Trail of Broken Wings (11 page)

“And yet,” Sonya pauses, “you said otherwise at graduation.”

Taking a deep breath, Ranee struggles to try to clarify what she meant the night of graduation. “Sonya, when I said it would have been best for you to be aborted . . .” Ranee pauses. “It was the only way I
knew how . . .”
To let you go
are the words that remain unspoken. That was the reason Ranee had spoken the truth. She knew it would make Sonya leave, escape. For Ranee, it was the only choice left to make. The only way Sonya could be free.

“Did you mean it?” Sonya asks quietly when Ranee is unable to finish the sentence.

“Yes,” Ranee whispers. “But not for the reasons you believe.”

Before Ranee can attempt to explain to her daughter why she never wished her born, Sonya finishes the conversation with, “The reasons don’t matter. What’s done is done. Nothing can change the past.” Sighing, she gathers her hair together. “It’s best if you and I don’t discuss it again.”

When you lose someone there is a grieving process. Shock, anger, despair, among a multitude of other emotions. Every one of them wrapping around you like a vise. No room to breathe, to think, or to understand. But what about when someone is alive yet wants nothing to do with you? Is there a mourning process in place then, or do you hold on to hope like a life raft in the abyss? After the fight with Sonya, Ranee’s emotions swing erratically. Like a pendulum with no gravity, they shift minute to minute, until she is exhausted from nothingness.

She straightens out the bed covers, smoothing wrinkles she knows Trisha must have attended to once already on her daily visit to Brent. It is past midnight. The hospital halls are eerily quiet. For Brent, it must make no difference; his mind is living in complete solitude. Lost in a world that is void of sense.

In Marin’s first year of school in the US, she told Ranee that she’d learned in science class you could tell a tree’s age by the number of rings on the stump. Marin yearned to take a trip to Yosemite to learn the ages of fallen trees but Brent refused. Ranee wondered if there was any way
for someone to tell her real age—or could people only see the one that the multitude of worry lines on her face indicated?

Ranee learned how to speak proper English from the soap operas on television and how to read it from the newspaper. Since arriving in America, she often thought what it would be like if she brought home pay equal to Brent’s. Would that have changed the dynamic of their relationship, or was she destined to live in battle with him as the guaranteed victor?

“I envy you,” she said quietly, making sure no one could overhear. The nurses were constantly in and out, as if their noise could be the jarring he needed to awake. “There is no one you have to face for your deeds.”

An outlawed practice in India,
sati
, required a widow to throw herself on her deceased husband’s burning body during cremation. The assumption was that no woman would want to live without her husband to support and love her. Ranee had seen the practice as a child. Children were not allowed at funerals, but she had sneaked into one. As smoke billowed into the air and sobs were heard, a young widow in a white sari threw herself onto her husband’s pyre. Her screams silenced the group as they watched her burn to death. Ranee had covered her eyes, praying for someone to rescue the woman from her demise. But everyone stood in place, watching the widow do the right thing. When the village folk told the couple’s orphaned children the news, they fell to the ground sobbing. An uncle pulled them into his arms and explained that their mother had died with honor and they should be proud. They could now hold their heads high because of her actions.

“I won’t die with you,” Ranee says to Brent’s still body. “So many years I wished I were dead that now I choose to live.” The argument with Sonya replays in her mind. Her belief that she was a burden. “But she was never a burden, was she, Brent?” The ticking of the clock echoes in the hospital room. Her husband remains the silent companion in the conversation. “None of our girls were. But I believed you
when you said you knew what was best. When you told me that I was stupid and you were smart.” She lowers her head in shame. “I believed you when you said the stress of our new country was too much to bear. That because you had to stand silent in our new world . . .” She pauses, a sob building. “I convinced myself that in our home you had the right to be strong.”

Despair and regret grip Ranee. He was not strong but instead the weakest of them all. Her children were pawns in his game. A voice in her head that sounds eerily familiar to his reminds her that he provided her with a home and food. That he gave her everything when she had nothing. She dismisses the voice, her own finally strong enough to hear.

“But I never knew the full story, did I? Maybe I didn’t want to see.” In the belly of a whale, Ranee knows she is drowning but is helpless to save herself. “But it was past time for me to save our daughters. I—we owed them that much.”

She lays her head on the bed, next to his like she has for all the years of marriage, and weeps. Her
mangalsutra
, the sacred necklace she wears of gold and black beads, falls forward, intertwining them. A symbol of love and marriage, he gave it to her during their wedding ceremony as required by tradition. Slowly, she brings her hands around to the clasp and undoes it, dropping the necklace between them before wiping her tears and walking out.

SONYA

When I left home after graduation, my first stop was Kentucky. I had loved horses as a child, and the song “My Old Kentucky Home” during the Derby always made me feel like crying. Maybe it was the huge hats, a welcome cover from the world, or the sight of the horses running as fast as they could only to end up right where they started, but it was my first choice for escape. I arrived in Lexington and was welcomed by endless miles of thoroughbred farms. White picket fences and grass so green it looked blue. Smiles graced everyone’s faces.

I rented a hotel room and car for a week. With no clear direction about what I was doing or planning, I assumed seven days was enough time to figure it out. After researching various options, I started my adventure. Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, I spent hours hanging off freshly painted fences photographing horses grazing on the grass. At the world famous Keeneland horse track, I snapped pictures of thoroughbreds in flight. Their powerful legs propelled them forward, while their chiseled bodies stayed in perfect alignment with the track. Stall cleaners started recognizing me. At first it was daily waves, but soon they offered me unrestricted entrance to the stalls. With their
permission, I was able to capture the horses in peaceful repose, waiting until it was their moment to shine.

Seven days turned to fourteen. I had hundreds of photos, but I still took more. My camera offered a safety I hadn’t known before. For the first time in my life, I was in control. But my refuge proved temporary. A horse owner’s son noticed me. A few years older, he was handsome and kind. He offered to show me how to ride the ones I admired. English versus Western. We began to spend our days together. When he kissed me, I expected it. The first time we slept together, I told him I was quiet because it was so beautiful. When he told me he loved me, I was lost, falling off a cliff with no parachute. I struggled to say the words back to him, but images of my father strangled any hope. That night I left without saying good-bye. Drove until I found a motel off the highway, hundreds of miles from nowhere. Turning on my computer, I searched the Internet until I found what I was looking for. I read from sunset until sunrise, each account filling an unspoken need within me. Exhausted, I laid my head down on the cheap wood desk and cried.

After leaving Kentucky, I had no idea what to do with the hundreds of pictures I had taken. With no formal training in photography, I had no concept of how to create a career in the industry. Searching online, I found a website where amateurs uploaded their pictures for anyone’s viewing pleasure. I did so and thought nothing of them until I received a call from an agent a month later. Linda was with a large management company that represented some of the premier photographers in the country. She asked to see a portfolio. When I told her I didn’t have one but was currently in Turkey and could send her pictures I had recently taken, she laughed. “You do that,” she said. She signed me, and I’ve
been with her ever since. Through her contacts, I’ve been hired to work all over the world.

I call Linda days after promising Trisha I won’t leave. When I reach her answering machine at the agency I call her cell phone.

“Sonya, sweetie, how are you?” My name has come up on her caller ID.

Linda is quintessential LA. She drives a convertible with the top down; her house sits on the bluffs of Malibu though she hates to swim in the ocean. She has two dogs, Pinky and Princess. She dresses them in identical sweaters, like twins, but somehow is able to tell them apart. Though she sleeps with the dogs nightly, she is a sworn germophobe. Nearing fifty, Linda dresses and looks like she’s in her thirties. Swearing that green tea is the fountain of youth, she devours gallons a week. The Botox remains unmentioned.

Linda started her career as an intern at the agency. Over drinks one night she confided that she only had to sleep with two partners before climbing the ranks. That one of them was a woman barely fazed her. When I asked her if she had ever demanded the same from underlings, she winked and told me she would never tell. Linda changed her hair color by the decade. Currently a redhead, in the nineties she was a blonde, but she decided they really don’t have more fun. A brunette before that, she has forgotten her natural shade. And since she keeps her weekly Brazilian wax appointment, she said, she’ll never find out.

“Good,” I answer her over the phone, our connection clear. She was also the first one I called when I decided to come back home. I needed to let her know that I wouldn’t be available for any new assignments for a while. Not a religious person, she had nonetheless wished me Godspeed and the best for my father.

“And your daddy? How is he?” she asks me now.

“Still sleeping,” I reply, the only answer I have at hand.

“Excellent,” Linda does not miss a beat. “The rest will do him good. And your family? How are they holding up?”

“As well as can be expected,” I answer. As close as we are, I have never told her or anyone about my past. “Did you get the last set of pictures I sent you?” I ask, eager to change the subject.

“Of the Nor’easter that hit New England? Storm of the century? They were fabulous. I have three papers that made bids for them. We’ll play them against each other for a bit.”

“Thanks.” The money has never excited me much. With no one to spend it on, it sits in the bank. Linda, however, is continually frustrated with me when locale trumps payment for my choice of assignments. She is sure my talent can bring in the big bucks, plus, for her, every assignment’s worth is dependent on the commission it pays her. “That’s why I’m calling. I need a job.”

It is usually the other way around: Linda contacts me with a slew of new projects. She runs down the list until one sounds appealing. I am her favorite client because there are no limitations on where I will go or when. It is easy for me to drop everything since I have nothing to hold me. No husband or children whose schedules will be interrupted by mine.

“Excellent! I have an online magazine that wants pictures of Russia.” She pauses as she consults her iPad. Linda has very few attachments in her life but if her tablet could be surgically connected to her, she’d be thrilled. “A paper in London wants to follow up on the rape crisis in India. An in-depth exposé. May require three to six months of time, but that hasn’t stopped you before.” She sounds pleased. “Which one should I schedule you in for?”

I pause, considering her offer of India. My heritage, my ancestral home. “No,” I murmur, keeping my voice light, the panic at bay. Though we went once when I was a child, I’ve never felt the yearning to return. “Not India. Actually, I need something closer to home.” I glance out the window of the café I have been sitting in for the last few hours. With a cup in hand, I have watched as the diverse population of
Palo Alto has found the one thing they have in common—the need for expensive coffee. “The Bay Area, in fact. No traveling.”