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An Excerpt from The Golden Son

MAYA THE HARELIP

ANIL PATEL WAS TEN YEARS OLD THE first time he witnessed one of Papa’s arbitrations.

Children usually were not allowed at these meetings, but an exception was made for Anil since he would, one day, inherit his father’s role. As the only child present, he made himself as invisible as possible, crouching down in the corner of the gathering room. The meetings always took place here: the largest space in the largest house in this small village nestled into an expanse of farmland in western India. This room was the beating heart of the Big House, where the family ate their meals, Papa read the paper, Ma did her mending, and Anil and his siblings raced through their schoolwork before going out to play. The centerpiece of the gathering room was an immense wooden table—its top four fingers thick, its carved legs so wide a grown man’s hands could not reach all the way around—a piece of furniture so substantial it took four men to lift it, though it hadn’t been moved more than a meter in generations.

On this day, Papa sat at the head of the magnificent table, with Anil’s aunt and uncle on either side. Relatives, friends, and neighbors stood a respectful distance away. The room was filled with people, but the subject of the day’s arbitration, Anil’s cousin Maya, was not among them. Maya had been born a harelip to Papa’s sister, and her husband believed this to be a curse of the family into which he’d married. That Anil’s uncle had agreed to come here, to hand his family dispute over to the arbiter of his wife’s clan rather than his own, was significant but not surprising. Papa had a reputation for fairness and wisdom that extended well beyond their land.

Anil’s uncle argued he should be released from his marriage, to be free to seek another wife, one who could give him normal, healthy children. Maya’s deformity, he said, was proof his wife’s womb was tainted, and that she would bear him nothing but more bad fortune and unmarriageable girls who would remain a burden. Papa’s sister sat nearby, weeping into the end of her sari.

Papa’s face remained impassive as he listened. He then consulted the astrologer for whom he had sent, asking him to read Maya’s birth charts. The astrologer found nothing untoward: Maya was born under a good star, no eclipses had occurred during the pregnancy. Finally, Papa turned to his younger sister. Did she love Maya? he asked. Was she dedicated to her husband? Would she give whatever was needed for their health and happiness? To all of these questions, she nodded yes, still weeping. Her husband stared down at the table for so long that Anil worried he might notice the initials he and his brothers had recently carved into its edge.

“This is a very difficult matter,” Papa began after everyone else had spoken. “Obviously, no one would wish for what has happened to Maya. But as you’ve heard from the astrologer, the problem did not come from the pregnancy or the birth. In this case, we can no more lay the blame for Maya’s condition with her mother than with her father.”