Bride of the Buddha Read online

  “Let’s take off our clothes!” Deepa said, already tugging at her red-and-yellow-dotted shift.

  “We’ll get into trouble.”

  “You’re a scaredy mouse—squeak, squeak! You’re not a dog at all! Dogs will laugh at you!”

  “I don’t care what the dogs think,” I said, “but I do care about Ama finding out.” Our mother could confine us to the dreaded women’s quarters.

  “Ama has to understand, we’re purifying our souls.” Deepa grinned. “And it’s so hot today!”

  True, the heat had not let up, and my thick black braid, flopping like a dead squirrel on my back, weighed me down. The shining puddles beckoned, reflecting the infinities of a cool, blue sky. Besides, I couldn’t let my little sister get the better of me.

  “Wuff, arf, wolf, glumph!” I yanked off my own shift and tossed it against the mango tree. Deepa followed suit, barking and howling and laughing. We headed for the puddles. “Doggy needs to cool off! Arf!”

  The deliciously cool ooze of the water swept us into a splattering and laughing frenzy. The calf-deep puddles erupted into gray clouds around our bare feet; black mud spangled our honey-colored bellies and butts. “More!” I shouted. “More purity!” I was up to my knees and elbows in muddy water and could feel the grit of it between my teeth. “Roll like a dog!” I ordered Deepa, as I threw myself down into the gray slop. “Arf!”

  Half a dozen kitchen children had gathered around to cheer us on. “Clean up your souls!” I said. “Leave your bodies in the mud!”

  Suddenly, I was flying through the air backwards, my head nearly wrenched off my neck. Slam! The back of my skull hit up against something hard. It was Jagdish’s chest.

  “Yasodhara!” he shouted. “Cover your shame!” Clutching my braid, he yanked me out of the puddle. My scalp stung, feeling like he’d pulled out half my hair.

  Deepa was crying, but I willed myself not to. The kitchen children vanished.

  My brother was fifteen, as tall as our father, and his voice had the resonant depth of early manhood. He dragged me by my wrist, the back of my skull throbbing, my ears ringing as though my head had been invaded by locusts. Deepa trailed along, whimpering.

  Jagdish pushed us toward our heap of garments—“Pick these up!”—then pushed us behind jasmine bushes big enough to conceal us from passersby. “What if someone saw you acting like little whores! You’ve darkened our father’s good name.”

  “Whores don’t roll in the mud,” I muttered, having no idea what they did do. My anger, which would remain a problem for much of my life, was working hard to replace the shame, pain, and fear, and almost succeeded. “We’re purifying our souls,” I told him in my haughtiest voice. “We’ll be dancing in the deva realms while the demons torture you in hell.”

  “You stand right there, or hell you’ll pay.” My brother’s handsome face flamed with a fury that overwhelmed mine. Deepa and I huddled together in the bushes.

  In the time it would take a mango to drop from a tree, Jagdish sprinted to the cistern and back, and before we knew it, a torrent of water crashed over Deepa and me, knocking us to our knees.

  Gasping, I shook my head to clear it, trying to figure out how to get back at him.

  “Please don’t tell on us,” Deepa said in her best baby-sister voice.

  Jagdish sighed, handing us rags to dry off, his anger seemingly spent, or perhaps Deepa had won him over. Most likely, as I would learn one day, Jagdish simply didn’t want to make unnecessary enemies—even powerless ones—because he already had too many, starting with his grown-up male cousins who ruled over him. “Put your clothes on and come with me,” he said. “I won’t tell Ama how you disgraced yourself, but I’m going to tell her about the dog-duty charlatan. You shouldn’t be down here listening to these crazies. You should be with your sisters, learning to purify your body, not what you think is your soul.”

  “But—” I tried to plead with him.

  The fierce glitter in his brown eyes stopped me. With the side of a finger, he rubbed the developing cleft in his chin. It was a habit he had, edging his fingernail in that cleft, as if trying to deepen it. “I said I wouldn’t tell. If I did, you’d be locked in the women’s quarters until the day you marry.”

  The threat was clear, so as he marched us up the stairs to our mother’s domain, I was grateful things weren’t worse. As long as he didn’t tell about our naked adventure, Ama would probably confine us for a week or so, and then, preoccupied as ever with our older sisters, release us to our own devices.

  The teakwood women’s quarters were gloomy as always, despite the carved shutters letting in jiggles of sunlight over the patterned red and green tapestries affixed to the dark walls. Once inside, I sat cross-legged, sullenly spinning cotton into thread, wrinkling my nose at the jasmine perfume and the unending gossip of my mother, aunts, sisters, and cousins’ wives. Their stories were mostly tales of childbirth deaths, disappointing marriages, and the dismal and frightening present age, with the old gods drifting away or deigning to speak to only a few priests and prophets.

  “Dog-duty man was right,” I told my mother as Deepa and I wound dreary balls of undyed thread. It was our second day in captivity, and our elder sisters and other female relatives were out making offerings at the village temple. We sat in the smallest room, devoted to the spindles and spinning wheels, barely able to accommodate the three of us. “When I die, I want to go to the land of eternal bliss and stop riding the stupid samsara wheel lifetime after lifetime.”

  Ama slapped her forehead. “And what land is that? Did he tell you there’s some land out there?”

  “No, he didn’t talk at all, Ama. He was a dog,” I said, happy for her ignorance, which I could now correct. “Cook said he would end up in eternal bliss.”

  “She was toying with you.” Ama smoothed her sari, which was teal with a bright orange border. She was beautiful, with symmetrical features, a torrent of shining black hair, and glimmery brown eyes with the classic fish shape craved by all women. She also had a precision of movement, as though every gesture had been taught to her by the gods. But her voice was severe. “The only bliss comes from following Mitra’s rules and playing our roles as best we can, trusting in the Rta and the devas to guide us. They will reward us with bounty and joy.” Her words sounded wooden, as if belonging to some dead aunt.

  “You don’t seem happy,” I said. “All you do is worry about your daughters not marrying into the right clan and whether you put the right number of millet grains in the offering fire. You hardly go outside these rooms. Maybe the gods are leaving because they’re bored.”

  “Don’t you speak to me that way.” Ama plucked the misshapen thread ball out of my hand and threw it down like a dead rat. “I’d be perfectly happy to live in harmony with the divine order—except that human filth like the dog-duty ascetic and the so-called holy men your father invites to his table are driving the devas away.”

  “I like the wanderers,” I said. “They have more fun than you do, even the dog-duty man.”

  Deepa chimed in. “I’m going to be a dog-duty when I grow up.”

  Ama glared, and Deepa screwed up her face as if about to cry, then burst out laughing, as always. “I will!” She glanced at me for support. I did a poor imitation of a righteous frown.

  “Enough,” Ama said. “I hope none of the gods are listening.” She glanced down where she’d tossed my thread ball on the floor. “What a mess,” she said. “I have to rewind the whole thing.”

  She stood up in a swoosh of blue and orange. “You will stay here the rest of the day and meditate on your proper position in this earthly realm.” She strode over to the windows. The room, though small, was a corner one, and its two windows let in enough light for spinning. Now Ama closed the shutters. “I don’t want to hear giggling or even talking in here. You must learn decorum.” She stood at the door, speaking in her borrowed voice
. “A woman’s gift to men and devas is her beauty, which requires silence. Beauty gets lost in chatter.” The door closed behind her, followed by the rattle of the latch. We were locked in.

  The closed-up room was stuffy and darker than ever, the shutters’ carved filigrees allowing only the tiniest glimpse of flickering green mango leaves, as doves cooed and mynahs whistled amid the wretchedly joyful laughter of the children outside. Monsoon season would soon be upon us—who knew how many more days of sunshine we’d have before being confined to these rooms even more?

  “I can’t stand it,” I whispered and creaked open a shutter as quietly as possible. A branch of the tallest mango tree extended to within a finger’s length of the window. But how strong was it?

  Deepa crowded close to me. “Are you going to climb out?”

  I was having second thoughts. “Maybe we should try the door latch first.”

  “Ama will hear us. But if we go out the window, we can climb back up the tree and get back before she even knows we’re gone.”

  Trying to steady my breath, I looked out again at the leaves, slick in the afternoon sun, the branches heavy with fruit, bunches of mangos dangling from single stems as if arranged by the devas to make harvesting easy. The baby mangoes, green with the faintest hint of rouge, had a while before they’d ripen, which meant they wouldn’t fall and attract attention.

  No one was around. “I’ll go first,” I said, asserting my big-sisterhood once again.

  I leaned out the window, my heart suddenly faltering, suspended over the abyss between the window and the ground three stories below. Still, the main branch was thicker than my thigh and sloped gradually down to the trunk, where other branches sprouted into a convenient ladder nearly all the way to the ground. Slowly, I leaned as far as I could out the window and grasped the branch. It was steady. I looked out above the trees at the land of freedom beyond, the hills of new grass rippling silver in the wind, glossy white clouds tumbling in the blue northeast, everything freshened and sweetened by the first monsoon rains. How I wanted to get out into this glorious day! I took a deep breath, and after the stuffiness of the spinning room, the breeze filled me with the confidence of air-devas skittering through the sky. In a single motion, I grabbed hold of the branch and swung myself around so I could shimmy down to the trunk. My shift had ridden up awkwardly, but there was no one to see. “It’s your turn,” I said in a loud whisper. “But don’t grab the stems, they won’t hold your weight.”

  “I’m lighter than you.”

  “Just don’t!”

  Framed by the window, Deepa’s round face puckered with terror, and all at once the beautiful free landscape in front of me contracted into my own fear, and all I could see was the ground far, far below, the clay soil trampled and packed hard as stone. I regretted ever having thought of this cockamamy plan.

  Then Deepa broke into one of her wide grins. “I’m a bird!” she whispered. “Yesterday I was a dog; now I’m a bird.”

  “That’s not funny,” I said. For once, her terrified-child act had failed to amuse me. I wrapped my legs around the branch and held out my arms. “Be careful,” I said.

  She fell into my arms, the front of her first, clawing hands and a wild-eyed face and heavier than I expected, the branch swaying, my heart pounding through every part of my body. “Hold on!” I said, still taking care to whisper. I had to let go of her with one arm or fall myself. With my other arm I clutched her hot, squirming little body as the branch continued to sway. My arm ached. Shiny mango leaves pitched to the ground.

  “I’m all right,” she said in a gasp. “You can let go.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t do this,” I said. “I could hoist you back up.”

  “No! Let go! Don’t be a squeaky-mouse.”

  I let loose of her and started climbing down the branch, keeping my eyes on my hands to avoid the twigs. I’d almost reached the trunk when the branch jerked upward.

  I stared at the emptiness where my sister had been, my heart paralyzed, the world rocking back and forth so violently I feared it would break apart. Had Deepa jumped back inside the window? She’d had an excellent hold, I knew that for sure. She must have gone back inside.

  Far below lay a broken puppet staring up at me, wearing Deepa’s red and yellow shift.

  Without knowing it, I’d started screaming her name over and over and over. A crowd of women from the kitchen and loincloth-clad men from the fields appeared from all directions, swarming over the small figure on the ground, hiding it from my view, but not before I noticed the green mangos scattered around it. I had warned her! I wrapped my arms and legs around the branch I lay on, still howling as if only the tree could save my sister, reaching down with its branches and sweeping her back up. Then I saw my mother hurrying toward the crowd. Her scream split the air, swallowing my voice and every one of my thoughts. All I could do was hang onto the branch. I didn’t even see our two maids until they grabbed my shoulders and hauled me back into the dark room.

  I lost all sense of time. Surely, not enough of it had passed since we’d climbed out the window for anything bad to happen. Surely I could climb back inside the moment just before we decided to escape and everything would be fine!

  My mother burst into the room. “What have you done? You killed my baby!”

  “No! I wanted her to go back…” I stared up at Ama, unable to say anything more, and then I fell backwards into moonless, starless night.

  I awoke in Ama’s arms; she was crushing me against her and weeping. “It’s not your fault, it’s mine. I never should have locked you in.”

  But I would never be able to pry her blaming words from my heart.

  Over the next day, time jumbled even more. I lost the order of things. Night seemed to come and go, with everyone praying in the main altar room and the priest and the doctor conferring in rumbling, muted voices. Then I was back in the sewing room, still calling Deepa’s name; then night returned in a different form, full of chants and incantations, and through it all my mother and sisters kept weeping. At other times all sound fled from the earth.

  Finally, the next morning Ama wrapped me in a white sari so tightly that it hurt my hips and belly. She and my sisters were dressed likewise. Voices murmured around me, sounds without form. Someone offered me milk-rice pudding, but I turned my head away. I dwelled in my own silence, and a thought was struggling to emerge from it, like someone in danger of drowning.

  My sister wasn’t dead.

  She couldn’t have died, the branch was too thick and steady. And when she climbed out the window, I had held onto her. Perhaps she had fallen, but surely not far enough to kill her. She’d just been knocked out. When I had this thought, it became clear that I’d known it all along. Then I remembered I’d seen her—when? Sometime late yesterday or last night. She’d been lying on a plank behind our home altar, bouquets of lilies and heaps of plumeria all around her, the onyx statues of Mitra and the little household gods staring out over the praying mourners. But Deepa was just sleeping, just knocked out, wrapped in a white sheet. She didn’t look dead, not like my aunt or my grandfathers with their closed eyes sunken like dried-out puddles and not like my baby cousin, his skin gray and his skull wrinkled like an overripe plum. And not like the accident-mangled or sickness-ravaged children and adults I’d caught glimpses of through the years.

  Hands were pushing me out our front entrance into blinding sunlight. Twenty or thirty women in white saris had gathered under the trees, along with an equal number of men in lungis, mostly white. The women were keening, and my mother occupied the center of the group, her long hair tangled down her back, her voice raw and hoarse. The old priest, dressed in a white dhoti, stood just outside the group, and now he started walking, holding up an incense burner, filling the air with choking fumes. My father, Suppabuddha, followed. The adults parted, and the sight of the cart with the wrapped-up body burned itself into my memory
for all time. One of the male servants led a donkey to the front of the cart and hitched it up.

  Deepa’s face was covered. “She won’t be able to breathe!” I dashed forward and threw myself on the cart, intent on tearing off the wrappings.

  “Yasodara!” Jagdish lunged at me, almost throwing me to the ground. “Stop tormenting our mother! You’re old enough to understand the difference between life and death.” He clapped his hand over my mouth. “If you don’t shut up, I’m locking you in the cellar. We’re taking our sister to the charnel ground.”

  Another thing I’d known all along.

  Still, I would have tried to pull my sister off the cart, but my brother held me fast. And I realized that if I really wanted to help Deepa, I would have to follow the procession so I’d know the route. She didn’t look dead. I clutched that thought to my heart like a cherished secret. I would come back that night and rescue her.

  I’d only seen the charnel ground once and from a distance when we were on the road to visit our cousins in another village. It was on a long slope next to the river outside of town. Although we’d passed it well before the driest time of year, the grass on the slope seemed worn and faded, except for patches of lurid green grass that nourished itself on rot. From the road, we could make out a couple of face-down naked corpses and scattered white bones, but by far the worst sight was what appeared to be huge beasts, brown-black and heaving, five or six of them randomly positioned over the field.

  It took me awhile to see that they were vultures in clumps so thick they appeared as single beings, flapping their multiple wings and plunging their slimy meat-colored heads to gulp down innards, the way I’d seen them consuming the occasional dead dog or rabbit. But never so many, and never like this.

  Ama had ordered us to look away. She said that it was bad luck to gaze on such a sight, and that we were fortunate not to be passing the charnel ground at night, when roaming spirits hovered above, mourning their lost flesh and driving living beings mad with fright. At the time, I’d feared the vultures more than the ghosts, and now as I followed the cart with my sister, I was glad that by nightfall the birds would have all disappeared.