by Leah Franqui
Swati turned Bunny’s words, harsh as they had been, over and over in her mind. She thought back along their friendship, searching for answers, for some sign of this betrayal lurking like a cobra in a wheat field.
Like the way Bunny had stopped speaking to their friend Tanvi when her husband had lost a great deal of their money in a real estate venture when it was tied up in court for a few years. Someone in the Marwari community had hinted that Tanvi’s husband had bought the place with black money, and the family soon became gently but firmly shunned. Tanvi and Bunny had been close friends, and they were even second cousins. True, Bunny hadn’t cut her off, not quite, she had been more subtle than that, slowly seeing less and less of Tanvi in a way that was apparently coincidental but, Swati suspected, might have been more engineered.
Perhaps Bunny had always cared more about how things looked than how they felt on the inside, and had just hidden it well. Perhaps, though, Swati only wanted to think that, to make herself feel better, because she was wicked, and now everyone would know it.
Was that how the world saw her now, the world of Kolkata, at least, which had been Swati’s world her whole life? The story would pass from presswala to madam, from wife to husband, from parent to child. It was probably halfway through the city by now, infecting ears in every home. Gossip was like malaria, highly contagious, and eternal in the body.
You are a wicked woman.
She supposed she was now. People would see her this way, and that was what she would be. After all, what was anyone but the way that they were seen?
“Well, you’ve certainly stayed a long time, haven’t you? I didn’t even know you liked Mumbai,” Akanksha said as Swati sat down with her to lunch at a chic little tea shop that Akanksha had insisted they try.
She had been so shaken by the morning’s call that she decided she, like Rachel, departing for her soap opera work, must get out of the house. The only person she really knew, though, was Akanksha. The idea of going out and being alone was completely foreign to her, so much so that when Rachel had suggested it, she had laughed, despite the pain that was living in her heart, thorns stuck in, burrs coating the soft tissue. What would a person possibly do outside alone? It was hard enough to be inside alone. Outside would be impossible.
So she had called Akanksha, who was free.
“Yes, well. Dhruv left, a work trip, and I didn’t want Rachel to be alone in a new place,” Swati said. Were those the actions of a wicked woman? No, but lying is.
“Of course. How kind of you,” Akanksha said slyly.
She knew. Swati’s heart seized. Akanksha knew; she had to know. She had found out, Bunny in Kolkata had called her and told her. Did they even know each other? How had she found out? Would she repudiate her, like Bunny had? Swati felt a little dizzy, trying to calm herself, trying to breathe.
Akanksha sat in front of her, her solid, square form resplendent in a gauzy floral salwar kameez set, embellished with delicate eyelet at the hem of the kurta and trousers. Her dupatta draped gently around her thick neck, a cloud surrounding a tree trunk. Swati’s own dupatta felt like it was strangling her, twisting into the strands of her mangalsutra, the marital necklace, digging into her throat.
Was Akanksha looking at it? If she did know, she must be quite curious as to why Swati still wore the mangalsutra, when she had left her husband and abandoned the home she had vowed to keep. Marwari women didn’t even wear mangalsutras, not traditionally, but Vinod’s family had, and they had given it to her on her wedding day, with a diamond at the center that had thrilled her. Now she wished she had thrown it into the sea when she had arrived in Mumbai, or tossed it in the garbage at the Kolkata airport. She wanted to throw up.
“Well, there is so much to do, you know. To help.”
“Of course,” Akanksha said knowingly. “So much to do. Shall we order? Their chais are all excellent, and some sandwiches, maybe?”
“You decide,” Swati said, her face on fire with shame. She had read a story when she was a girl, years and years ago, by Edgar Allan Poe, another of the many Angrezi writers they had been inundated with at school. It had been disgusting, and all her friends had giggled about it. It described a heart, outside of the human body, bloody and gross, underneath a floor, beating, and only the narrator could hear it. She had always thought this story was very stupid and strange until now, as she sat waiting for tea, smiling and nodding at Akanksha’s story about her son’s new watch. She was sure that her heart was so loud everyone in the café could hear it.
She looked up at Akanksha, who was sipping her tea, her eyes crafty.
“You know, I have a cousin who stays in Kolkata. He met Vinod recently at some club and he mentioned that he was looking rather disheveled. His shirt was missing a button, if you can believe it, and he was complaining that his cell phone didn’t work, but it was clear he just needed to pay the bill. You might want to cut this trip a bit short. An unattended husband is always a bad thing,” Akanksha said, smiling at Swati in what Akanksha probably thought was a kindly manner.
What she should do, what most would do, and certainly what Akanksha expected her to do, was deny everything. Make a smooth excuse, tell her that Vinod was being silly, that he called her nightly asking for her to come home but she simply had to stay in Mumbai a bit longer. No one, not even Akanksha, would be so ill mannered as to directly ask her what had happened, if she had left her husband or not, and so while there would be a thousand conversations behind her back, at cafés just like this one, with someone else in Swati’s place, she would never have to directly answer for her actions as long as she herself didn’t acknowledge them. The rumors had flown quickly from Kolkata to Mumbai, but if she didn’t address them, they would remain that, forever. Everyone would know, and she would know, and no one would say anything. She would, in time, become an open secret, without lifting a finger. Everyone would know, but no one would really know. That was how such things worked.
Suddenly, the prospect of it, being the subject of so many conversations, while maintaining a pretense of normalcy, sounded exhausting. Idiotic. Useless. What was the point? Here was Akanksha, an army at her gates, willing to turn and walk away as long as Swati played along and did, for the millionth time in her life, what was asked of her, expected of her. She was already bad. A wicked, shameless woman. What was the point of any of it? Who was she trying to prove anything to? It was over. She had not fallen, she had jumped. She might as well keep jumping. It would, then, be her choice, in the end, where she landed.
She swallowed, and felt the mangalsutra constrict around her throat. She fumbled for the clasp, and unclasped it, and looked at it, then put it in her purse, in full sight of Akanksha and any other customer that might be looking at her.
“Actually, I’ve left Vinod,” she said, willing her voice to be calm, sipping the last of her tea.
Akanksha’s face, which had been placidly content, went suddenly pale, almost ashen, and her mouth fell open. She looked like a large tropical fish, with her bright clothing and her mouth that opened and closed with her shock. Watching her, Swati leaned back in her seat, terrified and exhilarated. She had done it, she had said it, and the world hadn’t ended. The waiters continued serving water, the sun kept shining, and she was still there. She swallowed again, enjoying the way her neck felt without the necklace, the way her shoulders felt now that Akanksha had nothing to pry for, nothing to hold over her.
Of course, now the questions would come, pouring like a river. Oh, it was horrifying, what she had just said, what she had done, it really was, but she had never felt so weightless in her life. Even Bunny’s disapproval felt distant now. She should have told more people sooner. She should have mentioned it to shop owners and security guards, she should have confessed it while making offerings in temple and shouted it out to beggars. If she had known how good it felt, she would have told the world, because the world around here, at least here in Mumbai, didn’t care. No one was looking at her. No one in this restaurant would ever
see her again, and if they did, they wouldn’t remember her. Did people live like this all the time? Unseen, unobserved, and free?
“I see,” Akanksha said, reaching for her water and downing it quickly. “I had no idea.”
Swati smiled placidly, bracing herself for impact. But Akanksha surprised her, for the first time since Swati had met her, years ago. Instead of an outpouring of judgment, she reached across the table and took Swati’s hand.
“Are you all right?”
Swati was amazed. What was Akanksha doing? Perhaps she wanted Swati to break down in tears, confess a long sob story, a soap-opera-worthy tale.
“I am, certainly.”
“You aren’t looking for a reconciliation?”
“No. I’m not.” She wasn’t. She had asked Dhruv to tell his father when his bills were due, remind him about the deliveries of milk and vegetables, to help him learn his own home, without a wife in it, but she hadn’t communicated with Vinod otherwise. This was the longest she had gone without seeing him since they had married, and she didn’t miss a thing about him.
The truth was, when she was still living with him, what had they really talked about with each other, what had she really said to him? When was the last time they had had a conversation about something real? Oh, no wonder he was surprised she had left him. He was probably surprised she felt anything at all.
She felt a surge of pity for her husband, not just because of the wrinkled shirts, the disruptions in his schedule that had surely come with her departure, but because he must have been, she knew, horribly confused. And she had no energy to clarify anything for him. It was bliss, the way she no longer felt that was her duty.
“Well. At least you have Dhruv here,” Akanksha said, drawing her hand back.
“Yes, I have Dhruv.”
“So, you’ll stay here with him, then?” Akanksha asked, paging through the menu again. Swati was almost amused; it seemed that her revelation had ignited Akanksha’s appetite.
“Where else would I go?” Swati said, signaling the waiter for more water.
“How does that wife of his like you staying?” Akanksha said, the gleam back in her eyes. It seemed that she wanted some kind of complaint about Rachel in exchange for her neutrality on the subject of Swati’s abandoning her husband and home and fleeing to Mumbai.
“What is there to like? I am her mother-in-law. Where else would I go?”
“You know how these girls are—”
“Why should I adapt to her just because she is American? She is living here,” Swati said, with more force than she intended. But it was true, wasn’t it, it was what she had been telling herself day after day, that Rachel had to adapt, she had no choice. But wasn’t that part of why you left Vinod? For choices? a voice said in her head, mocking her, and she closed her eyes, trying to erase it from her mind. Rachel would adapt, she would understand, it only took time. Swati was giving her a better life, and once Rachel really saw that, she would be happy, just the way Swati finally was.
“I don’t mean that. Lots of these young girls now don’t want to stay with their mothers-in-law. Not just the foreign ones. It’s a different time, na.”
“Disrespectful,” Swati hissed, but Akanksha shook her head.
“It’s different than it was for us. They can do this, it’s not so uncommon anymore in Mumbai. And sometimes I think it’s better.”
“How can it be better not to be with family?” Swati asked sharply. Akanksha gave her a strange look. Swati supposed it was odd, she of all people defending the old ways, but leaving her husband didn’t mean that she had no respect for anything anymore. She hadn’t lost all her values at once.
“If people don’t want to live together, why should they be so unhappy? If they don’t live together well, if they don’t get along, what is the purpose?”
Swati leaned back again, looking at Akanksha with new eyes. She had been so certain that Akanksha was one kind of person, a Mumbai matron firmly entrenched in her social circles and her gossip and her little life, much like Swati’s own. She had thought her another Bunny, albeit an inferior one. But she was another creature altogether.
She knew Akanksha through a cousin and had met her for tea for years, every time she was in Mumbai, but she hadn’t known her, not really, and she’d never liked her all that much. They had spoken and gossiped and lunched, just like Swati had done with so many distant connections and people through the years. She had always thought of Akanksha as rather set in her ways, rather fussy, and the comments she had made about Rachel, about Dhruv’s marrying a white woman, had confirmed this. Now, though, it was like she was meeting Akanksha for the first time.
“My mother-in-law was not a kind woman. She didn’t like me, and she didn’t make anything easy for me. I would like to think I would be better than she was, that I would be nicer to a daughter-in-law, but I am set in my ways, I like my home to be the way it is now, I don’t want to change, she won’t want to change, and what if we don’t get along? If my son—should he ever get married, please, Lord Krishna—would rather stay somewhere else, or his bride would, well, he can afford it, maybe that is better,” Akanksha confided.
Swati stared at her. It was an intimate thing to admit. Perhaps this was the exchange, Swati’s news for Akanksha’s information, each one sure the other would contain the other’s secret.
“Well. This is better for us,” Swati said. “I am teaching her how to live in India. Really, I don’t know how they would have lived without me. For us, it is better that I am there. I am sure Rachel feels that way. I am her mother now, only. What would she do without me?”
All of the relief and joy Swati had felt confessing the truth about her marriage to Akanksha disappeared the moment she returned home. Instead of Akanksha’s kindness, all she could think of was Bunny’s rage.
The apartment was empty, and she stood in the kitchen for a long moment, staring at the carefully stacked ceramic bowls laden with food, each covered with a tin lid, protecting each part of her dinner from the others. She imagined herself passing her hand through the stack, smashing each bowl, her dinner transforming into a ceramic-spiced mess. But she didn’t; instead, she carefully placed each dish in the refrigerator. She wasn’t really hungry.
Lying on her bed, the fan churning above her, she breathed in, enjoying the cooler air on her face. She stretched her arms out and her legs, wrestling with her salwar, to make a star shape on the bed, taking up as much space as she possibly could, taking everything.
She didn’t miss Vinod’s body, the sharp, metallic scent of his sweat, the movement of his legs, which always woke her up. She wished she could free herself, however, from her tendency, developed over decades, to take up as little of the bed as she could, leaving everything for her husband. Every night she went to sleep sprawled out, but every morning she woke up in a small ball on the edge of the mattress. If only she could, in her dreams, remind herself that she had more space, that she no longer needed to cede to someone else, maybe she would wake up spread across her bed. But she couldn’t.
She felt hollow, after her confession, the way children feel after their birthday party, after all the guests have left and the sugar has worn off and they are panting, exhausted, in the corner, red-faced and crying, not really sure why.
Swati heard the sound of the door opening. It must be Rachel. The maid had come and gone. Swati sighed. She should go, greet her, talk to her, but she didn’t want to move, didn’t want to do the work of making conversation. Rachel should come to her. That was what the young owed the old.
“Hello?” Rachel called out. Swati lifted her head as Rachel appeared in the doorway to her room, which she had left open.
“Hello,” Swati said softly. She turned on her side, watching Rachel through narrowed eyes.
“Are you all right?” Rachel said. The room was dark, and Swati supposed she might look odd, lying on her bed at five p.m. without any lights on.
“I don’t know,” Swati answered honestly. Rachel
hovered over her, biting her lip. “Sit, please.”
“There aren’t any chairs,” Rachel pointed out. Swati slid backward on the bed, making space for her daughter-in-law. Rachel grimaced but sat.
“Be comfortable,” Swati said.
Rachel shook her head. “I’m fine.”
Swati shrugged; there was nothing she could do if the girl didn’t want to relax. They sat in silence for a long moment.
“I told Akanksha that I have left my husband,” Swati whispered, not sure if she wanted Rachel to hear her or not. But she did.
“Oh. You hadn’t told her before?”
“I hadn’t told anyone. Except you and Dhruv. I have told no one.”
“So no one knows?”
“Someone found out. My friend Bunny from home. She told me I was wicked.”
“I’m sorry,” Rachel said. “But, why? I mean, why wicked? What does that mean? It’s not like you did something evil, right?” she asked, her face puzzled.
Swati shrugged. She couldn’t explain it all. It was too complicated, and it just was. She knew it, everyone around her knew it, and none of them could remember how they’d learned it, or why they followed it, but there was a way to be as a person, a way that things should be done, and Swati had broken that covenant. That was why she was wicked.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Swati said, settling for the thing that was the closest to the truth.
Rachel surprised her by nodding. “Then don’t.”
Swati smiled, faintly, at Rachel’s words.
“I have not spoken much to Vinod since I left Kolkata,” Swati confessed.
“That is very— That must be hard.”
“No. It hasn’t been,” Swati said, candid. “Which is why I am wicked.”