Читать книгу Rani Patel In Full Effect - Sonia Patel - Страница 7

WIDOW

Moloka’i, 1991

I caught him. Red handed. In the alley behind Kanemitsu’s.

My father and the barely out-of-adolescence homewrecker, making out.

I can’t stop bawling.

I grab the scissors and electric razor from the closet. I rush to the deck of our pole house, almost tripping over the leg of the piano bench. The ocean air stuffs itself in my nose. The sticky breeze doesn’t do anything to cool me. I flip on the light, toss my black Clark Kent glasses onto the table and start cutting. Clumps of hair and sloppy tears cover my face. I can’t see. I can’t breathe. I just cut. That’s me, a cutting slashing machine.

When I’m done, I throw the scissors onto the table and take hold of the razor. I switch it on and shave my scalp clean.

I’m friggin’ bald now. I catch my breath and blow and push the little hairs from my face with my breath and my shaking hands. I turn off the light, stand under the starry sky and imagine that the electric razor in my hand is a Star Trek communicator. And I’m the alluring Lieutenant Ilia. Cocoa skin, oval eyes, and high cheek bones now accentuated by my bare head, made all the more resplendent by the daggers coming out of my eyes.

I put on my glasses, searching for the outline of Lanai across the wide Moloka’i channel. I find it. My index finger and eyeballs trace it. I relax and listen to the Pacific’s gentle grazing of the naupaka on the miniscule patch of south shore beach below. My troubles and my hair are gone, at least for this minute.

Sniffling interrupts the tranquility.

It’s my mom. She’s behind me. She says, “I heard the buzzing, Rani.”

The wooden deck planks creak as she takes a step closer. Then I feel her rough fingers running down the back of my head. I don’t turn around. Or move.

“Betta, why?” she asks in a heavy Gujju accent. The concern in her voice is unsettling. I haven’t heard that before.

Really? I had to shave my head for you to notice me?

She walks around me, inspects me as if I’m a statue. “Widows are forced to shave their heads in India,” she mumbles. She crosses her arms and pauses, ruminating. Then she laments, “Vidhwa ne kussee kimut na hoi. Thuu vidhwa nathee.”

Yeah, Mom, I feel just like a worthless widow. A kimut-less vidhwa.

I picture myself in a thin, white cotton sari. It’s draped over my bald head. I’m standing close to a scorching funeral pyre. Like countless other widows in India, I’m ready to fling myself into the conflagration. For a second, the sati is almost real. I feel my skin burning. I flinch and my hand immediately checks.

Skin cool and intact. No burn.

Just a mental scorch.

Mom asks again, “Betta, why?”

Finally I whisper, “It was this or banging my head.”

She collapses on the teak-slatted chair. Her face is frozen in suffering: Picasso’s Weeping Woman.

Then she pulls herself together. “Betta, I didn’t know what else to do,” she says. She gets up from the chair and approaches me. “Sunil dada taught me that husband is God, so husband’s word is law.”

I look the other way. Is she talking about the same Sunil dada, my grandfather, who lives in Nairobi, the one who encouraged me to pursue a career and not get married?

“I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Mom,” I say after a while, “Dad’s so busted. It’s Wendy Nagaoki. I saw them together at Kanemitsu’s.” I move to the edge of the deck and lean against the railing. Looking up at the moon, it hits me again.

Dad’s gone and I don’t have anyone. I turn to face Mom. “Look, I didn’t know what else to do either. But I figured shaving my head was a good start.”

Mom breaks down and falls into the chair again. Her head’s in her hands as she rocks back and forth. She sobs, “I wish I was dead, I wish I was dead.”

I’m not saving you this time. It’s your turn to save me. Only I know you won’t.