Secret Keeper (2 page)

The conversation was over, but Asha could hardly believe that so much had been confessed. Her mother usually clung to secrets so tightly that nobody could pry them loose. Ma’s face was regaining its usual composed, confident expression; the thought of her crying on Reet’s shoulder seemed ridiculous now.

“I’m tired,” Reet said suddenly, moving to the empty bench on the other side of the compartment.

Ma took out a finely knitted scarf from her bag and rolled it into a pillow. “Sleep, Shona,” she said, passing the soft coil of wool to Reet.

“Shona” meant “gold” in Bangla, and it was what Ma and Baba had nicknamed their older daughter. They’d tried to train Asha when she’d first started lisping out words:
“Shona
Oidi,
call her Shona
Didi.”
“Didi” was the standard address for an older sister. But Asha stayed with “Reet” through the years, leaving off the honorific “Didi” altogether.

Reet stretched out on the bench, hands palm to palm between cheek and pillow as always, and fell asleep almost immediately.

Baba had paid double to reserve all six places in the compartment. Asha overheard him talking to Ma: “You have to be more careful than ever since I won’t be around. Especially while traveling with the girls overnight.” Asha knew what he meant; her sister had been attracting unwanted attention from men for three or four years now, and it seemed to Asha that it was getting worse by the minute. Just last month, an older man had pressed himself behind Reet on a bus and refused to move, even after Baba had asked, courteously at first, then stridently after the man pretended not to hear. Eventually Baba had punched the man on the jaw, much to the girls’ astonishment. They’d never seen their father that angry.

Asha stood up to make sure the door to their compartment was locked. Their father wasn’t around to stop unwelcome visitors, so she was taking on the responsibility. All that would change once a telegram arrived from America with the best news in the world:

FOUND JOB STOP COME SOON STOP LOVE, BABA STOP

TWO

M
A’S KNITTING NEEDLES BECAME RED- LOOPED BLURS, CLICKING
and clacking to the rhythm of the train. She was making Baba a sweater for the cool spring nights in New York.

Asha felt herself relax; as long as Ma knit, she seemed better at keeping hold of her usual scolding self. Their mother, too, seemed to recognize the craft as a shield; her suitcase was stuffed with shawls and sweaters she was bringing as gifts to the relatives, designed and created in the long months since Baba had lost his job.

Asha sat back and looked out over fields drenched in sunlight. It was late April, the heart of the hot season, and cows, people, and stray dogs sought out patches of shade. Farmers, skin coal- black from hours in the sunshine, steered slow bullocks through rice paddies. Children raced each other, chasing tires with sticks down dirt lanes,
ignoring the heat in the joy of play. Had her mother played like that in a village somewhere in the Himalayan foothills of North Bengal?

Ma had made the long trek back twice after her marriage, once after each of her parents had died, but had taken neither Baba nor the girls. As far as the sisters knew, they had no uncles or aunts on that side. The two of them tried to piece together a portrait of the Strangers, as they called their maternal grandparents, but Ma never revealed much. Baba couldn’t answer their questions, either, claiming he knew little more than they did.

Quietly Asha reached into her bag and pulled out a fountain pen and a small leather- bound book secured with a lock. She was wearing the key on a long gold chain that she kept tucked under her salwar. With as little movement as possible, she carefully unlocked the book.

This was the fourth diary her father had offered her, and it had “S.K. 1974” printed on the cover in her neat handwriting. Only Asha and her sister knew that “S.K.” stood for “secret keeper.” The other three diaries, labeled “S.K. 1971,” “S.K. 1972,” and “S.K. 1973,” were in the bottom of Asha’s suitcase wrapped in an old sweater.

In “S.K. 1971” Asha had mostly scribbled about squabbles with her now best friend Kavita. That was the year they’d fought their way into real friendship. “S.K. 1972” was where Asha had raged after her body betrayed her for the first time. In “S.K. 1973” she wrote about tests and exams as an upperclassman at the academy, and the mad crushes she’d had on brothers Vij ay and Anand Amritraj, Indian tennis stars.

In this diary “S.K. 1974,” she’d already filled four months of pages with worries about money, concern over Baba’s chain- smoking, and frustration during Ma’s times of captivity in the clutches of the Jailor. It was also where she’d confessed her dream of what she wanted to do with her life. That entry was written just before she’d had to leave the academy in January, and she flipped to it now.

Her diary never answered her questions, but this time fate did. Right after that entry, Baba lost his job. Thanks to the economy shutting down, he couldn’t find another in Delhi or Calcutta, so eventually the call for engineers in America seemed like the only option. This was the main reason Asha wasn’t devastated about leaving India-in America, she’d still be under her parents’ roof, and she could study whatever she wanted. Even the science of psychology.

Ma stopped knitting so that the blur of red became two white sticks and a patch of wool. “I don’t see why your baba keeps giving you those diaries,” she said.

Asha had mastered the art of locking a diary fast and slipping the key next to her skin; she didn’t want Ma reading one word she’d written.

“They’re like your knitting,” she said. “Writing things out helps me survive.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Let me see it.”

Reluctantly, Asha gave the diary to her mother, who fingered the leather, turned the book over, and tried to open it before handing it back.

“I still don’t understand why you lock it. If I had my way, this nonsense would stop, but that father of yours lets you talk him into anything.”

Asha stashed “S.K. 1974” safely in her bag. “That’s the design of the book, Ma. It’s supposed to be locked.”

Ma shook her head. “You scribble for hours, Tuni. Wasting time when you could be learning to sing, or dance, or play the harmonium. You’re sixteen now, and you have so few womanly accomplishments. Your grandmother blames
me for it. She’s been complaining in her letters about how hard it’s going to be to find husbands for four grand daughters.”

“I’m going to college, Ma,” Asha said, carefully not stressing the “I’m” so that her mother wouldn’t take her words the wrong way. “Grandmother thinks that ‘girls who get a good education find good husbands.’ ” Asha left off the “usually” that Grandmother emphasized when Ma was around, implying that her own daughter- in- law was the exception to the rule.

Ma sighed. “I’ve heard that from her a thousand times, but she won’t pay for it. Don’t count on any more schooling until your father finds a job, Tuni. It’s too expensive.”

“I’ll study on my own, then,” Asha said stubbornly, twisting the cap of her fountain pen.

“Isn’t that the pen Kavita gave you?” Ma asked. “That girl pours out her parents’ money like water.”

“She’s my best friend, Ma. She wanted to give me a nice goodbye present.”

Ma snorted, but quietly, so that she wouldn’t wake Reet. “She doesn’t speak a word of Bangla. Couldn’t sing a Tagore song if you paid her.” This was one of the reasons Ma had never gotten to know Kavita well-Kavita was Punj abi and didn’t speak the Holy Language, as the sisters called their mother tongue. Ma mingled only with other Bengalis who lived in Delhi, of the same class and caste as her husband’s family.

“Who cares if she’s Punjabi, Marathi, or Gujarati?” Asha asked. “Or even British for that matter? She’s my friend.”

“You’ll forget about such so- called friends when you get married,” Ma said, starting to knit again. “
I
don’t need friends, do I? You two girls and Baba are my whole life.”

Asha stifled a groan. She didn’t want to be Ma’s whole life. Or even one- third of it. But she knew from experience that arguing was useless. Her mother could never understand Asha’s friendship with Kavita. It wasn’t about competition and rivalry, the way middle- class Bengali housewives in Delhi interacted. Osh and Kavi rejoiced over each other’s victories and suffered through each other’s struggles. They ran around the academy courtyard during tea break, orga nizing games for their class until everyone who joined in was sweaty and laughing. Asha was going to miss practicing tennis and cricket in Kavi’s family’s enclosed garden; she was going to miss their long talks and laughter. But suddenly, in the face of Ma’s certainty, Asha felt a twinge of doubt. Could even the closest of friendships stand the test of time and distance? Would Kavi vanish into Asha’s past like Ma’s childhood?

No,
Asha told herself fiercely.
I'll never forget Kavi. And she’ll never forget me. We’ll be friends forever, just as we promised.
She tucked the pen into her bag next to the diary. She’d been stupid to take them out, even though she’d been longing to write ever since they got on the train.

Ma frowned at her red rectangle, holding it at a distance to find a dropped stitch. “That girl’s a bad influence, anyway. I don’t like how she gave you another tennis racket after I forbade you to play.”

This time, it took Asha immense amounts of energy not
to debate her mother’s point. She was battling the fury that always flamed when she remembered how Ma had given away her tennis racket and cricket bat to the servants. The bat was cheap, and Baba had bought another just like it, but the racket was an irreplaceable wooden Chris Evert from America, and Asha had won it as a first prize in a tournament. She would have liked to keep it forever as a memory of playing tennis with Baba. And trouncing boy after boy while he watched.

Their father had learned tennis when he’d studied engineering in London, and he joined a club in Delhi after he and Ma settled there as newlyweds. He’d started teaching Asha when she was seven, and she’d learned so fast that Baba encouraged her to start playing competitively. He and Reet stood at the sidelines cheering, and people came from miles around to witness the unusual sight of a girl winning matches in an all- boy juniors league. An Indian Billie Jean King or Virginia Wade, they called her. Or Vij aya, the female version of the name Vij ay, after the more famous Amritraj brother, who the past year had actually made it all the way to the quarterfinals at Wimbledon. Asha and Baba had listened to the matches on the radio, shouting like maniacs every time Amritraj hit a winner.

Asha played tennis for five years, until the day she’d woken her sister in a panic after finding rust- colored stains in her underwear. Everything changed with her body on that day, and there was no going back. Asha could no longer wear shorts or pants-only salwar kameez and her school uniform. She’d had to start growing her hair. No more going down the hill to the market with Baba or playing cricket
with Kavi and the neighborhood boys in the street. And worst of all, it wasn’t
proper
for a young woman to play tennis with boys at the club.

When Ma issued her final edict about tennis, Asha had lost her temper, shouting at her mother with the servants in earshot. Baba had taken his younger daughter into another room, closed the door, and delivered an unusually stern lecture. She’d listened quietly, her anger spent.

“It’s my fault, Tuni,” Baba ended. “Ma’s right; I’ve spoiled you and it’s time I faced facts. But even so, I will not permit you to talk to your mother like that. Ever.”

Baba so rarely laid down the law that Asha always obeyed when he did.

“I don’t know how Punjabi parents train their daughters,” Ma said now, needles battling each other like swords again. “But in a good Bengali home, a girl obeys her mother. Especially while other people are around.”

Asha was still swallowing anger over losing her racket, her tennis, and her freedom. And now maybe even her friendship with Kavi.

“Did you hear me, Tuni?” Ma asked. “Do not bring shame to me or your father in your grandmother’s house.”

Asha took a deep breath. “I’ll try, Ma,” she made herself say, but the words took a mighty effort, and only the memory of her father’s face allowed her to mean them.