Secret Keeper (14 page)

Servants hauled piles of colorful silk and cotton out of Ma’s room, and Ma had to borrow one of Grandmother’s white sarees until she could buy one or two of her own. She could never again wear anything but white, the color of mourning that implied that a widow, too, was dead. Dully, Asha registered Auntie tucking away the most expensive of Ma’s sarees in a trunk. The day after the telegram came, Ma stopped adorning the part in her hair with the stripe of vermilion powder. The unfamiliar exposed quarter- inch line of skin across her mother’s scalp reminded Asha of a scar. Weeping, Grandmother and Auntie led Ma to the pond so she could break her marriage bangles in half and throw them into the water. With her bare wrists and scalp bereft of color, it seemed to Asha that their mother, too, was becoming a ghost.

“The body?” Ma asked Uncle once. Those were the only two words the girls heard her speak during the required thirteen days before the memorial.

“His friends will have it burned in New York. One of
them is coming in a month or so, and he’ll bring the ashes for you and the girls to give to Mother Ganga. Beta, take this.”

Raj stared in confusion at the razor his father was holding. “But, Baba, I already have one.”

Uncle sighed. “You’ll have to shave your head. For your uncle’s memorial.”

Asha stood up immediately. “I’ll do it,” she said, taking the razor from her cousin’s hand. “He’s my baba.”

“You can’t shave your head, Tuni,” Uncle said, and his voice was so gentle that for the first time it sounded exactly like Baba’s. “Only a son can make that sacrifice. Without a son, a nephew must take the duty.”

Asha nodded, too drained of strength to protest. Besides, a simple shaving of the head didn’t come close to demonstrating the overwhelming grief she was carrying inside.

TWENTY

J
AY CAME TO THE MEMORIAL SERVICE WITH HIS PARENTS,
clean-shaven and dressed in a formal kurta and pajama, like all the other men who attended. Asha didn’t look his way, but as he passed her in the dark hallway he glanced quickly around, reached for her hand, and squeezed it, hard. It was the first time they’d touched, and he let go quickly as the hall filled up with other visitors. Tears filled Asha’s eyes for the first time since the telegram, but she blinked them back quickly. Reet was the only one who noticed Jay’s gesture, and apart from a quick intake of breath, she didn’t say anything.

The rest of the day was a blur to Asha. She stayed close to her sister and blocked out Grandmother’s wailing and crying, the scores of proverbs and platitudes offered by neighbors and relatives, and the priest’s intoned prayers
for Baba’s incarnation into the next life. Reet and Ma were managing the correct social motions, too, greeting visitors, nodding, pretending to listen, but Asha could tell they were in the grip of the same terrible numbness.
So this is the power that captures Ma,
she thought.
No wonder it takes so much to free her.

That night, she stopped taking the medication. Once her sister was asleep, palm to palm with both hands between cheek and pillow as usual, Asha forced herself to picture Baba’s face. The image that came first was one of his cheeks crinkling in laughter after he told a funny story; the girls always teased him about laughing more than his listeners at his own jokes. The salty tears came silently at first; then Asha released deep, rending sobs into her pillow while Reet slept on. After hours of crying, sleep finally came, but it wasn’t deep, and Asha woke again to fresh tears.

Every moment she could, she scribbled memories of Baba in her diary. Jokes he’d told, advice he’d given, times just the two of them had sipped tea and talked about tennis. Asha made herself remember, chiseling away at the numbness bit by bit. It was the most difficult thing she’d ever done, allowing herself to suffer a pain she could barely tolerate. The days were easier because her diary absorbed some of it. Nights were rough; four times she failed, groping in the dark for the nightstand, finding and taking the pills.

But the Jailor was reluctantly loosening his grip on her, and she kept at it. The only thing she chased from her mind was imagining Baba’s last minutes of life. What good
would it do to try to travel where her own memory couldn’t take her?

Baba’s last postcard arrived the day after the memorial. Asha saw it on the veranda where the postman had left the mail, grabbed it, and raced with it up to the roof. She wanted to read it alone, so for once she was glad there was no sign of Jay.

The picture was of the Verrazano- Narrows Bridge, and Baba’s message was brief:

Asha read it three times, pain searing through her like a sword. She put her head down on her knees and wept in the daylight, trying her best to be quiet so nobody would hear.

The windows across the way opened slowly. “Osh, do you need me?” Jay asked, his voice gentle.

She wiped her nose and eyes on her scarf and looked up. Slowly, she nodded. “You’ve got to help me, Jay. I have to take care of Ma and Reet. I promised my baba.”

“I’ll do anything, Osh. Anything. Just tell me and I’ll do it.”

“For now, stay here for a while with me, will you?”

He did, sitting by the open window and letting her cry, and cry, and cry.

Finally she stood up. “I have to show Reet this postcard, but I think it might kill her. It’s the last one he wrote.”

“Jay! Time for tea!” It was his mother’s voice from below, and he gave Asha one last encouraging smile before they each went to their respective downstairs.

Reet took Baba’s card and read it silently, but even then she didn’t cry. “Can I keep this one?” she asked Asha. “You’ve got seven; I’ve only got six.”

Asha nodded. The day before they had divided up Baba’s postcards like jewels; it was the most extensive discussion the sisters had had since the news had come. Reet was using fewer and fewer words as the days went by. She’d nod, shrug, or shake her head; it was as though the Jailor were squeezing her tongue between two iron fingers.

The days plodded on into October, and then November, but the family wouldn’t participate in any festivals this year. No birthdays, holy days, or other celebrations. In mourning, the family also had to relinquish meat and fish for a month, and the cook grumbled over the extra cleaning of the utensils to ensure a vegetarian kitchen. Ma, according to custom, was supposed to give up meat and fish forever.

Asha made herself chew and swallow lentils, eggplant, rice, potatoes, noticing that her sister was eating next to nothing. Ma was eating, but automatically, as though
somebody else were in charge of what her hand was bringing to her mouth. No sign of tears from either of them, but by now Asha was crying enough for forty daughters, mothers, and wives. She shared the job with Grandmother, who wept ferociously in front of her gods and goddesses day and night.

The balance of power in the house was shifting so fast that Asha sometimes wondered if the old building itself was actually tilting. Grandmother was fading, dwindling, disappearing for hours with her inconsolable sorrow into the prayer room. Auntie, meanwhile, soon stopped pretending to grieve. Asha didn’t mind that; after all, Raj’s mother had hardly known Baba. What the girls did mind was the way she began treating Ma. Gone were the days of giggling and gossiping as if they were friends, or trying delicately to cajole Ma back into a better mood. Now it was: “Stop sulking, Sumitra. You’re a bad example to my girls.” Or: “Can’t you remind your daughters to make the bed upstairs after they get up? The servants are complaining about how lazy they are.”

Ma never answered Auntie back or argued. In fact, she hardly spoke at all. The few times she talked to the girls or answered one of Grandmother’s direct questions, she didn’t use the high Bangla of the upper- class Delhi circles that she’d perfected. Now only the village version of the language came out of her mouth, as though she’d lost the desire to pretend along with her status as Baba’s wife.

Asha kept going only because of the promises she’d made to Baba. But how could she keep them? She felt more powerless and lonely than the girl Jay had sketched on the
roof. The strange sight of Ma without makeup, bangles, or any color adorning her face and body was enough to make the tears come again. Not to mention her sister, sitting silently in a dark corner with all seven of her postcards spread across her lap. Reet’s curves were slipping away like the tides of the sea, the bones in her neck and shoulders jutting out like rocks.

Asha tried taking her diary up to the roof but stopped writing once Jay appeared. Then she’d start to talk while he listened, telling him story after story about her father. After a while, they even laughed over some of the funny things Baba had said and done, both of them with tears in their eyes. She could see Jay’s eyes because he leaned so far out of his window, almost as though he were trying to reach her. But the houses, close enough for conversation, were too far for touching.

TWENTY-ONE

W
HEN
B
ABA’S ASHES WERE BROUGHT TO
I
NDIA A MONTH AFTER
his death, it was the girls’ duty to take them to the Ganges River. Uncle and Raj went with them, but as was the custom, Ma, Grandmother, Auntie, and the little girls stayed at home. Their uncle and cousin led the way in one rickshaw and the sisters rode in another, the carton from America cradled in Reet’s lap. A priest met them on the cement stairs that descended into the river, built for just this purpose, and a crowd of strangers gathered to watch.

Uncle stood on the top step, water sloshing around his shoes, and opened the box. He handed Reet the large urn that was inside, and then he and Raj waited while the girls climbed down four more steps. Reet’s saree floated around her knees; Asha’s salwar became so heavy it felt as if the
current were trying to drag her downstream. Maybe she would let it if it tugged fiercely enough.

The sisters didn’t look at each other before reaching in to pick up handfuls of what was left of their father. As they scattered his ashes over the river, Asha heard her sister finally beginning to cry, a high- pitched sound of sorrow rising above the horns of the passing barges. Asha wept, too, and her tears this time weren’t for Baba, but for the two of them, desolate as the water flowed around them, taking Baba’s body away from them forever.

When they got back, neighbors were gathered on the corner outside the house, obviously in the middle of a gossip session. Ma was waiting just inside the gate, which was unusual, as she’d rarely ventured outside the house since their arrival in Calcutta and had never left it once the telegram had arrived.

The neighbors stopped in midsentence as the Gupta girls disembarked from the rickshaw.

“Wonder what they’re talking about,” Asha said dully as their mother opened the gate to let them in. “Did I wear the wrong colors or something?”

“No,” Ma answered, taking the empty urn from Reet. “You girls are dressed appropriately. I’ve been through this before, remember?”

It was an obscure reference to the Strangers. Asha pictured a younger version of Ma strewing her own father’s ashes, and then her mother’s, over a faraway bend of the river as it curved down from the Himalayan foothills.

“I know what they’re saying,” Reet said as the gate closed behind them. “It’s about Baba.”

Ma stopped. “What about him?” she asked. “What have you heard, Shona?”

“They’re saying that it wasn’t an accident, Ma.”

“What?” Asha asked.

“The gossip-the gossip is that Baba couldn’t find a job. That he lost hope. That-that he jumped on that track because he gave up.” Reet’s voice broke and she began to cry again. Ma handed the urn to Asha and put her arms around her older daughter.

Clutching the empty container tightly, Asha kicked the gate as hard as she could. She didn’t care that the neighbors were gaping at her. “It’s not true!” she said. “He wrote that last card just before it happened and said he was sending for us soon. Besides, Baba would never do something that terrible to us.”