Arrangements

You nod when your mother reminds you to keep your mouth shut and your eyes averted when the guests arrive. You try not to fidget as she tugs at your hair, wrestling its curly mischief into a long, respectful braid. With quick, deft hands she adds another fold at your waist, another pleat below your shoulder. "Be careful walking," is the last thing she says before you are left alone in the bedroom to examine her handiwork. You turn to face the mirror, and a stranger, shapely and delicate, stares back at you wide-eyed. The rose-tinted Benares silk is heavy on your small frame. You practice walking, a sodden underwater walk, and remember those days long ago when you played dress-up with your mother's saris, twirling in long, soft sheets of color. Her cheek was warm when she scooped you up, pressed her face against yours and tickled you until it hurt too much to laugh. You didn't notice then the shiny moistness in her eyes, the way her gaze rested on your sari-clad body for long moments, savoring a future.

Your mother calls you from the kitchen. Each step is precarious; you hold the hem high and long for the comfort of blue jeans and a T-shirt. Your father paces the living room, straightening his tie and pretending to watch CNN as his eyes scan the street through an open window. "Ah, here you are, so pretty," he says when he sees you. He takes your hands in his and squeezes them hard. "Today I am so proud." Your eyes rest for a moment on the tired wrinkles around his eyes, the new gray in his hair. He has never called you pretty before. You feel a warm flush in your cheeks, but you can't think of anything to say in response.

In the kitchen you are put in charge of making tea. Fumbling with the saucepan, you measure out three cups of water and three of milk. Your mother bustles around you, assembling the tray of achappams, fried plantains, and tiny fish cutlets she spent all afternoon making. Her sari palloo whips you as she moves from counter to refrigerator to stove, her long-practiced body unconstrained by the heavy silk folds. Tiny beads of sweat form on her forehead and nose as she works, leaving the Yardley talcum powder on her face white and patchy. You think about wiping her face for her, but the tightness in her cheeks, the slight twitching of her lips, stop you. A part of you wants to laugh at the stiffness of her shoulders, the pained, bloated look on her face. She is on her cross again, suffering for you. The pain you have caused her is endless.

You wait for the milk to boil and slowly add the ginger and cardamom your mother has ground. The spices blend into the frothy milk, turning it a rich ivory color. The familiar scent takes you back to the Saturday afternoons you sat on the kitchen floor with your dolls and coloring books, watching your mother chop and grate and slice, filling the house with the fragrance of South Indian dishes. You didn't care then that you were always in the kitchen with her while the neighbors' children ran wild in their backyards. You didn't know that being the center of her world was a treacherous thing, that the sweetish Avon smell of her cheek could make it difficult for you to breathe.

Your parents couldn't breathe when you told them. The words came out squeaky and shrill, even though you practiced them for months in your bedroom, mouthing the sentences in your bathroom mirror, whispering them even in your dreams. "I don't want an arranged marriage. I don't want you to choose for me. I love you, but I can't do this."

The decision took even longer. It came to you over time, a knowing that grew uncertainly, timidly. You felt it after your first period, when your mother began to hover, her eyes, lidless like fish, always on you. You knew it when your aunts gathered over pots of curry to tell their dark stories, stories of runaway brides, of dowry burnings, of long wet black hair, polluting the family wells back home. You felt it as you watched your cousins' bodies widen, their eyes narrow, and their tongues grow shrewish short years after their weddings. As graduation neared and your friends planned for college, you saw the colors around you deepen, grow riotous with possibility. You convinced yourself that your parents would honor your wishes, if only you could muster up the courage to talk to them.

They sat across from you in the living room on the day you chose to tell them. You told them that you had plans to study, maybe even to travel. You explained that in America, 18 was so young. They looked at you with puzzled expressions. Before your courage failed entirely, you said the dreaded words. Before you had time to inhale again, your father's words began to fall on you like knives, words about disgrace, scandal, ruin. "Travel? Live alone? Like some kind of shameless woman? Am I hearing you correctly, Asha? What do you want, some white boy? You will destroy us. Do you hear me? You will be killing us!" His face was colorless, shaken. His words pressed you down, covered you, until he paused long enough to notice your mother. She was heaving, struggling to breathe. He took her arm and began to help her upstairs. The last thing you heard was her cry, the dumb cry of an animal, trapped and hopeless, "How could she do this to me? How could she?" The living room grew quiet after they left, and you sat for hours, unable to move.

Your bedroom door opened very late that night. Your mother turned on the bedside lamp and sat down next to you, her swollen eyes searching yours. Your father stood by your bed and spoke first. "Asha, we understand your confusion. Going to school here, hearing so many crazy ideas from your friends. We've tried our best to protect you, but maybe we didn't do enough. Back home you would not have been confused like this. You would have understood, even without words, what is in our hearts for you. This is our greatest responsibility, to make sure you don't ruin your life. Believe me Asha, you will thank us later."

Your father lifted your chin with one finger, forcing you to meet his gaze. "You have your entire life ahead of you. Don't throw it away for some lie America feeds you, Asha. Listen to us. Do what is right and every blessing will follow you." He nodded to your mother and left the room quietly.

Your mother waited several moments before speaking. When she did her lips trembled. "Asha, molay, there are many things you are not able to understand now. But you will later. I was young once, too. When you are young you think happiness is always somewhere else, somewhere far away. But that's not true. The truth is, you can wander all over the world, but in the end, there is only home to return to. This is home. This is where to find your happiness."

In the dim light your eyes scanned the room, the familiar, once comforting setting now strange and frightening. You thought about your parents' home, that place across an ocean they longed for, a country etched in neat lines of black and white. They had worked feverishly for 20 years to recreate that home in resistant America, to give it shape in your life, your murky gray. You realized how fragile they were, how tired. As tired as you.

Your mother cradled your face in her hands, and you felt your eyes filling. There were circles under your mother's eyes, strain in her face. You reached out to touch her cheek. In that moment you wanted so many things, to scream, to hide, to run. But most of all, you wanted your fingers on her cheek to be soft. It was long after you fell asleep that your mother left the room.

Within the next few days your father set his elaborate family network into motion on your behalf. Phone calls went back and forth, urgent conversations with uncles, cousins, and in-laws around the country. You heard snippets, your father's bright, too-cheerful voice fooling everyone but you. "Yes, she is finishing high school next month. We are getting older, you know, and we would like to see her settled." "You can never be too careful in America, better to proceed when she's young." "She's a good girl, smart, good-tempered. We raised her just the way we would have back home."

Photographs began to arrive a week later. Your mother waited for the postman each afternoon and brought the envelopes to you with a feverish excitement, avoiding your eyes as carefully as you avoided hers. There were black and whites and color prints, casual shots and groomed portraits, crisp white envelopes from New York and California alongside fragile blue aerograms from Bombay, Calcutta, and Kerala. You thumbed through them in a numb haze until the varied features began to blend together, the thin and tall with the muscled and stocky, the thick shiny mustaches with the clean-shaven faces. Your mother's chatter buoyed her up and pinned you down, the detailed descriptions of Matthew the engineer from North India, Anjan the pre-law student in Texas, Sajan the rich accountant in Illinois. As you shuffled the pictures around you realized with a dull horror that these men must be looking at pictures of you as well, sizing you up, grading you. You handed each day's batch of pictures back to your mother without comment. Each day she set her lips together and left your room.

One day the ritual changed. Your father came into your room first, holding a single Kodak color print in his hand. Your mother stood behind him, chewing on her lip, once again averting her eyes. "We have looked into several proposals, and decided that this is a family we should meet. They moved here from Bombay five years ago. He's the oldest of three boys, 24 years old. Studying to be a doctor. Very respected family back home, very smart boy." Your father coughed and cleared his throat. "You should like him, we think. They'll be coming to visit this Saturday evening, he and his parents. If you get along well, we can make all the arrangements." Your father placed the photograph on your lap before turning to go. "His name is Sunil. Sunil Ninan."

You spent long moments looking at the fair, slender man in the photograph. His eyes looked soft, a lighter brown than yours. He was smiling. You wondered if the smile was genuine, or forced like yours. It was a while before you realized that your mother was still in the room, looking at you. "He's handsome, I think. Sweet eyes." She sat down beside you and lowered her voice to a whisper. "Handsomer than your father was when he first came to see me!" She laughed, and waited for you to join in. "Mummy, I don't--" but she cut you off, a rising panic in her voice. "We've already spoken to the parents. They said Sunil liked your picture so much. We sent the one your friends took of you last month. You were wearing the blue silk salwar your father brought from Calcutta, remember? It was beautiful, so becoming. I've always told you to wear Indian outfits more often; they suit you." You remembered the picture, a comic attempt to imitate an Indian film star for your American friends. You had tried to look exotic, striking a coy, flirty pose, smiling like a TV commercial. Someone had grabbed your camera and clicked away as you danced Bollywood style around the backyard. You had doubled up laughing at the sham of it when the pictures were developed.

You turn the stove off just in time; the tea is ready. You hear the car pulling up to the front of the house. Your mother tells you to stay put, and heads for the living room. When she's gone you pull the photograph out of a fold in your sari and try to match the face to the voices you hear at the door. Sunil's father has a heavy accent, his mother's voice is low and gracious. You hear the rustle of sari silk on the sofa and know exactly how your mother must be straining to impress, the warm smile on her face, the helpless way her hands motion for everyone to sit and make themselves at home. Sunil's words are neat and easy as he answers your father's questions about medical school. His father jumps in to embellish and the talk flows easily. You realize Sunil has done this before, met other girls and rejected them. His ease frightens you. You cross your arms and hold the cool silk against you. You close your eyes and envision getting it just right, the graceful walk in to the living room, your firm grip on the sandalwood tea tray as he reaches for a cup and meets your eyes with a sure smile. You imagine your future mother-in-law nodding approval as she looks you over, examining every curve and feature. Through a dizzy haze you see your wedding day, the hundreds of relatives and friends crowding around you, touching the white and gold sari draped modestly over your head. You see the way your parents beam and strut as friends congratulate them on raising a dutiful daughter in treacherous America. You imagine basking in the warmth of approval, safety, belonging. Something like relief washes over you. But then your mind races on, and you feel in the deepest part of your stomach the way your body goes cold when he undresses you, the big day finally over and the long night stretching out before you.

From far away you hear your father calling. "Asha, would you bring some tea out for us and meet our guests?" Your clammy fingers slip and slide on the china teapot as you pour the steaming drink into six white cups. As soon as you lift the tray, the tea begins to slosh over the edges, forming golden pools in each saucer. You try in vain to steady your hands and head toward the living room door. The first face you see is your mother's. You are caught by the quick, darting movement of her eyes from your face to Sunil's as she takes in his first impression. Next to her your father clears his throat and taps his foot on the hardwood floor. The dull sound fills the room.

You are three steps away from the coffee table when you feel a sharp, terrible tug on your sari. Your foot is caught in the hem. You take another step, shaking your foot to free it of the tangled material, but the second tug is even stronger. You feel the slippery pleats tucked in at your waistline begin to give way. Instinctively you grab at them, forgetting the tea tray which tips sideways, sending one cup crashing to the floor. You see the dark liquid splatter on Sunil's pant leg as he jumps up in surprise. Letting go of the pleats you grab at the tottering tray again, only to lose another cup before you feel your father's large hands grab the tray from you. Hot tea scalds his hands and he pulls away with a small roar of pain. You drop the tray on the table just as your sari palloo slips off your shoulders, and the pleats, now having given way altogether, fall to the floor in a disheveled heap. A collective gasp goes around the room. Through the red heat in your face you see Sunil's eyes on your bare stomach, his mother's appalled glance at your small high breasts, through your translucent silk underblouse. Your mother gropes at your feet, gathering up yards of silk and throwing them over you in a frenzy. It occurs to you that you should help her. You bend down to grab a fistful, but just then your hands stop obeying you. You push your mother's fingers away and throw the sari back on the floor. Crossing your arms across your chest, you savor the sudden lightness of your body, the freedom of air moving across your bare skin, the sticky sweetness of the ruined tea on your fingers. The sensations lighten your head, help you see how close you are to the front door, to the late spring evening with its heady warmth, calling you. Your eyes linger for a moment on Sunil's look of alarm, his mother's haughty, disgusted expression, your mother's tears threatening to spill over. But in the next instant you are outside, covered by a soft darkness. Voices follow you as you walk away, your mother's choked apologies, your father's halting attempts to explain. But then you start running, arms outstretched to hug the evening, and their voices fade away. A trail of soft, unbound silk streams behind you.

Copyright © 2003 The President and Fellows of Harvard College.
All rights reserved. Comments. Last modified Tue, Dec 9, 2003.