Saptapadi

Saptapadi

The rhythmic hiss of a breathing machine kept me company in a quiet ICU. My eyes wandered, searching for dirty imperfection. It had been days of waiting and praying. My wife, Aabha, whose name means “lustrous beauty,” lay comatose. Her face a swollen, purple pulp, with no evidence of who she had been.

Some disgusting beast who didn’t deserve life beat her for being a Muslim, which she was not. She was a Buddhist from India. She visited a mosque, where a friend, Zimal, was the Imam. She’d known him from an orphanage in India they’d been sold to.

Leaving the mosque, a mad man was waiting and beat her in broad daylight. It was doubtful he’d be caught. Rage for bigotry and hate stormed in my gut. Mentally, I heard what she’d said before.

“Forgive them, Jason. They are ignorant. If we could see their soul, we’d understand. We need the heart of a mother to forgive.”

She was too good for this earth.

I saw her and it was love at first sight. I’m an IT consultant. After hours of work, I took a break. I lived above a market that reeked of dried fish in Chinatown. I bought fruit and walked west, taking advantage of rare San Francisco sun.

Ahead of me, a woman struggled with a bulldog. He crouched like a soldier ready for battle. The overfed beast wouldn’t budge ten feet toward the open door of the dog groomer. She coaxed him in a soft, soothing tone.

“C’mon, Diesel. Don’t you want a bath? You stink. C’mon, boy.”

I helped her, picking him up and delivering him inside. I looked into her beautiful eyes and forgot what day it was. We spent the next three years discovering each other.

Our wedding three months ago in India was so hot, I felt like an over steamed momo (India’s version of a dumpling). I wore traditional sherwani and silk slippers. (Like the prince in Disney’s Aladdin.) It was embarrassingly soft and silky against my skin.

Aabha’s Uncle Aadi, who rescued her from the orphanage, wanted a Hindu wedding and was paying. I would have worn a corn sack for the privilege of marrying this exceptional woman. The ceremony was Hindi, I had no idea what was said. My favorite part was the saptapadi – where the couple takes seven steps around a holy fire and are legally husband and wife. On the seventh step, our souls merged. Pink and pale orange layered delicately over the bluest skies I’d ever seen, and Aabha glowed.

Hair, the blackest black, fell over one shoulder in ringlets shinning like satin. The gown was a work of art with bold patterns of turquoise, gold, and red. A jeweled headpiece dangled on her forehead. She was breathtaking. That night, she revealed the Mehindi drawn on the exceptional canvas of her body.

I could scarcely believe she now lay hovering between life and death.

I expected Uncle Aadi to arrive that evening. He was disturbed on the phone. “I don’t understand. How could this happen? Who could hurt Aabha? I am coming.”

His tone of accusation and blame said I should have known and protected her. It would stick in my gut, like swallowing thorns.

Glass doors in ICU slid open to Bella, the day nurse. She carried saline and antibiotics for the IV drip.

“When was the last time you went home? You might feel better with fresh clothes and your own toothbrush. Maybe deodorant too, huh?”

She smiled, showing an overbite. Platinum hair fell just above her shoulders, sprayed so not a wisp moved. Eyes set close together and slightly uneven, held intelligence and compassion. She replaced bags and documented vitals. Suddenly aware of my body odor, I said,

“I guess I’m not the freshest. The good news is deodorant is unpopular in India, so Aabha won’t mind.”

Bella continued her patient care.

“I’m here until three pm. I promise to call immediately with any change. If you leave now, you can be back in no time.”

She reached into her pocket, producing a cell phone.

“We aren’t supposed to have these on shift. I will put you on speed dial and call right away. I promise.”

I liked Bella. She would do as she promised. I said,

“I guess new underwear wouldn’t hurt. Maybe a real razor too. Though I do appreciate the plastic ones provided here. I’ll be back by lunchtime. Thank you, Bella.”

I left for the first time in five days.

Urine-soaked sidewalks, exhaust, and grinding city traffic greeted me. A shrill cry punctured the noise like a dart. After Aabha’s attack, I was sure some animal was accosting another innocent. I ran toward the sound. Two things happened as I ran. Intense heat engulfed me and movie-like images played in my mind. I would come to understand that the moving-pictures were the past lives of others. When I look back on this experience, maybe I should have questioned why I had visions, but I didn’t question it. I just accepted.

I saw a burly man in riding chaps, gray shirt, and cowboy hat. He was dust-covered and dirty. Dark rings stained his underarms, shirt clinging in a sweaty mass to his back. He laughed, playfully tossing his young daughter into the air. Her drab, prairie-like dress parachuted as she fell downward into his sturdy hands.

A new clip showed the same man, dead from a self-inflicted bullet wound to the head. Blood pooled seeping downward into a crevice, lifting tiny rocks and dirt as it oozed. Mud clods and weeds beneath him, blue skies above, and horrifying screams of his child rang across a desolate landscape.

Next, a new man, vaguely familiar, in raggedy trousers and suspenders, stood in quiet resignation. With a rope tied to a rafter, he placed a noose around his neck and leapt. His body jerked and swung from a hayloft like a pendulum. A woman, wearing a depression-era dress, a baby swaddled in her arms, screamed at the ghastly sight of her husband’s hanging corpse. Her desperate pleas scattered like hay across the floor.

More images played. A mother hurried through the door, filled with unexplainable dread. Her face was frozen in bleak anticipation. She called up the narrow staircase for her son.

“Danny! Danny!”

She rushed up and threw open his bedroom door as tears fell, fat with despair.

A long-haired, teenaged Danny, in bell-bottomed jeans and psychedelic t-shirt, slumped in a chair. Head back, mouth agape, his thin arms dangled. Blood splattered from gashes on his wrists. The last thing I heard were groans turned to screams.

“Nooo! Oh, nooo, Danny!”

I arrived at an alley between brick buildings, confused and breathless. A woman knelt and wailed, holding a knife to the throat of a terrified boy. He croaked,

“Mama, don’t. P-p-p-lease, Mama.”

I stepped forward and opened my palm in a gesture of help. Bizarrely, I emitted an energetic forcefield freezing us in a weird suspension while our minds connected.

At that moment, I understood the meaning of those visions, and our minds were now connected as they replayed.

The woman and boy in front of me were the same souls as in the visions but in different lifetimes. Their past lives together had the same tragic outcome of loss and suicide.

Before the visions, the woman hadn’t understood her tortured rage that delivered her to the brink of madness. She hadn’t understood why she wanted to kill her son, who had killed himself in all of their past lives. Her soul couldn’t bear another suicide.

Collectively, we were catapulted forward in time. High school graduation, the boy grown with a college degree and an image of the woman, gray-haired, with grandchildren beside her. Together, we felt the grace of forgiveness. Lifetimes of pain could be healed with another chance for happiness.

The boy resolved to stick it out and the woman let go of the pain and fear of suicide. A dark, foul-smelling fog lifted from their bodies and hovered above them. It rumbled and flexed with angry rejection. The woman’s face hardened as she resisted. It moved toward the boy to enter his body. He shouted, “Nooo!”

The energy growled in hate and swarmed above them. They refused to host it anymore. It squirmed and exploded, disappearing in the air. The forcefield broke and the boy held the woman’s neck.

“I’m sorry, Mama, I’m sorry.”

The knife clattered on the ground, she rocked him and cried,

“Oh my God. Oh my God.”

The boy looked up, his black face shining with gratitude. He said,

“Thank you, lady.”

I was surprised and thought him confused, and who could blame him? But in the reflection of glass from a window on the building’s side, I was shocked to see a blue-eyed, Hindi woman staring back at me.