Oleander Girl by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Page B

wishes he carried a gun, like some of his friends do. He has a flash vision of pointing it at the man’s face, seeing his features crumple. In his mind he says, Let’s see who’s scared now, bhaiya.
    He takes a deep breath. Back away from trouble, Rajat. You need to be Cara’s support right now. Plus, Papa and Maman have enough problems—the gallery in America, their money troubles here. And now thisnews about Cara’s father. He needs to figure out how to contain it, like a radioactive leak. As for that daft notion of hers that she can’t get married until she finds Rob, Rajat hopes that a good night’s sleep will rid her of it.
    “We’ve got to tell your parents.” Korobi puts a hand on his arm. “I know they will want to know. They are like parents to me already, but they will understand I need to find my own papa before the wedding. . . . Will you tell them for me? Right now, it’s too painful for me to go over it again.”
    He inclines his head, a motion that could be a yes or a no, and turns the key in the ignition. The last thing his parents need right now is to have to deal with this disconcerting development. He’s going to do all he can to keep it from them.
    The car roars to life, gratifyingly obedient, carrying them to safety.

    I sit on the edge of my chair in the investigator’s office, hands clasped tight, watching the man’s face. Mr. Sen does not look happy; his brow is creased as he hands back the photograph I gave him at our last meeting. It’s an old Polaroid, the colors faded. In it, two young women dressed in jeans and sweatshirts stand in front of a tall, pointy tower. A shadow has fallen over one woman’s face so her features are blurred, but the other woman can be seen quite clearly.
    The night I told Rajat about my father, I found the photo on my bed, with a note attached:
    I found this tonight, searching through your grandfather’s papers. I’d been hoping he loved Anu too much to destroy every single image of hers. She sent us this photo to us just a few months after she went to America.
    There’s something else I remembered: A week or so before her accident, I had asked Anu where she planned to live when she went back to America. She was careful not to mention your father, but she did tell me that they were thinking of moving to the East Coast because of a job opportunity.
    I lifted the photo with shaking fingers. At last I was to see my mother, my real mother and not the mournful, mouthless silhouette of my dream. I knew her right away—those serious, straight eyebrows were the ones I saw whenever I looked in the mirror. But she was her own person, too, with her generous, strong-willed, beautiful mouth. She smiled with such vivacity into the camera that I was sure my father had been the photographer. Indeed, when I turned it over, a bold script stated, To lovely Anu. My heart raced. Halfway across the world, before I had even been imagined, my father had handed this piece of paper to my mother. Perhaps their hands had touched and she had shyly smiled—it would have been in the early days, soon after they met. I ran my fingers across the back, over where their fingers had rested. It was as close to touching the two of them as I had ever been. In a strange way, it made my father possible.
    How could I remain angry with a grandmother who had given me such a gift? Now that I was calmer, I could see how impossible it would have been for her to stand up against Grandfather. His will, which I had always thought of as protecting and supporting me, would in this case have been an avalanche, crushing everything in its path.
    I went into the bedroom. She was sitting by the shuttered windows in the melancholy, slatted moonlight. I sat by her. We didn’t speak, but I leaned into her and felt something begin to mend, as when one blind end of a fractured bone finds its partner under the skin. And here’s something strange: I was still furious with Grandfather, but a question rose up