How long do we look at each other in that movie hall that is neither in the world nor out of it? How long do we remain suspended in that timeless opal light that gives us strange permission? I don’t know. I must have glanced at the screen from time to time, though I’d long since lost track of the story. (The heroine is weeping as she reads a letter. Then she’s dancing—is it at her beloved’s wedding party? She throws down a glass to shatter on the ground and keeps dancing, her feet smearing with blood, but the pain is less than that which tears her heart. And then it’s the end of the movie, with her in his arms—but how did that come about?) It seems to me as though I haven’t looked away from his eyes at all, that I cannot, even when the houselights come on, and people push each other along the aisles in their hurry to catch the buses before they get too crowded.
Lying in bed that night I would marvel at the chance that made Anju choose this very day to persuade me to go to the cinema, that arranged this young man’s seat next to mine in a hall that held so many hundreds. But even then I had known it was no chance but the inexorable force of destiny, hushed and enormous as the wheeling of the planets, which brought us together. And as our glances met, like that of the prince and the princess in the story of the palace of snakes, the final word the Bidhata Purush had written for me blazed on my forehead. But this we had no eyes to see.
They say in the old tales that when a man and woman exchange looks the way we did, their spirits mingle. Their gaze is a rope of gold binding each to the other. Even if they never meet again, they carry a little of the other with them always. They can never forget, and they can never be wholly happy again.
That is why in families that kept the ancient traditions, girls were not allowed to meet men until the moment of auspicious seeing, shubho drishti, when the bride and groom gave themselves to each other with their eyes. It wasn’t, as Anju said, to keep the woman ignorant and under control. The elders in their wisdom had done it to prevent heartbreak.
“Sudha.” Anju shakes my arm urgently. “Sudha, what’s wrong with you? Let’s go!”
I try to focus on her words, but her voice comes from someplace far away. I start to say something reassuring to her, but instead I find myself smiling at my—yes, foolishly, possessively, I think of him as such—my young man.
“Come on,” says Anju, and now I see that her face is tight with worry. How ironic that she, the valiant one who had initiated this adventure, should be afraid just when my own timidity has disappeared. “Let’s go, we still have to change into our uniforms. If we don’t hurry we’ll never get back to the school gates before Singhji arrives.”
“Okay,” I say. But all of them—Singhji, the nuns at school, even the mothers with their inevitable anger—belong to another universe, one that has nothing to do with me.
The young man speaks thoughtfully, musingly. “Sudha,” he says, and in his mouth my name takes on a sweetness, an elegance I have never thought it could possess.
Anju draws herself up. “Please move out of the way so that we can get past,” she says in her best grown-up voice.
“Yes, of course,” he says, courteous without being apologetic. As Anju pushes past him he says, “Sudha, I’m Ashok, Ashok Ghosh. What’s your full name?”
Ghosh. The word tolls inside my head like a warning bell. I can hear my mother saying, in her most disapproving patrician tones, What? A lower-caste man? I squeeze shut my eyes, willing her voice to fade.
“Sudha, stop, don’t say anything,” Anju cries, abandoning sophistication. “We don’t know who this man is, what he might do, whom he might tell.” She claps her hand over my mouth, but I move it aside. Ashok. The one who banishes sorrow. I know he’ll never use the knowledge of my name against me.
“I’m Basudha Chatterjee,” I say, and I smile my most enchanting smile for him.
Anju’s trying to pull me toward the door. The hall is almost empty and her voice echoes as she says, “Come on, Sudha. God, am I sorry I suggested coming to the cinema.”
“It’s okay, Anju, don’t worry,” I say. A great tenderness fills me. Because she is my sister. Because she wants to protect me from harm. Because she is the one who brought Ashok and me together.
“Don’t worry!” Anju’s voice is brittle with desperation. “Don’t worry, she says. How can I not, when you stand here like your head is filled with cow dung instead of brains? Someone’s sure to see you talking to a strange man, and then what’ll we do?” She yanks hard at me.
“Wait.” Ashok extends an arm as though he would stop me. I wonder how his touch would feel, his fingertips electric, but warm also, like summer rain. But he hasn’t forgotten the proprieties completely. At the last moment he fists his hand and jams it into his pocket. “Don’t go so soon. Can I buy you a soft drink? Can we talk? Even a few minutes—”
“No,” says Anju angrily. “Is your head filled with cow dung too? Didn’t you hear me say we’d get into terrible trouble at home if anyone saw us here with you? Please, just go away.”
“At least let me call you a taxi—”
“We’re going to take the bus,” Anju says as she pushes me to the door of the jenana bathroom. I look over her shoulder at Ashok’s fallen face. I wish I could tell him not to worry—we will surely meet again. But there’s just enough time, before Anju slams the bathroom door, to say, “We live in Baliganj.”
“How can you be so stupid?” Anju bursts out even before the echo of the door fades. “You’re acting just like one of those silly lovesick girls in the movie. The first stranger you meet, just because he happens to sit next to you—”
“Not just happens, Anju. Nothing just happens. I know—”
But before I can say more, the door to one of the ladies’ stalls swings open.
“Girls,” says a familiar voice. “Girls, is it you? I thought I recognized your voices, but then I thought, no, not possible. What are you doing here? You should be in school, isn’t it so? And what’s this I hear? A man? Sitting next to you?” The large, billowy form of Sarita Aunty emerges from the stall. She shakes out her sari pleats and stares at us, goggle-eyed. “What are you wearing? And look at that stuff on your lips! Like women of the street. Goodness, I’d better take you home right away. Oh, just wait till your mothers hear of this!”
And, enormously elated, Sarita Aunty grips our arms and holds on, as though she is afraid we might dissolve magically into the ammonia air of the bathroom and deprive her of the season’s best gossip story. Her steely fingers dig into our flesh all the way home.
WE’VE BEEN sent to our separate rooms in disgrace, to wait until the mothers have decided on a fitting punishment. I lie on my bed staring at the ceiling. The watermarks left there by years of seeping rain usually distract me, they’re in so many fantastic shapes—forests and fortresses and the winged beasts which peopled the fairy tales Sudha and I used to act out. It was on this bed, too, that we lay together and dreamed of our futures. I would have a brilliant career in college. It would enable me to visit all the countries I wanted. And Sudha would have a magnificent marriage and wear silk saris every day if she wished. Her children would be beautiful as moonbeams. But today I can’t think of anything except how much trouble I’ve landed us in.
It seems like an awfully long time before Ramur Ma comes to summon me to the office room. All my bravado is gone by now. But at least I’m glad I didn’t give in to tears. Otherwise she’d have seen the traces, and the gossip would have traveled through the servant mahals of the old Calcutta houses faster than diarrhea germs in the height of summer: Wonder what terrible thing the Chatterjee girls have done this time to make Anju Didi break down like that.
I stand outside the office room, gathering the courage to knock. Then I hear Sudha’s soft step behind me. Her hand clasps mine, clammy but firm, telling me we’re in this together. Our footsteps ring on the cold mosaic floor as we walk in. Shadows dip and swerve against the bookshelves like frightened bats, and the portrait of our great-grandfather, painted in the gloomy oils popular in his day,
glowers down at us.
Beneath the portrait the mothers sit so still on the old velvet sofa, they could have been painted too. Pishi stares into the dim air beyond our shoulders, her mouth a thin, pained line. She hates scenes as much as Aunt N loves them. Aunt has worked herself up already. I can feel self-righteousness rising from her pores like sulfur gas, ready to explode. And my mother—her eyes are in shadow, I can’t read her mouth. But when I see her silhouette, the head bent as if it’s too heavy for her neck to hold up, I wish with a pang that I’d listened to Sudha.
“Here they are,” says Aunt N. “Look at them sauntering in, hand in hand, the shameless hussies. Do they care that all of Calcutta is talking about their escapade? Of course not. Do they care that they’ve smeared blackest kali on our faces? Of course not. Do they care that in this one afternoon they’ve undone everything we’ve been trying to build up for years. All those hours and hours of hard work you put in at the store, Gouri Di”—here I feel a tremor go through Sudha’s hand, but Aunt, unaware or uncaring, continues—”and all my scraping and bowing to women from the important families of the city? Of course not. Do they care—”
For heaven’s sake, I want to say. We just went to the cinema. You’re making it sound like we went and got pregnant.
But the least I owe my cousin now is not to make matters worse.
Then Pishi speaks, surprising me because usually she’s a silent watcher at Aunt’s scold-sessions. “They behaved badly, I agree,” she says. “But must you be so hard on them, Nalini? Look at their faces, I can tell they’re sorry about—”
“With all due respect, Didi”—Aunt’s voice is chill and black, like the inside of a coal cellar—”you’ve done enough harm already, filling their heads with old romantic stories. Please don’t interfere in this business between mother and daughter.”
How well Aunt knew each of our weaknesses. How ruthlessly she went for them. My childless Pishi’s eyes glint with pain like broken glass before she lowers them. But Sudha suddenly looks up at Aunt, her body hard and dangerous like an arrow. She doesn’t flinch when Aunt lunges forward to grip her by the elbows and shake her, shouting, “Haven’t I told you over and over that men can’t be trusted? And still you do this! Tell me, who is he? Who’s the man you went to the cinema with? How did you meet him? Tell me right now. Don’t think being silent is going to save you. And you’d better not make up one of those lying tales you’re so fond of.”
Aunt shakes Sudha so hard that her head snaps back, and my mother cries angrily, “Nalini! Stop that! Anju has already said they only sat next to him by chance.” But there’s no stopping Aunt.
“Ogo,” she cries, raising her eyes heavenward to address my dead uncle, “where have you gone, leaving me to bring up this wicked girl all by myself ? If only you could have been alive to see my suffering and shame today, if only you—”
“He would have been alive,” Sudha says. She speaks slowly, each word falling from her as distinct as chiseled stone. “If you hadn’t pushed him to desperation with your constant nagging.”
The room is still with the absolute silence of shock, even my aunt left openmouthed in mid-sentence. But what astonishes us isn’t so much Sudha’s boldness. It’s the absolute authority with which she speaks.
As though she really knew.
I’m not quite sure what happens next. One moment Aunt Nalini’s crying, “See, my own birth-daughter, how she’s turned against me. When everything I do is only for her happiness.” The sorrow in her voice is raw and rough-grained, and it hits me that for once she really believes what she says.
But when Sudha speaks it’s like she hasn’t even heard her mother.
“As for lying tales, haven’t you told your share of them?” She says this with such contempt that I’m chilled. What could she possibly mean?
From somewhere Pishi’s hand covers Sudha’s mouth. “Hush, girl, hush.” And then my mother, her voice uneven as if she’s climbed a long hill, holds up her arms, saying, “Enough, we’re all overwrought, let’s end this before we say things we’ll regret for the rest of our lives. Sudha and Anju, since you seem incapable of being trusted, no more pocket money for you until you start college. Give the clothes you bought to Ramur Ma—she’ll dispose of them. I will let the nuns know that from now you are to be kept in your classrooms each day through recess.”
The punishment’s fair enough, I have to admit. Already my mother’s calm sternness has shamed me more than a thousand yellings. Silently I follow Sudha to the door, thankful the evening’s over.
Then Aunt N says, “Wait! Is that all you’re going to say to them?”
“I think it’s sufficient,” Mother says. Her cheeks are a hectic red—I can’t tell if it’s from anger or distress—and she’s breathing hard.
“Then I’ve got something to add,” says Aunt. “Your Anju is a bad influence on my daughter. All the ideas she gets from those English novels you allow her to read, she passes on to Sudha. Sudha would never have dared an escapade like today’s on her own. I can’t interfere in how you deal with Anju—she’s your daughter, after all, and her situation is very different from Sudha’s. She’s the only heir of the Chatterjees, while Sudha’s just the poor cousin come from nowhere—oh yes, don’t think I don’t know what people say behind my back. Anju’s position will shut a lot of gossiping mouths. But my poor Sudha—what does she have? Only her mother to watch out for the reputation she’s determined to ruin. That’s why I’ve decided that she’s not to leave the house, not even for school, unless Ramur Ma accompanies her.”
Oh, the insult of it! As though Sudha were twelve years old!
But what Aunt says next makes me feel as though someone’s dropped me into a cold, dark well.
“I’ve also decided on an early marriage for her. As soon as she’s finished at the convent, I’ll start looking for a suitable boy.”
“But she wouldn’t even be eighteen,” says Mother from somewhere above me, her voice echoing with shock. “That’s much too young—”
“If she’s old enough to fool around with men in movie houses,” Aunt says, “she’s old enough to care for her husband’s family.”
It’s hard to speak from under layers and layers of freezing water, but finally I manage. “What about college? Isn’t Sudha going to go to college?”
“What good is that going to do?” says Aunt. “It’ll just put more wayward ideas into her head. Instead I’ll have a lady teacher come to the house to give her cooking lessons. I’m only letting her finish school out of respect to your mother, who’s put so much of her money into it.” She inclines her head at my mother as though she’s doing her a favor.
The water smells dark and musty. It presses down until my chest is about to burst open. “How can you do this?” I shout, only it comes out as a damp whisper. “How can you ruin Sudha’s future—”
“That’s enough, Anju!” warns my mother—but it’s the pity in her eyes that frightens me into silence. “We’ll discuss it later, when our heads are working more clearly. Sudha and Anju—to your rooms. Now! Ramur Ma, go with them.”
We climb the desolate staircase, emptied of words. My heart feels like all the light has leaked away from it. Sudha’s eyes are wide and feverish. A small, new muscle jumps in her jaw.
Oh, why had I been so impetuous? Why hadn’t I thought of consequences?
If I believed in wishing, I’d wish to turn the night back into the innocent morning. And like in the old tales, I’d be willing to pay any price for it.
But wishing isn’t any good, nor is regret. I’ve got to find another way to undo the harm I’ve done.
At her door I give Sudha a hug, holding her to me tightly. Ramur Ma’s watching, ears pricked up, so I can’t even say how sorry I am. But Sudha knows. And by the way she presses her hot cheek to mine I know she’s forgiven me already.
“Don’t worry, this isn’t over yet,” I whisper. “We’ll fight it every way we can think of.” Already I’m devising strategies, things I?
??m going to say to Mother, who I sense is on our side. “And no matter what happens, it’ll happen to us both together. I promise.”
I wait for Sudha to agree, but instead she draws back a little and looks at me with a slight, ironic smile. As though she knows already what it’ll take me years to figure out: promises may be fulfilled, yes, but not always in the way we imagine.
LYING IN BED in the midst of my suffocating rage, I think, strangely, of Hercules. Perhaps it is because at school we have been studying the legends of Greece and Rome. Though the nuns have cautioned us about the pagan heroes and heroines, I am fascinated by them. They seem closer to me than most of the people in my life. I have felt the blue air rushing beneath Icarus’s wings, the ominous trickle of wax down his arms. I have wept with Persephone when the black vaults closed above her head, and then wept again when Ceres took her in her arms the way my mother never does with me.
Tonight I know how Hercules must have felt, trapped in the poisoned cloak sent to him by the one who—he had believed—had only his welfare in mind. My body is pierced by needles of fire, rage against my mother, and my powerlessness in her hands. What gives her the right to control my life, to wall me up in the name of her mother-duty? Wrong, wrong, this society that says just because I was born to her, she can be my jailer.
Earlier tonight, when she pronounced that I must stay home while Anju goes to college, I had an eerie sensation. I felt I was in a dark twisting tunnel which pressed in on me. It took me a moment to recognize it: the birth channel, narrow, suffocating. Only, I was receding up it, going back into the womb, where my mother would keep me, forever and completely engulfed.
Anju, save me.
My bedsheets sting my skin. My pillow is a roasting stone. Perhaps if I get some water and then go to Anju and lie beside her, listening to her sleeping breath, this night will somehow end.
On my way, tiptoe-silent to the clay pitcher that sits in the passage, I see that the door to my mother’s room is open. Slats of light fall across the floor from the moon on the other side of the barred window. Then I see a silhouette.