Passage I

LITERARY NARRATIVE: This passage is adapted from the novel Love Marriage by V. V. Ganeshananthan (@2008 by Vasugi Ganeshananthan).

He met her, my mother, in New York City, and the Heart said plaintively:Thump thump thump. That was not the sound of illness. Theirs was an auspicious meeting, although no one had troubled to check the alignment of the stars; the young woman was twenty-seven—old for a prospective bride?—but she did not look it. She had a generous face, he said to himself.

He liked her glossy sheaf of dark hair, her sparse brows, her pronounced chin, her full lower lip. She smiled with her mouth closed because she did not like her teeth. He could already see within the structure of her face how she would become thinner, that her bones would give her older face a certain elegance, a chiseled and austere severity. He liked her precision in even the smallest of tasks, like arranging hibiscus in a vase. Her reserve, her inability to say anything truly personal in public. He thought she might be full of secrets and wanted to know them. She never raised her voice, but she did not speak softly. How are you? That 's a beautiful sari. How are the children? I like this rice. She liked her food steaming and spicy, as he did. She made her own clothes, staying up late into the night, her foot on the pedal of a sewing machine that had belonged to her mother and had crossed the ocean with her. Her hemlines suited both the times and her young pale slimness, which reminded him of a flowering tree by his home in Jaffna. He never caught her admitting she was wrong; her words clambered around that impossibility, but so sheepishly that he found it endearing. In a noisy room he learned to tell the clear bell sound of her bangles apart from the rest.

Suddenly, he was no longer thinking about widows or about repeating his own father's collapse. It was as though an invisible conductor was directing the pulling of strings to draw them together. Whether it was Murali who managed to get introduced to Vani or the other way around, no one else really remembers. And they will never admit which one of them was responsible. And yet, it was this simple: a friend of his noticed that they were staying near each other. Perhaps Murali could give Vani a ride home? Yes, yes, two heads nodded. They left the party they were at too quickly to say all their good-byes. After the door closed behind them the space where they had been was filled with the laughter of friends.

He took her home. She boarded with a family in Brooklyn. During the car ride they were silent. It was a strange and comfortable silence for two people who had waited for so long to be alone. The thrum of the motor was loud because the car was old. When they turned around the corner he pulled over and turned the engine off and there was a quiet as loud as the motor had been. He walked her to her door and she thanked him. She did not ask him in for a cup of coffee; it was not her house. But it was out of his way and both of them knew it. She forgot that she did not like her teeth and bared them at him. Her smile, for once, was not self-conscious. She watched him drive away, waving from the window.

The Sri Lankan elders of New York City were all too eager to play parents to the couple. She was Proper: smart and polite and a good cook and lovely. Vani had a job, and more important than any of these things, she had grace, which was something that could not be taught. Murali, of course, was the Beloved Parentless Boy; their favorite bachelor-doctor whom they took into their homes and bosoms and tried to smother with welcome and curry. Occasions were arranged; even the very rooms seemed to conspire to make the two end up next to each other. And then one day something was suggested by one of those elders. And somehow the pair of them were talking about it. To each other. Directly.

Which was a faux pas. But neither of them minded.

Oceans away, families exploded. True to form, his family's discord faded quickly. But her family almost did not consent: afraid of the Improper, they questioned his intentions, his failure to observe certain formalities, his ancestry, his habits and his character. He heard about what they had said and turned to her, his eyes full of questions.

They may not know these things about you, she said, but I do.

Are you sure? he asked her. The unsaid: they may not forgive you for this.

Positive, she answered. Countries away, Vani's brother crashed into Murali's brother's house, yelling: Who is this doctor who wants to marry my sister? Who is this doctor who is in love with my sister?

The nerve of Murali, they thought. In Love? These were not words they were used to saying.