The Lowland

Gauri to minimize her fears, to rid her mind of these impulses. To handle Bela less, to ask Subhash to hold her instead.
    She reminded herself that all mothers needed assistance. She reminded herself that Bela was her child and Udayan’s; that Subhash, for all his helpfulness, for the role he’d deftly assumed, was simply playing a part. I’m her mother, she told herself. I don’t have to try as hard.
    He entered the bedroom without knocking now, the minute Bela woke up in the middle of the night and cried. Picking her up, walking her around the apartment. He was unprepared for how small she was. Her only weight seemed to come from the blankets wrapped around her, nothing more.
    Already, she seemed to be recognizing him. To accept him, and to allow him to set aside the reality that he was an uncle, an imposter. She reacted to the sound of his voice as she lay in a flat cradle he formed by crossing one of his legs and resting his ankle on top of the opposite knee. In that nest of his folded limbs, cushioned against his thigh, she lay contentedly, seeking him with her eyes. He felt purposeful as he held her, essential to the life she’d begun.
    One night he switched off the television and entered the bedroom with Bela. Gauri was turned away from him, asleep. He perched on the other side of the bed, then leaned back, placing Bela’s moist black head on his chest, quieting her. He extended his legs on the bed so that Bela could stretch out.
    He remained on top of the covers, his eyes open in the dark. Though Bela rested on top of his body, his awareness of Gauri, no longer pregnant, was greater. His curiosity, his desire for her body, had only intensified. For now he marveled at how she had produced the child that lay against him, helpless but tranquil, her cheek turned to one side.
    When he opened his eyes Bela was no longer on his chest but beside him, in Gauri’s arms, feeding. The room was dark, the blinds down. Birds were chirping. His body was warm, still clothed.
    What time is it?
    Morning.
    He had fallen asleep; they had passed the night in the same bed. Lying next to her on top of a shared sheet, with Bela between them.
    When he realized what had happened he sat up, apologizing.
    Gauri shook her head. She was looking down at Bela, but then she turned her face to him. She put out a hand, not using it to touch him, but offering it to him.
    Stay.
    She told him it had been reassuring, having him with her in the room. She said that she was ready, that it had been long enough.
    Her altered appearance made it easier: her shortened hair, her face that was turning gaunt again after the baby’s birth, the slacks and tops she now wore exclusively. Also the effects of Bela’s birth, the shadows that were beneath her eyes, the smell of milk on her skin, so that her body was marked less by the fact of Udayan impregnating her, and more by the infant they now shared.
    At first she expressed no obvious desire, only a willingness. And yet this combination of indifference and intent excited him. They bought a crib for Bela, and when she was in it, asleep, the bed was theirs.
    She lay on her stomach, or on her side. Her back to him, her head turned, her eyes closed. He pushed the material of her nightgown up to her waist. He saw the tapering shape of it. The long straight valley bisecting her back.
    Inside of her, surrounded by her, he worried that she would never accept him, that she would never fully belong to him, even as he breathed in the smell of her hair, and clasped her breast in his hand.
    Her skin was uniform, the color even. No tan lines, not a blemish or a fleck of variation as there had been, everywhere, on Holly’s body. No nicks on her calves from shaving, not the prickly texture he expected to find on her buttocks and thighs. It was almost disturbing in its softness, like an underbelly that ought not to be exposed.
    And yet it did not bruise from his weight, did not redden or swell from the pressure of his teeth or hands. The briny odor between her legs, transferred temporarily to his fingers when he probed her, was absent the following morning when he sought it again.
    She did not speak to him, but after the first few times she began to take his hand and put it where she needed it to be. She began turning to him, kneeling up on the bed, facing him. She reached the moment when her breathing quickened and was audible, her skin glowing, her body tensely held.
    It was the only