Tell It to the Trees by Anita Rau Badami

Author:Anita Rau Badami [Badami, Anita Rau]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-36674-0
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 2011-09-19T16:00:00+00:00

—and I would dream of running away.

I had no idea how I would accomplish this since I had no money. Then my passport disappeared. Perhaps Vikram hid it—but I didn’t dare ask him. It would only have given him reason to shout at me for my carelessness or stupidity or any of the number of flaws I’ve developed since I became his wife. I don’t possess a driver’s licence—he doesn’t think I need to drive. So here I am stuck in a world full of borders and boundaries, unable to travel because I can’t show proof of my identity to the people who guard the entryways and exits. It is not enough to say, I am Suman, daughter of a beloved man, wife of a hated one. I still need a piece of paper with my photograph, stamped by the government of a country. Without that I am nobody other than the wife of a man who is my guardian, my custodian, my prison.

I spent hours wishing myself away from Merrit’s Point. I wished I had the courage to run until I reached the highway beyond Merrit’s Point that would take me to Vancouver, which shimmered in my imagination like a mirage. I thought of running away all the time, and then one day I gave up that thought too. I can remember the moment when I stopped trying.

Varsha brought home a Russian doll which she had won in an essay competition at school.

“Look, Mama!” she said. She pulled one doll away to reveal another and another and another until she got to the last one, when a tiny black beetle emerged and scuttled across the table, released from captivity after god only knows how long. I screamed and knocked the pile of dolls away. That beetle was me, caught inside the house, inside the town, within the circling mountains.

There is no escape for me from this place.

My father and Madhu Kaki never found out about my unhappiness. I didn’t tell them, it was pointless. There was nothing they could have done for me. They didn’t have the means to help. Besides, I couldn’t contact them without Vikram finding out. I could not telephone long-distance without him knowing when the bills arrived, and when I wrote letters he mailed them for me after reading them first, naturally. “Leave the envelope open, Suman,” he would say. “I would like to add a line or two to your dear father.”

So I created a lovely tracery of lies for my beloved Appa, warbled on pleasantly about how happy I was, how big my house was, how lucky I was.

Then he died, followed soon after by Madhu Kaki, and there was nowhere for me to run to.

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