The Girl in the Garden (36 page)

It pained me that I would not get a chance to see Krishna, but I would write her a letter. I would invite her to come visit us in Plainfield. This was not the end.

Nalini Aunty gave me a perfunctory pat on the shoulder.

“Keep in touch,” said Vijay Uncle, and he slipped a dusty, unwrapped candy into my hand with a wink.

“Don’t forget us,” Meenu said, giving my arm a pinch.

“I won’t,” I told her. “I won’t forget.”

I looked at them all once more before turning away for the last time. “Bye!” I called, and ran across the lawn toward Aba.

“All set?” Aba said without looking me in the eyes.

“Amma will be right down,” I said, and followed him into the car.

“We’re ready,” Aba leaned forward and told the driver, as we settled in and shut the door.

“Not yet,” I said, “Amma’s just coming.”

“Rakhee—” Aba started to say something, but was interrupted by a shout.

“Wait!”

Krishna, barefoot and in her nightgown, was running down the steps. I opened the car door and jumped out.

“Rakhee!” she cried, and flung her arms around my neck.

“Krishna!”

“Rakhee, come back for me,” she whispered. “Please come back for me.”

“I will,” I touched my cool forehead to her burning one, “I promise.”

“It’s time,” came Aba’s voice.

I gave Krishna another kiss on the cheek and got in the car. Aba leaned across me and pulled the door shut.

The engine roared.

“But wait, Amma—” I said, and my heart flared with panic and confusion for only a split second before it hit me. Just now, in her room, she had been saying good-bye.

The car began to jog down the bumpy road.

My eyes filled up, and a huge feeling of emptiness opened in my chest. I turned around and looked out the back window.

Krishna was still at the bottom of the steps of Ashoka, waving. But she was not alone. A snow-white bird was strutting out of the trees, dragging his plumage behind him like a bridal train. He was crossing the road and heading toward her. Krishna stopped waving and turned her head to the bird.

I pressed my hand against the glass and watched Krishna and Puck grow smaller and smaller. The afternoon sun blazed into a frenzy of gold, blinding me.

Ashoka melted into the distance, and with it, so did Amma.

I sat back down on the seat and covered my face with my hands.

“Rakhee.” Aba took one hand and held it in his. “Amma will come back to us when she is ready.”

The empty feeling deepened, and I leaned my forehead against the window to hide my face. Around us, on either side, the forest was green and lush with life.

Aba squeezed my hand.

I knew that he would take me home.

A
few days after we returned to Plainfield I went out into Amma’s garden. It had survived the summer and that fall was unseasonably warm, so it continued to thrive. Even though the leaves were still green and the sky was summer blue, the air had taken on that distinct fall scent, crisp and sharp, the scent of new beginnings. I spent the whole afternoon yanking the flowers and the rosebushes up from their beds, making sure to get the entire root. I gathered the refuse into a giant wheelbarrow and made several trips back and forth to the ravine, where I dumped everything and watched as the piles and piles of vibrant blooms tumbled down the hill.

Aba never said anything about my act of vandalism, but not long afterward a landscaper arrived, and eventually a layer of fresh green grass carpeted the space where her garden once grew. No one ever brought up the idea of planting a new one, and when Merlin died of old age I buried his ashes there, marking the spot with a painted rock.

Aba and I developed an unspoken bond that had never existed before, the way I suppose soldiers do when they’ve made it through a war. He did his best, though I know it
was not easy. Looking back, I think I probably took care of him during those years as much as he took care of me. When I was a senior in high school he married, with my blessing, a woman from his lab, Catherine, who has at last given him the love and stability he deserves. Still, sometimes even now I catch him with a certain distant look in his eyes, and I suspect he is not thinking of me, or of work, or of Catherine.

As for Amma, she never came back to us.

She remained at Ashoka for a few months before she decided to take that train to Trivandrum after all, and from then on she existed only in my dreams and memories. I ignored every phone call and every letter, though she persistently called and wrote up until my high school graduation, when I went east for college. Aba tried to persuade me to speak to her, but I never budged.

All these years she and Prem have lived side by side as friends and neighbors, nothing more. Although I never heard Sadhana Aunty’s full revelation that last day at Ashoka, I eventually pieced together the truth. But I have kept it to myself. Krishna and Tulasi, both of whom I have been in close contact with, are mystified that they never married, nor sought comfort elsewhere. Privately, I have always wondered if it is because they cannot bear the thought of being with anyone else, or if it is just their small way of atoning for the chaos their love has wreaked.

Tulasi binds them together now. For a month after Prem took her away from the garden she was gripped by a panic, despair, and confusion so intense she could not speak. She cowered inside her bedroom at Prem’s house, mute and terrified. Prem consulted one of his colleagues, a professor of psychology, who suggested that Tulasi be institutionalized, but Prem refused. He could not bear to do
that to her after everything she had already been through. But she grew increasingly withdrawn, sometimes locking the door so he could not come in to see her, and opening it only to allow a servant woman to bring in food and water. At night, he heard her crying out
Teacher! Teacher!

He persisted in trying to reach her until one day she unlocked the door and let him into her room. Though she still would not acknowledge his presence, he brought her food and water from then on instead of the servant woman, day after day, and he would sit with her as she stared at the wall, explaining things about himself, about Amma, and about the world. She would never eat or drink in his presence, but whenever he came back into the room later, her cup and plate would be clean. After weeks of this ritual, one day, she took the plate as soon as Prem brought it in, and held it in her lap while he tentatively began to talk. A few minutes later, she took a bite. Then another. Then another and another until she had finished. A week later, she spoke to him, and her first hoarse words were,
How is Rakhee?

Since then, she has undergone years of intensive therapy and, ultimately, surgery to correct her cleft palate. She has come a long way, but I don’t know that one can ever fully recover from what she has experienced. She has never been able to bring herself to see or speak to Sadhana Aunty again because, she says, it brings back too many memories of her life in the garden. These days she shuttles back and forth between Amma’s and Prem’s houses, and tutors schoolchildren in math, science, and English a few days a week. She remains generally shy of strangers and prefers to stay close to home, content to read, garden, and keep her parents company. Considering all she has endured, she has done remarkably well.

Although Tulasi and I have maintained our close relationship by writing to one another at least once a week and talking regularly on the phone, we have not seen each other since that summer. Tulasi does not feel comfortable leaving home, and as for me, I have not been able to find the strength to return to India because I know that it would mean seeing Amma.

Meenu and Krishna have long since left Malanad—Meenu studied dentistry at university and Krishna sociology—and both are now married. Krishna and I keep in frequent touch, and we have seen each other three times since that summer. She came to Plainfield for two weeks when we were in high school, then visited me a few years later in college, and a few years after that we met in Paris when I spent the summer there between my first and second years at Yale. Both Meenu and Krishna invited me to their weddings in Kerala, but I am ashamed to say I made excuses.

Sadhana Aunty, Vijay Uncle, and Nalini Aunty are all still at Ashoka. I am not sure if Vijay Uncle ever stopped drinking, but I know he runs the hospital now, and that my cousins regularly send money back for its upkeep. From what I hear, it is flourishing. Balu went to college in the city for a year, but ultimately dropped out, and now he, too, lives at Ashoka, where he helps his father out at the hospital. If for no other reason, I know I am a Varma by blood simply because the knowledge that the hospital is doing well and that it still belongs to our family fills me with a level of pride I have never fully understood.

And what of Sadhana Aunty? Once when I was in college Krishna sent me a family snapshot. I hardly recognized my aunt. In fact, when I first glanced at the photo I thought that the white-haired, stone-faced woman was
Hema. I wondered later how I could have made such a mistake, since they looked nothing alike, until it struck me that they both had the same hollow look in their eyes: the look of a woman who has lost the thing she loves most in this world.

This brings us to the present, with me sitting on the floor of my studio, holding the letter I just received from India in my hands: