by Rishi Reddi
ADELA’S MOTHER and Rosa’s mother were sisters, Karak explained when Ram asked. They had an aunt who lived in Algodones, of whom they all, including Esperanza, were very fond. Ram wanted to know more. When Karak was out, Ram asked Rosa himself.
“She is my mother’s older sister’s daughter,” Rosa said. “We are like sisters ourselves. When we were girls, we saw each other every day until my family came to El Norte. Her mother is my madrina.”
“From Chihuahua?”
“Sí,” she said, then added, “Adela went with Señor Villa’s army when he was sweeping the villages in Chihuahua, gathering men to fight for him.”
“She went with the army?”
“With her husband,” Rosa said quickly, as if Ram had questioned Adela’s honor.
“Ah.”
“Her husband was killed, Ram.” She paused, as if this fact were also evidence of her honor. “She left Villa and went to Algodones to stay with our aunt. Then she came here.” If Rosa thought it was odd for Ram to ask these questions, she did not say.
“On her own?”
“¡Sí!” Rosa turned to him, smiling. “Adelita does many things on her own! Even as a child she helped her father with the horses and mules. She learned many things from the curandera in our village.” There was pride in her voice.
Later, Ram wrote to Padma, The Mexican women are strange. Some of our men say they have too much freedom. They are very forward, it is true. They look directly at any man, and are given liberty to choose their husbands. Some would say they are too loose. I wonder what you would think? Sometimes they offend me, then I realize, of what concern are they to me? Let them be as they are, a different people.
It felt reassuring to write this.
ADELA CAME THE NEXT SUNDAY TOO, with Esperanza and her children, and stayed the day with Rosa. She checked on the horse once, spoke with Jivan, and went back inside Karak’s house. Alejandro came to fetch them in the late afternoon, and Ram and Karak stood on the porch and watched the wagon, loaded with adults and children, turn toward town. The sky glowed red and orange. Rosa came out of the house. “Karak,” she said softly. Something about her voice made both Ram and Karak turn around.
“What?”
“The water has come.”
The men said nothing.
“Viene el bebé.”
“Oye!” Karak said, stepping backward, his boot grazing the edge of the porch. “Ram! Ram! Go and tell Jivan Singh! Go!”
Instead, Ram ran to the roadway to tell Esperanza. What could Jivan Singh do if Rosa was about to give birth? He chased after the wagon, yelling, “Alejandro, stop! Stop! The baby is coming soon! You cannot go back!” Every person on the wagon turned to face him. Esperanza’s eyes grew wide. “Take the children back to the barrio, Alejandro,” she said. “Tell the partera—Señora Jiménez—to come.”
Ram walked back to the Eggenberger house. Esperanza and Adela joined Rosa inside.
Ram sat next to Karak on the porch. “Do not worry,” he said. “They have sent for the woman to help her.”
Karak glared at him. “Are you mad? I live in America and my wife is to have her baby with a Mexican midwife? Go to Moriyama and use his phone. Call the doctor. The doctor himself must come!” It was lucky, Ram thought, that the door was closed. He hoped the women had not heard him.
Ram saddled the mare; she was doing better now. He did not like to ride, but it was the fastest way to get to the Moriyama farm. Did one need to rush when a pregnant woman’s water had come? Should he have told Jivan Singh before leaving, or perhaps Kishen Kaur? He did not know the answer to all these questions.
He found Hatsu and Tomoya working in the vegetable garden. Tomoya showed him the phone that hung in their parlor, and Ram went through the dispatcher to the doctor’s assistant. He repeated his request twice, but in the end, she understood. She would send the doctor as soon as he returned from another house call.
Outside, he found the Moriyamas seated in their Model T, waiting for him. Hatsu wanted to help Kishen with the other women. Tomoya would drop her there.
RAM ARRIVED ON THE HORSE after Tomoya had already left. Hatsu was in the Eggenberger house with Kishen and the other women.
Ram unsaddled the horse and put her in the shed. When he walked to Jivan’s house, Karak and Jivan were sitting on the back porch. They looked up when he entered. Leela was sitting with them, drawing on a slate. “What are you doing?” Ram asked.
“We are waiting for you to make dinner,” Karak said, gravely.
Ram made beans and cholé and rotis and had Leela take it, in a basket, to the women in the house. By the time the men slept at midnight, neither the midwife nor the doctor had come.
In the thick darkness before the sun rose, Ram woke to the sound of a woman’s cry. “That is Rosa,” Karak whispered. He had stayed at Jivan’s home and slept on his old cot outside. They heard a female voice instructing her, calm and steady and knowing. The partera must have arrived during the night, Ram thought as he drifted in and out of sleep. But Rosa cried out again and again; the cries seemed desperate and Ram woke. He had heard labor cries before; he had been present when three of his cousins’ children were born. But those did not sound like this. Karak was awake too. He ran to the house and banged on the door. “What is it? What is happening?” Karak said.
Kishen came to the door. “The baby is in an odd position. You must wait, Karak, and pray,” she commanded. “Do Ardas.” Ram and Karak sat on the Eggenberger front porch and waited for the dawn. As the sky grayed and brightened, Kishen emerged from the house. Strands of hair had escaped from her braid. Her chunni lay tangled around her neck. But her eyes were bright.
“Karak Singh, you are the father of a son!”
Ram had never before seen that expression on Karak’s face: elation, relief, fear, humility.
“Let me see him,” Karak said.
“Wait a few moments,” Kishen said. “I’ll bring you to him.” They waited silently.
A wagon drawn by a single mule turned onto the path. A woman was driving it.
“What do you want?” Ram asked.
“Me mandó Alejandro Felix,” the woman said.
“The baby is born,” Ram said. “Already born!”
Suddenly Karak could wait no longer. In two long strides, he crossed the porch and burst through the front door.
Later, Kishen told them how it happened: the baby had been out of position, but Adela had moved his head down with her own hands so that he could be born—clear and healthy and crying—with Rosa unharmed.
THEY NAMED THE BABY Federico Singh Fernandez. He was large and pink and always hungry. He had inherited Rosa’s white skin. He had a maroon birthmark on his tiny hip that darkened, then faded, then reappeared again. If Rosa was not holding him while he slept or ate, someone else was: Adela, Kishen, Ram, Karak, even Jivan. Ram held him often. He wondered if Santosh had had eyes as dark as this baby’s, with that indecipherable color between black and violet. He wondered if his son had chirped in that same odd way in the first hours after birth. He wrote to Padma, Describe to me what Santosh looked like in those days, how he smelled. Tell me everything.
Esperanza returned to the barrio, but Adela stayed for almost a month, washing, feeding, and cleaning. She rose early in the morning while Rosa slept.
After Ram’s hurried trip to the Moriyama house, the horse had again come up lame, and with this too she helped. If Jivan wanted to keep the mare, Adela could do something for her—but it would require that the horse rest for a full month afterward. Was that possible? Jivan said it was.
One afternoon, while Jivan held a towel over the mare’s eyes and Ram pushed down her ears, Adela poured acid on the horse’s leg. The horse groaned and tossed her head. Adela had prepared a poultice, and she placed this on a clean rag and wrapped it low around the pastern. The dressings would need to be changed every day, she instructed them, and the mare needed to be kept in the shed.
“That is impossible,” Ram snapped. “She
will not stay quiet for that.”
“I will do the dressings, then,” she said. “You need not bother.”
This was not what Ram had meant to suggest. The next morning, she arrived when he was cleaning out the stalls. He felt a tide of resentment toward her. He was capable of doing anything on this farm. He had made a success of three cotton crops. He supported a family in Punjab. He wanted her to know these things.
They were silent around each other. Her expertise with the horse bothered him, as did her sincerity, her seriousness in everything she did. He wondered if she knew he was there. That bothered him too. She was in the animal shed the next morning, and the morning after that.
One time he arrived to find her sitting on the stool that was usually kept near the harnesses; she was unaware of him, bent over, holding her head in her hands. At first, he thought that she was only tired. He had heard the baby’s cries at night and Karak had begun to sleep on the outdoor cot again—but when Ram came closer, he realized that she had been weeping.
He stepped away so that she would not know he had been there, and walked around the pond. By the time he returned, she had recovered. She looked at him but said nothing, and turned to the horse, and for a moment all he saw was her hair swept back in a bandana, the black curls spilling out underneath.
“I am sorry,” he said in Spanish.
She did not turn around. “For what are you sorry?”
He hesitated. “Perhaps the horse is lame again because I rode the day that the baby came.”
“It is not your fault.” She had bent now to take off the bandage. “She had already had a week’s rest. If not that day, she would have been hurt on the next day.” She turned to look at him. She was older than him by a few years—not many—he could see that now.
He could not condemn her for crying, for he had done the same for weeks after leaving his country and his wife. He knew why she might sit and weep for no reason at all.
ADELA ROSE EVERY MORNING to change the horse’s dressing, and Ram got used to seeing her when he came to take care of the other animals. They were comfortable with each other in the cool stillness. He liked the tremor of her voice as she comforted the mare. At night, his last thought before falling asleep was of seeing her again. She could have cared for the horse at any time, but every morning she was there.
When Alejandro and Esperanza came to fetch her, Adela gave instructions that the horse should be walked twice a day. Ram took up this job. Suddenly, there was an empty space, a longing, a secret that only he and the horse knew.
RAM WAS WATERING THE ANIMALS in the shed when he saw Alejandro’s wagon come up the dirt path six weeks later, with Adela seated in the back. A chill went down his spine. When she entered the shed, the mare snorted softly, her ears twitching.
“She has missed you,” Ram said in Spanish.
“The leg is healing well.”
He felt a tinge of pride. “Did you see the baby?”
“He is so happy. Already he seems to smile, but I think it is only gas. Barriga llena, corazón contento.” They laughed.
“Karak is very proud.”
A car honked in the distance.
Adela bent over the horse’s leg. “It will still take a few more days,” she said.
“We have rented another horse for a month. Karak Singh went today to fetch him. To give time for the leg to heal.” He wanted her to know that he cared for the horse too.
“Bueno,” she said.
The honking grew louder. Ram leaned out of the door of the shed to see. A gleaming black touring machine rolled in front of Jivan’s house. Karak sat in the driver’s seat, grinning.
“You like it, Ram Singh?” Karak stepped out of the automobile.
“Where did you rent it?” asked Ram.
“I bought it, bhai! I thought, why waste the money on renting a horse? Or renting a car? I can buy it outright. So I did.”
“But—the waiting list?” Ram said.
Jivan appeared. “What is this?”
“Our new horse.”
Kishen appeared too, untying her apron. Behind her, Leela was jumping with excitement. “A Tin Lizzie! A Tin Lizzie!” Kishen reached out to touch the gleaming fender.
“Stop!” Karak said.
Kishen pulled back her hand, her eyes wide. Karak plucked a handkerchief from his pocket and gave it to her, waiting for her to wipe her fingers. “Now you can touch it,” he said.
“How did you buy this, Karak?” Jivan asked.
“Shipment came yesterday on the express from Los Angeles. They had extras.”
Jivan looked at him doubtfully. “The waiting list had more than twenty names.”
“Fifty dollars can make that list shorter.”
Jivan rubbed his hands together like a young man. “Let’s go. Where will you take me? Let Kishen Kaur sit in the front.”
Ram saw Adela leaning on the fence post, watching them. They had all been speaking in Punjabi.
Kishen pulled her chunni around her head and sat immediately in the passenger seat.
“Me too, me too!” Leela said, climbing into the back seat.
Jivan slid in next to her.
“Ram,” Karak said, gesturing with his head that he should get in too.
Ram glanced again at Adela. He did not know if she would remain until he returned. “I’ll come later. You go.”
Karak’s eyes darted from Ram’s face to Adela’s, then back.
Ram turned back toward the animal shed, suddenly ashamed.
HE DREAMED ABOUT ADELA the night that Karak bought the motorcar—her skin and her scent and her taste. He dreamed without his conscience interfering. When he woke, his shame felt like a boulder, massive and heavy. But he could not help himself. He turned on his side and faced Amarjeet’s empty cot and released himself in the solitude. He went to the canal and bathed and when he returned, he took up a pen and paper and wrote to his wife. He wrote of manliness and virtue. Of tilling the land. Of the money that he had grown with each crop. He wrote of anything that would keep his mind on Padma, far away, and not with Adela, so near.
He wrote these lines at the end:
I must ask you something. Another man would not ask his wife but declare it only as an order. You know that is not my way. Never. Will you come and join me here, the way that Kishen Kaur joined Jivan Singh? I will make you comfortable. We will have our own house. We will have more children. After some time, we can return home together and I will buy some land and you will be the richest woman in the district. I do not usually think these things, but now I feel it strongly. You see, Kishen Kaur advised me. Sometimes a wife might not be happy with her husband’s family, and wants to live only with her husband. Sometimes she may be miserable in her in-laws’ home. Will you come? If you say yes, I will fetch you and Santosh, or if the new British laws will not allow it, I will arrange for someone to accompany you. Do not worry about the money. All is different now.
He read the last paragraph several times before sealing the envelope. He willed himself to believe that Padma’s coming was the right thing. That it was possible.
The letter lay on his trunk for one week, unsent. Every day, he forgot to leave it for the mailman. Once he forgot to take it with him into town. Ram did not know what to make of this failure.
THE FIRST SUNDAY that Karak and Ram rode to Fredonia Park in the new car, Karak parked it on the road nearest the benches.
“Aren’t you embarrassed, showing off to everyone? Don’t you have some humility?” Ram asked. “The motorcar is not a prize.” Ram thought he was talking not only of the car, but of every fine thing that existed in Karak’s home. Ram saved every penny to send to his uncle. To him, Karak’s spending was an offense.
“But it is a prize, Ram,” Karak said, grinning. “Why not be proud of it?” By the time Karak and Ram stepped out of the car, the Khan brothers and Harnam Singh were leaning over the side of the fence to get a better look. The top was down.
“Karak Singh, from whom did yo
u steal this?” Harnam asked.
“They gave them away at the fair last week,” Karak said.
More of the men were getting up to look.
Malik Khan said, “Model T Touring . . . other cars run smoother.”
“I bought what I wanted to buy, Malik,” Karak said. “What do you know about it?” The two men had never gotten along, all the Hindustanees knew that.
“Must have cost a lot, Karak Singh!” Sikander Khan said, shaking Karak’s hand.
Three men climbed in the car. Karak cranked the engine, hopped in, and drove off, a tail of dust rising behind.
Ram was happy to see him go. He settled down on a bench under his favorite tree.
“Did very well with the cotton this year,” said Ahmed, Sikander’s brother.
“He must let everyone know,” Harnam said.
“I would do the same,” Ahmed said with a chuckle, lying down on another bench with his hands behind his head.
“Our mare became lame,” Ram said. He wondered why he was making excuses for the car, while Karak shamelessly boasted about it.
“Nice to have a Touring rather than a Runabout,” said Gugar.
“Too expensive, bhai,” said Hukam, shaking his head. “A waste for our needs. I was looking at a Runabout. I put down my name for that. We’ll get it in two months’ time.”
“What do you know of their needs, Hukam?” said Ahmed. “They have their needs. We have our needs. What do you know of them?” He fished a bidi out of his pocket and held it between his lips.
Ram was already tired of their jealousy. “We need the car because Karak Singh wants to treat Kishen Kaur very well,” Ram said, “otherwise we will lose the only good cook in the valley.”
The others laughed.
“She is a good cook,” Harnam agreed. “Her makki-di-roti, sarson-da-saag.” He kissed his fingertips. “Best saag-roti in California!”