I swung the car in a wide U-turn and started driving back to the city. My CDs were in the back, so I turned on the radio, low, to keep myself awake. After a while, the news came on. There had been a major explosion in one of the chemical factories to the east of the city. Twenty fire engines had been dispatched to tackle the blaze. The situation was now under control, although residents close to the factory had been advised to keep doors and windows closed and to drink bottled water until informed otherwise.
This explanation of my aurora was disappointing, but no matter what its source, the dance of lights over the night field had given me something facts couldn’t take away.
I was almost at the city limits by the time Jeri and Ripley woke up. There was much loud-voiced remonstrance and banging of fists and questioning of my sanity and spewing forth of profane threats. I bore these with equanimity. I was in the driver’s seat, after all. I took the exit where we had picked up Ripley, stopped at a gas station, and asked them to get out. Something must have changed in my demeanor, because they did so without further ado. In all the turmoil, no one brought up the aurora.
I drove back to the dorm, took a shower, ate some dry cereal, and got to my classes on time. I hadn’t missed much; it wouldn’t be difficult to make up the work. Friends looked at the circles under my eyes and surmised I’d had the flu; I didn’t deny it. I gathered up the money-I hadn’t spent even a dollar-and returned it to the bank.
Later I listened to the messages that had piled up on my cell phone. There were twenty-two-eighteen of them from my father, increasingly frantic as he tried to figure out if something had happened to me. I thought of how he had almost ruined my life. Then I thought, no. I was the one who had headed for the brink; I was the one who had pulled back from it.
When he called that night, I picked up the phone. When he asked where the hell I’d been, I responded with a cool silence that lobbed the question back at him. He must have sensed that same difference in me that had made Jeri and Ripley leave quietly.
“What I told you about, a few days ago,” he said. “All I can say is, I don’t know what came over me.”
He wanted me to express thankfulness, but I would not oblige him.
“Maybe I’d caught a bug or something,” he said.
I didn’t reply.
“What I mean is”-he spoke too fast, the words tripping over one another-“I’m no longer planning to ask your mom for a divorce. In fact, I want you to forget all about that conversation we had.” He must have realized the absurdity of this request, because he amended it. “I’d appreciate it if you don’t bring this up with your mother.” There was a pleading tone in his voice.
I agreed. Reassured, he asked his regular questions about my health, coursework, and financial stability, and I offered my usual monosyllabic answers. The status quo thus restored, he hung up with relief.
But things were not the same. The relationship between my parents and me had shifted. I was driving, seeing them in my rearview mirror: smaller, shrunken; my mother trustingly oblivious of the fragility of the relationship on which she had based her life; my father without the courage to follow through on what he had-selfishly, illicitly, but truly-desired. Later I would forgive, but for now, I pulled away from them. Perhaps this distancing would have happened anyway, in time. But I felt rushed into it, as though I had yanked off a scab before the wound was healed, leaving behind a throbbing pink spot, the slow blood oozing again. And when I entered relationships of my own, I was careful to withhold the deep core of my being, the place in my mother that would have shattered if she had learned of my father’s betrayal.
I didn’t realize-until this earthquake, until today-that my withholding was a worse kind of betrayal, a betrayal of the self. It was time for me to change.
THERE WERE SOUNDS AGAIN UPSTAIRS, A CLANKING, ADVANCING noise, as though a different giant-this one in iron shoes-had decided to take a walk. It could be rescuers; it could be parts of the building getting ready to collapse. No one jumped up. It hurt too much to hope indiscriminately. But their eyes were alert. They were aware of the possibilities and ready to accept them. While Uma had been busy telling her story, people had moved around some. Tariq sat between Jiang and Lily, and both of them had laid their heads on his shoulders. Mangalam had come over to Uma’s table and placed his arm around Malathi. Mrs. Pritchett had wrapped Mr. Pritchett in the black shawl, and he hadn’t objected. Cameron, who had been pressed closer against Uma by these rearrangements, patted her knee as if to say, Good job.
But what they didn’t know was that the story wasn’t over yet.
A RAIN OF PLASTER BEGAN TO FALL, COVERING THE LITTLE BAND in grayish white until they looked like statues carved from the same material. Uma knew she had only a few minutes to find the right words to describe how, long after she had graduated and moved back to California for further study, the past had resurrected itself in the form of a phone call. It was Jeri on the line, her voice like old sandpaper. Uma hadn’t recognized her until she identified herself.
Jeri said she was dying. She didn’t give details. Nor did she ask for money, as Uma at first supposed she might.
“Hey,” she said, “remember that aurora we saw that night we almost went to New York? That was something, wasn’t it?”
Uma agreed.
“Remember,” Jeri said, “I was the one who pointed it out? You guys wouldn’t even have noticed it without me, you were that stoned.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Uma said.
“People never believe me when I tell them about it. They say I must have been smashed and imagined it. Or it must have been something else, something ordinary. But it was an aurora for real, wasn’t it? Because if it wasn’t, I want to know.”
There was no time to hesitate. Uma said, “It was an aurora.”
“You telling the truth? People lie to me all the time. I’m sick of it. I want the truth about this one thing before I die.”
“I’m telling you,” Uma said. “It was an aurora.”
Jeri laughed, then coughed a horrible, hacking cough that went on and on. When she could speak, she said. “I knew it! All those SOBs, trying to mess with my head. Feels good to hear you talk about it. I screwed up my life big-time, a lot of ways. Did a lot of stupid stuff. But at least I saw one amazing thing.”
Then she hung up. Uma never heard from her again. But her thoughts kept returning to their surreal night together, an experience she would never have had but for her father’s fateful phone call. She wondered if she had done the right thing in lying to a woman who had seemed to want only one thing from her: the truth before she died. Or had it not been a lie? Weren’t the lights an aurora, their magic transforming Uma, giving her the courage to turn her life around, because she had believed them to be so? Uma suddenly felt it was crucial that she ask the company what they thought of this.
The clankings grew louder. The giant was on his way down. As they waited to see what would happen next, Uma began the end of her story.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My deepest thanks to:
My agent, Sandra Dijkstra, for support
My editor, Barbara Jones, for guidance
My mother, Tatini Banerjee, and my mother-in-law, Sita Divakaruni, for good wishes
Murthy, Anand, Abhay, and Juno for love
Swami Nithyananda, Baba Muktananda, Swami Chinmayananda, Swami Tejomayananda, and Swami Vidyadhishananda for blessing
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
