Her parents were drinking afternoon chai in the living room. She covered her head with her dupatta and approached the barred window. There was a mound of dirt next to her feet, speckled with Cadbury candy wrappers, guava skins, and cigarette butts. She stood on top of it and waved.
At first, their faces lit up.
Is everything okay?
Are you hurt?
She explained everything in hushed Gujarati and flashed a smile whenever neighbors walked by. Papa told her to come inside. Portraits of his mother and father hung above the bookshelf, both of them framed with a white garland.
I can’t stay there, she told Papa after she told them how things had been for her. Let me come back home.
Papa kept his voice steady. You have to learn to honor your commitments. They’re your family now, and your duty is to them. Don’t embarrass us.
Nandini pretended she didn’t hear him and walked toward her bedroom.
Papa blocked the door. You should go home. Your home.
I can’t. Nandini tried to say the words as if there was no room for an argument.
Papa shook his head. He refused to hear any more.
When Nandini tried to walk past him, he said, I will drag you back there myself if I have to.
He opened the front door. I mean it. You’re going back now.
Mami started crying and repeating something Nandini couldn’t understand. Before Nandini could say anything else, Papa grabbed her wrist and guided her down the concrete steps. Papa shook the driver awake and pushed Nandini inside the rickshaw. He paid the driver double the fare to not bring her back.
Her in-laws’ house was ready for dinner when she shuffled in. Nobody suspected anything thanks to Papa’s explanation over the phone, but her father-in-law told her it was no longer appropriate to visit her parents whenever she pleased.
Her following mornings were spent cutting vegetables, feeding leftovers to the cows, washing clothes, and pinning them across the thick rope in the backyard to dry. Her mother-in-law barked orders like clockwork from her rocking chair. Don’t burn the onions! If you care about your husband, you’ll feed him properly! Gain some weight if you want healthy babies! Nandini’s husband would watch the exchanges with his arms crossed.
By lunchtime, her sister-in-law’s one-year-old son would need another diaper change. Nandini would unpin the cloth from his doughy waist and soak it in the leftover water. Everyone else in the house—her father-in-law, mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and brother-in-law—would leave for languid strolls in the park and mutter questions about lunch when they returned.
We don’t need you to work, her mother-in-law said after Nandini couldn’t find a part-time position at the local hospital. Her new family found her education impressive, but it was to remain on paper. She had already waited for her parents to set up the marriage until she was done with medical school, which made her an “old bride.” But now, she was no better than the girls she lamented growing up, who went to school just to increase their eligibility for a groom.
She ran away the second time in a manner similar to the first with the same results.
It didn’t take her long for her to realize she was waning. Her husband had told her about his parents’ requests, so they had begun having procedural sex. Thrust, thrust, collapse.
Within two months, she felt her stomach churn and saw bright red blood in the toilet. Five minutes later, something that looked like a liver emerged between her legs.
Her husband slapped her when she lost the baby. He demanded that a doctor confirm what Nandini said.
On the way back from the hospital, she caught her reflection in the mirror and was surprised at what she saw. There was something ablaze inside her, kernels that deserved to glow. The death of her baby reminded her of her own life.
The third time she ran away, her friend from medical school picked her up on a motorcycle in the middle of the night. She never told her parents why she left: her brother-in-law began crawling into her bed at night, while her husband was at work. When she told her in-laws, they called her a liar.
Papa didn’t have the energy to send her back again. Friends stopped calling. Invitations for Diwali parties and weddings never arrived. Everywhere they went, they ran into diverted eyes and whispers.
For the following months, Nandini helped the maids with the housework so Mami could rest. She found potential grooms for her sisters. They sat for nightly dinners where nobody spoke. It was a long process, transforming into another person.
But none of it mattered. Her parents had lost their place in the community and were still trying to earn back the money they gave for Nandini’s dowry. She once saw Papa pacing in the park, his eyes pointed toward the ground as though he dropped something he could no longer find. None of the men Nandini’s age were interested in a woman who left her husband. Family members suggested they move to another city. Change their name.
Papa began having trouble breathing. They took him to the hospital Nandini never worked in. He was diagnosed within one hour. Congestive heart failure. She set up a bed for him at home and gave him his medicines, checked his vitals every thirty minutes. His socks left imprints on his ankles. Pitting edema. On days she wasn’t there, the maids told her Papa refused to take his medicine or eat. The doctors diagnosed him with depression.
She approached Papa’s room after dinner one night.
He wrapped his clammy hand around hers and pointed to a black-and-white photo of a man.
What do you think?
He couldn’t manage two words before coughing. Hack, hack. Fist over mouth.
Nandini liked the man in the picture, his side part, the mustache that curled at the ends. Ranjit.
He wants a doctor, Papa said. We know the family. They are in America. New Jersey. He wants to move there, with a wife.
The man also had a past. Something about being with a Muslim girl.
When she didn’t answer, her father sat up.
Tell me, Nandini, where did I go wrong with you?
Nowhere, she insisted, thinking of the way he woke up at four a.m. to sell brass pots and pans, how he used an entire week’s pay to buy Nandini and her sisters tickets to The Sound of Music.
She thought about Papa’s question. She thought about her life at that moment, a life of endless rejection from family, a life of dissolving everything her parents worked to maintain. She thought she was strong enough to accept all of that.
Call his parents, she told Papa.
At the end of the month and after three “Swaha” chants by the local priest, she was married. Ranjit never once asked about her past.
Papa passed away two weeks later. She hung a fresh garland around his photo.
Ranjit saved Papa from spending his last weeks in distress. He took his final breaths in his bedroom, surrounded by family, a smile deepening the lines around his eyes.