The Girl in the Garden Read Online Free PDF

of the container and filled a syringe with another clear liquid, which he injected into its limp bottom. The mouse stiffened, but I could still see its chest continuing to rise and fall in slow, methodical breaths.
    “We’re ready to begin.” Aba stretched the rigid creature out onto a metal tray and used strings to tie its limbs down; it looked so helpless lying there like that with its soft white belly exposed. A blade of nausea rose at the back of my throat. Aba picked up an instrument that I thought was a small butter knife until he ran it along the length of the mouse’s body, and I saw the thin thread of blood that welled up. He drew back the white flaps of outer flesh and revealed the inside of the mouse.
    “Can he feel anything?”
    “No, no, don’t worry, it can’t feel a thing,” said Aba. “This way you can see how the organs actually work in life.”
    I stood up on my stool and peered down, deep inside the mouse’s body—at its pulsing, purplish innards, at the droplets of blood that had dribbled down onto the tray and coated Aba’s cream-colored latex gloves, at its live, beating heart. I couldn’t hold it in anymore—I stumbled off my perch and landed on my knees, where I proceeded to vomit all over the floor.
    Aba rubbed my back, took me into the bathroom to wash my face, and let me sit in his office while he cleaned up the mess in the lab. As I waited for him in his leather chair, shame consumed me. Aba had been kind about it, but I felt that in some fundamental way I had let him down.
    Before we went home, he took me to Dairy Queen, but I couldn’t eat a thing. “It’s my fault,” he said sadly. “Your mother was right. Maybe you are too young.”

    The morning of our flight to India, I rose early to make sure that I had packed my most important belongings.When I had confirmed that my sketchpad and colored pencils were safely tucked away in my backpack, I crept downstairs in my nightgown. Amma was talking on the phone in the kitchen. I knew that it must be Veena Aunty on the other end of the line because of the casual way she cradled the receiver under her ear, the thickening of her accent, and the Malayalam words and phrases that peppered the conversation.
    “I just don’t know what else to do,” I heard Amma say, as I lingered unnoticed in the doorway. “This is killing me, but I can’t tell Vikram, I can’t, I
won’t
ask him for help.”
    That is all I heard or understood because Amma then saw the edge of my pink nightgown peeking out from behind the door frame.
    “Ah, you’re up. Go upstairs and get ready. We have to leave soon.”
    She told Veena Aunty that she had to go then, so I did as I was told and went upstairs, my limbs heavy.
    What was Amma talking about?
    I resolved then to bring my parents back together. I would use the summer in India to find whatever was tearing them apart and fix it. If I did not want to end up like the mouse, alone and doomed in his cage, I had to figure out a way to save our family. At that moment, I believed it could be that simple.

Chapter 4
     
    I stumbled as I stepped off the plane in Bombay, and Amma caught my moist hand in hers. The sun was white and blinding, and the wall of heat that greeted us was unlike anything I had ever felt before. The lenses of my glasses fogged, and a scarf of sweat spread across the bridge of my nose. Amma was hurrying across the steaming black runway toward a row of glass doors, and pulling me along behind her.
    I stayed close to her side as we wove through the sweaty throng to identify our baggage so it could be transported to our connecting flight. Children darted by swift as multicolored arrows. Unsuppressed body odor invaded my nostrils. All around us, barefoot women dressed in identical saris swept the dusty floors, stooping over their long bristled brooms like agile, purple-winged insects.
    Mirrors flashed through puffs of smog and bold silks swished. Gold ornaments dangled from necks, ears, and arms.