Early the next morning, as I stretched my body to prepare for the day to come, a knock sounded on the door.
I found Sita on the other side, her eyes bright with tears.
“What is it?” I asked, ushering her in. The moment the door slid shut behind her, the tears began slipping down her cheeks.
“He was angry,” she said, her voice steadying as she spoke. “He was explaining to me how you had come to see him asking him to give up the throne two days before his coronation. I told him that you must have been tired, that perhaps you misspoke and… and he could not believe I had seen you, that I was defending you.” She stood up, twisting the end of her braid in her fingers. “He said a friend had told him that if he did not use a firm hand with me, I would never listen to him. That he hadn’t thought it good advice at that time, but perhaps he had been mistaken.”
This was a nightmare. It had to be. Rama was single-minded, and perhaps gullible, but he had never once shown himself to be this kind of man. A firm hand. It did not take much imagination to uncover what this might mean. I wanted to cry, even though it had happened to Sita. “What can I do?” My voice trembled. I did not want to believe that any man would consider hitting a woman, let alone a god. But perhaps she was just a mortal to Rama, someone who was getting in his way. And perhaps he was more man than god in some ways. How had so much changed in the span of one night?
Sita took my hand in hers. “You seemed… I mean… last night.” She kept trailing off and restarting, and I squeezed her fingers.
“You can say anything you want to me, Sita.”
“Can you really do something to help him? Stop him from actually doing this?”
I could not imagine how putting Bharata on the throne would help Sita. No. I would have to do something more. A thought sprang into my mind—I could send Rama away, far away from the pressures that had consumed him. That had turned him from a kind boy into a person willing to sacrifice his subjects in order to take the throne. It was difficult to imagine doing it, forcing him away for years, and yet perhaps there he could safely pursue his divine war without harming anyone else. And when he had worn himself out on this fool’s quest, he could return as the man Kosala needed him to be.
“I will see what I can do,” I told her.
She left with a small, hopeful smile, but when she did I let myself sink to the floor and give in to heartbreak. I had raised a son who would threaten a woman. Who would insinuate violence toward her. It was a grief beyond tears to contemplate, the totality of my failure. I sat crouched against the door until my thighs cramped and went numb. Only when Asha came through the door and nearly hit me did I rise on unsteady feet and set out to try to mend what I still could.
Some instinct directed me to the training fields.
Rama stood alone, his back to me and a bow in his hands, loosing arrow after arrow at a target.
“Ma,” he said without turning. “Would you love me if I did something terrible?”
“Of course,” I said, knowing where this was going. “But I might still be angry with you.”
He turned around. His eyes were red, as though he had been crying, and despite everything, I wanted to gather him in my arms. But the moment passed, for he was not the baby I had sung to sleep nor the child I had chased around the yard, as much as I wanted him to be. “You know, then. What I said to Sita.”
“Yes.” I wanted to comfort him, but he did not deserve it. I clasped my hands behind my back. “I am disappointed in you, Rama.”
“I wasn’t thinking,” he whispered. “I don’t know what came over me. I just—I feel so burdened. The pressure of my purpose is unbearable. And I wanted your help, so after we talked, and I realized you did not believe in me, I just… snapped. I am so sorry for what I did. For what I said.”
He hung his head in shame, the picture of contriteness, but it was too little, and it came too late. For I saw it then, the pattern. Under stress, Rama lashed out. He put people in danger. He had done it to me, to his brother, and now to Sita.
“Please, Ma,” Rama was saying. “You have to believe me.” But he was speaking from a distance. I had heard husbands speak like this before. I had heard it for years, since the inception of the Women’s Council.
“I believe that you are sorry, Rama,” I said. “But you have been sorry many times, and yet this is not the first time you have behaved this way. You threaten people because you feel a lack of control. It’s not right.”