Arranged Marriage: Stories by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Read Free Book Online Page B

miss the bustle of the Calcutta streets a little, the hawkers with their bright wares, the honking buses loaded with people, the rickshaw-wallahs calling out make way , but I say, “It’s so neat and quiet, isn’t it?”
    “Every Wednesday the cleaning truck is coming with big brushes to sweep the streets,” Aunt tells me proudly.
    The sun has ducked behind a cloud, and it is colder than I had thought. When I look up the April light is a muted glare that hurts my eyes.
    “It is probably snowing later today,” Aunt says.
    “That’s wonderful! You know, I’ve only seen snow in movies! It always looked so pretty and delicate. I didn’t think I’d get to see any this late in the year….”
    Aunt pulls her shapeless coat tighter around her. “It is not that great,” she says. Her tone is regretful, as though she is sorry to disillusion me. “It melts inside the collar of your jacket and drips down your back. Cars are skidding when it turns to ice. And see how it looks like afterward….” She lacks at the brown slush on the side of the road with a force that surprises me.
    I like my aunt though, the endearing way in which her eyes widen like a little girl’s when she asks a question, the small frown line between her eyebrows when she listens, thesudden, liquid shift of her features when she smiles. I remember that she’d been considered a beauty back home, someone who deserved the good luck of having a marriage arranged with a man who lived in America.
    As we walk, the brisk, invigorating air seems to loosen something inside of Aunt. She talks and talks. She asks about the design on my sari, deep rose-embroidered peacocks dancing against a cream background. Is this being the latest fashion in India? (She uses the word desh , country, to refer to India, as though it were the only one in the world.) “I am always loving Calcutta, visiting your mother in that beautiful old house with marble fountains and lions.” She wants to know what movies are showing at the Roxy. Do children still fly the moon-shaped kites at the Maidan and do the street vendors still sell puffed rice spiced with green chilies? How about Victoria Memorial with the black angel on top of the white marble dome, is it still the same? Is it true that New Market with all those charming little clothing stores has burnt down? Have I been on the new subway she has read about in India Abroad? The words pour from her in a rush. “Imagine all those tunnels under the city, you could be getting lost in there and nobody will be finding you if you do not want them to.” I hear the hunger in her voice. And so I hold back my own eagerness to learn about America and answer her the best I can.
    The street has narrowed now and the apartment buildings look run-down, even to me, with peeling walls and patchy yellow spots on lawns where the snow has melted. There are chain-link fences and garbage on the pavement. Broken-down cars, their rusted hoods gaping, sit in several front yards. Thesweet stench of rot rises from the drains. I am disconcerted. I thought I had left all such smells behind in Calcutta.
    “Shouldn’t we be going back, Aunt?” I ask, suddenly nervous.
    Aunt Pratima looks around blindly.
    “Yes yes, my goodness, is it that late already? Look at that black sky. It is so nice to be talking to someone about home that I am forgetting the time completely.”
    We start back, lifting up our saris to walk faster, our steps echoing along the empty sidewalk, and when we go back a bit Aunt stops and looks up and down the street without recognition, her head pivoting loosely like a lost animal’s.
    Then we see the boys. Four of them, playing in the middle of the street with cans and sticks. They hadn’t been there before, or maybe it is a different street we are on now. The boys look up and I see that their sallow faces are grime-streaked. Their blond hair hangs limply over their foreheads, and their eyes are pale and slippery, like pebbles left