Well-Behaved Indian Women

by Saumya Dave

  But then, as she stares at the picture again and again, the confusion lifts and is replaced with shock. The type of shock that makes it hard to think or feel or even see. The picture becomes blurry, just a constellation of shapes. But it is real. That is Mom next to another man.

  Simran stares at the man. He doesn’t look familiar. Who the heck is he?

  Mom’s husband, that’s who, a voice in her head says.

  She feels a wave of sickness rising in her stomach. Her mother was someone else’s wife. What else has she been hiding? What if Simran doesn’t even know her? What if her life has been a lie?

  Simran grips the picture and runs to the living room. “Nani!”

  Nani doesn’t move. Simran nudges her shoulder.

  “Nani, wake up.”

  It takes Simran a few more seconds to realize that Nani isn’t breathing.

  Nandini

  She ran away from her first husband three times.

  The first time, she went to the market to buy okra for dinner. A black rickshaw was dropping off a young mother and her son. Nandini saw their hooked pinky fingers, told the driver to wait, and then stepped in, one chappal at a time. She tucked her dupatta into her lap. She reached Mami and Papa’s house in twenty minutes. After she paid, the driver settled in front of their neighbor’s veranda to take a nap.

  Her parents were drinking afternoon chai in the living room. She covered her head with her dupatta and approached the barred window. There was a mound of dirt next to her feet, speckled with Cadbury candy wrappers, guava skins, and cigarette butts. She stood on top of it and waved.

  At first, their faces lit up.

  Is everything okay?

  Are you hurt?

  She explained everything in hushed Gujarati and flashed a smile whenever neighbors walked by. Papa told her to come inside. Portraits of his mother and father hung above the bookshelf, both of them framed with a white garland.

  I can’t stay there, she told Papa after she told them how things had been for her. Let me come back home.

  Papa kept his voice steady. You have to learn to honor your commitments. They’re your family now, and your duty is to them. Don’t embarrass us.

  Nandini pretended she didn’t hear him and walked toward her bedroom.

  Papa blocked the door. You should go home. Your home.

  I can’t. Nandini tried to say the words as if there was no room for an argument.

  Papa shook his head. He refused to hear any more.

  When Nandini tried to walk past him, he said, I will drag you back there myself if I have to.

  He opened the front door. I mean it. You’re going back now.

  Mami started crying and repeating something Nandini couldn’t understand. Before Nandini could say anything else, Papa grabbed her wrist and guided her down the concrete steps. Papa shook the driver awake and pushed Nandini inside the rickshaw. He paid the driver double the fare to not bring her back.

  Her in-laws’ house was ready for dinner when she shuffled in. Nobody suspected anything thanks to Papa’s explanation over the phone, but her father-in-law told her it was no longer appropriate to visit her parents whenever she pleased.

  Her following mornings were spent cutting vegetables, feeding leftovers to the cows, washing clothes, and pinning them across the thick rope in the backyard to dry. Her mother-in-law barked orders like clockwork from her rocking chair. Don’t burn the onions! If you care about your husband, you’ll feed him properly! Gain some weight if you want healthy babies! Nandini’s husband would watch the exchanges with his arms crossed.

  By lunchtime, her sister-in-law’s one-year-old son would need another diaper change. Nandini would unpin the cloth from his doughy waist and soak it in the leftover water. Everyone else in the house—her father-in-law, mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and brother-in-law—would leave for languid strolls in the park and mutter questions about lunch when they returned.

  We don’t need you to work, her mother-in-law said after Nandini couldn’t find a part-time position at the local hospital. Her new family found her education impressive, but it was to remain on paper. She had already waited for her parents to set up the marriage until she was done with medical school, which made her an “old bride.” But now, she was no better than the girls she lamented growing up, who went to school just to increase their eligibility for a groom.

  She ran away the second time in a manner similar to the first with the same results.

  It didn’t take her long for her to realize she was waning. Her husband had told her about his parents’ requests, so they had begun having procedural sex. Thrust, thrust, collapse.

  Within two months, she felt her stomach churn and saw bright red blood in the toilet. Five minutes later, something that looked like a liver emerged between her legs.

  Her husband slapped her when she lost the baby. He demanded that a doctor confirm what Nandini said.

  On the way back from the hospital, she caught her reflection in the mirror and was surprised at what she saw. There was something ablaze inside her, kernels that deserved to glow. The death of her baby reminded her of her own life.

  The third time she ran away, her friend from medical school picked her up on a motorcycle in the middle of the night. She never told her parents why she left: her brother-in-law began crawling into her bed at night, while her husband was at work. When she told her in-laws, they called her a liar.

  Papa didn’t have the energy to send her back again. Friends stopped calling. Invitations for Diwali parties and weddings never arrived. Everywhere they went, they ran into diverted eyes and whispers.

  For the following months, Nandini helped the maids with the housework so Mami could rest. She found potential grooms for her sisters. They sat for nightly dinners where nobody spoke. It was a long process, transforming into another person.

  But none of it mattered. Her parents had lost their place in the community and were still trying to earn back the money they gave for Nandini’s dowry. She once saw Papa pacing in the park, his eyes pointed toward the ground as though he dropped something he could no longer find. None of the men Nandini’s age were interested in a woman who left her husband. Family members suggested they move to another city. Change their name.

  Papa began having trouble breathing. They took him to the hospital Nandini never worked in. He was diagnosed within one hour. Congestive heart failure. She set up a bed for him at home and gave him his medicines, checked his vitals every thirty minutes. His socks left imprints on his ankles. Pitting edema. On days she wasn’t there, the maids told her Papa refused to take his medicine or eat. The doctors diagnosed him with depression.

  She approached Papa’s room after dinner one night.

  He wrapped his clammy hand around hers and pointed to a black-and-white photo of a man.

  What do you think?

  He couldn’t manage two words before coughing. Hack, hack. Fist over mouth.

  Nandini liked the man in the picture, his side part, the mustache that curled at the ends. Ranjit.

  He wants a doctor, Papa said. We know the family. They are in America. New Jersey. He wants to move there, with a wife.

  The man also had a past. Something about being with a Muslim girl.

  When she didn’t answer, her father sat up.

  Tell me, Nandini, where did I go wrong with you?

  Nowhere, she insisted, thinking of the way he woke up at four a.m. to sell brass pots and pans, how he used an entire week’s pay to buy Nandini and her sisters tickets to The Sound of Music.

  She thought about Papa’s question. She thought about her life at that moment, a life of endless rejection from family, a life of dissolving everything her parents worked to maintain. She thought she was strong enough to accept all of that.

  Call his parents, she told Papa.

  At the end of the month and after
three “Swaha” chants by the local priest, she was married. Ranjit never once asked about her past.

  Papa passed away two weeks later. She hung a fresh garland around his photo.

  Ranjit saved Papa from spending his last weeks in distress. He took his final breaths in his bedroom, surrounded by family, a smile deepening the lines around his eyes.

  Nandini and Ranjit moved to America, where they both redid their residencies in order to practice. The first years were spent in a studio apartment in downtown Baltimore. Their car was broken into three times, and they slept on a mattress in the middle of the floor. After their thirty-six-hour shifts at the hospital, they would eat milk and cookies for dinner.

  There weren’t many Indian families in Baltimore yet, and they couldn’t afford frequent phone calls to India, so Nandini wrote letters to her mom, sisters, and friends. She waited for their replies to arrive in sky blue envelopes that were coated with India’s damp and earthy scent. Sometimes she cried out of pure loneliness.

  It started slowly; or maybe it was there all along. Ranjit was the first member of his family to have a furnished apartment. It was understood that he and Nandini would pay for everyone’s sandwiches at Subway and all of their nieces’ and nephews’ Six Flags tickets. When Nandini’s sisters moved to America years later, they sent their kids to stay at their house for months at a time. You’re better at keeping them in line than I am, they’d say, as if the compliment insulated the imposition.

  Nandini’s position as one of the only three doctors at the family medicine practice allowed her to manage everyone’s healthcare. She could see people as her patients, had access to medication samples, and was home by seven every night. But she knew, just before Ronak was born, that she was ready for another job. Working in primary care had become corrosive. She wasn’t getting through to patients or practicing in the manner she envisioned. Maybe she could work at a teaching hospital, where she could conduct research and present at case conferences.

  Ranjit held up his palm before she could finish. His family needed her to have stable hours. Nandini went over to their homes on a daily basis, to drop off cholesterol and samples of high blood pressure medication, examine a new rash on someone’s leg, or refer someone to a specialist. She knew Ranjit wanted to marry a doctor so she could take care of his family, while he could focus on being a surgeon. They were both doctors, but she was the one who handled any family health concerns, managed their children’s schedules, and took care of the housework while he could focus on becoming a boss, the owner of a practice. Even professional ambition could become a vector for subservience. The women in his family talked behind her back, wondering why he settled. But her job, their dependence on her, kept them in line toward her face.

  All around her, Indian women in America were leading parallel lives. Becoming friends with their husbands’ friends’ wives. Crouching over stovetops while the men sat at the table, waiting to be served. Ironing button-down shirts from the clearance rack at Marshalls. Wiping down the kitchen counters and packing food into Tupperware containers after a party.

  Nandini knew she was in a better position than other women. Ranjit was even-tempered and easygoing. A man who let both of their pasts recede into oblivion. They treaded through garden-variety marital issues: control, money, time.

  By the time Ronak was born, she and Ranjit had established an understanding where she thought love would be. He became president of the local Indian American Association and was encouraged to think about the national position. They had guests stay over multiple times a week. They were interviewed in the local paper for embodying ideal Indian values. It was possible to start over, she realized, the days of her first marriage sometimes visiting her in faded flashes, as though they were memories within memories.

  Ranjit had given her too much to be grateful for. Whenever she questioned her life, she forced herself to think about something else, but the doubt always lingered in the corner, its arms outstretched, waiting to be picked up again. She had two selves: one going through the daily motions, another that was always elsewhere. Over time, she realized it wasn’t Ranjit’s fault that their marriage felt like a dress that never quite fit. It was their marriage’s fault.

  Nandini told herself she wouldn’t be one of those wives, like her mother or sisters. When the time was right, she would pursue her goals. She couldn’t accept the possibility that her aspirations were larger than her capabilities, that she would have to downsize her dreams and accept an ordinary life. No, once her duties were fulfilled, she would move on from all of this.

  But everything changed after Simran. Ranjit’s family gossip about her no longer mattered. Nandini would be damned if her daughter suffered from a fate that resembled her own.

  After a certain point, she forgot where her life ended and Simran’s life began. During the teenage years, she realized there were many Simrans: the one who was her best friend, the one she emotionally relied on, the one she worried for, the one she needed to guide. They slipped in and out of these roles with a simple mixture of words, intonations in opposing directions. It was only Simran who knew the lies Nandini told others, the truths she told herself. They exchanged glances across the table when Ranjit’s family was over. They laughed when Ranjit and Ronak couldn’t boil a pot of rice.

  As much as Nandini liked to think of herself as an evolved mother, improved from the generations before her, she knew there were certain mistakes she repeated.

  There were occasions when she considered telling Simran about her first marriage. Late at night after Ranjit and Ronak had gone to sleep and she and Simran sat in front of the television. On car rides back from school.

  The confession lingered on her tongue but refused to enter the air in front of her. Even as a mother, she couldn’t be sure that her daughter would still accept her, if she revealed all of herself.

  And now she had failed her, just when she thought things were in place. She thought she did everything right, but it didn’t matter. People always blamed the mother when kids weren’t doing well.

  Maybe she should have stayed home more.

  Maybe she shouldn’t have been so exhausted, so distracted.

  Maybe she shouldn’t have let parts of herself dissolve, until there was nothing left.

  Ten

  Simran

  The hospital reeks of rubbing alcohol and latex. Nurses rush in and out to check on the Nani’s pulse or tighten the white blood pressure cuff around her twiglike arm.

  There’s a fluorescent tube light over the bed that gives the entire room a jaundiced tint.

  Simran rests her head against the bed. Fiddles with her dupatta. Watches the clock on the faded wall. Tick, tick, tick.

  Some amount of time later, Nani stirs under her sterile blue blanket and sits up in bed, noticing her surroundings. “What happened?”

  “You weren’t waking up,” Simran says, afraid that if she clutches Nani’s hand too tightly, it’ll snap.

  “I was tired,” Nani says, her voice barely audible over the monitor, with its continuous mountain-like designs that Kunal taught Simran represent heart rate and rhythm.

  “It wasn’t just that,” Simran says.

  “Ugh.” Nani presses her hands to her forehead. “I have a headache.”

  “Let me call the doctor.”

  The doctor is a short chubby man with a gray comb-over. He takes out his stethoscope and presses it against Nani’s chest, then her back. She takes deep breaths whenever she feels the silver disc touch her skin.

  “Your labs haven’t come back, but your blood pressure has been very low. I think you were dehydrated. I would tell you to drink more fluids, but you already know how important that is.” He slings his stethoscope around his neck and raises an eyebrow at Simran.

  “What are you talking about?” Simran asks.

  The doctor clears his throat and breaks his gaze with Simran.


  Nani sits up in bed and says, “You can tell her. She’s going to find out soon enough, anyway.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “Are you sure?” he asks, his eyes shifting from left to right. “Really sure?”

  “Yes. I am,” she says.

  Even though Simran’s grandmother is the one pale, weak, and in bed, he’s scared of her. The woman has a gift.

  “Tell me what?”

  Simran looks back and forth between them, as though she’s watching a tennis match. “TELL ME WHAT?”

  Nani turns onto her side. “Simi, I’ve been sick for some time.”

  “Sick? Sick how?”

  Her lips become straight. “I have ovarian cancer.”

  “You . . . what?”

  The air in Simran’s lungs disappears, as though someone just punched her chest. “How? How is that possible?”

  Nani scoffs. “You know these types of things are always possible.”

  “No, I don’t . . . I don’t understand. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  But then Simran thinks about how it does make sense. Nani missing the engagement party. Mom saying she’s been hearing from her less. The purple pillbox.

  “Now, look,” Nani says. “Do not get weak about this. The last thing I need is for my granddaughter to be whimpering when she’s with me.”

  Simran wants to tell her that she can’t process this right now, that they need to rewind back one day and go back to normal.

  Instead, she takes a deep breath and straightens her shoulders. Her grandmother and mother both have the ability to maintain discipline even when they should be in distress.

  Simran faces the doctor. “Tell me everything.”

  He glances at Nani for approval, which she provides with a nod.

  “She was having abdominal pain for a few months. When she finally agreed to see me, I thought she was just constipated. But things didn’t get better with standard treatments. So I decided to run some tests and we found a small mass on her right ovary.”