The Girl in the Garden (16 page)

The overhead tube light flickered, and a mosquito settled upon my arm. I slapped at it but missed, and it skittered away. An ugly red bump appeared in the spot where it had been sitting. I suddenly felt scared, sitting alone at night like that in the hospital. Reality came back to me, and I remembered that my cousins were probably wild with worry, and that Amma might already be home and that she would be furious.

It was time to go back.

Gathering up the notebooks, I started to put them back in the drawer, but as I slid them inside they bumped up against something hard. I reached in and pulled out the obstructing object—a small, carved wooden box, encased in a fine layer of dust. It looked as if it hadn’t been touched in years. The lid opened easily and inside it was a pile of folded-up papers and letters. I flipped through them, one after the other. Most of them were letters and fragments of paper written in the funny, indecipherable curlicues of Malayalam script, but one of the letters, written on brittle yellow paper, was in English.

I hesitated, but the temptation was too strong. I stuck the letter into my T-shirt pocket and put the box and the notebooks back into the drawer. I turned off the light, and began to run with all my might back toward Ashoka, trying not to think too much about the darkness surrounding me and whatever might be lurking in that darkness.

When I got back to the house, my three cousins were
waiting for me on the verandah. Krishna’s eyes were red and puffy, Meenu was pacing back and forth, and Gitanjali was sitting on a chair with her head in her hands.

“Rakhee!” Krishna jumped up.

Meenu stopped pacing and Gitanjali came swiftly toward me. At first I thought she was mad, but then she put her arms around my neck, pressed the side of my head into her stomach, and exhaled.

“Where have you been? I was just about to go find Vijay Uncle and tell him you were missing. Do you know how much trouble we would have been in? Where on earth did you go?”

I told them I had fallen asleep by the river—which was partly true—and had woken up only after dark. Even though I felt sorry to have worried them, part of me was touched that they cared so much, especially Gitanjali. I had always secretly wished for an older brother or sister, an ally who understood me and looked out for me, and for a fleeting moment Gitanjali’s embrace made me feel that I did indeed have one.

Krishna sniffled and linked my arm with hers as we walked up the verandah steps.

“My mom’s not home yet?” I asked.

“Thankfully no,” said Gitanjali. “Now listen, all of you, we can’t let on that anything went wrong today. For all they know, you spent the day reading and studying, okay?”

We all agreed, and by the time the grown-ups returned we were bathed and dressed in our pajamas, sipping milk at the dining table.

Amma stroked the top of my head. “Rakhee, I’m exhausted, I’m going to bed. You had a nice day?” She didn’t wait for a response, just gave me a feeble kiss and left the room.

Nalini Aunty was uncharacteristically subdued. Balu
was sleeping in her arms, his small head nestled into her shoulder. “Where is your uncle?” she asked us. “Hasn’t he come home yet?”

“No, Aunty, we have not seen him,” replied Gitanjali.

Nalini Aunty sighed, and I wanted to tell her about what had happened at the hospital earlier that day so she would know that Vijay Uncle had done more than just drink at the toddy shop, but before I could say anything she left the room.

Sadhana Aunty clapped her hands. “It’s getting late. It’s time for you girls to go to sleep.”

Krishna looked up at her mother. “What about you? Aren’t you going to bed?”

“No,” she replied, her mouth set into a grim line. “No, I have a few things to get done.”

Sadhana Aunty was always the first one to get up in the morning and the last one to retreat at night. I wondered if she even slept at all. Somehow I couldn’t imagine her lying down on that stiff bed, wrapping the thin cotton sheet around her exhausted body, letting her head rest on a pillow, closing her eyes, and surrendering to sleep.

“Good night, everybody,” said Gitanjali. We all dispersed to our respective rooms without looking at each other, as if somehow making eye contact would cause the real events of the day to spill forth.

I turned off the light in my room and climbed into bed with the letter I had stolen. Clutching my keychain flashlight, I lay flat on my stomach and made a tent around my head with the sheet. In my little glowing shroud I read the letter the way I read books at home: late at night, under the covers, long after Amma had told me to turn off the lights.

The letter was addressed to my grandfather.

I stared at the letter—at the thin, formal script written in blue ink, at the crisp, yellowing paper, at the network of creases, like the wrinkles on Muthashi’s faded cheeks. I imagined an old, sick man in a dark suit and spectacles, huddled over a desk with an expensive fountain pen. I pictured my grandfather reading the letter. Somehow it was chilling to think that he might have been the last one to have touched it, that my fingers were on the very spot that his fingers had once been. In spite of the heat, I shivered, and slid the letter under my pillow.

The sound of shuffling feet and a chair being knocked over on the verandah made me sit up. For a moment there was silence. And then I heard the hollow, mournful music of a solitary flute. It was a familiar tune, one that Amma used to sing to me at my bedside when I was little. She once told me it was a devotional song about Lord Krishna. The melody was haunting, and I would hear it inside my head as I drifted further away from Amma’s sweet voice and deeper into sleep.

Following the music, I climbed out of bed and went out onto the verandah. Vijay Uncle didn’t see me at first. He was sitting on the ground near the toppled chair, his back resting against the wall, playing a crudely fashioned wooden flute. I took one step back and the floor creaked.

Vijay Uncle dropped the flute and froze. “Who’s there?”

“It’s me,” I said, stepping out into the moonlight. “It’s just me.”

Vijay Uncle sighed and placed his hand on his heart. “Rakhee, what are you doing up at this hour? You gave me a fright.”

“Sorry, Uncle.” I shifted my weight from one bare foot to the other.

“Well, seeing as you’re awake, why don’t you come and keep me company?” He patted the spot next to him.

I slid down onto the ground, and at once the heavy stench of alcohol draped itself over us like a cloak. I moved away a couple of inches but the smell did not dissipate.

“You are a night owl, I see,” said Vijay Uncle. “I suspect that is another thing you inherited from yours truly. I’m glad of it. There’s nothing sweeter than a clear, moonlit night. It’s the only time I can really have any peace.”

He seemed in a talkative mood, so I decided that this would be a good chance to find out more information.

“Vijay Uncle, do you know anything about a man named Charles Holloway?”

“Of course I do.” He hiccupped and covered his mouth with his hands. “Please excuse me.”

“Who was he? What do you know about him?”

Vijay Uncle laughed. “You really are a curious little monkey. I’ve never seen a child ask so many questions.
Good thing you’re only here for a summer or we might have had a problem.”

My heart thumped. “What do you mean by that?”

“Oh nothing, nothing at all, molay.” Vijay Uncle ruffled my hair with a clumsy hand. “Anyhow, you were asking about Holloway. He was a friend of your grandfather’s, well, more of a patron, really. He was extremely wealthy, and he brought Muthashan to America to cure him of some disease or other, and in the process grew fond of him and lavished him with riches. Muthashan was only there for six months but they grew very close during that time, a bit like father and son.” Vijay Uncle snorted, rubbed his nose, and continued, “Holloway wanted Muthashan to move to America permanently—just before he died he offered him a position at Yale University, but Muthashan’s family wouldn’t allow him to take it. Not long before he sailed for America, you see, he had married Muthashi. She was still very young then, only a teenager, and he left her behind with his mother and three sisters. They were very resentful when he left, because his father had died a few months earlier and he was the only son. They relied on him for everything.”

“Did they all live at Ashoka?”

“Ashoka? Heavens no. It hadn’t even been built back then. No, they lived in our ancestral home, which is over four hundred years old. It’s still standing today, and my three aunts still live there. The cranky old virgins. They never married.”

“Where is the house? Why do we never see them?”

“It’s only about a mile away from here. We do see them from time to time, but we were never close. Muthashan didn’t much like having them around. Anyhow, after he wrote home telling his family of his good fortune and asking
them to send Muthashi over to him, his sisters wrote him a letter, begging him to come home. Their mother was on her deathbed, they said, and was asking for him. So Muthashan came all the way back here to see his mother. She made him promise on the fate of her eternal soul that he would never leave again, that he would stay in Malanad and take care of his sisters, and that he would use his money and medical training to start a hospital in the village. She said his people needed him and he couldn’t abandon his duty.”