Madras on Rainy Days: A Novel (12 page)

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Authors: Samina Ali

BOOK: Madras on Rainy Days: A Novel
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“Did you know Henna was returned?” I asked.
She unfolded the new sari and began admiring its bead work, not answering. Then she cast it aside and sat on her bed, staring into her palms. She said, “It was the reason she didn’t attend the
mun-jay
ceremony It would have been bad luck for a woman in her position to perform rituals meant to begin your wedding.”
A woman in her position, one who’d been returned, abandoned. “But you performed the rituals,” I said.
She looked up at me, blinking, as though trying to make out who I was. “It’s time for you to bathe,” she said. “I’ve asked Raga-be to help Nafiza prepare you. The wedding dress is elaborate. And, after you bathe, there are more rituals to scent your skin.” She rose and snapped closed the velvet jewelry boxes. Keeping her back to me, she said, “Go now, child, go from here.”
I pressed a thumb into my palm and tried to rub out his initials. I said, “If I’m returned, we can go back to the U.S. together … can’t we?”
Her body straightened, loose hair falling out of her bun. For a moment, she was very still. Then she suddenly turned and walked past me to the door, where she twisted the fabric of the door curtain as she had her
pallow
and shoved it over the door. Outside, framed by the doorway, was Dad, sitting cross-legged on the ground, lips tugging back into a smile even as he ate, proud of his kill. He had changed out of his trousers into cotton pajamas, and the tie-string hung between his legs. His shoes, now caked with dirt and blood, were on the verandah, being washed clean by the rain. Across one pale ankle, lamb’s blood.
She was using him as a threat, warning me to stay quiet, within my limits. There would be no returning with her—no returning
to
her.
“Talak, talak, talak,
” I said, aware of my legs growing weaker, barely keeping me up. “I was in my room when it happened. I heard everything.”
She busied herself with folding the sari, spreading it open, then
folding it again. She said, “In the U.S., people say you lose your independence when you get married. That’s not true for you, Layla. Once you’re married, you’ll be free.” She paused before adding, “No matter what he does, he doesn’t see it as wrong.”
“There are different laws in the U.S.,” I said. “You can get alimony …”
“I don’t want his money Layla! What will I do with more of his money? I want my life back! Can he give me that? Can anyone?”
There, she had said the one thing she’d never said before, the one desire forever pulsing with her blood, and we stared at each other, both of us inadequate. Her hope to give me a home, my hope to let her give me one, each believing it would bring the other happiness, yet somehow now it just didn’t seem enough.
I stepped toward her, finally able to say what I’d always wanted to myself, “I wasn’t worth giving up your life for, Amme. I wasn’t worth your sacrifices … This house, give it back to him, or tell him to leave with his family. After I’m gone, don’t live like this anymore. Don’t share this room …”
Dad stepped into the doorway and the light shining in from behind blackened his figure.
“What am I hearing in here?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper. “What are you two talking about?” He moved in farther, his light eyes dark with anger. The demon in him coming out.
“What are you teaching your mother?” he asked, moving toward me even as his eyes darted about the room. He was searching for a tool, a weapon, something he could get his hands on, quickly, easily There was no belt with the loose pajamas. The shoes were being rained on. His fingers curled into fists. “I send you back here each year so you’ll learn who you are, and still I find you teaching your mother these ideas … these American ways.
Randi!
It’s because of you she speaks to me with disrespect, in front of her relatives, in front of servants.”
I began pounding on my legs. Useless, they were useless. How
long ago had I learned I couldn’t run away, couldn’t escape, not him, not his laws.
“This is my house,” he said, his voice still low, spit flying out of his mouth. “This will always be my house. Do you think it matters whose name it’s in? Throw me out, throw my family out, out of my own house!” His voice began rising, knuckles grinding against a palm. “I’ll throw
you
out and you can prostitute yourself to stay alive.”
My legs buckled and I curled up on the floor, hiding those parts I knew he liked to beat, my belly and breasts, my thighs, between my legs, the woman in me. He wanted to break her.
He grabbed a silver tray from the dresser, one of those that had carried over Sameer’s dowry gifts, and hurled it into the air, ready to strike. I closed my eyes and heard the rain thrashing the ground, his two sons playing in the salon. Amme threw her red sari over me, covering my body She stepped before him, stepped between us, at last stopping him.
“She doesn’t belong to you, not anymore!” she cried, arms flung wide to hide me even more. “You have no rights left. She is married.”
He hesitated, glaring from her to me before he tossed the tray onto Amme’s bed, a thick lip pulling up in disgust as he turned away
So she had done it, after all. My mother may have lost one child, but somehow, she had managed to save the other.
DHAK
.
DHAK. DHAK dhinak dhin. Dhak. Dhak.
I was naked, a towel concealing my damp body Nafiza had just bathed me, as she had been doing since I was a child, washing away the night’s impurities and the day’s illness. Now she and Raga-be lugged two earthenware bowls into Amme’s bedroom, where I was sitting at the edge of her bed. The doors and windows were bolted closed. These were a bride’s private rituals.
Dhin dhin.
Thunder rumbled in the distance, the rain that had been tormenting the earth having at last ceased. In its place, the unmerciful glare of the sun. How would I put on the layers of silk and netting and jewels when my skin, at the touch of a cotton towel, was recoiling? The bath water that had been rolling down my neck and breasts was now shimmying sweat. The musicians had been moved into a sheltered corner of the verandah, protected from any further onslaught of rain, and the
shenai
raised a high-pitched note, rising even higher against the
dol’s
steady beating, then collapsed.
Dhinak dhin dhak.
Steam was swirling out of the narrow-mouthed jug Raga-be had by the neck, held away from her body, this ceremony more frightening
to her, it would seem, than the
jadu
she’d performed last night. Nafiza placed the large, flat bowl at the center of the floor and Raga-be squatted next to it, turning over the jug. Hot coals tumbled out. Nafiza added what looked like small black stones. Fragrant fumes rose.
The women spread a white sheet on the floor and laid me on top, my head near the coals. Each took sections of my wet hair and dried it over the fumes, capturing the fragrance. Then they sat me up and passed my forearms and shoulders, thighs and feet over the bowl. They asked me to undo the towel and lean over it. My breasts hung low, nipples wide as quarters. After a moment, they pulled me up and told me to stand over the bowl. I placed a leg on either side. Fumes swelled up around me and pushed inside. Not the smell of jasmine, but the bitter scent of a brand-new bride.
Dhin. Dhin. Dhak.
 
 
THE RATTLE AND chaos of a brass band. The members were dressed in red uniforms with brass buttons, shiny black-and-white shoes, gold
shamlahs
on their heads that rivaled the groom’s own. Two or three performers were drinking kerosene, spitting fire, lungs ablaze, then black, withering. The music was burning into my skin, taking root at the core, a sound I would forever carry, like the wedding
dol
, like Amme’s wail from long ago. Each as much part of me as my beating heart, my gurgling innards. All this noise just to lead the bride to her new home.
The wedding car, a red Chevy Impala, was covered bumper-to-bumper in floral ropes, and inside, on the ivory backseat, I was squeezed between my new husband and my mother-in-law. In front sat Sameer’s father, younger brother, Feroz, and the driver who had come with the rented car. A young man was marching with the band, recklessly close to a fire breather, the only one out there in a suit. The fabric was the color of his skin, the cut showing off his broad shoulders and thin face. When the band stopped, as it did every fifty or so feet, the men took up their instruments and the man danced for us, the bride and groom, to the music that was never meant for dancing.
My mother-in-law kept her face turned away from the spectacle, staring out the side window. Feroz clapped. Sameer peered at me through the veil, watching me watch the stranger. His hand was clutching mine under the layers of my
duppatta,
respectfully concealed from his mother, the rings biting into my skin. The man was dancing in front of the Chevy now, legs cut off by the long hood, his jacket swirling about, exposing his lean waist and narrow hips, the button that had come undone at his belly, flapping open and closed, the soft flesh beneath. Two fire breathers, one on either side of him, bent onto their knees and threw back their heads. In the scorched air, I saw him peering into the front windshield, eyes squinting against the headlights. His face was stern and unsmiling, though he was forcing his body to move.
Zeba tightened the black
duppatta
around her head, her face still turned away. She’d worn the veil to the
nik’kah
, just as she’d done to the
sanchak
, right over her fancy wedding clothes.
“Minas shai-tan
e
rajim,
” she whispered, shooing away the devil, then began reciting Qur’anic prayers.
Sameer’s hand tightened around mine, and the band resumed its slow march as the man stepped to the side of the road. He shook his jacket by the collar to straighten it, then rolled his neck. When the car caught up to him, he began walking in pace, just outside my husband’s window.
 
 
SAMEER’S HOUSE WAS the last on the dead-end road, next to a field of tall grasses curled into themselves from the heat. It was a one-story structure with a flat roof, lit up by a thousand celebration lights. The marching band’s racket had alerted everyone, and his women relatives stood outside the front gate, dressed in bright silk saris, flowers strung through their long braids, waiting for the car to pull up, the younger girls bouncing in excitement. Neighbors had also come to the street, Muslim women covered in veils standing next to Hindu women with red
surma
lining their hair parts, a sight I had never seen in the Old
City. I spotted my nanny off to the side, against the tall boundary wall, hands clasped at the thighs. She was dressed in the sari Amme had bought her for my wedding, her face closed against the surrounding happiness. She didn’t know that Raga-be’s
jadu
had made the bleeding stop.
When the car parked, the band played even louder, growing into a crescendo that cut through the heavy night sky, a cacophony of celebration that must have reached the dim stars. Doors were flung open and Sameer jumped out, the back of his long silk jacket creased and stained red by flowers. He disappeared into the crowd. Arms reached in, covered to the elbows in red glass bangles, and helped me out. My silk kurta and veils were straightened and pulled out from beneath my high heels, then, hunched under the weight of flowers, I was led into my new home. At the doorway, Sameer’s father, Ibrahim, held the Qu’ran over my head, blessing my steps.
The women guided me into the bridal room. My dowry furniture had been set up, the red sequined cloth pulled off the tall mirror, the bed’s mosquito netting draped from end to end with ropes of marigold. The peacock’s beak had chipped in the move and been painted over in a pale white that did not match the original ivory Outside, the band was leaving, and the growing quiet felt immense.
The women closed the bedroom door and stood me before the mirror. I was the image of a perfect bride. Wrapped in a six-foot-long
duppatta,
my face concealed behind two red wedding veils that hung to my waist, and underneath, strung around my neck, five pounds of flowers and ten pounds of gold. My wedding henna matched the red of the wedding dress. In the drawer before me, Nate’s letters.
The women began unwinding the
duppatta
and pulling the pins from the veil, and like that, just as they had adorned me a couple of days before, they now stripped me of the jewels and clothes. I was left with only the silk skirt and a tight top that stopped just below my breasts. The only thing keeping it on was a gold thread that tied at the front; meant to be easily taken off. My face was wiped of sweat, fresh powder dusted on, the red wedding veil draped over me again.
Zeba, who had been standing apart, instructing, now drew keys hooked onto her sari by a silver key ring. She opened my
almari
, and the women placed the jewels and folded clothes inside.
The door to the mosquito net was parted. The mattress was covered by the maroon velvet blanket Amme had sent along and the pillows Nafiza had sewn together. The blanket was pulled back to reveal white bedsheets on top of which was another, smaller, white cloth. The women seated me at the center of the cloth and arranged the veil around me, bangles clinking gently Then they withdrew and Zeba stepped forward. I could feel her staring at me through the netting.
“I prayed a long time for this day,” she finally said, her voice trembling with emotion. “Allah,
tera shukar,
” she said, thanking Allah for granting her wish. Then she whispered, “Beti,” daughter, and left the room, the women following with the soft swish of flowing saris.
Certainly, she hadn’t prayed for a daughter like me.
 
 
SAMEER WAS LYING across the foot of the bed, on top of the velvet blanket the women had folded back. His long legs were bent, head propped up on a hand. He was staring at me through the wedding veil, his gaze so intense I found myself doing what I had when we’d first met. Taking him in with quick glances, his fair skin and hard jaw line, his dark eyes and wavy hair, that space between his front two teeth, the tongue moving in and out. My handsome husband, foreign to me yet also the most intimate. And there it was, that familiar pull of attraction. opening something up inside.
I was still sitting on the white cloth with my chin resting on a knee, the way the women had positioned me. He seemed calm for a man who had just gotten married, nothing like a husband who’d found letters from his new wife’s old lover.
In the living room, women were playing the
dol
and singing a popular Hindi song: “Eik, do, then, char, paanch …” One, two, three, four, five, they counted, all the way to thirteen, then sang, “
This is how I tallied the days waiting for you.
”
Sameer said, “So they’ve undressed you, taking off the flowers and jewels. Making it much easier for me … but, look! They forgot something.” He reached out and touched my big toe. On it, a silver toe ring gleaming against the red henna designs. “Now why do you think they left this poor little thing?” he asked, smiling, the tip of his tongue red from the sweetmeats we’d been fed all night. “Do you think they meant for me to take it off?” He pulled my foot toward him and put my toe into his mouth, his tongue swirling around it. Then he looked up at me and said, “For lubrication,” and I couldn’t help but laugh and kicked him away I hadn’t expected to be enjoying this, not right away, so what was taking over? Or what, at last, was giving in?
He grabbed my foot again and yanked it back, now bounding up, the neckline of his sheer kurta falling low to expose his clean chest, the muscles that hadn’t been there before. He pushed my leg into the air so that I fell onto my back, the veil flattening across my face, and stretched apart the silver. He snapped the band off and slipped it on his own thumb, cinching the metal together again. He licked my tendon.
“This is how I tallied the days waiting for you
…”
“The guests were marveling at the ceremony,” he whispered, sliding back my skirt. “They said it was like the elaborate stage of a Hindi film, you and I the stars.”
I was aware of the rise and fall of my chest, the veil pressed to my skin, fluttering against my nostrils with each slow breath, and overhead, the canopy of yellow flowers seen through hazy vermilion silk. The stink, the overpowering stink of marigolds and sweat. His tongue, which I had so often seen pushing through his front two teeth, I had never imagined would now be pushing inside me.
“Tallied the days, one two three.”
“Oh God!”
“What?”
“Oh God!” He rose, turning his face away from me, his hands up, blocking it even more. He fumbled about for the netting’s door, and when he couldn’t find it, he swore and yanked the netting up from the foot of the bed. He tumbled out and into the adjoining bathroom.
“Sameer!”
Nothing but the sound of women singing, bangles clinking, the beat of the
dol
. After a moment, the song came to an end. and in the breath’s pause between notes, I heard my husband retching.
 
 
HE WAS SITTING on the velvet stool that had come along with the dresser, his knees rising almost to his chest. Between them, his hands clutching my first wedding kurta, the pale silk one Henna had wrapped around Nate’s letters.
The women had gone to sleep. Rain was steadily tapping the window shutters. My heart was unusually calm, as it had been the night I had let Nate into my room, my body tamed by its habitual surrenders.
Between my new husband and me. the dense mosquito netting, the ropes of marigold. It was the blood—my bleeding mixed in with his saliva—that had made him vomit. I was wrong that Raga-be’s
jadu
had made it stop. For there it was, two small splotches of red on that white cloth. I explained it away by saying I had started the pill on the wrong day nothing more than my menses coming earlier than expected, things I knew that he, as a man, wouldn’t really understand.
“I threw the letters out,” he said, head hanging low, shoulders slumped, knees at his belly. He could have been the child caught with some secret, when it was I who had been the one to behave without judgment. “But I read them. I shouldn’t have read them, but I did.” He twisted the kurta around his fists. “Now I’m haunted by them … possessed by him, your old lover. When I was touching you, it was him I saw touching you. Over and over, he writes about the night he came to you. Thoo!” he spat, then lurched up and stood very still, fists trembling over his face, my kurta the color of his flesh. Through his sheer
kameez,
I could see the heavy rise and fall of his chest. “You have made a fool of me …”

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