Mother Land

by Leah Franqui

  “Oh Christ, I missed it, didn’t I? Bollocks,” the woman said, frowning in exasperation.

  “Missed what? Oh, the meet-up thing? Yeah. It’s over.” Rachel reached for the blazer before it fell into the pool of liquid ominously gathered in the gutter.

  The other woman smiled ruefully and took it. “Thanks, and can I just say, I appreciate your appropriate use of the term over? It’s nice to hear it said correctly here.”

  “Oh, you mean like when someone says the rice is over?” Rachel said, thinking about it. She had heard the same thing and found it consternating.

  “Yes! Exactly!”

  “I hate that,” Rachel said. She really did. She had thought these things were cute when Dhruv used to use them intermittently in New York, but now that it was how everyone spoke, it all rubbed her the wrong way. Dhruv slipped into them more and more, and when she pointed it out, jokingly, lovingly, he just scowled at her. We use them here, I want people to understand me, don’t I? he grumbled. He was right, of course he was, but she missed how their communication used to be a point of interest—How fascinating it is that we say things differently—and now it was a point of contention. Why had what made them interesting to each other suddenly become annoying? Was it her fault or his? She had blamed India, but more and more she worried she was wrong to do so.

  “Well, there is literally no point in me trying to go back to the office now. Traffic will be a nightmare and by the time I get there I will have to go home. Shit. I promised my boss I would go to this, he always wants us looking for new business at this stuff.” The woman looked up at Rachel speculatively. “How about if I take you out for a coffee or something? Then it’s not really a lie. D’you mind?”

  Rachel, who was feeling more affected by the alcohol on the hot day than she had thought, considered it. This woman was a stranger, but she couldn’t be worse than the group she had just left, could she? And besides, what was Rachel going home to, other than an occupied kitchen and a confrontation she was loath to have?

  “Not at all.”

  “. . . So basically it’s been a year or so, more or less, but it feels like ages, really.” Fiona—call me Fifi, everyone does—had just finished sharing the story of her own arrival in India, which, like Rachel’s, had been via the HMS Marriage. All the women at the lunch had been there for a few years, and it was wonderful to meet someone who was a more recent transplant, like Rachel herself.

  “I guess I shouldn’t be complaining about three and a half months.”

  “Well, the beginning is the hardest. And at least my mother-in-law hasn’t come to stay! Although her visits are always a piece of work. She means well, though. I feel sorry for the poor thing,” Fifi said, dipping a cookie in her latte.

  “I used to feel bad for mine, until she hired a cook behind my back,” Rachel said, sipping her iced coffee.

  “I quite like ours! She’s teaching me Hindi, food words, at least, and it’s such a relief not to have to do all the cooking. I never have to think about what to eat, it’s just there, d’you know? A proper meal and everything. Amazing. I still get quite chuffed about it, to tell you the truth.” It seemed that everyone felt differently than Rachel on this point. She wanted to scream, but only a little bit. The coffee was calming her.

  “I like cooking. And honestly, I find the whole servants thing so uncomfortable,” Rachel said, amazed that a woman like Fifi, someone who seemed, well, like Rachel herself, would enjoy having help.

  “So did I at first. But she’s so dear and she chops the vegetables for me. And Rakesh loves her. I mean, what’s the harm? We have to employ people, don’t we? Better me than someone else, who might not treat her as well. It lets me be lazy, for a change. Everything can be so hard here anyway, why not, you know?” Fifi said airily. Rachel looked away, trying to hide her expression at the way Fifi easily dismissed all the complications Rachel experienced when it came to servitude. Just when she was starting to really like her.

  They had quickly broken down the facts of each other’s lives, and Rachel knew now that Fifi had attended King’s College in London and worked in hospitality at a London hotel company that specialized in business travelers, which was where she had met Rakesh, her husband, whose company had transferred him to London for a two-year assignment. When his visa had run out, Fifi had decided to give India a go, as she said, and they had moved together, albeit scandalously unmarried. After a few months, the relationship seemed to be sticking, so they had gotten married in a huge blowout in Goa at which Fifi’s college friends had gotten extremely drunk and passed out on the beach, waking up the next morning to a group of cows relieving their bowels on top of them.

  Fifi worked for the Raj Hotel Group now, and lived near Rachel and Dhruv, while her husband commuted to BKC, a large industrial complex turned financial center, to manage money with Edelweiss. Rachel only knew Edelweiss as the flower and song in The Sound of Music, but she nodded along with Fifi’s enthusiasm for her husband’s work.

  “You don’t find it strange? Someone in your kitchen?” Rachel said tentatively. She wanted to keep liking Fifi, but more than that, she wanted her to reflect Rachel back at herself.

  “I think I would in London, but here, there are so many people everywhere, if I started finding that strange I might never stop! And, I guess I just figure, one less thing for me to do,” Fifi said brightly, bringing Rachel back to the conversation about help. “How has it all been for you, then? Settling in okay?”

  “Hard,” Rachel said. She instantly regretted it. She didn’t want to have another India-bashing session, she didn’t want to be unfair, she just wanted someone to understand her. But to her relief, Fifi nodded along vigorously.

  “I know. I know. Look, I might like the servant thing more than you do, or maybe I’m just not so bothered by it, but I do understand. It’s really just so much, isn’t it? It’s a lot to get used to. It can be amazing, but it’s also hard. Because it’s just so different, and it all feels wrong sometimes. But it’s not. It’s just not your right, you know?”

  “Yes! That is, no one has put it that way. That’s it. That’s exactly it.” Rachel felt a sense of extreme relief. It wasn’t so bad, after all, Fifi wasn’t so far from her.

  “Well, at least you have Dhruv,” Fifi said brightly. “I find it’s so nice to have Rakesh to help me out. It’s like my own personal cruise ship director. We go around on the weekends and explore something new, find some new bar or café, go to a movie and walk home just to see a new part of the city. It feels like it’s us against the world, or at least, against the city. You know?”

  Rachel didn’t know. She wanted to know. Fifi was describing the life she had hoped she would lead in India, and she envied her for it.

  “But he’s not even here right now! That’s the thing, right, he’s gone and left me with this!”

  “Done a runner. Typical man.” Fifi laughed.

  Rachel thought about it. These days, she spent more time thinking about her mother-in-law than her husband. Could the problem be her? Was she fixated on one part of her life when she should have been looking at the bigger picture? But there was no bigger picture, really, her life had emptied out in the move and had yet to fill with much of anything else. And Dhruv had left; he wouldn’t be back for weeks. How could she see the whole picture when a big part of it was absent?

  Fifi checked her phone suddenly. “Oh, damn, I’ve got to go, actually, I’m sorry, but this was lovely, and thank you for letting me use you!”

  “What? Oh, for your boss, sure, you can tell him that I will absolutely be recommending Raj hotels to all my rich white friends.”

  “And any Middle Easterners, please, we love that oil money! Seriously, though, this was nice, you aren’t the usual scared-to-drink-the-water expat wife.”

  “No, I just had lunch with them. I don’t think I’m like that much at all. Neither are you. Would you, uh, want to do this again, sometime? Meet up, for coffee, or, a drink? Maybe?” Rachel felt like she was as
king someone to a middle school dance, and she blushed.

  Fifi laughed, shaking her head. “Was that the first time you had to ask someone on a friend date?”

  Rachel blushed even more hotly. “Does it show?”

  “A bit. You’re a virgin! It’s sweet. I’d be happy to meet up again. You seem quite lovely. Here.” Fifi grabbed Rachel’s phone and put her number in it. “Text me. Bye!” And she bustled out of the café, into the afternoon, toward something to do, somewhere to be, with a sense of purpose. Rachel wished she could call her back and ask to go with her. At least then she would have a direction in which to go, even if it was someone else’s.

  Instead, she had an apartment filled with servants she didn’t want and a mother-in-law she didn’t like or understand, as well as a husband who had abandoned her, effectively, to both.

  She sat in the rickshaw she had hailed outside the café, blinking, and the world spun around her, just a little. She should have eaten more at lunch, she should have drunk less in general. The coffee was mixing with the wine in her stomach and making her feel sick. She felt irresponsible, drinking in the middle of the day, and sad, because it really didn’t matter that she had, she had nothing to do, nothing to go back to, no sense of purpose anyway. She could get as drunk as she wanted at lunch and it wouldn’t matter to anyone.

  She should tell Dhruv about the cook. She had planned on doing so before but hadn’t had the time. She would do it now, and he would agree, it was time for Swati to leave. The thought cheered her, and she dialed his number.

  “Rachel? What is it?”

  “Swati hired a cook,” Rachel said, her voice hard. Surely Dhruv would understand that this was a violation.

  “Oh yeah? That’s great.”

  Rachel froze at his words. “Great?”

  “Sure, I mean, doesn’t it make life easier? We hadn’t gotten around to finding one.”

  “We didn’t want one,” Rachel said softly, but Dhruv just kept going.

  “She wants to be helpful. She wants us to be more comfortable. I’m glad she found someone so quickly. Employee searches can be hard in Mumbai. I had looked at someone before, nothing panned out.”

  “You . . . looked for a cook?” Rachel said. She felt like she couldn’t breathe.

  “When Mum first arrived. I knew she would want one.”

  “But I don’t. We talked about this, Dhruv, you know this—” Rachel’s voice was rising higher with each word; she felt like she was shrieking like an eagle.

  “Calm down, Rachel, you’re getting yourself upset,” Dhruv commanded. Rachel wanted to howl. She wasn’t getting herself upset. This situation was upsetting. Why was it her fault? “Just try it out, okay? You might like it.”

  “Dhruv, but I—”

  “Have you been drinking?” His tone had a harsh note that caught her off guard.

  “They served wine at the lunch, the expat lunch thing.”

  “Oh, it was just expats? That’s fine.”

  “What?”

  “I wouldn’t want Indians to see you like that, during the day, in public, they might get the wrong idea.”

  Rachel’s mind reeled, and her mouth opened. Dhruv had never said anything like that to her before. She didn’t even know if she had heard him correctly, it was so strange.

  “What do you mean? What idea?”

  “I said it’s fine, it was just expats. But be careful, okay? If someone saw you, they wouldn’t get it. It wouldn’t look nice. I have to go, I’m stepping into a meeting, the flight was late so I’m behind. I’ll call you later, okay? Give Mum my love, and thank her from me, I’m sure the cook is great.”

  And he was gone. The rickshaw struggled up the road, in fits and starts like Rachel’s breathing, faltering and labored, as his words pounded away at her head.

  She had posted a photo on Instagram during the lunch, the lunch she had enjoyed and then hadn’t, with a caption about joining the ranks of ladies who lunch, and people in the United States were waking up to it now, hitting like, commenting that they were so happy she was meeting people. She had many likes, growing every moment, congratulating her for an experience she regretted, one her husband was judging, one she wasn’t sure she wanted to remember.

  Mumbai was the largest city Rachel had ever been to. There were over twenty million people living there, breathing its polluted air and scraping out an existence on its hectic streets. Rachel had never been so saturated by people, so utterly surrounded by them at all times. She had a husband who took care of her, who wanted the best for her. She had a mother-in-law who wanted to be helpful. She had friends across the globe eager to tell her how happy they were for her. And she had never felt more alone.

  Thirteen

  Within a few short days, Swati soon found herself with something it had taken her years to establish in Kolkata, a household that functioned to her direct specifications.

  The first day Geeta, the cook, had come, Swati had sat with the wizened Maharashtrian woman, whose potbellied torso was wrapped in a neatly draped synthetic sari, bright green with chemical dyes. The woman was probably thirty but looked as old as Swati did, her body twisted by a life of physical work. Swati interrogated Geeta about her ability to cook Marwari food and found, to her delight, she had worked for a Marwari household before and knew many of Swati’s favorite dishes.

  Of course, Rachel said she was willing to try to make them, came a voice from Swati’s head, but she ignored it resolutely. Still, it troubled her that she had heard it at all. Perhaps it was the look on Rachel’s face when she had seen the cook, the confused hurt of a child appearing in an adult’s eyes. It was the look she imagined in Vinod’s eyes whenever she thought of him now. Did he understand what she had done? She had never thought of herself as someone who could hurt other people. She had never thought she mattered enough to others to hurt them. Children get over these things, she told herself, and so will they.

  Swati and Geeta had discussed meal ideas, supplies the cook would need, and techniques Swati enjoyed. Swati specified that everything be vegetarian, although she did eat eggs now and again, something her own mother would have found horrifying because it was against the rules of pure vegetarianism. Her friend Bunny had introduced them to her, a tasty taboo, and sometimes, when she was alone, she enjoyed one hard-boiled or even lightly poached. She had tried every way there was to prepare an egg, once she started eating them, working methodically through them until she had found the ways she liked the most. She had never told Vinod about her indulgence, fearing he would be ashamed of her, or worse, that he would enjoy his moral superiority.

  He was the kind of man who believed himself to be better than other people. He liked to be so. He enjoyed knowing where he stood next to others. He had liked her own moral rigidity, her disinterest in breaking with the rituals and conventions of their lives, and yet he had wanted to surpass her in them. He wanted to correct her, to be the source of authority on the way things should be. At any family wedding, he was the one telling people how to hang the flowers, how to wrap the turbans, in what order the garlands should be given, what was auspicious and inauspicious, what was wrong and right. She had not wanted to tell him about the eggs because it might make him unhappy, but also because it might make him very happy indeed. What kind of wife had she been, to not want to make her husband happy? What kind of husband had he been, to take joy in her shame?

  The kitchen was better stocked than Swati had expected, with most of the spices Geeta would need to make simple dishes, although woefully low on chili powder and turmeric, which Swati vowed to replenish soon. Dhruv had quickly established a weekly allowance for Swati when she had moved in, and even given her access to an account he and Rachel used for household goods. But Swati had never been very comfortable with debit cards and banks and things like that. They seemed like fake money, and she had never trusted that the card Vinod had gotten for her really would work. She had not even checked, after she left Kolkata, if Vinod had cut it off or not.

&
nbsp; Would he do such a thing? She had abdicated as his wife; morally that meant he had no responsibility toward her. She had abandoned her own duties; she could not expect him to fulfill his own. Perhaps she should? She realized, with a frown, that perhaps not understanding anything about money put her in a position of weakness. If Vinod had left her the way she had left him, she would have known nothing, had nothing.

  Of the many calls she got from him, she answered only every tenth, and when she did she mostly listened to his high-minded lectures about her dharma and asked him commonplace things about his diet. But he never asked her about her days, if she was eating, if she had money. Perhaps he didn’t think that was useful; after all, she had Dhruv, and Vinod had other things on his mind. Recently when he had called, he had put their priest on the phone when she had answered, and she had listened to thirty minutes’ worth of ragas, politely, until he stopped to catch his breath and she could say goodbye in an acceptable way.

  What were they to each other? She had always thought Vinod saw their marriage as a sacred duty and a social obligation. His insistence on talking about love and affection toward the end had been all the more surprising because it was out of place with the rest of their time together. She had thought it was all a result of convention: this was the way people talked about their marriages now, so he had to, too. But perhaps she had been wrong about him. Surely that, if nothing else, proved they should not be man and wife, that she could be so wrong about him after so long.

  Well, she wouldn’t try to use the card. Dhruv was there, and her son should support her. It was only right that he do so, and she was proud of him for recognizing that without having to be asked. There were so many conversations she didn’t know how to have with Dhruv, and she was relieved time and again when she didn’t have to. She shouldn’t have to, really. People ruined things with talking, she felt. Why did everyone need to discuss everything all the time anyway?