Ranee hears her daughter’s anger. She wants to reach out, to find a way to soothe her pain. But a long time ago she accepted there was nothing she could do. It was their journey to take. Every person had his or her path. Given the chance again, Ranee imagines changing their destiny. Saying no when the green cards came in from America. She could have spoken up and said the land of dreams and opportunity might hold neither for them. That their small village in India was all the happiness they would ever find.
“We do not always understand why people do things,” Ranee said, dismissing that memory among millions of others. “But it is not our place to judge.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Ranee knew it before the sentence was complete. However, like with so many things in life, there was no turning back. Ranee knew she and Sonya would never be close. Maybe it was the fact that she was the youngest, or that when she was born Ranee was just too tired. Or it could be what Sonya always knew—that they did not want her.
“You certainly never did,” Sonya says. “I guess I’m not as forgiving as you.”
“You think I have forgiven him?” Ranee always heard that the power of the word was stronger than anything. She wants to ask the person who said that if he or she had ever felt the power of the hand. “I think it is up to God to absolve us. In doing so, he must take into account all that we have done. Not just one act.”
“It wasn’t one act,” Sonya protests. “It was a lifetime of hurt.”
“You were not with him his entire lifetime,” Ranee says, fighting because she can.
The chants of the gurus from the open-air temples in India start to ring in her head. She can smell the burning incense and hear the bells ring overhead as if she were there. She would watch them from her seat with the other girls on the marble floor of the temple and listen as the gurus taught them about life. Obey your parents, feed the hungry, do good every day, otherwise Lord Shiva may open his third eye and the world will burn. Lessons learned by fear.
“He was not always cruel,” Ranee says, hoping to justify her choice to stay with him. “In India, there was a time when he was kind.”
“I’m glad you have memories of that,” Sonya says, her voice clipped with fury. “But I don’t. So I guess I just have to live with what I know.”
Ranee watches Sonya walk out of the kitchen without another word. Collapsing into the chair, her mind drifts to the past.
Ranee’s father had decided her engagement after a chance meeting with Brent’s father. The two men met at a business dinner in rural India. Of the same caste, they learned each was looking for a mate for his child. After discussing formalities, they shook hands on the union. Ranee’s father came home and told his wife about the engagement, but Ranee didn’t learn about it until a week later, when a servant mentioned it.
The first time she met Brent, three servants accompanied her to the town square. They sat at a table nearby while Ranee and Brent sat opposite one another at an old picnic table. They were shy, glancing everywhere but at one another.
“Ranee is a very pretty name,” Brent said in broken English. “It means ‘queen,’ yes?”
“Yes,” Ranee nods. “And to be reborn.” They fell quiet again, the noise from the public keeping them company. “Your name, Brent, it is rare.”
“Yes,” Brent agrees. “My father named me after a friend from overseas. ‘A good man,’ my father said.” He stares at the people around them. “I am happy to have heard the news of our engagement,” Brent said. “It was an auspicious occasion for my family.”
“As for mine,” Ranee lied. In fact, her mother, busy with all the children, had only recently bought sweets to celebrate the occasion. “My siblings look forward to the wedding.”
Brent nodded. Staring at his feet, he bent slowly down and ran his hands over the ground. Finding what he was searching for, he picked up a small rock, no larger than a pebble. Laying it between them on the tabletop, he pushed it toward her without touching her. “For you,” he said.
Ranee glanced at it in confusion. “I don’t understand.”