Vicky Fish
The Sari
The clanking of metal invaded Sarah's dream and her mother, dressed in
a silky robe, knelt in front of a kitchen cabinet searching for a pot
to boil eggs in. "Oh my god, I can't find anything around here anymore,"
she said, and began pulling out strands of graying golden hair. Sarah
woke and felt her face for tears, but it was dry, then pressed her body
for lumps or pain, but there was none. She felt emptied of everything.
It was Chandra clanking a pot in the courtyard at the water spigot. The
monkeys screamed and hurled nuts on the metal roof over her head.
Ahmedabad, India was thousands of miles from Boston. Her mother wasn't there
or anywhere anymore. Death did that to a body.
Laura was asleep in the bed against the other wall. Four rooms opened
out onto a large, unroofed courtyard, two American students in each
room. Sarah slipped on her loose cotton pants and tunic.
Laura wore sari blouses and slips and learned to wrap herself in bright
swathes of silk. They'd been returning from a bank where they'd spent
over an hour changing money. Laura spotted the tailor's shop and called
to the rickshaw driver to stop. Sarah waited outside, leaning against
the building, looking at her toes rimmed in red dust, choking in the
mid-day mugginess. A young man nudged her. Did she know his uncle in
Chicago? The tailor poked her head out the door, "Come in! Have a look!"
Sarah heard Laura laughing, enjoying her transformation at the hands of
this woman. To take such delight. To be transformed. It seemed more
foreign than India. Sarah shook her head no at the plump smiling woman,
who raised her eyebrows and disappeared. Laura bought glass bangles and
silver toe rings, too. All the girls at the Gandhian University, the
Vidyapith, were thrilled. They tugged and readjusted Laura's sari. They
gave her an Indian name and laughed when she tried to sit cross-legged on
the floor to eat. Sarah thought her pale skin and sloppy pleating made the whole job look
bad, a girl playing dress-up.
Sarah wore the cotton cloth woven by the students. Every morning all
the Indian students at the Vidyapith went to the great hall to sit in
neat rows and hand-spin cotton and sing morning prayers. Gandhi believed
in the principal of self-sufficiency. The American exchange students
made lumpy string that could not be used for anything.
The burn of yesterday's meals gripped Sarah. She crossed the courtyard
to the toilet stall, a hole in the ground. After squatting, she flushed
with a pail of water and washed her hands at the water spigot. A blue
light came from the room they used as a kitchen. She could hear the
whoosh of the gas stove, and knew Chandra was making their tea and breakfast
chappatis.
Cross-legged in the middle of the dawn-roofed courtyard, Sarah waited
for the others. The chameleon sky took on the colors of the land below
it, green like the Sabarmati River, rust like the dust that coated
everything, blue-white like the flames of stoves that burned throughout the
city. Sarah closed her eyes and tried to pay attention to her breathing
like the yogi showed them at a meditation class the students attended,
an attempt to understand Indian culture and religion. But she drifted
and could not pull herself back.
Roger, lion-haired and loose-limbed, emerged from his room. He rubbed
Sarah's neck and she felt his big thumbs on the muscles around her
shoulder blades. He breathed in her ear, "Om mani padme om." She was too
tense, he always told her, stop holding on, let go. As if he knew. She
met him on the flight from New York to London to Dubai to Delhi. She
felt vague, without edges, not sure about anything. She felt bad about
leaving her father, but didn't want to stay. She didn't want to go back to
Middlebury, to her gaggle of kind friends who hadn't a clue. But she
walked reluctantly onto the plane that would take her thousands of miles
from everything familiar. The other American exchange students were
reading guide books, practicing Gujarati, ordering little bottles of
liquor and storing them in their carry-on bags. Roger seemed like a
sensitive animal, sniffing out what was missing or what used to be there. He
found her a pillow and a blanket and saved her food, which was delivered
while she slept.
"Wanna run today?" he asked her now.
"I'm going to meet the sweepers." Her independent study project. Roger
held her hand and traced its bones.
She could feel Roger's hand now on the skin under her tunic.
"Let's meet back here this afternoon. One o'clockish?" He had green
eyes that wanted to know her and the long arms and tight torso of the
rower he was back at Brown. The first time they slept together was when
the others went on a field trip to the Amul Dairy. She lay in her bed
while he told the guide they both had diarrhea and couldn't ride the bus
that far.
"I'll see." If she'd met him a year ago, his strong hands and bright
eyes would have filled her with eagerness and silliness and she would
have held his sweats at the Head of the Charles and drunk too much beer
to make it even more fun. She felt old and unable to connect with his
energy and ardor. "I might do errands after my meeting." Buy eggs maybe;
the rust colored dal they ate at every meal filled her with longings
and no meat or eggs were allowed at the Vidyapith.
"You always seem so blank, Sarah." Roger removed his hands. "Sarah the
statue, chiseled from stone." He held his hands up to frame her face.
He was trying to be mean. He didn't know they weren't close enough for
that. But it alarmed Sarah, this anesthetic numbness. She welcomed the
hot feeling of alarm that spread through her belly. At least it was
something.
Sarah would boil the eggs over the little stove later and eat them
sprinkled with salt and still steaming. Her mother had little porcelain
egg cups that looked like dancing women. Sarah ate her eggs now in
secret, out of her hands.
Ramesh, her advisor, came on his red scooter to take her to meet the
sweeper women. Sitting behind him, she had to hold his soft middle to
keep from being lurched off the bike as he swerved through streets thick
with rickshaws, cows, people hauling carts, trucks belching diesel
exhaust.
Ramesh put a toe on the ground and paused as a funeral procession
snaked across the street and down toward the Sabarmati. They were in the
square with the bronze statue of Gandhi. Drums beat and people wailed. A
child picked up stones and tried to juggle. Sarah closed her eyes as
the body on a bamboo pallet bumped and jostled by.
They tossed her mother's ashes into the Atlantic from the beach at
Race Point. It was a windy May day. Their brightly colored foul weather
gear caught the bone dust the gusting wind brought back. It coated her
like the fine mist spraying off the waves.
A man walking his golden retriever stopped and watched. Sarah couldn't
help noticing his drooling dog growling at a stick, front legs down,
rear up, wanting to play. She hated that he distracted her, that later
that day she could remember more of him than of the ceremony for her
mother.
As the scooter idled, a plump woman came out of a whitewashed shop. The
woman was the tailor Laura had dragged Sarah to. Her smooth skin shone
like polished copper. Sarah thought she looked like autumn, in a
crimson sari flecked with gold, with a red tika in the middle of her
forehead. The woman laughed after she and Ramesh exchanged some words.
"American girl again she says! Dressed like a peasant Indian man. She
thinks you look funny. See the sign? She's a tailor." Ramesh chuckled.
The heat and dust and traffic smells made her want to throw up.
Glancing back as the scooter roared to life, she saw the woman, red-gold in
the ray of sun, glass bangles on her wrist shimmering as she waved
goodbye.
When they arrived at the Ahmedabad Technical College where the
sweepers worked, Sarah's hair was wind-blown, her body covered by a fine net
of dust and sweat. Ramesh's black hair looked neat as a book of matches
and his silk shirt was sweatless.
Ramesh called to the women. Then he was gone in a wave of after-shave.
Sarah felt like she was standing in front of a group of hungry
squirrels. The women squatted and pulled the ends of their faded cotton saris
over their heads, their twiggy feet poking out. They twisted arm
bangles, picked at their teeth with pieces of straw, pulled at the loops of
gold in their ears.
"Namaste," Sarah said, her mouth dry. They were pleased and chatted
among themselves; Sarah felt dizzy in the thick buzz of the foreign
language.
A woman in a maroon sari walked over and plucked at her pants. Sarah's
stomach squelched and burned. Another put her fingers in Sarah's thick,
straight hair. A smooth, papery palm ran down her arm. Sarah stared
into the empty cup of her hands and felt her body stiffen and shrink. A
pearl of sweat rolled between her shoulder blades. Hands were all over
her body. Her mother used to come behind her and put her hands in Sarah's
jeans pocket. What does it feel like to be you? she'd say. She wanted
to sink into the floor, melt away.
Sarah lay on her bed with the wooden shutters closed. A banana smell
filled the room. She would bring her own pillow if she ever came to
India again. And brush up on her folk songs. Wherever they went people
asked them to sing. She couldn't even carry a tune.
Roger opened the door before she could say come in. The sun from the
courtyard was at his back, his face a blur. He came with open hands and
face. He held onto her ribs and kissed her shoulders. She knew enough
to know she was missing something. She willed herself to focus. To feel.
He looked small and far away, as if she was looking through binoculars
from the wrong end. She was numb, as if her skin had burned away in a
fire and there was nothing left.
Stretching her legs wide she hoped to show herself the way to opening.
His rough cheek burned her face. Tears flowed like diamonds, filling
the curved shells of her ears. Her mother lost her diamond solitaire
three times. Once in the snow by the mailbox. A neighbor had seen it
sparkle the following spring. The second time her mother remembered last
seeing it when she was mashing potatoes. They searched everywhere, closets,
kitchen drawers, the insides of pants pockets and her tan leather
gloves. The diamond fell to the floor when Sarah pulled out the Boston
Yellow Pages. The third time it came loose from the prongs, her father said
he'd get it set with six prongs if they found it. Her mother said,
"There isn't time this time!" Her mother's voice was acquiring sharp edges
where it had once been smooth, like sea-washed stones.
Roger raised up on his elbows, he dotted her wet face with kisses.
"You're awesome, Sarah." She was spinning in black space and he saw it
for joy, or didn't notice her at all. The emptiness inside of her filled
with pity at him for being clueless, and disgust at herself for letting
him stay that way. She wanted a scalding hot shower. She couldn't even
get a bucket of cold water, because they only had water between 6 and 9
a.m. and 5 and 7 p.m.
Laura came back from a lesson on the Bharat Natyam, moving her hands
and fingers in graceful twisting ways.
"Girls spend ten years learning the dance, Sarah." She tried to move
her neck from side to side while keeping her head completely level. "It
takes two years just to learn the hand movements, and every little move
has a specific meaning." Laura snapped on an ankle bracelet with bells.
"But why?" Sarah pulled her sheet tighter so Laura wouldn't see she
was naked.
"Why what?"
"I don't understand the point of spending ten years on a dance?"
"Why'd you come to India, anyway, Sarah?" She said it gently, as she
ran a hand through her short blonde hair. Her sari was coming untucked
at the waist, showing her plumpness, the Indian ideal of beauty. When
Sarah didn't answer she picked up the Bahgavad Gita she was reading and
went into the courtyard. A second later, she stuck her arm back in.
"Mail."
It was a thick manila envelope covered with stamps and her father's
lefty scrawl. She held it in her hands and opened it slowly. The air
inside smelled like her mother's stationary drawer, pencil shavings and
lilac scented paper. Her mother would have typed long, newsy letters. A
review of the current novel she was reading, a lambaste of local politics
and how conservative the town was growing, sightings from the fall
birdfeeder, designs for her new scrap metal sculpture. Sarah dumped out the
envelope and pieces of paper fluttered to her bed. There was a yellow
sticky. "Thought you might find the enclosed interesting. Muddling along
without you. Lots of hugs and kisses. Dad."
Clippings from the Town Crier on the Weston Wildcats field hockey
season (she was captain when she was a Senior). Donna Brownlow's wedding
announcement, (Sarah's favorite babysitter when she was little). A recipe
on how to make simple herbed chicken for one in a packet of foil (Sarah
wondered if this enclosure was a mistake, revealing the chaos on her
father's desk). Finally, the Order of Service from the Unitarian Church
on October 15, with a photo clipped on. Her father had circled one of
the announcements in royal blue pen.
"The flowers on the altar this morning are given in the loving memory
of Jennifer S. Dixon, by her devoted husband and loving daughter, Edward
J. Dixon and Sarah C. Dixon."
The picture showed the arrangement of flowers set against the dark
wood at the front of the church. All her mother's favorites. Yellow
freesia, purple irises, white snapdragons, orange Chinese lanterns. The
church announcements had been something to read, something to doodle over
when she was bored in church. She held the picture in her hand for a
moment, stunned at how little was left of a life.
Sarah found tiny nail scissors in her travel bag. Carefully, letting
bits of the church drop to the floor, she cut around the flowers. She
snipped the adhesive part off a Band-Aid and taped the flowers to a clean
page in her journal. She put her nose to it, wishing she could smell
something. Then she got out some pens and drew a garden with woods all
around the bright flowers.
Sarah woke early when Laura rolled over in her sleep and kicked a book
to the floor. Laura was reading My Experiments with Truth, by Gandhi,
and The Wonder That Was India, by A.L. Basham. Her shelf had little brass
figures of Hindu gods, Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Sustainer, Shiva
the Destroyer. Laura embraced all of it with nonjudgmental goodwill.
Sarah had signed up to go to India before her mother got sick. A junior
semester abroad; it sounded exotic and full of questions and answers.
It made Sarah feel serious, grown-up. She'd been on the phone to cancel
when her mother walked in, her head in a scarf, her cheek bones carved.
"Put that phone down right now." The voice she used when Sarah was
small and being disobedient. Her mother's face was hard. "This is
shattering my life plan. I won't let it mess up yours." As if she had power.
The dhobi had come the evening before and hung their washed and wrung
clothes on lines he strung up across the open space. Their white cotton
pants. Laura's saris. Roger and Kevin's lungis they wore instead of
pajamas. A wind banged the shutters and snapped the damp cloth. Sarah lay
listening; it sounded like kites. Her mother loved kites. The day they
scattered the ashes at Race Point they wrote little notes on scraps of
paper and twisted them on the wind taut strings, where they twirled
skyward. Her dad wrote, "Jen, my one true love, may God keep you safe
until I can hold you again." One of the aunts wrote, "You always had to be
first. Why?" Sarah wouldn't read hers. She let go of the kite and
watched it whip up, as if snatched away, gone into gray.
Laura snored softly. Sarah wished for sleep so oblivious that ended in
waking so enthusiastic. Every morning felt the same color of gray. She
put her hands on her breasts and felt for lumps or pain. Breast cancer
killed her grandmother too. Sarah used to be vain about her body but no
more, the health and beauty could all be a trick.
She had to meet again with the sweepers. She didn't know how to connect
with them. Their bodies -- stooped over their short-handled brooms --
were in endless motion and constant service to others' dirt, and they
came back each day and did it again and sang while they worked. She felt
trapped and desperate with a longing she could not name. She wanted to
peel herself away like she peeled the shells of eggs.
The morning stillness and quiet made Sarah want to scream, just to
drown out her own self. She could knock on Roger's door and he'd go running
with her but his chatter would irritate her. She had to get out, to
breathe hard, to sweat, to surround herself with other than herself. Sarah
got up and put on yesterday's cotton tunic and loose drawstring pants.
In the courtyard she clapped her hands to scatter the monkeys.
The morning was dim and sounds came to her muffled in the still air. A
man sat by the side of the road, firing up a small stove and setting
out glasses with a clink. She crossed the Nehru bridge and hit a wall of
smells; dung fires, hibiscus, excrement, cinnamon. Women with saris
pulled over their heads clapped breakfast chappatis with smooth hands.
People slept, curled together like baby chicks on beds pulled outside on
the pavement. Flip-flops slapped as people moved by, wrapped in blankets
against the early morning chill. A child with yellowish eyes squatted
in an empty patch of dirt. Daughters of a dhobi walked toward the river
with armloads of clothes to beat in the sluggish Sabarmati with little
wooden paddles. Sarah heard the clink of their bracelets, the songs they
sang.
She was running and not paying attention to the turns. A little prick
of fear poked at her. But she welcomed it, like she welcomed the alarm.
There might be a crack somewhere inside of her. First these things --
alarm, fear -- would squeeze in. Then maybe the other things she wanted to
feel. Grief, backed up inside. Joy that comes out of nowhere.
Sarah heard the chanting first. In this city of thousands, the sounds
of death were familiar to her now. The body would be taken to the river
for the ritual cleansing and to the ghats for burning. It was
everywhere here. All of it. The messiness of life, the squalor of truth. India
was hard that way, to be forced to see it everyday. Or maybe it was just
the opposite that caused her emptiness - her loneliness - she thought.
Death and disease were hidden behind doors back home, skirted around in
conversation, whisked away in a flower covered box. She'd brought her
isolation with her.
No one noticed her now, but it wasn't that they didn't see her. Sarah
felt acknowledged but accepted, as if they saw she was out doing what
needed to be done, just as they were. A woman in a green sari, frayed on
the end, glanced shyly at Sarah and yanked a toddler by the hand when
he got distracted by a chicken. He cried and his mother hoisted him
onto a hip, and Sarah could see the swell of another child in her belly.
One of the older boys carrying the bamboo pallet combed his eyes over
Sarah as if he'd never seen such a sight, but his glance was curious and
not threatening. Their curiosity invited hers.
In this way she found herself following them, for once not turning away
from the sight of a dead body on its final journey. It wasn't private.
She suddenly felt bold, momentarily thrilled by herself, by the idea of
herself plunging, as Laura seemed to do every day. As Sarah pictured
herself to be when she first decided to go to India, way back before her
world exploded.
A white sheet draped the body. Who was up there? Sarah wondered. A
grandfather? A mother? A child? An older woman wrapped in a big gray shawl
was crying loudly and shaking her head back and forth. But sometimes
she stopped to pick a rock out her sandal or glance back at the others
and her crying stopped suddenly, only to resume again. Sarah didn't take
it for less than real sadness or grief, but there was a quality to it
that she envied, as if the old woman knew something about death that she
didn't.
Sarah hung back, shadowing the mourners as they wended their way from
more prominent streets with sidewalks and shops to roads and then alleys
becoming progressively more narrow and primitive. She felt as if she
were going back in time.
Finally they arrived at a set of stone steps that led down to the
water. Dawn was breaking, rippling the water with pink. The men and boys
carrying the body set the pallet down on the bottom step. The wailing
swelled. Sarah closed her eyes; the atonal vibrations moved through her
like an electric current. She tried to conjure up her mother's face and
let the songs of grief swaddle them both. But the face was broken up, a
collage. The eyes from the picture of her holding baby Sarah, the
thirsty lips of those last days, the hair how it looked after she walked the
dog in the rain, the cheeks curled up in a mischievous smile, the
eyebrows missing.
She hurt from the effort of reconstructing her mother. The unfamiliar
noises began to suffocate her, raking against her ears like angry bees.
She trembled as if cold and felt the earth spinning her off balance.
The breeze off the water was warm and ripe like decay. Opening her eyes
to the sight of the cloth being peeled away, Sarah saw an arm that was
ghastly yellow and the skull of an old man. Sickness rose up in her
throat, hot and choking and the sheen of adventure and courage and
strength blew away like ashes.
She turned around and ran. The path went up, away from the river and
then flattened, and she was lost in a maze of little alleyways. The
ground was uneven, rutted by mangy dogs, holy skinny cows, the bare feet of
beggars. Sarah ran. She turned right then left, just guessing. A prick
of light from a cigarette glowed in the doorway of a tin and cardboard
shack. Sarah was afraid he would reach out and grab her but she wanted
to be grabbed. The world was like a spinning tea-cup, those stupid
rides that made her sick. She only wanted to stop. Sarah heard a thumpity
bump sound up ahead on the path but it was too late. The man's head was
down as he strained like an ox with his heavy load. They passed too
close to one another, and Sarah caught her foot in the drainage ditch as
she stepped to the side. She went down into the murk. Lurching to her
feet she yelled after him, "Look up goddamn you!" He rumbled on, his head
bent, whispering in rhythm with the wheels.
Her wet pants clung to her leg and the smell repulsed her. She looked
down; children defecated in those ditches, dogs rooted for food scraps.
People would think she'd soiled herself. Saliva filled her mouth as if
she would vomit. Sarah ran, looking for pavement, stores, some place
she recognized. Something besides the ugliness of the place and the
stink of herself.
They often found her mother in the blue chair by the bay window next to
the garden, she would come down in the middle of the night. "It is so
dark," she'd say, "I wanted to be by the window when morning came." End
stage cancer they told them. But it was a terrible beginning without an
end. Her mother had held their hands and said, "I'm going home now. I'm
ready to go home." Her father, broken, had said "I love you." She'd
grabbed her mother's shoulder and screamed, "Mommy don't go!"
The terrain was shadowy and unfamiliar. The alleys led to more alleys
and Sarah hoped for a street with sidewalks and rickshaws and vegetable
sellers. The people lurking in these tin shacks were not the ones who
spoke English. She was turning in circles and choking in her own smell
and couldn't speak Gujarati well enough to ask for help. The running and
her the fear raised a hotness in her head and in her chest. When what
you counted on vanished anything could happen. Her fear was crumbling
her from the inside out; she wanted to curl up on a mattress with the
little children and let someone take care of her. Wake when it was over.
When she was out of the muddle of darkness, the slum where life and
death mingled so effortlessly.
Sarah ran, looking for the opening.
Gandhi, bent, bespectacled, bronzed stood before her on a pedestal in
the middle of a square. His neck was adorned with marigold garlands and
his bald head shone. She knew this place. Up ahead a woman, whose rich
brown mid-drift escaped above her sari skirt was throwing open the
shutters of a small whitewashed shop. She wore silk of purples and greens.
Thick forearms jingled with shiny silver bangles. She was Laura's
tailor, the one who had laughed.
"Namaste," Sarah called out, her own voice a shock, her body melting
with relief.
"Namaste!" The woman pressed her palms together in greeting and looked
hard at Sarah. "Aha! The girl from the scooter, is it?" Her English was
lilting.
"Yes. I fell when I was running and I smell horrible, I'm afraid. I
don't know which way the Vidyapith is."
"Please do come in for a cup of tea." The woman's shiny black hair was
twisted in a tight bun above her fine featured face. "My husband and I
run a tailor, you know." She pointed with pride to a small sign in
Gujarati and English.
"I'll be late." Sarah looked at her watch. "I have a meeting."
"We don't hurry in India, haji? Drink some tea and I'll dab your
pants."
Sarah looked at the street behind her, Gandhi's hopeful face and firm
stride, a tired dog, a trash collector with a wagon of scraps, a maze of
streets leading into the square. She stood for a second. The woman had
gone in the shop.
Inside the woman held out a glass of hot chai. A small altar with
incense burning hung on a wall and there was a statue of a lotus-positioned
god on a shelf. A bright poster of Queen Elizabeth on another wall.
Against the far wall bolts of colorful material, cottons and silks, were
neatly stacked. In the center of the room, a worktable held a shiny
black and silver Singer sewing machine.
"You can't wear those pants."
"They smell. I know." Sarah sipped the sweet hot tea.
"No, my dear, you just can't wear them. Not becoming. Not flattering.
They are what peasant men wear." She lifted Sarah's shirt and reached in
to pinch. "And, they make you look even skinnier than you are. No. No.
This will not do." She stood back and circled Sarah.
"How long are you here?" the woman finally asked.
"Here? Six more weeks, until Christmas."
"No. HERE." She held her smooth palms up, "This shop."
Sarah put down her tea glass. "I have a meeting at ten with some
sweepers. Very good tea." She held out the glass to the woman but it was not
taken.
"Sweepers. Now that is interesting."
"Yes. Thank you again but I need to go."
"What do you find interesting about the sweepers?" The woman was
pulling out a tape measure, scissors, unfolding a metal chair.
"Well. They've formed a cooperative. They're demanding better
conditions and healthcare."
"Ah. Things are different from America, is it?" The woman took the
glass from Sarah now and put it on the table.
"Not as much as you'd think. But that's not it really." Sarah felt
flushed from the tea, the heat from the stove.
"What then?" The woman was raising Sarah's arms into a T and measuring
around her bust and her waist.
"I'm not sure." Sarah tried to put her arms down but the woman
skillfully measured her shoulders.
"I wonder," the woman said, "if it's their rotten luck. They take their
rotten luck and make something better."
Sarah looked at her, this woman whose name she didn't know.
"Now, raise up your arms again. We have time."
"Time. On no. I haven't time." But her arms were lifted.
"I'm making a beautiful sari for you. My gift to the American girl."
"No. I've got to get back." Sarah tried again to leave, but the woman
held her arm with firm fingers.
"It is bad luck to refuse a gift." She took a piece of material and
held it out. "A sari is just a very long piece of beautiful material.
Tucked and pleated just so. I will quickly sew you a blouse and I have
sari slip you can have. This last piece just comes up over your shoulder."
The woman efficiently began cutting, her back to Sarah. Sometimes Sarah
wanted to slap someone, Roger, her mother, this woman. She couldn't
believe that this woman had so skillfully trapped her. But an exhaustion
overcame her. Sarah felt pinned to the floor and suddenly safe.
"My name is Surya and you are?"
"Sarah," she whispered.
"Sarah, come look at the lovely silks." Surya turned. "Oh, oh, I see.
Sadness is there." She made a clucking sound with her tongue and pulled
a white handkerchief from a fold in her sari and pressed into Sarah's
hand. "I see, dear. Sometimes, I think, a sari can make us feel
beautiful, graceful." She pulled down a rich bolt of cloth.
The room was snug and quiet. The sari slip was over the back of the
chair. Sarah untied the drawstring on her pants, rolled them into a ball
and put on the slip.
Surya pressed Sarah gently into the chair. She refilled the glass with
steaming chai and placed it between Sarah's palms.
"You look at the cloth, haji? I'll sew your blouse while you choose
your sari."
The warmth of the glass tingled Sarah's hands.
"I went to the river this morning; they were going to wash and burn a
body."
"Where Lord Shiva ferries them to the far shore." Surya paused and
pointed to the god on her shelf. "Shiva. We say that death is certain for
all who are born, and birth is certain for the dead."
"I thought that Shiva was the destroyer."
"But it is never-ending. From destruction comes creation, haji?"
"I guess." Sarah listened.
"In the Bhagavad Gita Krishna says the cycle is inevitable, so there is
no cause for grief. Death is a passage, we believe. It doesn't mean
there isn't sadness. But it isn't the end."
She felt her shoulder blades melt downward. Surya bent over the sewing
machine, guiding the piece of cloth surely under the darting needle.
The humming noise made Sarah sleepy. Her mother had a Singer. It was
probably in a case in the closet still. They used to sew clothes for
Sarah's dolls. Little smocked party dresses. A pink and white stripped
bathrobe, for Molly, the favorite doll, to match Sarah's. A snowsuit so Molly
could play outside.
Sarah closed her eyes. She was upstairs in her parents' bedroom where
the sewing table faced the leafy maples and oaks in the backyard. On
rainy Sundays when she was younger her mother would snuggle in bed with
her while her father made omelets downstairs. If they didn't feel like
going to church her mother would say, let's just go for a walk later. Her
mother said God was in the small rocks and shells they used to hunt for
at Race Point in the summer, in the tapping of the woodpecker in the
mountain ash, in the thunderheads that swept in in the Spring. And, her
mother would say, what about a Lady Slipper?
Her mother was a dabbler, a noticer of small things. She built strange
sculptures out of scrap metal and planted them in the front yard. She
tutored children, knit stocking caps, learned how to paint sunsets from
a PBS show, took modern dance at the church and told Sarah, "Look at
me, I'm a mountain, now a river, now a cloud." She went on roller
coasters when dared. What made her mother magical once made her an object of
disdain when Sarah became a teen. She was flighty, fanciful and lacked
focus, seriousness, a sense of the heaviness of the world. And look
what happened. She sat in the blue velvet armchair by the bay window,
looking at the pink dogwood, weeping.
Sarah could feel the warmth of someone standing near. Her mother had
sweet and salty breath that puffed over her like steam from a kettle. She
wanted a boiled egg sitting like a head in the body of a dancing woman.
She wanted to eat it slowly, with a spoon, flooded by the light coming
in the square panes of the kitchen window. She wanted to dance in a
golden sari in the courtyard of the Vidyapith. She wanted someone to
unwrap her. She wanted the hurt to start so the numbness would end. She
wanted to believe her mother again and feel her light. A lady slipper, her
mother, would say, God in a flower.
Warm salty trails curved over her lips. She felt like a glacier,
calving, breaking apart and falling into the ocean. The folding metal chair
on the cement floor on the red earth a million miles from anywhere was
where she was. Look at me, I'm a mountain, now a river, now a cloud.
©2006 by Vicky Fish
