Secret Keeper Read Free Page B

play sports, in the garden with Kavita.”
    “I don’t see why your father allows you to do that.”
    “We stay behind the walls, Ma, nobody sees us.”
    And so it went. Asha overheard a couple of Ma’s Delhi friends murmuring about how tough it was going to be to marry off a “skinny, underdeveloped girl” like Sumitra’s younger daughter. Apparently a girl had to fill a bra of decent cup size to attract a husband.
    That's good for me,
Asha thought, her arms getting tired from holding the shawl across the window.
More time to be free. Get my PhD. Do what I really want.
    In America, where women were burning bras and fighting for equal rights, they didn’t need curves to snare a husband. Sixteen- year- old American girls could play sports, drive cars, win scholarships, keep studying, even think about staying unmarried if they wanted.
    Asha Gupta, tennis champion.
    Asha Gupta, psychologist.
    Asha Gupta, forever.
    Once the sarees were draped to satisfaction, Reet combed Asha’s hair and fixed it in a fresh, tidy braid. Ma tried three different hairstyles on Reet before settling on a thick bun that coiled on the top of her head like a crown. Finally Ma combed out her own long hair, arranged it exactly like Reet’s, and powdered her face again carefully.
    When the train pulled into Calcutta’s Howrah station, Ma made them wait until a knock sounded at the compartment door. “Open! Hurry up!” said a voice that sounded so much like her father’s that Asha’s heart skipped a beat. But then Reet unlatched the door, and there stood a stockier, grimmer version of Baba-Uncle, head of the clan and master of the home where the two Gupta boys had been raised.
    Reet started to welcome him with the traditional greeting for elders, bending to touch his feet with her hands and then tapping her own forehead, but Uncle stopped her before she could complete the whole pronam. “The train is only stopping for a few minutes,” he said. “We have to disembark quickly. I’ve hired a coolie to bring the heavy bags.”
    He didn’t seem to speak directly to Ma. It would have been wrong for him to speak freely to his sister- in- law, so that wasn’t unusual. But Uncle went beyond that; Asha had noticed it during their last visit, even though she’d been only twelve then. He hardly even looked at Ma. It was as if he didn’t trust his gaze to find his younger brother’s wife for a second.
    The girls and Ma gathered their handbags and followed Uncle to the platform. There he paused briefly to permit the reunion ritual, placing his hands on his nieces’ heads as they touched his feet. Asha turned away as Ma bent before her brother- in- law. Something in her hated to see Ma, proud and strong, bending in front of a man who wasn’t Baba. Of course Ma never gave Baba pronam in greeting-only elderly women still gave their husbands such a traditional sign of submission. Every decent Bengali woman, though, was expected to honor her older brother- in- law with this gesture, and Ma offered it as gracefully as she had four years earlier.
    Uncle received Ma’s pronam with his face averted. “Taxi’s waiting,” he grunted, hurrying them along the crowded platform. A thin, agile, red- turbaned coolie followed them, three suitcases stacked on his head.
    The beggars descended once the Gupta family left theplatform and entered the station. In the prosperous neighborhood where the girls had lived in Delhi, a few beggars used to wander the streets, but they were nothing compared to the multitude of refugees crowding Howrah station. Faces covered with sores, hair matted and straw- yellow from malnutrition, hoisting bony babies on their hips, they wailed or whined about their plight to everyone and anyone.
    “Stay together,” Uncle called.
    Asha kept her eyes on his broad back. He was striding forward, elbowing people aside and scolding them to make room. Reet clutched Asha’s hand, and Ma stayed so close behind, she kept stepping on the heels of