The Vine of Desire by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Page B

fling it into the Dumpster that hulks in the parking lot. Finally, she does neither. Lately she is growing into a woman of cautious gestures, movements that give little away. She turns neatly on her heel and returns to the apartment.

    We want Sudha to open her letter, but she goes about her daily chores with exasperating meticulousness. Measure the rice: two cups. Leave it to soak in three and a half cups of warm water. Set out the chicken for thawing. Use the blender to grind six cloves, two teaspoons of coriander and cumin seed, a jar-lid full of peppercorns, three red chilies and a stick of cinnamon. Change Dayita’s diaper. Give her a snack: apple juice in a no-spill cup, Froot Loops in a plastic bowl.
    The two letters sit on the kitchen counter, side by side, calm cream, calm blue, like a husband and wife who have been married a long time.
    What fibers of steel are woven into Sudha’s will that she can go about her work like this, not giving in to the need to know?
    Take a load of clothes down to the laundry room. Dust the furniture. Give Dayita an oil massage and then her bath. Chop the vegetables and stir-fry carefully with mustard seed—it’s zucchini today, and if you leave it on the stove too long, it turnsto mush. Dayita wants a bottle. Turn the stove low, warm the milk, add a pinch of sugar—an old Indian habit, a hope that the child’s life will be filled with sweetness. Put her in the crib and run down to throw the clothes in the dryer. Marinate the chicken in a paste of turmeric, yogurt, and salt.
    Perhaps it is not strength that keeps her from opening the letter. Maybe Ashok’s letter is a painful reminder of the prospects she gave up in order to come here, into this disappointing, disturbing existence. Or is she saving it, a deferred treat, the way children hide candy in their pockets to enjoy in the sticky secrecy of their room?
    The chicken simmers in the pot, filling the room with the centuries-old smell of garam masala. Sudha zips her wind-breaker, smooths down her hair, the folds of her sari. In the mirror, her reflection looks dissatisfied.
    “I wish I had a pair of jeans,” she tells Dayita, who is trying to climb into her stroller. “I think I’ll scream if one more stranger comes up and tells me how much they love my costume. Maybe I should borrow a few things from Anju.” But her voice is reluctant. “No, don’t climb in yet,” she adds sharply. “Wait till we get downstairs. NO, Dayita! Don’t you hear me?”
    She turns off the chicken, checks the catches on the windows. Last week, someone broke into the apartment downstairs and trashed it. The police think it’s the tenant’s ex-boyfriend, but Sunil grumbles that the neighborhood’s going to the dogs. She grabs a protesting Dayita in one hand, the stroller in the other. At the door she stops and comes back to pick up the letter.

    In the park Sudha pauses the way she does each day now and looks around. Expectation flickers over her face like a match-stickflame. She’s looking for Sara of the cutoff jeans, Sara the adventurous, who has promised her entry into the real American life, and—more importantly—escape from herself. But it’s as though the woman has disappeared, as though she had only been a figment of Sudha’s wanting. She bites her lip and sets Dayita down near the slides. Dayita holds up a fistful of sand to show Sudha.
    “Mama! Mama!”
    “Yes, shona, I’m watching,” says Sudha. “That’s very good, shona. Just don’t get any into your eyes.” She nods encouragingly, but she’s thinking about another place, another life. The past tugs at her with its blue aerogram fingers.
    Sudha takes the letter out of her pocket and turns it over and over.
    When she’d been in America for two weeks, Anju finally asked her the question she’d been expecting ever since she got here. Why did you turn Ashok down?
    Sudha shrugged. She’d imagined the question many times, practiced the shrug, the careful