by Alka Joshi
I had been on my own for so long and had no experience raising a child. Should I remind her to ask instead of just taking something, or should I indulge her, a village girl enchanted with the everyday niceties I took for granted? A flower was such a small thing, after all.
I moved into the room and set the milk jug on the table. I smiled at her. Pointing to the bowl with the remaining blossom and my blouse, I said, “Would you hang my blouse to dry on the roof while I fix my hair?”
Her body relaxed, as if she had been holding her breath. She picked up one of the bottles on the table and asked, “Jiji, what is this one for?”
“That’s bawchi oil,” I said. “It makes your hair grow. You don’t need it. Yours is thick enough.”
She pointed to a clay bowl sitting atop a square of red velvet. Its rim was stained a dark cinnamon. “Is there something special about that pot?”
Before she could lay her hands on my saas’s old mixing bowl, I steered her away from the table. “I mix henna paste in it. Now hurry with the blouse.” Checking my wristwatch, I said, “We’re going to the seamstress. If we catch her early, she’ll be bargaining on an empty stomach.”
* * *
The seamstress’s sparse hair was parted in the middle and pulled into a straggly bun. Parts of her yellow-brown scalp showed through. After she had pinned the three pairs of salwaar-kameez we’d brought with us, she leaned out her second-story window and called for tea. Five minutes later, a boy entered, carrying three tiny glasses of steaming chai. I accepted a glass, but the layer of oil floating on top kept me from taking a sip. Radha, on the other hand, had gulped hers down in less than a minute. She did the same to mine when I handed it to her. I would have to teach her how to drink without seeming thirsty.
“How much?” I asked the tailor.
The woman removed a large tin of Scorpion Brand Snuff from a shelf and pinched the tobacco between her thumb and forefinger. She inhaled it, sharply, first through one nostril, then the other, the way Maa used to, then snorted, with her mouth open.
“You never told me you had a sister,” she said.
I said, “You never told me you had the raw silk in orange when I asked for it. Imagine my surprise when I saw Parvati Singh wearing a blouse you’d made from the same fabric.”
Her lips flattened.
I noticed Radha watching us, eyes darting from the tailor to me.
Making enemies was not my way, and certainly not with one of Jaipur’s best seamstresses. I pulled a small bottle out of my carrier. “Let me give you this before I forget.”
She grabbed the bottle, and we watched it disappear in the folds of her sari. “It will take two days,” she said.
I stood. “Tomorrow.”
As soon as we left the tailor’s house, Radha asked me what was in the bottle.
“You can’t guess?”
We walked in silence. Suddenly, she stopped. “Bawchi oil?”
Smiling, I took her arm to get her moving again. “Before she started using my oil, the poor woman was almost bald on one side.”
Radha laughed.
“Auntie-Boss!”
A rickshaw pulled up beside us, Malik on the running board.
I squinted up at him. “You’re wasting my money on a rickshaw?”
He held a hand to his heart and tilted his head. “Auntie-Boss, I’m taking care of my ladies.” He pulled me up by the hand, then turned to help Radha. His mouth was busy sucking a tamarind candy, and he offered one to Radha, who hungrily popped it into her mouth.
Thirteenth thing: eating sweets will ruin your teeth, I added mentally to Radha’s list. Busying myself with the purchases, I began unwrapping the newspaper bundles. “Did you get the Moonstar brand of lavender oil?”
Malik, who had squeezed in next to Radha, leaned forward to look at me. “A wise man to the rest of the world is a nobody at home. Madam, not only Moonstar but a discount on the best brand money can buy.”
“So I should be getting money back?”
He held his hands out, palms up, toward the rickshaw driver. “Does the driver work for free?”
This made me want to laugh, but I stopped when I saw him lift his brows and salaam Radha formally, his cupped palm rolling gracefully from his forehead to his mouth to his heart, making her smile. I turned my attention back to the packages.
“Jiji! Look! Just like the crown of Krishna!” Radha shouted, pointing across the street.
Gently, I pulled her arm down. “Sixth thing, Radha?”
Radha frowned, thinking. “Don’t let my mouth hang open?”
“Very good. That building is the Hawa Mahal. It has almost a thousand windows. The ladies of the palace may be looking out those windows, and they do not wish to be seen.”
As we left the Palace of Wind behind, I knew Radha was fighting the urge to turn around and see if the ladies were watching us. I would have to keep an eye on her. My younger sister was lively and curious, which was good, but she was also untamed—and that could be a dangerous combination.
* * *
Twenty minutes later, I asked the rickshaw-walla to stop. “I need to run an errand, so I’m getting off here. When you get home, Malik, show Radha how I make the laddus. But don’t let Mrs. Iyengar catch you at her hearth.”
“Certainly, Auntie-Boss. But...”
“What?”
He shrugged exaggeratedly. “Laddus are not food, as you so often tell me, Madam.”
My cheeks felt hot. Of course! I’d completely forgotten that aside from tea at the seamstress’s and a tamarind candy, Radha had had nothing to eat. Malik had noticed. I hadn’t eaten anything, either, but I was used to it. Radha, on the other hand, was a growing girl. I should have known better. “At home there’s aloo, gobi, piyaj. Radha, can you make the subji and chappati?”
She moved her head from side to side, looking serious. Yes.
“Good.” Stepping off the rickshaw, I warned them, “Wash your hands first. And this time, Malik, be sure to use soap.”
* * *
Ten years ago, I was earning my living in Agra by making contraceptive teas for the courtesans to keep them childless, and they paid me well. Madams like Hazi and Nasreen were especially kind to me, offering me lodging in properties they owned in return for my teas. In their spare time, they taught me the art of henna. Skimming a reed across skin was only slightly different than brushing paint across a peepal leaf skeleton as I had done with Munchi-ji back in my village. I took to henna painting quickly. Before long, I was decorating the arms, legs, bellies, backs and breasts of pleasure women with designs they taught me from each of their native lands—Isfahan, Marrakech, Kabul, Calcutta, Madras, Cairo.
Samir Singh frequented the pleasure houses of Hazi and Nasreen whenever he had business in Agra. There, Muslim noblemen, Bengali businessmen and Hindu doctors and lawyers smoked hookahs, and ate and drank as the courtesans recited ancient poetry, sang sweet, nostalgic ghazals and performed classical kathak dances to the beat of skilled musicians. When Samir heard of my henna skills, he sought me out. “There are many gentlemen in Jaipur who would like to start digging a well before their houses catch fire, if you know what I mean. And they’ll pay triple what the pleasure houses pay you.” What Samir proposed was a move to Jaipur and more money than I could have imagined, preventing unwanted pregnancies for men like him, men who dabbled outside their marriages. He explained that while he liked visiting the pleasure houses, he personally preferred young, childless widows. These women, no matter how young they had been when they lost their husbands, were often doomed to a life of loneliness; that was how society preferred it. (Not so for widowers, who could marry without repercussion.) Samir lavished widows with compliments, presents and his considerable charm, and they responded gratefully.
It was the respectable cover Samir offered me that cinched the deal. I could offer my henna to high-caste w
omen like his wife while I discreetly sold my contraceptive tea sachets to his friends and acquaintances. When Parvati lamented her inability to conceive, I fed her what my saas would have—red clover, primrose oil and wild yam in the form of sweets or savories—until she became pregnant with Govind. Pleased, Parvati introduced me to the ladies whose names now graced my appointment book.
By the time I met Samir in 1945, I had already created my own life of independence. I could pay for my lodging, eat well and send a little money home to my parents. What Samir did was offer me a chance to grow my business, and I grabbed it, the way a child grabs a firefly: snatch the air—quick!—before it disappears.
Now, standing in front of a neat row of bungalows, I checked Samir’s note from yesterday: Mrs. J. Harris. 30-N Tulsi Marg. The woman with the gray victory rolls on either side of her head, who was snipping spent flowers off a climbing rose on the front terrace, looked past her childbearing years. I looked at the address again, puzzled. In all the time I’d been making my herb sachets, I hadn’t encountered a woman on the far side of fifty who needed them. Still, with English women, you never knew. The Jaipur sun was as merciless on their freckled skin as it was on the hands of my Indian ladies.
“Mrs. J. Harris?” I asked.
The Englishwoman turned and flashed a smile crowded with gray teeth. “You’ve found her! The gardener never gets this right. If I want it done properly, I have to do it myself. You must be the governess come to interview. Good with babies, are you? Well, I must say you look a mite cleaner than the ones the army’s sent. But then, my husband, Jeremy, used to say, how can they clean the dust off when they haven’t any proper place to bathe?
“Major in the British Army, he was. After he died, I stayed on. Couldn’t very well afford a Bristol cottage on his army pension, could I? I’ll call for tea, shall I? I warn you—none of that spicy chai you all like so much...bad for the stomach. Good old-fashioned English tea for me, thank you. Come inside. You must be freezing, dear. Twenty-one Celsius is glorious as far as I’m concerned, but you Indians pull out your woolies the instant there’s the slightest breeze. Never understood it. Fresh air’s the stuff for me!” Her busy English swallowed the r and softened the d—consonants we Indians took such care to pronounce. Army came off as aamy. Indians became Injuns.
Murmuring apologies, I turned, ready to make a hasty departure, when a younger woman rushed through the front door to rescue me.
“Ah, there you are, Mrs. Shastri. I believe you have some products to show me? My friends have been raving about your hand creams!”
* * *
We sat in the young Englishwoman’s bedroom with the door locked, our voices low.
“I apologize for my mother-in-law, Mrs. Shastri,” she whispered.
I had a feeling she was apologizing for more than her saas’s presence.
“She is Mrs. Jeremy Harris. I’m also Mrs. Harris but my first name is Joyce.” The young woman’s cheeks pinked. “My mother-in-law had a bridge game scheduled today but it was canceled. I’d assumed we’d be alone.”
“Mrs. Harris, I don’t wish to pry, but your mother-in-law seemed to think I was applying to be a governess. You have another child?”
Joyce Harris shook her head, lowering her eyes to her belly.
“But you are pregnant? And your pregnancy is not a secret?”
She shook her head again.
“I need to know how far along you are,” I said gently.
Her eyes filled. Two tears dropped onto the bodice of her cheerful nylon dress. She watched the water travel down the length of the flowered fabric but made no move to wipe it away.
“Mrs. Harris?”
She hesitated. “F-four months.”
It wasn’t safe for women to eliminate babies too far into their pregnancy; four months was the upper limit. When women came to my mother-in-law for help, she would tell me: we must leave the women as healthy as we found them. “You’re sure?”
A beat, and then she nodded.
“At this stage it would be risky—both for you and for the baby. And my main concern is for your safety. I need you to be sure it’s no longer than four—”
She interrupted me with an urgent whisper. “I want this baby with all my heart. But if I’m thrown out on the street...”
The women I helped always wanted to confess their guilt, but it would have been easier for me and for them not to take me into their confidence. I wet my lips. I had to be sure she was telling me the truth.
“If you can tell me with absolute certainty that you aren’t more than four months along, and if you follow my instructions precisely as I give them to you, then you should be fine, but—”
“I can’t sleep. My headache is constant. If I could have this baby, I would. But I don’t know if it’s...my husband’s.”
Many of the women I handled at Samir’s request were having an affair.
“Madam, there is no need to explain.”
Joyce Harris leaned toward me and clasped my hand, startling me. I stared at the pale skin stretched across her knuckles, the loose wedding band, her bright red nail polish. She expected from me what wasn’t mine to give. Forgiveness. Absolution. I was a stranger.
I looked at her face—wet, blotched, streaked with pink. The whites of her eyes were bloodshot.
“He plays squash at the club with John—my husband. That’s where I met him. At the club. He’s married, too. The baby may be John’s but it could be...his.” She released my hand and removed a handkerchief from her belt to wipe her eyes. “He’s Indian.”
For the briefest of moments I wondered if her Indian lover was Samir. But Samir was far too cautious; he made sure to supply each of his mistresses with my tea sachets so he could move on to the next woman with a clear conscience. If Joyce Harris were one of his lovers, he would have told me. He’d never made a secret of the others. Besides, he favored widows, and Joyce Harris was clearly married.
“What would my husband say if I handed him an Indian baby? I don’t have to wonder what Mother Letty would say. I couldn’t bring a brown baby back home to Surrey. There’s no place in English society for such a child. There’s no p-place my baby would be safe.”
I waited until her sobs had subsided.
“Mrs. Harris, I’m sure you’re doing what’s best for your circumstances and for...those around you. But again, I must warn you not to delay. Boil one herb sachet for a half hour in one quart of water. Drink a cup of the liquid every hour until it’s finished. It will taste bitter. You can put honey in the mixture to make it more palatable. Repeat the process once more. Within a few hours, you will develop cramps. Be sure to put some cotton padding in your underwear to catch the flow of blood when it starts. At your stage of pregnancy, your body will expel large clots of tissue, as well. It will be painful, but do not panic. Let the herb do its work.”
Joyce Harris closed her eyes, letting more tears fall. I paused to let her absorb the instructions.
“I will leave three sachets with you, but you should not need more than two. To help with the pain, you can keep a hot water bottle on your belly or soak towels in warm water and apply them to your female parts. Only after it’s over should you call your doctor. He’ll think you’ve had a miscarriage. If you call him too soon, he’ll try to save the baby, which, I believe, is not what you want.”
I patted her pale arm. “It works most of the time, but there is no guarantee. If you’re losing too much blood, you must call the doctor immediately. Again, I need to warn you there will be a lot of pain.” I set a small vial on the tea table and told her to apply the lotion I’d prepared to soothe her female parts, which would feel raw after her body had expelled the fetus. “Do you understand everything I’ve told you?”
She nodded. We sat a little while longer in silence.
“Do you have any more questions?”
“Only the ones neit
her of us can answer,” she told me in a voice I had to strain to hear.
* * *
As soon as I entered my lodgings, Radha sprang up from the floor, where Malik was gathering pebbles from a game of fivestones. She ran to the cooking pots and came back with a steel plate of food, relieving me of my carryall. “For you, Jiji.”
Something was amiss. My eyes circled the room.
Malik stood and pocketed the pebbles. He stared at the floor sullenly, not meeting my eye. Radha ran to the water jug and returned with a full glass.
Now I was standing with a plate of fried dough and a glass of water, two anxious faces watching me.
“Dal batti? I thought I told you to make laddus.”
She offered a nervous smile. “Malik said dal batti is a Rajasthani specialty. I took off the burned pieces. Taste, Jiji.” She was anxious to please.
I ignored her. “Malik?”
Radha took a step forward, as if to shield him. “It’s not his fault, Jiji. He was only putting out the fire. Then Mrs. Iyengar started screaming—”
Fire? Mrs. Iyengar screaming? “Chup-chup!” Putting the plate and tumbler on my worktable, I took a deep breath. “Start from the beginning.”