English Lessons and Other Stories

by Shauna Singh Baldwin

  Lisa said, “I’m calling him.”

  “My ma says I can move back with her for a while.” Lisa dipped a nacho in the salsa and Brenda rolled her eyes.

  Jaya looked up from her econometrics book. “I don’t understand why you don’t do the sensible thing and get rid of it.”

  Lisa rounded on her, a tigress with an unborn cub. “It’s not an it. It’s alive.”

  “And so are cockroaches,” said Jaya, “but I don’t notice you feeling anything when you kill one. Besides, you’re a little late with your morality, since you’re the one who lived with him without being married first.”

  Brenda said, “Hey, I’m not gettin’ in the middle of this one.”

  “I’m moving out of here. She’s on his side.”

  “I’m not on his side, Lisa. It’s just you expect too much.”

  “Oh, yeah? I don’t think it’s too much to expect a guy to keep his promises, or to support his child.”

  Brenda flicked the remote to a demolition derby. The crowd roared.

  “No, I mean, how do you expect a guy to go against centuries of tradition, years of obedience to his family?”

  “Jeez, I thought love had something to do with it.”

  “Love is an American invention. It has nothing to do with Indian marriages. My mother says it comes after marriage.”

  “Marriage. I didn’t need some guy pronouncing words over us to feel married. I didn’t look at another guy while we were going together, did I, Brenda?”

  But Brenda was watching a big truck with oversize wheels grinding a small Toyota to scrap.

  “Besides, we were real good together,” said Lisa wistfully. “He told me he didn’t care what people think.”

  “Well, he seems to care what people in India think,” said Jaya.

  “I’m filing a paternity suit as soon as its born,” said Lisa. “He’s gonna get hit where it hurts — in the pocketbook, for child support.”

  “Does he make good money?” Here she was, defending a countryman again.

  “He’s self-employed — an importer.”

  “Woman, you can’t assign his wages, then. You’ll never collect, you’ll end up on welfare.” Brenda reached for the salsa. “The bastard,” she said.

  Brenda chain-smoked and strode up and down the little visitor’s lounge like an expectant father. Jaya sat, knees to chin, running her fingers through her hair and wishing she had thought to bring a comb. She wondered where Lisa’s mother was — or any of her relatives. A heavy-footed nurse finally came to the door and said, “It’s a girl.”

  “Awright!” said Brenda. “I knew it. I kept telling her ma she shouldna put blue wallpaper in the baby’s room! I gotta tell the guys at Hooligan’s so they can figure out who won the pool. I didn’t. I bet it was a boy just cuz I wanted a girl.” Her fingers flew over the pay phone buttons.

  Jaya said, “I’m going to get some more coffee.”

  “Their coffee’s lousy. Heck, get me some, too.” Then a pause. “Hey, you know what? I’m gonna call that jerk and tell him he’s a father.”

  Jaya stopped.

  “Don’t tell him it’s a girl.”

  “Why the heck not?”

  “Just don’t.”

  Brenda shook her head. “Aw, get the coffee, I gotta be at work in a couple of hours.”

  She has her mother’s green eyes, and her father’s brown skin, thought Jaya, as she laid the little girl in the crib. “Mommy’s gone to get a job,” she cooed. But baby still wasn’t happy so Jaya gave her a bottle of warm milk, rocked her for a while, and then laid her on her stomach in the crib. She began a one-handed rhythmic pat on the baby’s back till she fell asleep. Just like a pure-Indian baby, thought Jaya. She made herself a cup of tea and sat down with her study notes to wait for Lisa. Soon it would be summer and she would fly back to India, where everyone is careful to marry their own race.

  But in the meantime, here was Lisa, waving a county envelope she’d opened climbing up the stairs. “He hasn’t paid child support this whole year now, since she was born,” she panted. “Not a dime. Not a stinking rupee. I’m going to have to get him back in court.”

  “Shshshsh. She’s asleep,” warned Jaya.

  “I don’t care. She’s going to know someday.”

  “Well, she can’t understand it now.”

  The springs of the couch groaned as Lisa sank into it.

  “Man, oh, man. I don’t know that I understand it either. What is the guy, a monster? He knows it’s his child, he had to take a paternity test. Now I gotta take him to court again. My ma says I oughta give the kid up for adoption. I told her if she talks like that I’m leaving. She says I’m bad news.”

  Jaya said, “Lisa, it isn’t you.”

  “Yeah, it is. Always was bad news.”

  Jaya put her arm around her. “You’re fighting years and years and years of tradition, Lisa.”

  “Quit patronizing me.” Lisa shrugged off Jaya’s touch. “I think that schmuck just didn’t have the guts to tell his glorious tradition to go shove. Brenda says you think he would have supported the baby if she’d been a boy.”

  “I think he would have,” Jaya said seriously.

  Lisa walked over to the crib and looked in. “Well, his loss, then. Oh, yeah, I got a job telemarketing for the opera. They say I can bring her to work with me.”

  Jaya smiled. “That’s wonderful.”

  “They said I have a real nice voice. No one ever said that to me before.”

  “I’m sure the baby thinks so.”

  “I suppose. Say, you think you can babysit tonight?”

  “Ask Brenda. I’ve got a class to go to.”

  “See, this Eye-raynian guy asked me out. He says he really likes my hair…”

  A Pair of Ears

  Balvir arrives before dawn, and the double gates at the foot of the driveway are locked. I tell him it was my fault for sleeping so soundly he’d had to wait outside, but he shouts at my mem-sahib instead.

  This man I knew as a beardless boy towers over his mother and shouts — though he could be yawning or yelping for all she knows — he shouts, “You knew I was coming and you tried to lock me out of my father’s house!”

  “You should be more respectful.” I come between them. “She is an old woman left without a man to protect her.”

  This is to shame him, so he will remember he is a man and her youngest son. A son whose duty it is to protect her. But he looks at me as though I am only a pair of ears for his mother.

  “Go sit in the kitchen, Amma,” he says, but I can see Memsaab is grateful.

  Balvir calls Khansama and tells him to take his suitcase to his father’s old room.

  I take Mem-saab her silver water glass and her pills and she gives me a message. “Tell him I am not signing any more papers. I already gave him twenty-five percent of this house last time he came.”

  I think: Balvir and Jai have decided not to wait till my Memsaab has gone.

  “Khansama,” I call. “Serve Mem-saab her breakfast.” I can’t deliver her message; Balvir has locked himself in his father’s room. I can hear him inside, unpacking.

  “What does he want you to sign?” I ask her.

  “He wants me to give all of this house to him and to Jai so they don’t have to pay taxes when I die.”

  “What will they do with this house?” I ask. Khansama will need to know — he has four children and a wife in the one-room servant’s quarter behind the big house. For myself, I can go back to Jagadri and live with my Leela. Maybe I will even become a Hindu again; sometimes I need more gods than one, and more than ten Gurus for inspiration.

  “They will make condos,” she says.

  “What is condos?”

  “Tall buildings,” she explains. But I can tell she doesn’t quite understand the word either. Mem-saab studied up to class eight before her marriage, which is more than I ever did. At sixteen, the chauthi-lav of the marriage ceremony ringing in her jewelled ears, she came wrapped
in red silk to ornament her husband’s home. I came later, when I was widowed and she had need of my ears. For thirty rains since — perhaps longer, for there were seasons when the rains deserted us — I’ve only needed to know the art of massage and the timing that turns flattery to praise.

  “And where will we live then?” I ask.

  “Balvir says I should live in a smaller house. He says he is becoming concerned about me here… such a big house… alone… with my poor health.”

  Balvir’s “concern” is like a kisan’s for a crop of jute — how much can be harvested and how much will it bring? And she is not alone — I and two other servants are here with her, but we are nothing.

  She sighs. “Amma, money — the very prospect of money — is changing my sons.”

  Changing? I can remember Balvir at fifteen, whipping a tonga horse who could go no faster. And his elder brother, Jai, closing his eyes in silence till the job was done. I can remember Balvir at twenty, laughing out loud at a barefoot beggar who dived into a ditch full of slime to escape the swerve of his car. And Jai in the front seat with him, calculating the amount they would need for a police bribe to forget the poor man’s life, should it come to that.

  “How true, how true,” I reply.

  A good Amma forgets almost as much as she remembers.

  Once, I gave Balvir and Jai all the love my own children needed. I told them the stories my Shiv should have been told, and gave them all the blessings and hopes I could have given to Leela. Leela and I said little to each other when I went home for her wedding. She understands — I get tea in the morning and two meals a day, and but for this work she would have had no dowry.

  I must have been a weak Amma; Balvir is an exporter sending scraps of clothing that would barely cover a child to faithless women in abroad. And Jai — instead of becoming a doctor so he could cure the pains that strike his mother every time she climbs the stairs, Jai is an astrologer abroad — divining if the prices of things will go up or down and will we have too much of one thing and not of another. Even his old Amma knows prices go up and there is never too much of anything, only less of all good things, more of all bad things in the age of Kalyug. So much money spent on his education and he cannot even tell me if Shiv will do well and love me when I can no longer give him money. Foolish mothers like me make astrologers rich.

  “Where is Balvir now?” Mem-saab asks.

  I listen. I can hear Balvir trying on a dead man’s silk ties and turbans.

  “He is unpacking now,” I say to Mem-saab.

  “Stand here while I eat.” Her order is a plea. Perhaps there are things Balvir cannot say to his mother in the presence of a servant.

  When she has finished I call, “Khansama, tell the driver to bring Mem-saab’s car.”

  When the driver has taken her shopping, I wash her heavy silk salwar kameezes and soft widow-white dupattas and I hang them on the second-floor terrace to dry. Then, using as little water as possible, I bathe and wear cotton.

  I hear Balvir send Khansama to get him a taxi, and then he is gone.

  “The suitcase was heavy,” Khansama says in the kitchen.

  Khansama forgets sometimes that he is just a servant. He forgets even more often that there can be honour only from serving those who have honour. He has too much desire, too many expectations, like all young men these days.

  “How much did he pay you this time?” I ask.

  “Full five hundred rupees.”

  Half a month’s pay just for carrying a suitcase? Khansama fans himself with the notes. He’s forgotten to wear the topi to his uniform and Mem-saab will find his black hair in the curry tonight. When Sardarji was alive Khansama learned to make dinners like those served in the five-star hotels — rich curries with chicken and mutton swimming in layers of pure butter-ghee. That was only six rains ago, but even then I had become too old to stomach the leftovers. Mem-saab couldn’t eat such food either; that’s when I started giving food to Khansama.

  “Only a fool would accept dirty money.”

  He examines the notes carefully, holding them up to the sunlight. They are worn in the centre but acceptable; he has no wit to know what I mean.

  “He says he will bring his beevi and son and they will move in here, too.”

  “Here?”

  “Where else? You too are becoming deaf,” he says.

  “There are only two bedrooms upstairs here, where will they live?” The Embassy-walla tenant lives in the five bedrooms on the ground floor below us. If Balvir moves in downstairs, Mem-saab’s monthly income will be gone.

  “Balvir says he will build more rooms on the terrace,” says Khansama. He looks happy; to those who follow him, Balvir can be the smile of Krishna and Ganesh all in one.

  “Are you finished?” he asks.

  He wants me to let him use the sugar I need for my second cup of tea.

  “No.” I will not give away any more of Mem-saab’s food. Nothing sweet, and no more of her salt than I can help, till I know the price of Khansama’s heart.

  Mem-saab returns from her shopping without parcels or bags, eyes red and swollen. She stops several times to rest as she climbs the narrow staircase, and I call for Khansama to serve her lunch. I stand by her as she eats and then prepare her bed for her afternoon nap.

  When she falls asleep at last, I can go up to the terrace and smoke. Leaning over the latticed concrete, I light the tan leaf of a bidi and blow the smoke out and down to the Embassy-walla’s lawn. Mem-saab will smell tamakhu anyway and tell me I must try to be a better Sikh.

  I watch from the terrace in case Shiv’s round face appears at the iron gates; every few months he comes to pay me respect and I tell him his eyes will roll round like marbles in his head if he spends more years tending machines that copy foreign music cassettes for sale. It takes him three hours each way from Okhla, and food is expensive. Whenever he comes, I give him money and later Mem-saab tells me he uses me and I should make him fend for himself. But Shiv is a good son — he does not shout at his mother like Balvir.

  When she wakes from her nap, Balvir is still gone.

  “I will give you a massage and you will feel better,” I offer.

  She allows me to draw the curtains in her room and bring a steel bowl of warmed mustard-seed oil. Sweeping the line of her back with my strong hands, I talk about old times when children lived with their parents, and then parents with loving, caring children. My massages take a long time; anything important should be done slowly.

  I help her to be beautiful, even though she is a widow and her ears hear no sound. I bring water for her to wash her face — a face like the milk-tea I made for her children, not deodarwood-brown like my skin in the mirror behind her. She takes black kajal pencils from my hands to make eyebrows, and I tell her how beautiful they look.

  Her hair, resting in my palms as I braid it, is the colour of spent fire-coals. My hair is orange-red in the mirror now — I buy one egg a month for myself and I mix its soft bubble yolk with dark henna powder and water that has known the comfort of tea leaves.

  Mem-saab goes to the door of her husband’s room and feels the padlock, weighing its coldness in her soft hands. She looks over her shoulder at me and there is fear in her eyes.

  “Did he say when he would be back?”

  “No, Mem-saab.”

  “Let me know as soon as you hear him arrive.”

  “Will you have dinner together?” I ask. We can pretend she knows the answer; Khansama will need to know how much food to make.

  “Make enough for two,” she says.

  When I lead Mem-saab out in the evening for her walk, I am her ears on the street.

  “Hilloh,” I say to the Embassy-walla tenant downstairs, just like Jai calling from abroad on the phone. The Embassy-walla folds his hands strangely, holding them far from his heart. He takes the word as Mem-saab’s greeting, and does not realize I mean, Move out of the way, my Mem-saab is coming. If the Embassy-walla forgets to speak Hindi I cannot help her, and
they stand for long minutes, smiling.

  At Jorbagh market, I keep her from the tooting of the three-wheeled scooter-rickshaws and tell her the prices the fruit-seller asks. When she turns her face away so that she cannot read my lips anymore, it is my signal to tell the fruit-seller that is her rock-bottom price. She takes very little money with her — just a few notes tied in the corner of her dupatta, so that Balvir and Jai will inherit more of their father’s wealth. Even so, she always gives me a little to buy an offering of marigold garlands at the Hindu temple and she waits outside in the shade while I ring the bell before Ganesh and ask him to smile upon my distant children. When I emerge, she offers a gentle chide. “Amma, Vaheguru also answers old women’s prayers.”

  Later, when she has put colour on her cheeks and her lips are hibiscus-red, she is ready to receive relatives. Ever since she lost her ears, Sardar and Sardarni Gulab Singh, Sardar and Sardarni Sewa Singh — people her husband helped when a Partition-refugee’s application lay between them and the begging bowl — are the only ones who still come to pay her respect.

  They touch her feet in greeting; she represents her husband for them. It’s been a long time since either Balvir or Jai touched her feet — or mine.

  “Amma,” they say. It gives them status to call me Amma — old servants are rare these days, only good families have them. Today Khansama’s white uniform jacket is crumpled and he wears its Nehru collar insolently unhooked, but Mem-saab does not order him to change it before he wheels in the brass trolley-cart crowned with a wobbling tea cozy. She talks to her relatives in English about his “stealing.” As always, she says she will send him and his family back to his village.

  She is ashamed to tell her relatives about the lock on her husband’s room and the suitcase that says Balvir is staying for as long as it takes to break her again.

  I have made sweet white rasgullahs to serve after dinner, but I should have made Balvir eat them before the meal to sweeten his words.

  “You are getting so old, you cannot make up your mind about anything,” he tells Mem-saab. He remembers to speak slowly, but it is always difficult for her to lip-read men with mustaches and beards.