Silence and the Word (11 page)

I stayed with her through the day; we didn’t
touch. We could perhaps have held hands, or stolen a few kisses…but
that would have been going outside the game, and the game had kept
us safe so far.

It was an eternity until nightfall.

When I arrived in the kitchen, she was
waiting. Something was different. The tin cup sat on the table, and
the pitcher, but something else as well — a stone. It was my
mother’s sharpening stone that she used for her knives.

“Help me,” she said. She picked up the cup
and ran the stone along the jagged edge. I thought at first she was
dulling it, making it safer — but after a few strokes, I realized
she was making it sharper. Sushila handed it to me, and I stroked
it to greater sharpness. We passed the two items back and forth,
the cup and stone, sharpening the edge to match that of a blade…and
still I didn’t know why. It didn’t matter, though. I trusted her.
Finally, she put down the stone and called the cup done.
Three-quarters of the rim was still that of a cup, safe and dull.
But one quarter had a sheen of sharpness to it, and it seemed more
than just a cup.

“Pull up your sari,” she said. I was
startled, but obeyed, pulling it up past my ankle, my calf, my knee
until almost all of my thigh was visible — “Stop.” I stopped,
obediently, and watched her do the same with her sari. Her legs
were so smooth and fragile; for a moment, I felt like a great,
hairy cow. But the moment passed. We were past that now.

“Cut me.” She pointed to her thigh, and,
suddenly understanding, I took the cup in my hand. I reached out,
pressed it against her soft flesh, bit my lip, and sliced down. A
short, sharp cut, barely half the length of my palm. She had
exhaled once, sharply, but made no other sound. She took the cup
from my hand and, with a swift motion, made an identical cut in my
thigh. The beads of blood welled bright, shining in the moonlight,
and for a moment I was so dizzy I thought I would faint. But then I
steadied, and when she leaned forward and pressed the cuts
together, blending our blood, I held firm. She kissed me then, and
the world spun around us.

“Pour the water.” I poured the water into the
cup with my left hand, spilling some onto the table. It didn’t
matter. I poured until the cup was full. She took it then, and
carefully sluiced some onto our joined legs, pulling away as she
did. The bright blood ran down, mixing with the water,
diluting.

“Don’t pour it all!” I trusted her, but I
couldn’t keep the words from coming out. When the water was
finished, so were we… .

“I haven’t. See?” She showed me the water
left in the cup, barely a mouthful.

“Good.” I looked at our legs, at the cuts
that would turn into scars that we would carry forever. Forever!
She wouldn’t forget me, and I would never forget her. But we had a
problem. “If we let the fabric go, the saris will be stained.
People will wonder.”

She nodded, smiling. “We’d better just take
them off, then.”

It was so risky; it was the last time.

We carefully removed our clothes, holding
them away from the now trickling blood. We piled the fabric on the
table and then, carefully, eased to the floor. My leg hurt, but as
she bent her head to kiss me, the pain mingled with pleasure.

My hand found her breast, and hers wrapped
around me. We lingered over our pleasure until the sky began to
lighten, and then we shared the last mouthful of water. By the time
the household wakened I was back in my room, embracing the ache in
my leg, trying very hard to remember everything.

When she left, she reached up to my ear one
last time. In full sight of everyone, she whispered, “It’s for the
best, Medha. You’ll be married soon, and you must try to be happy.
I will always care for you.”

I didn’t say anything out loud, but I knew
that I would never marry, and I swore in my heart that I would
never love anyone as I had loved her.

The scar faded into nothing within a
year.

Rain patters against the bamboo walls,
and

I raise my head, hear its thrumming, then
bend again,

creating patterns of rice grains along her
thighs;

every one to be nibbled with my little mouse
teeth.

“
Let no one cherish anything, inasmuch as
the loss of what is beloved is hard. There are no fetters for him
who knows neither pleasure nor pain. From affection arises sorrow;
from affection arises fear. To him who is free from affection there
is no sorrow. Whence fear?”—Gautama Buddha

Suneel wakes up hours before his family. This
is normal, although today is not normal, today is a special day.
Most days he makes tea, reads the paper, eats some toast without
butter before going to work at his store. Sushila, his wife, never
wakes until after nine. She likes to stay up late, talking on the
phone with her friends. When the children were younger, he was the
one who woke them, who ironed their Catholic school uniforms and
put out milk and cereal. But now the children are able to wake
themselves, and only Riddhi, his youngest, still sleeps at
home.

It is Riddhi’s birthday today. Tonight all of
their friends will gather to celebrate his youngest daughter’s
seventeenth birthday. She has just finished high school, and plans
to start at the local community college in the fall. Not as smart
as her older sister, no. His sweet Riddhi will never join Raji at
Harvard. Just as well, considering what Raji is doing there,
running around in public with white boys. It turns his stomach.

He drinks his tea, savoring the taste of
cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, with shreds of ginger so fierce and
strong. He’s tasted the tea in American stores—weak, sugary brews.
Diluted, adulterated. Pathetic. His wife claims she likes it that
way, but she still makes his strong, the way they drink it back
home. She knows that his standards haven’t changed, that he still
believes in doing things right. When she is with him, she drinks
tea the way he does. But when she’s on her own—who knows?

Sushila is still asleep; she has stayed up
late, cooking for the party, making curries that will taste better
the second day. She has made beef curries and pork and chicken for
their friends, who are all Catholic like her; vegetables for him,
the lone Buddhist. He has sometimes been tempted by the smell of
her meat curries, but the thought of actually eating meat turns his
stomach. He has not had meat since he was twenty, back in 1946. Two
years before they married; thirty-four years ago. He has held firm
to his convictions. If he ate meat now, it would make him ill.

He can taste already her brinjal curry, savor
the spicy coconut sambol and the pungent pickled limes. His mouth
is almost burning, though the fire is wholly imagined, and he takes
a long drink of tea to soothe it. He chokes on a piece of ginger,
and coughs for a few moments, his whole body shaking. Then it’s
gone, swallowed down, and he is at rest again.

His wife is an excellent cook; none can deny
that, at least, though he can guess what else they say about her.
She won’t be awake until eleven at least. But there is a lot to do
between now and then. He washes the cup, dries it, puts it
away.

He calls the store; no problems. His
assistant is a solid man, his cousin’s friend, and reasonably
trustworthy, although he wouldn’t give the man access to the
store’s bank account. He knows that you can’t really trust anyone
here, in America, not the way you could back home, in Ceylon. It’s
just not the same; family and friendship don’t mean the same things
here that they did back there. He has learned that the hard way.
Still, the man works hard, and the store takes a lot of hard
work.

The store has fed and clothed him and his
family; in it he sells saris, lengths of shining fabric in silk and
chiffon with bright gold threads. Suneel started the shop with
money saved up from work in Colombo, the capital, back when they
were newlyweds. He had saved enough to bring his wife and young
children to America, enough to buy a partnership in a new sari
store, one of the first in the country, and then worked hard enough
to buy the store outright a few years later. He’s proud of the
store, and it’s doing well, but who knows for how long? When they
first arrived, it seemed that their white neighbors shared their
values; knew the value of hard work, the importance of family, of
decency. He’d thought it a good place to raise children, a place of
opportunities. But in recent years, America has changed, changed
completely. Nothing here is as it was, nothing lasts. In this
country, everything looks bright and beautiful and substantial, but
it is so often a sham, with nothing real supporting it. Not like
back home.

Time to start cleaning. Sushila does the
light cleaning—she looks lovely wandering around the house in a
simple green sari, feather duster in her hand. But ask her to scrub
the bathroom tiles, or even move the furniture to vacuum behind it…
. But he brought her here, after all; against everyone’s advice.
The first man in his village to go so far from home. It was his
vision—America, land of opportunity, a shining bright future for
his family. How could he have known that in America, you had to be
fabulously rich to afford even a single servant? They are not
fabulously rich, and his wife prefers not to think about the dirt
that gathers in the corners, under the carpet.

He does not force it on her, though sometimes
he is exhausted, coming home from the store only to find the house
is so filthy that he cannot stand it. Sometimes he stays up late
for nights on end, sweeping and scrubbing and mopping, while she
talks on the telephone to her friends. She has so many friends, and
they have so much to talk about. Sometimes he wants to take her
face and push it down in the bucket of scummy water, just for a
moment, just so she knows what she is forcing him to do—but he
would never do that. He doesn’t even raise his voice when he asks
her what she has been doing all day long; he is not that sort of
man. The Buddha counsels calm in the face of the vexatious;
restraint when in the presence of troublesome souls. He tries to
follow the teaching.

An hour later, Suneel is still cleaning, but
Riddhi has woken up. She comes down the stairs in her purple
pajamas with sleep still crusted in her eyes, hair falling tangled
down her back. How many times her mother has told her to brush it
with oil and braid it before sleep? She always forgets, like a
child. His little one, his delicate angel. She looks just like her
mother did when he married her; much the same age as well. So
lovely. They sent her to a Catholic girls’ high school; both of
them had agreed that it was best, after what had happened with
Raji. But soon the boys will be swarming around her; even tonight,
at the party, the sons of their friends will be drawn to her. His
sweet innocent; if he could only keep her a child, safe,
forever.

She wraps her arms around his neck as he
bends over the bathroom sink, scrubbing at a stubborn stain. “Good
morning, Appa.” Oh, good morning, my daughter. Happy birthday. I
hope you have a very happy birthday today… .

Then she’s off to eat cereal before starting
to help with the cleaning. Dutiful child, not like her sister who
had always found some excuse to be out of the house when there was
work to be done. Even today—where is she? Has Raji come home to
help? No. She’ll take the late train from Boston, waltz in the door
at four o’clock when the guests have arrived and the work is done.
And he’ll have to count himself lucky if she comes alone.

So far, Raji has at least kept her shameful
behavior with her at college, not brought it home to their house.
He’s not sure how much it matters, since she isn’t discreet enough
to keep it a secret. Running around in broad daylight; holding
hands and kissing. All of their friends know what she does at
night, when her mother calls at eleven o’clock and she isn’t in her
dorm room. One friend called them from
Australia
to tell
them what she had heard—oh, how troubled she was, how concerned
about their Raji. Sushila has pleaded with him to do something
about it, has raged at him. But what can a father do? Raji has made
her own choices. He will educate her, that is his duty; then she
will be on her own.

The heavy cleaning is done. Now there is just
a little straightening left. Though soon Sushila will be up with an
endless list of errands for him to run. He turns the sofa cushions
in the family room, his fingers digging deep into the fabric,
threatening to tear. She always has lists for him, and never mind
what else he has planned; she never asks—that’s yet another of his
jobs, after all. To run around after his wife. He deliberately
relaxes his hands, breathes deeply, releases the cushions.

He pulls open the curtains to let sunlight
into the fading room. Suneel straightens the photos on top of the
TV; so many of them. His beautiful wife, laughing at party after
party. She likes parties, where she is always surrounded by her
female friends. He can imagine the others not in the picture, the
ghosts surrounding her. He is standing behind her, there to hold
her up, catch her if she falls—the good husband.

There is Raji, so tall and straight and
serious. His studious one, always busy alone in her room with her
books and paper and paint. He had such hopes for her…all gone, now.
And Riddhi, his angel girl, like a flower. Riddhi dancing, like her
mother, a twirling burst of colored flame. After her Arangetrum,
her graduation dance performance, she stood up on the stage so
seriously, and thanked her teachers, her sister, her amma and appa
most of all. You could see in her face her sweetness, her love for
her family; it was clear from the light shining out of it. You can
see it still.