Oleander Girl by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Page A

change things between us. But I had to. I can’t lie like that to the man I love.”
    That word love, it comforts him. “You did the best thing.”
    “Was Grandma right? Do you feel differently about me because of what I just told you?”
    “Of course not.” But a part of Rajat is troubled. One of the things that had always charmed him about Korobi was her background. Old Bengal through and through, her great-grandfather the judge, her grandfather the barrister, her father the brilliant law student cut down tragically in his prime—khandaani, something with heft, something you could never buy your way into. As different from Sonia as handloomed silk from glittery synthetics. Marriage to Korobi, he had hoped, would initiate him into the mysteries of this life.
    Now she isn’t quite the person he had believed her to be.
    Can she read his thoughts? Because just then she says, “I’m so confused. All the things I was so proud of, my family, my heritage—they’re only half-true. The other half of me—I don’t know anything about it. Except that all this time my father was alive, and in America.”
    In the light of the streetlamp Rajat examines his fiancée’s distressed expression, the slight tremble of her lips, the hair escaped from its braid to curl untidily around her face. For a heart-stopping moment, he feels nothing. Then, thankfully, love comes rushing back like the ocean after low tide. It’s in her eyes, the real reason he loves her, and nothing can take it away: her forthrightness, her unspoiled enthusiasm—and now, courage and honesty in the face of the unexpected. At the moment, those eyes are swollen from crying and clouded with distrust. He vows that he’ll bring the shine back to them. He, Rajat, will be 100 percent dependable. He feels again that overwhelming desire to protect that he has never experienced with any other girlfriend. He kisses her with great relief.
    “You’re still my Cara, and I adore you. What you learned today doesn’t make the slightest difference to me. Don’t think about it anymore. We’ll get married in a couple of months, just as we had planned. With time, what you heard will fade away—”
    She shakes her head impatiently as though she didn’t even hear hisdeclaration of love. “Rajat, you don’t understand! I don’t want it to fade away. I’m shocked and hurt, yes, but I’m excited, too. Do you see? I have a father now! I can meet the man my mother loved so much! All my life I longed to understand my parents. Now fate has given me a chance.”
    Rajat doesn’t like the sound of this, but before he can respond, a car door slams, startling him. A trio of men has stepped out of an Ambassador, carrying bottles of beer. They see Rajat and Korobi, and one of them says something. The others snicker. The group begins to walk toward them.
    “Cara, we have to leave.”
    “I need to find him, talk to him. I need to know who he is. And he can finally tell me about my mother—the things that no one else knows. My mother in love. Won’t that be wonderful, Rajat? Then I’ll know who I really am, too. But how will I find him? I don’t even have his name. And America is such a big country.”
    He hears the words, but they are too much to process right now. He grabs her hand and hurries her to the car.
    “Will you help me, Rajat?”
    The men are closer now, goonda types, he can see: flashy nylon shirts, thick chains around their necks. One calls out, “Come on, bhaiya, join us for a drink. And your girlfriend, too.”
    Korobi doesn’t notice. “Until I find him, Rajat, I’m not sure I can get married.”
    He pushes her into the car. Locks her door. At least she knows enough to lean over and unlock the driver’s side.
    As he slips inside the car and locks his door, too, the man sneers, “Looks like the bhaiya got scared! Eh, bhaiya, we were only being sociable.”
    Heat pulses inside Rajat’s head. The city is going to the dogs, even this beautiful riverbank. He