Although Chitra Divakaruni's poetry has won praise and awards for many years, it is her "luminous, exquisitely crafted prose" (Ms.) that is quickly making her one of the brightest rising stars in the changing face of American literature. Arranged Marriage, her first collection of stories, spent five weeks on the San Francisco Chronicle bestseller list and garnered critical acclaim that would have been extraordinary for even a more established author. For the young girls and women brought to life in these stories, the possibility of change, of starting anew, is both as terrifying and filled with promise as the ocean that separates them from their homes in India. From the story of a young bride whose fairy-tale vision of California is shattered when her husband is murdered and she must face the future on her own, to a proud middle-aged divorced woman determined to succeed in San Francisco, Divakaruni's award-winning poetry fuses here with prose for the first time to create eleven devastating portraits of women on the verge of an unforgettable transformation.

Chapter 1

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 school, braiding my hair into the slick, tight pigtail that I disliked because it always hung stiffly down my back, I noticed something funny about her face. Not the dark circles under her eyes. Those were always there. It was high up on her cheek, a yellow blotch with its edges turning purple. It looked like my knee did after I bumped into the chipped mahogany dresser next to our bed last month.

"What's that, Ma? Does it hurt?" I reached up, wanting to touch it, but she jerked away.

"Nothing. It's nothing. Now hurry up or you'll miss the bus. And don't make so much noise, or you'll wake your father."

Father always slept late in the mornings. Because he worked so hard at the Rashbihari Printing Press where he was a foreman, earning food and rent money for us, Mother had explained. Since she usually put me to bed before he came home, I didn't see him much. I heard him, though, shouts that shook the walls of my bedroom like they were paper, the sounds of falling dishes. Things fell a lot when Father was around, maybe because he was so large. His hands were especially big, with blackened, split nails and veins that stood up under the skin like blue snakes. I remembered their chemical smell and the hard feel of his fingers from when I was little and he used to pick me up suddenly and throw me all the way up to the ceiling, up and down, up and down, while Mother pulled at his arms, begging him to stop, and I screamed and screamed with terror until I had no breath left.

A couple of days later Mother had another mark on her face, even bigger and reddish-blue. It was on the side of her forehead and made her face look lopsided. This time when I asked her about it she didn't say anything, just turned the other way and stared at a spot on the wall where the plaster had cracked and started peeling in the shape of a drooping mouth. Then she asked me how I would like to visit my grandpa for a few days.

"Grandpa!" I knew about grandpas. Most of my friends in the third grade had them. They gave them presents on birthdays and took them to the big zoo in Alipore during vacations. "I didn't know I had a grandpa!"

I was so excited I forgot to keep my voice down and Mother quickly put a hand over my mouth.

"Shhh. It's a secret, just for you and me. Why don't we pack quickly, and I'll tell you more about him once we're on the train."

"A train!" This was surely a magic day, I thought, as I tried to picture what traveling on a train would be like.

We packed fast, stuffing a few saris and dresses into two bags Mother brought out from under the bed. They were made from the same rough, nubby jute as the shopping bag that Father used to bring home fresh fish from the bazaar, but from their stiffness I could tell they were new. I wondered when Mother bought them and how she'd paid for them, and then I wondered how she would buy our tickets. She never had much money, and whenever she asked for any, Father flew into one of his rages. But maybe she'd been saving up for this trip for a long time. As we packed, Mother kept stopping as though she was listening for something, but all I heard was Father's snores. We tiptoed around and spoke in whispers. It was so exciting that I didn't mind not having breakfast, or even having to leave all my toys behind.

I was entranced by the steamy smell of the train, the shriek of its whistle-loud without being scary-that announced when a tunnel was coming up, its comforting, joggly rhythm that soothed me into a half sleep. I was lucky enough to get a window seat, and from it I watched as the narrow, smoke-streaked apartment buildings of Calcutta, with crumpled washing hanging from identical boxlike balconies, gave way to little brick houses with yellow squash vines growing in the yard. Later there were fields and fields of green so bright that when I closed my eyes the color pulsed inside my lids, and ponds with clusters of tiny purple flowers floating on them. Mother, who had grown up in the country, told me they were water hyacinths, and as she watched them catch the sunlight, it seemed to me that the line of her mouth wavered and turned soft.

After a while she pulled me close and cupped my chin in her hand. From her face I could see she had something important to say, so I didn't squirm away as I usually would have. "My uncle-your grandpa-that we're going to see," she said, "lives way away in a village full of bamboo forests and big rivers with silver fish. His house is in the middle of a meadow where buffaloes and goats roam all day, and there's a well to drink water from."

"A real well!" I clapped my hands in delight. I'd only seen wells in picture books.

"Yes, with a little bucket on a rope, and if you like you can fill the bucket and carry it in." Then she added, a bit hesitantly, "We might be staying with him for a while."

Staying with a grandpa-uncle who had a well and buffaloes and goats and bamboo forests sounded lovely, and I told Mother so, with my best smile.

"Will you miss your father?" There was a strange look in her eyes.

"No," I said in a definite tone. Already, as I turned my head to look at a pair of long-tailed birds with red breasts, his loud-voiced presence was fading from my mind.

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Copyright © 1996 by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni.

Tags: Relationship Fiction

About the Author

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is the bestselling author of the novels Sister of My Heart and The Mistress of Spices; the story collections The Unknown Errors of Our Lives and Arranged Marriage, which received several awards, including the American Book Award; and four collections of prize-winning poetry. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Ms., Zoetrope, Good Housekeeping, O: The Oprah Magazine, The Best American Short Stories 1999, and The New York Times. Born in India, Divakaruni lives near Houston. More