“Why is everybody here?” Tara asked, without looking at Amma, focusing on lifting her suitcase and setting it on the bed; opening, then unbuckling it to rummage for fresh clothes.
“Why didn’t you tell us you are coming?” Amma had recovered from her initial shock, but her voice was still a hoarse whisper.
“I am sorry if I embarrassed you, Amma. I’ll leave.”
“Don’t be silly. That’s not what I meant.” Amma thrust the glass of sherbet in Tara’s direction. “Drink. You will feel refreshed.”
Tara accepted the glass, took a sip of the salty-sweet-tangy drink. “Why are they all here?” she asked again.
Amma sat on the edge of the bed, wiped her sweaty face with the pallu of her beige handloom sari. She looked thinner, which made the skin on her face sit a little looser, especially around her jowls. Aunty Nanda’s daughter Nina was getting married next week, she said. “Since the family lives in Bangalore, Daddy graciously offered to host the bridal party at our home.”
“I thought you said you and Daddy don’t go to community functions. How are you hosting a wedding here?”
Amma sighed. “It is a family wedding, Tara. Who else does Nanda have?”
“So, you regained your family honor? By cutting me off?”
“It is not like that.” There was no conviction in Amma’s words, and she quickly changed the direction of their conversation “I just need to know you are all right. Why did you come alone?”
“I have some work related to the foundation we run.” The white lie had come to Tara’s lips easily, and with it, a reminder of the work she had abandoned midway. She pressed a white knuckle to her lips to stop their trembling.
Amma sighed. “Take a rest now. I can send your lunch up when it is ready, if you wish. So much left to do. Only four days left for the ceremonies to begin.”
Her room did not stir any old attachments in her chest. Maybe it was the new sage green on the walls or the new floral bedspread. She had been away eight years, long enough to erase some memories. There were signs her room was occupied by some of the guests. The dresser was messy; a hair dryer and flat-iron straightener jostled for space with lipsticks, compacts, and eye makeup. Three large suitcases lay flat on the marble floor, clothes peeping out from them. Her own slim Delsey stood out, as if it didn’t belong in the room.
She looked out the French window into the garden below. It was a riot of colors: rows of potted marigolds, zinnias, dahlias, petunias, and colorful crotons set against a high, whitewashed compound wall. She looked away, suddenly blinded by the charged memory of the tree house she had left behind.
Amma served an early lunch—parboiled rice, fish curry, and green beans. Tara ate ravenously sitting at the desk in her room, filling the wide-mouthed pit inside her with food. She fell asleep in her old bed, and she was vaguely aware of Amma stroking her hair, kissing her forehead, pulling a light handloom blanket over her feet. Then she fell into blackness, heavy, dreamless. She slept all afternoon, and it took Amma several minutes to wake her up three hours later for tea and snacks.
“Come down,” she said. “You cannot stay here all day.”
Tara met Aunty Nanda and her daughter Nina, the bride, at the round glass-topped kitchen table, where they were nibbling crunchy banana chips with their tea and complaining about the tailor who had ruined a Kanjeevaram silk sari blouse. She took the spot next to Nina. Amma poured tea from a stainless steel pot, pushed the bone china cup in front of her. Tara’s head still felt like it was inside a foggy dark tunnel; she eagerly took a sip of Amma’s milky sweet brew.
Aunty Nanda looked youthful in her floral handloom salwar kameez, her thick, slick hair pulled back with a wide barrette. Nina, in tight jeans and a short yellow top, looked nothing like the gawky sixteen-year-old Tara had last seen. Her face was arresting and bright; her hair, inherited from her mother, fell straight down her back like a sheet of black silk.
“What are you wearing to the wedding?” she asked Tara. Her voice had a breathless quality to it, as if her excitement could not be contained.
“Oh, I didn’t bring anything dressy. I had no idea you were getting married.” From the corner of her eye, Tara caught Aunty Nanda and Amma exchange looks. Shame coursed through her; then anger at feeling shame. She breathed in the hot steam from her cup, a sharp open-mouthed gasp.
“Actually, I am not invited to your wedding, Nina.” She smiled a tight-lipped smile at her young cousin. “Didn’t you know?”
Nina’s eyes widened, she put a warm hand over Tara’s forearm. “Of course you are invited. You are family.”
Aunty Nanda cleared her throat, as if to get the appropriate words out. “The boy’s side is from Bangalore; they don’t know the story,” she said at last. “Why take risks, we thought.”
Why risk inviting an outcast, Aunty Nanda had meant. Tara turned to look at Amma, who had buried her face in her sari pallu, her shoulders shaking uncontrollably. She wondered if she could find a little bravery inside her to hold her head up, even as shame filled her with no restraint and burned her face.
She strode to the living room. Of the many guests she had encountered on her way in, only a few remained; possibly a late afternoon lull in the flow of people. The television was on local English news, but no one was watching. She recognized one of the three boys who lounged on the sofa, Nina’s younger brother Nitin, an engineering student. The other two were probably distant relatives who lived in town and had come to hang out with Nitin. Aunty Nanda’s father-in-law, Nina and Nitin’s grandfather, sat on a sofa chair at the far end of the room, his face lost behind a copy of the Morning Herald.
Tara occupied the slatted teakwood easy chair opposite the TV. Her chest heaved; she could hear her labored breathing over the voice of the TV reporter who was yelling hysterically into the microphone about an income tax department raid at a police inspector’s home in Karkala. The repeated close-ups of the thick stacks of rupees discovered in the attic was so irritating that she wanted to stuff them into the screeching TV reporter’s mouth. A sob was building inside her, which she tried desperately to quell.
Daddy walked in when the news anchor had moved on to communal tensions in Kasaragod, where a public closing enforced by a local Hindu political outfit had been successful. She stood up in greeting, her hands clasped in front of her like an obedient schoolgirl. He patted her lightly on her shoulder. She noticed his slight stoop, at the way his shirt hung a bit too loose over his shoulders. His face drooped, bearing a sullen expression, but she saw no shock when his eyes fell upon her. Amma had obviously called and filled him in. He stood next to her for a few moments, eyes on the wall, as if struggling for words. For once, he didn’t know what to command her to do. His gaze moved to the other occupants of the room. The youngsters took turns greeting him.
She heard the rustle of paper. Aunty Nanda’s father-in-law had dropped it on the rug. He was now looking at her intently with magnified eyes from behind his convex glasses. His gray mustache twitched. When Daddy left the room to go upstairs to change, he finally spoke.
“When my younger sister ran away fifty years ago to marry a trader’s son, we performed her last rites.” His voice was loud, in the manner of one who is hard of hearing.