My mother comes in a worked sari. I know this is not what she had envisioned for me, the bridegroom being a tall white man instead of a dutiful Lankan boy, an artist instead of a doctor, engineer, lawyer, even for god’s sake, a professor. And the wedding too must be a disappointment. What she would have wished for is a hall full of people, a spread of food, a flowered poruwa, young girls in white ruffled half saris singing the proper verses. Without these things, is it even a wedding? She would have wanted everything Dharshi had at her wedding for me. She must feel bad that Aunty Mallini gave her daughter these things, married her the proper way, but that she cannot do the same for me. But if she thinks these things, thankfully, blissfully, she doesn’t say them. A wonderful thing has happened. After we have lived together for years, instead of leaving me as she thinks all white people are prone to do, Daniel is making me a legitimate and lawfully married wife, and for this she is thankful enough to stay quiet.
Then too she has told me this. Soon, a few months after our wedding, she is moving home. When she told me this, I said, “Where?” before I realized she meant she’s moving back to Sri Lanka. I was incredulous. “Why now?” and she said, “You’re settled now. There isn’t anything to keep me here anymore. Even the cat is dead.” I feel guilty for not asking after Catney Houston, who after hanging on for this ridiculous length of time has finally died. Now there is truly nothing holding her here. She says, “I’ll get a place in Colombo. Or a house in Kandy. In any case you’re settled, so I can go now.” I can hear the determination in her voice. She wants to reclaim what was lost. My wedding will be the last time I will see her for years. I am sad; I am relieved; I am joyous.
A month before the wedding I open the mail and find a package from her. A sari froths out. A white sari studded with paisley in golden sequins and shining crystals. It’s beautiful. I throw it over my shoulder and am transformed. An instant bride. But then the memory of that other sari glowing in the dark, hanging over the door, and below it two bodies tumbling together in love and desire comes to me. I haven’t seen Dharshi for years. She has been taken into a different life, become a person I don’t know. Our connection has been diluted to seeing pictures of each other on our computer screens. I have seen pictures of her and Roshan, rounder now, and claimed by two children, hanging on to her from all angles. A sort of yearning shoots through me. She had been my first love. I know that now. I put the sari back in its box. I tell my mother it’s hard to wear a sari, I don’t want to stumble on the steps, I don’t want to trip under six yards of floating fabric. The truth is, I want nothing that reminds me of who I was before this man came.
On my wedding day I wear a clean white dress, a satin dress that spills to the floor. A dress that is not ivory or champagne or any other corruption of white, but is instead stark and startlingly white. A dress that he had bought for me a few weeks before, wrapped and packaged, a huge crimson rose held by a ribbon to the top of the large white box. “Here,” he said, “this will fit you perfectly.” I opened the box and exclaimed, “Oh my god. It’s beautiful.” I pulled the dress, slithery and heavy as an animal skin, out of the box. I could feel how expensive it was, how exquisitely, elaborately one of a kind. I couldn’t imagine how he had paid for it. He must have saved for a long time. I’m touched by his generosity when this money could be going to other, more practical concerns. He said, “Put it on.”
“But you shouldn’t see me. It’s bad luck.”
He laughed and said, “What? You’ve turned traditional? Go, put it on.” I went into the bathroom, stepped out of my clothes, and pulled the dress over my head. It sighed against my skin, settled. I came out, shy, the cloth slinky against me, my arms bare, the entirety of my silhouette exposed. He looked rapturous and said, “Yes. Amazing. It’s perfect.” I loved that he said the word perfect. Not a stain or a blemish anywhere on me. He pulled me close, searched my face, touched his thumb to the mark beneath my right eye, high on the cheek. “This is my spot. This I claim,” and put his lips against my skin exactly there, a slight suction. He thought it was a beauty spot, but it was a scar from a childhood cruelty that had faded now into this slightest demarcation.
The dress is beautiful, a long sleek column of white with silver straps that slide against my shoulders and make them shine. But under this, a thought like a splinter under the skin. On the island, white like this, unembellished and not lit up with gold embroidery or jeweled sequins, is a symbol of death. This is something my American fiancé cannot know. White was the color I should have worn to my father’s burning. Instead I had worn the slightest shade of pink. Now when I should be as adorned as a goddess, I am wearing the perfect white of mourning.
*