Secret Daughter
Shilpi Somaya Gowda
For my parents—
for giving much in their lives
so that anything might be possible in mine
Contents
Prologue
HE CLUTCHES THE WORN SLIP OF PAPER IN HIS HAND,…
Part I
1
Dawn of Mourning
2
Clean
3
Never Again
4
Without Much Effort
5
A Long Journey
6
A Fair Assumption
7
Shanti
8
Out of Options
9
Solace
10
A Powerful Thing
11
Spend and Save
12
Bearings
13
Ambitions
14
Monsoon Season
15
Victory
16
Offense
17
Already Attached
18
Silver Bells
19
Maternal Instinct
Part II
20
Shakti
21
An Uneasy Peace
22
Gold Spot
23
Give Thanks
24
Afternoon Rest
25
Overdue
26
Sixteen Years
27
Cruel Complications
Part III
28
Parents’ Weekend
29
Real Life
30
Part of Her
31
Same as Always
32
Change of Current
33
Welcome Home
34
Brother and Sister
35
Times of India
36
In God’s Hands
37
True Indian Beauty
38
Slipping Away
39
A Promise
40
Separate
41
Two Indias
42
Only One Regret
43
Marine Drive
44
Chowpatty Beach
45
One More Lie
Part IV
46
A Father Never Forgets
47
Once Before
48
Revolution
49
The Only Safe Ground
50
A Powerful Love
51
Mother India
52
As Good as I Remember
53
A Family Matter
54
Uncommonly Placid
55
That’s Family
56
Crossing Oceans
57
Morning Prayers
58
Parting Gifts
59
Return of Hope
60
Such a Good Thing
Acknowledgments
Foreign Terms Glossary
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
PROLOGUE
HE CLUTCHES THE WORN SLIP OF PAPER IN HIS HAND, TRYING TO compare the letters written there to the red sign hanging on the door in front of him. Looking back and forth from the paper to the door several times, he is careful not to make a mistake. Once he feels certain, he presses the bell, and a shrill ring echoes inside. While he waits, he runs his palm over the brass plaque next to the door, feeling the ridges of the raised letters with his fingers. When the door opens suddenly, he pulls back his hand and gives another slip of paper to the young woman in the doorway. She reads the note, looks up at him, and steps back to let him enter.
With a slight tilt of her head, she indicates he should follow her down the hallway. He makes sure his shirt is tucked in underneath his slight paunch of a belly, and runs his fingers through his graying hair. The young woman walks into an office, hands the slip of paper to someone inside, and then points him to a chair. He enters, sits down, and clasps his fingers.
The man behind the desk peers at him through thin spectacles. “I understand you’re looking for someone.”
PART I
1
DAWN OF MOURNING
Dahanu, India—1984
KAVITA
SHE CAME TO THE ABANDONED HUT AT DUSK, WITHOUT A WORD to anyone, when she felt the first unmistakable pulls deep within her. It is vacant, except for the mat on which she now lies, knees drawn up to her chest. As the next wave of pain shudders through her body, Kavita digs her nails into clenched palms and bites down on the tree branch between her teeth. Her breathing is heavy but even as she waits for the tightness to ease in her swollen belly. She steadies her gaze on the pale yellow shadow on the mud floor, cast by a flickering oil lamp, her sole company in the dark hours of night. She has been trying to muffle her cries until it is unbearable to do so anymore. Soon, she knows, with the urge to push, her screams will beckon the village midwife. She prays the baby is born before dawn, for her husband rarely awakens before sunrise. It is the first of only two prayers Kavita dares to have for this child, wary of asking too much from the gods.
The deep rumble of thunder in the distance echoes the threat of rain that has been hovering all day. Moisture hangs in the air, settling in small droplets of perspiration on her forehead. When the heavens finally open and the downpour comes, it will be a relief. The monsoons have always held a particular smell for her: raw and earthy, as if the soil, crops, and rain have all mingled into the air. It is the scent of new life.
The next contraction comes abruptly and takes her breath away. Sweat has soaked dark patches through her thin cotton sari blouse, which strains at the row of tiny hook fasteners between her breasts. She grew larger this time, compared to the last. In private, her husband chided her for not covering up more, but with the other men, she heard him boast about her breasts, comparing them to ripe melons. She saw it as a blessing that her body looked different this time, as it led her husband and the others to assume this baby will be a boy.
A sudden fear grips her, the same suffocating fear she has felt throughout this pregnancy. What will happen if they are all wrong? Her second prayer, and the more desperate of the two, is that she not give birth to another girl. She cannot endure that again.
SHE WAS NOT PREPARED FOR WHAT HAPPENED LAST TIME. HER husband burst into the room just minutes after the midwife had cut the umbilical cord. Kavita detected on him the sickly sweet odor of fermented chickoo-fruit liquor. When Jasu glimpsed the writhing body of the baby girl in Kavita’s arms, a shadow crossed his face. He turned away.
Kavita felt her budding joy give way to confusion. She tried to speak, to articulate something from the thoughts swirling in her head. So much hair…a good omen. But it was Jasu’s voice she heard, terrible things she had never heard before from his lips, a string of obscenities that shocked her. When he spun around to face her, she saw his reddened eyes. He moved toward her with slow, deliberate steps, shaking his head. She felt an unfamiliar fear rising in her, tangling with shock and confusion.
The pain of labor had left her body weak. Her mind struggled to make sense. She did not see him pounce toward her until it was too late. But she was not quick enough to stop him from grabbing the baby out of her arms. The midwife held her back as she lunged forwar
d, arms outstretched and screaming, even louder than when she had felt the baby’s head tearing her flesh to make its way. He stormed out of the hut amid the cries of their daughter taking her first few breaths in this world. Kavita knew, in that terrible moment, they would also be her last.
The midwife pushed her gently back down. “Let him go, my child. Let him go now. It is done. You must rest now. You have been through an ordeal.”
Kavita spent the next two days curled up on the woven straw mat on the floor of the hut. She did not dare ask what had happened to her baby. Whether she was drowned, suffocated, or simply left to starve, Kavita hoped only that death came quickly, mercifully. In the end, her tiny body would have been buried, her spirit not even granted the release of cremation. Like so many baby girls, her first-born would be returned to the earth long before her time.
During those two days, Kavita had no visitors except the midwife, who came twice a day to bring her food and fresh cloths to soak up the blood that flowed from her body. She wept until her eyes were raw, until she thought she did not have another tear to shed. But that turned out to be just the dawn of her mourning, which was punctuated by another sharp reminder when her breasts produced milk a few days later, and her hair fell out the next month. And after that night, every time she saw a young child, her heart stopped in her chest and she was reminded yet again.
When she emerged from her grief, no one acknowledged her loss. She received no words of support or comforting touches from the other villagers. In the home they shared with Jasu’s family, she was given only scornful glances and uninvited counsel on how to conceive a boy next time. Kavita had long been accustomed to having little dominion over her own life. She was married off to Jasu at eighteen and settled into the daily toil of fetching water, washing clothes, and cooking meals. All day she did what her husband asked of her, and when they lay together at night, she succumbed to his demands as well.
But after the baby, she changed, if only in small ways. She put an extra red chili in her husband’s food when she was angry with him and watched with quiet satisfaction as he wiped his forehead and nose all through dinner. When he came to her at night, sometimes she refused him, saying it was her womanly time of month. With each simple rebellion, she felt her confidence grow. So when she learned she was pregnant again, she resolved this time things would be different.
2
CLEAN
San Francisco, California—1984
SOMER
THE MEDICAL JOURNAL DROPS FROM SOMER’S HAND AND SHE clutches her abdomen. She rises from the couch and stumbles toward the bathroom, supporting herself down the long corridor of their Victorian flat. Despite the sharp pains forcing her to double over, she pulls aside her robe before sitting on the toilet. She sees the bright red blood dripping down the pale skin of her thigh. “No. Oh god, please no.” Her plea is soft but urgent. No one is there to hear. She squeezes her legs together and holds her breath. Sit perfectly still, maybe the bleeding will stop.
It does not. She puts her face in her hands, and the tears come. She watches the red pool spread in the toilet bowl. Her shoulders begin to shake, and her sobs grow louder and longer until her whole body is overtaken by them. She manages to call Krishnan after the cramps have subsided somewhat. When he arrives home, she is curled into a ball on their unmade four-poster bed. Between her legs, she has stuffed a hand towel, once plush and the color of French vanilla, a gift for their wedding five years ago. They selected that particular hue together—not hospital white, not dull beige—an elegant shade of cream, now soaked with blood.
Kris sits on the edge of the bed and puts a hand on her shoulder. “Are you sure?” he asks softly.
She nods. “Just like last time. Cramps, bleeding…” She starts crying again. “More blood this time. I guess because I’m further along…”
Kris hands her a tissue. “Okay, honey. I’ll call Dr. Hayworth and see if he can meet us at the hospital. Do you need anything?” He arranges a blanket on top of her, tucking it around her shoulders. She shakes her head and rolls onto her other side, away from Krishnan, who is behaving more like a doctor than the husband she desperately needs. She closes her eyes and touches her lower belly, as she does countless times a day, but this gesture, which usually brings her comfort, now feels like a punishment.
THE FIRST THING SOMER SEES WHEN SHE OPENS HER EYES IS THE IV stand next to her bed. She shuts them again quickly, hoping to recapture the dream about pushing a baby in a playground swing. Was it a girl or a boy?
“The procedure went well, Somer. Everything is clean now, and I didn’t see anything that would lead me to think you can’t try again in a few months.” Dr. Hayworth, in his crisp white coat, looks down at her from the foot of the bed. “Try to get some rest and I’ll be back to see you before discharge.” He pats her leg lightly through the sheet before turning to leave.
“Thanks, Doctor,” comes a voice from the other side of the room, and Somer becomes aware for the first time of Krishnan’s presence. He walks to the bed and leans over her, laying a hand on her forehead. “How do you feel?”
“Clean,” she says.
He furrows his brow and tilts his head sideways. “Clean?”
“He said clean. Dr. Hayworth said I was clean now. What was I before? When I was pregnant?” Her eyes focus on the fluorescent light humming above her bed. A girl or a boy? What color eyes?
“Oh, honey. He just means…You know what he means.”
“Yes, I know what he means. He means it’s all gone now: the baby, the placenta, everything. My uterus is nice and empty again. Clean.”
A nurse enters the room, smiling. “Time for your pain meds.”
Somer shakes her head. “I don’t want it.”
“Honey, you should take it,” Krishnan says. “It’ll help you feel better.”
“I don’t want to feel better.” She turns away from the nurse. They don’t understand it’s not just the baby she lost. It’s everything. The names she runs through as she lies in bed at night. The paint samples for the nursery she’s collected in her desk drawer. The dreams of cradling her child in her arms, helping with homework, cheering on the sidelines of the soccer field. All of it, gone, disappeared into the thick fog outside. They don’t understand that. Not the nurse, not Dr. Hayworth, not even Krishnan. They just see her as a patient to be doctored, a piece of human equipment to be repaired. Just another body to be cleaned up.
SOMER AWAKENS AND ADJUSTS THE CONTROL ON THE HOSPITAL bed to sit up. She becomes vaguely conscious of canned laughter emanating from a television set in the corner, some game show Krishnan left on before going to the cafeteria. She never thought she could feel this uncomfortable in a hospital, the place she spent five straight years of her life. She used to get a rush of excitement walking down the sterile corridors and hearing the buzz of the speaker overhead. The rituals of slipping on her white coat or picking up a patient’s chart gave her a shot of confidence. It was something she and Krishnan used to share, that sense of purpose and mastery in being a doctor. Now, she knows, this is another thing that will pull them farther apart. She resents being the patient, hates that she can’t fix this.
She wasn’t supposed to be here yet, in this hospital she chose deliberately for its focus on obstetrics. Eight thousand deliveries a year. Twenty babies born here today. Today, while her dead baby was being scraped out of her. On the floor just below hers, every woman in the ward has a baby sleeping in her room. It seems so easy for everyone else: the mothers she sees in her practice every day, her friends, even the idiot on that game show, waving to her kids in the audience.
Maybe this is nature’s way of telling her something. Maybe I’m just not meant to be a mother.
3
NEVER AGAIN
Dahanu, India—1984
KAVITA
ANOTHER PAIN COMES NOW, THIS TIME FROM EVEN DEEPER within her, its dull edges sharpened to jagged blades. Kavita can no longer catch her breath between the waves of pain coming one upon
the other. Her thighs tremble, her back throbs, and now she cannot help but cry out in anguish. When this sound reaches her own ears, it no longer resembles a human voice. This body is no longer her body, it is driven by primal impulses that belong to the earth, the trees, the air. Outside, a sudden flash of lightning illuminates the dark sky, and an eruption of thunder shakes the ground beneath her. The branch in her mouth cracks from the pressure of her clenched jaw, and she tastes the bitter flavor of raw green wood inside. The last thing she feels is a wet warmth envelop her body.
When she opens her eyes again, Kavita feels the midwife arranging her legs and positioning herself between them. “Beti, you should have called earlier. I would have come. How long have you been here by yourself? As it is, the baby’s head is showing already. It won’t be too long now. The second time is much…” Her voice trails off.
“Daiji, listen to me. No matter what happens, you must not let my husband take this baby. Promise me…promise me!” Kavita shrieks.