The Girl in the Garden (14 page)

The man immediately began pulling out the bolts of
fabric from the shelf, one by one, with the verve of a magician, destroying his carefully organized stacks. He spread them out one after the other on the counter for Amma to peruse.

“I’m going to get married in this,” said Meenu, picking up a gaudy magenta-and-gold-bordered sari and wrapping it around her head with a flourish.

“If anyone even marries you at all,” said Krishna.

Meenu dropped the cloth back onto the counter and went after Krishna, who let out a peal of laughter and began a game of dodging her irate sister.

While my cousins were thus occupied, I glanced out the shop window and saw Gitanjali standing outside talking with a boy. He was thin and well groomed, with a shy face and a shadow of a mustache on his upper lip; he was carrying a couple of books under one arm. I had never seen Gitanjali so animated before and wondered who he might be. She abruptly ended the conversation when Prem rounded the corner, then ducked into the store and began fingering one of the saris as if she had been there the entire time.

“Ready for ice cream?” Prem approached the counter and put a hand on my shoulder. I shrugged away from him and went to stand beside Amma, who was pulling a wad of rupees from her purse. The shopkeeper wrapped her purchase—a simple white sari with a wide gold border—in a plastic cover.

“This is a typical Kerala-style sari,” Amma told me.

“It will look beautiful on you,” said Prem, and while Amma did not look up or thank him, I saw her smile.

On the way home, after we had filled our bellies with ice cream, we stopped by Prem’s parents’ house.

“Why do I have to go? Can’t you just drop me off at
Ashoka first?” I grumbled to Amma. She gave my ear a pinch and told me I had better be polite.

Prem parked the car on the road at the bottom of a hill not far from Ashoka, and we had to climb up a steep, wooded incline to reach the house.

“This is it,” he said, when we made it to the top.

Prem’s parents’ house was small and shrouded in gangly trees. A thunderous bark erupted from a cage at the side of the house as we approached. A fierce-looking German shepherd bared his teeth at me through the bars.

“Quiet, Striker, quiet. These are friends,” said Prem, and the dog, hearing his master’s voice, flattened himself at the bottom of the cage and began to pant. Out of nowhere, a white-haired woman appeared and began to rattle a ring of keys in front of the dog’s cage.

“Look, it’s crazy Hema,” Krishna whispered, nudging me.

Hema, with faded white widow’s cotton wrapped around her shriveled frame and disheveled hair, shook the keys and made cooing sounds to the dog, as if it were a baby.

Prem’s parents, roused by the commotion, came out onto the verandah. His father was tall and solemn, with a full head of gray hair and thick, Coke-bottle glasses. Although he looked as if he had once been a sturdy, handsome man, he now leaned heavily on a cane and his skin sagged on his frail bones. Prem’s mother was short—about the same height as me, but rotund. She had curly gray hair with ragged bald patches the size of postage stamps spread across her scalp, and eyes blued and cloudy with cataracts.

“Hema, that’s enough. Leave the dog be,” said Prem in a firm but kind voice. Hema turned to examine us
with unfocused eyes and muttered something under her breath.

“You can go now, Hema,” Prem said. “Thank you.”

Hema continued to stare with that vague, soft look in her eyes until Prem’s father cleared his throat loudly and Hema slunk away behind the house.

Krishna and I exchanged looks.

Amma went over to Prem’s parents as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened, and bent down low to touch their feet.

“Uncle. Aunty,” she said.

They each in turn put their arms around her and embraced her, like a prodigal daughter.

“Namaste Uncle and Aunty,” said Gitanjali, bringing her hands together as if in prayer. Meenu and Krishna both did the same thing.

Prem’s parents nodded their heads at them, and turned to me.

“Is this Chitra’s daughter?” said the mother.

“Yes, this is my daughter, Rakhee,” said Amma.

“What a nice child.” Prem’s mother smiled, and extended her hand to rub my cheek with a palm rough as bark. “Come, come inside,” she said with great animation, and bustled into the house.

The sitting room was cramped and dimly lit by two small windows, but in spite of the shabby furnishings the floors were spotless and the wooden tables had been polished to an immaculate shine. The walls were painted blue and were spotted with stains. A photograph of my grandfather was prominently displayed in a gold frame.

“Sit, sit,” said Prem’s mother before disappearing into the kitchen. I sat down between Amma and Krishna on
the couch, which was long and hard as a bone. My backside began to ache.

Prem’s mother returned with a large plate piled high with an assorted selection of sweets. I wondered how long the plate of sweets had been sitting in the kitchen, patiently waiting for guests to serve.

“Oh, Aunty, we don’t need all this,” Amma said. “We just came to see you. You should save these for a special occasion.” But Prem’s mother looked so horrified at the suggestion that we each took a proffered sweet.

“Look at you both. How nice to see you together again,” said Prem’s mother, beaming and glancing between Amma and Prem. “What friends you used to be! Rakhee, did you know that when Prem went off to college, your mother was so frantic she would not let go of his hand and we had to tear her away. She cried so hard afterward she made herself sick.”

Prem’s father cleared his throat, and Prem looked down at the floor.

“Well, it’s probably time we head back to Ashoka,” said Amma, and I felt mortified by her brisk tone. “I’m sorry this has been such a short visit, but Sadhana Chechi will start to worry.”

Prem’s mother protested, saying how could we think of leaving without eating dinner, but Amma was insistent, so we left.

I
watched Amma wrap yard after yard of primrose pink silk around her waist. She was going out for the day, with Sadhana Aunty and Nalini Aunty, to visit friends in town. They were leaving us under the care of Gitanjali, who had been instructed by Sadhana Aunty to make sure Meenu and Krishna completed their two hours of study, and after that to see that we didn’t spend too much time outside in the sun—we were already dark as it was.

“I’ve been dreading this, but it has to be done,” said Amma, more to herself than to me, as she tucked the pleats of her sari into her beige underskirt. “People will talk if I don’t go and see them and act as if everything is normal. Stupid gossips.” She went over to the mirror and stared at her face—pale and tired, but still exquisite. She pinched her cheeks, blinked a few times, then took the round red bindi she had stuck on the smudged glass the night before and positioned it at the center of her forehead. Like a third eye, I thought.

I followed Amma outside, where Sadhana Aunty and Nalini Aunty were waiting near the front steps, both in stiff saris. Balu, who was perched in his usual spot on his mother’s hip and playing with her braid, looked like a little
man in his checked, button-down shirt with his tufts of hair slicked to one side.

Amma kissed my forehead with her cool, soft lips before she disappeared down the stairs. I went to join my cousins, who were assembled on the verandah.

“You all don’t need me, do you?” Gitanjali looked around at the three of us as soon as the hum of the car motor grew distant. “I’m going to go read in my room, so don’t do anything that will get us into trouble,” she warned before stalking into her bedroom and closing the door.

We decided to go see what Muthashi was up to and found her in her bedroom, lying on her back with her bare feet splayed out to both sides. The top of her sari had unraveled, revealing the loose, defeated flap of her stomach. It looked as if she was just staring up at the rattling old ceiling fan without blinking, but then Krishna told me that Muthashi sometimes slept with her eyes open.

We spent the rest of the morning on the verandah, too exhausted by the growing heat to practice our play, or to even move. Swatting flies away was an effort. Janaki brought idlis and chutney, along with a pitcher of water, out to us on a round tray. By afternoon, the heat had become unbearable; it was by far the hottest day I can recall that summer.

“I can’t sit around here like this—I’ll go crazy,” Meenu finally said, her body stretched across the swing. She wiped a ribbon of sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand and sighed. Krishna was slumped on a chair, with her mosquito-bitten legs spread out at an unladylike angle, fanning herself with a dust-laced comic book. I had laid myself down on the ground and pressed my cheek against the cool floor, for once not caring about dirt or bugs.

Vijay Uncle was down at the hospital, and Hari had taken the cows and goats out to the paddy field to graze. A thin cat with a mottled brown coat lay on the verandah step and licked the previous night’s rainwater from a cracked flowerpot. Even the birds, whose various cackles and coos issued from the surrounding trees with unceasing frequency most days, had retreated, leaving the yard in silence.

“We have to do something.” Meenu sat upright and a mischievous smile spread across her face. “I know! Let’s go for a swim.”

Sadhana Aunty had specifically forbidden us from swimming in the river because the monsoon rains had caused the water levels to surge. “The last thing I need on my hands is a drowned child,” she had said.

“But what if the grown-ups find out?” said Krishna. “And won’t Gitanjali Chechi worry if we disappear?”

“No one is going to find out. The grown-ups are not returning until evening. Who knows where Vijay Uncle is, and Gitanjali Chechi doesn’t care what we do. I bet she won’t even notice we’re gone. She’s too busy daydreaming about her boyfriend.” Meenu emphasized the word
boyfriend
in a singsong voice and stuck out her tongue in disdain.

Krishna looked shocked for a moment, then giggled and glanced sideways at me.

“Anyhow,” Meenu hopped off the swing, “no one ever said the two of you had to join me. I can go by myself.” She skipped over the half-comatose cat, down the steps, and began strutting across the lawn. When neither of us made a move to follow her, she paused, her two braids swinging over her shoulders as she turned to face us. “Do you actually mean to stay here all day and burn to death? Stop being such bores—come along!”

I turned to Krishna. She shrugged her shoulders and grinned.

Together we scurried across the road, the giddy thrill of rebellion propelling our limbs through the sluggish heat. We decided to cut through the luxuriant overgrowth of bushes and trees behind the hospital to get to the river, but a gathering of people on the hospital’s front lawn temporarily distracted us from our mission.

“What’s going on?” Meenu pushed herself into the crowd and we followed. A young man was crouched on the ground in the center of the circle, clutching his gut and groaning. The women surrounding him were in various states of distress.

“Help him!” one of them sobbed, as the man’s eyes rolled into the back of his head and he appeared to lose consciousness. “He’s my son, help him!”

Vijay Uncle came running outside, accompanied by a young woman, and the crowd parted to let them through.

“What happened?” he asked the young woman, as he knelt beside the man and clasped his limp wrist.

“He had stomach pain all morning, but I did not think anything of it. We should have brought him in earlier,” she said.

After asking the woman a series of questions about her husband’s eating and bowel habits, Vijay Uncle hurried back inside and reemerged moments later with two glass bottles containing a bronze-colored liquid. He unscrewed the cap of one of the bottles, bent over the man, coaxed his mouth open, and released a few small drops of the liquid onto his tongue. Then he tilted the man’s chin back and poured some more down his throat. We stood around waiting in anxious silence, and after about fifteen minutes the man’s lids fluttered and opened.

“Thank God,” a voice cried, and the crowd began to cheer. Vijay Uncle helped the man sit up and handed him one of the bottles.

“Take one ounce of this three times a day before every meal for five days. That should do it,” he said. The man nodded and bowed his head in gratitude.

The mother and the young woman rushed forward and fell to the ground, touching Vijay Uncle’s feet. “Thank you, Doctor, thank you,” they wept.

Vijay Uncle’s face flushed with pride. It was the first time I had seen Ayurvedic medicine being used to heal a patient. The whole scene had felt so magical, so foreign to anything that happened within the sterile white walls of the Plainfield Clinic. I could not fathom why Vijay Uncle, who had never looked more vigorous than he did in that moment, spent more of his time at the toddy shop than at the hospital.

“Come on, the fun’s over. Let’s go,” said Meenu, grabbing both Krishna and me by our arms and leading us away.

When we reached the red banks we stopped to catch our breath and gazed down at the water. The prospect of entering the crisp churning waves below subdued the intensity of what we had just witnessed. Meenu pulled out her ribbons and ran her fingers through her hair, releasing the strands from the tight confines of their braids.