The Mango Season (21 page)

“Happens in the first trimester,” Lata told her caustically. “And why are you and Anand so late? I thought you would be here in the morning. Sowmya and I had to mix the dried mango for the
maggai
all by ourselves.”

The scolding didn’t faze Neelima who wanted nothing more out of life at that instant than coffee. “My parents wanted us to have lunch with them,” she said.

“Here no one has eaten lunch,” Sowmya muttered. “
Nanna
came and just took some of the morning’s curd rice and
Amma
is still having a headache. Radha
Akka
and I unnecessarily cooked so much rice and
pappu
.”

“We’ll have it tonight,” Lata said, and then focused on me. “How is your father doing?”

I smiled. “He’s going to be just fine.”

Lata put her hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “I think you are very brave,” she said. “It would have been easy for you to not have said anything . . . like Anand. But you did and that was very brave.”

I was surprised by her assessment. I didn’t feel very brave, just helpless in a situation that I couldn’t alter.

“I wish more women would stand up for what they want,” Lata finished with a smile.

“Maybe it’s time you did,” I suggested to her.

Sowmya finished churning the buttermilk and started pouring it in tall steel glasses that stood shakily on the not-so-smooth stone kitchen counter.

“Can you take this to your father and mother?” Sowmya pointed to two glasses.

“They are in the veranda-bedroom,” Lata told me. “Your mother is very angry. Good luck.”

I took the two glasses and went to find my parents. I knew my father was probably telling Ma that he was not going to raise any objections to who I wanted to marry. That was not going to be a pretty sight but I wasn’t going to back out after I had come this far. Even though Adarsh had annoyed the hell out of me he had shown me that hiding Nick from my family was detrimental to my relationship with Nick.

“Nothing doing,” Ma was yelling at
Nanna
. “She told Mallika . . . she told Mallika about this Nicku person. Mallika phoned everyone and told them. Sarita just called me here to tell me. What is she doing to us? Dragging our name in the dirt?”

I almost didn’t enter the bedroom, but took that heavy step across the threshold, pushing the slightly closed door. “
Lassi
,” I said, holding the glasses high.

Ma glared at me. “What, Priya, what are you doing to us?”

There were tears in her eyes and I wondered if they were there because she was sad or because she was angry. I never really got close to Ma the way daughters were supposed to get close to their mothers. I had managed to develop a very close relationship with my father but with Ma, things were better left unsaid. I think I never respected her or credited her with too much intelligence— that was for
Nanna
. Ma was the nuisance parent in my life, and even though Nate bitched about Ma, I knew that he always bought her a gift for her birthday, remembered my parents’ wedding anniversary, and sometimes just for the hell of it would bring home
jalebis
, Ma’s favorite sweet.

Why was it that we had divided our affections like this? It was a subconscious thing because when I looked inside myself I could feel that
Nanna
loved me more than Ma did. Sometimes I actually felt that Ma disliked me because I was so different from her and because I was so close to
Nanna
.

When I was a little girl, and Nate had yet to be born, I used to imagine that Ma was actually my stepmother.
Nanna
was my real father but my real mother had died and no one was telling me the truth. Ma’s curtness and her lack of overt affection or physical affection of any sort always bothered me, left me empty. Whenever I told her that I loved her she would shoo it away, saying that love had to be shown in actions and not in words. Maybe she was right. I couldn’t show what I didn’t truly feel. I was ambivalent about my feelings for my mother; there was love, I was sure, it was just sometimes submerged under dislike.

“I’m really sorry,” I said sincerely. “I thought Adarsh would be discreet since he told me about his Chinese girlfriend. I really didn’t think he’d put out an ad in the newspaper.”

Ma seemed to be surprised by my apology but she recovered from that fast. “So if he tells something you have to counter it? Don’t you have any shame?”

“What has shame got to do with this?” Politeness be damned. The woman was as usual getting on my nerves.

“And why would you tell Murthy Auntie about this? Don’t you have anything better to do?”

“She asked about Adarsh and I told her the truth,” I said, now regretting my rash decision of telling Murthy Auntie about Nick. I had done it because I was angry with the family, irritated with Murthy Auntie’s interrogation. It was juvenile and I was now embarrassed.

“But I’m sorry I told her,” I said, my eyes downcast. “It was a stupid thing to do.”

“She told everyone,” Ma said, and then added sarcastically, “No need for Adarsh to put it in the papers, you did a fine job yourself. Why don’t you yell it off the rooftops?”

“Radha,”
Nanna
intervened. “She made a mistake and she is sorry.”

“Sorry?” Ma looked at my father in bewilderment. “Sorry does not make this right, Ashwin. She is insulting us and”—she turned to look at me—“get out of here and I don’t ever want to see your face again. If you marry this American, that is it, you are never welcome in my house anymore.”

My mouth dried up because she was imparting the small knives with great precision and they were striking me the way she wanted them to. I may not love her as much as I loved my father but she was my mother. How can a mother turn away from her daughter?

“Radha.”
Nanna
put his hand on Ma’s shoulder just as her chest heaved. She jerked the
pallu
of her sari that was falling off of her shoulder and tucked the edge at her waist.

“What, Ashwin, I had such great dreams . . . such hopes, all shattered.” Ma started to weep, the words pouring out of her through hiccups and tears.
Nanna
put his arms around her and rocked her gently.

“Everything will be okay,” he murmured into her hair, and smiled sadly at me.

The lump in my throat burst and I set the glasses of
lassi
down on the bedside table.
Nanna
held out an arm for me and I ran into it. We all held each other through the torment of acceptance.

Ma was the first to push us both away. She wiped her face with her
pallu
and looked at me with eyes that glistened with the aftermath of tears and rage. “Are you really marrying this American boy?”

I held on to my father as I turned to face her. “Yes.”

Ma nodded. “When?”

“This fall. Maybe October.”

Ma nodded again and walked out of the bedroom.

I leaned into
Nanna
some more and whispered an apology. I didn’t know what I was sorry about anymore, just that I wanted it to end, I wanted things to go back to normal.

By the time a tired
Thatha
came home, dinner was ready. We all sat down quietly to eat. Anand and Jayant, who were in a heated discussion about the riots that were raging in Gujarat, also fell silent when they reached the dinner table. There was an ominous flavor to the air around us.

Everyone was waiting for me to reveal my defection yet again and to tell
Thatha
about my meeting with Adarsh, my improper conversation, and my impending marriage to a man they would all refer to as the
firangi
.

Sowmya was serving leftovers from lunch but no one, not even Anand who always had a problem with leftover food, complained.

“Lata’s ultrasound and amnio test is tomorrow,” Jayant said, I think to stop everyone from thinking about my American fiancé.

Thatha
looked up at Lata and smiled. “It will be a boy,” he said confidently.

Lata, the first to finish dinner, washed her hand in the plate with the remaining water in her glass and rose, plate in hand. “No,” she said looking at me, her eyes triumphant. “There will be no ultrasound and no amnio test.”

Jayant stood up, pushing his chair away sharply, its four legs squeaking against the floor’s polished stone, a look of total panic on his face. “What do you mean you won’t do it? Sixteen weeks, they can tell the sex in sixteen weeks these days.”

Lata moved and the curd rice mixed with water sloshed on her plate. “I don’t want to know the sex of this baby.”

“But you said that if it is a girl you would . . .” Jayant stopped himself from revealing too much but it was already too late, everyone was privy to what they had decided would be the fate of a baby girl.

“I want to have this child and I want it to be a surprise like it was when Shalini and Apoorva were born,” Lata said and left for the back yard to put the plate in the tub for the maid to clean the next day.

While she was gone,
Thatha
demanded an explanation from Jayant. “What is going on, Jayant? If it is a girl . . . You know we want a boy.”

Jayant threw his hands up in exasperation. “I don’t know what to do. I . . . will try and talk to her.”

“Why?” Sowmya asked and surprised everyone with her voice. “If she doesn’t want to know, we should not force her. We are not that kind of a family.”

Everyone in the room became very still.
Ammamma
, who had been fanning herself with the day’s
Deccan Chronicle
with one hand while eating with the other, stopped in midair and looked at her husband, seeking out a reaction.

Sowmya had put it out there, told everyone, especially
Thatha
, that if he complained or insisted too much about knowing the gender of the baby he would be slotted away with all those other despicable middle-class men who participated in female infanticide. She had managed to corner the great old man himself with a few words.

“Okay,”
Thatha
said, looking at Sowmya as if he had never seen her before. “Whatever Lata wants.”

Lata, who was waiting by the back yard to hear the outcome of her announcement, smiled. “We will leave for the night,” she said, coming into the kitchen. “We want to go to my parents’ house so that we can drop Apoorva and Shalini off at school tomorrow morning.”

Jayant washed his hands in the plate but unlike his wife did not bother to put his plate away.

“
Thatha
,” I started, and fell silent when he raised his hand.

“I will not accept it, Priya. If you marry this man, then you are not my family,”
Thatha
said.

I had expected it all along but I had not been prepared for the pain that followed his announcement. My heart felt heavy and I clenched my teeth in an effort not to cry. I didn’t want to give the old man the satisfaction. He had hurt me just as deeply as I imagine I had hurt him. Were we even now?

“Then that is your choice, I have no problems with who Priya marries,”
Nanna
said clearly and rose from the table with his plate. Jayant and Lata who were about to leave stood still by the doorway between the dining area and the hall to see the drama through to its end.

Sowmya took
Nanna’s
plate and he walked up to the sink by the doorway to the back yard. No one said anything while the water from the tap splashed on his hand and cleaned it.

“And you think that marrying this American is going to make her happy?”
Thatha
demanded while
Nanna
dried his hands on the towel hanging on a rusty nail over the sink. In all the years we had all been together, I had never seen or even heard of
Thatha
and
Nanna
having a confrontation.

“I think that how she lives her life is her choice and yes, I believe that she will be and actually she is happy with Nicholas,”
Nanna
said, still standing, keeping his advantage by looking down at
Thatha
.

Thatha
washed his hands in his plate and looked at Ma. “Radha? Is this okay with you?”

Ma sat still for a very long moment and then nodded.

“It is going to only end badly,”
Thatha
told
Nanna
. “And when it does,” he pointed a finger at him, “I want you to know that
you
will be the person with the most blame. You can stop her. Do it now.”

Nanna
shook his head. “She is my daughter and this is my choice to make, just like you are making yours. I trust her. I believe her to be a smart and intelligent woman. I think that if she says she is happy with Nicholas, she is telling the truth. Priya is no fool.”

“But you are for letting her do this,”
Thatha
said agitated, his chest heaving with the rage he was trying to control. This was his family, he was supreme here. How dare anyone go against him.

“In that case, my family and I will take leave of you,”
Nanna
said politely, so politely that it was insulting in its weight.

Ammamma
cried out then. “No, no. Why do you talk like this?” She looked at her husband of fifty-one years with admonishment. “He didn’t mean it, Ashwin.” She tried to assuage my father.

“Then he shouldn’t have said it,” Ma said angrily. In all the years that we had all been together,
Thatha
had never called
Nanna
names. This was quite an event and I was solely to blame, or so I felt. Guilt that I had banished just a little while ago came back in big waves rolling me into them and throwing me on the shore of repercussions.

“I shouldn’t have said it,”
Thatha
said slowly, realizing that he was breaking up his family.

“It is not right but . . . she is a daughter’s daughter,”
Ammamma
said, patting
Thatha’s
shoulder. “And if Radha and Ashwin feel it is okay, who are we to say anything?”

Thatha
nodded grudgingly but didn’t look at
Nanna
or Ma or me. This was the end, I realized. There would be no sneaking away to the pomegranate tree or taking walks with him. There wouldn’t be phone calls on the weekend where he would complain about the Indian politicians and how the corporation he had leased the mango orchards to was treating him.