The Vine of Desire by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Read Free Book Online Page A

reluctantly.
    I don’t want to say any more. But they’re waiting.
    “I was with Ramesh,” I say. It is the first time I’ve spoken his name since I came to America. Heat stings my cheeks. I wait for my voice to tell me how I feel. Is it sticky with bitterness? Black with tar? No, it is cool, matter-of-fact. It tells me nothing. “It was the only time we’d gone somewhere without my mother-in-law. He’d taken me to the inauguration of a bridge he’d built. Hewas good at things like that. The workmen loved him because he was kind and fair and gave them all bonuses.”
    This part I don’t say: He had stood close and put his arm around me. He asked if I were cold, would I like him to get the shawl out of the boot of the car. The birds had been flashes of blue fire. I asked him if they were kingfishers, but he wasn’t sure. Maybe they were creatures from another world. I told him I longed to be like them, bright and brave. He said, We can be like them, Sudha. We can. Why not? He believed it—I saw it on his flushed, earnest mouth. I almost loved him then. But later, when his mother decided to erase our daughter from my womb as though she were a misspelled word, he didn’t have the strength.
    Sunil spits out an unfamiliar American invective and swings away—as though he can read my thoughts. His shoulders are high and stiff. He pulls the collar of his coat over Dayita’s head, hiding her from my past.
    “Forget him!” says Anju. Her hand fits tightly over mine, that old protective gesture from our childhood days. “You did the right thing. That’s all that matters. A lot of women in your position would have given in. You left. You didn’t care that you had to give up everything….”
    She doesn’t know the one hundred and one faces of my cowardice. My resentment. Someday I will tell her, I did care. All the things I had to leave behind, not only clothes and jewelry but my good name. The legitimacy of wifehood that I had worked so hard to earn. But now the women fliers are walking by us. They call out cheery hellos. They are not young, I note, surprised. There’s a grainy strength about them, like desert rock. Their skin is wind-rasped and bright with living. Their waists are wide and sturdy.
    “What lovely saris,” the redheaded one calls out.
    Unexpectedly, Anju holds out her hand. It trembles a little—such overtures are hard for her nowadays—the fingers curling inward in their reluctance. Her nails are soft as wax, and very white. I see with dismay that her lifeline has acquired a new, feathery thinness. The woman takes Anju’s hand in both of hers.
    “You were beautiful,” Anju says.
    The woman smiles. There is henna in her hair, I can smell its wild, weedy fragrance. “Thank you. Would you like to try it sometimes? It’s not as hard as it looks—I teach people. If you want, I can give you a lesson. We can go up together, on a tandem glider—”
    “We really must go now,” says Sunil. He looks at the woman with disapproval. He is suspicious of unrequired adventures. They are American in the worst possible way. Unwomanly. He gives Anju’s elbow a small, proprietary tug. “Dayita’s bound to catch a cold in all this wind.”
    “Do you have a card?” asks Anju. The woman nods and unzips a pocket, hands Anju a rainbow-colored rectangle. Her companion has joined us and drapes a casual hand around her waist. Weeks later, just before I fall asleep, it will strike me with a slight sense of shock that they are lovers.
    As we walk to the car, I can feel their eyes on us, considering. Are they wondering about our little ménage, who belongs to whom? Perhaps they think all Indians live this way, the man walking in front, hunched and shivering against the wind. The child staring gravely over his shoulder. The two women stumbling a little in their wind-whipped saris.
    No one speaks on the way home. Rain clouds glower through the rear window. We are tired and cranky. We’ve seenthe amazing, the