The Unknown Errors of Our Lives by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Page B
Authors: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
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the servants away because there was no more money; my hand setting the pyre alight, those jasmines burning.
All the things he walked away from, leaving them for me.
ONCE AGAIN I’VE misjudged. My father is not tossing, guilt-ridden, on his bed of thorns. He’s asleep. He just hasn’t switched off the lamp.
I venture closer to see why. He’d been reading when sleep struck him down, so suddenly that he didn’t have a chance to remove his glasses or cover himself. The red cloth-bound book splayed by the pillow looks just like the holy texts mother used to read before she died.
There’s an irony in this somewhere, but as I try to figure it out, my eyes fall on my father’s face. How different it seems in repose, the tension melted out of it. I see that he’s been afraid of this trip as much as I have. Maybe that’s why he hasn’t removed the vase of jasmine from the bedside table but merely pushed it all the way to the edge.
The night has grown colder, and my father sleeps curled on his side with his knees drawn up. Denuded of fear, his face could be an adolescent’s, soft-chinned and self-willed.
And for a moment I’m looking into the core of my father’s existence, who he was. Is. The boy-prince I read of in the old tales, his face always turned toward adventure. The prince who never grew up, who, trapped by the mundane demands of a household, believed he could free himself with a single, graceful slash of his sword.
Not so different from me, slashing through life with anger as my weapon of choice, after all.
I lift the glasses from his face, shake out a blanket over him. I’m careful not to touch him. But his eyes flutter open. I hold my breath until I realize that he’s still mostly asleep. Even if he saw, it would only be a blur of white and red, my mother’s sari which I am wearing.
I lift the jasmines from the vase and hurry toward the door intent on escape.
Then I hear my father call out a sleep-softened word. Is it my mother’s name? Someone else’s? I wait for the prickly heat to rise up under my skin, but there’s just a slight tingling. When did the answer cease to matter as much?
It’s only a little thing. I cannot call it forgiveness.
My mother would have disagreed. She’d have said,
Ocean is nothing but water drop upon water drop
. And if I said, I don’t know if I’ll ever have more than this one drop to give, she’d have smiled.
My father sighs and turns, tucking his hands neatly, familiarly, under his chin.
I switch off the lamp and close the door. In my grasp the jasmine stems are tough and knuckled, like fingers. I think I will start collecting sayings of my own.
Invisible flowers spread greater fragrance. Home is where you move fluently through the dark
. In our bedroom Dilip is lying awake. When I reach him, I’ll begin to tell him about my mother. How she died. What she lived by.
It’s a story that has waited a long time.
WHAT THE BODY KNOWS
WHEN HER WATER breaks, Aparna is standing on a chair in the baby room, hanging up the ceramic flying-fish mobile Umesh and she had purchased the day before. As the wetness gushes out of her, warm and unpleasantly sticky, she notes for one wondering moment the instinctive reactions of her body—the panic drying her mouth, the legs clamping together as though by doing so they could prevent loss. Then terror takes over, sour and atavistic—just what she had been determined not to succumb to, all through the carefully planned months of doctors visits and iron pills and baby-care books and Lamaze classes. It floods her brain and she cannot think.
She drops the mobile and hears it hit the tile floor with a splintery crash. Somewhere in the back of her mind there is regret, but her body has suddenly grown clumsy, and all her energies must go into getting down from the chair. She negotiates the newly dangerous floor to the kitchen where Umesh is fixing an omelette just the way she likes it, with lots of onions and sliced green
All the things he walked away from, leaving them for me.
ONCE AGAIN I’VE misjudged. My father is not tossing, guilt-ridden, on his bed of thorns. He’s asleep. He just hasn’t switched off the lamp.
I venture closer to see why. He’d been reading when sleep struck him down, so suddenly that he didn’t have a chance to remove his glasses or cover himself. The red cloth-bound book splayed by the pillow looks just like the holy texts mother used to read before she died.
There’s an irony in this somewhere, but as I try to figure it out, my eyes fall on my father’s face. How different it seems in repose, the tension melted out of it. I see that he’s been afraid of this trip as much as I have. Maybe that’s why he hasn’t removed the vase of jasmine from the bedside table but merely pushed it all the way to the edge.
The night has grown colder, and my father sleeps curled on his side with his knees drawn up. Denuded of fear, his face could be an adolescent’s, soft-chinned and self-willed.
And for a moment I’m looking into the core of my father’s existence, who he was. Is. The boy-prince I read of in the old tales, his face always turned toward adventure. The prince who never grew up, who, trapped by the mundane demands of a household, believed he could free himself with a single, graceful slash of his sword.
Not so different from me, slashing through life with anger as my weapon of choice, after all.
I lift the glasses from his face, shake out a blanket over him. I’m careful not to touch him. But his eyes flutter open. I hold my breath until I realize that he’s still mostly asleep. Even if he saw, it would only be a blur of white and red, my mother’s sari which I am wearing.
I lift the jasmines from the vase and hurry toward the door intent on escape.
Then I hear my father call out a sleep-softened word. Is it my mother’s name? Someone else’s? I wait for the prickly heat to rise up under my skin, but there’s just a slight tingling. When did the answer cease to matter as much?
It’s only a little thing. I cannot call it forgiveness.
My mother would have disagreed. She’d have said,
Ocean is nothing but water drop upon water drop
. And if I said, I don’t know if I’ll ever have more than this one drop to give, she’d have smiled.
My father sighs and turns, tucking his hands neatly, familiarly, under his chin.
I switch off the lamp and close the door. In my grasp the jasmine stems are tough and knuckled, like fingers. I think I will start collecting sayings of my own.
Invisible flowers spread greater fragrance. Home is where you move fluently through the dark
. In our bedroom Dilip is lying awake. When I reach him, I’ll begin to tell him about my mother. How she died. What she lived by.
It’s a story that has waited a long time.
WHAT THE BODY KNOWS
WHEN HER WATER breaks, Aparna is standing on a chair in the baby room, hanging up the ceramic flying-fish mobile Umesh and she had purchased the day before. As the wetness gushes out of her, warm and unpleasantly sticky, she notes for one wondering moment the instinctive reactions of her body—the panic drying her mouth, the legs clamping together as though by doing so they could prevent loss. Then terror takes over, sour and atavistic—just what she had been determined not to succumb to, all through the carefully planned months of doctors visits and iron pills and baby-care books and Lamaze classes. It floods her brain and she cannot think.
She drops the mobile and hears it hit the tile floor with a splintery crash. Somewhere in the back of her mind there is regret, but her body has suddenly grown clumsy, and all her energies must go into getting down from the chair. She negotiates the newly dangerous floor to the kitchen where Umesh is fixing an omelette just the way she likes it, with lots of onions and sliced green
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