Page 19 of The Henna Artist

“How did Pitaji die?” I asked.

“He drowned. But he was sick, too. In his stomach.”

“What do you mean?”

“He liked hissharab,” she whispered. “He thought he was hiding it from us, but by nightfall, he was too drunk to walk. The next day, I would have to go and teach school for him.”

I knew Pitaji had started drinking around the time we came to live in Ajar, but he’d never been so drunk that I had to take over the school. “Did Maa ever forgive him?”

Radha turned her face to look at me. “For what?”

Just then, she looked so much like Maa that it was almost as if I were lying next to my mother the night I asked where her gold bangles were. I was just a little girl then, and as long as I could remember she’d never taken them off, even as she bathed, cooked and slept. I loved playing with them when we lay together like this. Maa’s eyes filled with tears at my question, and I felt fear for the first time in my life.

I stroked Radha’s cheek. “We didn’t always live in Ajar. Didn’t Maa tell you? We came from Lucknow. Pitaji had become obsessed with the independence movement. He would skip work to join the freedom marches. He spoke out against British rule at rallies. Then, when the movement needed more money, he sold Maa’s gold, the jewelry from her dowry—wedding bangles, necklaces, earrings—against her wishes. Maa was furious.

“The British, who ran the school system, hadn’t approved of his freedom fighting. So they demoted him to Ajar, this tiny, backwater place. I must have been about ten. In one fell swoop, they cut his salary and his pride.”

“But Pitaji was right, wasn’t he? India won in the end.” Radha wanted to believe in our father, to defend him, as I had.

“Of course he was right,” I said. It was people like our father, millions of them, who had made it clear to the British that Indians would no longer be held hostage in their own country.

But I could also see why Maa disapproved. So many Indians had been hurt or imprisoned for standing up against the British. She pleaded with our father: Why couldn’t he keep quiet, just take care of his family, and let others fight? But our father was fervent in his beliefs; I admired him for that. He was committed to his ideals. Unfortunately, high ideals came with a price.

Once he had depleted his savings, he sold the remainder of Maa’s only possessions, the gold that could have saved us from poverty, that was supposed to keep Maa secure in widowhood, that might have kept me from having to marry at fifteen. In a country where a woman’s gold was her security against the unforeseen, Maa’s naked earlobes and bare wrists were a constant reminder that my father had put politics before his family.

And so, we were forced to move to Ajar, where my mother buried her disappointment and my father buried his pride. Independence wouldn’t come for another twelve years, but by then, he was already broken.

Radha said, “Maa never talked about you. Never spoke your name. I didn’t even know you existed until the gossip-eaters told me you disappeared the same year I was born. As soon as I learned to read, I realized it was your letters Maa was burning whenever they arrived. The only letter of yours I read was the one you sent about the train tickets to Jaipur. You didn’t mention me in the letter at all. I knew then that you didn’t know I existed, either.”

I closed my eyes.Oh, Maa, how angry I must have made you. Your husband betrayed you. I betrayed you. If only you had opened those letters!

As soon as I was able to earn enough, I’d sent money in every envelope for my parents to spend on their needs. I’d begged their forgiveness for leaving my marriage and told them I would send for them as soon as I could. If the money had been destroyed along with my letters, no wonder Radha’s clothes had looked so threadbare when she arrived in Jaipur.

I curved my body around hers again, as if I were hugging my mother, as I longed to do.

Radha squeezed my hand, bringing me back to the present, reminding me that I had a living, breathing sister. She may not be my penance for the wrong I had committed, but my salvation. I could no longer make anything right with my parents, could no longer humble myself before them, could no longer restore their good reputation. But I could take care of my sister, guide Radha into maturity, into womanhood. Make sure she became someone my parents would be proud of—unlike me.

Radha stirred. “Jiji, remember Munchi-ji?”

I remembered the old man in Ajar, hunched over a tiny leaf skeleton, painting agopiand cow no larger than my thumb, dotting the milkmaid’s sari with his camelhair brush. He’d been the one I’d run to when my parents argued about money. I escaped my mother’s bitter silences and my father’s drinking by losing myself in my painting. Old man Munchi taught me to see, to really notice, every tiny detail of what I was about to paint before ever handing me a brush. It was this practice that made it easy for me to pick up a henna reed years later and paint designs etched intricately in my memory.

“Is he still painting?” I asked.

“Hahn.He always said you were his best student.”

I found myself smiling. “Did you paint with him, too?”

“I don’t have your gift, Lakshmi. Mostly, I made the skeletons for him out ofpeepalleaves. I also ground his paints.” She turned to look at me again, a mischievous smile playing at her lips. “Do you know what you get when you feed a cow mango leaves, then mix the cow patty with urine and clay?”

“What?”

“Orange paint!” She grinned. “Munchi-jisaid my paint was smooth as silk.”

“I can show you how to grind henna leaves to make my paste if you’d like.”

“Accha.”Yes. She closed her eyes, yawning loudly.

“You should cover your mouth when you yawn, Radha.”

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