for you and Da, Ma. I tend to her and to Kushi and in between, I scout for jobs.

I have given up the medical degree. I cannot be doing that as well as looking after Kushi. Nilamma is not well enough to care for Kushi and no-one else, with the exception of aunt’s friend Gangamma, will come near us. I have become a pariah now, an unwed mother, the lowest of the low.

‘Whore,’ the inhabitants of Nilamma’s village label me. ‘Slut.’

They point and jeer, spitting and crossing the street to avoid me. I am not served in the shops. It is Gangamma who gets the groceries for me and I cook for her in return.

Most of the time I don’t let it get to me. I am strong and cheerful for Kushi and my poorly aunt. But some days when I collect the shopping from Gangamma and she asks me how I am, I succumb to the tears that I have been suppressing for what seems like forever.

‘Look around you, Sharda,’ Gangamma says, gently patting my back, ‘These people have hardly any food and no proper roof over their heads. They have nothing but the fragile veneer of their respectability to lay claim to. They feel better about themselves when they pass judgement on someone else. Believe me, it is not about you.’

I sniff, wipe my face with my sari pallu, squeeze Gangamma’s hand, and begin the long trudge back up the hill. It is a blessing, I think, even as the bags of groceries dig into my palms, that my aunt’s hut is so remote, otherwise we would have had to endure much more than just spitting and name calling.

Sometimes I wonder if Puja left me Kushi as a form of punishment for what I, along with you and Da, did to her? I wonder if she knew that this was what she would have to endure as a single mother and decided to pass the baton on to me.

I don’t know how I feel about Puja. I am angry with her, still. I am hurt, the hurt having multiplied when I realized that Kushi is Gopi’s child. But I also feel sorry for Puja, for everything she went through all alone, without the bolstering support of us, her family. Now I understand why Puja asked the landlord if she could marry Gopi. It was a desperate act on the part of a floundering girl.

Is Kushi Puja’s way of giving me something of Gopi because she stole him from me?

I love Kushi like nothing and no one else. It was love at first sight as it was with Puja, Ma, but with none of the jealousy. How could I resent this tiny new life, this helpless minuscule being who had come into my world on the rain ravaged day when I bid adieu to you and Da, a blessing at a time when I had never felt more alone?

Whatever her reasons, I am grateful to Puja for the gift of Kushi, this little girl who floods my heart with love, and chases away the anger and the guilt, the regret and the blame, the taint of smoke and fire, and the bile of betrayal.

‘She said she would wait in the hut for us,’ Nilamma said bewildered, between wracking coughs, when I asked her where Puja was, the day I found Kushi. She was staying at Gangamma’s house, as she was too weak to climb back up the hill to her hut the day of the fire, which is why, when I went to look for Puja on the day of your cremation, the hut was empty.

‘I thought she was at home.’ Nilamma’s eyes blinked repeatedly in dumbfounded surprise as she took in the fact of the baby. ‘I did not even know she was pregnant. I had not an inkling.’

I went to find the wise woman, having placed the wiry hair, and the shambling gait of the woman I’d seen disappearing across the waterlogged fields when I found Kushi.

Marrows dangled from the low beams of her hut, green and yellow dancing bubbles. The piquant fragrance of ripening mulch and ground spices infused the air. Conjee simmered merrily on the hearth, tapping the lid of the pot, and making it dance, the gruel effervescing out of the sides.

The wise woman’s eyes lit up when she saw Kushi, who was drifting to sleep in my arms, her hands thrown up on either side of her diminutive head in exquisite surrender, her breath coming in sweet, milk-scented gasps.

‘It was you who left her under the mango tree for me to find,’ I said.

She nodded. ‘I waited until I was sure she had won your heart. And then I left.’

‘Why leave her there? Why not just give her to me?’

‘Would you have taken her from me if I had held her out to you saying she was your sister’s child with Gopi? You would not even have looked at Kushi, this manifestation of your sister’s final treachery. I wanted you to fall in love with Kushi, to consider Kushi for herself, and not in connection with anybody else. You needed to look forward not back. To be reminded of the immense love you are capable of and not the hate that has recently begrimed your heart.’

‘Where is my sister?’

The wise woman sighed, a deep, weary exhalation and at that moment, she looked her age. ‘I don’t know. Your ma had given her some gold bangles. I sold them for her. She took the money and left.’

‘Why did you let her go?’

She sighed again. ‘I tried talking her out of it. But her mind was made up. And it was not my place.’ Looking pointedly at me.

‘What would you have wanted me to do?’ I snapped. ‘I didn’t even know she was pregnant.’

She raised her eyebrows.
Exactly.

‘You expected me to find her and beg her to come home after she had betrayed me so horribly?’

The wise woman did not say anything but her eyebrows stayed raised.

I was glad I was holding Kushi, as I was beset by a sudden urge to walk up to her and slap them back in place.

‘Why did she leave her child to me?’ I held Kushi close, breathing in her pure, clean, new baby scent to chase away the anger, the upset.

How dared this woman blame me? When Puja was the one who claimed Gopi from me, destroying our family; Puja who shamelessly went to the landlord, asking if she could marry Gopi; Puja who slept with him, Gopi who was meant for
me
.

Kushi, the miracle blooming out of this chaos, sighed contentedly in her sleep, her little chest heaving up and down. Strips of light sneaked in through the gaps in the mat that masqueraded as the front door of the wise woman’s hut and played on her face.

I wouldn’t want it any other way, but I have to know why Puja left Kushi with me. I don’t want Puja to change her mind again, to come and snatch Kushi away, having decided she wants her child back, after all, when this child is the reason I’m able to survive, go on in a world where I have lost everything and everyone who mattered: you; Da; Puja; Gopi
—
my unsullied version of him, that is, a sensitive boy beneath the brash façade he presented to the world; and my dream of becoming a doctor.

The wise woman picked up a coconut shell ladle and stirred the conjee. She sighed again and sat down, joints creaking.‘She did not trust herself with her child. She was convinced she was cursed, unworthy of Kushi. She thought her love was not enough, and she could think of only one person to whom she could trust her child, only one person who would give her child everything she herself yearned to, who would bring Kushi up the way she wanted to but didn’t believe she could.’

When it mattered, Puja, I let you down. And yet you did not hold that against me.

I already love Kushi more than life itself. I will not let you or Kushi down in this regard, Puja, I promise.

The wise woman came towards me and extended a shrivelled hand to my cheek, her palm cool against my burning skin. It came away wet with my tears.

‘She thought you would make a wonderful mother. She told me that with you, Kushi would never want for love.’ The wise woman nodded at Kushi slumbering peacefully in my arms. ‘She was right.’ A breath, then, ‘This child is incredibly blessed, to be loved so profoundly. Puja loved her so much she gave her away. Giving Kushi to you was penance for her perceived sins, her attempt at redemption and at securing the best possible future for her child, at the cost of her own happiness. And for you, this cherub is salvation: for allowing a man to come between you and your sister; for wilfully breaking the bond you promised to cherish; for abandoning your sibling whom you vowed to protect. Isn’t it?’ The wise woman’s penetrating stare was like being skewered by light which shone directly into my soul and found it accountable.