Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 106422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 532(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 532(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
“Would you like food, coffee?” I asked them. “Diya’s in a deep sleep so I’m going to head out and hit up a fast-food joint.” My appetite had returned with a vengeance with my wife’s awakening, my entire body suddenly, wildly alive.
To my surprise, Mrs. Kumar got up. “I’ll come with you,” she said. “I need to get away for a while.”
Neither her husband nor Ajay made any move to stop her, and we were soon driving through the night-shadowed streets of Rotorua. I didn’t know what to say to her, so kept my silence…and as my father had taught me, the silence weighed her down until she had to break it, had to speak.
“You think I’m a bad mother, don’t you?” Words formed into hard little pellets. “I see the judgment on your face.”
I’d been extremely careful in all my interactions with her—and I knew how good I was at hiding what I wanted to hide. “Mrs. Kumar, I don’t know you,” I said with open awkwardness. “I’ve been focused on Diya all this time.”
She was stiff in the passenger seat for a long minute before she seemed to fold in on herself. “I’m sorry.” Words so tired they were near inaudible. “I just…I could never bond with my daughter. That makes me sound awful, but I tried. I just couldn’t.
“It wasn’t about Shumi being a girl and Ajay being a boy like some people whispered. I wanted a little girl, had all these baby dresses already picked out for her, was ready for us to do the mother-daughter things I saw other mothers with girls doing, but when she came…I felt nothing.”
It took effort to see past my own experience of emotional neglect. “Postpartum depression?”
“Yes, I think so, looking back. But I’m not educated like Sarita was—I was a village girl. I didn’t understand that anything was wrong, just thought I was a bad mother. It did get better after a while, but by then, she was four and she knew deep inside that I didn’t love her.”
Her sobs were loud in the car, and even though we’d arrived at the fast-food restaurant, I didn’t go into the drive-through. Pulling into their small parking lot instead, I said, “I’m really sorry.”
This woman wasn’t Audrey, who’d made a conscious choice to neglect me.
“I blame myself,” she said at last, after she could speak again, “about how she got so hung up on Bobby. He paid attention to her when she was little, used to help her if she fell, small things like that. It sounds like nothing, but for a child who knows her mother doesn’t love her…it was everything.”
The waterfall of her words wouldn’t stop.
“She followed that whole family around like a little pet. She’d do anything for them—but at least Rajesh and Sarita and especially Diya were nice to her. I was happy she had a best friend in that house, even if Diya would never see the reality of who her brother was, what he did to Shumi when they were alone.”
Digging out a tissue from her bag, she wiped at her face. “I tried to get her away from Bobby after that girl died at the beach, but it was too late. She had no respect for me and no desire to follow my wishes. Later, when I saw the bruises on her, I told her that people who love you shouldn’t hurt you, and she just laughed in my face and told me I should’ve taught myself that lesson.”
Another bout of tears…followed by a painful silence.
“She’s alive,” I said to her. “You have a chance to be there for her if you really want to be.” I hadn’t forgotten what the nurse had said, about how disconnected Mrs. Kumar seemed when it came to her daughter.
“Yes.” She shoved the tissue back in her bag. “Let’s get the food. I know everyone’s hungry. And Ajay likes the sugary drinks they do, the ones with all the ice cream and chocolate. We have to make sure we order that.”
Chapter 60
Diya
Diya sent off the email to her favorite baked goods supplier—it was an order for a “cupcake cake” for a sixteenth-birthday bash. The birthday girl was the only grandchild in two very loving families, her sweet sixteen looking to be bigger than many a wedding.
Still, the girl didn’t seem spoiled—she’d been fun to work with when it came to selecting cupcake flavors and the style of decoration. But it was a good thing Diya had taken care of all of that before she’d made the impulsive decision to stay on in Los Angeles.
Teenagers might be fine with texting and video calls, but their parents wanted actual meetings with the event planner they’d hired to make their girl’s day “just perfect.”
Having ticked off that task, she scanned down the list to see what else was outstanding.