The Lowland

the front door. Her throat was raw with pain. She needed water but she didn’t dare ask for it. She put her hand on the knob.
    I’m sorry, Bela. I won’t bother you again.
    I know why you left us, Bela said, directing the words at Gauri’s back.
    I’ve known for years about Udayan, she went on. I know who I am.
    Now it was Gauri unable to move, unable to speak. Unable to reconcile hearing Udayan’s name, coming from Bela.
    And it doesn’t matter. Nothing excuses what you did, Bela said.
    Bela’s words were like bullets. Putting an end to Udayan, silencing Gauri now.
    Nothing will ever excuse it. You’re not my mother. You’re nothing. Can you hear me? I want you to nod if you can hear me.
    There was nothing inside her. Was this what Udayan felt, in the lowland when he stood to face them, as the whole neighborhood watched? There was no one to witness what was happening now. Somehow, she nodded her head.
    You’re as dead to me as he is. The only difference is that you left me by choice.
    She was right; there was nothing to clarify, nothing more to convey.
    There was a knock on the sliding glass door, and Bela went to open it. Meghna wanted to come in.
    She saw Meghna standing at the dining table with Bela, seeking approval for the flowers she’d chosen. Bela was composed, attentive to her daughter again, behaving as if Gauri were already gone. Together they were taking old flowers out of a mason jar and replacing them with new ones.
    Gauri could not help herself; before leaving, she crossed the room, walked over to the table, and placed her hand on the girl’s head, then on the cool of her cheek.
    Good-bye, Meghna. I enjoyed meeting you.
    Politely, the child looked up at her. Taking her in and then forgetting her.
    Nothing more was said. Gauri walked toward the front door, briskly this time. Bela, not looking up from what she was doing, did nothing to detain her.
    She opened the envelope as soon as her mother was out of the house, before she’d even started the ignition of the car. She made sure she’d signed and agreed to what her father had asked. What he’d told Bela, a few months ago, he was ready to do.
    There were the signatures, all of them in place. She was thankful for this. As bewildering as it had been, she was thankful that it was she, not her father, who’d had to confront Gauri. She was thankful that she’d shielded him from that.
    Her mother’s brief presence had shocked Bela as a dead body might. But already she had vanished again. She listened to the sound of the car fading, then disappearing, and then it was as if her mother had never come back, and those few moments had never happened. And yet she’d returned, stood before her, spoken to her, spoken to Meghna. Bela had dreamed it so many times.
    This morning, seeing her mother, the force of her anger had crushed her. She’d never felt such violent emotion before.
    It twisted through the love she felt for her father, her daughter, her guarded fondness for Drew. Its destructive current uprooted those things, splintering them and flinging them aside, shearing the leaves from the trees.
    For a moment she was flung back to the day they’d returned from Calcutta. The ripe heat of August, the door to the study left open, the desktop nearly bare. The grass sprouting nearly to her shoulders, spreading before her like a sea.
    Even now Bela felt the urge to strike her. To be rid of her, to kill her all over again.
    6.
    VIP Road, the old way to and from the airport in Dum Dum, had once been remote enough for bandits, avoided after dark. But now she passed high-rise apartment buildings, glass-fronted offices, a stadium. Lit-up malls and amusement parks. Foreign companies and five-star hotels.
    The city was called Kolkata now, the way Bengalis pronounced it. The taxi traveled along a peripheral artery that bypassed the northern portion of the city, the congested center. It was evening, the traffic dense but moving quickly. Flowers and trees were planted along the sides of the road. New flyovers, new sectors replacing what used to be farmland and swamp. The taxi was an Ambassador. But most of the other cars were imported, smaller sedans.
    After the bypass, turning after a fancy hospital, a few familiar things. The train tracks at Ballygunge, the tangled intersection at Gariahat. Life pouring out of crooked lanes, seated on broken steps. Hawkers, selling clothes, selling slippers