RANJANA DIDN’T KNOW WHAT SHE was doing with Achyut. She had never behaved like this, her comportment with strangers a longtime matter of tiptoeing and averting her gaze, often from her own image. Interacting with strangers was very much like being a bride: just because it was an occasion for something out of the ordinary didn’t mean that it was a time for self-indulgence. There was a larger purpose to it, which was to endure.
Take, for instance, the process of immigration years ago: flying all the way from India to Frankfurt to New York. Mohan’s arm wrapped around her back, not her waist, protecting her but moving her along. The weather cold, as she had expected for the winter, but so much rain, a type of rain that she had never felt, which seeped into her sari and coat and deepened their already dark colors. It all felt like an extension of the wedding itself, and Ranjana kept her head down and her center knotted up. She simply had to tolerate getting from one end of the world to the other without losing the unmistakable, ephemeral foundation of her status-as-bride. When they finally arrived at their family friends’ house in Edison, New Jersey, Ranjana had to use three towels to dry herself off, including one of the enormous beach variety. Naked in a cramped child’s bedroom, she caught her reflection in a long mirror, stickers clustered at its bottom. The abbreviated wings of her shoulders, her breasts small, as if hung on her frame with a sling, the slim columns of her legs intersecting in a dark cloud. The mehndi on her hands and feet had lost none of its scarlet polish. There you had it: she had made it to America. She was a wife, if her hands and feet were any indication. As she pulled on a nightgown that her host had given her, a fluffy white bag with small, pink ribbons festooning its front, she could feel Mohan’s arm still fastened around her.
After they moved to the Cleveland area, where Mohan had gotten a job at Case Western, and slowly negotiated their way into an American life, Ranjana learned to reemphasize her shyness when dealing with her white counterparts. Mohan did all of the talking anyway, moving them into their campus housing with little fanfare, everything as he had envisioned it, he claimed. Ranjana became obsessed with the number of reflective surfaces in their home: the toaster, the microwave, even the pearly block of their refrigerator. The bathroom mirror, sectioned trifold in its vanity, the silver disc of a mirror affixed to the shower’s tile so that Mohan could see himself shaving. One room, where Ranjana kept her sewing machine and Mohan kept his books, even had a wall covered entirely with mirrors. A mural of a flock of geese, in a yellow-brown hue, was spackled across it, although Ranjana could still catch slivers of her face and her limbs around it. She had never been vain—and she wasn’t now, either—but the prevalence of mirrors gave her the chance to examine her appearance. Perhaps she was not as unimpressive as she had always assumed; the only mirror on which she had relied all her life was the collective reflection of her family’s gaze. She had one sister and one brother, both older, both now in California, and they had borne the dark eyes and long faces and shiny smiles of her parents. She had dark eyes, but set too widely apart, and her face followed suit, broad and uneven. A smile could not thrive under these circumstances, especially not under the unruly mantle of her hair. All of these deficiencies had been pointed out by the suite of aunties who had taken up roost in her childhood home. They had pecked at her hair and eyebrows, pinched the vulnerable skin at her hips, taken her face in their hands and turned it side to side. Successful in their examinations, they had built Ranjana’s self-criticism step by step.
Since they were absent from Ranjana’s new American life, she sought the unbiased approval of this mirror-flecked apartment, hopeful yet aware of her na?veté. She did not make a grand discovery; she was every bit as unimpressive as they had indicated. Free of the tribunal of aunties, she began to take grim pleasure in seeing her homeliness anew. Mohan found her one afternoon as she stared at one of her eyes in a teaspoon, holding it to her face as if looking through a monocle. She brought it to the table in a quick thud. She sensed his assessment of her across the table as if it were an aroma; he dipped a dry biscuit into his tea. He must have found her vulnerability much more flavorful than his snack, and he voiced as much to her later in bed.
“I go through all of those papers in that tiny office all day, and I know that I am grading these idiots’ homework so that I can come take care of you.” Her back was turned to him, the warm silhouette of his body aligned with hers. Through her nightgown, she could feel his arousal and wondered how dissatisfied he would be with the whimpering carnal assembly that she had examined in that mirror. Mohan breathed into her ear, his breath hot, but he fell asleep before she could be expected to do anything. She watched the numbers on the digital clock of their bedside table as they rearranged themselves in glowing red stick figures. If she strained hard enough in the dark, she could make out her reflection in the face of the clock, lined in spare moonlight, the snoring mountain of Mohan’s body behind her.
*