Sister of My Heart (39 page)

Is he about to confess to a secret vice? A mistress? An illegitimate child that he wants me to take in as my own? No matter. If he can accept my past, I can accept his.

“While I don’t care about your previous marriage”—Ashok looks away as he speaks—”I don’t think I can welcome your daughter as fully as she deserves.”

I am too shocked even to pull my hand away from his. “What do you mean?” Disks of dizzy light flash across my vision.

“Please, Sudha.” Ashok speaks pleadingly, rapidly. “Don’t be angry. It’s better that I speak the truth now, rather than have it come out later through a hundred veiled resentments. I discussed this already with your Aunt Gouri, who’s a very intelligent woman. She understood me completely and agreed that it’s the best thing for us. You and I need to be alone, at least in the beginning, so we can build a strong relationship. The mothers will be happy to keep your daughter and make sure she never lacks for love. I promise I’ll give her every opportunity that money can bring. You can visit her whenever you want. Perhaps, after we’ve had little ones of our own, she could even come and stay with us, like a dear niece. No, Sudha, don’t push me away like that. Think about it, please. Talk about it with your mother and aunts. You promised me you’d consider it—”

“I’ll consider it,” I say tonelessly. Somewhere inside me a
tornado swoops down, lifting a matchstick house into an exploding sky. Shards fall like rain, piercing my skin, thorning the ground.
In dreams begin follies
, says a voice like a forgotten poem. I walk carefully through the thorns, one foot in front of the other, not looking back. Behind me the car door sighs shut.

I LOVE WORKING
. No. To be honest, the work part is so-so. What I really love is earning my own money. What a feeling of power it gives me to take my own check to the bank and put it into my own account! The first time I got my check, I made the teller cash the entire amount into one-dollar bills. I held the pile of money in my hands for a whole minute, breathing in that green scent, the scent of freedom, and then I gave it all back to her to deposit into my account.

“Why’d you do that?” she asked, obviously annoyed.

“To make it real,” I said. She stared at me. I could tell what she was thinking.
Crazy foreigner
.

I don’t think the American students who work with me at the college library would understand it either. They’re constantly bitching about how tired they are, how work doesn’t leave them enough time to have fun. They joke about wanting a rich uncle who’d pay their bills so they wouldn’t have to lug carts of library books up to the stacks. They’d probably laugh their heads off if I told them how, growing up in India, I’d have given anything to be allowed to work at our bookstore. How it didn’t always feel so good to be given everything I needed. How sometimes I’d wanted to be able to give too.

Since getting married I’ve felt this more and more. Not that I can accuse Sunil of stinginess. When money’s short, he’ll do without things rather than ask me to cut back. I can feel the strain it puts on him, though, so once or twice I offered to take up a
job. But he got all huffy and said he’s quite capable of feeding his own wife, thank you. If that isn’t a typical Indian male!

That’s why I’ve had to be so careful about keeping this job a secret, only working weekday hours—though weekends pay better—and opening an account at a different bank. I’ve even asked my supervisor not to call me at home, though it embarrassed me no end to do that. But my supervisor, an older black woman who looks like she might’ve been through troubles of her own, had nodded understandingly and not asked any awkward questions. I’m beginning to think I won’t even tell Sunil about Sudha’s tickets—I’ll just send them to her and swear her to secrecy. I shudder when I think of tax time, when I’ll have to hand him my W-2. But, like the heroine of one of my favorite books says, Tomorrow is another day. I’ve got plenty of other things to worry about right now.

Today I’m particularly worried because when I go for my monthly checkup, the doctor isn’t pleased at all. My blood pressure’s still too high, he says, and my sugar doesn’t look good at all. Have I been eating what I should, and at the proper intervals?

I hang my guilty head. I do pretty well early in the day. Even when I have to go straight from class to work, I pack myself apples or an egg sandwich, things I can eat on the run. But by the time I get home, I’m tired and cranky. That’s when I’ll eat half a jar of sweet chutney, or a big bowl of ice cream. It’s the least I deserve, I’ll tell myself, refusing to listen to the scolding voice in my head. Then when Sunil comes home and makes us a virtuous, balanced meal of rice and low-salt dal and such, I’ll only pick at it, complaining that it’s too boring and bland.

Maybe I’m under too much stress, the doctor continues sternly. Maybe I should consider dropping out of school for a quarter.

“I can’t do that,” I tell him, horrified.

“Why not?”

I stare at him mutely. How can I explain to him how hugely important college is for me, a second lease on life after the first had been snatched away from me in India? How can I explain how hard Sunil and I had worked on our budget in order to pay for these classes? Or that—perhaps worst of all—if I dropped out of school, I’d no longer be eligible for the library job, and all my dreams of having Sudha start a new life here with me would be shattered?

“Well?”

“I won’t get a refund if I drop out now,” I blurt out. Which wasn’t even what I meant to say.

“You’ll have to decide, of course, whether a few dollars are more important to you than your baby,” says the doctor coldly.

Although I’ve always liked him until now, suddenly I hate my doctor. Stupid, supercilious man. What does he know about my circumstances? About my cousin’s? Why I need the money so badly that I have to keep working even when some days I feel dizzy after bending over and picking up an armful of books? Does he think I’m doing it just for fun? Then I remember that he doesn’t know about my job. He’d probably go right through the roof if he did.

“I might have to put you on bed rest if I don’t see any improvement by your next visit,” he warns as I leave.

I mutter curses under my breath all the way to my car, but he’s managed to scare me. The next few weeks I’m a model eater—I smile through my steamed broccoli and drink gallons of prune juice and remember my iron pills and give the ice-cream aisle a wide berth when I go grocery shopping. During my work breaks I lie on the women’s restroom couch and practice my Lamaze breathing, and at home I study in bed, feet propped on pillows to help my circulation. By my next visit I feel a lot better, and the doctor actually smiles when he looks over my test results.

“I guess we’ll let you stay on your feet a while longer,” he says.

We’ll let you!
Who does he think he is, Queen Victoria?

But all the way home, with a brief stop at the bank to deposit my latest check, I sing Bengali nursery rhymes loudly, cheerfully and—I must confess—unmusically to Prem. No matter. When Sudha gets here, she’ll teach him all the right tunes.

At the apartment, I munch on carrot sticks as I hide my bank book in the back of my underwear drawer. And suddenly I’m overcome—as I often am nowadays—by sadness. How easy it is to trick Sunil, who for all his shortcomings isn’t the kind of man who looks through someone else’s drawers. Although I’m not doing anything
wrong
, although I’d do it all over again for Sudha, I feel guilty. Along with the guilt come two thoughts. First: How little husbands and wives know of each other. I’m willing to bet every penny in my bankbook that Sunil can’t even imagine me being capable of such duplicity. And second: If I can hide so much so easily from Sunil, who is both more resourceful and more complex than I am, how much might he be hiding from me?

EVERY AFTERNOON
in our new flat, while the mothers rest in the bedrooms and Ramur Ma snores on a mat on the kitchen floor, I sit at the small desk by the window, sketching clothes for the two babies. Singhji, who is now officially retired but stops by each day to see if there are errands to run, dozes in an armchair. As I draw, the jangling of tram bells and the cries of vendors from the dusty street below seem to recede. Sunlight drizzles through the leaves of the tamarind tree outside onto little confections of caps, all lace and silk and ribbon. Woolen booties with birds worked into them, so our children will soar over every trouble. Pants made of softest malmal. White muslin dresses with shadow-work for the hot summer that’s coming up for Dayita. Checkered wool shirts for Prem, his name embroidered over a little pocket, for the rainy California winter. From time to time Singhji wakes to cluck his tongue admiringly over the pictures I’ve drawn. It’s bad luck, of course, to actually stitch anything before the babies are born. But the mothers have conceded that designing them is harmless. I think they sense the happiness my work brings me, the way it keeps me from dwelling too much, through the long, still afternoon, on the uncertainty that is my future.

I adore the names Anju has given our children, Prem and Dayita, the way she calls them children of love. My daughter especially needs such a name, for apart from this little household,
there is no one on this entire continent who cares for her. I cannot forget that—I
must not
forget that—through these coming weeks, which are sure to be filled with pulled-out, painful arguments about what I should say to Ashok.