After City Hall, after the judge has said the solemn words and the rings have been slid onto fingers, after Daniel has been told to kiss the bride and I have acquiesced and after the few assembled friends have whooped and cheered, we go on a pilgrimage to the water. His parents, my mother, the chosen friends. We stand on the cliffs over the Sutro Baths, the churning sea stretched far below us. This is the distant edge of the world. There are apocalyptic clouds above; the red bridge is framed in the distance, the entire world painted in shades of gray, silver, and emerald.
Someone pops open champagne and it froths over all of us, making us giddy. He pours it into gushing flutes and hands them out. We are toasted in words of love and blessing. The wind flings itself in our faces and we fall silent then, because it is beautiful, and just like that I know I will belong to this man for always. I, who have sailed these seas in storm and peril, who had felt ever wind-tossed, ocean-flung, have come home to dock in these safe and sunny harbors. I throw my bouquet over the cliff down into the rushing waters and the sea takes my offering, unties the silver ribbon that holds the flowers together, tosses them until they are scattered on the waves, tiny as single petals borne away on that salt tide.
Part Four
Fifteen
Three years pass faster than I can imagine. We learn the rules of marriage. It is a closed system with its own weather, politics, and machinations. It is a loyalty constructed out of inside jokes, the sharing of fears, and predawn recounting of dreams. It is a shifting of personality toward each other like two plants in a small pot striving for the same patch of sun and in the process becoming entwined above and below ground. His roots take hold in the earth of my body.
*
Soon enough comes the inevitable question. Hamlet grappled about whether to be or not to be. Our burning existential question becomes to baby or not to baby. His parents drop subtle American hints, “It would be so nice if you did. And it would be so beautiful. A lovely shade of caramel. Like Halle Berry.” My mother on the phone doesn’t hint. “So when are you going to do it? Better now than when you’re even older. What are you waiting for?”
I say, “Amma, we just got married.”
“Three years ago. Don’t you know what comes after marriage? The baby.”
“And after that?”
“The second baby, of course.”
“God, Amma, you’ll have me with a herd if you had your way.”
She says, “I always wanted a lot of kids, but then I couldn’t. You should. It’ll be good for you two, make you settle down and grow up. Maybe it’ll make that hubby of yours get a real job.”
She’s set up in Colombo now. She rents a house, has a servant. She says the country has changed so much, I wouldn’t recognize it. The war is over, of course, but more than that, money is flowing in, roads are being built—freeways, just like in America—there are shopping centers, and everyone has a cell phone. She says that the only thing that would bring her back to America is to see her first grandchild. I don’t tell her the truth. That neither of us really wants children, neither of us is pulled in that particular direction.
She goes on. “You know Dharshi is pregnant again.”
I say, “She’s having another baby?”
“Yes, her third. A girl, they say, this time. Two boys before, you know.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“You know, I think it worked out. I think she’s happy. They look good together now. Mallini got her married so young. But now she’s settled. And the babies, Mallini has her arms full of them, lucky lady.”
I sigh. She says, “What darling? I just want you to be happy. How can a woman really be happy without children? All that other stuff, career, love, what have you, it’ll all go away, but a child is yours forever.”
I don’t tell her that I’ve never felt those urges other women talk about. I’ve never looked at babies with longing, never envied women with newborns in their arms or toddlers hanging off them. My uterus has never throbbed at the sight of a newborn. The biological imperative, those essential hormones that make women stare at babies as if they are delectable, they must be missing in my particular chemical makeup.
And yet the baby-hunger is all around us. I know women with a baby-desire so deep their breasts automatically weep milk when they hear other people’s infants crying. I have friends who after years of focusing on careers are issuing baby ultimatums to stunned husbands or boyfriends.
Daniel’s male friends sit at the table and talk about being surrounded by women who are newly rapacious for newborns. One of them says, “I feel like they just want my sperm. A woman actually said to me the other night, ‘I want to have your blond baby.’” He looks terrified. The rules of dating have changed under his feet. It’s no longer lighthearted or spontaneous; the objectives are different.