to the darkening mango strips. The sun has slid down until it is impaled on the thorny fronds of the coconut trees. It is long past the time when I should have turned the mangoes over, as I promised Pishi. I bend to them and begin my task even as blood soaks my underwear, even as I know what the result of my action will be. But I don’t care. I want my touch to rot it all, to turn everything in this faithless world black with fungus.
I try to focus on the salt-coarsened strips in front of me, but one final thought breaks over me, takes my breath. It makes me rock myself back and forth, with pain or fear, I don’t know which. And the thought shapes itself into a wail that spirals tornado-like through the old mansion of the Chatterjees, shaking every stone: I, Sudha, am nothing to Anju. Not twin, not sister, not cousin. Not anyone except the daughter of the man who with his foolish dreams led her father to his death.
When I come back to myself—is it an age later?—the terrace darkening like dying coals around me, Anju’s voice calling me impatiently downstairs, mock-scolding, and my own voice answering her, joking back, I know this: Something has changed between us, some innocence faded like earliest light. The air we breathe now smells of salt and seaweed, as when, the fishermen on the Ganga say, an ocean storm is about to rise.
TODAY’S A SPECIAL day, our thirteenth birthday. When Sudha and I come home from school, Mother gives us each a slim packet of rupee notes and the permission to buy whatever we want with them. The top of my head goes all tingly with excitement because we’ve never been given any money before.
Aunt N frowns. “I don’t think you should put cash into children’s hands like that, Didi,” she says. “Who knows what they’ll be up to.”
“You forget, Nalini,” my mother replies, smiling. “They’re no longer children, they’re women now. It’s time we started trusting them.”
Aunt mutters something darkly about what happens when a mother lets her daughters dance on her head.
I wish Mother would say something sharp and stinging back to her, but she only smiles again.
“Don’t worry so much,” she says. “They’re good girls. They know what they’re allowed to do.”
“I hope you’re right,” says Aunt N, but from the look in her eyes as she fixes them on me, I can tell she has no hope at all.
Sudha and I are just finishing up our homework when Ramur Ma comes by to say Mother wants me in her bedroom, alone. No, she doesn’t know why.
I’m so pleased I run all the way up the stairs. Mother’s usually so busy managing the household and the bookstore that I hardly ever get her to myself. I love those rare times when I get to sit next to her in the big double-armchair in her room while she asks me what I learned at school. She’s not so stern at those moments, nor so worried, and when she cups my face in her hands and tells me how proud she is of my achievements, I feel my whole body softening with happiness, all the rebelliousness melting out of it. Maybe today she’ll take that ancient leather photo album from her almirah again and point out my various ancestors to me. I really couldn’t care less about all those faded faces with their pince-nezs, their silver-tipped walking sticks, and their crimped dhotis. But I’ll pretend a fervent interest just so I can lean against her arm and breathe in the sandalwood scent that rises from her skin like the smell of goodness.
When I get to her room, Mother asks me to close my eyes. Then she puts into my hands something at once hard and velvety. It’s an old jewelry box, and opening it I gasp at the pair of bird-shaped earrings inside, sparkling against blue silk. They’re beautiful—even I can see that. Usually I’m not the least bit interested in jewelry. I’d rather have a good book, as I’ve told all my relatives, not that they listen. But these earrings—I fall in love as soon as I see them. They’re made of
I try to focus on the salt-coarsened strips in front of me, but one final thought breaks over me, takes my breath. It makes me rock myself back and forth, with pain or fear, I don’t know which. And the thought shapes itself into a wail that spirals tornado-like through the old mansion of the Chatterjees, shaking every stone: I, Sudha, am nothing to Anju. Not twin, not sister, not cousin. Not anyone except the daughter of the man who with his foolish dreams led her father to his death.
When I come back to myself—is it an age later?—the terrace darkening like dying coals around me, Anju’s voice calling me impatiently downstairs, mock-scolding, and my own voice answering her, joking back, I know this: Something has changed between us, some innocence faded like earliest light. The air we breathe now smells of salt and seaweed, as when, the fishermen on the Ganga say, an ocean storm is about to rise.
TODAY’S A SPECIAL day, our thirteenth birthday. When Sudha and I come home from school, Mother gives us each a slim packet of rupee notes and the permission to buy whatever we want with them. The top of my head goes all tingly with excitement because we’ve never been given any money before.
Aunt N frowns. “I don’t think you should put cash into children’s hands like that, Didi,” she says. “Who knows what they’ll be up to.”
“You forget, Nalini,” my mother replies, smiling. “They’re no longer children, they’re women now. It’s time we started trusting them.”
Aunt mutters something darkly about what happens when a mother lets her daughters dance on her head.
I wish Mother would say something sharp and stinging back to her, but she only smiles again.
“Don’t worry so much,” she says. “They’re good girls. They know what they’re allowed to do.”
“I hope you’re right,” says Aunt N, but from the look in her eyes as she fixes them on me, I can tell she has no hope at all.
Sudha and I are just finishing up our homework when Ramur Ma comes by to say Mother wants me in her bedroom, alone. No, she doesn’t know why.
I’m so pleased I run all the way up the stairs. Mother’s usually so busy managing the household and the bookstore that I hardly ever get her to myself. I love those rare times when I get to sit next to her in the big double-armchair in her room while she asks me what I learned at school. She’s not so stern at those moments, nor so worried, and when she cups my face in her hands and tells me how proud she is of my achievements, I feel my whole body softening with happiness, all the rebelliousness melting out of it. Maybe today she’ll take that ancient leather photo album from her almirah again and point out my various ancestors to me. I really couldn’t care less about all those faded faces with their pince-nezs, their silver-tipped walking sticks, and their crimped dhotis. But I’ll pretend a fervent interest just so I can lean against her arm and breathe in the sandalwood scent that rises from her skin like the smell of goodness.
When I get to her room, Mother asks me to close my eyes. Then she puts into my hands something at once hard and velvety. It’s an old jewelry box, and opening it I gasp at the pair of bird-shaped earrings inside, sparkling against blue silk. They’re beautiful—even I can see that. Usually I’m not the least bit interested in jewelry. I’d rather have a good book, as I’ve told all my relatives, not that they listen. But these earrings—I fall in love as soon as I see them. They’re made of
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