One

The day Sudha stepped off the plane from India into Anju's arms,
leaving a ruined marriage behind, their lives changed forever. And
not just Sudha's and Anju's. Sunil's life changed, too. And baby
Dayita's. Like invisible sound waves that ripple out and out, the
changes reached all the way to India, to Ashok waiting on his
balcony for the wind to turn. To their mothers in the neat
squareness of their flat, upsetting the balance of their household,
causing the mango pickles to turn too-sour and the guava tree in
the backyard to grow extra-large pink guavas. The changes
multiplied the way vines might in a magical tale, their tendrils
reaching for people whose names Sudha and Anju did not even know
yet.

Were the changes good or bad?

Can we use such simple, childish terms in asking this question?
Neither of the cousins were simple women, though there was much
that was childlike about them when they were together alone, or
with Dayita. When Sunil was away.

Sunil. Anju's husband. Sudha's cousin-in-law. A young executive
with a bright future in a prestigious computer company. But no.
None of this tells us who he really is. Because he wasn't a simple
man either.

It is not clear when Anju first sensed this. At their double
wedding, when she stood beside Sunil, their bridal garments
knotted, and watched him watch Sudha's forehead being marked with
the red powder of wifehood? Months back, when he told Anju that it
was a bad idea to bring her cousin to America? The night before
Sudha's arrival, by which time it was too late? When did she first
sense that though she loved him, she didn't always trust him?

But lately Anju doesn't trust the runaway roller-coaster of her own
emotions either. The wild mood-swings after the miscarriage that
would leave her weeping or laughing hysterically. The long bouts of
depression, later, that immobilized her in bed, incapable of even
answering the phone.

Guilt ate at her, a slow, pernicious rust. No matter how often
Sunil assured her that the miscarriage could have been caused by
any number of things, she didn't believe him. When the blackness
came upon her, her mind turned heavy and stubborn, like one of
those cement mixing trucks you pass sometimes on the road. A
sentence would catch in it and begin to rotate, If only I'd
listened to the doctor and not overworked myself, until it broke
down into a phrase, If only I hadn't, If only I hadn't. It ended,
always, in the same anguished chant. Prem Prem Prem.

She would rock her body from side to side, her neglected,
will-o-the-wisp hair spreading its static on the sofa, fingers
digging rigidly into her arms until they left bruises shaped like
tiny petals.

"I don't know how to help you when you're like this," Sunil would
say.

Afterwards, when the depression lifted, she would sometimes say,
"You don't need to do anything."

Inside her head she added, Except love me.

Inside her head he replied, I do love you.

Inside her head she said, But not enough.

The night before Sudha arrives, Anju cannot sit still. Some of it
is excitement, but mostly she is nervous. Why? Isn't this her dear,
dear cousin, sister of her heart? They've protected, advised,
cajoled, bullied, and stood up for each other all their lives. Each
has been madly jealous of the other at some point. Each has enraged
the other, or made her weep. Each has been willing to give up her
happiness for her cousin. In short: they've loved each other the
way they've never loved anyone else. Why then does Sudha's coming
fill Anju with this unexpected dread?

If there are answers, she will not allow herself to think of
them.

At dinner she is unable to eat. "But what if Sudha doesn't like it
here?" she keeps saying.

It is the year of dangerous movements. Two weeks back, a major
earthquake hit Los Angeles, causing $7 billion in damage and
leaving over 10,000 people homeless. Will Anju and Sunil read this
as an omen? Or will they discount it in the belief that every year
has its own disasters?

Anju, who is a terrible cook, has spent the day making lasagna
because, she says, Sudha has never tasted any in India. The sink
and their few dishtowels are all dyed the same stunning orange, a
color which looks fearfully permanent.

Sunil doesn't comment on this. He focuses instead on the gluey
orange mass on his plate, at which he jabs half-heartedly from time
to time. He is a meticulous man, a man who detests chaos. Who takes
satisfaction each evening in shining his shoes with a clean rag and
a tin of Esquire Boot Polish before putting them away on the closet
shelf. But he makes an effort today and says nothing--both about
the lasagna and about Anju's question, which is not so much a
question as a lament for something she fears has happened already.
He is thinking of what she said a few weeks back, unthinkingly. The
happiest memories of my life are of growing up with Sudha. He is
thinking of what he didn't say to her.

What about me, then? What about you and me?

"Let me tell you," Sudha was fond of saying in the last months of
her pregnancy, "who I used to be before the accident of America
happened to me."

She would be lounging in bed with a cup of hot milk and honey and a
novel, one of those rare days when she didn't have to go to class.
She would knock on the curve of her stomach. "You, sir," she would
say. "I hope you're paying attention."

She loved speaking to Prem. In an illogical way, it was more
satisfying than speaking to Sunil, even though Sunil was a careful
listener and made the right comments at the right times. But
Prem--the way he grew still at the sound of her voice, the way he
butted her ribs with his head if she paused too long in the middle
of a story--

She told Prem about the old house, that white elephant of a mansion
that had been in the Chatterjee family for generations: its
crumbling marble facade, its peeling walls, the dark knots of its
corridors, the brick terrace where she and Sudha went secretly at
night to watch for falling stars to wish on.

"It's gone now. Demolished to make space for a high-rise apartment
building. And I'm the one who kept at your grandmothers--do you
know you have three grandmothers: my mom, Sudha's mom, and Pishi,
who's my dad's sister?--to sell it. I used to hate that house, how
ancient it was, how it stood for everything ancient. I hated being
cooped up in it and not allowed to go anywhere except school. But
now I miss it! I think of my room with its cool, high ceilings, and
my bedsheets which always smelled clean, like neem leaves--and
which I never had to wash myself!--and the hundred year old peepal
trees that grew outside my windows. Sometimes I wish I hadn't been
in such a hurry to come to America. Sudha used to sneak into my
room at night sometimes. We'd sit on the wide windowsill, telling
each other stories. I'd tell her about characters in books I'd read
that I liked, such as Jo in Little Women--and she'd tell me the
folk-tales she'd heard from Pishi about women who would turn into
demonesses at night and the monkey who was actually a bewitched
prince. She was great at doing voices! You'll see it for yourself
when she gets here."

Some days, after the doctor had scolded her for not getting enough
exercise, Anju went to the park. She would make a desultory round
of the play area, watching the children, whispering to Prem that
he'd be better than them all--more handsome, more active, and of
course more intelligent. She would tell him how prettily the maples
were changing color and then, choosing one to sit under, she would
go back to her childhood.

"My favorite place of all was the family bookstore. For the longest
time all I wanted was to be allowed to run it when I grew up. Every
weekend I'd beg mother to take me there. I loved its smell of new
paper and printing ink, its rows and rows of books all the way to
the ceiling, its little ladders that the clerks would scramble up
when a customer wanted something that was stored on a high shelf.
There was a special corner with an armchair, just for me, so I
could sit and read all I wanted. It was funny, Gouri-Ma--that's my
mom--was strict about a lot of things, but she never stopped me
from reading anything I wanted.

"So in my teenage years, I read things like Anna Karennina
and Sons and Lovers and The Great Gatsby and A
Room of One's Own. I'm glad I did, but maybe Aunt
Nalini--that's Sudha's mom--was right. They were no good for me.
They filled me with a dissatisfaction with my own life, and a
longing for distant places. I believed that, if I could only get
out of Calcutta to one of those exotic countries I read about, it
would transform me. But transformation isn't so easy, is it?"

What about the other places of her growing-up years? The ones she
never spoke of, the ones you'd have to eavesdrop among her dreams
to find? Such as: the banquet hall where she saw her new husband
stoop to pick up a woman's handkerchief that was not hers? But the
rest of that scene is brittle and brown and unreadable, like the
edge of a paper held to a flame, another of those memories Anju
keeps hostage in the darkest cells of her mind.

"The bookstore was where I met your father. He had come dressed in
an old-fashioned kurta and gold-rimmed glasses--a kind of disguise
so that I wouldn't guess that he was the computer whiz from America
with whom Gouri Ma was trying to arrange my marriage."

"He'd come to check me out! Can you imagine! People just didn't do
such things in Calcutta, at least not in traditional families like
mine. When he confessed who he was, I was terribly impressed. But
what made me fall in crazy love with him was that he bought a whole
set of the novels of Virginia Woolf. She used to be my favorite
author, you know. But he'd done it only to win me over." She
sighed. "Later I couldn't get him to read even one of them!"

"Still--he's going to be a wonderful father to you. I'm sure of
that. He'll love you more than anyone else does--except of course
me and your Sudha-aunty!"

This evening, her dinner uneaten, Anju pushes back her chair and
walks over to the old, discolored mirror that hangs in the small
bathroom in the passage. She runs an uncertain hand through her
hair and touches the dark circles under her eyes. She presses down
on her jagged cheekbones--she's lost a lot of weight since the
miscarriage--as though she could push them in and hide them. "God,
I look like such a witch!" she groans.

Last week she opened her India suitcase and took out a framed
picture of herself and Sudha at their school graduation dinner. She
examined it for a long moment before setting it on her dresser with
a dissatisfied thunk. Even at that heedlessly happy time in her
life, she hadn't been pretty in the traditional way. She didn't
have her cousin's rush of curly hair, or those wide, sooty eyes
which always looked a little mysterious, a little tragic. But
anyone could see (anyone except herself, that is) that she had
spirit. In the photo, she stares out, a challenge in her eyes. She
crooks her lean, stubborn mouth in a half-smile. There's an
irrepressible intelligence to her nose. Maybe that was what made
Sunil choose her from among all the girls he could have had as an
eminently eligible, foreign-returned, computer-whiz groom in
Calcutta.

But somewhere along the way Anju's eyes grew dull and muddy. Her
mouth learned to twitch. And the expression on Sunil's face when he
watches her nowadays--he does this in bed, sometimes, after she has
fallen asleep--is complicated. At times it is pity. At times,
regret.

All through the fall of her pregnancy, while the leaves of the
maple turned a crisper, brittler red until they were suddenly gone,
Anju told Prem stories of Sudha. Beautiful Sudha, the dreamer, the
best cook of them all, the magic-fingered girl who could embroider
clothes fit for a queen. Luckless Sudha who worked so hard at being
the perfect wife to Ramesh even though she didn't love him. Until
the day she walked out of the marriage.

"It was because of her witch of a mother-in-law. For years she'd
been harassing Sudha because she couldn't get pregnant. You'd think
she'd be delighted when she found out that Sudha was having a baby.
But no. She had to have an ultrasound done, and when she discovered
that her first grandchild was going to be a girl, she insisted that
Sudha should have an abortion. So Sudha ran away--how else could
she save her daughter--though she knew they'd make her life hell
afterwards.

"Oh, that old crocodile! How I wish I could have seen her when she
woke up to find Sudha gone!"

For weeks afterwards, Anju would describe that afternoon for Prem,
over and over, in the hushed tone one saves for legends.

The entire household has fallen into a stunned sleep, even the
servants. The heavy front door, which is carved with fierce yakshas
wielding swords, opens without a sound. Sudha slips out, carrying
only a small handbag. She wears her cotton house-sari and forces
herself not to hurry so passers-by will not be suspicious. The air
inside her chest is viscous with fear. Her slippers slide on the
gravelly road. Mango leaves hang dispiritedly in the heat, like
small, tired hands. She walks carefully, she mustn't fall, she
presses her hand against a belly that will start to show in a few
weeks. At the crossroads she pulls the end of her sari over her
head in a veil, a princess disguised as a servant-maid, so no one
on the street will recognize her.

"What about Ramesh?" Sunil asked when Anju told him Sudha had gone
back to her mother.

"What about him?" Anju said, her voice dangerously tight.

"Didn't he try to bring her back?"

"Him! That spineless jellyfish! That Momma's boy!" Anju's breath
came in outraged puffs. "He did nothing--nothing he should have
done, that is."

Excerpted from THE VINE OF DESIRE © Copyright 2002 by
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. Reprinted with permission by Anchor
Books, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.