by Alka Joshi
She told me she was making dal baati when her chunni caught fire. Malik rushed down the stairs to help, and Mrs. Iyengar yelled at him for polluting her hearth.
Malik made circles on the floor with his big toe. “Sorry, Auntie-Boss.”
Radha frowned and looked from him to me. “Malik has nothing to be sorry for. He saved me from burning! That mean old crow—”
Had it not been for her insolence, I might have been more sympathetic. But her attitude must be curbed now or it would color my relationship with the landlady.
I held up a finger. “That old crow is our landlady.” I held up another finger. “This is her home, not ours. She has the right to tell us what to do.”
“That’s not fair! Why don’t we just move now to your new house? Get away from her?”
The vein on my temple throbbed. I pressed it gently with my fingers, resisted the urge to raise my voice. “I told you, Radha. We’ll move into our house when it’s ready. Not before.”
I looked at Malik. “Did it happen as she says?”
He nodded.
I placed my hand on his head. “Thank you for keeping Radha from burning the house down.”
He gave me a small smile.
“As for you, Radha, you must be more careful from now on—”
“But—”
“Especially when it comes to Mrs. Iyengar’s hearth.”
“Jiji—”
I reached for Radha’s shoulder to calm her. She flinched, as if I were about to slap her. Is that what Maa used to do? Or what Hari did?
I dropped my hand. She wouldn’t meet my eyes.
I let out a sigh. Appeasing the pious Mrs. Iyengar would cost me plenty. The last (and only other) time Malik had unknowingly walked across her hearth, she had insisted on a Brahmin pandit to purify it. (Muslims like Malik ate meat; the Iyengars didn’t. They would have objected even if the Singhs had crossed their hearth. Rajputs ate meat also.) The first purification had cost me forty rupees. First my debt to the builder, then Hari. Now, this.
I tucked the end of my sari in my petticoat, steeling myself for a chat with my landlady. “I will go see what our punishment is.”
Malik ran to the herb table, picked up two bottles and handed them to me. “I’ve already mixed them.”
I looked at the labels: a hair tonic and a skin lotion. I smiled at him. “Good man.” He knew as I did that bribery was the way to the landlady’s heart. Mrs. Iyengar had us dangling over a well: we couldn’t cook treats for tomorrow’s clients until the pandit had finished his purifying ceremony, which could take from one to three hours. It was going to be a long night.
As if he’d read my thoughts, Malik said, “Pandit-ji is coming in one hour.”
* * *
It was midnight, finally. My favorite hour. The moon was at the window. A koyal cried out its love song; the spotted dove joined in. The day’s heat and dust were at rest, as were the people of Jaipur. The room was fragrant with the savories and sweets we had cooked (dandelion leaf pakoras for Mrs. Patel’s arthritis, sweet almond laddus for Mrs. Gupta’s headaches) and the lotions we had made (fresh sandalwood oil for Mrs. Rai’s aching feet).
Malik had gone home hours ago. Radha was sleeping on the cot. I sat at my herb table with a small diya burning to give me light. I opened my notebook, licked the tip of my pencil.
The pandit’s ablutions (he’d taken an hour to purify Mrs. Iyengar’s hearth): debit.
The lavender and clove oils, turmeric and saffron that Malik bought today: debit.
Money I’d received from Samir for his tea sachets: credit.
Money paid by Joyce Harris for her sachets: credit.
The builder’s invoice: debit.
Payment to Hari: debit.
Overall, a loss. I closed the notebook and began taking the pins out of my hair. I wondered how long it would take to finalize the Singh-Sharma union. And if the builder would give me an extension on what I owed him. How much more would Hari demand for his silence? I really needed the palace commission, but how long would I have to wait for Parvati to talk to the maharani?
I sifted through my hair with my fingers. Saasuji once told me there were three kinds of karma: the accumulated karma from all our past lives; the karma we created in this life; and the karma we stored to ripen in our future lives. I asked myself which karma had led to my marriage with Hari. And deserting my family—was that a new karma I had created or was it a karma from a previous life that had ripened in this one?
In her sleep, Radha cried out, as if she were shouting for help through a closed mouth. I rushed to the cot before she woke up the entire household.
“Radha. It’s only a dream.” I rubbed her shoulder.
But she would not wake up. She was curled on her side the way a baby lays in a womb. Her fists were balled tightly under her chin. Her tears dripped on the pillow. She looked so fragile. A flash of memory came to me: crying myself to sleep every night of my married life with Hari.
I lay down behind her and pressed my chest against her back, my cheek against her cheek, my leg against her leg. I wrapped my body around hers until there was no space left between us. I touched the skin of my ladies daily in my work, but being this close to another body was a new sensation.
“Shh. There now. Shh,” I whispered.
With my free hand, I stroked her hair, still scented with the frangipani from this morning. “Rundo Rani, burri sayani. Peethi tunda, tunda pani. Lakin kurthi heh munmani,” I sang softly at the edge of her lip, my father’s voice guiding me.
Her breath relaxed. Her muscles softened. She was awake now. She reached for my hand and hugged it to her breast. I felt her ribs rise against my chest, then fall as they settled, with each breath.
I wiped her face and neck with the edge of my sari. “Tell me. About the dream, Radha.”
She sniffed. “It was dark. Pitaji was in a well. And he only had me to hold on to. The gossip-eaters had gone home a long time ago. I was trying to help him. But he was so much heavier than me.” She released a racked cry. “And I let go. Jiji, I let go. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t. I looked for you but you weren’t there!” She took a great gulp of air. “So many times I wished you would come and help me. One time, I started off from Ajar to find you, but Mala, our neighbor, saw me and sent me home again.” A fresh wave of tears flooded my hand, the one she was holding. “When Maa died, I didn’t tell anyone. For two days. I let her lay there. On the cot. I was so scared. I didn’t know what would happen to me. I was so alone. Where were you all this time, Jiji? Why did you leave us? Leave him?”
I loosened my grip on her. Of course she wanted to know. For thirteen years I had kept the answer to myself.
I swallowed. “I would have died if I’d stayed. Hari would have made sure of it. I couldn’t go back to Maa and Pitaji.” She knew as well as I did that, once married, a woman was her husband’s property. Unhappy wives couldn’t just go back home to their parents, expecting sympathy. Some families even changed their daughter-in-law’s first name as soon as she came to their household, as if her previous self had never existed.
I told Radha about the one good thing in my marriage, Hari’s mother. How she taught me to heal women who came to her from surrounding villages. Mostly, they complained of stomach upsets, cooking burns, female pains and barren wombs. I didn’t tell Radha about the wombs they wanted to empty without their husbands’ knowledge.
I told her about Hari’s beatings and the day I walked out of his hut one afternoon, making my way to Agra on foot, hiding behind a bush or in a trench whenever I saw anyone. It took me a week. I ate whatever I could forage along the way, often at night, when no one could see me, making sure there were no wild boars around. In the city of the Taj Mahal, I told her I helped women in much the way my mother-in-law had. What I left out were the details, that most of my income had come from wrapping a few
tablespoons of ground cotton root bark in muslin pouches—as my saas had done for the village women—and selling them. It wasn’t that I was ashamed of my work; if not for me, many courtesans and dancing girls would have sought cruder, and more harmful, means to keep pregnancies at bay—douching with detergents, throwing themselves down stairs or piercing the fetus with a knitting needle. But the ears of a thirteen-year-old village girl were too tender to hear such things.
I explained to her that Agra was where I learned to paint henna. I smiled as I thought of Hazi and Nasreen teaching me to paint a woman’s body to inflame desire, but I didn’t share that with Radha. I told her about the offer I’d received to paint henna for more money in Jaipur, and how I had jumped at the chance. “It allowed me to send more money back home.”
“But henna work is for Shudras, not Brahmins,” she said. “Pitaji would never have allowed you to touch other people’s feet.”
I let go of her hand then, and rolled over on my back. “It was better than being a whore, Radha.” I had intended to sound harsh, and I had.
We lay quietly for a while.
“How did Pitaji die?” I asked.
“He drowned. But he was sick, too. In his stomach.”
“What do you mean?”
“He liked his sharab,” she whispered. “He thought he was hiding it from us, but by nightfall, he was too drunk to walk. The next day, I would have to go and teach school for him.”
I knew Pitaji had started drinking around the time we came to live in Ajar, but he’d never been so drunk that I had to take over the school. “Did Maa ever forgive him?”
Radha turned her face to look at me. “For what?”
Just then, she looked so much like Maa that it was almost as if I were lying next to my mother the night I asked where her gold bangles were. I was just a little girl then, and as long as I could remember she’d never taken them off, even as she bathed, cooked and slept. I loved playing with them when we lay together like this. Maa’s eyes filled with tears at my question, and I felt fear for the first time in my life.
I stroked Radha’s cheek. “We didn’t always live in Ajar. Didn’t Maa tell you? We came from Lucknow. Pitaji had become obsessed with the independence movement. He would skip work to join the freedom marches. He spoke out against British rule at rallies. Then, when the movement needed more money, he sold Maa’s gold, the jewelry from her dowry—wedding bangles, necklaces, earrings—against her wishes. Maa was furious.
“The British, who ran the school system, hadn’t approved of his freedom fighting. So they demoted him to Ajar, this tiny, backwater place. I must have been about ten. In one fell swoop, they cut his salary and his pride.”
“But Pitaji was right, wasn’t he? India won in the end.” Radha wanted to believe in our father, to defend him, as I had.
“Of course he was right,” I said. It was people like our father, millions of them, who had made it clear to the British that Indians would no longer be held hostage in their own country.
But I could also see why Maa disapproved. So many Indians had been hurt or imprisoned for standing up against the British. She pleaded with our father: Why couldn’t he keep quiet, just take care of his family, and let others fight? But our father was fervent in his beliefs; I admired him for that. He was committed to his ideals. Unfortunately, high ideals came with a price.
Once he had depleted his savings, he sold the remainder of Maa’s only possessions, the gold that could have saved us from poverty, that was supposed to keep Maa secure in widowhood, that might have kept me from having to marry at fifteen. In a country where a woman’s gold was her security against the unforeseen, Maa’s naked earlobes and bare wrists were a constant reminder that my father had put politics before his family.
And so, we were forced to move to Ajar, where my mother buried her disappointment and my father buried his pride. Independence wouldn’t come for another twelve years, but by then, he was already broken.
Radha said, “Maa never talked about you. Never spoke your name. I didn’t even know you existed until the gossip-eaters told me you disappeared the same year I was born. As soon as I learned to read, I realized it was your letters Maa was burning whenever they arrived. The only letter of yours I read was the one you sent about the train tickets to Jaipur. You didn’t mention me in the letter at all. I knew then that you didn’t know I existed, either.”
I closed my eyes. Oh, Maa, how angry I must have made you. Your husband betrayed you. I betrayed you. If only you had opened those letters!
As soon as I was able to earn enough, I’d sent money in every envelope for my parents to spend on their needs. I’d begged their forgiveness for leaving my marriage and told them I would send for them as soon as I could. If the money had been destroyed along with my letters, no wonder Radha’s clothes had looked so threadbare when she arrived in Jaipur.
I curved my body around hers again, as if I were hugging my mother, as I longed to do.
Radha squeezed my hand, bringing me back to the present, reminding me that I had a living, breathing sister. She may not be my penance for the wrong I had committed, but my salvation. I could no longer make anything right with my parents, could no longer humble myself before them, could no longer restore their good reputation. But I could take care of my sister, guide Radha into maturity, into womanhood. Make sure she became someone my parents would be proud of—unlike me.
Radha stirred. “Jiji, remember Munchi-ji?”
I remembered the old man in Ajar, hunched over a tiny leaf skeleton, painting a gopi and cow no larger than my thumb, dotting the milkmaid’s sari with his camelhair brush. He’d been the one I’d run to when my parents argued about money. I escaped my mother’s bitter silences and my father’s drinking by losing myself in my painting. Old man Munchi taught me to see, to really notice, every tiny detail of what I was about to paint before ever handing me a brush. It was this practice that made it easy for me to pick up a henna reed years later and paint designs etched intricately in my memory.
“Is he still painting?” I asked.
“Hahn. He always said you were his best student.”
I found myself smiling. “Did you paint with him, too?”
“I don’t have your gift, Lakshmi. Mostly, I made the skeletons for him out of peepal leaves. I also ground his paints.” She turned to look at me again, a mischievous smile playing at her lips. “Do you know what you get when you feed a cow mango leaves, then mix the cow patty with urine and clay?”
“What?”
“Orange paint!” She grinned. “Munchi-ji said my paint was smooth as silk.”
“I can show you how to grind henna leaves to make my paste if you’d like.”
“Accha.” Yes. She closed her eyes, yawning loudly.
“You should cover your mouth when you yawn, Radha.”
Her eyes slid upward, coyly, to meet mine, her lips curving. “Twentieth thing?”
* * *
I’d always been a light sleeper, so when I heard the rattle of the doorknob, I was immediately awake and off the cot. It was still dark outside. Radha was fast asleep. Samir burst through the door, and my first thought was that he’d had too much to drink at his club and lost his head—until I noticed the woman in his arms. She was bundled in a quilt. Eyes closed, moaning softly. Samir’s friend, Dr. Kumar, stood beside him. As I sprang out of bed, I glanced at the wall clock. It was two in the morning. I ushered them inside the room before Mrs. Iyengar woke up.
When I flipped the light switch, Samir’s expression was grim.
“Something’s wrong with Mrs. Harris,” Samir whispered. “Kumar has some questions for you.” Then his eyes darted around the room until he spotted my cot, where Radha was propped on one elbow, rubbing her eyes.
I rushed to her. “Radha, please get up.”
She scampered off, her eyes growing wider, as Samir laid his charge car
efully on the cot, on the sheet where she and I slept. As he did, the quilt fell open and I saw the congealed blood shining in the weak light of the ceiling bulb. Joyce Harris’s eyelids, flushed and blue-veined, fluttered, and her knees rose toward her chest. She was clutching her stomach. Her teeth were chattering so loudly I was surprised Mrs. Iyengar wasn’t already pounding at my door, telling me to be quiet.
“Why are you bringing her—”
“No time. Kumar will explain.”
I noticed the doctor’s black medicine bag. He pulled a stethoscope from it.
Samir grasped my hands. “Thank you, Lakshmi. Please do as Dr. Kumar says,” he begged. Then he was gone, pulling the door closed quietly behind him. The whole exchange had taken less than a minute. The air in the room was close, thick with the Englishwoman’s moans.
Dr. Kumar, whose eyes hadn’t yet found a place to rest, kept his voice low. “She’s taken something. I need to know what she took and how much.”
“I don’t understand—”
“What’s to understand?” He frowned. “She’s taken a dangerous herb to kill her baby, and she’ll die unless I know what she took.”
“But I only—” I felt my face flush. “Hasn’t Samir explained to you what I—”
“Do you know how risky it is to abort a baby at five months?” His gray eyes flashed.
“Five months?” My mouth hung open.
Kumar nodded and placed his stethoscope on Mrs. Harris’s abdomen. She let out a cry. “I’m picking up the baby’s heartbeat, so it’s eighteen weeks at least. But the heartbeat is faint. The woman has lost a lot of blood. She needs a transfusion. Samir is calling in favors to get her to a private hospital.” As he talked, his eyes wandered from Joyce Harris to me. “I don’t think the baby will survive.” He glanced at my hands, which were clasped in front of my sari.
Finally, he removed the stethoscope. “What did you give her?” His words were measured, as if he were trying to contain his anger.