Pillboxed 2 (16+)

One week after Gautam’s outburst, Deepti told Farah that she was going to take Anjali and live with a friend across town. Gautam hid in the downstairs bedroom. Farah went up to her daughter’s room and knocked on the door.

“Who is it?” Anjali asked, a quiet worry apparent even through the wood.

“Your grandmother’s here,” Farah said. “She wants you to visit her.”

They went down the stairs together, Anjali checking the hallway behind her and sitting down on the bottom step, while Farah continued into the kitchen to finish making dinner.

“We’re not going to stay for dinner,” Deepti said.

“I am almost finished.” Farah tapped the wooden spoon against the side of the pot and shook off the excess sauce.

“I can’t stand the smell of it.” Deepti sniffed and shook her head. She rummaged in her purse for a small body spray bottle and ran her finger over the nozzle, then pressing the scent to the area below her nostrils.

“You used to make this for me.”

“Well, there was a reason I stopped.”

“Then tell her what you’re planning and why,” snapped Farah. Deepti sniffed. She faced Anjali and crossed her arms.

“I am going to bring you to live with me somewhere else. Is that okay with you?”

“Mom?” asked Anjali in English.

“Your grandmother asked you a question.” Farah refused to return the language. She didn’t turn away from the stove and from the sound of simmering sauce.

“For how long? Are we leaving now?” Anjali went halfway back up the stairs toward her room. “Should I pack?”

“Go on and pack what you need for now. Your mother can bring more later.” The girl disappeared without another word.

“So how do you think it’s okay to--”

“Farah, I will call the police if you try to stop me, and I will tell them what he did, and he will be deported.” Deepti’s heels clicked hard on the wooden floors of the wide kitchen when she looked up the stairs to see if Anjali was still listening.

“He said that you--”

“I am not interested in what he said. I am not interested in anything except that the women around me are safe. You will not let me help you, so I will help Anjali.”

“How long do you think you can keep this up?”

“I’ve already spoken to a school near where we will live.” She paused. “Farah, if you don’t leave him, you will let me adopt Anjali.”

“Mother, you don’t know what it’s like between me and Gautam,” said Farah. She looked at the rosemary plant on the window sill – so many still, green branches, unaffected by the electricity in the air around it. It was as still as if the kitchen were abandoned. It was as still as if everyone in the house had died. “We’re trying to fix it.”

“You can’t fix it. It was broken from the start. It’s my fault. It’s my fault and I apologize, so let me take you out of it.”

“I love him.” Farah lifted the spoon to her lips and licked off the curry. It lingered like a stain on her tongue. Then she let go of the wooden handle so that she could turn and face her mother. She repeated, looking straight into Deepti’s deep eyes,

“I love him.”

Deepti sprang and slapped Farah across the face.

And in the high-ceilinged kitchen of the new house in the new country, Deepti pronounced her second daughter dead as well, because Farah did nothing to stop her. Instead, Farah stumbled, fell onto her hands and knees, hair scattered in thick black strings in front of her face, between which she saw Anjali staring at her through the banister.

The girl’s baby-smooth forehead, like sanded wood, drooped. She wrinkled her nose and let her mouth gape open to show her top teeth. Farah realized that Anjali was mimicking her, that she was taking the look of pain on her mother’s face and trying to make it her own. So Farah wiped herself clean. Anjali’s put-on anguish vanished, too. She stood up and handed her luggage to her grandmother, then ran over to wrap her arms around her mother’s shoulders.

“Mom, you have to visit me.”

Finally, in English, Farah replied,

“I will.”

Her quiet tone told Deepti that her second daughter was dead, too, after only twenty five years of life. She had lived far longer than Anima, but perhaps it was impossible to raise a child to be an adult. Farah kissed her daughter on the forehead, but did not wave goodbye. Instead she served a scoop of curry onto a plate of waiting rice and bit her lip so hard it bled.

Later, after she had eaten dinner alone at the counter because she did not want to travel as far as the dining table, Farah went into the bedroom and lay next to Gautam. He rolled onto his side and tried to whisper into her ear, but she tilted her head so that her ear met her shoulder and left him out in the cold.

“I miss how you feel,” he said to her.

“I can’t,” she said.

“Farah, I want to make love to you. Why do you say no?” He still faced her, but his eyes were closed now, forehead furrowed between his thick eyebrows, jawbones making straight lines all the way around his face. One of his hands slipped toward her, and she squeezed her eyes shut to give him a chance. She wanted to feel warm with him again, and so she let him describe small circles on the skin between her legs. She let herself arch into him, burying the back of her head in a pillow.

Then, sharp as always, she saw the flare in his eyes. He said, in a way that was soft and rough at the same time, like woven tapestry,

“Finally.” Just the tint of anger, just the lightest hue of resentment, and Farah couldn’t stop her hands from shaking. If she told him to stop now, would she spark him to explode, too? Would she find herself pushed against the bed not by his body but just by his hand around her neck? Would she forget the taste of breath?

“Please, please, please stop,” she said, and pushed with all her might so that she could run into the bathroom and close the door behind her. She sat with her back against the cold, white-painted wood and listened to Gautam’s wide sobs from the other side. Farah’s own eyes were dry. When she looked in the mirror, they were as round as the saucers she forced herself to serve tea on to Gautam. She could see where they were bloodshot from sleepless nights.

“What is wrong with me?” she asked Gautam when he had quieted.

“Nothing is wrong with you,” he said.

“I can’t bring myself to do it,” she said.

“I miss you.”

Farah reached for the remote and turned on the television.