Trail of Broken Wings (16 page)

I meet Trisha at a secluded park in the hills of Saratoga. It was a narrow drive on a one-lane road that circled the mountain before climbing toward the peak. There, overlooking the town and its neighbors, we find a patch of grass and settle in. Because it is the middle of the day, there are only a few hikers and some ambitious mothers with their toddlers in tow. Otherwise, we have the area to ourselves.

Welcoming the shade from a large tree, I lean against the trunk watching as Trisha unpacks a light lunch, laying it out on the plaid tablecloth as if we are readying to eat a five-course meal.

Hiding my smile, I compliment her on the spread and take a bite out of some still-warm French bread. “This is delicious,” I admit. She sets out a bowl of fruit and a container filled with what looks like crushed olives. “Is this an olive spread?” I ask, reaching for a butter knife.

“Tapenade,” Trisha corrects before realizing how she sounds. Giving me a sheepish grin, she says, “Sorry.”

“Tapenade it is,” I say, assuring her no harm done. Taking another bite, I savor the olives mixed with peppers and garlic. “Thanks for this lunch. I was expecting Danish and coffee.”

“You remember?” Trisha asks, surprised. When Trisha was fourteen, she watched
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
for the first time. Deciding Audrey Hepburn was her idol, she insisted on eating Danishes and drinking decaf coffee for a full year.

“I can still taste it. You made me eat that stuff with you,” I say, shuddering. “To this day I cringe at the sight of a Danish.”

“Sorry,” she says, though I have the feeling she doesn’t mean it. We eat in silence, listening to the leaves rustling in the breeze. When we were young, it was rare for us to be in each other’s company without talking. To do so now makes me realize that we have both grown up but still find comfort in spending time together. “What was your favorite place to live?” Trisha asks quietly, surprising me. The few times we spoke over the years she never asked me where I was.

“Seychelles,” I answer without hesitation. “A small island in the Indian Ocean. Has a population of about ninety thousand.” I remember sleeping in a tent on the beach, waking every morning to the sounds of the ocean crashing against the shore.

“Were you lonely?” she asks, looking horrified.

I want to explain to her that loneliness isn’t remedied by people around me, that my loneliness is an integral part of me. But by admitting that to her, I would be welcoming questions I don’t have answers to. “Yes, I was.”

“I can imagine.” Taking some grapes from the bowl, she munches on them. She offers me some, and I take a handful. After setting the bowl back down, she stares into the forest. “There’s a mother looking for parents for her newborn,” she shares. “Eric wants to adopt the child,” she murmurs.

“That’s wonderful news?” I ask, assuming it would be.

“Maybe,” she says softly, but her face says otherwise. As I start to prod her for more, to ask why she doesn’t have children when that was all she ever wanted, she points behind me to a bird walking nearby. We both watch as it comes closer to us. “I think it is hurt,” Trisha exclaims. Jumping up, she walks slowly toward it, bending to scoop it up in her palm. “It’s the wing.”

On closer look, we see a small cut on the side of the wing. I spent over three months on an African safari for endangered animals doing a photo shoot for
National Geographic
. There I learned that an injured wing will heal in time, but the bird’s greatest threat was the danger in the wild in the meantime. “It needs food,” I say, starting to crumble the bread.

“Let’s build it a nest,” Trisha decides. Cradling the bird in one palm, she frantically starts to gather materials for a makeshift nest. I watch her curiously before she motions me to help. “Come on!”

For the next fifteen minutes we put together twigs, leaves, and grass and build the best nest we can. In between laughing, we argue about how to make the nest into the most luxurious bedding possible. Finally satisfied, we situate the new home in a circle of trees, protected from any prying eyes. After filling the nest with food, Trisha gently lays the bird down, but not before it gives Trisha a few hard pecks in gratitude. Rubbing her broken skin, she asks me, “You think it’ll work?”

“Yes,” I say with a surety I suddenly feel. “She’s going to be fine.”

“It’s a she?” Trisha teases me.

“He’s going to be fine.” When she gives me a look, I throw up my hands in mock surrender. “It’s going to be fine.”

Laughing, Trisha and I watch the bird settle in. As we start to walk away, she nudges me with her shoulder. “We should do this again.”

“Definitely,” I say, already looking forward to it.

TRISHA

In India, a woman’s marriage means she is moving from one man’s house to another’s. Both men chosen for her, one by an act of God, and the other by the father. As dictated by Indians’ belief system, the men, the father and the husband, were two sides of the same coin. Both owned you and could do with you what they wished. But what happens when the woman wants her freedom?

Twice as a child, Sonya called an ambulance to our house. The first time, playing hooky from school, she waited for Mama to get up. When Mama stayed in bed, Sonya, eight years old, climbed in with her. Finding her unresponsive, she called 911. After running a number of tests, the doctors concluded Mama had simply blacked out. No one thought to mention the hit to the head the night before.

The second time was when Mama started vomiting and didn’t stop. Sonya, eleven, had again feigned illness and stayed home from school. The ambulance sped Sonya and Mama to the nearest hospital. The doctors made Sonya wait in the reception area with an angel helper who gave her crayons and paper, assuming coloring would alleviate her gut-wrenching fear.

Inside, unbeknownst to Sonya, they were pumping our mother’s stomach. She had swallowed a full bottle of sleeping pills that morning. Afterward, when the social worker asked her why, she replied, “I was tired.” That was the last time Sonya stayed home from school. Connecting the dots, she decided it was safer for her to be away from home, where at least there were no lives she had to save.

The lights are off in the house when I arrive home. Eloise will have already cleaned up, leaving me a plate of food in the oven. I have started spending more time at the hospital, with Papa. After my visit today, I drove for hours.

“You’re home.” Surprised, I see Eric standing in the dark, his eyes unreadable. “Where were you?”

“You’re home,” I say. When he stays silent, waiting for an answer, I tell him, “I was driving around.” I search for the light switch. Once I find it, I hit it, but the light only flickers, casting us in an eerie glow.

“It’s not working,” Eric says, coming closer. His voice is hard. “Driving around for six hours?”

“Of course not.”

I am not afraid of my husband. I know women who are. After giving up work, they may decide that the breadwinner makes the decisions in the home, their autonomy lost in favor of security. Others simply give up the ordinary fight. Believe themselves safer that way than fighting battles they might lose. Friends tell me I am lucky. They say I married an extraordinary man, one who gives me the lifestyle others dream of while allowing me complete control. He cedes to my every wish, my every want. In return, I offer him myself.

“Then where were you?” he demands, his words like ice.

“I was with my father.” Reaching a table lamp, I hit the switch, flooding the room with light. Eric’s hair is disheveled, his tie undone.
He’s wary, a hawk circling the field. Closing the distance between us, I reach out but he steps back. “Eric, what’s going on?”

“How is he?”

“The same.” My footing, already unsteady, is shakier with Eric’s demeanor. “He just lies there,” I tell Eric. “No matter what I say to him, he doesn’t answer.”

“That must be hard.” Eric watches me, his stance unflinching. “To be in the dark.” From the end table, he grabs a sheaf of papers. He tries to hand them to me but I refuse. “The adoption forms. I filled them out.”

He flips through the pages until he reaches the last one. “Everything is set. It just needs your signature here and here”—he points to two flagged spaces—“and I’ll get my attorney to start the process.”

A process. In India, children are born for many reasons. In the villages, it is for labor. Boys outweigh girls in importance. Boys are able to help in the family’s business, whether it is farming or shop keeping. No one judges the family when the boys begin working at a young age. Girls, however, present a liability. Dowries must be saved for each daughter born. A payment to the boy’s family for accepting their daughter in marriage.

“A child is not a process.” Sweat starts to trickle down my spine. “Not a decision to be made lightly.” Images of my father holding me beckon. His love unconditional, constant. “We have to discuss this, think about it.”

“I agree.” He throws the papers down on the table. A deep swallow. A sheen of wetness covers his eyes. “I thought that’s what we had been doing. All these years, when we talked about having a baby. Decorating the nursery. Believing you when you told me the fertility specialist said it would happen.”

“It will. There’s just a lot of stress right now.” Something is wrong. I rack my brain for the answer, search for the words he wants to hear.
“With my father, Sonya coming home.” I reach for him but he steps back. “I just need time.”

“Is that why you’re on birth control?” From the table drawer, where the adoption papers are, he pulls out a sheet of paper. My heart starts to race. I scan it quickly when he hands it to me. A letter from my doctor. I am past the date to replace my IUD. The coil I had inserted years ago to prevent a pregnancy. Since the day I vowed to love and honor Eric till death do us part. “For time?”

Some moments in your life you wish never happened; you would do anything to take them back. They make you realize you are not all-powerful. That there is a force stronger than you at work. In those moments, you fall to your knees and abdicate all sense of power. Offer your hand and ask for help. If you are lucky, you will feel the touch of something or someone to help you rise. If not, you stay kneeling, left all alone.

“When did you get this?” he asks. There is no use denying the facts. With all the stress of the last few weeks, the appointment slipped my mind. I have always kept it before, never missed a date. Being diligent, I was sure he would never learn my secret.

I start to count. One, two. In my head I race, wanting to reach eight. My lucky number. It has been years since the need has arisen. I had almost forgotten about my escape. One where reality shifts until returning to one I can live with. Where I am happy and safe.

“You lied to me.” He waits for an answer. Offers me the courtesy of a chance to explain my betrayal. “You made a fool of me.”

“No.” His pain crowds the room, inching over me until I can’t breathe. He’s told me the stories—growing up alone in an orphanage, yearning for a family to love. I knew his pain but dismissed it without reason. Now, he’s demanding to know why. Words race through my head as I search for the exact ones that will end this nightmare. But even as I dismiss one excuse after another, I know there is no justification that he will accept. “It was not about you.” Three.

“Then who?”

He stares at me as though we have just met. I am desperate to remind him I am the woman he married, the one he loved above all else. We wrote our own vows. He told everyone who came to bear witness that I was the most important person in his life. That I was his dream come true.

“Being a mother, I don’t know, it just . . .” I went to my doctor a month before our wedding to get the IUD implanted. It guaranteed I would never bear a child, though all the while Eric yearned desperately for one. “My family,” I try again, the only explanation I have. Four.

“When I met you, I thought your commitment to your parents was commendable. Daddy’s little girl, always will be.” He laughs at himself, at both of us. “I was fine with it. Believed it proof how much you valued family.”

“I do.” But what is the value of a family when it is a kaleidoscope of broken glass? Each turn, each twist, is just another view of shattered pieces thrown together. When raised with the belief that you are perfect within an imperfect world, you fear one day you too will fall from grace. “You know what they mean to me.”