Sister of My Heart (34 page)

That night, while I am at dinner, my mother phones. She is all agitated about our cousin’s baby—the idiot boy, she calls him. “I went to see him today, and you could tell there wasn’t a bit of brain behind the walls of his skull, the way he just lay there. And his mother, the poor girl, I don’t think she’s stopped crying ever since the doctor’s diagnosis.” Now her voice goes shrill with virtue. “I thought to myself, Nalini, this is no time for false family pride. Not that Sudha, God bless her, is going to have a problem. After all,
my
side has never had any such happenings, not in fourteen generations. Still, you must tell Sudha’s mother-in-law, so that Sudha can get that test done, amio-something, you know, with the injection needle. No, no, girl, don’t tell me you’ll tell her later. I want to talk to her myself.”

Wearily, I call my mother-in-law to the phone and return to the table. I stare at my plate without appetite although Dinabandhu has cooked a jackfruit curry specially for me. Foolish, interfering woman, I think angrily. Now my mother-in-law will be all stirred up, like a nestful of hornets. There’ll be more doctor visits, more people poking and prodding at me. All for no reason.

But there’s something else bothering me, some unnameable apprehension.

“Yes indeed,” I hear my mother-in-law saying from the hallway. I’m perplexed by how gracious her voice sounds. Why isn’t she more upset? “I agree. You acted most responsibly. No, I won’t waste any time. In fact you’ll be happy to know
I’d been thinking along the same lines—one can’t take any chances when dealing with the heir of an old, bonédi family like ours. I’ve already set up tests for Sudha. She’ll be going in next week. Yes, of course, I’ll call you with the results right away.”

THE DOCTOR’S
waiting room is decorated in pale blues and pinks designed to soothe nervous parents-to-be. But they don’t do Sunil and me much good as we fidget in our plush chairs. I wonder how Sudha’s doing—she should have got her amniocentesis results yesterday. I shifted my date to match hers, so we’d both know around the same time if our babies were okay. I hope Ramesh went with her to the doctor, instead of that crusty old mother-in-law of hers. I hope he held her hand the way Sunil is holding mine. I doubt it. In India men don’t do those things—at least not the men I’ve seen. But I’ll know everything when I call her tonight.

The doctor is forty-five minutes late. He’s busy with a delivery, the nurse informs us smilingly. I give her a glare. Sure! He’s probably pacing his office right now, agonizing about how to break the news to us. I glance at Sunil, hoping he’ll flash me one of his quirky smiles. I want him to lift his eyebrows in that amused way that says,
There you go again, Anju, with your overactive imagination. Didn’t the doctor tell you that the chances of a problem for women your age are very slight? He really only ordered the test because you insisted
. But Sunil dabs at his upper lip, avoiding my eyes, and when I clasp his palm it’s as damp as mine.

What will I—we—do if … ? My mind freezes on that thought. I stare at the cover of the magazine on the table in front of me until I can feel the face of Princess Di being tattooed into my brain.

But just like Sunil says, once again I’ve tortured myself needlessly. The doctor breezes in, smiling plumply, waving a report. All is well with our baby—and it’s a boy! We follow him with sheepish, relieved grins to the examination room, where he goes over the results of some other tests with us. He’s concerned about my blood pressure, and the fact that my sugar’s too high. He wants me to rest a lot and cut out the salt and the sweets. I nod dutifully but I’m only half-hearing him. I’m rehearsing all the things I’ll say to Sudha tonight. I can’t wait to tell her my news, and to hear hers!

On our way home, Sunil and I stop at the Golden Dragon to celebrate. We splurge on hot and sour soup, spring rolls, eggplant in black bean sauce, sweet and sour shrimp, and pork chow mein. Recklessly, I eat a whole plateful of the extra spicy (and extra salty) Kung Pao chicken. Sunil tries to stop me—but halfheartedly. He can see how much fun I’m having.

“Relax,” I tell him. “I know my body better than that doctor does. I won’t even get heartburn, you’ll see. Happiness is the best digestive tonic in the world!” As proof I show him the fortune in my cookie. It reads,
A wonderful event is about to occur in your life
.

“It is,” says Sunil. “Because I’m going to take you home and make love to you.”

And he does. The tenderness with which he kisses the curves of my breasts and hips makes me cry. I can’t even remember what the word
sorrow
means. Afterward, I lay my head on his damp chest, which gives off a scent like newly cut grass. His breath is gentle and rhythmic like deep-sea waves, and though I don’t intend to let it, it pulls me into sleep.

I jerk awake, my heart pounding with the feeling that I’ve forgotten something crucial. It’s after midnight, way past the time I promised Sudha I’d call her. Shit! I should have set the alarm. I aim a glare at the sleeping Sunil—it’s all his fault, the seducer!—
and drag my body over to the phone. My sleepy fingers fumble with the numbers, and I have to start over a couple of times.

One of the brothers-in-law picks up the phone at the other end. When I ask to speak to Sudha, he hesitates. She’s resting, he finally says in an uncertain voice. I insist, so he tells me to hold. He’s gone for a long time. I chew the inside of my cheek and watch the phosphorescent dial on the clock.

Sudha’s voice, when I hear it, is a dead monotone I hardly recognize.

“Are you sick?” I ask, scared. “Shall I call back some other time?”

“No,” she says, then adds, with obvious effort, “How’s your baby?” Her words slur like she’s been drugged.

“He’s fine,” I say. A huge, awkward silence looms between us, filled by the question I don’t dare to ask.

“My baby—she’s okay too,” Sudha says, then makes a small, choking sound. “Can’t talk anymore now,” she says.

The line goes dead.

I sit in a daze, holding on to the phone. The muted dial tone buzzes in my ear for a while. There’s a bunch of metallic bleeps, then a female American voice instructs me politely to replace the receiver. I obey. My arms are made of wood, my joints stiff and unoiled. What could be wrong? If Sudha’s okay and her baby’s okay—could it be Ramesh or her mother-in-law? No—if it were that, Ramesh’s brother would have been more upset. Are they giving Sudha a hard time because it’s a girl? No, that would sadden her, but it wouldn’t make her break down like this.

It’s something else, something devastating, something—a chill travels down my spine as I think this—she couldn’t talk about in front of her in-laws. So it’s no use calling her back. I’m going to have to wait for her to call me. But where—and when—in that watchful household will she ever find the privacy for that?

I hold myself tight and rock back and forth, trying to dislodge the icy dread in my chest. Something horrifying is looming over Sudha, spreading its dark, scaly wings.

“Nonsense,” says Sunil when I finally wake him and sob out my incoherent fears. “If there was a problem, your mother would have known. She’d have called and told me, even if she didn’t want to upset you. Come to bed. You’ll make yourself sick carrying on like this.”

I sob some more, but Sunil’s voice is confident and commanding, and thankfully I give in to it. I snuggle down in bed and push my aching spine against him. His hand finds my hip and strokes the stretch marks that line it like silver seams. His breath ruffles the small hairs on the back of my neck, makes me sleepy. But he himself is wide awake. I know it in the hard precision of his shoulders, the too-still way he holds himself, like a wild animal might in the presence of danger. Just before I drift off the thought comes to me that perhaps he’s worried too. Perhaps—and I’m not sure if I should be happy about it, or disturbed—under his nonchalance, he cares more about what happens to Sudha than he’ll admit.

The next day I stay home, although I know I’ll miss my psych midterm with Professor Warner, who doesn’t allow makeups. I’m afraid to leave the phone even to go to the bathroom, though by now it’s past midnight in India. But I imagine Sudha tiptoeing down the dark staircase of the sleeping house and lifting the receiver with trembling fingers. I have to be here for her.

Around midday I can’t hold out any longer. I call my mother. But just as I guessed, she knows nothing. She thinks I’m overreacting. Still, she promises to phone Sudha right away, and to call me back if anything’s wrong. But I have a feeling she won’t get through to my cousin past that dragon of a mother-in-law.

By evening I’m exhausted from waiting. My shoulders ache like I’ve been pushing a huge rock uphill. All I’ve managed to force myself to eat are some Saltines dipped in milk.

Sunil’s face grows heavy when he returns from work and sees me lying on the sofa by the phone, still in my nightgown, wads of Kleenex strewn around me. “Anjali,” he snaps. “This is ridiculous. This kind of obsessive behavior won’t help either you or your cousin. All it’ll do is hurt my son.”

His son
. Worried as I am, the statement intrigues me. This little life inside of me, which I’ve been thinking of as totally
mine
, already belongs to so many others. Grandson, cousin, son of his father. It’s the same with Sudha’s baby.

While I mull over the complexity of these claims, Sunil pushes me into the bathroom. “Take a long, hot shower,” he orders. “I’ll call you if the phone rings.” He hands me a new bar of the Mysore sandalwood soap that we save for special occasions. By the time I come out, he’s made me some tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich.

I’m suddenly ravenous. I take a big bite of the sandwich. “It’s the best grilled cheese I’ve ever tasted,” I tell him. A sweet, long-ago memory resonates in the air between us, and over the steaming soup we smile at each other.

I’m having a nightmare, one of those where you know you’re dreaming, but that doesn’t make it any less scary. In my nightmare my baby’s trapped somewhere underwater, far from me. He lifts a tiny black receiver to call me for help. I hear the muffled ringing of the phone and try to run to it, but my limbs are like stone. A submarine wind starts to blow. The water, quiet till now, rushes swirling around my little boy, rips the phone from his fingers. There are faces in the torrent, human faces—Ramesh, Sudha’s mother-in-law, Aunt N, Sunil. But as I watch, their features flatten out, their skin grows black and scaly, and their tongues forked. They’re serpents now, throwing their coils around my baby, pulling at him. His face crumples as he begins
to disappear into the writhing, looped mass of their bodies.
Anju
, he cries.
Anju-Anju-Anju
. Then he’s gone.