The Direction of the Wind: A Novel(7)
3
SOPHIE
2019
Sophie breathes in and out sharply as she sits on the floor of Papa’s wardrobe. Her fingers tremble as she picks up the blue letter again, and her delicate gold bangles clink against each other. The sound echoes through the desolate room. She tries to read the single page, but she can’t concentrate long enough to bring the words into focus, and they swim before her eyes. In the box are several more, each with the same familiar scrawl—each with a postmark from Paris. All of them after September 1998, when she’d been told her mummy had died. They go on for a few years after that tragic day that changed Sophie’s life forever. The day that separated everything into a before and after.
“How can this be?” Sophie asks herself aloud.
Her words fall heavy in the quiet bungalow. There is no one to hear her. No one to answer her questions. There must be an explanation. There has to be. She rechecks the dates, making sure her eyes are not playing tricks on her, but the last letter she sees has a date of 2001, and there’s no mistaking that Nita hadn’t died in 1998.
Sophie thinks back to that time over twenty years ago. She still remembers it like it was yesterday but now examines it more carefully. Nita had been away for over two weeks, taking care of Ba in a village a couple hours from Ahmedabad. When Ba had first gotten sick, Papa had left as well to go help Mummy and Ba, and Sophie had been left with Sharmila Foi’s family for a week.
When Papa returned alone to take her back home, he said Nita would be back as soon as she could. That week, after Sophie finished her schoolwork, she sat in the seat by the window where Nita did her painting and worked on drawings of the green mango tree and jasmine flowers that she wanted to send to Ba and Mummy. Then one day Sophie came home from school and found Papa sitting at their dining table with his head in his hands. Sophie felt the heaviness in the air around her and knew she had to be on her best behavior. Papa reached for her, and she silently moved toward him so he could put a shaky arm around her shoulders.
“Beta,” Papa began, “there has been an accident. Mummy—” His voice caught on the word. He cleared his throat and took a deep breath. “Mummy is not coming back home.”
His eyes misted, and Sophie did not know what to do. She had seen her mummy cry on occasion, when Nita was alone and didn’t realize anyone could see her. Sophie would approach her and ask what was wrong, but Nita’s expression would change quickly, and she would dismiss the tears and focus on the chores that needed to be done around the house. But Sophie had never seen Papa cry.
He took a deep breath, and his eyes rested on the photo of Bhagwan hanging in the dining room with the garland of fresh marigolds and rose petals taped to it. The servants changed the garland weekly so the blooms were always fresh.
“Beta, Mummy has died. We will not get to see her again. Not in this life. But hopefully in the next one.”
Sophie considered his words. “How will we find her in the next life?” she asked.
Papa looked surprised by her question. “I don’t know, beta.”
“How will she know it’s us?”
His face was strained. “She will know. Especially you. She cannot forget her daughter. She loves you very much.”
Papa’s eyes flooded, and a single stream escaped from each, slowly trailing down his cheeks. He looked to the seat by the window where Nita’s easel still rested. Her paints that were usually strewn around it had been gone since Nita went to Ba’s, and Sophie’s colored pencils were there now. Papa clutched Sophie to him so hard that she could barely breathe, but she didn’t protest. Later that day, she packed up her colored pencils and never brought them out again.
In the weeks afterward, Sophie remained quiet as her fois organized the pujas for Nita’s passing. They both seemed mad, but they took a framed photo of Nita and added it to the mandir inside their home with a small garland of flowers. Sophie sat quietly behind them as they chanted the prayers and dotted Nita’s photo with vermilion and a few grains of basmati rice and laid the flowers around it. Papa was not present for those ceremonies.
Each morning since, Sophie has gone to the mandir and said her daily pujas and touched the bottom of her mummy’s framed photo to show her respect. Papa had never commented on her ritual, nor did he join her for it. Sophie had always believed it was all too painful for him. And she never wanted to burden him with that pain, so she bore hers alone, just as he did his.
Sophie now reels as she considers how many of these memories had been a lie. She has so much sorrow over Papa’s passing, but rage fills her as she thinks about how much she did to protect Papa from his sadness. That they could not grieve Nita’s death together because Papa knew there had not been one. Why would he tell her that when it wasn’t true? She could not fathom what would justify such a lie and knows she will never have the answer from him. She is bereft thinking about how his love and lies existed so seamlessly. Sharmila and Vaishali Foi obviously knew as well, based on the conversation she overheard. She clenches her teeth, wondering if everyone in her life knew and only she had been taken for a fool. She must learn why she was kept in the dark, but how can she trust those in her life who have maintained the lies for so long?
4
NITA
1998
The room was filled with sunlight when Nita woke up the next day. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes, feeling as though she had just awoken from the dead. She took in her surroundings and remembered she was not at home in Ahmedabad. She glanced at her watch face on the inside of her wrist. It was the middle of the afternoon. She had been asleep for fifteen hours. Never had she slept this many hours straight, not even during her pregnancy or after giving birth. But she had never traveled before. She now understood better the jet lag Rajiv had always suffered upon his return from his business trips abroad and that it wasn’t simply a matter of discipline to get over the exhaustion.