Couple Having an Argument: (Park Street Station, Boston)

67ugolnik Carolyne Wright Couple Having an Argument (Park Street Station, Boston) On the subway platform, jammed with Saturday pleasure-seekers, the Indian couple is having an argument. She picks at the pleats of her sari, exhaustion leaving its caste-mark. He turns away, crushing the packages for the child that grows heavier inside her. Nard and orange groves stretch away across the low hills behind her eyes. Her younger sisters lean over the veranda, waving goodbye, silks billowing in foothill wind. He sighs. He thinks of the whir of air conditioners, blueprints unrolled in the high-rises. He looks back: his father's cheque from Bombay, the ochre-daubed Brahmin who joined their hands soon after, the magenta veil not yet lifted from her face. She remembers the taxi at dawn through a strange, metallic city, the apartment's bare walls— first silence that held no family in it. They face each other: the blueprints, drone of the Dharma Sutra, eyes opening in the paisley of her pleats. The child kicks for the first time inside her. ...