The Stolen Girl (17 page)

T
he girl standing
in front of her, the girl Aarti has spent the best years of her life looking for, is
fat.
Rolls of fat jiggle from under her chin, her face is so puffed up that it is hard to make out her features. Her arms wobble; they tremble as she leans against the doorjamb, watching Aarti watch her, taking Aarti in just as meticulously as Aarti takes her in.

‘Am I not what you expected?’ she asks at last and Aarti looks directly at her daughter’s burnt sugar eyes that shimmer with hurt. She tries to wipe the shock from her face, ironing it clear of expression like she once used to with her parents. How can this girl know just what she is thinking? Is she that transparent?

Her daughter’s voice is clear, like the ringing of bells to signal meals served at the clinic she had checked into when recovering from her breakdown after Vani disappeared with her child,
this
child, standing now in front of her, less than an arm’s length away. Aarti looks at her daughter’s face and finally, she is able to see past the weight, the expanse of her body and focus instead on her eyes. She finds reflected in the nervousness, the anguish in their soft caramel depths, an echo of what she herself feels.

She recognises those eyes. They hark back to a past when she was happy, to that blissful decade when she had both friendship and love, that delightful time sandwiched between the heavy, lonely doorsteps of yawning years on either side. And Aarti is able to see, at last, the girl hiding in there, lost amongst the folds of flesh.

She leans forward and extends her hands, manages to encircle her child in them. She holds her close and breathes in the apple and strawberry scent of her hair. She realises as she rests her cheek on her daughter’s head and breathes in her smell, as her heart shifts a little, thaws a little, the melting manifesting itself as a wetness on her cheeks, that it has been years since she last held someone or was held by someone. It has, in fact, been exactly thirteen years.

What do you say to a child you have hankered after, missed and longed for for more than a decade? To the child who stands looking at you with the eyes of the man you loved and the body that you have tried all your life to stay clear of, a body that repulses you. What do you say first?

Yes, you are not what I expected. All those pictures I conjured up, images of you at various stages of your life, none of them were…like this. It feels like a double betrayal, like she, Vani, has won again. She stole you once and now it is as if she has stolen you all over again – my vision of you.

All her life, Aarti had sworn to herself that if she ever had children, she would not behave like her parents, delivering barbed comments and thoughtless jibes, hurtful admonishments that would scar for life. And so, she stops the references to excess weight, the advice to eat healthily that seem to be stumbling over her mouth in their eagerness to come out against her will, and says instead, shyly releasing her daughter from her grasp, ‘Come inside.’

Her daughter enters hesitantly, makes for the little table beside the bed and lowers herself down onto one of the chairs. Aarti looks at her daughter –
her daughter!
– here, in this hotel room, and is struck dumb by nerves, nausea churning, inciting her stomach to riot, even though she has been unable to eat anything since the phone call informing her that her daughter was ready to meet her. She bites down the sudden urge to be sick, as if by purging herself, she will get rid of all the things that have already gone wrong, start again.

How does one fill a silence of thirteen years? How about the words I practised over and over in front of the mirror: I missed you, sweetheart, every single day you were away, I missed you. But you are here now. You are here and everything is going to be all right.

She opens her mouth to say these words as the stranger who is her child spills out of the chair opposite and regards Aarti with familiar eyes. Her daughter is playing with her skirt, alternately bunching and loosening it.
She’s nervous too,
Aarti thinks.

Instead, the words that tumble out of her mouth are, ‘You look just like your father.’

Her daughter flashes her a half-smile, a gentle trembling upwards of her lower lip. She could be beautiful, Aarti thinks, if only…
Don’t go there. Look past the weight. Don’t say anything you might regret. You’ve already lost thirteen years. You have begun on a shaky footing. You do not want to spend the rest of the time you have with her, the time she has afforded you, the time she can refuse, saying things that will be hard to take back, harder to undo.

‘Tell me about him,’ her daughter says.

‘He misses you. He sends his love,’ Aarti lies.
He doesn’t know I am here, meeting with you.

‘And you?’ Her words a challenge. Her eyes shimmering. ‘I am not what you expected, am I?’

That question again. She is just like her father, Aarti thinks, both of them stubborn, not giving an inch once they get an idea into their head.

No, darling, you aren’t. You are nothing like I imagined. Even your name is different from the one I chose for you and I cannot get my head around that. The words falling out of your mouth are accented; you sound foreign. You are foreign to me.

She aims for a bit of truth and a bit of evasion, ‘I did not know what to expect, after thirteen years. I created so many images in my head. Of course the reality of you was always going to be different from the picture in my head, Rupa.’

Her eyes flashing, ‘I am not Rupa. My name is Diya.’

Aarti is exhausted. She does not know what to say, how to go forward. She did not expect this meeting to be quite so difficult, so hard, like cycling uphill when you have no strength left to carry you onward. She tries for a smile. She knows it doesn’t quite make it to her eyes. ‘We called you Rupa. Your name is Rupa on your birth certificate.’ Her voice sounds brittle as a twig on a dying tree.

‘My name is Diya,’ the girl repeats.

Aarti gives in. What else can she do?
I hate you, Vani. I will not let you win. I will concede this to you, but I am not going to let you win.
‘Diya…’ she says and her daughter smiles, properly this time, and it is like the first marigold of the season, blooming joyous and hopeful, and Aarti reaches across spontaneously and cups her daughter’s face in her palm and her daughter flinches and the smile disappears and the moment is lost and Aarti’s hand falls back down, forlorn, to hug the side of her body.

Outside, darkness has fallen, not with the aplomb with which darkness arrives at home in Bangalore, always with the prelude of twilight, the sky mutating through myriad hues like a woman changing saris, unable to make up her mind. Here, in this frigid, sunless country, the sky just switches to a darker shade of grey. Now, it is a tempestuous bluish black – the exact shade, in fact, of the eyes of the girl looking back at her.

Aarti clears her throat, makes herself say the words she has practised all day in front of the mirror, the words she has decided on after countless tries, the words she has learnt by heart. ‘I missed you, sweetheart, every single day you were away, I missed you. But you are here now. You are here and everything is going to be all right.’ Her voice sounds artificial to her ears, as if she is saying the words by rote, as if she doesn’t really mean them.

But her daughter nods and her eyes sparkle with sudden tears, and the social worker stands and says, ‘We must be going,’ and her girl looks at her and says softly, ‘Goodbye,’ and Aarti takes her daughter’s hand in hers and this time her daughter doesn’t flinch and Aarti is gratified; she is emboldened and she pulls her daughter in for another hug.

And then she is leaving and it is over, and Aarti is disappointed and she is reassured that the awkward first meeting is done and, even though it began badly, it has ended well, and that is all that matters.

M
y darling Diya
,

I have been moved to Bronzefield prison.

‘It is one of the best prisons around,’ my lawyer informed me with a pleased smile – and he is not wrong.

It is like a big, communal house but with very high walls and doors which are locked on the outside. The other women here are mothers, sisters, daughters. We share stories and relive memories of our loved ones and it gets us by, makes sluggish time pass that little bit quicker.

Some of the women are elated after a visit from their families. Others cry, their sobs rending the walls, making us weep in reciprocal pain. Much as I miss you, Diya, I do not want you to visit me here, darling, even if you were allowed to meet me. I do not want you to see me like this.

Have you grown? You must have. I miss seeing you off to school, miss your voice, your smell. I miss your arms around me. I miss your smile, your repertoire of expressions, that wistful look you get sometimes when you are chasing a thought in your head. I miss seeing you asleep an arm’s length away when I wake first thing. I miss falling asleep listening to the sound of your dreams. No matter how tired I am, I have always stayed awake until you have fallen asleep. Once I hear your even breathing, signalling deep sleep, I let myself go, escape into the world of reveries. When I wake up in the night for the loo, I plant a kiss on your cheek smelling of slumber and the sweetest of dreams, soft and malleable and growing and precious and mine.

When you were little, I used to wake many times to check on you, just to make sure you were breathing. It was my fear of losing you, I guess. I have never quite given up that habit. Over here too, I wake countless times during the night, and it takes a moment always to register that you are not there. And then the pain, that had been napping briefly, awakens. Thirteen years with you by my side and now I am alone again. It is like missing a limb, missing the best part of me. It is like losing my parents all over again, except much, much worse.

It is always after you have put your book away and turned off the light, just before sleep claims you, that you share your innermost thoughts with me. I cherish that time. I wait every night for it.

Your voice thick with impending sleep, you will say, ‘Mum, have you fallen head over heels in love?’

Your questions almost always have something to do with the book you are reading currently. How do I answer that question? What do I say? I deflected it that time you asked, darling; I can’t remember what I said, but you were very good at deciphering unspoken messages and you did not pester. You left it and asked instead, your voice wistful, ‘Do you think I will find love one day?’

‘Of course, my sweetie,’ I said, and I was thinking inside,
my baby’s growing up
. ‘You will find someone who will sweep you off your feet, who will cherish you and adore you, who will love you like you deserve to be loved. You will.’

You fell asleep that night with a smile on your face and I knew that you were dreaming of love.

Here’s what I wish for you, darling. I wish that when love finds you, you will recognise it, you will recognise him. I didn’t, you see. I didn’t see love until it was staring me in the face. And I only realised what I had after I had lost it.

Diya, the lawyer just paid me a visit. The DNA test has been sanctioned. They will be contacting you soon and once the results come through, this nightmare will be on its way to resolving. I cannot wait, sweetheart. I cannot wait.

All my love, my darling,

Yours,

Mum

B
iological

Adjective:
related through birth; being such by blood and not by adoption or marriage.

Synonyms:
birth, consanguineous.

J
ane’s phone
rings while we are driving back from meeting with the woman who claims to be my mother.

‘What shall I call you?’ I had said to the woman.

‘Uh…’she had faltered.

Jane ignores her ringing phone. It beeps a couple of times and then rings again. She looks at me apologetically and mouths, ‘Do you mind?’

I shake my head no. She pulls into a parking spot just being evacuated in front of a post office and bakery.

‘What is your name?’ I had asked the woman.

‘Aarti,’ she’d said.

‘Shall I call you Aarti then?’

She had flinched. I knew my voice sounded angry, interrogative, but I couldn’t help it. The whole thing seemed staged, felt unreal.

Somehow the visit did not go as I expected, or, I gather, as she expected it to. She clearly had been imagining someone else, had probably nurtured this romantic idea of a daughter, skinny like her perhaps.

In the car just now, before her phone rang, I asked Jane, ‘So this girl she snatched from the street because she thought she was her daughter, did she look anything at all like me?’

Jane’s eyes had faltered; they had skipped away from the road for a brief moment and settled on my face, her gaze like being sheltered from the storm on a freezing evening. ‘She loves you, Diya. Give it time.’

I worry the loose thread on my skirt, which I realise is a bit short for me. I must have gained height in the past week, well, since before half-term anyway, since before it all happened. I might even be taller than Mum now. She will have to look up to peer at my face, gaze at it as if she is drinking me in, like she does of an evening when she has just got home from work. She will be so pleased. She used to chart my growing height, my developmental milestones with delight and awe in equal measure. She will joke that she doesn’t recognise me when she sees me. When she sees me. If she sees me…

I blink and look out of the window. Cream buns, chocolate éclairs, doughnuts and cakes in all their delectable glory line the bakery window but I do not feel a smidgen of desire for the appetising confections. Before, in those innocent days when I had no idea all this was looming, I would have scrabbled around for some change, jumped out of the car and into the shop, stuffing éclairs and doughnuts willy-nilly into my mouth.

A little girl skips out of the bakery on her mother’s arm, clutching a gingerbread man. Pink Smarties for eyes, a chocolate button nose, blue iced grin. She takes a huge bite. Crunch. His head disappears.

How can that woman that I just met be my mother? I do not recognise her. I do not feel anything for her, anything at all. She could be anyone as far as I am concerned. My mother is somewhere close by, staring at the oppressive walls and thinking of me as she waits to be extradited to India. In this strange woman’s bony arms, smelling of pain and discomfort and something else, something medicinal, I was uncomfortable. I didn’t quite fit. I worried that if I moved I might break her. Her skeletal arms were like brittle cord encircling me, keeping me captive, her hip bones jutting into me. I felt disproportionately large, the excess weight bulging out of me, making contact with her insubstantial bird-like bones. In that scrawny prison, I was lost, at sea. I did not know what to say to her. Even the impassioned plea I had prepared on behalf of the woman who will always, in my mind, be my mother, the words I had been rehearsing, flew out of my head.

Jane walks up and down in front of the post office, head bent against the cold and sleet that has thickened into a proper downpour, performing an intricate dance of politesse as she dodges people who trudge past. Customers entering the post office freeze on the step as they shake off the drops clinging to their coats. Jane pulls her cardigan tight around her with one hand and holds the phone with the other. Her greying hair whips about her face, lank blonde-grey strands hugging the contours of her round, kind visage. I am overcome by a sudden rush of affection for her.

I had been expecting to like the woman, I realise now. I had expected to feel
some
recognition, some tug of an inner bond, perhaps the calling of the umbilical cord that had once bound us together. I had imagined she would look more like a mother, like Jane perhaps, cuddly and comfortable, or Farah, petite but real, not this scrawny emaciated husk of a woman. But then, she hadn’t expected me as well. I have a suspicion she was repulsed by the excess weight bursting forth from the contours of the person she had been waiting thirteen years to acknowledge.

Well, tough. We disappointed each other.

Jane is gesturing into the phone, looking at me, trying to avoid a man clutching a sheaf of envelopes encased in thin plastic close to his chest. Her hair and cardigan gleam with moisture. Rain drips down her face, a stealthy drop hanging at the tip of her nose, shining silver before blending into the grey sheath of rain that blurs everything, an amorphous curtain.

A posse of teenage boys stumble past, clutching beer bottles, pushing each other, yelling, laughing. One of them catches my eye, winks. I blush, look away, down at my hands sitting primly on my lap, pudgy fingers drumming my skirt like a woodpecker’s incessant tapping.

‘You look just like your father,’ she had said.

And I had thought,
of course I do since I am nothing at all like you.
Guilt bloomed, a purple bruise, warring with red splotches of anger. Guilt at disliking this woman who had spent the better part of the last decade and a half looking for me, who was possibly this emaciated because of the worry and pain of missing me. Anger that
this
was my mother and not the one who had loved me and looked after me all these years, who was even now languishing in some prison missing me. Anger that, because of this woman, the mother I loved was in prison. I was in this situation because of this woman. I did not like her. In fact…

The woman had sighed then. And the purple bruise had nudged out the red splotches, spreading right over them, incorporating them into one giant bruise, guilt winning over anger.

‘Tell me about my father,’ I had said softly.

And she had. I had watched her thin mouth, pursed and tiny as a newborn kitten’s, moving as she told me about my father, and I had waited patiently for the moment when I could come up with my passionate plea. Somehow, I couldn’t bear to interrupt her. She was too fragile; I was afraid that if I said anything she would break, disintegrate before my eyes, become a heap of silky powder, the silvery colour and texture of bone with bits of leathery skin thrown in.

And then, just when she stopped and looked at me with hope shining out of her dull brown eyes so that for a brief moment I could see that she had been beautiful once, Jane had placed a gentle hand on my arm and said it was time to go.

A blast of rain, yellow dribbles, tasting of ice and salt and impending night gusts into the car as Jane squashes into her seat. The squelch of wet cotton making contact with leather, the musty whiff of moist sweat. Jane looks at me and there is something in her eyes.

‘What?’ I ask, wary.

‘That was Vani’s lawyer,’ she says softly.

It is suddenly too hot in the car. I cannot breathe. I cannot find words to speak; my throat is constricted, my chest hurts.

‘He wants to know if you will consent to a swab being taken for a DNA test.’ She reaches across and lays her wet hand on top of mine. The brown tang of damp leather drying too soon, her hand warm on mine, moisture dotting white wrinkled skin like sequins on a bride’s veil. For once I let her leave it there, taking comfort, not pulling away. ‘Vani insists that she is your biological mum. It took this long to get permission from the judge, to procure legal aid to sanction it, et cetera, et cetera.’

As her marshmallow voice washes over me, I can breathe again. In fact I have to tell my racing heart to slow down, to take it easy.

‘Of course,’ I manage to squeeze the words past the great big lump in my throat, a salty protuberance that tastes of relief, joy even. ‘Of course. When does he want it done? When will we get the results? Once it is proven that she is my biological mother, can she come home?’ As soon as I have squeezed the words past the plug, they trip over themselves in their urge to come out.

Jane’s eyes are as soft as my mother’s cotton sari, chocolate brown like my mother’s skin gleaming after a shower. ‘I do not want to dent your excitement, the first bit of enthusiasm you have shown in days,’ she says, her voice like flowing water whispering soft lullabies to the pebbles in its path. ‘What I am trying to say is…the extradition order wouldn’t have been issued and she wouldn’t have been arrested if they didn’t have incontrovertible proof…’

‘Stop.’ I don’t let her finish, pulling my hand away from under her grasp, turning away from her to stare out the window. The rain drips and drabs, it surges in the drains, collects in the gutters, soaks pedestrians with its icy tears. The wind whips the dustbin lids into a bizarre dance and they gallop down the street like charging horses, they dance like desperate debutantes.

‘She wouldn’t do that to me, subject me to the DNA test, if she wasn’t sure. Don’t you see?’ I yell, glaring at Jane’s shadowy silhouette reflected in the window.

‘I’m sorry. I just…I don’t want you to get your hopes up, Diya.’

‘Are we going to sit here freezing to death or are we going to get back at some point?’ I ask coldly.

The engine sputters into life, Jane sighs. ‘I…’ she begins.

‘When am I giving the swab?’ I interrupt, my voice chillier than the gale sweeping outside.

‘I could take you tomorrow lunchtime?’

A woman in a yellow raincoat stained grey by the stormy evening is battling the wind and trying to move forward. For every step she takes, she is pulled back two by the force of the wind. ‘And how long will the results take to come back?’

‘Three to four days. A week at most.’

‘Well then.’ I lean back in my seat and close my eyes. Images swirl before them. My mother, eyes shining, liquid like molten caramel: ‘Diya. My light. The light of my life.’ She is not lying.
She has been lying to you all your life.
No, my mother would not willingly set me up for disappointment, allow me to hope if she didn’t know for sure. This much I know.

So why is that scrawny slip of a woman lying? Why has she put me through this agony? Why would she go through with this, searching for me for thirteen years, snatching the little girl she thought was me and almost ending up in prison on a kidnapping charge – the same crime she has accused my mother of – if she did not believe I was hers? Is she mad? Her face, those weak eyes, that brittle embrace swim before my eyes. She could easily be. I need to know. I need to find out.

‘I will visit with this woman, Aarti, again tomorrow.’ Her name unfamiliar on my lips, bitter as the seed of an apple bitten into by mistake. ‘Can you bring me?’ I ask and Jane’s eyes gravitate away from the road toward me again and she smiles, the smile soft as vanilla cream cake.

‘Of course, sweetie. I will rejig my schedule so I can take you.’

I am swamped by a wave of affection for Jane, despite the concerns she’s raised about the DNA test. She is only looking out for me, after all.

‘I’m sorry,’ I mumble, chewing the inside of my lip. ‘All this, it’s hard for me.’ The closest I have come to admitting what I feel within.

Jane’s eyes leak as, with one hand, she pats my hands which lay joined on my lap, demure as nuns.

‘Hands on the steering wheel, please! I don’t want to die just yet,’ I yell, mock angrily and she beams me a watery smile.

‘I cannot begin to imagine, sweetie, how hard all this must be for you,’ she says, taking my admonishment to heart, her brimming eyes firmly fixed on the road ahead. ‘For the record, I think you are one of the bravest people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. I admire you immensely.’

I sniff, something warm blooming in my heart, pushing at the cold weed of pain that has already been dislodged a tiny bit by news of the DNA test.

Out on the rain-battered pavement, a little boy is being coaxed along by his mother. He digs his feet in and refuses to move, his small face set in a determined frown. She pleads with him, both of them wet and bedraggled, soaked to the bone. He shakes his head, shivering a little. She bends down, picks him up, holds him close and battles the wind as, together, they make their way home.