Amulya Malladi - The Mango Season

It was as if there were two people inside me: Indian Priya and American Priya, Ma’s Priya and Nick’s Priya. I wondered who the real Priya was.

I had always thought that self-evaluation was nonsense. It didn’t really mean anything. How could you not know yourself? I believe we know who we are, we know the exact truth about ourselves, and it is when this truth is not palatable that we want to dig deeper within our conscience to find something better, something we can live with. Did I need to dig deeper now, to explore who I was beyond Nick’s Priya and Ma’s Priya?

We laid the oil- and spice-coated pieces of mango on the cloth, our yellow fingerprints marking the pristine white muslin.

“Did you tell your Thatha?” Neelima asked without looking at me, and suddenly I was face to face with familial politics again.

Everything was so complicated and it struck me like a sack of mangoes-I couldn’t live here. Nostalgia for a mango and HAPPINESS was one thing, living here on a day-to-day basis was impossible. I didn’t want to live close to my family anymore. I had been in Thatha’s house just a few hours and I was already seething with feminine rage over half a dozen things.

I wanted to distance myself from India and my family; I wanted to feel nothing, pretend this was happening to someone else, not me; but I couldn’t. I knew these people and they knew me; however dark and ugly it might get, I would still know them and they me. There was no delusional escape, this was the here and now, and whether I liked it or not, I was here now.

“I told him,” I murmured softly.

Neelima wanted Ammamma and Thatha’s approval but she was never going to get it, not complete and total approval. For that she would have to die and come back as a Telugu Brahmin. I felt sorry for her even as I felt annoyance. Why was she here? If Nick’s family treated me the way Ammamma and Thatha treated Neelima, I would give Nick hell and make sure I didn’t deal with his family.

As it was, Nick’s family was wonderful. Whenever we went to visit them in Memphis, they were all hugs and acceptance. When I went with Nick the first time, it was for Thanksgiving and I was very nervous. What if they didn’t like me? I was an Indian and I wondered if they would hate me for that as my parents would hate Nick for being American.

Nick’s mother didn’t care about my ethnicity but she was undoubtedly fascinated by my Indianness. When we met for the first time she told me, “I’ve never spoken to an Indian before, but I love curry.”

And over curry powder and turkey, Nick’s mother- Frances-and I became friends. She was an adorable woman who always remembered my birthday and sent me a gift, something she knew I wanted. She would investigate, harass Nick for information and try to find out from conversations with me what I wanted and then she would ensure that the birthday gift reached me wrapped and packed and on the mark. She always talked about our “impending” wedding and changed the reception dinner menu regularly-her way of asking us to hurry up and tie the knot and of course give her grandchildren.

Nick’s father had died five years ago and from what Nick told me about him, I was sorry to have not met him. He used to be a high school football coach and apparently never held a grudge when Nick became an accountant and his brother, Doug, a sous-chef in New Orleans.

“He used to joke that we were sissies,” Nick said when I asked him about his father. “I miss him. He never told us what to do. I think if I wanted to be a ballet dancer, Dad would have called me a sissy and then would have driven me to ballet lessons.”

Frances had called me before I came to India. “Tell them you’re pregnant. They’ll want you to marry my Nick right away, ” she joked when I told her that I was more than a little nervous about telling my family about Nick.

“So what did your Thatha say about the baby?” Neelima asked demurely.

“Nothing,” I replied, and sat down cross-legged, my right hand still inside the pink bucket. “Why do you keep coming here, Neelima?” I asked bluntly, and her eyes met mine with shock.

“Priya!” Sowmya gasped.

I shook my head and put my hand on the cloth and made a yellow handprint. “I didn’t mean it that way, ” I said finally. “I mean, they treat you… well, they treat you like they don’t like you.”

“How will they like her if they don’t know her?” Sowmya jumped to Neelima’s defense.

“Do you really believe that knowing her will make them like her?” I asked slightly irritated. “Anand keeps sending her here and they… they don’t want to like her, Sowmya.”

Neelima sniffled and we both turned our attention to her. Lord! Did the woman have to cry? I disliked women who cried incessantly over one thing or the other. Neelima had been bawling or on the verge of doing so ever since I met her.

“Come, come,” Sowmya nudged her sister-in-law with her elbow because both her hands were drenched in turmeric.

“Crying is not going to solve your problem,” I admonished, and they both looked like two little puppies I had kicked with high-heeled boots.

“Don’t be mean,” Sowmya said sternly. “You don’t know what she has been through.”

I shrugged. “Does it matter? So she has been through hell, I understand, but I don’t see why she should keep coming back here for more of it.”

“Because Anand wants me to,” Neelima said, and wiped her tears with the sleeve of her red blouse. “He keeps making me come here so that his parents will… accept us. But they don’t, do they? Priya is right, Sowmya. They just don’t want to.”

“It takes time,” Sowmya said solemnly.

“How much time?” Neelima demanded sarcastically. “We have been married for over a year now; I am going to have a baby soon. How will they treat my child?”

“You may have a son and Lata may have a daughter,” I said, trying to lighten the atmosphere just a little.

Sowmya and Neelima smiled.

“How about your parents?” I asked. “Are they okay with Anand?”

Neelima nodded. “They like him very much. They even tried to get friendly, but they don’t want to have anything to do with my parents. We tried, you know; we called them all to our house so that the parents could meet and everything. But they didn’t even come, called at the last minute making up an excuse about some water problem in the house. My mother was so upset and my father… bless that man, he told me to be careful and that he would support me through anything.”

Sowmya glared at her. “Meaning?”

Neelima stuck her hand inside the pink bucket and laid out the remaining fistful of mangoes on the muslin and started to spread them.

“Neelima?” Sowmya persisted, and Neelima threw the last piece of mango down forcefully.

“Just that,” she retorted angrily. “Your parents treat me like garbage and mine treat him so well. If things don’t work out and if Anand persists on making his parents happy, what choice do I have?”

I was shocked. Divorce! Was she talking about divorce and being a single mother?

“But I am pregnant now,” she added, and then shook her head. “Anand and I are very happy together.”

Sowmya was pleased with that answer. “My parents will come around.”

It was a hollow promise. They would finally, someday, accept her, but she would always be the woman who stole their sweet, little, innocent boy.

“Let us get out of here before one of us gets a sunstroke,” I advised the duo, and we went downstairs to cook lunch.

Lata and Ma were already in the kitchen chopping vegetables, talking about a wedding they had attended a couple of weeks ago.

“She was fat… so fat,” Lata was saying. “And he… What a catch!”