Before We Visit the Goddess by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Page B

he stepped forward. He had thought he could do it, touch the flaming brand to the body, but when he looked into that face, rigid and bereft of its humanness, his hands shook so much that the priest had to help him. He was an old man; it had been a long day; the few neighbors gathered around the pyre thought nothing of it.
    By the time he got back to the house, it was dark. He would have to stay over and return to Kolkata in the morning. There was only one bed in the house. Sabitri’s. Rekha had made it up for him to sleep in, but he told her it would be disrespectful to the dead.
    â€œMa would not have minded,” Rekha said, cocking her head stubbornly. But he could be just as stubborn, so finally Rekha laid out a mat and bedsheets for him on the floor of the sitting room. He bathed and ate the food that she forced upon him: overcooked rice and dal that, in her distraction, she had salted twice. Before he retired for the night, he reassured her that Ma had made certain she would be taken care of. He knew this to be true because Sabitri—a planner, like him—had years ago shown him a copy of her will, of which he was to be the executor. Finally, he asked Rekha if she knew what had brought on the heart attack. Had Sabitri had been ill?
    â€œMa was just fine,” Rekha said, “and happy, too, until Bela Didi called.” Her face twisted and Bipin Bihari could see that she (like him) had never forgiven Sabitri’s daughter for the grief she had caused Sabitri when she eloped all those years ago. For a moment he gave in to his resentment of Bela, remembering with dull anger how he had tried several times to befriend the girl as she was growing up. But she had been suspicious and thorny, treating him as though he had an ulterior motive.
    â€œBela Didi was crying loudly—even I could hear it. That one, it was problem after problem with her. She never cared how much she upset Ma with her news. After she hung up, Ma got real quiet. So many times I asked, but she refused to eat dinner. In the night, she started writing something. A letter, I think. She wouldn’t go to bed. I told her she must lie down, her pressure would go high otherwise. She shouted at me to leave her alone. To go to sleep. But I shouldn’t have listened to her.” She dissolved into tears again.
    Bipin Bihari waited until Rekha was done sobbing. Then he asked where the letter was. She led him to the table where Sabitri had been sitting. He picked up one of the sheets of notepaper that lay on it. It struck him that this was the last thing Sabitri’s hands had touched. He wanted to raise it to his lips, but Rekha was watching. The desire to know Sabitri’s final thoughts swept through him like fire. Dearest Granddaughter Tara , he read.
    But no, he could not invade her privacy this way, now that she was powerless to stop him. He gathered all the sheets, even the ones thrown on the floor. He smoothed them out and put them carefully in his bag. Here was an envelope, addressed in Sabitri’s handwriting, which he knew so well, to Bela’s daughter at her university. He took that, too.
    Upon his return to Kolkata, Bipin Bihari would mail the entire packet to Sabitri’s granddaughter. He would put in his own address and a phone number, in case someone called him from America, wanting details. He would wait a long time, hoping for that phone call. He wanted Sabitri’s family to know that she had spent her last hours thinking of them, trying to communicate something so crucial and difficult that it had caused her death. With a fierceness that was rare for him, he wanted them—especially Bela, who had so summarily abandoned her mother—to feel guilty. But no one ever contacted him. Had the letter even reached Tara? There wasn’t any way for him to find out.

    After the cremation, the pyre workers had scooped up Sabitri’s ashes in an earthenware pot and handed them to Bipin Bihari. There was