Bodies in Motion (11 page)

Chaya starts school in September. I'm thinking of going back to college then. I don't want my daughter to think her mother is ignorant.

SEPTEMBER
19, 1975—
CHAYA
'
S FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL.

The house is so empty. It's harvest time in my garden, but soon there won't be anything to do there. I've decided—I'm going to take some classes, and if I do all right in them, I'm going to college. I don't know what I'll study—but I don't think it matters, as long as I pick something and stick with it. I learned that from my marriage—sometimes, you just have to keep working at something, even when you don't understand exactly why. Eventually, things work out.

JUNE
20, 1980—
GRADUATION DAY.

College graduate—that's me. A degree in art history, which I enjoyed, even though I'm not sure it will do me any good. Classes seemed easier than they did in high school, eleven years ago.

Chaya is ten now, and she looked beautiful in her white dress, sitting proudly in the audience. She may be dark like her mother, but she's still lovely. Everyone says so. She's doing so well in school—the highest scores in the class!—and at her piano lessons too. Her teacher says she has real talent. And she's so affectionate. I'm proud of my little girl.

Maybe I should have another child. Maybe I should have several, the way I planned. I'm not so old yet—not even thirty.

Raksha looked handsome too, holding his daughter's little hand, beaming as he watched me walk down the aisle. He never understood why I wanted this degree, but he paid for the classes, for the babysitting when I needed the time to study. He looked happier today than he did at our wedding. I am growing fond of my husband, after all these years. We may not have the perfect understanding, the great love affair, that Kili claims to have with her husband, but we have a beautiful daughter together. We are gentle with each other. That's more than many marriages can claim.

SEPTEMBER
18, 1980—
PREGNANT AGAIN.

I hope this birth is easier.

I'm knitting again. When I was pregnant with Chaya, all my socks and sweaters came out malformed. I didn't have any patience back then; when I made a mistake, I'd just keep going. It's going better this time around. I fix the mistakes before continuing, even if it means pulling out half the rows I've already done.

OCTOBER
10, 1980.

It is nothing. Nothing. I'm not even sure why I'm writing this. Nothing has happened.

I woke up in the middle of the night. Raksha wasn't in bed. I went to Chaya's room. He was standing by her bed, watching her.

This is nothing. Every parent does this—every parent wakes in the middle of the night and goes to check on their child. Is she healthy, is she sleeping soundly, is she breathing well? Raksha has a weak heart, and we've always worried that Chaya might develop problems too. He loves her so much—of course he goes to check on her at night, sometimes. And if he stands and watches her for a while, so what?

The expression on his face…it's nothing.

I called him softly, and he turned and smiled. No guilty start, nothing. “Just checking,” he said. “I'll be there in a minute.” And I nodded, and smiled, and went back to bed. He was there beside me a few minutes later.

What's wrong with me? Pregnant-woman fancies, that's all.

NOVEMBER
28, 1980.
HE
'
S DRINKING AGAIN.

I'm sure of it. And I don't know how long he's been doing it, because there are so few signs. He doesn't come home reeking of whiskey—he doesn't go out drinking with his friends from work. I haven't found any bottles around the house; maybe he picks them up in the morning and drinks them at lunchtime. I don't know. But I've been watching him closely the last few weeks. Something is different.

He's louder, noisier. More energetic when he plays with Chaya—he throws her up in the air as if she's still a little girl. And when he sits her on his lap and reads to her, they're action and adventure stories, full of rocket ships and robots. She loves them—right now she's planning to be an astronaut when she grows up. And she adores her father, who can do no wrong. Chaya gets angry at me; she screams and shouts when she doesn't want to clean her room, but let Appa come home and say the word, and that room is clean before you can turn around. It's good for a little girl to love her father, and for him to love her. But the way he gets engrossed in playing with her…He often doesn't notice when I call them to dinner. He gets annoyed if I call again. “Leave us alone, Lakshmi—we're busy!” he'll shout, and Chaya will giggle. Conspirators together.

I've seen nothing wrong.

It's the drinking again. I'll watch him for a while. I'll make sure. And then I'll make him get help. I'm not going to just panic and kick him out—I'm not the frightened little girl I was when we married. I will fight for this man, for my marriage, for our family. We'll get through this.

FEBRUARY
20, 1981—
TALKED TO THE LAWYER.

Leilani took me. I haven't told anyone else. I'm going to ask for a divorce.

No one in my family has ever been divorced. I always wanted to be first at something.

I caught him last night. Not drinking, though I'm sure he's been doing that too. Maybe that's why—who knows? Maybe it would be too easy to blame it on the drinking. Maybe he's just a man who loves his daughter too much.

I woke up again in the middle of the night. Raksha wasn't there. I found him in Chaya's room. He wasn't touching her—she was fast asleep. But she had kicked off the sheet the way she always does, so that her bare legs stuck out, and his eyes were fixed on her, on my daughter. His daughter. My stomach began to churn. I couldn't breathe.
Something was wrong with my baby, my little girl. Something was wrong with him.

He didn't see me at all.

I wanted to rush in, to push him away from her, to scream. Instead, I went back to our room, walking as quickly and silently as I could. I climbed into bed and called his name, just loudly enough for him to hear me, as if I had just woken from sleep, and a moment later he came back.

“Bad dreams?”

Yes, bad dreams. The worst. He climbed into bed and held me, and I tried not to pull away, counting my breaths, forcing them to be calm, even. If I told him what I'd seen, would he hit me again? How hard? Or would he just start to cry?

I lay in his arms all night, wide awake. This morning, after Raksha left for work, I called Amma and told her the pregnancy was making me tired. I asked her if she'd mind taking Chaya for a while. Then I called Leilani and told her everything.

We'll keep it quiet—Leilani thinks that's best. But I am not going to leave my daughter in the same house with that man for even one more day.

MARCH
3, 1981—
CHAYA
'
S PIANO RECITAL.

We bought the tickets weeks ago; everyone expected Raksha to be there. Leilani won't say anything, but the others think I should let him come. Kili thinks I just had a bad dream that night; I'm sure the others think that too, though none of the others actually say it. I know what I saw. I know what it would become.

Chaya will be surrounded by other people throughout the recital. She hasn't seen her father in days, not since we moved back to Amma's and Appa's house, and she's started asking questions I don't know how to answer. I tuck her into bed, wrap the blue silk patchwork quilt around her small body, kiss her forehead and tell her I'll explain it all
soon. Then I curl up on a mattress on the floor beside her, trying to think what I can possibly say.

I don't think Raksha will fight the divorce; he sounds like a whipped dog on the phone. He's drinking all the time, I think—he cries every time he calls. I make him calm down before I let him talk to Chaya. He sounds so small.

He can come to the recital; he deserves the chance to say good-bye to her in person. He can pretend to be a good father for one more day.

JULY
20, 2000—
CHAYA LEAVES FOR HER NEW JOB IN CALIFORNIA.

I thought about burning this journal, so Chaya would never find it and suspect. But I saved it instead, buried it in the back of my closet, in a hamper full of scraps and rags. I was saving it for this day, it seems.

Chaya is leaving to start her new position; I don't know how often I'll see her after this. Christmas and New Year and perhaps a birthday or two. Maybe she should know what really happened that day, the day her father died. She should read these words and know the truth. I almost told her when she got involved with that white boy—I didn't trust him. But she got free of him quickly enough. I didn't need to say the words. But they're here. If anyone has a right to judge me, she does.

On that day in early March, Raksha at first seemed sober. But when we got to the recital hall, he slipped away. When he joined us in our seats, I could smell it on him. Chaya waited in the wings for her turn to go up. I said nothing. He drank more at intermission. Leilani sat on my other side; when Chaya went up, she took my hand. Chaya played beautifully that day. I never told her that. She was full of smiles as she curtseyed and the audience applauded.

Raksha hugged her when she came down. He hugged her and hugged her and when we left to go to the car, he swung her up on his shoulders. I should have stopped him then—but we were surrounded
by people. I didn't want to embarrass him in front of our friends and family and Chaya's piano teacher. I don't know why I cared.

When we got back to the car, Leilani offered to drive; Raksha refused. It was still winter in Chicago—we'd just been through a bad ice storm, and the roads were slippery. I tried to convince him to give her the keys, but he wouldn't listen. He started to get angry; his voice got louder, and Leilani tried to take the keys from his hand. He shoved her away, hard, so that she fell on the ground. Chaya looked scared; she opened her mouth to yell, and Raksha pushed her inside the car, into the front passenger's seat, shoving down the lock and slamming the door shut.

I couldn't let him drive off with Chaya. He was running around the front, climbing into the driver's seat. Chaya was crying loudly now, and I couldn't breathe. I was on the wrong side of the car to reach him, to stop him. I opened the back door and climbed in. It took a few minutes—my stomach was so huge—but it seemed like it took forever. He had already turned on the engine. Before I closed the door, the car started to move. I slammed the door shut as Raksha took off. He was shouting at Chaya, “Seat belt, seat belt, seat belt!” and Chaya was crying harder and trying to put the seat belt on. She managed it, and I did too, dragging it across my belly as I begged him to stop the car. I was crying too. He didn't say anything else, just drove, racing toward the highway, toward Lake Shore Drive. I don't know what he was planning to do, where he thought he could go. I doubt he was thinking at all. He drove much too fast. Before we even reached the highway, we hit a piece of black ice; we skidded off the road and hit a tree.

We were all thrown forward, but the seat belts held Chaya and me. Raksha had never put his on.

Chaya started screaming, and I tried to undo my seat belt and get to her. The front of the car was crumpled and Raksha's head was slammed up against the steering wheel, completely still. I couldn't reach her seat belt release. I reached forward, unlocked her door, climbed out of the car and opened her door, undid her seat belt and
got her out. I almost walked away from the car right then. We were on a deserted side street leading toward the highway. Nobody was there—and who would fault me, seven months pregnant and with a hysterical child, for leaving a grown man in a car that might explode? But I had to know if he was still alive.

He hadn't moved. I walked Chaya over to a tree and told her to wait there. Then I went back to the car. I must have run as well as I could, but I felt as if I were walking in slow motion; everything had been happening so fast, but now time had slowed until it was almost stopped. Chaya was safely away, and I had plenty of time to do whatever needed to be done.

Chaya, I could stop here. Or I could tell you that I found him dead there, tell you what the doctors said later, that the alcohol and the shock and his weak heart had combined to give him a heart attack and kill him at thirty-one. Maybe that's the truth.

I walked back to the car. I opened his door. I tilted him back in the seat, and I didn't know if he was breathing or not. His eyes were closed; he wasn't moving. My belly hurt and my legs ached, and I didn't know how to tell if he still lived. It didn't matter. Because what I did then was bend over my husband, shielding my actions with my body. I covered his mouth and his nose tightly with my hands and the folds of my sari. I counted seconds in my head. One one thousand. Two one thousand. Three one thousand. How long can a person hold their breath and live? I held my own breath until I had to breathe, until the air came rushing into my lungs in a great gasp, still counting. Seventy-nine. Eighty. Eighty-one. Eighty-two. He never moved.

I stood there until I heard another car pulling up, and then I stepped back and started to cry again. It was easy to cry. A white couple came up, all shock and pity and dismay. They herded me and Chaya into their car and drove us to the hospital, where we notified the police. The hospital sent an ambulance for Raksha. The family arrived soon afterward, and they were all around me when we received official word of Raksha's death. By that time the contractions had started, and
I was barely paying attention to anything other than my belly. Leilani had swept Chaya up in her arms; I knew she'd be safe there. Three hours later, Savitha was born, her birth so quick and easy I hardly noticed it. Savitha means sunlight.