THE SARI

BY

LALITA NORONHA

“You’re not wearing that to John’s wedding, are you?” my husband said, as I unwrapped a bundle of saris two weeks before the big day. Like a patchwork quilt, I spread them out on the bed—a cobalt blue silk with silver stars, a flame red streaked with gold reminiscent of a brilliant sunset, a forest-green sprinkled with amber leaves, and my favorite—my own wedding sari, white with a red and silver filigree border.

            “Oh, I might,” I said, not looking at Phil, “I was thinking about it.”

            “You’re kidding, right?” he said, absently opening and closing the drawers of our dresser. “Where’s my black T-shirt?”

            “No, I’m not kidding,” I said, answering the first question. Phil threw a what-are-you-up-to-now glance in my direction. “You’ll be the only one in a sari. Won’t you feel out of place?”

            He had a point. After all, I’d given up wearing saris several years ago. Too many justifications—no, it wouldn’t catch fire, or snag on a loose plank; it didn’t get in my way; it took about as long to drape as buttoning down a blouse and skirt. Never mind that millions of women slept in them, wore them to work in rice fields and factories, on construction sites and fishing boats—even spread their legs and popped babies out in them. No explanation sufficed; my Indian clothes were too far-out for a promising career in real estate and our social circle of friends. People wouldn’t identify with an Indian woman’s “costume,” they said. So I’d wrapped my saris in sheets like shrouds, along with beaded bags, bangles, sandals, and arrays of paisley bindis I would no longer wear on my forehead, and buried them all under my bed.

             “You mean you’ll feel out of place,” I said.

            “So?” Phil said, “That’s true. I probably will, and so will you.”  His voice held no tremor of doubt. “Ah, here it is,” he said, pulling his black T-shirt from the clothes hook on the door. “It’s hiding back here. Want to bet Jay borrowed it again?” He stressed the word “borrowed,” a slight irritation creeping into his voice. “He has been going out an awful lot. Must be sweet on someone.”

“You said he could help himself to your T-shirts,” I said, “and at least he hangs them up.”

“But, it’s dirty now, just when I want it,” Phil said, holding it up.

“I’ll have it washed and ironed by this evening,” I said.

When I first saw Phil he was sitting catty corner from me in Calculus 101, looking nothing like the man I hoped to marry. Five seven at best, barely an inch taller than me, slender build like a jockey’s, pale skin, small hands, almost dainty feet, a shuffling walk that scuffed his soles and skewed the heels of his shoes. Long dirty-blond hair, but not long enough for a ponytail. Not my type, not my culture, and I wouldn’t have cast a second look had it not been for his beard, and my weakness for bearded men, who I convinced myself must be the most passionate lovers, although I had no evidence for my convictions. He was Omar Sharif in Lawrence of Arabia, Richard Harris in Camelot, Charleston Heston in Ben Hur, characters in my trilogy of the world’s hottest lovers. I’d seen each movie at least twice before I’d come to America.

            We made love in an empty classroom the last day of our sophomore year in college, and often during that long, sultry summer. Without the encumbrance of family in America, freedom tasted sweeter than my mother’s mango chutney. We rented an old beat-up carriage house up in the Adirondacks. He got a job flipping hamburgers at the local Mickey Ds. I worked as a tour guide trekking up and down Robert Frost country—pointing out his log cabin and the roads he took strewn with trillium, wood sorrel, the poisonous bluebead lily, and Solomon seal with its red, translucent berries. Phil brought home greasy, leftover French fries and cheeseburgers for dinner. All of it—the food, flowers, and love—was free. Yet, even back then, we disagreed about love and marriage, and traditions.

“How can you arrange a marriage?” he asked, when I told him my parents had never seen each other till their wedding day. “You must mean make arrangements.”

“No,” I said, “not at all. I mean their parents, my grandparents, arranged the whole thing—they conferred with astrologers, matched horoscopes, picked the date, discussed dowry—the whole bit. My parents had to do nothing but show up, basically.”

“Whoa! That’s wild. Scary. Like a bargain basement sale. Who knows what’s in the bin?”

“On the contrary,” I said, “it’s the opposite. You’ve got tons of people examining the merchandise at the counter. People who want the best for their children. And it isn’t a bargain basement. In fact, it’s a specialty store.”

“Oh yeah?” he said, grinning. “And how come you’re not on the shelf? With a big for-sale sign on your head? ”

“Actually I am,” I said. “in India. Even as we speak, my parents .. …”

“The hell you are,” he said, pulling me down on his lap. “You’re mine, baby.”

“I am?” I asked, teasing.

“Yup, bought and paid for in full,” he said, his fingers slowly undoing the buttons on my blouse. I could feel my dark nipples hardening under his touch. Then suddenly, he picked me up and stood me in front of him. Taking one end of my sari, he slowly began to unwrap the six yards, deliberately, pleat by pleat, his fingers lingering a little below my belly button each time he completed a round. When the sari was undone, he knelt and pulled gently on the knot of the skirt into which it had been tucked, and it dropped below my hips to the floor.  

“Some package,” he said, looking up, his eyes glinting, as I stood there in my underwear, folds of material at my ankles, my blouse open, trembling.

When Phil and I were first married, he liked me in saris. It was a good ice-breaker at parties. Our unusual marriage, in itself, was a good conversation starter. “How did you two meet?” his business colleagues wanted to know. Clearly, he was the prince who’d won the princess, and at 24, here in America, it was easy to pretend. Interracial marriages were rare then; words such as “multicultural” and “diversity” were not mainstream vocabulary. It was all very exotic.

In the years that followed, Phil and I tried hard to bridge the culture chasm that seemed to widen between us. New ones kept coming, big cracks in the earth, and too many times I found my shoe stuck, my toes pinched and bruised, as I struggled to keep pace. It wasn’t easy. I’ll change, I kept telling myself. I’ll learn to measure up to Phil and to his well-connected family. I’ll remember not to wear white after Labor Day, not to walk barefoot to the mail box, to keep my toe nails painted, my feet encased in L’eggs, to set the table—salad forks for salads, butter plates, iced tea spoons, water goblets, and wine glasses—everything in its place. I began answering to “Lily” because Lilavati was too difficult to pronounce.

“A mouthful,” Phil’s mother said, “So many syllables. Lily sounds so pretty. It suits you.” 

When his family came to dinner, I ran the kitchen fan on high the night before to rid the house of remnant garlic or turmeric curry smells. I made large pot roasts, or lamb chops, and cooked huge quantities of food to avoid scraping pans. I kept an assortment of rubber spatulas in all sizes handy, just in case. I discarded half-burned incense sticks and lit fresh vanilla candles. If I concentrate, I thought, really put my mind to these issues like a blood hound, sniffing, sniffing, snout to the ground, I’ll lift myself out of this hole—my uncouth ways and meager past, out of this frugal mind-set I’ve been stuck in since I was a child. I would forget those hems my mother took up and let down, socks darned and re-darned, workbooks she insisted that I erase to hand down to my siblings. It was just a matter of time. But, like a recurring dream, I still heard the scrape of spoon on vessel, my mother rinsing it and adding the slightly colored water to already-thinned-out gravy; the smaller and smaller pieces of meat she cut for us, saving the best for my father and none for herself.

It was then that I planned to leave home—long before I gaped in awe at glossy pictures of spacious buildings and manicured lawns on campuses the size of small towns. I became what Americans call a nerd, studying greedily, learning the how-to of test taking, applications and scholarships, hounding international agencies, until I found my way to the red, white, and blue land of milk and honey. Here, I told myself, I’ll shed my past like snakeskin.

By the end of the week I still hadn’t decided what to wear to John’s wedding. “I can’t believe you couldn’t find anything at Macys,” Phil said. “Did you try Nordstrom’s?”

I didn’t answer.  The truth was I hadn’t gone shopping at all. After all this time, I was still insecure about how I looked in western clothes.

“Saris are awkward, Lil,” Phil said in a soothing voice. “Draws too much attention, especially at a wedding.”

“On the contrary,” I said, “that’s when the wedding party—bride and bridesmaids are center stage. Guests just blend into the woodwork.”

“But I’m the best man,” Phil said, his voice rising with sensible logic.  “I’ll be up there making a toast, and you’re my wife.”

“You never said stuff like this about saris when we first met,” I said. “You thought they were sexy.”

“They were,” Phil said. “We were young then. Your waist was what? Twenty four inches?”

“Oh, so that’s what it is, is it?” I said, my blood starting to boil. “I don’t look like a twenty-something, or thirty-something, and so I don’t look good in saris? I really feel your pain, Phil—stuck with me, while your friends have new and improved models. Is that it?”

“For God’s sake,” Phil said, “don’t get started.”

“This is John’s third wedding, isn’t it?” I said, as if I didn’t know. He glanced at me sideways, on guard. “Right on target—the seven year itch.”

“He’s a good friend, for God’s sake. You can wish him well, you know. You’ve known him a long time too, since we were kids in college, remember?”

“Oh, I remember, all right,” I said, “And I do wish him well. Why wouldn’t I? If it makes him happy; it’s his life.”

“Exactly,” Phil said.

“The only thing is…” I faltered. “I just wish you wouldn’t wish for what he has.”

“Here we go again,” Phil said, “now what’s that supposed to mean? Are we back to talking riddles?”

“No riddles,” I said, “it’s a dead giveaway, Phil.  It’s written all over your face. You wish you walked in his shoes. New wife, new home, new beginnings. You’re envious, aren’t you? You wish you were he.” Words gush out like water from a broken dam.

“I told you I’m happy for him. That’s it. He’s in love; I’ve never seen him so in love.”

“I have,” I said, “twice before. His first two wives, remember?”

“We’ve been through this before, Lil,” he said. “Every time you get into a bitchy mood..”

“Yeah, it comes up every time your friends dump their wives and begin new romances—the hearts and flowers and big diamonds. You tag along like a little boy. You get off on their excitement because you can’t generate any with your own wife.”

“Correction,” he yelled, “We can’t generate excitement. We. Not just me. It cuts both ways, Lil.”

“My name is Lilavati,” I said, my voice breaking, “Not Lil. Not Lily. That’s what you used to call me, remember? Is that too many syllables for you too?”

“I thought you liked Lily,” he said.

“Your mother gave me that name,” I cried.

“If you didn’t like it, you should have said so,” he yelled. “This is a helluva time to dig up old crap.”

“I wanted her to like me—love me, like a daughter—like she loves your sister. I wanted so badly to belong,” I burst out, choking on my words, surprising myself.  

He didn’t answer. I waited, wanted him to put his arm around me and say she did love me, and he did too, and I did belong, that I was making it all up. But he disappeared into the bathroom and turned on the shower.

Our son, Jay was named Sanjay after my father, who had died while I was pregnant with his first grandson. The name was easy enough to pronounce, two syllables, I thought.  Yet somehow, it too, got chopped and I still wasn’t sure whom to blame. Perhaps it was Sanjay himself, who was the only mixed-race kid in his class. Perhaps it was Phil, who with characteristic humor would call out, “Hey, son, Sun-jay. Is that an echo I hear? Son-sun-get it? Or is it J.J—” And the two would laugh and get into a wrestling match, a male bonding experience I couldn’t share. In any case, since I didn’t object, the name Jay caught on, both at home and in school, and stuck. And in time, my father’s name, like so many memories, disappeared into a rainbow-colored slurry in the big American melting pot—and no one, it seemed, had noticed or cared.

Phil and I didn’t speak much for the next two days. I left early for work both mornings and managed to avoid him the first evening by staying late at the gym. I did an hour on the treadmill, lifted some free weights, then enrolled in Ai chi, the mind/body healing class. The second evening, Phil went to Sanjay’s school play. It was “opening night” of his final performance as a senior and Sanjay had the lead in Romeo and Juliet. That was my night to lecture on “The Art of Selling Homes” at Lincoln College. I had no choice but to see the last show the following weekend.

“Good job, Romeo,” Phil joked at dinner. “You and Juliet made quite a handsome pair.”

Sanjay shuffled in his chair. “Yeah, thanks Dad,” he said. “Can I have some more fried chicken?”

 “She has a nice accent,” Phil said, passing him the platter. “What’s her real name?”

“Nirmala Desai,” Sanjay said, helping himself to a leg and a thigh.

“Oh, Indian?” I asked, perking up. “Juliet, played by an Indian girl?”

“Why not, Mom?” Sanjay said, “what’s the big deal?”

“No big deal,” I said, covering up. “I’m just surprised, that’s all.”

“She was born here,” Sanjay offered, shoveling mashed potatoes into his mouth.  “She’s as American as apple pie. Like me. ” 

Phil looked up from his plate and our eyes locked. Sanjay’s words hung in the air between us.

“So, then her parents are Indian immigrants?” I asked, unwilling to give up, “or is she mixed?”

“They’re Indian. American citizens, I guess,” Sanjay shrugged, working on another mouthful. “I’m not sure. I didn’t ask her.”

“Will we get to meet her?” Phil asked. “I mean in real life as Nirmala, not Juliet.”

“I guess so. I’ve asked her to Senior Prom,” he said, eyes bent over his plate.

I watched him; how he loved mashed potatoes and gravy. And fresh-baked, cinnamon apple pie, I thought. As if he’d read my mind, he smacked his lips. “Super job, Mom. You’re the best mashed potato maker in the world.”

I smiled. “You were always a sucker for food,” I said, “A real BP. Remember what that is?”

“Yup,” he grinned. “Bottomless Pit.  I must admit, I love good chow.”

“The way to a man’s heart,” I began, passing him the gravy boat.

Sanjay rolled his eyes. “I know, I know,” he said, “You always say that. So, what’s new? The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, right?” His words rolled out like marbles.

“Right on the money,” I said.

“Actually,” Phil said, looking up. For the briefest moment he looked into my eyes before turning to Sanjay. “It’s not, Romeo. The way to a man’s heart is through his eyes. And the eyes are the windows to your soul.”

 The next day I left for the mall early. With no appointments at the office, I had plenty of time to browse through department stores. I hoped to latch on to a good sales person to help me find an outfit. Black heels, with a glittering bauble, and a new purse, beaded or with a silver clasp, would dress up a plain dress.  If I was lucky, I’d get it all in one place, but I had to find something.

Stepping off the escalator, I noticed a small, new corner store with red sale signs posted on tripods at the entrance. Dozens of multicolored peasant skirts hung from racks; saris were displayed in the window, fanned out like peacock tails. Unable to resist, I walked in. The store was long and narrow, the front devoted to clothing, the back to an array of odds and ends—herbal shampoos, carved incense holders, Ayurvedic soaps, henna, lacquered boxes, and colored glass bangles thrown in with packets of assorted spices. I sniffed at a green, oblong cake of soap. What on earth was that fragrance? The circuitry in my brain felt disconnected. Inhaling deeply, I closed my eyes. And there I was in pigtails walking home from school under a canopy of trees, picking gul-mohur blossoms, or pieces of tamarind to chew on, or jumping up to reach a drooping branch on a Neem tree. Crushing the leaves between my fingers, I breathed the beloved fragrance that had permeated my childhood. I’d seen village girls chew on strips of its antiseptic bark, rubbing their teeth with the equivalent of a tooth brush. With a sudden urgency, I rummaged for more cakes of Neem soap, but they had sold out. 

At Macys, my eyes popped the instant I saw it. I could hardly believe my luck. There it was, a long lilac dress with a delicately sequined bodice and a slit at the back. There were pretty matching heels and a jeweled hairpin on display.

“It’s really very flattering,” the sales girl said, as I emerged from the fitting room.

“Yeah, it hides a multitude of sins, doesn’t it? I joked, turning around, side to side, in front of the mirror to check the slit and my hips.

“It does,” she replied, sincerely. “I mean, look at the way it’s cut.” Her hands glided over her hips and lingered. “It has a slimming, chic look.”

“It’s a morning wedding,” I said, “how’s the color?”

“Beautiful,” she said, “brings out your skin tone. And with those shoes…and if you pull your hair back…” Her smile was genuine as she took my credit card. “Enjoy. Have a wonderful time,” she said, carefully wrapping the dress in tissue.

As I pulled into our garage, I noticed Phil’s car was parked. He was home earlier than usual. He’d volunteered to pick up Sanjay’s dark blue suit from the cleaners. His black tuxedo with an ice-blue satin cummerbund, the color of the maid of honor’s dress, was already hanging in the closet. Phil was standing by the kitchen window looking out  the back at Sanjay’s old swing set and a rusted basket ball hoop.  His hair, slightly long at the back, reminded me of our younger days.

“What’s all this stuff?” he asked, watching me juggle packages.

“Guess what?” I said. “I found a nice dress. And some shoes to match. And a hairpin.” He helped me with some bags and followed me up the stairs. “The lady showed me how to wear my hair.”

“Oh?” Phil said.

And as I pushed open our bedroom door I saw it hanging there on the bedpost—my white silk sari with the red and silver filigree border, a brown laundry tag hanging from the tassels. It looked just as beautiful as it did on my wedding day.

I turned to Phil. “What’s this?” I asked, “I just bought a…”

The look in his eyes stopped me. “Wear it, Lil,” he said, softly. “I want you to wear it.”

I turned away, my heart beating fast, and pulled the lavender dress out from between the tissues. “Look,” I said, laying it against the length of my body.

He reached over and took the dress away. “It’s beautiful,” he said, laying it down on the bed, “but wear it some other time.”

And there, for just an instant, the years with all they had held, fell away at our feet like the silk folds of a sari.

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