The Toss of a Lemon (81 page)

“No,” Vani says emphatically, and Sivakami thinks she can imagine the scenes between them.

“I have in mind traditional remedies,” Gayatri says soothingly, and Vani looks more interested and less wary.

“But you don’t want to take them too early—it’s important to know that your baby is fully matured,” Gayatri explains. “When did you have your last period?”

Vani purses her lips. Gayatri sighs.

After some long minutes, Vani replies. “April.”

“April...” Gayatri counts off on her fingers. “So you might have been due as late as February. Let’s give it another week and I’ll see if my daughter-in-law knows anyone who can compound what you need.”

Through March, the weather grows hot, and the atmosphere in the house feels oppressive. Gayatri secures and brings several herbal composites, which Sivakami prepares, boiling five roots in water for ten minutes, mixing the resulting decoction into milk and giving it to Vani to drink on an empty stomach. Vani follows the regime for three days, until Vairum learns of it and throws the herbalist’s packets out the window of the kitchen.

“How dare you endanger our child with this witchcraft?” he asks. “I brought you here at Vani’s insistence, but if I catch you again doing anything to jeopardize this pregnancy...” He leaves the threat unspoken.

Sivakami hasn’t slept much since her arrival in Madras, and she lies awake for a week of nights after the confrontation, desiccated by sorrow. How could he think she would do anything to endanger the grandchild she wants, as she would readily admit, more than any of the others? A son of her son, a son of her son...

April bloats, May bursts—and still no child. Sivakami was to have returned to Cholapatti by now—she has been putting off her grandchildren, who all expected to convene in their natal home for the school holidays. It has become a tradition for those with school-age children to return, for the cousins to sleep together in the hall, play together near the canal, visit Gayatri’s grandchildren in gangs and meet other children of their age on the Brahmin quarter. And now there are the three youngest ones in Thiruchi, whom she is missing.

She cautiously broaches the subject with Vairum, who has become increasingly preoccupied and busy of late.

“I don’t see how you can go,” he replies, without looking up from the paper he is reading on the divan, “but they are welcome to come here.”

Janaki and Kamalam decide against coming, not wanting to crowd, and having visited so recently, but Saradha brings her family, as well as Radhai, Krishnan and Raghavan, who are thrilled to have the chance to see the city. Vairum makes a car available to them, though Saradha spends most of her time with Sivakami. Janaki had come to see her eldest sister the week prior and has sent a large packet of holy ash, along with a letter.

Sivakami thinks that surely Vairum cannot see holy ash as in any way harmful to the child-he is not superstitious but he is religious. But when, two months later, Janaki writes to her to say that the seer was arrested for leading a burglary ring—his henchmen would steal agricultural implements and he would collect money from the owners for describing how to find them—Sivakami discreetly tells Vani to discontinue this treatment also.

When August blooms like an foul-smelling flower, Vani is still acting elephantine with expectancy, though she has gained no more weight. If anything, she may have lost some, and has begun once more to look dull and drawn, as she did in the long, empty years before her pregnancy. Nearly all the glass bangles she received have broken, a bad omen, but who ever wears them this long? The lonely chime of those few remaining sounds like the dregs of misplaced hope. Vairum’s overinflated good humour has fizzled; he is short with his staff and talks to Sivakami as though she is a nuisance.

Gayatri, whose Madras son has had a child, visits, and Sivakami broaches the topic with her, saying Vairum has twice brought doctors to the house, but that Vani refuses to be seen by them.

“Akka,” Gayatri sighs, and looks away. “Vani’s pregnancy is not advancing because she is not pregnant. Something else may be wrong with her—early menopause? I don’t know. But she’s not... pregnant.”

Is Gayatri suggesting Vani has been lying? Why would she do that?

“I’m not saying she’s lying,” Gayatri continues in a gentle tone. “I ... I’ve never heard of something like this from a woman. But it happens, with animals. I remember my brother’s dog acted completely—”

“Really, Gayatri,” Sivakami shouts at her friend. Comparison to a dog is one of the grand insults. “Sometimes you just go too far.”

“Please, Akka, don’t take me wrong,” Gayatri protests, “I’m sorry.”

But Sivakami is furious and they part awkwardly.

Sivakami putters around the kitchen in a rage, prepares meals and goes through the motions of her day, before finally, in the depth of night, acknowledging that, of all the possible explanations, this one makes the most sense. She is surprised that Vairum, with his reverence for reason and science, has not seen it before now. Maybe he has and is not admitting it. The ways of the heart are obscure, though: how can he give up this hope? He can’t.

But if they can help Vani, perhaps they can still have a child? That is another question. Sivakami, exhausted by the effort logic demands from her, nods off over her beading.

“But she’s in exactly the same condition now that she was a year ago.”

Did she say that? She didn’t mean to. She didn’t mean it.

Yes, she did.

“Go,” he says.

Sivakami straightens and dizzies. She doesn’t understand.

“Go,” Vairum says again.

His meaning is becoming clearer.

“As always with you, it’s about appearances. I don’t know why I gave in to Vani’s begging for you to come,” he growls. “A Brahmin widow in the city—you have done everything possible since you arrived to hold yourself apart. I can see the blame in your eyes, always that blame.”

“No, it’s not true.” She doesn’t sound sincere, though she is. She has never blamed him—what does he think she would blame him for?

“Go home. You’ll never have to look at a non-Brahmin again, except for Muchami and Mari, who will cower for you in the courtyard.”

“I will stay.”

What about Vani? Can’t he see something is wrong?

“No. You will go.” He pulls her clean sari down from the drying rod, goes to the shelves of her room, takes out her few belongings and pulls a wad of cash from his pocket. His eyes are white and desperate.

“I ... I want you to have children!” she cries, stumbling toward him in desperation of her own.

“We will.” He pushes her effects and the money at her.

“Ten children!” She echoes the prophecy he made when he decided on this marriage.

“Go.” He means it.

Vani, in the sitting room, has broken off in the middle of her playing. Sivakami gives her the last square of beadwork she completed—Krishna surrounded by milkmaids—and lays a hand on the crown of Vani’s head. She need not remain madi if she is about to travel. Vani grasps her hand, so hard that Sivakami nearly falls, and lays her cheek in Sivakami’s palm.

“You will be a mother,” Sivakami whispers and then she walks toward the door, with Vairum’s eyes on her. She expected him to precede her, to arrange the car, but she looks back, and he points to the exit.

She descends to the street and the peon, though confused, pulls open the gate for her. It is evening. She breaks a small twig from a neem tree growing at the edge of Vairum’s compound, and pushes it into her bundle, walks a few steps, and stops. This is the first time in her sixty years that she has gone anywhere alone. She feels naked, invisible, petrified. She can feel Vairum’s house behind her, as Rama must have sensed his home at his back when he was banished to the wilds, driven from his kingdom. That story has a happy ending.

She clutches for her Ramayana, inside her satchel, and forces herself to shuffle along to the busy street at the end of the cul-de-sac, where she hails a horse carriage. The driver stops but looks to either side of her and asks, “You must not be travelling alone, Amma. Where is your son, your servant, your nephew? Who is helping you?”

“No.” Sivakami clears her throat. “I am going to my village. Please, take me to the station where I can catch a train south.” She remembers that she must change trains in Thiruchi. “To Kottai,” she adds, using the traditional name to make herself sound practised.

“Yes. Yes. Sit, please.” He gestures to the carriage as his horse snorts in her frayed blue harness.

At the station, he escorts her in with a great show of respect, points out where she can get her ticket and overcharges without apology. Sivakami brought the cash Vairum gave her—she didn’t want to insult him further—but doesn’t want to use it for this journey. She extracts one of the five ten-rupee notes she pressed between the pages of her Ramayana all those months ago and pays her own way.

Though India has been bound together by the iron ribbon, most people on a train will try to keep a respectful distance from a Brahmin widow. As the cabin fills, though, this space thins to a sheet the thickness of a single molecule. Sivakami appreciates the delicacy of the dark and noisy persons to either side, who avoid eye contact with her despite their thighs pressed length to length, their shoulder blades fitted together like parts of a rice mill. These non-Brahmins clearly have not yet been infected by that intimacy shown by Vairum’s associates, an intimacy which, she thinks, breeds and festers in cities, especially among the wealthy classes.

Madras rolls away. It is already dark. Chingleput, Madurantakam. She feels the sea recede. It is hours before she must change trains for Kulithalai. The sound of Vairum’s voice returns to her on the rhythm of the train. “Go... Go... Go...”

One day, when Vairum was small, he came to her urgently, wanting to tell her a story Gayatri had told him, of Lord Ganesha and his brother Murughan. The young gods’ father, Shiva, had set up a competition, saying that the brother to most swiftly circle the entire world would inherit all its peoples and riches. Lean, noble Murughan leapt onto his peacock. It spread its wings with a shriek and sped off, to return in moments. Like that! Vairum said, and snapped his fingers.

When Murughan returned, Ganesha was still standing where his brother had left him. Murughan dismounted with a swagger and bowed to receive the winner’s garland from his father.

“Very good!” said Shiva as he stepped forward and placed the garland over Ganesha’s elephant head.

Vairum let his mouth fall open, dramatizing Murughan’s shock. Shiva explained, “While you sped through the heavens, your brother, not even summoning his mouse”-that’s Ganesha’s vehicle, explained Vairum, as Sivakami pretended not to know—“walked clockwise around his mother. ‘Mother is the entire world,’ he said, ‘I need go no farther.’ And he fell at her feet and received her blessing and stood back up just as you arrived.”

“I’m surprised fatso could move that fast,” Vairum improvised on Murughan’s behalf. But he accepted defeat and also fell at his mother’s feet, at which point Vairum had leapt at Sivakami, throwing his arms around her, burying his face in her stomach. She could feel the warmth of him, even now, her precious boy, his face making a veronica of her belly

Mother is the entire world. This is what we believe, she wants to shout out the window. He will hear her, back in his enchanted, sorrowful house, because this is the truth. Did she not raise him any better than this?

At Vellur, a young couple board. The floor between the benches has just been vacated. They spread their bedding. Sivakami cannot see them but can hear from their speech that they are Brahmins. The girl wakes with the first beams of light and smiles up at Sivakami.

“Where are you going, Granny?” she asks, rubbing her eyes.

“Kulithalai.” Sivakami is sitting by the window now, her feet tucked under her.

“Who is ... is he your grandson?” she asks, pointing to a young man next to Sivakami, whose head, bobbing in sleep, Sivakami has been trying for some hours to avoid.

“No, I am travelling alone.”

The girl pauses, and Sivakami winces.

“You are so brave!” says the girl, her voice different now.

“One must be brave in this life,” Sivakami says, hoping for some distraction to end this. “When life gives no choice.”

“I am lucky,” comes the response, full of youth’s smugness. “Life has allowed me the choice of cowardice.”

No distraction has arrived, so Sivakami asks, “Children?”

“In about six months,” with a sign to ward off the evil eye.

“Very good.”

“This is my first time south. My husband has taken a job in Thiruchi. Water inspector. My mother is in Kanchipurum, and...”

They pull into a station platform with a roof and open sides. Sivakami has anxiously checked the name of every station they have pulled through in the night and now she sees the name she has been looking for: Kottai. Kottai! She is caught off guard. This is where she must change trains!

The young woman looks doubtful, but Sivakami hurries from the train along with a few rumpled families, squeezing past the rest of the passengers, still awakening, sitting up, scratching and yawning. She descends the rungs of the metal steps and hops onto the platform from the lowest, which is still high for her. She is some thirty paces from a pump and as she walks toward it she feels some cheer. It will be good to brush her teeth and wash her face. Soon, she will arrive home. She need only think of how to disguise her unescorted arrival. She is glad to have a mission to distract her from her terrible thoughts, her shame.