TRISHA
In India, a woman’s marriage means she is moving from one man’s house to another’s. Both men chosen for her, one by an act of God, and the other by the father. As dictated by Indians’ belief system, the men, the father and the husband, were two sides of the same coin. Both owned you and could do with you what they wished. But what happens when the woman wants her freedom?
Twice as a child, Sonya called an ambulance to our house. The first time, playing hooky from school, she waited for Mama to get up. When Mama stayed in bed, Sonya, eight years old, climbed in with her. Finding her unresponsive, she called 911. After running a number of tests, the doctors concluded Mama had simply blacked out. No one thought to mention the hit to the head the night before.
The second time was when Mama started vomiting and didn’t stop. Sonya, eleven, had again feigned illness and stayed home from school. The ambulance sped Sonya and Mama to the nearest hospital. The doctors made Sonya wait in the reception area with an angel helper who gave her crayons and paper, assuming coloring would alleviate her gut-wrenching fear.
Inside, unbeknownst to Sonya, they were pumping our mother’s stomach. She had swallowed a full bottle of sleeping pills that morning. Afterward, when the social worker asked her why, she replied, “I was tired.” That was the last time Sonya stayed home from school. Connecting the dots, she decided it was safer for her to be away from home, where at least there were no lives she had to save.
The lights are off in the house when I arrive home. Eloise will have already cleaned up, leaving me a plate of food in the oven. I have started spending more time at the hospital, with Papa. After my visit today, I drove for hours.
“You’re home.” Surprised, I see Eric standing in the dark, his eyes unreadable. “Where were you?”
“You’re home,” I say. When he stays silent, waiting for an answer, I tell him, “I was driving around.” I search for the light switch. Once I find it, I hit it, but the light only flickers, casting us in an eerie glow.
“It’s not working,” Eric says, coming closer. His voice is hard. “Driving around for six hours?”
“Of course not.”
I am not afraid of my husband. I know women who are. After giving up work, they may decide that the breadwinner makes the decisions in the home, their autonomy lost in favor of security. Others simply give up the ordinary fight. Believe themselves safer that way than fighting battles they might lose. Friends tell me I am lucky. They say I married an extraordinary man, one who gives me the lifestyle others dream of while allowing me complete control. He cedes to my every wish, my every want. In return, I offer him myself.
“Then where were you?” he demands, his words like ice.
“I was with my father.” Reaching a table lamp, I hit the switch, flooding the room with light. Eric’s hair is disheveled, his tie undone. He’s wary, a hawk circling the field. Closing the distance between us, I reach out but he steps back. “Eric, what’s going on?”
“How is he?”
“The same.” My footing, already unsteady, is shakier with Eric’s demeanor. “He just lies there,” I tell Eric. “No matter what I say to him, he doesn’t answer.”
“That must be hard.” Eric watches me, his stance unflinching. “To be in the dark.” From the end table, he grabs a sheaf of papers. He tries to hand them to me but I refuse. “The adoption forms. I filled them out.”