Read Online The Vine of Desire by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
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there’s something else in her gaze, something steady and measuring. She knows they’re engaged in some kind of battle—a staring battle maybe, and she isn’t going to lose. Her mother pulls back her arm, her palm flat and swordlike. Maybe it’s time to let out another wail?
But, look, she’s biting her lip, backing away. She’s stumbling toward the TV now, rummaging through a pile of children’s videos that the man bought for the child. She slams one of them into the VCR, a last act of temper. The child considers reprimanding her with a sob or two from her considerable repertoire, but a frog puppet has appeared on the screen. It begins to sing a song she knows. She sways from side to side to the beat. Key Largo, Montego … that’s where we wanna go. Everything else dwindles: small stuff, not worth sweating. In the back of her mind, she hears her mother shut the bathroom door. Bermuda, Bahama, come on pretty mama. The child knows that she will weep in there for a while. The knowledge makes her suddenly sad, makes her lie down, curled into herself, thumb in her mouth.
By the time the mother returns, leaving behind a gleaming bathroom that is sure to earn her Aunt Anju’s wrath, the child is asleep. In sleep she senses that her mother’s eyes are reddened, that the end of her blue sari is wound untidily around her slender waist. Even this way, she is beautiful, with the kind of uncared-for beauty that makes people want to be a shield between her and the world. The child knows this because the man has told her so. The mother is smiling a rainy smile at the child, who looks so much like her with her cleft chin and a small mole high on her cheekbone—except there’s an added stubbornness to the child’s mouth, which pouts in sleep. The mother shakes her head. In India this stubbornness would have been a disadvantage, something to be scolded—even beaten—out of a girl. But here she’s not sure. All the rules are different in America, and she knows none of them yet.
She bends to pick the child up, then pauses.
“I’m scared you’ll wake up,” she whispers against her forehead. “And we all know what a terror you can be if your nap’s disturbed, don’t we!” She smiles an exhausted smile. All that kneeling and scrubbing and weeping has taken its toll. Is that why she lies down now, with a delicate, catlike yawn, curling her body around the child’s? Or is she merely acquiescing to the child’s wilder will? The child snuggles backward into that smell she knows so well. She is dreaming of the boy again. Cloud boy, she calls him on some days. Sandstorm boy who looks at her with such hunger. Today he flutters over them with pigeon wings. No, no. Not here. She wants to tell him not to be scared. What will be, will be. But she is distracted by the insistent wind, the way it presses against the windowpane, trying to find a crack so it can enter.
“Ah, mothers and daughters,” she hears her mother sigh, “how we wear each other out! No matter. Anju Ma will be here in an hour to wake us up.”
Four P.M. Her last class over, Anju stands on a campus pavement fidgeting with her sunglasses, which she wears even to class. She is trying to decide what to do. A part of her yearns homeward, but there’s the matter of the letter to her father. She knows she can’t write that letter in the apartment, its charged, gunpowder air. For that she needs a space empty of history and its attendant expectations.
It is the year of passings: Ionesco and Kojak, Jackie Onassis from cancer. Anju wonders if they are expected to share the same afterlife space. She fears it might be so. But maybe it is a mistake to fear, perhaps the dead do not care about such things. She thinks of Prem for a speck second, the way one might lay a finger on the coils of a still-hot burner, then snatch it back. Death is the great equalizer. Is this a phrase she created just now, or had she read it somewhere before? To her dismay, she cannot
But, look, she’s biting her lip, backing away. She’s stumbling toward the TV now, rummaging through a pile of children’s videos that the man bought for the child. She slams one of them into the VCR, a last act of temper. The child considers reprimanding her with a sob or two from her considerable repertoire, but a frog puppet has appeared on the screen. It begins to sing a song she knows. She sways from side to side to the beat. Key Largo, Montego … that’s where we wanna go. Everything else dwindles: small stuff, not worth sweating. In the back of her mind, she hears her mother shut the bathroom door. Bermuda, Bahama, come on pretty mama. The child knows that she will weep in there for a while. The knowledge makes her suddenly sad, makes her lie down, curled into herself, thumb in her mouth.
By the time the mother returns, leaving behind a gleaming bathroom that is sure to earn her Aunt Anju’s wrath, the child is asleep. In sleep she senses that her mother’s eyes are reddened, that the end of her blue sari is wound untidily around her slender waist. Even this way, she is beautiful, with the kind of uncared-for beauty that makes people want to be a shield between her and the world. The child knows this because the man has told her so. The mother is smiling a rainy smile at the child, who looks so much like her with her cleft chin and a small mole high on her cheekbone—except there’s an added stubbornness to the child’s mouth, which pouts in sleep. The mother shakes her head. In India this stubbornness would have been a disadvantage, something to be scolded—even beaten—out of a girl. But here she’s not sure. All the rules are different in America, and she knows none of them yet.
She bends to pick the child up, then pauses.
“I’m scared you’ll wake up,” she whispers against her forehead. “And we all know what a terror you can be if your nap’s disturbed, don’t we!” She smiles an exhausted smile. All that kneeling and scrubbing and weeping has taken its toll. Is that why she lies down now, with a delicate, catlike yawn, curling her body around the child’s? Or is she merely acquiescing to the child’s wilder will? The child snuggles backward into that smell she knows so well. She is dreaming of the boy again. Cloud boy, she calls him on some days. Sandstorm boy who looks at her with such hunger. Today he flutters over them with pigeon wings. No, no. Not here. She wants to tell him not to be scared. What will be, will be. But she is distracted by the insistent wind, the way it presses against the windowpane, trying to find a crack so it can enter.
“Ah, mothers and daughters,” she hears her mother sigh, “how we wear each other out! No matter. Anju Ma will be here in an hour to wake us up.”
Four P.M. Her last class over, Anju stands on a campus pavement fidgeting with her sunglasses, which she wears even to class. She is trying to decide what to do. A part of her yearns homeward, but there’s the matter of the letter to her father. She knows she can’t write that letter in the apartment, its charged, gunpowder air. For that she needs a space empty of history and its attendant expectations.
It is the year of passings: Ionesco and Kojak, Jackie Onassis from cancer. Anju wonders if they are expected to share the same afterlife space. She fears it might be so. But maybe it is a mistake to fear, perhaps the dead do not care about such things. She thinks of Prem for a speck second, the way one might lay a finger on the coils of a still-hot burner, then snatch it back. Death is the great equalizer. Is this a phrase she created just now, or had she read it somewhere before? To her dismay, she cannot
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