Well-Behaved Indian Women

by Saumya Dave

  Columbia is a blur on her walk home. She looks forward, avoiding eye contact with any students rushing past her, with their notebooks and leather laptop sleeves and excitement. The man who sells roasted peanuts smiles at her. She waves back.

  And just like that, it’s over.

  She won’t be a therapist.

  Images of a future she’ll never have flash before her: sitting in a sunlit office with a patient, learning about different cases at conferences, feeling a sense of stability about her career, having conversations about it with her family and friends. . . .

  And then a thought emerges as she passes her favorite deli: Fuck, Simran, what the hell is wrong with you?

  She can feel her heartbeat. Everything around her seems to disappear. She clutches her chest. Takes deep breaths. How will she break this to everyone? What will she say when people ask her what she does? Did she just make the biggest mistake . . . and without a backup plan at that?

  She looks back at Columbia’s campus. She could cross the gates, march back into Dr. Bond’s office, tell him this was all a mistake.

  Or she could move forward.

  She stands still, not knowing what to do.

  Cognitive dissonance: when you’ve got only yourself to blame.

  Nandini

  “We’ve always had to worry about Simran, haven’t we?” Charu sneers. “We saw warning signs and should have been better prepared for this. What is it these Americans suggest when someone starts acting like this? Therapy? A new exercise regimen? A facial?”

  “We have things under control.” Nandini points to herself and Ranjit to tell Charu, You are not part of us. “Simran doesn’t need anything.”

  “God, that Meghna Ben and Pratik Bhai.” Charu rolls her eyes. “Who do they think they are, behaving this way? They should know where we come from, for God’s sake. We’re Mehtas.”

  Nandini rolls her eyes. The entire family knows Charu’s system of judging Indian people: last name, parents’ profession (extra points for doctor/lawyer/engineer, demerits for anything artistic), place of origin in India, skin color, house size, and, lastly, children’s professional accomplishments.

  Charu rambles until she tires herself out.

  “Let me know if there’s anything at all I can do,” she tells her brother in the accent she usually reserves for when she talks to American people.

  After she leaves, Ranjit settles onto the recliner and pulls out his laptop from beneath a stack of medical journals.

  “Do you have to tell Charu Ben everything?”

  Ranjit keeps his gaze on his laptop. “What are you talking about?”

  Nandini points to her cell phone. “Why does she have to know about what happened with Meghna Ben? It’s bad enough as it is without her being involved.”

  “I thought she could help. Maybe she could have suggested something we hadn’t thought of, since clearly these people are difficult to plan a wedding with,” Ranjit says. “Besides, what’s wrong with Charu knowing?”

  Mothers lie. For her whole life, Nandini thought pushing Simran to do well, work hard, and have high expectations would guide her in the right direction. Instead, she was preparing her to be exhausted, overwhelmed, and confused. All she could hope for was a partner who understood her, and once she found that, it was important for her to not taint that, out of youthful recklessness or the inability to realize what mattered for the long-term.

  “Well, if you think she’s so helpful, you’ll like to know that she judges everything that happens between us and our kids. I don’t understand what type of joy she could possibly get from all this meddling. We need to keep things that concern our family between us. Nobody else needs to know. Nobody.”

  Ranjit stands up and kicks the recliner’s foot stand. “I know. I know. It’s always my family’s fault. They’re the bad ones.”

  “I’ve never said that.”

  “You don’t have to. It’s written all over your face. You’re in the worst mood whenever they leave our house, call us, talk to us.”

  She takes a deep breath. “You can’t deny that your family’s . . . needs . . . have interfered with my own.”

  Marriage etched away at the person you once were, forced you to grope for whatever remnants you could get of your old self: a conversation with a childhood friend, yellowing photographs, compliments. Nandini felt herself becoming tinier, almost nonexistent, with each polite nod or stifled complaint or ambivalent surrender.

  “This again?” Ranjit asks. “Yes, Nandini, I know you wanted to start your own practice, but we couldn’t afford for you to take out the time or money.”

  “Because you expected me to take care of everyone,” she says. “Literally. They’re all somehow my patients. Even when they’re not! When I’ve said I shouldn’t see family members and help refer them to someone else, it’s expected that I oversee their medications, give them opinions on their labs, or see their friends that they bring to my office without any advance notice. I’m literally their doctor on demand no matter how hard I’ve tried not to be. How could I ever expect to advance if there were continuous demands placed on me outside of work?”

  Nandini thought a career in medicine would be about building long-term relationships with patients and teaching training doctors and adding to the field in creative, stimulating ways, not watching the clock and documenting visits so that her numbers could be compared to the other doctors’. Competition was fierce in their family medicine clinic, and if the staff thought she wasn’t contributing her portion, she would lose her job. It had already happened to two other women, even after they discovered they were paid less than their male counterparts. Forget that they never asked for maternity leave or flexibility with child care. Even with the sacrifices the female physicians made, it was never enough. There was no way for Nandini to spend extra time with Mr. K after his pancreatic cancer diagnosis or celebrate Mrs. L’s first pregnancy. Instead, she was another cog in the wheel, a white coat with legs. On her days off, she woke up wondering if she had prescribed Ms. B the right dose of blood pressure medication or if she had read Mr. M’s lab results properly.

  Ranjit slams his laptop shut. Nandini looks down at the red hand-embroidered rug they got from Delhi. It was the only trip they ever took as a couple, the first time they saw northern India. For five days, they posed for photographs, filled themselves up on street food, and shopped for new clothes. In the evenings, they slipped under crisp hotel sheets and reflected on their day.

  On their last train ride, she thought, This is how light we can be, without having to schedule anything around others. They had two identities: the vacation Ranjit and Nandini, novel and daring, and the day-to-day Ranjit and Nandini, who walked side by side, guided by habit more than anything else. Over time, she told herself they would be able to make the most of the delicate contradictions embedded in their marriage.

  Ranjit scoffs. “It’s easy for you to make everyone I’m related to the culprits. As if your own sisters don’t do the same things to you.”

  “You’re right,” she says now. “I allow everyone to do this to me at my expense.”

  “Okay, go ahead and have your pity party. Just don’t go pointing fingers at my family and me for why things didn’t work out.”

  “You’ll never understand.” She snaps her head up. “You got to have your practice. Hire your own staff. Work in the way you want, when you want. And then even become the president of the Indian American Association! It must be nice knowing you could make mistakes—big mistakes—and still have everyone’s support. Even after your family found out what you did, they still paraded you as the most eligible bachelor around.”

  She shouldn’t blame him. It was the culture’s fault. Women were supposed to be accustomed to nursing guilt and blame. They had to keep their husbands sane. Teach children manners. Make the perfect daal. In some parts of India, mothers were still fault
ed for giving birth to daughters instead of sons, even though Nandini learned in high school that it was the male who determined the sex of a baby.

  “They’re my family,” Ranjit says. “They’ll always support me and vice versa. And I’m allowed to make mistakes. We all are.”

  Nandini tries to ignore the resentment building up inside her, a resentment she’s tried to let go of for decades.

  “Mistakes?” she asks. “Our kids have a half-sister.”

  She watches her husband’s expression shift from anger to surprise as the words come out of her. They rarely bring this up. For a while, she even thought she might have gotten over it. But she realizes that a lot of her life has been about ignoring rage and hoping it disappears, then learning it never does.

  Rage lives in the body, Mami used to tell her. You just learn to deal with it differently as you get older. But it doesn’t really go away.

  And the rage of double standards was even tougher for her. Why did her husband—men—get away with everything? Why was she always apologizing and making amends for her past while theirs got to disappear?

  “Had . . . had a half-sister.” Ranjit’s voice is soft, as though he’s worried someone could hear them.

  “Oh, right, of course. Had,” Nandini says, recalling the way she had found out about her husband’s other child.

  Six months into their marriage, Nandini noticed something in their bank statements. Money was being sent to an address in southern New Jersey every month. When she confronted Ranjit, he didn’t even bother covering it up. Instead, he sat next to her and told her about his first love, a Muslim girl, and how they had had to break things off because her family threatened to disown her. He knew his own family would have never approved of her, so in some sense, the decision was easy, until the girl missed her next two menstrual cycles.

  The girl’s family married her off in weeks. She was able to pass the baby off as her new husband’s. They settled in New Jersey, where Ranjit followed so he could visit the baby. The girl’s husband, a rotund fellow who was ten years older than her, worked two jobs: pumping gas and tending the register at Kmart. Ranjit began sending them money every month, which the girl passed off as tokens from family back home. One month after the baby turned five, the entire family died in a car accident.

  She shouldn’t have felt betrayed after he told her. After all, who was she to hold someone’s past against them? And as much as it bothered her, she always had to remind herself of what they both needed: a chance to start over.

  “How many times are we going to have this conversation?” Ranjit asks.

  Nandini squeezes her hands together. “You’re right. My fault. I should be used to us overlooking your past. How dare I ever bring this up?”

  “You and I know that we both let things go from the past,” Ranjit says now.

  “You can hardly compare the situations!” Nandini says. “I can’t believe you would even mention that now.”

  “I can’t believe I thought we may actually have a peaceful night tonight . . . for once,” he says. “But no, things just had to be taken in this direction.”

  She wants to laugh when she remembers that tonight is the night she was going to tell Ranjit the things she has been keeping from him for months.

  She considers stopping him as he paces toward the kitchen, pours milk into a sky blue mug, and puts it in the microwave. Nandini had observed this part of her husband’s bedtime routine during their first week of marriage, when they were still strangers, waiting for their inevitable intimacy to arrive like a package on the front porch.

  But then she glimpses him drinking his warm milk, like a child. There was no use in hurting him tonight. They were too heated already. Her husband may irritate her, but he isn’t vindictive, deserving to be hurt. Her news will have to wait.

  She walks up the stairs and slams the guest room door. It is hard to imagine that their first apartment was smaller than this bedroom. They never had heat or air conditioning. When Nandini told the management company about a roach infestation, they told her she was lucky not to have to worry about rats. Their neighbor’s son went missing after school one day. Another was involved in a shooting. Ronak took his first steps in that dump, too young and carefree to notice his surroundings.

  Her phone lights up.

  Can you talk right now? Is it too late?

  She walks into the bathroom and studies herself in the mirror in the way people sometimes do, taking note of fresh shadows and emerging gray roots.

  After she dials the number, she sits on the floor and waits for his voice.

  She’s finally ready.

  Seven

  Simran

  Kunal’s phone goes straight to voicemail.

  “Hey, I really need to talk to you. Call me back as soon as you get this. Please.”

  Simran hangs up and curses at herself for leaving the type of vague, ominous message she hates receiving.

  She brightens her phone screen and dials Mom’s phone number.

  Mom picks up after the first ring.

  “Mom, can we talk?” Simran asks.

  “Yes.” She pauses. “I need to talk to you, too, Simran. There’s something we should discuss as a family.”

  “Uh, about what, exactly?”

  “You should come home tonight. Text Dad and me when you’re on the train. One of us will pick you up from the station.”

  “Can you be more specific about wh—”

  Mom hangs up.

  Hours later, she’s at the train station with her Sole Society gray overnight bag, which is stuffed with the essentials: granny panties, Cookie Monster pajamas, Snickers bars, and a decoy psychology textbook in case anyone “accidentally” peeks into her bag, the way Mom used to “accidentally” stumble into Simran’s diaries while she was at school.

  Mom is already waiting in her silver Mercedes. Simran stands still and observes her laughing into her cell phone.

  She deserves so much better than Simran for a daughter. Each step toward the car emits another truth:

  Step: I’m a fuckup.

  Step: My career no longer exists.

  Step: Kunal and I need to take a break.

  Simran knocks on the passenger’s-side window. Mom glances up and shakes her head, the way she used to when Simran would wake her up from her power naps between hospital shifts. Mom’s finger darts to end the call.

  Simran climbs inside, tosses her bag into the back seat, and motions to her phone. “You didn’t have to hang up.”

  “It’s fine,” Mom says, waving her hand. Simran catches a whiff of the lavender lotion she keeps in the car. “How was the train ride, beta?”

  “Fine. Who were you talking to?”

  “Just someone from work.”

  “Okay,” Simran says, focusing on her mother’s face, her long slim nose, which she inherited, waiting for her to elaborate.

  There’s no way Mom can know about school or Kunal, not just because Nani wouldn’t have told her, but because unlike Dad, Mom is incapable of keeping things that piss her, off all to herself. Ever since Ronak and Simran were little, Mom preferred the confront-as-soon-as-possible method, while Dad could let his anger settle down.

  They pull away from the station and drive deeper into suburbia, with its tree-lined streets and wide sidewalks. Simran’s parents chose Livingston for its good schools even though it lengthened their commutes to work. They pass her elementary school’s playground. It still has the same green monkey bars and tilted tire swing. Simran thinks back to who she was then. Did she ever see any of this coming? When was the moment that she veered off path?

  * * *

  — —

  Mom starts humming to herself, seemingly unaware that Simran is in the car with her. Her hair is in waves across her shoulders instead of in its usual tired bun. Simran looks at her the way a stranger
might. Her slim build, thick hair, and large, almond-shaped eyes. When she was younger and they’d visit the city, men whistled at Mom whenever they passed construction sites. Simran learned how to flip them off.

  “So, how is everything?” Simran asks the question as though she’s talking to an acquaintance, not the woman who gave birth to her.

  “Everything’s going well,” Mom says. “There are still so many last-minute things to do for the engagement party. It never ends. We still have to get snacks for the welcome bags, go through the final timeline for each event, iron the gift saris, make sure our outfits and jewelry are labeled, and go—”

  “Mom, don’t worry. I’ve got it. What was it that you wanted us to talk about?” Simran’s stomach churns as they pull into the driveway.

  Mom turns off the ignition and gazes at the steering wheel. “There’s something I’ve always wanted to do. At one point, I thought it could wait until you and Ronak were settled. But then, as the years passed, I gave up on it ever working out. And then a few months ago, things changed and, well, I knew it was important to tell all of you as soon as possible.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  She moves her stethoscope from the dashboard to the console. “Yes, for the first time in a long time, things are better than okay. Let’s go inside. I’m sure Dad is waiting for us.”

  Beneath the perpetual stress and need for everything to be in order, Simran catches a glimpse of something lighter inside her mother. For a second, Simran thinks, I can actually tell her everything and it’ll be okay. We understand each other.

  They pull into the garage. The newspapers, which are usually stacked by the side door, are gone. So are Ronak’s old baseball bats and the piles of everyone’s shoes and the broken lawnmower. Their lives tucked away. Set to impress.

  Dad’s jade green BMW is next to them, with the same expired Christmas tree air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror. He installed one of those devices from India that plays “Jingle Bells” when he puts the car in reverse. Ronak and Simran begged him to remove it after they got dirty looks in the mall parking lot.