Arranged Marriage
Stories
Chapter One
THE BATS
That year mother cried a lot, nights. Or maybe she had always cried,
and that was the first year I was old enough to notice. I would wake
up in the hot Calcutta dark and the sound of her weeping would be
all around me, pressing in, wave upon wave, until I could no longer
tell where it was coming from. The first few times it happened, I
would sit up in the narrow child's bed that she had recently taken
to sharing with me and whisper her name. But that would make her
pull me close and hold me tight against her shaking body, where the
damp smell of talcum powder and sari starch would choke me until I
couldn't bear it any longer and would start to struggle away. Which
only made her cry more. So after some time I learned to lie rigid
and unmoving under the bedsheet, plugging my fingers into my ears to
block out her sobs. And if I closed my eyes very tight and held them
that way long enough, little dots of light would appear against my
eyelids and I could almost pretend I was among the stars.
One morning when she was getting me ready for sc ... read full excerpt from Arranged Marriage: Stories ebook
