Only the Women Are Burning. Nancy Burke
he was gone.
Ages ago, Dr. Gimpel had showed me the newsreel I played and replayed in my life whenever I retreated emotionally, whenever I felt someone had failed me or I was on the verge of failing, and now, it whirled like an old 8 mm film in my head. I lay down again in my unmade bed and closed my eyes fighting my memory and my grief.
I had seen Dr. Gimpel weekly for that period after our return from Bangalore. She urged me toward yoga and meditation and my yoga teacher taught me to deepen my focus on the present, to look ahead, not behind, to ease the horror of the memory of watching Banhi die, to live as if each new day was my first. “The best path toward healing is to reach out and help others,” said my teacher. And this started my sisterhood, first with Cindy Barrow, then a collection of new mothers, at home raising children after leaving careers. She and I had grown that group to fifty moms. NPR heard of us and featured us on “All Things Considered”. Women and choices.
How much, I realized, now that she was not here, I’d always imagined Cindy and I would reconcile. I had not had the courage to attempt that reconciliation and now I would never have the chance.
I stared at the ceiling, listening as Pete stepped down the stairs, and felt a familiar hollow in my heart chakra. I flashed to Rehani’s reaction to Banhi’s burning. She was there in the kitchen. She watched as her daughter-in-law burned to death. And what loomed large in the present was Pete’s reluctance to believe me right now which felt as dishonest as Rehani’s response to Banhi’s fate. That frightened me as much as the flame had and as much as the prospect of it happening to me did too.
I got up and went to the kitchen. My husband had tried to help. He had put the chicken in the sauce and stirred it, but he had neglected to light the flame under it. I turned the knob to light the stove. The gas didn’t ignite. I did it again. Again, the scent of gas filled my nostrils. I shut it off. I twisted the knob one more time. This time, it lit like it had earlier, flame bursting around the sauté pan, flaring up and around with a whoosh. I pulled my hands away quickly and looked at Pete who had returned. “This needs some attention.”
“That’s what happened when I tried to light it.”
I moved the pan to another burner. I showed him my arm with the singed hairs. No reaction.
“I want to grab a shower,” he said. “Can you just finish cooking? I’ll look at it later.”
Lila emerged from her basement darkroom and, with a dramatic sigh as if she hadn’t eaten in days, said, “Is dinner ready? I’m hungry.”
She sat down with her sisters and in a moment was pointing out errors in their homework which they hurriedly attacked with their erasers. Their lack of defensiveness, their complete acceptance of her help was a pleasure to see. The way sisters should be, I told myself. I turned the chicken in the masala sauce, savoring the aroma lifting from the pan, and wished I could fix some of my own past mistakes as easily as they did their math. Pete joined us at the table. The green beans were a pallid green by then, but the chicken was ready and so was the basmati rice. I moved the sauté pan to the table and sat down to eat and found myself letting out a long sigh, “Oh, can someone please grab a ladle?” Pete didn’t seem to hear me. Lila reached her long arm over to the drawer and slid the ladle out with a bit of clattering. She laid it next to the pan of chicken and said, “I hope it isn’t too spicy.”
“Please, let’s just eat,” I said. I lifted the lid and a puff of steam rose and the scent took me back to the evening when I first triumphed over this recipe with help from Banhi. I could see her hands, measuring with her fingers the spices she pinched or spooned in deliberate quantities while I furiously scrambled to write approximations in my notebook. For her, this recipe had no meat, just lentils and vegetables, and my Americanized version paled in the wake of my recollection of sitting down to her finished product with naan and chutney and basmati rice with cumin seeds and cloves. This meal was in its own condition of compromise and I felt my mood sink down and I knew I was going to sound very unpleasant if I joined in the conversation. Rarely an evening dinner at this table included Pete. I passed the plate of store-bought flatbread. I passed the green beans and I scooped into the sauté pan and served my children their portions.
I watched Pete. Here he was, the young man who stepped into my life and, well, it hadn’t started with love. It started with me shouting at him from under the sarsens at Stonehenge to please step back onto the tourist’s path, running toward him across the dig where my team was meticulously working in neatly drawn grids, roped off and numbered. Pete stood in the center of the blue stones with a camera, changing lenses, aiming at the largest lintel where the early morning sun was the most brilliant for it was nearly the spring equinox.
“I’m sorry, but you aren’t allowed in here,” I said.
“I’m a photographer,” he said.
“There are professional photographers here all the time. They know to not walk in here. Their permit gives them strict instructions. Where is yours?”
“I’ll only be a minute,” he said. “Are you American?”
“No, you will not be a minute,” I said. “Step back to the path, please.”
He might have stood his ground and given me trouble, but he yielded. Then, he aimed his lens at me and took my picture. Then, he clicked another.
“Please stop,” I said.
“Hold still,” he said. “If you are American, what are you doing here?”
“Stop,” I said, lifting my hands to my face. “I’m a graduate student. Archaeology. Please.” I pulled the hood of my sweatshirt up to hide under.
“Have you found anything?” he asked.
“We’re not looking for artifacts,” I said. “They’ve all been dug up long ago.”
“So what are you doing?”
“Research.”
“Well I hope so.”
“Please, I’ve got to get back to work. Stay on the path.”
“Yes, Miss Keeper of the Stones.”
I looked directly into his eyes. “Someone has to be.”
“Would you mind if I looked at what you’re doing over there?”
“There really isn’t much to see and we’re very busy.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I had no idea there would still be work here.”
“Apology accepted.” I returned to my work. I sensed his shadow moving off to where he should have been and I felt pleased and a bit relieved this had not turned contentious. This was not the end, however. We met later at the Peach and Thistle where he’d gone to wait for the local photo lab to develop his film. Phoebe, my roommate and assistant at the dig, studied him across the bar and turned to me. “He’s not stopped watching you.”
“Who?”
“Oh, right,” she said. “Don’t lie. You’re watching him too. Your American.”
Pete stood and Phoebe squeezed my leg. “He’s making the first move.”
But she was wrong. He left his empty glass and some money on the bar and walked out.
“Lost your chance,” Phoebe said. “Really, Cassandra, I will have to teach you to flirt.”
“I’m not looking for a man,” I said. “I’m here to study.”
“Right,” she said. “You couldn’t possibly do both, could you?”
But he returned and approached, offering me an envelope of prints. “These might just be something you’d be interested in,” he said. The enlargements of those photos of the sun coming up over the largest of the stones still hang in our hallway.
Pete’s laugh brought me back to the present. Yes, this was a family meal, suddenly bathing me in a glow