Sister of My Heart (41 page)

I rise in the dark and unlock my trunk by feel. I grope inside until I find the cool, smooth American paper. Anju’s promise of reprieve. Anonymity. I hold it to my cheek until it is warm, until it is like holding onto Anju’s hand, and I begin to reconsider.

ALL WEEK
I’ve been dragging myself through the hours, more tired than I’ve ever been in my life, wondering how I’m going to get through the rest of my pregnancy. But finally Friday’s here, and am I glad! Friday’s my best day, just a couple of classes, no work. I plan to put in a solid afternoon of studying—not at the main library where my co-workers are always interrupting me to chat, but on the deserted top floor of one of the graduate branches. I’m winded by the time I make it up the stairs, but there’s a comfortable old couch where I put up my feet—and then, before I know it, I’ve dozed off. When I wake with a start, heart thudding, it’s almost evening. Shit! I’d counted on getting the groceries before I picked Sunil up from the station. Now I’m not even caught up on my homework, and worst of all, the niggling pain I’ve had all week in my lower back has gotten worse, probably from lying scrunched up on this couch, which isn’t halfway as comfortable as it looked. When I straighten up, the pain spreads to my stomach as well. I try to massage it away. Just below my ribs I feel a familiar bump—my son’s head—and even though I’m hurting, I smile. You’re in the wrong position, kid, I whisper, patting him. But I’m not concerned—he still has three months to turn around.

I get to the station in record time, maneuvering the car around corners like a regular James Bond—and there’s no Sunil. I wait for the next two trains, growing more anxious by the minute. My back’s killing me. In exactly five minutes I’m going to have to use
the bathroom, or else. Finally I give up and drive home, and the first thing I see when I open the door is my dear husband, sitting comfortable as you please in the recliner, watching TV with a mug of beer in his hand. It’s enough to give a saint apoplexy.

“What the hell happened to you? Do you know how worried I’ve been?” I shout over my shoulder as I rush to the bathroom. The pain in my stomach, which must have been caused by an overextended bladder, is a little better now, and I return to the living room ready to do battle. But I’m taken aback by the expression on Sunil’s face. It’s not apologetic, as I’d have expected, but furious.

God! Something awful must have happened for him to come home early like this. Did he get laid off? I’m ashamed of the selfish thoughts that begin to explode one after another inside me like a string of firecrackers at Kali Puja: Will the insurance still cover my delivery? What’ll I feed our baby? And, I’ll never be able to bring Sudha over now.

“What’s wrong?” I whisper finally, sitting down. I reach out to touch Sunil’s shoulder, but he shoves my hand away.

“Nothing’s wrong with
me
,” he says in a hard voice.

“Why are you home early then?”

“I had to visit a client close by, so I just took a cab home. I tried to call you—I left several messages”—he jerks his chin at the answering machine—”but you were nowhere around.”

“I fell asleep at the library.”

“Sure you did!” Sunil’s voice is heavy with sarcasm.

I look at him in surprise. “What do you mean?”

“Then what’s this?” he says, and jabs at the answering machine button. “I found this when I tried to erase my messages.”

“Anju,” says a female American voice. “I hope I got the right number for you—you didn’t have it on file.” It takes me a moment to realize that it’s the woman who sometimes fills in for my supervisor. My heart gives a sick lurch. “Sorry to disturb you at home, but we’re desperate. Three of the stackers have come down with the flu, and with exam week just around the corner, the
library’s a mess. I know you don’t like to work weekends, but could you possibly come in for a few hours tomorrow? Call me as soon as you get this message—”

If thunder could whisper, it would sound like Sunil’s voice. “How long has this been going on? And why? What did you need so badly that you had to get the money for it secretly, like this?” There’s a desperate hurt beneath the anger in his eyes.

“It’s for Sudha,” I blurt out. “I’m saving for her ticket. I had to do it this way because you didn’t want to help.” Someone seems to be pulling apart the bones of my lower back with both hands. If only this were all over, and I could go lie down.

I expect an outburst from Sunil, but he’s oddly silent. In the darkening evening, an expression flits over his face, gone before I can catch it.

“You
had
to meddle, didn’t you?” he says finally. A cracked tiredness runs through his voice. “You couldn’t leave well enough alone.”

“What do you mean, meddle?” I say. I’m tired, too—too tired for fighting, too tired for diplomacy. “Sudha’s my sister, the person I love most in the world. You yourself told me how hard life would be for her in India, now that she’s now married anymore. How can I just leave her there to suffer?”

“Go to bed, Anju,” says Sunil with a sigh. “You look awful. Now I know why you’ve been so tired and irritable these last months—you’re working yourself to death. I’ll bring you some hot soup, and then I’ll call that woman and tell her you’re quitting.”

I jump to my feet with the last of my strength. “You’ll do no such thing,” I cry. “I’m not quitting. I’m perfectly fine. I
will
keep working. I
will
bring Sudha to America, whether you want it or not.”

“Please, Anju,” says Sunil. “Go lie down. You’re all worked up.”

“Don’t treat me like a child.” I’m shouting now, gasping for breath. Someone’s smashing the bones of my pelvis with a steel
hammer. “I won’t let you control me like your father controls your mother. I won’t let you—”

And then the pain’s so bad I have to double over, but not before I’ve seen the stricken look in Sunil’s eyes. There’s a sticky wetness between my legs, a dark stain begins to spread down my pants. There’s a smell like rusting metal in the air. Did I lose control over my bladder?

Sunil mutters something as he grabs the phone.

“No,” I cry, lunging to knock it from him.

“Stop it, Anju,” he says, trying to ward me off with his free hand. “Calm down. I’m not calling your work. I’m calling an ambulance.”

The firecrackers explode inside me once more, taking me with them.

When I come to, the pain is intense, a hot light that blinds me even through the dull haze of medication. But worse is the hollow feeling I have, that sense that it’s too late.

When I get up the courage, I touch my belly. Low down, there are bandages, seals of a disaster I’ve somehow stupidly slept through. And though I’m still swollen, I can tell my baby is gone.

I’m not sure what happens next. The tears which stream their course down the sides of my face until they pool into my ears like warm blood. Or the crisp, starched nurse who smiles an unbearably cheerful smile and comments on the fact that I’m awake. Or the screams that spurt out independent of my will because inside my throat there’s a bottomless fountain, as in the tales Pishi used to tell when I was too young to understand that life can be crueler than any story. Or the hands holding me down, the needle piercing my flesh, the burning squirt of more numbing medication. But finally there’s Sunil, stroking my hair, saying I must be brave.

“Tell me,” I say. My voice is a hoarse, grating thing. It shows
nothing of the helpless rage building to explosion inside me. When Sunil hesitates, I grasp his hand with all the strength I can call up, letting my nails sink in. I want him to hurt, to feel at least a pale echo of what I’m feeling. “Tell me everything.”

They’d rushed me, bleeding heavily, to the hospital. They’d brought me to an operating room as soon as they could, and performed a C-section. But by then his heartbeat had stopped.

“I want to see him,” I whisper, but Sunil shakes his head. The body’s been sent away already. Even otherwise, the doctor had advised against it. The best thing for me would be to put the whole incident behind me as soon as I could—and this way, the baby would be less of a reality.

Oh, the stupidity of men. I’d held him inside me for six months. I’d talked to him every day since I knew he was there. He’d pulsed against my flesh with the minute brightness of a star, giving me guidance and courage. Through the thin lining of my skin, I’d touched the curve of his head. Nothing they did could lessen the wrenching reality of what he’d meant to me.

I try to argue with Sunil, but my tongue’s heavy from the tranquilizer, and I see from his eyes that he’s made his decision.

It’s hard to form words with lips numb as leather. But I must know one more thing before I go under. “What did he look like?” I ask. The sounds are so slurred I’m afraid Sunil won’t understand, but he does.

“He was beautiful, with tiny hands like starfish.”

Sunil’s eyes grow unfocused, remembering. The softness with which my usually unpoetic husband speaks startles me. “Something had been wrong with the cord, it had cut off the oxygen, so he was blue—like a—baby Krishna.”

I’m amazed, again, at his words. But of course they’re exactly right. I can see the translucent blueness of my baby’s skin glowing through the darkness of my tight-shut eyes.

“He was so beautiful,” Sunil repeats. The bitterness in his voice pries my eyelids open. A brilliant rage is flickering over his face, like electricity in a storm cloud.

I know then I was mistaken earlier. Hearts break in different ways, a father’s no less than a mother’s.

“My baby, I killed him.”

I’m not sure whether I’ve spoken the words or only thought them from within the hot bands of steel that are squeezing my throat. But from the sudden, profound stillness of Sunil’s body I know he’s heard me.

“Don’t be silly, Anju,” he says, after a pause.

That pause—the enormous, accusing weight of that pause. It makes me turn my face into the antiseptic smell of the hospital pillow and shut my eyelids tight, tight, tight.

I’m not going to open them ever again.

THEY TRIED
to keep the news from me because they were afraid of what I might do, but I suspected. I smelled it in the air of the flat, cold suddenly in spite of the blistering April sun outside. Cold and heavy with the smell of white chrysanthemums, though it wasn’t the season for them. White chrysanthemums, the kind we drape over bodies at funerals. Sometimes I would wake at night and think I heard sobs from Gouri Ma’s room. I would walk over, and she would be sleeping, the bedspread covering her face—but too soundly, not responding when I called her. And there hadn’t been a letter from Anju in over a month.

“She must be busy, or maybe just not in the mood—you know how pregnant women get sometimes,” says Pishi when I tell her how worried I am. “Your job right now is to eat well and rest well and exercise properly, and most of all, to not worry.”

“But don’t you think we should at least call?”

“Actually, Sunil called the other morning, when you were out for your morning walk—”

“How is it you didn’t tell me?” I ask, annoyed.

Pishi sighs. “I’m getting old—I guess I forget things sometimes.” She does look old suddenly, and weary. The skin under her eyes hangs loose and purple. Has her arthritis been acting up again, keeping her awake at night? “Anyway, they’re both doing quite well, so you can stop being so anxious.”