English Lessons and Other Stories

by Shauna Singh Baldwin

  The way she remembered it, he had stood behind her and twisted her tongue back in her throat until her whole body arched backwards and up and her screams were the terrified screams of a woman betrayed.

  And then she remembered his narrowed dark eyes an inch from her own and his so-reasonable voice. “If you bring shame to this family, if your Mumji has to bring you to my office like this one more time, I will tear your tongue out and send it to your father.”

  And the so-reasonable voice went on, the pain increasing with each word till she thought he had decided to turn threat into action. “Your Mumji is a santini. You understand? A saint! She could have thrown you out when you and Kamal spent the night on that hill above Shimla. But she didn’t. She loves you like a daughter — see, she even takes you to the doctor when you have a tantrum. Just remember that.”

  And then, when there were no screams left in her body, the merciful loosening of the clamp on her tongue till she could open her streaming eyes.

  And later Mumji, entering the room. “Doctor-sahib, will she be all right?”

  Doctor-sahib, returning the clamp to the white-clothed table. “Nothing to worry, dear lady. You have a very pretty little daughter-in-law. We just had a nice little talk. She was frightened that she would not be worthy of such a loving family. I told her she should be grateful — she is such a lucky girl, she has such a wonderful mother-in-law, such a handsome husband. I see so many women every day who are not so lucky.”

  Afterwards, Chaya didn’t make a sound for three whole days. Mumji had never needed to take her back to Doctor-sahib’s office.

  “Where would you like me to put these?” Chaya pointed to a pile of export-reject dresses Janet had bought at the shops on Janpath.

  “Oh, shove them in somewhere, I don’t care.”

  Really, Chaya was very little use, not much good at packing and incapable of making the simplest decisions. This woman who so nearly married her husband had a studied ineffectual quality to her incompetence. There were moments when the slight jingle of her jewellery was all that betrayed her presence.

  Janet gave up and cleared a space on the bed. “Tell you what. Why don’t you sit here and talk to me while I pack. Tell me about yourself.”

  Chaya sat down, confusion in her face.

  “What is there to tell?”

  “Tell me about you and Arvind, for instance.” There, she had asked it, almost commanded it.

  “There is nothing to tell.” An automated voice.

  “You were engaged to him before, weren’t you?” A cross-examining barrister with a reluctant witness.

  “Yes. I was engaged to Arvind but Mumji decided I should marry Kamal.”

  “Did that bother you?” Perhaps a psychiatrist’s style might produce results.

  “It was Mumji’s right.”

  “But Chaya, what about you? If someone decided such an important matter for me, I would feel terrible. I would feel violated. I would feel angry.”

  Chaya asked, “What should I have done?”

  She was being asked what answer she wanted Chaya to give. Tell her what to say and Chaya would say it. Harmony is the mask that covers the absence of song.

  What did she want Chaya to say — that Arvind was her one true love? That she still loved him? Where would that leave Janet? And what right did she, Janet, have to tell Chaya she should be angry about any of the past? Anyu would say, “Anger is useful only when life can be otherwise.”

  “I’m sorry, Chaya.” A weight in her voice.

  Chaya nodded.

  “I am sorry for you, too,” she said.

  “Sorry for me?”

  “Yes, sorry for you, for you have given Arvind no children.” Here lay the true test of womanhood for Chaya, the fulfilment of being, the source, however short in duration, of a pure and devoted love.

  “I…” Janet began. It would be easy now to retreat into privacy — but her questions had allowed Chaya no such right and she could no longer lay claim to it for herself. She could talk about fulfilment in a life without children, tell Chaya there were other ways to know love, other ways of seeing joy, other ways to satisfy dreams of what might have been, but Chaya would never believe her.

  Whenever she’d been confused as a child, Anyu had said, “Perhaps the truth would be a good start,” so Janet said now, “It is Arvind who cannot have children.”

  Chaya gave her an uncomprehending stare.

  “He had the mumps when he was a teenager, and now he cannot have children.”

  Chaya said, “You’re lying.”

  “I’m not lying.” Janet was indignant.

  Chaya took a long, deep breath. Then she raised her childlike hands over her ears. “I’m not listening anymore. You’re a very bad wife to say such terrible things about him.”

  “Chaya, it’s true. Ask Arvind.”

  Chaya lowered her hands and looked at her sister-in-law. Then she began to rock herself forward and back, forward and back, and soon Janet realized she was laughing. Laughing! Laughing at her? At Arvind? At their pain?

  “What is it, Chaya? Why are you laughing?” To be angry at Chaya would be like being angry at a child. She knelt on the floor before Chaya, taking her by the shoulders, shaking her gently.

  Chaya stopped rocking. For the first time, Janet saw passion in the flare of her nostrils.

  “I’m laughing at all of it. All of it. All of it. At Kamal who was worried about our son’s inheritance, at Mumji who wants you to bear Arvind’s children. At Papaji, who wanted his eldest son to come back to India. And…” dark eyes a few inches from Janet’s own, “at myself for wanting all these years a man who could not have given me my child.”

  Janet drew back.

  “Are you saying a man who cannot produce children is not worth marrying?”

  “Perhaps,” Chaya whispered, “not even worth loving.”

  Her eyes closed again. The rocking motion began again, this time from side to side as though Chaya were holding a baby. After a few moments, Chaya’s eyes opened and she said, “I laughed at you, too, you know.”

  “I know. Why?”

  “Because,” said Chaya, as though pity were a prelude to friendship, “you will have to learn how to be an adjustable woman.”

  Janet returned to her packing, her movements swift and urgent. Nothing, but nothing, must spoil this visit.

  English Lessons

  I told Tony — that is what he likes me to call him in America — I told Tony I will take English lessons till my green card comes. Valerie says there are English teachers who will teach me for free, and she will find a good one who will come to the apartment so that I do not have to go outside. Tony says OK, and then he leaves for work at the cardboard factory.

  I pick up the breakfast dishes and Suryavir’s toys. No one can say his name here — I will tell them at the school to call him Johnny, like Tony’s Johnny Walker Whisky.

  The phone rings and my heart starts to pound — dharak, dharak. Our answering machine message has Valerie’s voice, and I follow the words with her accent.

  “We’re naat here right naow, but if you leeev a mehsej, weell get right baak to you.” But it is only Valerie herself. “Pick up the phone, Kanwaljit. I want to know if you’re home so I can drop the kids off for the day.”

  “Hello,” I say. “I am here. You come.”

  Valerie is a nice person, but you cannot be too careful. Tony says we cannot meet anyone from India till my green card comes, so Valerie is the only one who sees me. I call her Grocery Store Valerie to myself, because she answered my card in the grocery store, and now I babysit her two strong and unruly boys. What farmers they would have made in Punjab! My son is not so strong. More than two years of women’s company. I spoilt him while we were waiting for Tony to get his citizenship, but what was I to do? If I had disciplined him, Tony’s parents would have been angry — he is their only grandson.

  Valerie’s boys don’t listen to love or scolding. But they go to school, and Valerie say
s it is the law, I have to send Suryavir to school. So I went there with her to register him and on the form I wrote the address I had memorized from Valerie’s cheques, not ours. Still, Tony was worried in case anyone who might report us saw me. He makes me dress in pants so that I look Mexican, and says it is only a short while now. I hope so.

  But first I will learn English. It’s not that I don’t understand it, but it has too many words. Get it. Put it. I am stuffed. Pick up your stuff. On the other hand. Hand it to you. I learned English in school, passed my matriculation examination, too. We learned whole passages of translation by heart — I had a good memory. Now Tony says I must speak English to pass my immigration interview and to memorize my amnesty story.

  A knock. Someone is standing far away from the peephole — why are they doing that? Oh, it’s Valerie; she was bending down to tie a shoelace for little Mark.

  “Hello, hello. Come in. How-are-you?”

  Valerie has found an English teacher who will come to the apartment and teach me for free. But Tony and I are afraid. This English teacher is from India and we did not want to meet any people from India. Valerie said she told the teacher I am Tony’s girlfriend and that Suryavir is our son. She said the English teacher was surprised. Indian couples do not usually live together, she told Valerie.

  Tony says to tell Valerie we don’t need this teacher. But I took her phone number to please Valerie. I may call her just to speak in Punjabi for a while.

  I told Valerie I will change my name. I asked her to call me Kelly. No one here can say Kanwaljit. And Kanwaljit is left far away in Amritsar, before the fire.

  Some nights I lie next to Tony, here in America where I live like a worm avoiding the sunlight, and I wonder if he knows. And is it only because it was his brother that he does not sense that another man’s body has come between us, or is it that he cannot remember the fire we felt in those early days. We only had three weeks in which Suryavir was made. Then he was gone.

  If I had been able to return to my parents until he told me to come to America, I would not have been so weak. But to do so would have smelled of disgrace, and I am not shameless. Nor was it a matter of a month or two, Tony told me after six months, when I was becoming big with his son; it would take him two more years.

  I tell myself it is not only another man’s body that invades our bed, but another woman’s too. And yet, that is different. I hear her tearful voice on our answering machine. Her anger follows us from city to city — Fremont, Dallas, Houston, Miami, New York, Chicago — threatening to report us to Immigration. He lived with her for two years, shared her bed, paid her our life savings for a marriage certificate. I will ask the English teacher how to say, “Is not two years of our life enough? Is not my worm existence, my unacknowledged wifehood, enough for you? Enough that I call myself his girlfriend, my son his bastard?”

  But she does not have form, no substance in our bed. I cannot imagine him with her black body — and if I can, what of it? Many men pay prostitutes. This one’s price was higher and she lasted longer. And he got his green card after two years. Thus am I here.

  The other man in bed with us — he has form. He looks like Tony, only younger. And he still laughs at me, waving pictures of Tony with her. Telling me Tony left me for an untouchable, a hubshi. Threatening to tell my parents if I would not open my legs to him.

  I did. Rubba-merey, I did.

  I thought some force would come upon us then and tear him from my flesh before the act was done. Save me, as the virtue of Dropadi was saved. And it did. Too late for virtue but soon enough for vengeance.

  The police came looking for him. Oh, not for my protection — no. They were rounding up all Sikh boys between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five for “questioning.” Tony’s parent’s knew what was in store and they hid him in the servant’s quarter, a concrete room on the flat roof of the house.

  They told the police he was with Tony in America. That made them angry. One sinewy fellow with a whisky smell took a can of gasoline and slowly, as we watched from the rooms around, and as Suryavir’s eyes grew larger, poured it in a steady dribble all round the centre courtyard. They all walked to the door and, almost as an afterthought, the sinewy policeman threw a lit match and the world exploded from silence into horror.

  I took no chances. I gave Suryavir to Tony’s mother and they climbed out of the back window. His father was blinded by tears and I pushed him after them. Then I ran up the narrow steep staircase to the servant’s quarter on the roof.

  And I locked it.

  And ran back through lung-searing smoke and purifying flame. I was given vengeance, and I took it as my due.

  But still he comes between us — the half-dead only half a world away. I called the English teacher today. She speaks Punjabi with a city accent. I will have to ask Tony, but I think it will be, like Americans say, “fine, fine” for her to come and teach me.

  Her family on her father’s side is from Rajasansi, just outside Amritsar. And she is married to a white guy so she is probably not part of the Gurdwara congregation; they have all heard of Tony’s Green-Card Wife. (These matters travel faster than aeroplanes fly between cities.) I will tell Tony I will take English lessons, and that she will be my teacher.

  Tony was finishing breakfast when Mrs Keogh, the English teacher, arrived. She knocked and I let her in. Then I asked her to sit down, offered her some tea and listened while she and Tony spoke English.

  “Thank you very much. My girlfriend is just new from India. As soon as her green card comes we will be getting married, so till then I think English lessons will help her pass the time.”

  The English teacher did not remark on “my girlfriend.” Good. Not a prying woman. She said, “I am glad to help you and your fiancée.”

  Tony continued, “I will not like it if you teach her more than I know. But just enough for her to get a good-paying job at Dunkin’ Donuts or maybe the Holiday Inn. She will learn quickly, but you must not teach her too many American ideas.”

  The English teacher smiled at me.

  Tomorrow, I will ask her where I can learn how to drive.

  The Cat Who Cried

  She stood framed by the doorway with the hall lights blazing behind her, grey hair straggling from under her sari palloo, and Prem and I started up in bed, hearts thudding.

  “The children?”

  “Are you sick?”

  “No, no. Worse than that.” Maybe my Hindi is fading a little every year; I find it more and more difficult to understand her without her dentures.

  “Then what happened?” asked Prem.

  “I heard a cat crying outside.”

  I glanced at the window. Snow gusts swirled over the peaked roofs of the subdivision. Strange how sloping roofs are more familiar to me now than the hot shimmer-haze concrete flatness of an Indian city view.

  “Mataji, you must have imagined it,” Prem began, but I knew it would do no good.

  “It’s bad luck. Come, we must do puja. No one will ever say I allowed bad luck to come into this home.”

  Mataji’s life has been dedicated to the collection of strategies to outwit bad luck and Prem knew it, so he stifled a yawn and a groan and led the way down to the drawing room — I mean the living room — collecting little Nikhil and his blanket from Mataji’s bed and leaving baby Sheila sleeping.

  We had no furniture in the living room, then. Just a large wool dhurrie we’ve moved to every place we’ve ever lived since we came to America and cushions of all colours and shapes and sizes. We bought the house because we wanted a crackling fire in the fireplace, but that would have to wait till Mataji returned to India because she’d made it her shrine, filling it with statues of Shiva and Ganesh and Vishnudevi, flowers and garlands, incense and Christmas tinsel. It was her refuge, where she began at five every morning to confide her irritation with twanging nasal syllables, the whiteness of people and the greyness of that twilight that arrived just when she was ready to face another day of strangeness.
r />   “Mommy, what’s Mataji doing?” Nikhil asked in English.

  “A little puja, darling,” I said, as brightly as I could.

  “Don’t tell him why,” whispered Prem.

  But I couldn’t resist.

  “Mataji heard a kitty crying,” I said, smiling sweetly at Prem. Then, remembering it’s a wife’s duty to keep peace, I lied. “So we’re going to pray for it.”

  Prem sat next to Mataji as she began slowly and deliberately to recite the thousand names of Vishnu. Outside, church bells rang to call people to Midnight Mass and Mataji’s bad luck cat stayed silent. I wanted to lift myself upwards and follow the sandalwood incense curling out of our chimney.

  Mataji was suspicious of me as soon as she heard that her youngest son wanted to marry a woman he had met studying in America. That I am Indian was merely an indication of his good sense. That my parents sent their daughter to study in America was an indication of a family tendency towards wasteful spending. Mataji must have vowed to watch this trait closely for fear it should be passed along any further in her house, for as soon as we were married — in India, with all the appropriate ceremony — she made it clear that I was not to be trusted with money. Within two years, then, we had none left. My dowry distributed to Prem’s family — all of whom blessed us enthusiastically — and with Prem unable to find a job where he did not have to give or take bribes to survive, we finally asked his brothers to sponsor us to America.

  Mataji has been convinced ever since that I was a bad influence on the son who was to have lived with her in that huge white bungalow on Aurangzeb Road in her old age. When we decided not to have children till we could afford them, Prem began receiving piteous supplications to allow her to know her unborn grandchildren before she died and warnings that he must not be influenced by his over-educated wife. Like his three older brothers, Prem is unlikely to be influenced by anyone, least of all a woman, but he loves being the prize in a contest.