by Alka Joshi
“He must be beautiful.”
I didn’t want to talk about him now. Kanta was in too much pain. Instead, I did something quite unlike me. I gathered a few tendrils of her hair in my hand and pulled them across my mouth like a mustache, exaggerating the pucker of my lips the way her servant, Baju, did.
“Madam,” I said, doing my best to imitate his village accent. “I escaped! I stole money from your saas’s purse to join you. Please not to tell her. She will most definitely jail me.”
She managed to smile through her tears, and put a hand on my head to bless me, a gesture usually reserved for elders and holy men.
* * *
After Kanta fell asleep, I went to the baby nursery.
Radha’s boy had all his fingers and toes, two legs, two arms. He was a beautiful baby. His skin was a delicious color: tea with cream. He even had a full head of wispy black hair. I stroked his silky cheek, ran a finger across his chubby ankles. I felt a magnetic pull to him. We shared blood. We shared eyes the color of the sea. We might even have shared family in a previous life.
“How is it that you don’t have children of your own?”
I turned to look at Dr. Kumar, who had just come into the room. I wasn’t sure how to answer his question.
He was looking at the pallu of my sari, worry lines crossing his forehead. “I’m sorry. It’s impertinent of me to ask.”
I looked down at the sleeping baby. Under his pink lids, his eyes made tiny, rapid-fire movements. He had only been in this world for one hour. I couldn’t imagine what he was dreaming about. One tiny fist opened, then closed, as if he were squeezing pulp from a mango.
“I have no husband, Doctor.”
“So you aren’t—forgive me—I thought it was Mrs. Shastri.”
I am divorced. It was official now, but the words wouldn’t leave my mouth.
“I was married,” I said. “Long ago.”
I wondered if Jay Kumar knew about Samir and me. But when I looked at his face, the eyes tilting down at the corners, I thought not. His question had been innocent enough.
I smiled. “Surely you must have a family.”
“I did. That is, when I was a very small child.” He put a hand out, palm facing the floor, to indicate how small. “Parents. No siblings. My parents, well, both of them died—car accident—when I was young...” His starched coat rustled as he removed the stethoscope from around his neck, and wound the tubing around the metal carefully.
“I’m sorry.”
“Oh, it’s been ages. I was still in knickers. My late aunt raised me. Paid my way through all my schooling.”
A nurse came to check up on her tiny charges. Radha’s son rested in a corner crib, apart from the other newborns. Unlike the other cribs, his lacked the small card giving his family name. But his bed was clean, his cheeks rosy, his sleep restful. He was obviously getting excellent care.
“How did you end up in Shimla, Doctor?”
“Boarding school. The Bishop Cotton School for Boys. Then Oxford—where I met Samir.”
I realized I’d forgotten to send Samir a telegram about the baby. “You’ve informed the palace?”
“I’ll take care of it,” he said. “Haven’t found the time, so far, to complete their forms. Ten, twenty pages—down to the smallest detail. We must measure each fingernail. And every other body part.” He chuckled, glancing slyly at me.
I laughed.
He checked his watch against the wall clock. “It’s time for my clinic. Will you join me? There are some people I’d like you to meet.”
“Now?”
“No time like the present. Radha will sleep a few more hours.”
Radha’s son attempted a halfhearted croak and kicked. We turned to look at him.
“We’re still agreed that Radha is to have no contact with the child?”
He held his hands up in surrender. “The Sisters know. They have their orders.”
* * *
The tiny clinic was on the hospital’s first floor. The walls were painted toothpaste green. Half the chairs were occupied by local residents: women in dazzling blouses, petticoats the color of Himalayan wildflowers, headscarves adorned with orchids; the men in woolen tunics and drab suitcoats, their heads warmed by Pahari topas.
Dr. Kumar approached the pretty nurse behind the reception. “How many today, Sister?”
“Fourteen.”
He grinned, his chin dimpling. “Twice what we used to get.”
Ushering me into a cramped office, he indicated a chair for me. “My surgery,” he said. “Such as it is.”
His desk was littered with stacks of paperwork, prescription pads, an inkwell. An open medical textbook sat on top of the latest issue of Time magazine. On the wall: a photo of Gandhi-ji surrounded by leaders of the India National Congress. The scenery behind the Mahatma was familiar: Shimla in bloom.
Dr. Kumar sat down behind his desk. His eyes were restless once again. “We started this clinic a year ago. To serve the mountain tribes. Patients come from miles around to be cured at Lady Bradley. Well-heeled ones like Mrs. Agarwal. And, of course, like Radha, whose expenses are being borne by the palace. But no one—absolutely no one—was serving the people who have lived here...for centuries.” Hazarding a bashful glance at me, he said, “It’s your skin remedy for the little boy. That started bringing these new patients in. Today, we have more patients than ever.”
I smiled. “You give me too much credit.”
His expression became serious. “Actually,” he said, “I don’t think I’ve given you enough.”
A nurse poked her head around the door. “We’re ready, Doctor.”
He stood. “Let me show you what I mean.”
A drab burlap curtain separated the waiting room from the examination room. There, a nurse was helping a pregnant woman onto the table. Dr. Kumar introduced me as his herbal consultant and asked his patient questions in a mix of Hindi and the local dialect. He shared his diagnosis of her case with me, and when I didn’t understand the medical terminology, he explained it in layman’s terms. I had questions of my own, which he translated. We did this through five more appointments. In four out of five cases, I was able to recommend an herbal substitute for Western medicine.
For the pregnant woman suffering from severe indigestion, I suggested bitter melon cooked in garlic. Neem oil for a grandmother with hands gnarled from arthritis; asafetida—available from any vegetable vendor—mixed in water to calm a colicky baby; turnip greens and strawberries for a sheepherder who preferred my dietary recommendations to having his goiter removed.
The wall clock struck eleven.
Dr. Kumar checked his watch. “Radha must be awake now.”
How quickly the last hour had passed! I had been so occupied with the patients that I hadn’t thought of Radha. Or the baby. Or Kanta. I felt no hunger or thirst.
The doctor chuckled. “You enjoyed it, didn’t you? I was watching. Please say you’ll work with us! Mrs. Agarwal told me the work would come at a good time...” He stopped when he saw the look on my face.
Kanta had been telling him my problems! How I’d lost my business. That I didn’t have two annas to rub together. Did he pity me? Is that why he’d gone to all this trouble?
I set my jaw. “Doctor, I’m not looking for sympathy.”
“No, I meant—I’m only suggesting... What I’m trying to say is...your knowledge is worth a great deal to us. You see our need. No one else can do this work as well as you. I’ve looked. I need you.” He combed his fingers through his hair. When he let go, the curls fell in all directions, haphazardly.
“But I only know the herbs of Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. I have no knowledge of the plants that grow here—at this altitude and in this cool climate.”
His eyes scanned my face. “I’m bungling it, Mrs. Shastri. Medicine doesn’t pay handsom
ely but...there will be remuneration. We’re applying for funds. I’m asking you for professional advice. Think of all the people you could help.”
It was true that the patients at the clinic had been relieved to learn they would not have to take foul-smelling medications. The pregnant woman had touched my wrist as a gesture of thanks before leaving. Counting the time with my saas, I had fifteen years of knowledge about herbs and natural substances that I’d refined and improved upon. It could prove useful to people other than my ladies. (My ladies! As if there were enough of them left.)
Still, I wasn’t ready to make a decision. I needed to consider my options. Money would be coming from the palace after the baby’s birth, which gave me time.
“May I think about it?”
“Only if the answer is yes.” He smiled, the dimple on his chin deepening.
NINETEEN
September 3, 1956
The baby was a day old. Radha had pleaded with me for hours before I agreed to let her see him.
“We must at least cover him in sandalwood paste to guarantee his health, Jiji,” she had argued.
I had said no.
“A new birth calls for a blessing by the pandit. How about an ash tikka on his forehead?”
I had said no.
Now, Radha sat in her hospital bed holding the baby I had tried desperately to keep her from. We were alone; Manu and Kanta were taking a stroll in the garden.
Radha sniffed the baby’s head, perfumed with Godrej talcum powder. She tapped each of his fingertips. They were the size of peppercorns. His lips were the smooth texture of marigold petals, parting greedily as she slid her finger across them. She kissed his bare soles, tinted a dusky rose, and studied the crisscrosses on them. It was as if he had walked miles to get here.
“Can’t I at least feed him?”
I looked away. I knew her breasts were swollen. If I hadn’t been in the room with her, she would put him to her breast and let him drain her.
“He should get used to the bottle. That’s what his adoptive family will give him,” I replied.
Just then, the baby opened his eyes and tried to keep them open, but they rolled back in their sockets and closed again. Radha looked at me, her watercolor eyes round as marbles.
“Jiji, they’re blue! His eyes are blue! Like yours. Like Maa’s. He has us in him!”
I turned my head and cleared my throat. “You’re sure about the kajal?”
It was the only concession I had made: we could apply the black eye paste to ward off the evil eye. It was an old superstition, but Radha firmly believed it, and I suppose I had, too, at one time.
“Of course! He needs protection from burri nazar.”
I opened the tiffin I’d brought with me and reached for the tin of kajal. I had mixed soot with sandalwood and castor oils to make the smooth paste that many women wore as eyeliner. I dipped my little finger in the paste. While she held the baby steady, I gently pulled his bottom eyelids away from the sockets and drew a thin black line across the rims. Then I placed three tiny dots at both his temples and another three dots on the sole of each foot.
“It will come off when the nurses bathe him,” I said, screwing the lid on the tin.
“But the gods have seen us do it. Which means he’ll be safe.” Her baby’s fat fingers were curled around her thumb. “Would you like to hold him?”
I was wiping my hands on a towel, pretending I hadn’t heard. Through the window of the hospital room, I saw the sky: its silver cast, the clouds hovering above, a smoky green horizon of cedars, pines, rhododendrons.
“Jiji?”
“He’s healthy. His new family will be pleased.”
Her mouth became a thin line; my answer had irritated her.
The baby made sucking motions against her finger.
“You’ve barely looked at him.”
She wanted me to admit I loved him, too. That I saw us in him. If I did that, I wouldn’t be able to ask her to give him up. “I see him.”
“Then look at him with me.”
“No.” I set my jaw.
We stared at one another in silence.
“I’m not giving him up, you know.”
What?
“I only said I would because I thought you’d change your mind once he was born—”
“Change my mind? We can’t—”
“I’ve changed mine,” she said. “He’s my baby.”
My heart was beating so rapidly I thought it would burst out of my ribs. We’d sorted this ages ago! Kanta had assured me that Radha was willing to let the baby be adopted.
“Radha, he belongs to someone else—legally. That was the agreement.”
“He’s my son. He’s one of us. Could you really give up your own family?”
I already had. “He’s a baby someone else is expecting to raise!”
The baby yawned, exposing soft pink gums. She moved him to her other arm. Her eyes narrowed. “Why don’t you admit you hate babies?”
I blinked. “What?”
“I’ve seen you with little children—at your ladies’. You’re always polite and full of compliments. ‘What a pretty child, Mrs. Seth; she looks just like you. You’ve got a real Einstein on your hands, Mrs. Khanna.’ But then you turn to your work without another glance. You never look at the mothers pushing prams around the bazaar—I do. I want to see if it’s a girl or a boy. If the hair is straight or curly. You walk right past them.
“And the beggar children along the road. You hand them coins without a glance, as if they’re ghosts. I see them. I talk to them. They’re people, Jiji. This baby is a person. He’s our people. Look at his eyes. They’re Maa’s. Those ears are Pitaji’s. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
The baby fussed.
“Hai Ram! And family means so much to you that you’d destroy the only family you have left?” I said. The vein on my temple flared. “I’m family, Radha. I’m blood, too. What about me? I took care of you. Made it possible for you to go to the best school. And you repaid me by getting pregnant!”
“I didn’t do it to hurt you!”
“I spent thirteen years building a life. Now my appointment book is empty. Page after page—nothing.”
The baby was squirming now and clenching and unclenching his fists.
“But I loved him—I love Ravi,” she said, as if that made it all right.
My voice rose. “Love? This isn’t one of your American films where the heroine does as she pleases. And you’re not Marilyn Monroe.” I couldn’t stop. “How many times do I have to tell you that we don’t have the means to give this baby what he deserves? We’re not part of the polo set or the ladies’ auxiliary, no matter how much you wish it. We can’t afford to take a day off work while they book European tours for a month. Tailors, vegetable-wallas, cobblers—they go to their houses, not to ours. I wish it were different. But it’s not. It never will be.” I was in too deep. “You say you don’t want to be the Bad Luck Girl? Well, parade this baby around the city and you will be the Bad Luck Girl forever! No one will want to come near you or him.”
Radha’s eyes glittered, like the marbles Malik shot across the dirt. “I hate you! Get away from me!” she screamed.
The baby let out a loud wail. Radha rocked him from side to side, but her arms were shaking, which only frightened him more. His face had turned red.
The door opened. Dr. Kumar entered, followed by the sour-faced nurse with the brooch watch.
His eyes wandered from me, to Radha, to the baby, back to me. “Everything all right?”
I wiped the corner of my mouth where a little spit had formed. I couldn’t look at him because I was filled with shame. What I’d said to my sister about the Bad Luck Girl was a cruelty I hadn’t known I was capable of. I cleared my throat. “Please take the baby away.”
“No!”
she shouted. “I want to feed him!”
The baby’s cries were deafening.
With an effort, I shifted to the smooth voice I always used with my ladies. “Doctor, please.”
He sighed. Slowly, he turned to the nurse and nodded. Glaring her disapproval, the nurse took the screaming baby from Radha’s arms, and walked quickly out of the room.
The doctor rubbed his eyes. “Radha—”
“Dr. Kumar, I beg of you. Please. Let me keep my baby.”
It embarrassed me to hear her plead like a beggar.
“It’s not my decision,” he said.
“I’ll take care of him, I promise! I’ll find a way.”
“Your sister is your legal guardian until you come of age. You must follow her wishes.”
Radha covered her ears with her hands, shaking her head. “It’s my baby! Don’t I have a say?”
I looked at Dr. Kumar, who was rubbing his jaw, his eyes troubled.
He took a step toward me and touched my shoulder, leaving his hand there for the briefest of moments. It was soothing, as if he were telling me to be brave; that all would be well in the end. Then he was gone, quietly shutting the door behind him.
Her face wet and flushed with anger, Radha exploded. “You control everything! Whether I can feed my own baby. Who I spend time with. How I talk. What I eat. Will it always be like this? When will you stop running my life? I managed by myself for thirteen years! Thirteen years! I may as well have been alone. Pitaji drunk. Maa barely there. I found a way to get to you hundreds of miles away! Do you know how hard that was?”
She looked down at her hospital gown, now damp from her leaking breasts. “I want a family, Jiji. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. It’s why I traveled so far to find you. This baby is my family. He wants my milk. Did you see the way he looked at me? I talked to him the whole time he was in my belly. He knows my voice. He knows me. I know he needs me.”
Of course he knew her. He’d had her to himself for eight months. I understood that. And yes, my feelings toward him were so tender, so strong, it surprised me. Which is why I wanted the best for them both. Didn’t she realize that? How could I not manage one sentence that would help my sister understand that everything I did was for her own good? She exasperated me and sometimes intimidated me, but I would do anything to make her life better, easier.