Kalinda is still in her own world as she crosses the campus courtyard and lets herself into her car. There is a picture in her head. She is in her childhood kitchen, her mother at the table, writing in her little orange diaries. Her mother tells her that it is the responsibility of the mother to record the important events of the family. Grandmother taught her about that, and when the time comes, she will teach Leela. Leela knew that on the top shelf of the cupboard, was a box filled with these little orange diaries. Leela took the box of diaries with her to the foster home. She took them with her when she married Nick. She packed them just before she set the Toronto house ablaze. She put them in a safe deposit box in a bank in Buffalo 16 years ago. The time has come to retrieve them and read them.
Kalinda comes out of her head and opens a search on her phone; tomorrow's flight times O'Hare to Buffalo. Fly out in the early morning, fly back in the afternoon.
She composes a text to Will. 'Need to talk to you.'
Will responds immediately. 'Did you fail?'
'I passed. Can we meet tonight?'
'I'm at the gym. Place across the street. 20 minutes?'
'I can be there in 20. Thanks.'
Kalinda arrives at their meeting place before Will, and spots two vacant stools. She claims them, and orders a drink.
Will arrives shortly thereafter. He places his hand on her back and leans in. He's obviously fresh out of the shower. His hair is still wet. He smells like soap. "You passed. That's good news." He sits on the stool beside hers and orders a drink. "What's up?"
"I need some days off," says Kalinda, "It's important."
"You ok?" asks Will.
"Ya. I'm fine."
"How many days?"
"Most of a week, maybe," she responds. "I have some family legacy business to see to."
"You don't have a family," Will says.
"But I must have at some point, don't you think? I couldn't have come from nothing. I need to take care of some final closure on something."
"Sorry for your loss," Will says.
Kalinda gives him a 'don't be stupid' look. "It was decades ago."
Will adds, "Diane was worried about you and these psychologist meetings."
"Diane was?" Kalinda sends a knowing look his way.
"Well, I was too," says Will. "We didn't think you'd have the patience for that therapist nonsense."
"Don't I always have your back, Will?"
"Yes, you do."
"So, I need to disappear for a few days. You can manage if I'm not reachable?"
"Yes. Go." Will pauses for a moment. It went unsaid, but he didn't want it unsaid. "Come back."
"I'll be back. I promise."
She gives him a smile, grips his forearm with affection, and she's gone.
Will doesn't know if he is worried or grateful for his friend. Someone, it seems, has succeeded in reaching behind her curtain. In the time he's known Kalinda, he's not known anyone to see the mystery behind the walls, not even Alicia really, and she would have been the one most likely to succeed. He hopes it is for the good, for her good.
Dr. Hunt is closing all her business for the day, getting ready for sleep.
MRN: 0011266103
Record Security: General Access
Patient ID: Sharma, Kalinda NMN
F 42
DOB: 05/31/1972
Encounter: NWPS000551693327
Encounter Date: Revisit: 02/02/2014 1800
Fin: Contract Fisher & Li LLC
Sub Fin: Contract LG
Allergies: Bee sting (link: Medication Reconciliation)
Provider: Hazel A. Hunt-Ferrero, Ph.D., Psychology
Sub Record Security: Behavioral/Confidential
Provider Documentation: 02/02/2014 2127 Post Encounter – Free Notes
Diagnosis confirmed. Adult child of alcoholic parents.
Observed apparent high level of intelligence. Reviewed/evaluated impact of parental alcohol abuse on childhood development.
All previously recorded concerns satisfactorily addressed. No psychopathology present.
Well managed coping mechanisms.
Recommended for contractor project team.
Future sessions are offered if needed. Ms. Sharma will control the option.
(link: Therapy minutes: 60)
(link: DSM-5: NA)
(link: ICD-10: NA)
e-signature: Hazel A. Hunt-Ferrero, Ph.D. 02/02/2014 2303 (File)
Documentation minutes: 4 (End)
It's nearly time to leave for the airport. Kalinda pulls a briefcase on wheels from the back of her closet. She never uses it. The dust can attest to that. It'll be perfect for transporting the contents of the safe deposit box in Buffalo.
O'Hare is O'Hare. Same shit. Different day.
Buffalo is a significantly smaller airport. Getting to the taxi curb is quick and easy. Kalinda gets into a taxi and gives the driver her destination, Bank of America. She smiles, remembering herself much younger, much less jaded, liking the poetry of the idea that her mother's diaries should be housed in the Bank, of America. It seemed fitting, and a little bit funny. Little did she know at the time, how many more envelopes she'd push in her new life to come.
The taxi pulls up in front of the bank. The taxi driver gives her a card with a number on it. His company can provide her rides all over Buffalo today as needed. They have her credit card information and it can be done easily and without fuss.
Kalinda gets out and looks at the edifice. It hasn't changed at all in 16 years. She pushes the door of the bank and walks into the center court. She spots the desks for customer service and makes her way in that direction. She gets attention immediately. It's one of the nice perks of looking the way she does. The gentleman is happy to help her with her business although he is disappointed he'll be closing her account and helping her empty her safe deposit box. He hopes she'll come back again soon if they can help her with any of her future banking needs. Down boy. He leaves her alone with her safe deposit box. She opens it. As she remembers, there is the box, not much bigger than a shoe box, a gun, some ammunition and some cash. Everything fits well into her briefcase on wheels. She leaves the empty safe deposit box on the table. Then she exits the building.
She knows she won't make it into an airport with the gun and ammunition. She makes a call for a taxi, and within moments, one pulls up in front of her. She asks to be taken to the Buffalo PD gun-buy-back desk. It is a little déjà vu to be at the Buffalo PD. She's been gone an awfully long time, 14 years. She doesn't expect to be recognized by anyone, and she doesn't expect to see anyone she'll remember. Without any fanfare, she gives up the gun and the ammunition. The cash for the gun, she says, can go into a police fund, she doesn't care which. No, she doesn't want to put her name on the donation; 'anonymous' will be fine. They gracefully accept.
As she'd asked, the taxi waited for her. To the airport, please.
She is at the gate for her return flight much too early. She feels a tremendous urge to get on with this. She doesn't want to wait for her scheduled flight. The impulse to open the box of her mother's diaries is more overwhelming than she can bear, but she knows she doesn't want to do it in the airport terminal. She wants to make a ceremony of it. She finds a flight that is in final boarding, with an empty seat. She'll have to run, but she takes it. Maybe this is a lucky omen, one that might extend into her reading tonight. The realist in her, however, knows that it is likely the diaries will not tell a happy story.
Kalinda unlocks the door to her apartment. She wheels the briefcase into the bedroom, opens it, takes out the box of her mother's diaries, and places it on the bed. She's been thinking about how exactly she wants to do this. She starts by taking her hair down. Then she showers. She wants all her make up off. She wants to be her purest, unperfumed, unpainted self, like she was when she last saw her mother. It isn't quite evening yet, but she's choosing bed clothes. She makes herself a big mug of tea and sets it on her bedside table. Then she pulls back the bedding and makes a special spot for the box in the center of the mattress. She climbs into bed, sitting cross legged with the box in front of her. She pulls the sheet up over her head so that it forms a tent with her and the box. She has dared to fantasize that a sealed box that has been protected and unopened for thirty years might still contain the scents of her mother and her kitchen. Excitement and foreboding struggle with each other as she touches the lid of the box and lifts. She is not disappointed. The aromas are very faint, but they rush over her like a wave. Quickly, they are diluted by present day air. There are twelve little orange books in the box. The first five have been used. Seven are pristine. It feels like a religious ritual. Kalinda takes the first book into her hands. She opens to the first page.
'30 November 1970. My dearest daughter, like my mother before me and her mother before her, I give you this special gift on the happy day of your engagement to marry. You assume the responsibility to record the history of your family for your children and your children's children. You will write of the joyful and the sad, the births and the deaths. You will one day pass these books down to your daughter, as I will one day pass my books down to you, as my mother will one day pass her books and the books of her mother down to me. Thus is the family history kept. It has been your father's responsibility to find you a suitable match to continue the generations. He has done this with love.' Slipped in between the pages are two fading photographs. The first is a black and white photo of Kalinda's mother as an infant, with two proud parents. The second is a crudely-colored Polaroid, one of the earliest ones, of Kalinda's mother as a young woman with two proud parents.
'4 March 1971. Today I became a wife to my husband. My father has made me a happy match.' A wedding picture and a honeymoon picture are tucked into the pages.
'11 July 1971. I have talked to my mother about my troubles. We wept together. She says it is my duty to remain in the home of my husband, by his side.' Kalinda's whole body tenses. She stiffens her spine and sheds the tent. "Oh, my God. What went so wrong so fast?"
She stops reading slowly and deliberately. She scans as fast as she can to search for bits, for signs, for answers.
Her mother-in-law hated her, left bruises on her when the others weren't looking. She didn't want this match. You are not worthy of my son. Month after month, she would demean her. Still, there is no son in your belly. You are a bad wife. The circle of extreme stress; no let up, not one day, not one moment. When she finally conceived, you are too nervous. You're not carrying a good pregnancy. You are a bad wife.
Sisters-in-law. Your father is not very smart to be tricked into this match. Worthless drunk, gambler. They were resentful. The whole family was uprooted from London, a life they loved, to get him away from his criminal friends; men of other cultures and less noble upbringings. They put him to work in his brothers' businesses. He was terrible at the work.
The demeaning of him was unrelenting. The conflict between his mother and his wife could not be borne. He moved himself and his wife far away to Toronto to escape his family. He took up his old ways with a new group of friends. She feared giving birth without her mother. They had not been gone a year when her father's eldest brother made a surprise visit to Toronto. He was to check on them, and deliver the news that the family was going back to London. What he saw was his young brother and wife, in very modest living conditions, both consuming alcohol with unsavory people of other cultures. A young child was present. He reported back to the families. Kalinda's mother wrote of being cast off, disconnected from both families. Her letters to her mother were returned to sender. Pictures of the baby were returned to sender. Kalinda is finding this especially disturbing. Her mother's parents were probably young enough to have cared for her when she was orphaned. She could have been, she should have been spared the foster system.
Her mother wrote of getting up the courage to challenge her husband. She'd taken notice of changing times for women. "Times are not changing for Indian women", her father shouted at her mother. Kalinda remembers this fight very clearly. The apartment was very small. There was literally nothing that happened between her mother and father that Leela didn't witness. She was nine, she thinks, maybe ten, when they fought like this. It was the only time her mother ever raised her voice to her husband. Leela knew at the time, that the fight was about her, but she didn't understand anything more. She remembers her father saying, "I am the father. I will make these decisions." Her mother screamed at the top of her lungs, "Not while I draw breath!" Her delicate, well-mannered mother! "I followed you. I have been your wife. You took me away from my mother and broke my heart. Because of you, my mother will not see me. You make us dependent upon these terrible people." Her father shouted back, "You are still just a little princess. We don't live in a world of princesses anymore." Nothing like this ever happened again. Her mother's diary entry explained. At an early age, the visitors in their home from her father's outside world, would comment on what a pretty little girl she was. They were curious about the culture's tradition of arranged marriages. Her mother was unnerved. She was determined to keep Leela away from these men at all costs. She created a child's world in her bedroom and installed a lock on the bedroom door that was controlled from the inside. Leela's mother taught her how to operate the lock. This is where she would go when strangers came into the house. The fight broke out when her father began talking of making a match for Leela among those terrible people of whom her mother spoke. Her mother was fierce. "She will choose for herself!" Her father, exhausted, weary, browbeaten, convinced she would forever be like a dog on a bone, relented.
There is another entry in her mother's books; a topic that has recurred throughout her whole life. Her mother wrote of reports from school teachers that she performed in class, far below her ability. 'I am ashamed,' her mother wrote. 'This home is not good enough to nurture the gift of my precious girl.'
Kalinda opens an internet search. What is the impact of extreme maternal stress on fetal development? This is challenging reading. There are lists of somatic problems associated with fetal stress. She is not afflicted with any of them. There are also studies of the psychological impact. During fetal development, differentiation of the genitals takes place at a much earlier stage than the sexual differentiation of the brain, so these two processes can be influenced independently. She's not a scientist, but even she can see where this is going. Periods of extreme maternal stress can change the balance of hormone levels for the fetus. Hormone levels determine the sexual differentiation of the brain… the research is incomplete, but… even she can see where this is going. This is giving her a headache. She falls asleep among the five little orange books strewn about the mattress.
When she wakes, she starts again from book one, page one; slowly, deliberately, painstakingly, feeling every word.