The Dowry Bride (26 page)

B
rushing aside her memories of the walk by the river with Kiran, Megha forced her mind to return to the present and moved away from the window and the sight of the children in the park. She spent long moments observing the kids each day. As much as she liked watching them play and hearing their voices, it was painful, too. Her miscarriage still haunted her.

That ill-fated night, after Kiran had bought her the flowers and escorted her home, she’d felt drained. The exhaustion was beyond ordinary fatigue. After eating a small meal at her mother’s coaxing, she had gone straight to bed, hoping the tiredness would diminish after a night’s rest. Maybe she was coming down with the flu or something.

Megha remembered that night all too well. Just thinking about it made her stomach cramp up—even now.

She was deep in sleep when the first stab of pain speared through her middle. She came wide awake in an instant. What in God’s name was
that?
She rolled onto her side and the pain eased a bit. She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Just as she tried to go back to sleep another vicious stab penetrated her abdomen.

Easing herself into a sitting position, she took a few deep breaths. That didn’t help either. One sharp spasm of pain after another started to rack her body. She tried to rise to her feet, but ended up collapsing to the floor, feeling dizzy and weak. She frowned in panic. Something was terribly wrong with her. Was it something she had eaten earlier that night? But then, her parents had eaten the same things. They were sleeping peacefully in the next room. Her father’s snoring was unmistakable.

Should she awaken her mother? When the next wave of agony washed over her, she had no doubt she was in serious trouble. She had no choice but to disturb her parents, so she knocked on the wall that separated her room from theirs. There was no response. She could hear Appa’s snoring continue uninterrupted.

Waiting for the next surge of pain to pass, she knocked again—harder this time. In the next room she heard her mother’s startled reaction. “Ree, did you hear that?”

Then her father’s sluggish voice responded, “Hmm? Someone…knocking on the door or what?”

Realizing her parents were disoriented from their abrupt awakening, she desperately pounded on the wall once again. A second later her mother rushed into the room and switched on the light. She gasped in shock when she saw Megha sitting on the floor, clutching her abdomen. “
Ayyo,
Megha!” She sank to the floor beside her. “What is it,
putti?”

“I…I’m in pain, Avva,” she managed to whisper. Her face crumpled in agony.

Her mother managed to help her up and move her back to the bed. But she looked at the sheets and stopped short. “Oh my God! You are bleeding!”

Megha cried in pain again, but waited to let the cramp ease before she glanced at the blood. Good Lord! Where had all that blood come from? She drew in a ragged breath. “It—it looks horrible!” Dismayed, she frowned at her mother. “What’s happening to me, Avva?”

Her mother looked too stunned to say anything. She was silent for a full minute before she spoke again. “Did you miss your monthly cycles recently?”

Despite the pain, Megha tried hard to think. She recalled wondering why she had been so late this month. She calculated the dates in her mind. It had been several weeks since her last cycle. After a few moments she nodded. “I think I’m about six weeks late.”

Mangala examined the sheets once again, still looking dazed. “Oh, God! I think you are having a miscarriage.”

“Miscarriage!” Megha stared agape at her mother. “But…but how can I have a miscarriage when I’m not pregnant?”

“It looks like that, no? I can’t think of anything else for this kind of bleeding.”

Megha puzzled over her mother’s remark. Was a very late cycle a sure sign of pregnancy? She wasn’t sure. She’d felt extremely tired lately, and that was because of all that hard work…or so she had assumed. She hadn’t experienced any cravings or bloating or any of those other symptoms Harini had described to her. She had been getting lessons from Harini about what to expect when one got pregnant. But then, her mother was knowledgeable about these matters—much more so than young Harini. Avva was probably right. She gripped her belly as she felt the next cramp seize her.

Visibly shaken and distraught, her mother rose to hurry out of the room. “I better get your Appa.”

Megha’s father looked pale when he came into the room. His hair was sticking out in various directions and his nightshirt looked a hundred years old as he approached the bed to study Megha’s plight. “I’ll get dressed and walk over to Dr. Sanghvi’s house,” he murmured. “I hope he can come straight away.” He gave Megha a long, anxious look before leaving.

While they waited for the doctor to arrive with her father, Megha rested her head in her mother’s lap. “Oh
putti,
this is all my fault,” Avva said ruefully. “I should have noticed you looked different when you arrived this afternoon. You were more upset than usual, your face was flushed. I should have guessed that you might be expecting a baby. I should not have allowed you to walk so much. I think you strained yourself, no?”

“It’s not your fault, Avva. I’m the one who should have known. How could I be so stupid?” It wasn’t fair, this gut-wrenching agony. Damn it, it just wasn’t fair! She had tried to be a good person all her life. She had been taught by her parents and the nuns at school that being upstanding and decent always brought one good things. Except for a few minor lies, she had led an honest life. She said her prayers each day. To make sure she covered all bases, she said her Hindu prayers as well as the Lord’s Prayer and a Hail Mary. And what had she got in return? Grief! And more grief!

Her mother pushed a damp lock of Megha’s hair off her face. “Don’t blame yourself. You are so young. How would you know how to recognize the signs of pregnancy? When I was pregnant with your eldest sister, I was only a teenager, and didn’t realize until I was almost three months along that something was different.”

Megha glanced in disgust at the bloodstains on the sheet. She had waited so long to get pregnant. Her mother was probably right. She had walked a long distance—first the walk from her in-laws’ home to her parents’ in the merciless afternoon heat, and then the evening walk along the river. In the process she had inadvertently hurt her unborn child. Dear God, why had she not recognized the signs of pregnancy? Another cramp sliced through her just then, and she squirmed.

Would Suresh even care if he found out? Or would he be furious with her?

As if reading her daughter’s thoughts, her mother stirred. “Maybe I should go over to the neighbor’s house and use their phone to call Suresh.”

“No!”

“He should be here with you.”

Megha grabbed her mother’s wrist. “Please,” she cried, “I don’t want Suresh here.”

“But Suresh is your husband, dear. He should be told.”

“No, it’s best that he doesn’t know. He’ll run to tell his Amma and she’ll blame me for this. She hates me. Now she’ll hate me more. She’ll say I’ve robbed her of a precious grandchild.”

“But how can she blame you for something like this? It can happen to anyone.”

Megha shot her mother a wry look. God, for a mature woman her mother was so incredibly naïve, almost pathetic. “Avva, believe me, I manage to get the blame for everything that goes wrong in that house. Amma sees to it. Suresh lets her see to it.”

Mangala leaned back against the headboard and let out a deep sigh. “What kind of
naraka
are the Ramnaths giving you, Megha? Oh baby, you look so sad these days.”

Megha knew
naraka
meant hell “
Naraka
is what it really is, Avva,” Megha said and closed her eyes.

Dr. Sanghvi and Megha’s father arrived a while later. The doctor had treated their family for years. He was a small, bald, tired-looking man who should have retired years ago, but continued to work. He looked as if he would die healing people—he was that dedicated to his profession. He confirmed her mother’s suspicions after questioning Megha about various things.

“It’s my fault, isn’t it? What did I do wrong?” Megha asked him anxiously.

He shook his head. “It can happen at times for no reason. That is why we call it a spontaneous abortion.”

“Then it was not my fault?” she said, badly needing confirmation.

“No,” he assured her. “Sometimes, if the fetus is malformed or abnormal, nature aborts it for a good reason. Occasionally a lack of the hormone progesterone can also lead to a miscarriage.”

Megha sank back against the pillow, feeling the first wave of relief sink in. It wasn’t her fault. Thank God!

Dr. Sanghvi then carefully examined her, the bunched-up sheets, and the undergarment Megha had been asked to discard. “Early stages of pregnancy. It looks like the fetus has been completely expelled.”

“Are you sure, Doctor?” Megha’s mother looked at him with an uncertain expression.

“Quite sure,” the frail doctor replied. “I’ll give her something for the cramps. The bleeding should stop within a day or two.” He rummaged through the contents of his well-worn brown leather bag, pulled out a sample of some tablets in a foil pack and handed them to Mangala. “Give her one right now. The pain should ease and she will sleep. She might be sleeping a lot, so don’t worry if she does. Let her stay in bed until the bleeding completely stops, okay? She needs to rest.”

Megha quietly swallowed the tablet with the cold water her father fetched in a tumbler. At this point she was willing to do anything to get this over with. Then her mother helped her up and to the bathroom to get washed. After making the slow trip back from the bathroom, she changed into a faded kaftan that belonged to her teenage years and sank onto clean sheets that her father had spread over the bed. The simple effort left her feeble and shaky.

Her eyes settled on the soiled sheets heaped in the corner of the room. All that she had hoped for during the past year was reduced to a tiny ball of bloody mucus, swaddled in old, faded sheets. How could a fetus, a living, breathing, baby-in-the-making be eliminated so easily? She had never given serious thought to conceiving and giving birth. It had always seemed like an easy and logical thing: one got married, had sex and then there would be a baby. Who would have thought of serious setbacks like a miscarriage? The sheets seemed to mock her even as they lay huddled on the floor. She couldn’t even carry a baby to full term.

In that moment—Megha truly believed that nothing she did would ever come out perfect. Amma was right: her fate was flawed and her life would end in failure. Mistakes made in her past incarnations were catching up with her.

She turned to her mother and found her shedding silent tears. At seeing Avva so grief-stricken, her own sobs erupted. She put her arms around her mother, both to give comfort as well as to receive.

The two women held each other and cried. They wept for the baby that would never be, for Megha’s cursed fate that had placed her amidst the Ramnaths, for the complete waste of a young and beautiful woman’s life, and for the physical and emotional pain this episode had brought. They shed tears until there were none left, then Megha slid back down on the bed and lay down, exhausted.

She sensed her mother sliding in next to her and pulling a sheet over both of them. She felt Avva’s arm come around to hold her. Avva hadn’t done that in years. Did she, too, need the warmth and comfort as much as Megha did? “Avva?” she said.

“Try to get some rest,” whispered her mother. “I will stay here with you.”

“Do you think God is punishing me for something I did when I was little?”

Her mother was quiet for a long time. “You were a good girl when you were little, Megha. You are still a good girl. I think we all bring our punishment with us…you know…to make up for sins from our previous lives. It follows us through every life, again and again, making sure that we pay for everything, the good and the bad, until we have finished paying. Then we are free to become pure, and go to God…forever.”

“Hmm.” Megha pondered that bit of deep philosophy for a minute. It was rather complicated to comprehend. “Do you think there is a lot more bad fate for me, or do you think this is it?”

“Only God knows that.” Avva patted her hip. “Shh, go to sleep now. Perhaps things will get better after today, no?”

“Do you think if I pray to Lord Ganesh he will remove all my hurdles, my bad
karma?”

“He may or he may not, but prayer is never wasted. Even if God does nothing, it always makes you feel better. Prayer is good for the
atma.
Soul.”

Megha cuddled close to her mother and said a quick prayer. Her father must have taken care of the doctor’s fees, she figured, as she tried to block everything else out of her mind except the need to get rid of the physical pain. She would repay her father later. She didn’t want to be more of a burden to him than she already was.

Then she closed her eyes. There would be plenty of time later to grieve the loss of her potential son or daughter. At the moment she just wanted to sleep and forget it ever happened. She was lucky this had occurred at her parents’ home. She needed her mother, now more than ever. If it had happened at her in-laws’ house she would have choked from the sheer lack of sympathy and their disdain. She preferred not to speculate about what Amma would have said and done.

As the medicine started to take effect and the cramps began to ebb, she started to feel lightheaded, like she was floating in a white mist. Images began to dance across her delirious mind. Pleasant images…from her childhood…things she’d done when her father was a handsome man with a capacity for laughter…games she had played with her friends and sisters. Avva was even more beautiful then and so much happier.

It felt good to let Avva hold her like this. Her mother was saying something in her soft, gentle voice, just like she had when Megha had been ill when she was a little girl. Yes, it was nice to be with Avva—she always smelled of talcum powder and spices. She smelled exactly the same now.