Oleander Girl by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

her, and came back to ask Sarojini what terrible thing had happened. Sarojini didn’t want to lie to Cook, who had been with her for so many years, so she closed her eyes and shook her head until Cook went away. Now she presses the wet cloth, hot and salty with tears and no longer comforting, against her throbbing eyes and thinks, Bimal was right. By breaking her word to him, she has lost her granddaughter.
    The bed is filled with memories. Of Bimal, of Anu. But it’s the memory of Korobi that comes to Sarojini now. Born prematurely, she had been kept in the hospital incubator for weeks. How tiny she was, how frighteningly fragile when Sarojini finally brought her home, her skin like thin porcelain with the blue veins showing through it. Terrified that she would die, Sarojini had sent Bimal off to the guest bedroom and kept the baby in this bed, shored up by pillows. She checked on her breathing every hour, fed her milk from a dropper, held on to her as though she were afraid that any moment she’d slip away. With her eyes closed and hand cupped, she can even now feel that silky newborn skin. It comforts her, pulling her finally into sleep and thence into a dream.
    It is late morning on the last day of her daughter’s life. Sarojini the dreamer knows this already, and unease pulls at her heart. The Sarojini in the dream doesn’t know, but she, too, is sad because she is getting ready to say good-bye. Anu has asked her mother for a head massage,her last one before she returns to America tomorrow. She sits on this very bed, holding her distended stomach, while Sarojini fetches the perfumed hibiscus oil. Pregnancy has been good for Anu. Her hair is thicker than before, her complexion luminous. Except for the few times recently when she’s argued with her father, she has been as serene as the goddess.
    “I wish you could stay until the baby arrives,” Sarojini says, but without much hope. She knows her daughter intends for the child to be born in America, in the presence of the mysterious Rob, the husband she never mentions, and that is a reasonable desire. But Sarojini the dreamer knows that her wish will come true, tragically, perfidiously, that very night. This knowing-yet-not-knowing is a strange sensation, like being split in two.
    “Oh, Mother, let’s not think of all those complicated things right now. Let me just enjoy my head massage. It makes me feel like a girl again—and I want that so much today.”
    Sarojini pours the fragrant oil into her palm and rubs it into her daughter’s scalp, feeling that beloved body relaxing against her with a sigh. She wishes again: if only she could be around to do the same thing for her grandchild as the baby grows up! She closes her eyes and imagines a beautiful girl—and look, hasn’t that longing been fulfilled, too? If she were wiser, thinks the Sarojini of the future, she would never wish for anything again. But the foolish heart doesn’t know how to stop.
    Anu turns, tilting her head up at Sarojini, smiling without a hint of rancor. Looking at her, Sarojini remembers that she had always loved this quality about her daughter—this sweet quickness to forgive. To trust. Sarojini wonders if Anu would still be alive if she had been a little more hard-hearted.
    “You must tell her everything,” Anu says in the dream.
    “There’s so much I don’t know. So much your father kept from me.”
    “Tell what you can. Imagine the rest. I’ll fill in the gaps.”
    “But it’ll be so painful, Anu-ma. For myself and Korobi both.”
    “Ah, pain,” Anu says with that heartbreaking smile. “Mother, who among us has ever escaped it?”

    I stumble through the overgrown tangles of bramble bushes behind the house, pushing away vines that hang like snakes from the old trees. I throw myself down under an ancient banyan, barely missing a fire-ant hill, and press my knuckles into my eyes. How could Grandfather, to whom I’d given my entire child-heart, who had taught me how