least if the landlady ever found them, the dark-skinned young couple at the end of the road spoke English. Wanda had to give them that much. That was one thing about Indians. They usually came knowing English and had good manners. But their presence some fifty yards away was just another sign that this place where Ken had settled her was a world filled with strangers. It was never going to feel like home.
“Happiness Key, my eyelash.”
Morosely, she watched Tracy Deloche’s tight little butt swing in a determined rhythm until the young woman was finally out of sight. She didn’t even yell inside to tell Ken she’d taken care of the problem. Wanda knew what a waste of time sounded like.
chapter two
Rishi ate cereal for breakfast, whatever brand Janya bought him at the grocery store, usually whatever happened to be on sale. Her husband preferred cereal as sweet as candy and as light as a cloud, smothered with milk until it melted into a soggy paste. But perhaps this, like so many things, was her fault. Perhaps Rishi would eat a better breakfast if she made an effort to prepare some of the foods her mother had served in the morning.
Janya dreamed of childhood breakfasts of steaming masala milk and poha made with flattened rice, served with a sprinkling of grated coconut. She craved idli, the comforting rice dumpling dipped in fiery lentil sambar, and their cook’s richly spiced omelets, served with an array of breads from the grill or oven. Sometimes she imagined waking to a morning array of fruits. Mangoes and papayas, pomegranates and particularly chikku, with its sweet caramel flesh, something she had not seen in stores here in Florida.
But Rishi wasn’t used to such foods, so he didn’t ache for them. The aunt who had raised him in Massachusetts had rarely prepared such delicacies for her own family, and even more rarely for Rishi. Rishi was her husband’s orphaned nephew, and as such, the aunt was required to make him a home. But she was not required to love him, as she had loved her own sons.
Now Rishi was Janya’s responsibility, and she, too, was required to make him a home. But she wasn’t required to love her new husband as she had once loved the man she had lost. Janya was fulfilling the basics of her marriage contract. She shared Rishi’s home, kept it tidy and put meals on the table. She even shared Rishi’s bed, but she could never share her heart, nor could she accept his, although she knew that was what he hoped for.
This morning Rishi had left early for work, not pausing to eat his cornflakes or brew himself a cup of coffee. He had risen and left by the time she returned from her sunrise walk on the beach to their quiet little house that smelled like incense and rotting vegetation. Relieved that she would not have to make vacuous conversation, she showered, then dressed in an informal salwar-kameez, an embroidered cotton shirt, with pants that narrowed at the ankle. Finally, before she could change her mind, she consulted the bus schedule, locked the door and set off down the road that bisected the peninsula where their house stood.
Janya was glad she didn’t have to pass any of her neighbors’ houses, although it was doubtful any of them, except perhaps Mr. Krause, would expect her to stop for a conversation. The walk was long and tiring, and by the time she came home, the sun would torment every step. At least the bench at the bus stop was positioned beneath a huge banyan tree.
She waited alone, watching as cars with tops down and radios screaming sailed by. Few people rode the bus in Palmetto Grove, and accordingly, it only came and went infrequently. People did not hang out of doors or jostle fellow passengers, the way they did at home. She always had a seat; she never had strangers leaning against her or small children pulling at her clothes.
If the bus didn’t remind her of home, the banyan did. The banyan was India’s national tree, and the word itself was Gujarati. She still remembered a part of a Vedic text she had learned in school, although she could no longer recite it in Sanskrit.
Brahma-shaped at the root, Vishnu-shaped in the middle, and Shiva-shaped at the top, we salute you, the king of all trees.
There was a day in June when women could fast and pray to the banyan, and ask