Sister of My Heart by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Read Free Book Online Page A

says Pishi. “One of them. If you didn’t hear it, maybe it’s for the best.” And she starts down the staircase with slow, unsteady steps, leaning painfully on the banister because lately her arthritis has been bothering her. But for once I do not care for her pain.
    “It’s not fair,” I shout. “You tricked me.” Anger turns inside me like a broken spear tip. Ah, how helpless we children are, how dependent on the whims of adults. I’m shaken by the injustice of this, my life. And so I fling at my aunt the most hurtful words I can think of. “You broke your promise! I hate you. I’ll never trust you again.”
    The footsteps pause.
    “Very well, my poor Sudha,” Pishi says from the bend of the stairs, “so eager to lose your brief innocence, I’ll tell you what you want. Not because of your childish threats but because I am bound by the promise I made.” And sitting there in the gloom, her face turned away from me, her voice echoing eerily up the stairwell, she speaks the rest of the tale.
    “It was the night before Bijoy and Gopal were to leave for the ruby cave. I was checking the house doors to make sure they were locked when I saw the light in Bijoy’s office room. I went to see why, and there he was, holding a letter. When he noticed me, he started putting it away, then sighed and handed it to me. It was from a man I didn’t know, a certain Narayan Bose. From his letterhead I could tell he was a lawyer. The postmark was from Khulna in Bangladesh.
    “Khulna, remember, was the city our uncle, Gopal’s father, had gone to after that enormous fight with our grandfather.Gopal had grown up there—he often spoke with longing about his father’s beautiful home, seized by the rioters along with the rest of his property during the partition riots.
    “ ‘I’d written to Narayan Bose to see if we could buy back my uncle’s house in Khulna,’ said Bijoy, and as he spoke I noticed how stricken his face looked. ‘I thought it would make Gopal happy.’
    “Narayan Bose had written back that it was not possible to buy the house in question. The daughter of the original owner—and here he gave our uncle’s name—was currently living there with her husband and children. She had inherited the property ten years ago when her father died, as there had been no male heirs.”
    “What do you mean, no male heirs?” I break in from the top of the stairs. “What about my father—”
    “No male heirs,” says Pishi, staring woodenly at the wall. “And the daughter, the only child, had no wish to sell the house. It was probably a good thing, Narayan Bose wrote. The house had been broken into during the riots and parts of it set on fire. There were many other homes, far superior, that Bijoy could purchase for the same price.
    “ ‘So he isn’t related to us at all,’ I said to my brother. My voice shook with rage, and my hands also, as I remembered how I had trusted Gopal—but perhaps even that name was a lie, made up for the benefit of his gullible ‘cousins.’ But it wasn’t just rage I felt. It was pain too. I’d loved your father, the way he would come and ask me for a cup of tea, Didi, you make the best cha I’ve ever tasted , the way he’d stop at the Paush fair to buy for me the syrupy nolen gur I particularly liked. I had loved—but what was the use of thinking of it, when it was all a lie.
    “ ‘The cheater, the fake,’ I cried. ‘He should be whipped out of the house tomorrow, first thing. I’ll tell the gatekeeper myself. No. We should turn him over to the police. He deserves to rot in jail.’
    “I would have said more, but the look on Bijoy’s face made me stop. I hadn’t known a man’s face could show such heartbreak. And I realized that however much I’d loved your father, Bijoy had loved him far more.
    “We stood there, silently, for a long time. When the clock struck midnight we jumped, as though we were the guilty ones.
    “ ‘What are you going to do?’ I asked, and