The Girl in the Garden (5 page)

Aba went to fetch the necessary instruments and I tried to avoid looking at the mouse, who was wriggling his pink nose through the bars at me. For one mad moment I considered opening the cage and setting it free, but I repressed the urge. I didn’t want to disappoint Aba and make him think I was a coward or, even worse, a bore who could not see the thrill of science.

When Aba had returned he opened the cage and in one deft motion caught the mouse, encircling its head between his gloved thumb and forefinger, and holding its squirming hind limbs with his other hand.

He released the mouse inside a large bowl that had a clear plastic cover fitted with a nozzle. The mouse began to run around in circles inside the bowl. Aba attached a small glass vial to the nozzle.

“Now we wait,” he said. Its movements grew lethargic. Finally, it settled down in one corner, a sluggish white lump. Next, Aba took the mouse out of the container and filled a syringe with another clear liquid, which he injected into its limp bottom. The mouse stiffened, but I could still see its chest continuing to rise and fall in slow, methodical breaths.

“We’re ready to begin.” Aba stretched the rigid creature out onto a metal tray and used strings to tie its limbs down; it looked so helpless lying there like that with its soft white belly exposed. A blade of nausea rose at the back of my throat. Aba picked up an instrument that I thought was a small butter knife until he ran it along the length of the mouse’s body, and I saw the thin thread of blood that welled up. He drew back the white flaps of outer flesh and revealed the inside of the mouse.

“Can he feel anything?”

“No, no, don’t worry, it can’t feel a thing,” said Aba. “This way you can see how the organs actually work in life.”

I stood up on my stool and peered down, deep inside the mouse’s body—at its pulsing, purplish innards, at the droplets of blood that had dribbled down onto the tray and coated Aba’s cream-colored latex gloves, at its live, beating heart. I couldn’t hold it in anymore—I stumbled off my perch and landed on my knees, where I proceeded to vomit all over the floor.

Aba rubbed my back, took me into the bathroom to wash my face, and let me sit in his office while he cleaned up the mess in the lab. As I waited for him in his leather chair, shame consumed me. Aba had been kind about it, but I felt that in some fundamental way I had let him down.

Before we went home, he took me to Dairy Queen, but I couldn’t eat a thing. “It’s my fault,” he said sadly. “Your mother was right. Maybe you are too young.”

The morning of our flight to India, I rose early to make sure that I had packed my most important belongings.
When I had confirmed that my sketchpad and colored pencils were safely tucked away in my backpack, I crept downstairs in my nightgown. Amma was talking on the phone in the kitchen. I knew that it must be Veena Aunty on the other end of the line because of the casual way she cradled the receiver under her ear, the thickening of her accent, and the Malayalam words and phrases that peppered the conversation.

“I just don’t know what else to do,” I heard Amma say, as I lingered unnoticed in the doorway. “This is killing me, but I can’t tell Vikram, I can’t, I
won’t
ask him for help.”

That is all I heard or understood because Amma then saw the edge of my pink nightgown peeking out from behind the door frame.

“Ah, you’re up. Go upstairs and get ready. We have to leave soon.”

She told Veena Aunty that she had to go then, so I did as I was told and went upstairs, my limbs heavy.

What was Amma talking about?

I resolved then to bring my parents back together. I would use the summer in India to find whatever was tearing them apart and fix it. If I did not want to end up like the mouse, alone and doomed in his cage, I had to figure out a way to save our family. At that moment, I believed it could be that simple.

I
stumbled as I stepped off the plane in Bombay, and Amma caught my moist hand in hers. The sun was white and blinding, and the wall of heat that greeted us was unlike anything I had ever felt before. The lenses of my glasses fogged, and a scarf of sweat spread across the bridge of my nose. Amma was hurrying across the steaming black runway toward a row of glass doors, and pulling me along behind her.

I stayed close to her side as we wove through the sweaty throng to identify our baggage so it could be transported to our connecting flight. Children darted by swift as multicolored arrows. Unsuppressed body odor invaded my nostrils. All around us, barefoot women dressed in identical saris swept the dusty floors, stooping over their long bristled brooms like agile, purple-winged insects.

Mirrors flashed through puffs of smog and bold silks swished. Gold ornaments dangled from necks, ears, and arms. The people seemed much smaller than they did back in Minnesota, and livelier, too. There was a grace combined with unrelenting energy that propelled each muscle and tendon into motion.

Two young boys who looked to be around my age
came running up to us chanting “Madam, madam, please madam” in reedy voices, and tried to take our suitcases and place them on top of their heads. Amma shooed them away with one hand like flies.

I tugged at the dampening cotton of the sundress I had changed into in the airplane bathroom. Moisture prickled my skin and I felt unsteady on my feet.

A cluster of men in khaki uniforms passed by and I noticed their eyes scanning Amma’s jeans-and-T-shirt-clad figure, up and down, up and down, a dirty look that made me clutch the crook of her arm and press closer against her side.

A full day had passed since Aba had dropped us off at the Minneapolis airport and unloaded our suitcases onto the sidewalk. He had bent down low and taken me in his arms, holding me close. He seemed exhausted and resigned. I longed to tell him how much I loved him, that he should trust me and I would make everything right again. But I knew if I said that I would start to cry, and I wanted Aba to think I was brave.

“Promise you’ll take care of Merlin,” I said instead.

“I will,” swore Aba with a smile. I had elicited a similar promise from Merlin as I embraced him earlier that morning, curling my fingers in his black fur, and he had given my palm a dignified lick in response.

“I’ve heard that the phone lines where you’re going are not very reliable, so we won’t be able to speak much, but we can write letters,” said Aba. “Take this anyway, in case of an emergency.” He handed me a folded-up piece of paper. Inside, he had written down the code that I would need to punch in before our phone number in order to call home from India. I placed the paper in my pocket and resolved to memorize it as soon as I got on
the plane. “And Rakhee,” said Aba, standing up, “Look after your mother for me, all right?” He was gone before I could respond, just like that. Amma didn’t even say goodbye to him.

“Come, Rakhee, don’t dawdle.” Amma tugged at my hand.

We had to board a second plane, smaller and bumpier than the last, which carried us south, along the western coast of the country. My heartbeat quickened as I peered out the window, down through the clouds at the blue waves tossing and turning below us. My first glimpse of the ocean.

“Your grandmother will be so pleased to see you, Rakhee. Do you remember her—your Muthashi?” Amma asked over the whir of the engine.

I did remember Muthashi, my grandmother. She had come to stay with us in Minnesota when I was around three or four. I could not recall the exact details of her face, but I had a vague mental picture of a slight woman draped in white who used to sit me on her knee and sing a song in Malayalam about ants.

I used to run out onto the driveway humming the ant song, and guide a string of the black insects into my palm. Weaving my fingers together and making a delicate cup with my hands, I would transport them into the house, giggling as the ants tickled inside their little cage. Muthashi would always act so pleased when I proudly deposited the squirming ants into her outstretched hand, although I’m sure she would let them out the back door as soon as I wasn’t looking.

“Rakhee,” continued Amma. “I haven’t told you much about our family, have I?”

I shook my head.

“Well, the Varmas are the most prominent, respected family in the village. My father was a doctor, and he started a hospital across the street from our home. He died a long time ago, so now my younger brother, Vijay, is in charge. You’ll also meet my big sister, Sadhana, and her three daughters. One of them is about your age. And Vijay’s wife, Nalini, who I have never met, recently had a baby boy. Everybody lives together at Ashoka—that’s the name of the house where I grew up. You see, in India families stick together under one roof. It’s not the same as it is in America.”

“Welcome to God’s Own Country.” The voice of the smooth-skinned stewardess over the intercom interrupted Amma, as the plane glided to a halt at Cochin Airport. “Enjoy your stay.”

This airport was not as crowded or chaotic as the one in Bombay, and the people seemed neater and more subdued. In the bathroom Amma changed into a buttercupyellow sari and painted a red raindrop on her forehead with a bottle that she produced from her purse. “I can’t show up at home dressed like an American,” she explained.

I loved seeing that transformation, from my regular mother who took the trash out every morning with a bulky coat flung over her nightgown to this wondrous creature. From the moment she put on the sari and released her hair from its bun so that it streamed down her back in a lustrous river, she appeared younger and somehow more natural.

“How do I look?” she asked, as she ran a comb through her hair.

“You look beautiful, Amma,” I told her honestly.

A compact man with a bushy mustache and a symmetrical
crescent of sweat under each arm met us outside the airport, holding a sign with “Mrs. Chitra Varma Singh and daughter” printed across it in block letters. He led us through the thick heat toward a white car and loaded all our suitcases into the trunk. Amma and I both slid into the backseat. My legs stuck to the synthetic leather.

“Are you hungry, molay?” Amma asked me. “We’ll be home soon.” But she sounded absent, as if my hunger was hardly her main concern.

I stared out the window as we drove. Unlike the gray, arrow-straight highways I was accustomed to, here the roads were red and twisty. In the distance I could see groves of coconut trees, their green fronds waving against the sky like pinwheels. We passed forests of rubber trees and stretches of lime-green grassland that Amma told me were rice paddy fields. Wiry, mustachioed men with protruding rib cages spiraling down their torsos and white cloths knotted around their waists (“Those cloths are called
mundus
,” explained Amma) were scattered here and there in the treetops, tapping the trunks and collecting sap in metal buckets.

At one point the driver stopped the car abruptly. I leaned over the seat and was shocked to see a cow blinking her long black lashes at me. The driver honked the horn and she took her sweet time ambling out of the way.

Soon after, I heard a dull thud and a hulking elephant rounded the corner, heading toward us, the tough black ripples of its trunk swaying to and fro.

“Amma!” I cried.

But Amma only laughed. “It’s normal for elephants to walk around on the street here, don’t worry.”

A man wearing a faded blue turban and carrying a gnarled stick was riding atop the great animal. I waited for
either the turbaned man to steer his charge out of the way or for the car to slow down, but neither thing happened. The driver pushed forward with alarming speed, straight toward the elephant. I gasped, but at the last second he swerved, and both he and the man nodded politely to one another, as if this were perfectly normal. The elephant lumbered past the car window so close that I could have reached out and brushed my fingers against its sagging hide.

It was nearing sunset by the time we reached Malanad. My stomach lurched as we passed over the bumpy roads. The scenery had grown increasingly hilly and even more rural; through the scrim of trees I could see houses, like miniature boxes painted in weathered peach and white. Barefoot children loitered in yards and saris fluttered on clotheslines. The village square consisted of a row of thatched stalls where shopkeepers sold fruits, vegetables, and oily sweets. People craned their necks to steal glimpses inside the car as we drove past. Amma kept her eyes focused on an unseen target straight ahead, her body stiff.