by Meira Chand
‘It’s a jacket for the baby,’ she whispered.
‘Does he beat you?’ Sita remembered her father’s violence.
The words sprang from her as she searched for a way to shatter the wall Muni had built between them. Muni drew a startled breath and looked up.
‘Does he?’ Sita repeated, seeing again her mother’s cowed face, remembering the force of her father’s hand coming down upon her as a child, and the metallic taste of blood on her tongue.
‘It is only when he has had too much toddy. Otherwise, he is …all right to me.’ Muni stumbled over the words and Sita knew she wished she could say her husband was a kind man, but could not lie and yet did not wish to be disloyal.
‘Come back with me to Singapore,’ Sita urged.
‘I cannot leave…not now.’ Muni laid a hand upon her belly.
‘He wants a boy from me,’ she whispered.
‘And if it’s a girl?’ Sita asked, a familiar dark feeling running through her.
‘He says he will kick it out of me.’
Muni reached out a hand and gripped Sita’s wrist, darting quick glances at the door, as if expecting her husband to return even as they spoke. From outside the calls of birds and the din of cicadas came to them. It was as if Muni’s old world had risen up, animal-like, to claim her again, and she had retreated into that darkness from which, briefly, she had emerged to taste a different life. Perhaps, if Shiva had not died, she too might have found her old life waiting to reclaim her, just as it had repossessed Muni, Sita thought. Instead, with his death, Shiva had released her.
Soon, Gopal’s jeep was heard drawing to a halt outside and Muni dropped Sita’s hand, jumping up, her stress easing into relief now that she knew Sita would soon be gone. Sita too was filled with relief, impatient now to be free of the darkness she sensed about Muni. She had a little money and pressed this into Muni’s hand.
‘Use it for the baby,’ she instructed as she climbed into Gopal’s jeep.
She did not look back as the vehicle bounced away over the uneven ground. Gopal turned his head to glance at her, as if he understood her disappointment.
‘Don’t worry. She’ll be all right. Ramaiah gets drunk but he is not a bad man, in fact he is better than many. If she has a boy he will be happy with her.’
‘And if she has a girl?’ Sita inquired.
At the wheel of the jeep Gopal shrugged, and sighed.
28
SINGAPORE, 2000
Amita let herself into the flat as silently as she could. In the kitchen she heard Sita talking to Joyce, the sound of onions being chopped on a wooden board, the clank of a pan, a gushing of water. Closing the door of her room, she lay down on the bed. A breeze blew in through the half open window, and she was grateful for its cool touch on her face. Above her the ghostly manikin gazed down from the ceiling as always, and she turned her head away. It was over. They had given her some anaesthetic and she had known nothing about it. One moment the child was within her, and the next it was gone. Afterwards, they kept her in a curtained cubicle for a few hours. Finally, Dr. Tay came to see her and told her to go home, and rest.
‘Tomorrow is a national holiday, and then you have the weekend. By Monday you’ll be fine. It will all be behind you.’
She began to cry, and seeing her tears he paused, a hand on the curtain, turning a kindly face to her.
‘There was no option,’ he reminded her.
Then, he was gone, pulling the flimsy screen back into place behind him.
No option. The words kept repeating in her mind. No option, and probable death for them both if she had done nothing. In her distress she had not thought to ask about the child’s remains. On the ultrasound picture she had seen limbs and a head. What had they done with that tiny body? Would they have given it to her if she had asked, could she have cremated it with some kind of rite? Instead, because she had not even thought to inquire about her child, it would have been tipped into the hospital incinerator along with other human detritus. The thought troubled her painfully and would not let her free, as if the child reproached her in an invisible way.
Some months ago she had seen a television documentary about the practice in Japan of appeasing the souls of aborted foetuses, or those miscarried or stillborn. Offerings were made to a bodhisattva who was believed to protect these unborn children. Statues of Jizo were often small with childlike faces, and were adorned by bereaved mothers with red bibs and caps for warmth in the afterlife. Such statues were everywhere in Japan, and Amita knew now that they answered a need to comfort not just the soul of the lost foetus, but the guilt-ridden, grieving mother as well.
Somehow, she must find a way to hide what she was living through from her own mother. She did not think she had the strength to face the shock and distress Sita would feel at her wanton behaviour, and its consequences. Her mother would immediately light incense and say prayers before the devi, and appeal to the goddess on behalf of her apostate daughter. To her mother’s way of thinking, Amita had now imperilled her karmic progress by an act of violence, and also thwarted the karmic evolution of another soul. In her present fragile condition, Amita felt unable to argue her way out of the situation in the usual manner.
From the kitchen the clank of pans came to her. Whatever was being prepared must now have been cooked, for there was the clink of crockery as Joyce set the table and settled Sita to her lunch, then the echo of her goodbye and the shutting of the door. Amita closed her eyes and fell into a fitful sleep.
She did not know how long she slept, but a crack of thunder woke her. The usual tropical afternoon storm had arrived, and wind whistled through the flat, sweeping up the curtains at the window. The sky was dark and turbulent, rain drummed on the glass and splattered through the open pane. For a moment Amita, still struggling to surface from sleep, saw again the rain and lightning framed in a window in Amsterdam, but she shook the image away. From beyond the door there was the sound of her mother hurrying to shut windows she had earlier opened, and then her footsteps coming down the passage. The door to Amita’s room was thrown open and Sita burst in, crossing the floor to close the window. Turning back into the room, Sita stared in shock at the sight of Amita on the bed.
‘Came home early, not feeling well,’ Amita hastily swung her feet off the bed and stood up.
Then, feeling the discomfort of dampness upon her, she looked down to see her slacks and the bed sheets were wet with blood. Her mother stared at her in alarm.
‘I’m all right. Don’t worry.’
Amita heard the brusqueness in her voice, and saw her mother’s startled expression. Pushing past her, Amita paused before the cupboard to pull out clean underwear and trousers, then made her way to the bathroom.
When she returned, Sita was already changing the soiled linen, bent over the bed, frail and elderly, smoothing clean sheets into place, tucking in the corners with a military precision learned long ago in the army.
‘What’s wrong, something is wrong?’ In her anxiety, Sita sounded accusatory.
‘Nothing is wrong,’ Amita heard the anger in her voice.
Her legs were weak, and a deep aching pain flooded through her to meet that other ache she could not define, but which was worse than any bodily wound. She needed to lie down.
‘Come,’ Sita hurried forward, taking her arm, helping her to the bed.
Amita shook herself free of her mother’s touch, rounding upon her, taking no notice of her stricken face. In all the years they had lived together she had never raised her voice to her mother like this, but something had been released that she could not put back, and she heard her voice growing louder.
‘It’s nothing; leave me alone. What do you know of my life?’
Her mother stared at her in shock, lips parted and seemingly lost for words. Amita continued shouting, thrusting her face near Sita.
‘I wanted it. That’s what’s strange, that’s what I don’t understand. I wanted to keep it. I didn’t want this to happen, but we would both have died if
I had not got rid of it. It was a girl, they told me it was a girl.’ The words burst out, unstoppable, thrown up from deep within her.
Her mother sat down abruptly on a chair as Amita continued to shout, tears streaming down her face.
‘It was my fault. I wanted this to happen. I didn’t know I wanted it to happen, but I did. Only I didn’t think it would end like this.’ She could not stop the babble, or the sobs that shuddered through her.
Sita stared fixedly at her daughter, then, standing up, she placed a hand on Amita’s arm, pushing her gently towards the bed.
‘Rest,’ she said.
‘Go away. Leave me alone. How can I rest? What would you know?’ Amita yelled.
‘I do know,’ Sita answered, her face filled with such raw emotion that Amita fell silent.
‘I too lost a child. I wanted to be a good wife, to give him a boy, and I prayed and prayed, but it was a girl. He thought I had done it deliberately, but I did not. It just happened. Afterwards he would not speak to me.’
She remembered Shiva’s expression as he looked down at her. She remembered the press of Uma’s hand on her stomach, and the metal bowl of bloodied newspaper that held the remains of her child. Amita stared silently at her mother.
‘I have never told this to anyone before,’ Sita whispered, sitting down on the chair again.
‘And then you had me? Another girl. What did he say to that?’ For a moment Amita forgot her own grief and gazed at her mother.
It had never occurred to Amita that her father might not have wanted her, or that he would have preferred a boy. Something dense and suffocating seemed to be closing in about her. If the rain were not still drumming heavily upon the glass, she would have opened the window for air.
‘That is another story,’ her mother whispered, her eyes fixed upon her hands.
29
SINGAPORE, 1948
When Sita returned from Penang, the routine of life at the Ramakrishna mission soon claimed her again. Swami Vamadevananda arranged for her to give evening classes to a group of women who had once worked on the rubber plantations. Their husbands had now found jobs in Singapore in the booming construction industry, as the city cleared up the damage of war. Although the girls’ orphanage had moved to Penang, the boys’ school remained, and Sita continued with her teaching and tutoring duties.
The year ended, and a new year arrived. As the weeks went by Sita thought of Muni growing and swelling as the birth of her child drew near. Muni’s thin and fearful face was always before her, and she knew she must return to the rubber estate again. After a few months, she made an excuse to Dev and Rohini, cancelling her usual weekend visit to them, and instead took an overnight bus to Kuala Lumpur. The Ramakrishna Mission helped her buy a ticket, and along with food for the journey, she bought some packets of biscuits and a sari for Muni, plus a small dress and cotton shawl for the baby, and tied everything up in a carrying cloth.
The long distance bus was half-empty, and Sita settled down for the night, stretching her legs out on the empty seat beside her. In the early morning the bus would halt in a town not far from Muni’s plantation. From there a local bus would take Sita on to the nearby McCarthy Rubber Estate. Until that moment she had not realised how much the anticipation of the journey had tired her. Each sway and bump of the road rocked her deeper into sleep, and what she dreamed that night stayed in her mind, as a portal through which she passed into a new life. Nothing was ever the same again.
In her dream, she stood as her adult self beside the river in her childhood village, the muddy tide rippling past her. Gazing into the opaque water, she imagined she saw another river beneath the river, where her sister lived, still waiting for her after so many years. Stepping into the water, she plunged an arm beneath the surface, and grasped the hand she knew she would find stretched out to her there. Cold fingers gripped her own in a vice-like hold and, leaning back on her heel to better balance the weight that now dragged on her arm, she pulled and heaved until at last there was an abrupt lightening, like an anchor breaking free of its mooring. Then, in a great shower of water the body she clasped so tightly by the hand surfaced into the sunlight. Yet, instead of her sister’s face, it was Muni she saw before her, laughing, dripping, and carrying a baby in her arms.
Sita woke with a start as the bus changed gear, her heart thumping in shock. Even as she struggled back into consciousness, the images rebounded through her, as if she had returned from visiting a strange and sinister landscape. Morning light was already easing away the darkness in the bus. Sita took a sip of water from the flask she carried, and tried to keep calm.
Eventually, she arrived at her destination and changed to the local bus that would take her to McCarthy Rubber Estate. The bus was an ancient rattling vehicle crowded with Tamil labourers travelling from one estate to another, or to the small kampongs along the route. Sita found a seat next to an old woman with a bamboo coop of chickens, her basket of birds crammed into the narrow space of the aisle. The imprisoned chickens were piled one upon another in three suffocating layers, unable to move, and clucking in discomfort. The heat of the day seeped through the metal roof of the vehicle as it lurched forward, but a breeze blew on her face through the open windows, and Sita welcomed it with relief. On either side of the road green walls of vegetation pressed upon them.
Eventually, Sita stood again before the rusted gates of the McCarthy Rubber Estate, but the Sikh guards at the gatehouse told her Gopal was off sick.
‘You were in the INA with Ramaiah’s wife,’ the man remembered, pointing her in the direction of Muni’s house, but not offering to drive her there as Gopal had done.
Sita set off through the rows of trees, the emerald world swallowing her again in its shadows. Wherever she looked, identical lines of trees radiated out around her, so that at times she stopped, unsure of her direction. In places the sun speared the thick foliage, illuminating everything beneath with a pale jade light. Once more the whirring din of cicadas and crickets and the shrill cries of birds came to her. Then, at last in the distance she saw the line of the attap-roofed houses and, relieved, quickened her pace towards them.
The huts were raised up several feet upon stilts, for safety from snakes and wild animals. A group of women squatted below the houses, chatting and peeling vegetables, chickens picked the ground about them, a rooster crowed. Sita nodded a greeting to the women, and ignoring their curious glances, climbed the stair to Muni’s house, knowing her progress was being silently followed. The door stood ajar and she pushed it open apprehensively, wondering in what condition she would find Muni, hoping her husband, Ramaiah, would be absent as before. As she stepped out of the bright sunlight into the dim interior of the house, she was momentarily blinded, just as she had been before. Searching the shadowy space for Muni, trying to adjust to the sudden transition of light, she saw a figure rise from a chair in a corner.
‘Are you there?’ Sita stepped forward in relief.
‘You’re late. Already one hour I am waiting here for you.’
Ramaiah moved angrily towards her. His thick muscular body had the energy of a coiled spring, and Sita stepped back in alarm. He gestured to the back of the room, glowering at Sita beneath his bushy eyebrows.
‘Everything you need is there. I have work to do, I cannot wait here any longer, like a woman with nothing to do.’
He wore a stained white shirt, beneath which his belly bulged over a green checked sarong. He pushed roughly past her, and she saw the grey stubble of his cheeks and caught the smell of alcohol. As he descended the steps he called to the women peeling vegetables below.
‘See that she does her job and gets out of here quickly.’
Sita stared after him in confusion, hoping to see Muni’s slight form materialise from a dark corner of the room. The sour smell of the place settled about her again.
‘Muni,’ she called, but no answer came.
Instead, from behind her she heard a whimper, and turning, saw a cardboard box on the floor,
within which something writhed and turned. Stepping forward, Sita bent to pull back an old sheet heaped up in the box and immediately a small face was visible. As she gazed at the child it began to scream, lips curled back over toothless gums. Sita stared into the dark hole of its open mouth and marvelled that something so small could make a noise so deafening. A fetid odour rose from the baby, and Sita turned away, wanting to retch. The child lay naked in its own filth, excrement encrusting her small buttocks, her delicate female parts sore and inflamed.
‘Muni.’
Sita searched the room again, still hoping to see Muni emerge before her. As she stared down at the screaming child, unsure of what to do, the door opened and the women she had seen below, peeling vegetables, hurried into the room. A plump elderly matron in a green sari stepped forward.
‘Take the baby away quickly. Ramaiah is angry, and when he is angry nobody knows what he will do. He says he will turn her face into the mud, or leave her in the jungle for snakes or wild animals. Already, he has tried to drown her in a bucket of water, but we came in at that moment and persuaded him to let her live. First that no-good wife of his gives him a girl, and then she dies on him as well. If the child was a boy he would not be so angry, he would keep a son with him, bring him up.’ The women shook their heads sorrowfully.
‘Muni?’ Sita asked, bracing herself for what she must hear. A younger woman with a scar through her eyebrow spoke up.
‘We tried to help her but nothing could save her. They cremated her body the day before yesterday. So many hours she was in labour. The child tore her apart to get out. The white manager sahib has told Ramaiah to put the baby in an orphanage. We were looking for a wet nurse, but no one wants to nurse a She-devil that killed its mother! No one will give their milk to her for fear she will kill them too.’
The plump woman stepped forward again to explain. ‘Another woman from your orphanage came yesterday, she left some evaporated milk and a baby bottle and fed the child too before she left. Since then no one has fed her, and she is hungry. We are happy to help, but Ramaiah does not want it.’ They stood in a circle around Sita, looking down at the screaming child.