My mouth went dry as I became numb. In the few moments of silence that passed between us, I tried to absorb what he was trying to tell me, but it made no sense. I tried to react, but all I could muster was, “What?”
“That is the truth, Esha. And . . . all I can do right now is seek your forgiveness, and in time, your understanding.” He closed his eyes, and my heart skipped a beat as I feared the worst, but he kept speaking. “God will now help me to see whether my choices were in fact right or wrong, but I keep my faith . . . I love you, my princess.”
He opened his eyes again and gave another weak smile. I returned his affection with a kiss on his forehead. “Daddy, I love you.” My voice croaked, and I looked away, fighting back the tears. This was getting to be too much.
My mind was racing with so many contradictory thoughts. First, I’d been led to believe that the family in India belonged to him, and now I was being told otherwise. I’d spent a year being angry with him, and now I was frustrated. I couldn’t deal with it, because here he was, lying before me all bruised and broken and talking about his faith in God and his identity as a Sikh. What the hell was going on? I had so many questions for him, but he was too weak for a long discussion. In the meantime, I was going crazy. I had to get out. I needed air.
“Daddy, I’ll see you a bit later. I’m just going to go get some air.”
As I let go of his hand, I had a strange feeling that I was letting go of a part of me. I could sense an empty feeling creeping up from within. I turned and looked at him once more from the doorway. This can’t be it. Surely, I’ll see him again. Don’t be so scared, Esha.
Taking a deep breath, I turned on my heels and walked out the door. I tried to focus on happier moments to come, like bringing my father home and making up for lost time. I convinced myself there was still time. Life couldn’t be that cruel. Could it?
Later I realized that life has a mind of its own. It doesn’t pay any heed to the ways in which we try to convince ourselves that we have control over it. I wanted more time, because I wasn’t ready to let go of my father. I thought I had it.
He never came home from the hospital, and we didn’t make up for lost time. I never saw my father breathe, smile, talk, or open his eyes again. He passed away in my mother’s arms. She soothed his pain and watched him go. Where was I? When my father needed me most, I wasn’t there. Instead, I was out in the parking lot secretly having a cigarette, convincing myself that I had more time, because I wasn’t ready to let go. The more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t decide whether life was cruel, or I was.
THREE
After my father’s death, I found solace by sitting in my room and gazing out the window in complete silence. How many mourners visited the house, telephoned, or stood watching me as I sat in solitude, I never noticed. I allowed myself to become lost in my own quiet world of grief and regret. Memories of my father circulated in my mind constantly and pushed away all notion of sleep. Whenever I was lying in my bed, I half-expected him to come open my door as he always had when I was younger. It was a small knock, followed by a light whisper: “Esha, you awake yet?”
Maybe this is what that “phantom” feeling was all about. I had heard people describe such a feeling after they had lost something, like an arm or a leg. They had a hard time letting go of the expectation that it was still there. That’s how I felt now in my father’s absence.
Following that night at the hospital, I did my best to avoid my mother. I’m not sure if it was guilt or regret about the conversation we’d had right before we got the call about the accident, but for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to look her in the eye. So I avoided her altogether, until finally, one day, she came to my room.
I was once again perched up against my window, looking out at the mountains where they lined the clear blue sky, caught up in my own thoughts. She laid a hand on my shoulder and squeezed it slightly. Her touch brought me back into the room, and I slowly tilted my head towards her.
She was dressed in a white salwar-kameez, a simple Indian suit, with a shawl covering her from her waist up. Her face was pale and swollen. Her eyes were severely reddened from weeks of crying and sleepless nights. She had aged rapidly. Her once bright and striking appearance was nowhere to be seen.
“Esha,” she began, “our lives have changed a lot in the past few weeks. Waheguru only knows what the coming days will be like. No matter what, we must be a family.”
Hearing her use the word “family” brought tears to my eyes. I turned towards her, sinking my head into her stomach as she wrapped her arms around me. Feeling her warmth made me realize how lonely I had felt. Her warmth filled the longing I had been battling since the moment I had left my father’s bedside. She offered reassurance, comfort and love, and I accepted.
“I feel lost without Daddy,” I confessed. “I don’t know . . . anything any more. How I should behave, what I should do, who I should be . . . I’m lost.” I could no longer hold back my emotions. I felt a surge of energy and rage come from within, and this time I let it flow out. “I just feel so horrible. The things I said about him, those words, those feelings, they haunt me every moment, but . . . at the same time, it still doesn’t make any sense, Mom.”
“What doesn’t?”
“Everything! What’s true, what’s not, the things Daddy said to me before he . . . It’s too much!”
“Perhaps it is, but life does not stop moving because things get to be too much, Esha. Time does not stop. We have to pick up the pieces.”
“Why does everyone keep saying that? Life isn’t moving for me. Everything has stopped moving, everything . . .”
“Your father was a good man. He had a lot of respect and admiration for the people in his life, and he received just as much in return. Most important, he loved his kids very much. I hope you will remember that always.”
I nodded as she continued. “What you have heard about this . . . this other family in India . . . is partly true and partly fictional. The time has come for you to know everything.”
I looked up as she finally started to address a topic that was very disturbing for me. She turned away and walked over to my bed, where she sat down and gently folded her hands in her lap, staring at them intently. Perhaps she didn’t have the courage to look me in the eye as she spoke of this secret that obviously had been a burden on her marriage for years.
“You and your sister are not aware of this, but your father once had a brother. He was only one year younger than your father, but they were like twins, always together. Your father loved him very much, the whole family did. All the neighbours in the village would comment on how proud he would make the family one day. He was bright, handsome, and full of life.”
“Why haven’t we been told about him before? Why didn’t Dad ever say anything about a brother?”
“Because the family cut all ties with him not too long after your father and I married. It was agreed that we would never mention him again. Even now, I am not sure how to tell you about him.”
“Just say it, Mom. From the beginning,” I said eagerly.
“Okay, well,” she began, “he was a very carefree young boy, someone who was praised by his peers and adored by the elders. Like most boys, he was always up to some mischief, but never anything serious, and he could almost always get away with it. After your father and I married, he did his very best to make me feel comfortable within the family. We got along very well. He would come running to me and plead with me to calm your father and smooth things over whenever he was caught cheating on his school papers.”
“So what happened?” I asked. My curiosity was becoming unbearable.
“It was the evening of Diwali. The house