AMARYLLIS

1

New Delhi, 1979

Take control or die. The swollen slit of my right eye stared back at me from the mirror in the bathroom I shared with seven roommates in the Catholic Working Girls’ Hostel. An established bruise would stamp my face later. I didn’t care, chiefly because I assumed I no longer had to marry Rajat. A splash of cold water soothed my purpling eye. In mute rage, I observed the dried blood caked to my cheeks and upper lip. My face hurt as I washed it, dislodging tiny brown flakes that swirled down the drain of the washbasin. I dressed to go eat breakfast.

Downstairs, the dining hall bustled with girls—girls in the food line, which I joined, girls already seated at the two long dining tables, eating their portions of greasy potato curry out of white ceramic bowls. All, except I, were boarders from out of town who needed a safe place to stay while working in the capital city. Right then, however, the girls shared one more commonality—none of them met my eyes.

Their collective denial of my presence took me back to the previous evening as I burst into their midst through the side entrance of the hostel, jeans and white blouse in disarray, dripping blood from my nose and mouth, panting, “The mother superior! Where is the mother superior of this place? I must see her.”

My entry had scattered every last person, all females, in different directions, like hens fleeing a dog. After a few minutes, it brought forth their mother superior.

“What’s the problem?” she asked. Slim and of medium height in her white habit and black wimple, the nun appeared to be around forty years old to my seventeen.

I grabbed her hand, which held a string of wooden rosary beads. “You have to take me in. You have to let me stay,” I cried, well aware of how uncommon my behavior must be for her.

South Extension was a quiet, tree-lined, upper-middle-class suburb, therefore not the setting for bleeding girls to badger her for assistance.

“You have to save me from my fiancé,” I added to reinforce my case. “He’s the one who did this to me.” My fingers touched the blood trickling out of my nose, tasting salty on my lips.

“And where is your family?”

“I live with my grandma, who has dementia. She encouraged this beating.”

The nun glanced at the crowd of onlookers who had collected around us next to the central stairwell. She took my arm and led me down a gloomy corridor.

Inside her office, she switched on an overhead light, shut the door, and pushed me into a chair across from her desk. “Call me Mother Rosa, and tell me what happened.”

“It’s hard to explain.” I watched Mother Rosa pour me water from a spherical terracotta ghara vessel resting on her one windowsill.

“We have all evening.” She handed me the glass. “What is your name?”

“Noor. Noor Zulfiker.” The events of the last two months gushed out of me in a torrent.

My life had started to unravel as soon as Chirag’s letter had arrived. Chirag was the boy I had loved since I was a little girl of ten, but his folks had moved to America, and I had not seen him in years. Then, two months ago, I spotted him in a triangular park near our house, perched on the park railing, a strapping teenager with shoulder-length hair, watching a game of cricket. Ready to faint, I didn’t know what to do except beat a quick retreat from the scene.

He showed up at my grandma’s doorstep the following morning. We stared at each other, speechless, until he handed me a sprig of jasmine.

“I’m sorry for how I left India without saying goodbye. Can you forgive me? Can I see you later to explain?”

I took the jasmine, touched he remembered how much I loved the scent of the flower, and bobbed my head.

On the day his letter arrived, I walked the fifteen minutes home from the Delhi Polytechnic Institute, where I was a freshman in interior design, lost in my own bubble of happiness for having spent three glorious days with Chirag. Impervious to the gluey smell of tar the road workers were boiling in a metal drum to patch up a part of our street, I daydreamed of how Chirag and I were one. Across continents and seas, no one could penetrate our connection. Above me, the branches of the laburnum trees on the sidewalk were heavy with yellow buds. My steps had a spring to them as I hurried home.

I entered through our back door to see Didima brandishing a stiff, multicolored rectangle folded in two parts. Of course, as my legal guardian and grandma, Didima had the right to open any mail addressed to me. Now she screamed, “Prostitute. I knew it the minute I saw it! Prostitute. Jhummur was one, and you are too. I knew it. I knew it. You deserve to go live with her and her husband.”

My stomach tightened at the mention of my mother. She and I had never lived together because she had relegated me to my grandparents’ care as a newborn. The two of us also had an ongoing feud regarding my stepfather’s behavior from when I was six years old. But Didima was rubbing my mother in my face because dementia had deleted the difference between kindness and cruelty in her addled brain. In her saner moments, Didima also knew how much she and I hated my stepfather, Robu Chatterjee, but right then, she was too crazed to care. Knowing the shouting wouldn’t stop, I snatched the stationery out of Didima’s hand and ran into Teddy’s old room, the only other room in our house.

The mysterious note, with striking snapshots of tulips and windmills, was a folded postcard for first-class passengers flying with KLM Airlines. In it, Chirag, who had convinced me he “never wrote letters,” had poured his heart out, writing, My Darling Noor, I need you back in my arms again… for Didima to lose her mind over.

Unamused to see her audience disappear, Didima chased me. “What do you see in Chirag? He was a perverted boy even six years ago. How will Rajat marry you now that you’re not a virgin? Was it worth jeopardizing your engagement to a full-fledged doctor?”

In India, a girl’s virginity was her ultimate treasure to bequeath to a husband on their marriage night.

“Didima, Chirag did not take my virginity, okay?”

“Yes, he did! I’m sure he did!”

I kept quiet, knowing nothing would calm Didima while she was so agitated. If I told her Chirag wanted to marry me, she would have another heart attack, and that would be catastrophic. Poor Didima’s thinking had grown disturbingly erratic ever since her son, my uncle Teddy, had left us years earlier to emigrate to Canada. But the dementia diagnosis three weeks ago had led Didima’s treating doctor to explain it had been developing in her brain for a long time.

Fifteen minutes later, Didima continued ranting as I penned an urgent letter in the guise of doing homework on our dining table.

Dearest Chirag,

What happened to “I don’t write letters”?! The one you sent to my house has pretty much ignited World War III in my grandma’s head. As I write this, she’s threatening to tell my mother about you. So far, she hasn’t mentioned telling Rajat, but I’m sure she’ll threaten to reveal your existence to him too. So, please don’t mail letters to my house. Write to me at your bhuaji auntie’s house in Defense Colony. I promise I’ll pick up your letters on alternate days, come rain or shine. Meanwhile, I press this one to my heart. As I read it, your face comes alive in my mind, you talking to me, kissing me…

Over dinner the next day, Didima said, “What will we do now that you’re not a virgin anymore?”

I hurled my plate at Teddy’s wooden armoire. “Didima!” I yelled. “I am a virgin, and I will marry Chirag!”

Didima choked over a mouthful of egg curry and rice. “That’s it! I’ll send you to live with Jhummur.”

“No, you won’t. If you send me to live with her, who will give you your injections?”

Didima suffered from advanced diabetes and all its complications. Her failing health had ruled our daily lives since I could remember.

“I don’t care!” Didima screamed. “You won’t marry Chirag. You will marry Rajat.” Didima banged her plate on the dining table so hard it broke.

“Why do you hate him so much? He’s a good boy.” I got up to collect the shattered pieces of my plate off the floor.

“Good boy? Good boy? When he wrote you love letters on the wall at age eleven?”

The argument continued until Didima collapsed into an edema attack and a truce had to be declared. Fight forgotten, I rushed to administer diuretic injections into Didima’s vein. When her body calmed down and she could breathe again, I put her to bed. Before I switched off the lights, Didima caressed my cheek, and I kissed her forehead.

For all practical purposes, we lived in South Extension to be close to Didima’s youngest brother, my greatuncle Jiten. Uncle Jiten was largely in charge of Didima’s healthcare needs, but on a daily basis, the burden of that responsibility fell on my shoulders. In our neighborhood, we were the only poor dwellers who lived in the two back rooms of a large house rented to more affluent tenants, which I deeply resented, having spent my early childhood surrounded by luxury. I was also the one teenager in the area who took twenty-four-hour care of an ailing adult, a circumstance out of my control.

Didima couldn’t know that I hated Rajat, much less why. If she got wind of any part of my secret, her dementia would compel her to shout it to the four winds, then I would be in worse trouble than I already was. I wanted to break my engagement to Rajat on my own terms when he came to New Delhi at the end of April. Being a doctor in the Indian Navy, Rajat provided us with free medicine for Didima’s many ailments. That was why, for the time being, I had to keep up the pretense of loving him so as not to upset that balance. Pray God, Didima wouldn’t reveal Chirag’s existence to Rajat or my mother until I could come up with a plan for how to navigate the future.

Meanwhile, my only solace came from the letters Chirag and I wrote to each other, which I picked up from his auntie’s house every other day. Nothing lasted forever, however, and neither did Didima’s uneasy peace with me.

One afternoon, in the last week of April, I came home from the polytechnic to Didima sipping a cup of tea on our back patio. Her trembling hand held a green-edged airmail letter.

“Oh my God.” I threw down my bookbag and snatched the letter. With shaking fingers, I tore it open. Seeing the incomprehensible Bengali handwriting, I pushed the letter under Didima’s nose. “Read it,” I insisted. “And don’t tell me Baba’s coming to India, or I’ll have a fit.” Baba was my father, whom I had lost a long time ago to his second marriage. I had never forgiven him for it.

Didima shook her bifocals out of her cloth purse. “Hassan arrives in New Delhi”—she glanced up from the depths of her wood-and-canvas easy chair—“at the end of April.”

As a child, I had loved Baba’s name because many heroes in the Tales from the Arabian Nights were named Hassan, and when Didima had read me the stories as a little girl, I would imagine Baba as that hero.

“No!” I shouted. “Write back and put him off. Do it now—what else does the letter say? Is he coming with his wife alone or with his wife and three kids? And what about Rajat? He arrives at the end of April—”

“I can’t,” interrupted Didima. “April ends in six days.”

My eyes welled. “Where will they sleep? I know how this will go… they’ll all sleep inside, and you and I will be right out here, on charpoy cots, like slum dwellers.”

“They’re guests, Noor. My mother-in-law used to say—”

“Didima,” I said through clenched teeth, “your mother-in-law was a wealthy widow. You are not. Write back and tell Baba we’ve gone on a trip. Tell him whatever you want so he doesn’t come mooch off us.”

“The letter won’t reach him in time. Bangladesh is too far away.”

I stared at my grandma helplessly, wishing she had a mind to call her own like she used to have even two years ago. Battle lost, I went and threw myself down on Teddy’s bed and buried my head in his soft pillow, choking on the lump in my throat. Does Baba fly dragonflies with his new brood of kids? I am seventeen years old for God’s sake… why does the memory of my father always reduce me to the nine-year-old I was when he broke my heart? Does Baba ever remember our Calcutta life together when Dadu, my grandfather, was alive and we were well-off?

Whichever way I sliced it, Baba was a fair-weather father who lived in the present moment, and I had stopped being his “present” a long time ago. In these past eight years, if Baba had ever regretted abandoning me, I had never seen it. When he visited India, he acted as if I were a relative instead of the beloved only child he had once doted on before he left the country. And his rejection was a permanent knife twisting in my heart.

But that would change once I married Chirag. Chirag would take me to America, and I would live safely, away from Rajat and my stepfather and my baba too. In America, I would also be free to study English, the subject I truly wanted to pursue, and not interior design.

The expensive and modern women’s polytechnic where I currently studied had no English honors course. But located in South Extension, what it did offer was the proximity to come home and attend to Didima’s healthcare needs during lunchtime. That was yet another unwarranted sacrifice to prevent me from pursuing English. Admittedly, my desire to study English stemmed from a nonstop perusal of English literature anyway. But who can fault me for reading to escape my reality?

Six days later, I came home from the polytechnic to find Didima, Baba, his wife, and their five-year-old, Nadir, sharing tea and snacks on our back patio. When I walked in, I wanted Baba to stand up and hug me, but he was too busy assessing the fake smile his wife pasted on at the sight of me.

When he glanced my way, I spat, “How long will you stay?” I didn’t bother to greet his overly made-up, overdressed wife or their son clinging to his mother’s lap.

“Just like that?” Baba smiled the sunny smile that used to melt my heart as a five-year-old back in Calcutta. “How about a ‘Hello,’ or a ‘How are you?’ for your baba?”

“Aren’t we past pretending we’re a big, happy family, Baba?” Rage lit my eyes on fire. “I’m the one who’ll cook, clean, and attend college while you, your wife, and child have fun.”

“But I’m here to see you.”

“That’s such a lie!”

“Shona.” Didima used the Bengali word for darling, struggling to her feet from her canvas easy chair. “Come with me to the kitchen.”

“Why?” I wiped away angry tears. “So you can talk me out of saying how I feel?”

She took my arm and led me away. “Shona,” Didima repeated, “it wasn’t Hassan who left you on purpose. It was Jhummur, and you know that, but you always take it out on him.”

“I hate them both!” I was crying.

“But they are your parents, and I am not, which makes it horribly awkward because they blame your attitude on me.” Didima folded me in a hug.

“Oh, Didima. What a skewed reality we live in. It’s so unfair.”

“Let it go, my darling. When they leave in a few days, it’ll be over.”

Within two days, my mood grew even darker knowing Rajat would fly in from Bombay, where he worked on a navy base. Every time I thought of him, I regretted caving to societal pressure and letting Didima force me into an engagement.

That afternoon, I walked home from the polytechnic feeling as if I had swallowed a tablespoonful of hornets. Will Didima tell him about Chirag? Poor Didima wanted me to marry Rajat to ensure I wouldn’t have to live with my mother and stepfather once she passed away. That possibility preyed upon her so much, she overlooked how Rajat was socially way beneath her, belonging to an uneducated farming family from the rural area of Haryana in the north. It consoled Didima to focus on how Rajat was a doctor, since Didima’s own father had been a thriving surgeon in Lahore until the British Government officials had moved him to practice medicine in the Ambala district of the Punjab prior to the Partition of India and Pakistan. Didima knew that in India, as the minor I was, until I reached twenty-one, only a husband could save me from the clutches of my mother after Didima died—and she had been dying little by little for the past five years, always worse after a new diabetic complication.

The last time she became ill, Didima spent two months in the ICU of the Moolchand Hospital until her treating doctor discharged her, saying, “I don’t know how she is alive. She should have died a long time ago.”

On our back patio, Rajat and my family were having tea. When I came in, he stood and smiled. A little taller than me, Rajat was lithe and athletic, being a marathon runner for the Indian Naval Team. Didima always compared his sports background to that of my grandpa, Dadu, who had been a lightweight boxing and rowing champion for the famous Benares Hindu University during his college days, while also being a gold-medal-winning academic student. It allowed Didima to ignore how Dadu had belonged to the noble Kshatriya caste, whereas Rajat was a glorified Vaishya villager.

Why did I ever consider him handsome? Rajat’s eyes were small and mean behind the expensive rimless glasses.

“Can I see you inside for a minute?” Rajat’s voice sounded normal.

Whew! Didima hadn’t mentioned Chirag. What will he do in the room? Kiss me and tell me how much he loves me and missed me? Pretend he doesn’t enjoy the power he has over Didima’s failing health just because he’s a qualified doctor? If for no other reason, I would never marry Rajat for that meanness alone. Never mind the final humiliation of Didima forcing Rajat to propose to me six months ago.

I dropped my bookbag in our front room and followed him into Teddy’s room. When and how will I break my engagement? Rajat closed and locked the door behind me. My head whirled as Baba entered through the kitchen-corridor access, followed by his gaudy wife, Didima, and Baba’s little son. My stomach dropped as Baba locked that door as well. Both men corralled me.

Rajat slapped my face with one hand and hit my head with the other. He pushed me down on Didima’s dressing-table stool and slapped me again. “You slept with Chirag?” he demanded.

I tried to get my breath back.

Hearing Rajat, Baba punched me in the back so hard it felt as if he had punctured my right lung. “You’re just like your mother. She cheated on me, too, and I was fool enough to never beat her for it.”

My arms shot up to protect my face, and I screamed, “Please! I didn’t do anything.”

Rajat landed a punch on my right ear.

I couldn’t hear myself past the ringing inside my head.

Didima, meanwhile, leaned on Teddy’s wooden armoire, chanting in a high, querulous voice, “Don’t you see, Noor? Don’t you? Don’t you? You have to marry Rajat. Otherwise, you’ll end up living with Jhummur and Robu when I die.”

In between blows—ten, twelve, thirteen, and more—I wept and howled, “Didima, Didima, tell them to stop! I didn’t sleep with Chirag. I swear I didn’t.” But the fists rained on my face, hammered on my back, a punch to my jaw, a karate chop to my neck, my hair pulled back for a better angle of my ear.

Rajat swore, “You whore! You think I want you to be the mother of my children?”

I fought the salty taste of blood in my mouth and swore back, “Asshole! I would rather die than have your children, you low-class village idiot. It’s Chirag I’ll marry, not you. It’s his children I’ll have, not yours.”

I regretted my bravery the second Rajat chopped my right cheek with the edge of one hand. “Oh yeah? Let’s see how much he’ll want you after I knock your teeth out.” He buffeted me off the dressing table stool to land on the floor.

My screams, tears, blood, and mucus blended with the May heat of Delhi as Didima gained a moment of clarity. “Enough! She’s had enough!” she shouted.

But no one stopped to listen to her as Rajat kicked me in the kidneys.

Rajat and Baba were busy pummeling me with their feet when I croaked, “Please. Can I please use the bathroom?” If I didn’t find an excuse to stop their momentum, both men would beat me unconscious. Neither heeded my request until Didima tottered into their midst, her trembling arms outstretched. “Stop. Please stop! She’s had enough. Let her go to the bathroom.”

Seizing the opportunity, I charged out of Didima’s back door—face bleeding in the evening light—disheveled and crying, running for my life, uncaring of whether our snooty neighbors were at their windows to sneer at the developing drama.

Three blocks down the road, fear of the darkening sky had made me run past my old school bus stop on Ring Road to the metal signboard of the Catholic Working Girls’ Hostel, the two-story residence that provided safety for out-of-town girls to live and work in New Delhi.

The shock on Mother Rosa’s face told me I had convinced her.

“So here I am. You have to take me in because I need a safe place to stay until I figure out what to do with my life. If I go home, my ex-fiancé will beat me to death, and in this country, you know no one will care.”

Mother Rosa knew she was cornered. Still, in a weak attempt to save herself from the mess of my life, she said, “We run a working girls’ hostel. I can’t take you in for free. How will you pay us?”

I patted my jeans pocket. “I have the money. I forgot to pay my polytechnic fees this morning. I’ll pay you with what I have. Whatever you decide, please don’t send me home.”