Secret Keeper (6 page)

“I am?” Reet asked.

“She is?” Suma asked, looking a bit disappointed.

“Yes, she is. Sing that one about the two sisters, Reet. I haven’t heard it in a while. The three of us are going to
stand in a row and do some exercises while we hear the song. I need to move around a bit.” That, at least, was true.

The three of them, stretching from side to side and swinging their arms in the air, left to right, right to left, must have blocked the view, because the crowd outside dispersed as Reet began the lighthearted Tagore song.

SEVEN

T
HE POSTMAN ALWAYS LEFT THE MAIL AT THE GATE, AND
A
SHA
took over the job of collecting it. One afternoon, she brought in an anonymous love note from one of Reet’s admirers addressed “To the Beauty from Delhi.”

As Reet read those words out loud, Asha caught her mother’s arched eyebrows and open mouth. For a split second, she wondered if Ma thought the letter was intended for her, not her daughter. But nobody else noticed.

Baba sent two aerogrammes a week, covering every inch of blue paper with neatly printed Bangla words. It was strange how his handwriting in English was a scrawl, Asha thought, while his Bangla looked as if it could be in a book. He sent postcards to Asha and Reet with pictures of the Statue of Liberty standing in the harbor, the Empire State
Building, Wall Street, and other famous New York City landmarks. The few lines he scribbled on the backs of the cards were always in English, with a joke or two and a snippet of news.

He was sharing a flat with some other Bengali men who lived in a place called Flushing, Queens, he’d told the girls in the last one they’d received. No job yet, but he was starting to master the subway system as he went to interview after interview, mostly for lower- paying draftsman positions. He was studying hard to pass the professional engineering exam. If he did, he’d be more likely to get a high- paying job.

Grandmother always read Baba’s aerogrammes first, even though they were clearly addressed to Ma, which infuriated Asha. She went to the roof to write out her frustration over this outright violation.

The rainy season had finally started, and as slow, heavy drops began to fall, Asha curled tightly against the door, pulling herself and the diary under the small slanting tin roof that was the only shelter in sight.

Thanks to her sister’s suggestion, Asha had initiated a new cousin- based exercise plan. She taught Sita and Suma the basics of a good pillow fight, chasing them up and down the stairs while they giggled and squealed. She lay on her back with one cousin perched on her shins and lifted her feet up and down, fast, giving each a turn on the roller coaster of her body while they screamed and laughed. They played the Blind Bee game, with Asha tying a scarf across her eyes and buzzing while the twins circled her. Gingerly they tapped her and then ran away, singing out a rhyme that meant, “Hey, you buzzing bee! Sting us like you see!” Asha tried to grab them, chanting another rhyme: “I can’t see, so don’t blame me.”

An hour later, she was sweaty, thirsty, and relaxed. The little girls kept asking for just one more game, though, so they played until either Auntie or Grandmother came upstairs to put an end to the fun.

“It’s too much!” Asha overheard Grandmother complaining to Ma. “She gets the little ones so stirred up, they can’t get a good night’s sleep. How will they digest their dinners?”

Ma didn’t answer, but, to Asha’s surprise, Raj did. “The girls sleep like logs, Grandmother. And besides, they used to complain about going upstairs, remember? Now they’re
dragging Asha there as soon as dinner’s over. The exercise is good for them.”

Raj still hadn’t said much of anything to Reet or Asha, but they’d finally noticed that he wasn’t speaking to his parents much, either, and hardly teased his little sisters at all. Because it was so unusual for him to speak up these days, Asha felt even more warmed by his defense.

She and Reet talked about Raj’s silence when the sisters were getting ready to join their sleeping cousins under the mosquito net. “Tell you what: Make the Boy Cuz talk and get a half- hour foot massage,” Reet said, combing out her sister’s hair.

“From him?” Asha asked, grinning.

“No, Your Royal Highness, from your one and only lady-in- waiting. Me.”

Asha loved foot massages-she’d beg, whine, and wheedle until Reet caved in. Using baby oil, her sister would soften Asha’s callused toes and cracked heels, finding just the right pressure points on the arches.

Asha’s chance to rise to the challenge came one afternoon. She was reading “The Seven Swans” from
Grimms’’ Fairy Tales
aloud to the twins. Suma was perched cozily on Reet’s lap, getting her hair braided, and Sita was leaning against Asha’s shoulder, studying the illustrations. Ma and Auntie were giggling over the love note yet again, and Grandmother was rereading Baba’s last letter.

Raj came inside early, swinging his cricket bat and mumbling under his breath. “What’s wrong, Beta?” his mother asked, the tenderness in her voice making it clear that she was addressing her favorite child.

Asha stopped reading to peek at the twins. Did they notice the special treatment their brother always received-the finest piece of meat at dinner, his own room, access to their grandfather’s chair in the living room? But Sita and Suma were waiting eagerly for the end of the story and weren’t paying attention to their mother.

“Keep reading, Tuni Didi,” they clamored, but she was listening to Raj.

“Not a soul on the cricket field,” he was telling his mother. “And I really wanted to play.”

Grandmother peered at Raj over her reading glasses. “You should be studying, like your friends. You’ll be the head of this house one day, you know. Neither tennis nor cricket will put food on this table. Don’t you realize that?”

“Yes, Grandmother, of course, Grandmother,” Raj said, sounding like a tape recording.

Grandmother went back to Baba’s letter. Baba’s tone and words were always cheerful and optimistic, but Grandmother scrutinized them for any hint of his
real
condition. “Who is cooking for him?” she was muttering now. “Are they not hiring him because he’s a foreigner?”

Raj slouched toward the stairs. They were just at the climax of “The Seven Swans,” but Asha handed the book to her sister. “Finish it,” she said.

None of the adults was paying any attention, and Sita moved closer to Reet to keep track of the story. Reet winked at Asha and immediately picked up where her sister had left off.

Asha grabbed Raj’s bat from the corner of the room and
moved swiftly but quietly out to the stairwell before he could make his way up. “I’ll bowl for you,” she said, keeping her voice low. She used English, knowing that her cousin, too, spoke that language with his friends instead of Bangla.

Raj was surprised enough to look at her directly for once. “You? I thought you didn’t play anymore, since …” His voice trailed off, and Asha finished the sentence in her mind:
you haf bee- come a voo- man.

“I’m even better now. My friend and I used to practice in her garden.” She flexed her arm, making the muscle bulge like a camel’s hump.

Her cousin’s eyes widened at the sight. “Come on, then.” He was whispering now, too. “We can practice outside.”

They stole past the cook, who had her back to the door, and entered the walled garden beside the house. Suddenly Ma’s face peered out through the iron grating of a window. “Come inside right now, Tuni,” she ordered.

Asha and Raj exchanged looks. “We’re staying inside the garden, Auntie,” Raj said, his voice and verb tenses dripping with courtesy. “Will you permit Tuni to bowl for me here, please? I really need the practice.”

Ma frowned and began to move her head in the figure eight that meant no, no, no. Asha’s heart sank. Her fingers were curving around a ball again, and she was longing to hurl it as fast and hard as she could.

“Oh, let them play inside the garden,” came Grand mother’s voice from behind Ma. “It won’t do anybody any harm. And I don’t know why you made such a fuss about her going down the street to buy a few sweets the other day. I’m
sure none of the neighbors can even tell she’s a grown woman.”

No answer came from Ma, but she disappeared. Asha grinned as she took off her scarf and rolled up her sleeves. The one good thing about living in this house was that Grandmother could overrule Ma.

EIGHT

T
HE SIDE GARDEN WAS NARROW BUT LONG, AND
A
SHA MAN
aged to give her cousin an hour of first- rate batting practice. She noticed right away that he was an excellent player, but she actually bowled a couple of bouncers, making his jaw drop.

After about an hour, Raj glanced up at their next- door neighbor’s house. “Come and join us,” he called.

Asha glimpsed the face in the fourth- story window, but again, it quickly disappeared. She frowned. It was disconcerting to be the object of attention; she’d guessed from her sister’s constant audience that she herself would hate being ogled by strangers, and she’d been right. When someone you didn’t know stared at you, it felt as if you were being robbed, the sight of you stolen with no intention of return.

“What’s the real story with that neighbor?” she asked her cousin.

“Shhh … I’ll tell you later. He’ll hear us.”

Asha didn’t lower her voice. “He doesn’t seem to care what we think or he wouldn’t be spying. Why should I worry about his feelings?”

“Come inside, you two!” Auntie called. “The mosquitoes are swarming; it’s almost evening.”

“You
have
improved,” Raj told Asha as they gathered their bats and the wicket. “You’re as good as some of my friends. How’s your tennis, by the way?”

“Better than my cricket,” she said. It might not sound modest, but she was telling the truth. At least she hoped so-it had been months since she’d last held a racket. She felt a pang for the familiar grip of the lost Chris Evert in her hand.

“We’ll have to play sometime,” her cousin said. “We’ve got a tournament of sorts going at the college down the road, and we have some great matches. I’d love some extra practice before the next one.”

She hesitated. “I can’t, Raj. Ma won’t let me play sports in public.”

“We’ll talk Grandmother into an override. Want me to try?”

Asha’s heart leaped. To play tennis again, competing in the sun and open air against other good players, figuring out the perfect strategy to win a point… the temptation of it danced in her mind. She opened her mouth to accept her cousin’s offer, but then remembered the promise she’d
made Baba.
Take care of your mother, Tuni.
“No, Raj, don’t. I can’t have that happen to my mother. Baba wouldn’t like it.”

He shrugged. “Well, we can practice serves, tosses, and volleys in the garden, anyway. Hey-do you still play cards?”

“Baba and I play all the time.”

“Really? Let’s go.”

She followed her cousin upstairs, feeling as if she’d been reinstated on the guest list at an exclusive club. His room was tidy, the way she remembered. Not many frills and not much clutter, just a couple of posters of tennis players and cricket stars, a blue and white cotton bedspread, white mosquito netting tied up overhead, a desk, and a shelf jammed with dusty books. Asha ran her index finger across the spines.

“Borrow them if you want,” Raj told her. “I’ve killed them already.”

Asha knew just what he meant. She’d already demolished the few books she’d brought along. They were dead, at least for a while. Certain stories could come back to life on the second, third, and even tenth reading if you gave them enough time between encounters. While she waited for her own favorites to recover, she was making her way through the books on her grandfather’s shelf. But she missed the pleasure of a light read. Taking her time, she chose a handful of titles. Then she joined her cousin on the floor.