by Leah Franqui
The cook would be coming for the first time today, and Swati still hadn’t said anything to her daughter-in-law. While she didn’t resent Rachel for being foreign, or at least, she didn’t think she did, part of her wished that she could be Indian in these respects, that she could just accept that because she was the mother-in-law, Swati’s word was law in these matters. She should know that the people older than her were the ones who knew best. She should know that Swati, who had lived in India her entire life, knew how to live here far better than her. As a young bride, that had been Swati’s own life, and why shouldn’t Rachel have to obey the same rules?
The sound of the tap suddenly was gone, the kind of sound you notice when it is no longer there, and Swati realized Rachel must be done with the dishes. She noted, with a heavy heart, that the girl had left none for the maid. She shook her head. Why was she like this?
“Would you be all right if I left you alone for part of today?” Rachel asked, turning to Swati, the front of her shirt soaked.
“Where are you going?”
“There’s a meet-up today in the afternoon, for a group I’m in, on Facebook. It’s for expats. I joined when I moved here. I’ve never met any of the people, and it’s this lunch, so I just thought—”
“Of course you should go,” Swati said.
“Dhruv has been after me to go, apparently it’s good for his business; I guess these women—it’s all women—their husbands work in the same industry. I was hoping to ask about jobs, actually, see if anyone has any leads. I’ve been here for over three months and I haven’t been able to find anything on my own. I wanted something with food, or restaurants, or something, but I need an in. I’m going a little crazy, I think. Doing nothing. Not that spending time with you is nothing, but I—”
“I understand.” If Rachel got a job, she would be out most of the day, and Swati could run the household, setting it all to rights. Rachel wouldn’t be able to protest, she might not even know what was happening until it was too late, and by then she would be sure to appreciate it. Yes, it would be good for Rachel to get a job, something simple she could do with her time. Women worked now—it wasn’t like when Swati had been young—and Rachel wouldn’t have to do something that made money, of course, Dhruv took care of that, but something that helped her hours go by. Or perhaps she would even make some friends, wives her own age. It would keep her busy, and show her other women and how they lived so well in all of India’s comforts.
“You should change and go,” Swati said encouragingly.
“Why would I change?” Rachel said, frowning. Swati looked at her outfit, partly transparent from the washing water, and blushed. Surely she could see the way she looked, the cloth clinging to her body, making its shapes clear to anyone? Swati cleared her throat, anxious. Did it not make her uncomfortable, the knowledge that people, men, might see her, might understand more about her body this way than they would in something dry? And—and looser?
“Your shirt is wet,” Swati managed to say, swallowing hard.
Rachel looked down at her stomach. “Oh. Well, it’s so hot here, it will dry fast,” she said firmly, and reached for her purse, checking her phone. “Everything takes so long to get to here, and this lunch is down in Colaba, which will be at least an hour on the train. I should go.”
“You’re taking the train?” Swati was fascinated, and a little horrified. The Mumbai trains were crowded, stuffed to the gills with people, humanity spilling out from every side. At least, that’s what she had heard. She had never taken one, herself. She never even took the metro in Kolkata, and that was rather clean and empty outside of rush hour. Why would you take the train if you could afford not to? And there would be so many people, so many men, looking at her, with her wet shirt! How could she be so fearless? What if someone tried to touch her, or looked at her, or anything? But Rachel was unfazed.
“Yes, I think that will be fastest. Rickshaw to Bandra station, then down.”
“Oh,” Swati said, a world of judgment in her tone. “But won’t you be awfully sweaty when you arrive?”
“Oh. I mean, I feel like I’m sweaty everywhere I go here. So, what’s the difference, really?” Rachel flapped her blouse, a useless effort to dry it. “Better?”
It wasn’t, really. “It’s fine, I think. It would be better if you changed, though.”
Rachel smiled at Swati, but a bit grimly. “I better go, don’t you think? It’s at twelve, this gives me an hour and a half.”
Swati nodded, dazed. Rachel reached for her purse and was at the door in moments, as fast at this as everything else, sliding on her shoes even as she checked to make sure she had her keys and wallet. Swati stood to lock her out, and Rachel looked back, her hand on the open door. Swati realized the cook was due in ten minutes, but if she was early? Then what? She had planned to explain everything to Rachel, but when she was running out the door like this, maybe it would be better for Rachel to not even know about the cook for today, to just reap the benefits, maybe that would soften her. But her just seeing the cook, with no explanation, that would not be ideal. She had to get Rachel out of the apartment before the cook came.
“Are you sure you’ll be all right alone? You have everything you need?” Rachel said.
“Yes. Please, go.”
Rachel nodded and hugged her. Swati still had difficulty with this habit of Rachel’s, this hugging; it felt so strange, and today it made her shirt wet.
“Excuse me, madam.” A voice came from behind Rachel in heavily accented English, and Swati realized with a sinking heart that the cook had, indeed, come early. There was no time to explain this, to make Rachel see. Rachel turned around, confused. The woman, Geeta, standing in her lime-green synthetic printed sari, started speaking to Rachel quickly, but Rachel shook her head, not understanding.
“I’m so sorry, I don’t really speak Hindi. Who are you?”
Swati wanted to say something but it was like her throat was being strangled by an invisible octopus, tentacles choking her.
“I cook, madam.”
Rachel looked at Swati, confused, and then with dawning comprehension.
“You didn’t,” Rachel said, and her voice sounded as strangled as Swati’s throat felt.
Swati could send the girl away, pretend it was a misunderstanding, or at least apologize. She knew she could do any of those things, and part of her wanted to. But the bigger part of her that had made space for everyone else for so long, for Vinod, for her child, for everyone, put its foot down. She had come here to be happy, and happy she would become.
“Enjoy your lunch,” she said, and stepped aside and let the cook in. Then she gently closed the door on Rachel’s shocked face. She had betrayed her daughter-in-law, it was true. But that wasn’t as important as the fact that her life would finally, finally, be what she had made it.
Starting with dal, and freshly made roti.
Twelve
Rachel stared at the door, rage coursing through her. Every hair on her arms and the back of her neck stood up, vibrating with anger, and tears formed in her eyes. She cried when she was angry, something she hated about herself, because it made her seem so weak when she most wanted to be strong. She could feel the tears even now, the choking feeling in her throat, and she despised her body for refusing to cooperate. She would not cry. She would not.
Her hand reached for the doorknob and lingered on it. What should she do? Rush back in? Scream at Swati? Grab the cook by the dangling end of her sari and throw her out of the apartment? Some part of her wanted to do that, really. She wanted to do something, at least. But she was paralyzed and knew that if she tried to speak, the only thing that would really come out of her mouth would be a roar, one that transformed into a wail.
So instead, she turned around and walked stiffly toward the elevator. She jabbed the key hard, grinding the tip of her finger into the grooves of the G for ground floor. Stumbling out of the building, her anger dazing her, she blinked in the bright daylight.
; She pulled out her phone and called Dhruv, remembering as the phone rang and rang in her ear that he was on his flight. She thought about leaving a message but didn’t know what to say. Your mother hired a cook and didn’t tell me and the only thing that has ever made me this angry before was conservative lawmakers and what does that say about me that those are my two points of deepest rage? Instead, she just decided she would talk to him later and walked down the street, anger giving her energy to fight the humidity that wrapped around her like a shroud.
She had lied to her mother-in-law about every aspect of the event. The lunch was at one p.m., not twelve p.m., and it wasn’t in Colaba, an area far from their apartment, but around the corner, in Bandra. The spot was a well-styled, expensive little café, perfect for expats who could spend their inflated salaries, or rather, their husbands’ inflated salaries, on overpriced salads and americanos. Rachel had left early because she just wanted to get out of the apartment, and now she couldn’t imagine ever going back. Her deception, lying about the time and location of a lunch, was nothing in the face of a surprise servant.
The lunch was the kind of event that she had opted out of in the past, a meeting of expat spouses, people with Indian partners, but she gave thanks for it now with the fervor of a convert. It was worse than dating, trying to make friends, but it was vital, she knew, if she was going to survive Mumbai. And really, she wanted to find someone to complain to, in this moment more than ever. Maybe she would find someone who had woken up one day with a whole host of new maids and cooks, maybe she would find someone who had thrown their mother-in-law out of an open window. She just needed someone who knew her experience, someone who would know what it was like to have a Swati move into your home and disturb your life.
When she talked to her friends at home, they had so many questions that she couldn’t answer. Each part of every story required so much information, so much context, that it was exhausting to tell and retell it, and she wasn’t sure if they even understood it all, in the end. She was plagued by a feeling that she wasn’t doing it justice and that she wasn’t being clear, worried she was being too hard or too soft. And then her friends never responded the way she needed them to. Instead, they urged her to be more empathetic, telling her that they had read this thing in the New York Times about women in India being treated like chattel; they would forward it, hang on a moment. There was always something terrible about India in the New York Times, and none of it had anything to do with anything terrible, or wonderful, in Rachel’s life. How small did they think India was, really?
She knew that up until recently she had been just like them, and hated her past self for it. Talking to them reminded her of her life in New York and the way she, too, used to throw around easy phrases, like It’s terrible that women live like that, or These arranged marriages are so awful. They were true, but they were also false; they were just not nuanced enough, they did not honor the totality of things, they denied the complexity of the world around her and they didn’t help her with her actual problems. She tried to communicate this, but she couldn’t, she got too tired to try. It was exhausting to explain everything all the time. She had hoped that she could come to this lunch and talk to someone who just knew. Someone who would find Swati and her actions awful in the specific way Rachel did, without asking something of Rachel that ignored the whole problem.
Most of the expat lunch group, if not all, would be women, Rachel figured, because who else was available in the middle of the day on a Tuesday? Besides, men didn’t move for their wives. Women moved for their husbands. No matter what people said or wanted or did, that was still the way the world worked, in Rachel’s experience, and she felt pathetic and guilty to be a part of that. Still, she might as well take advantage of it, mightn’t she?
She realized she had walked several blocks barely registering the distance, with anger powering her, but the city was fighting back with heat and dust and an overwhelming cocktail of scents: garbage, street food, incense from public shrines, dying marigolds, the sea, the sewer. She trudged on, letting the sweat settle on her body, and as she finally entered the café she felt a sense of triumph for refusing to allow Mumbai’s climate to defeat her, and a thrill of anticipation. She sat at a table in the corner and ordered a fresh lime soda, sipping it down quickly. She was almost excited. She was eager to talk about her situation with people who would, she knew, be horrified by it in the right ways.
As she waited, she tried to read her book. It was one she had been meaning to read for a long time, by an Italian author who had never let anyone know her real name and wrote about female friendship, something Rachel would have killed for at the moment. But despite its quality, her mind kept wandering back to Swati, closing the door in her face. What gave her the right to do that? Why did she think it was right, good even, to come to someone’s house and start rearranging their life?
This would be it, she hoped, telling herself it must be. She would call Dhruv, and tell him about it, and he would see that this was terrible. They could find Swati her own apartment. She could be nearby, they would visit, yes, of course, but this would be the end of this stupid thing, this idea of living together. It would be better for all of them that way, and Swati would see that soon.
The thought cheered her. Swati had done something so unacceptable, Dhruv would have no choice, but this time in Rachel’s direction, and he would see what had to be done. What was the best thing to be done, for all of them. She tried to fix that wonderful idea in her mind and return to the pages of the novel. But she kept imagining herself reading it not here, in this cool, tranquil café in another country, but on the subway, on her way to work, standing, with one hand holding the pole for support and the other spreading open the book. People would jostle her, nudging her for space, but she would keep her eyes glued on the book in front of her, trying to absorb the story and block out the world. Reading would have been a victory, there, something she had committed to despite the obstacles. Something she felt proud of accomplishing. Now, with nothing but time, reading just felt like a way of distracting herself from reality.
She looked out the window, onto the street, its many people pushing and pouring their way through the city. A child in a torn kurta and grubby leggings, her hair lit with orange-red streaks, the product of a combination of time outside and malnutrition, knocked on car windows and tugged at passengers’ arms inside rickshaws, her hand out for money. Every ten minutes or so the girl ran back to the sidewalk, where an older child was collecting money from younger beggars. In Mumbai, even in begging there was a system, a hierarchy, a way things were done. She wanted to return to her book, but when she tried, it seemed to pale in contrast to the human drama outside her window.
She needed Swati gone, and she needed a job. For the first time in her life, practically, she didn’t need the money, didn’t even feel like she did, but she needed something to do. She had always thought she would have loved unlimited hours to read, and now that she had it, it seemed meaningless, a waste of time, but then she had so much time to waste.
There was a word people used in India, timepass. It meant just what it sounded like, things you did to pass the time. Relationships where you knew you weren’t going to marry the other person were timepass relationships. Things you did in between working were timepass activities. She needed something, some kind of timepass, or this place would break her. She would not be able to look beyond the street, the interweave of children begging, dodging open sewers and careless motorcyclists, all the gaping need around her, clutching at her own arm, holding its hand out to her. She would get lost in feeling so alone, in no one’s knowing what she was talking about, in being different and the way everything she felt was somehow incorrect. She felt unmoored from the world, from reality. Everything that she had thought about the way life was supposed to be, about universal ideas and needs, was proving to be unstable here. Parents weren’t supposed to move in with their children. They weren’t supposed to want to. People were supposed to do thi
ngs for themselves, not depend on other people to do them for them. To do for one’s self, to be independent, was virtuous, ideal. But here it wasn’t. Here she was the wrong one, and she loathed it, to the depths of her being. She hated the way it worked, and she hated the way it made her wrong.
She was angry that Swati thought she, Rachel, was supposed to want a cook. She was angry that she had said no, over and over again, and it hadn’t mattered, it had happened anyway. She hated that Swati thought she was wrong, when it was Swati who was the wrong one, everyone else who was wrong. And she was afraid, that she would give in, that she would find the things she hated pleasant someday. She was afraid to adapt, to lose the pieces of herself, to change, to accept what she had loathed. What would it say about her, if she could accept these things? What would she be giving up? She had to hate having a cook. Liking it, loving it, preferring it, would be too deep a betrayal of self.
“Are you here for the lunch?” A male voice pierced through her thoughts, his accent American. Rachel looked up to see a man with Coke-bottle glasses and a pirate’s mustache smiling down at her. “The expat thing?” he asked, holding out his hand. She took it, shaking lightly. His palm was clammy with sweat.
“I am, yes. I’m Rachel Meyer.”
“Meyer! Are you Jewish, by any chance?” Now, there was a question she hadn’t been asked since moving. She nodded, smiling awkwardly.