I shakes my head no. “Never,” I say. “Husband, good man. He never doing any beatings.”
“So what made you? Take the pills, I mean?”
And suddenly, the pain in my heart so big, it comes out of my eyes and roll down my face. “I’s alone,” I say. “I have no family relations in this desh. I alone.”
The black lady’s face is so kind, it making me cry more. “I’m sorry, sweetie,” she say. “I understand. It’s very hard.”
“I used to call my Shilpa sweetie. When I was the teaching her English.”
“Who’s Shilpa?”
I want to say: Shilpa is reason I’m in this jail of Am’rica. “Shilpa is my sister.”
“I see. And she’s still in India?”
I am surprise by question. “I thinks so.”
“You’re not sure?”
I look at the floor. “We not talking anymore. Husband not allow. After marriage, he say I not talking to Dada or Shilpa.”
She let out breath. “You have no contact with your family in India?”
“Husband not allow.”
She look angry. “Why ever not?”
I look at the floor.
We sit nice quiet for many minute. Then she say, “Tell me about your village. Tell me about where you grew up.”
Even Bobby not ask so many question about my life. No one ever take interest. I close my eyes and I smell the earth of my village after the rainy season. And the first thing I am seeing is the well.
6
IT RAINING SIX days nonstop and my father’s field is flooding. He sit at home and Ma say he drive her mad with his worry and kitpit. He telling her how to light coal stove properly, how to bake rotis correct way, how to sweep floor. She so irritate, she throw broom at him and say, “You so good, mister, you sweep this mud floor until it become Taj Mahal.” Shilpa and I think what Ma say so funny, we laugh and laugh, until Dada make strong eyes at us and raise his hand. But we not afraid of Dada because he never beating us. One time when my report card not good and Ma slap me, it is Dada who cry like a girl, not me.
On six day of rain, Menon sahib come to our house in his blue Ambassador and ask if I can go to his big house for cleaning. His wife in city for few days and Munna and he alone in dirty house. I see Ma is sad that I leaf my schoolwork to help Menon sahib, but she cannot do extra work now. Both her feets having the ’rthritis and it paining her. I am so happy to leaf house and go sit in backseat of big car with Munna. It is only second time I sits inside a car—first time was taxi that we took from train station one time when we went to city. But the taxi was small and crowding and the smell of the agarbatti that the taxi driver was burning make me sneeze and sneeze. Menon sahib’s car is big as my house and Munna is my friend, although he being only five and I am eight.
This is first time I goes to Menon sahib’s house without my ma, but I am knowing exact what to do. First I takes the jharu and sweep whole house. I collects the kachra in newspaper and then I get the rag and start to wash floor. I scrubs and scrubs until I am seeing my face in the white tile. Munna sit with me for some time and then he go to other room to play. Menon sahib’s house having many rooms. After floor wash, I begin to wash Menon sahib’s wife’s saris and cholis and bedsheets. My arm feel on fire as I scrub soap on clothes and rub them together. I wish Ma was here doing this jobs, but then I remember how her feets all swollen like a ripe mango, and I feel ashame. I push the hairs out of my eye and scrub harder.
The rain has stop when I finish washing and the sun is coming out. I takes the wet clothes out to dry. Munna is outside also, running around me, making zoom-zoom noise like aeroplane. He try to help me but he too short to hangs the clothes on the line. Even I having problem to reach the top but I managing.
After five-ten minute, Munna quiet. The sun is so hot on my face, it make my skin cry. I hear the mynah bird making song in the trees and I answers back. Woo-hoo, I say, and it listen and then talk back to me.
One minute everything is sweet and peace-like, but then I hear door open and Menon sahib is giving the shout and running toward me. I ascared, thinking I hang his wife’s clothes wrongly, but then I see he cover mouth with one hand and pointing with the other. I turns around. Munna has climb on the stone wall of the well in Menon sahib’s compound. He now leaning into the well, looking to find his face in the water. As I looking, he move in more, his little feets pushing against the stones.
The mynah bird still making song. The sun still making my face cry. But now there is no sweet in this day. I feel ascare, because in one minute Munna will fall into the well. I kick off my chappals and run. The mud is soft and make shuck-shuck sound from my feet as I move in it. The mud trying to pull me back and so I know running no good. If I to save Munna, I must to fly, fly like the mynah bird in the tree. So I does. I fly. As I get closer to well, I open my hands, like wings of big bird. Just as Munna slipping into well, I close my hands around his legs. He hanging upside down and my knee hit into stone wall and bleeding. But I don’t let him go. I hold him tightum-tight until Menon sahib come behind of me and take Munna out of my hands. For one seconds, I ascare Menon sahib has gone mad because he kissing Munna and slapping him at same time. Then he making some noise and moving forward-back, forward-back, and I see he crying. Munna start to crying also, and then Menon sahib kiss his son, all over his face and head. Menon sahib is always so strict, like the schoolteacher. When my dada go to him last day of every month to collect his money, Menon sahib never ever smiling at Dada, just writing numbers in big red book and counting a few rupee notes to give. Dada always feeling poorly when he leave Menon sahib’s shop and come home. We never becoming rich, Dada say, because Dada can sell what we grow only to Menon sahib and he never pay enough.
But now Menon sahib is crying more than Munna do, and I feels shy, like I watch something not my business. I begins to walk toward the house, but he put his son down and touch my shoulder to stop. “Lakshmi,” he say. “I am in your debts. If I take five more births on this earth, I still be in your debts.” And then come part that nobody belief, not even Shilpa: Menon sahib fold his hand to me. Dada say I lying when I tell him. Stupid girl, Dada say. Menon sahib is like a raja. He own our whole village. Why he join hands in front of a eight-year-old girl?
But he do. He say, “Beti, from this day on, you are like my little niece. I will pay your school fees for as long as you go to school.”
I so happy, I run all way home to tell Ma and Dada good news. I run through sugarcane fields, and while I run, I seeing myself in my future. I am seeing the Lakshmi that is high school pass. Shilpa and I is now living in Mumbai, in big house next door to Sharukh Khan. I have a big car like Menon sahib and a driver. And I is buying a new sari every week.
But that Lakshmi, high school pass, will never be allow to be born. My naseeb not allow, because my birth star weak. I see that future Lakshmi again, the day I leaving school forever in eight standard. I see her when I am bent over the kerosene stove and when I dipping chapati in dal to feed my ma because the ’rthritis twisting her fingers like root of tree. I see her again when I working with Dada in field, because Ma cannot help him no longer. Every time I see that future Lakshmi, she spit at me, make blood in my eyes.
Menon sahib good, honest man. He pay my fees as he promise. Not his fault that the promise turn out to be short and thin.
Once, only once, I see that future Lakshmi again with happy eyes. It the day my Shilpa become high school pass. You boil, boil, boil milk and what happen? It turn to malai, no? Same way, on day that Shilpa pass school, all my sadness become smaller and smaller and turn into happy.
7
SUDHIR WAS COMING home tonight and she was picking him up at the airport in five hours. Enough time to spend one last evening with Peter, to boil pasta on the stove of his small kitchen, knowing that he was following her every movement with his eyes. To feel the tingling anticipation of when he would put down the glass of wine and rise from the chair, take the few short steps to where she was, and hold he
r from behind, kissing the nape of her neck. Ever since Friday night, when she’d arrived to pick him up for a late dinner and he had seduced her on the living room couch, they had fallen into a surprisingly easy routine, meeting at Peter’s home in Homerville after Maggie got off work. Last night they had planned on going out to pick up some Thai food but ended up in front of the television, eating microwave popcorn for dinner. Peter was fascinated by American TV—that’s how he referred to it—because he was on the road so much and seldom had time to watch.
Their bodies, too, had fallen into an easy rhythm. For almost thirty years Sudhir’s was the only body Maggie had touched, and she knew it as well as her own—the tight muscles of his back, the dark hair on his chest, the sharp jutting of his hip bone, the callous on his big toe, the dark spot on his shin. Peter’s body was a new country to discover and explore, and she felt exactly like a tourist—giddy with anticipation, taking delight in both the familiar and the unfamiliar. In addition, there was the novelty of Peter’s whiteness. Steeped in her parents’ quiet but fierce race consciousness, influenced by the books about slavery and Jim Crow that she read as an undergraduate at Wellesley, she had never been interested in dating white men. Unlike some of her peers, she didn’t cultivate an active antagonism toward white guys and had never condemned her black friends who had white boyfriends. She was simply indifferent to the lures of white skin. When she was a kid, Wallace had told her enough stories about the humiliations he’d suffered, working as a houseboy for a British colonial officer, to turn her stomach. She knew better than to paint all whites with the same stroke, and God knows she’d had plenty of white friends in college, but still, when she met Sudhir, she was relieved that, like her, he was the color of the earth. The joke, of course, was that in many ways Sudhir acted very much like a stereotypical white middle-class American male—he spoke proper English, had bourgeois values, and had grown up in a stable two-parent home. Wallace had said as much the first time he met his son-in-law: “Baby girl, you done gon’ and married a white man.”
Maggie smiled as she felt Peter’s mouth brushing lightly against her shoulders. “Hey,” he said softly. “You haven’t even left yet, and already I’m missing you. How is this possible?”
She turned to face him. The thought of not seeing Peter again made her ache. “I know,” she said. How would she face Sudhir at the airport? Would he take one look at her and know? How would it feel to sleep in their bed tonight, after having spent four nights with Peter?
“But I will see you soon, right?” Peter had a curious expression on his face, as if he’d read her mind.
She sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t see how. Sudhir . . . When Sudhir’s in town, we’re pretty much together in the evenings.”
He grinned slowly, a cocky, wicked grin that made the breath catch in her throat. It was unfair, how handsome Peter was. Sudhir was a good-looking man, she knew that. In middle age, he had preserved his runner’s body, and although his temples were beginning to gray, he had a head full of dark, thick hair. But Peter was beautiful. The sparkling green eyes, the long, angular face, the curly brown hair, the thin, ironic smile, it all hit Maggie so forcefully at times that she had to look away. The most attractive part about Peter was how carelessly he wore his beauty, like some cheap aftershave. She had the feeling that he would be offended if she ever commented on his looks.
“What?” she said. “Why’re you smiling like that?”
“If you have to spend your evenings with Sudhir, then I guess we’ll just have to visit during the day.”
“And how do we do that? Quit our jobs?”
He grinned again. “My mother always said, where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
But was there the will? Maggie asked herself as she set the two bowls of pasta on the small kitchen table. She was already ashamed of what she’d done during Sudhir’s absence. It was so unlike her, this active courting of danger. Peter had a one-year contract at the university; he would be gone to God knows what forsaken country at the end of next semester. Whereas she and Sudhir had a forever contract that tied them to each other. Every strand of her life was woven into Sudhir’s. For years, Maggie had marveled at how lucky she was to be married to a man whom she still loved and respected. In her profession, she had seen so many bad marriages, had witnessed how often love corroded into hatred or indifference. She had heard enough stories to know that bad behavior—cruelty, volatility, secrecy, violence, addiction—was rampant in many marriages. The worst thing she could say about Sudhir after all these years was that he was slightly . . . boring. That he was a homebody, not a thrill-seeker the way Peter was. Imagine that. That the worst thing about her husband was that he was predictable in his routines, that he was loyal and steadfast and reliable, and that the highlight of his day was coming home to his wife.
So what was she doing sitting barefoot in Peter Weiss’s kitchen? How could she have so easily said goodbye to decades of fidelity, to years of counseling patients about the lasting damage that affairs inflicted on relationships? What did it mean that she had traded in her years with Sudhir for a few days with Peter?
The answer came from deep within her: It meant that, without her knowledge, a drought had existed in her. That she had been parched, thirsty in a way that Sudhir couldn’t quench. Unbidden, a picture of her ten-year-old self in bed with Wallace rose in front of Maggie’s eyes. And the next instant she knew: The strange, unnamable, ultimately shaming encounters with her father had dried up some part of her, had planted a seed of sexual restraint deep within her personality. No wonder she had picked someone like Sudhir—an Indian male from a conservative Brahmin family who was raised to be courteous to all, to be respectful and protective of women, who was cautious by instinct and precise by training. Sudhir had never seen the drought. Whereas Peter knew, had seen it the very first time they’d met three years ago. Recognized something, with his photographer’s eyes, that she herself was oblivious to. In any case, what had happened between them four nights ago was not anything she could explain with her conscious mind. It was not a decision. It was not a desire that she had acted upon. Rather, it was movement. A flow. Like water. Like music. A river does not choose its direction. It just follows the path that has been laid out for it. That was how she had felt, that she had flowed into his body.
“Hey,” Peter was saying. “Where did you go? You’re hardly eating.”
She shook her head. “Sorry.”
The green eyes narrowed slightly. “You look so sad.”
“I’m not. Really. I just . . .” She swallowed. “It’s going to be hard. Saying goodbye.”
“So don’t,” he said promptly. “Hey, I’m not going anywhere.” He leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms above his head. “I’m stuck in this job for a whole goddamn year.”
Even though Maggie knew better than to take it personally, the comment hurt. “You hate it so much? Living here? Teaching?”
Peter rubbed his eyes. “Ah, God, I don’t know, Maggie,” he said. “I like it well enough, I guess. It’s just that . . . I miss life. You know? Messy, unpredictable life. The adrenaline rush. Visiting new places. I don’t do well with routine, I guess.” He covered Maggie’s hand with his. “Though I’d miss you. And I’m very happy to have reconnected with you.”
They smiled shyly at each other as they ate. After a few moments, Peter said, “So how would you like to spend the few hours we have left?” The green eyes sparkled suggestively.
The thought of going directly to the airport from Peter’s, which was what she’d planned on doing, suddenly lost its appeal. “I think I’m going to go home for a bit,” she said. “Before I go pick up Sudhir. Is that okay?”
Peter opened his mouth as if to argue but then closed it. “Yup,” he said simply. “Whatever you need.”
Her thoughts were jumbled as she drove swiftly down the darkening streets. She was happy that Sudhir was coming home, she really was. It would be easier to resist Peter once Sudhir was home. She�
��d be the world’s biggest fool to risk her marriage over someone like Peter, she really would. Peter was a birthday party, all candles and cake and balloons. Now the party was over. Sudhir was the rest of the year, the real deal, the place where she’d built her nest. What she and Sudhir had constructed together, someone like Peter could only dream about. If he was even smart enough to realize and envy them what they had, that is. Which she somehow doubted he was.
You don’t have to demonize Peter, she scolded herself. You don’t have to let your guilt paper over how much fun you had these past few days. Or even over how your body answered his. Maybe everyone is entitled to one harmless fling, to one sexual adventure, and this was yours. A reward for a lifetime of good behavior. Which you will now proceed to implement. Which means you can’t do this with Peter ever again.
Promise? she said to herself. Promise?
8
MAGGIE SIGHED. SHE and Lakshmi had sat across from each other in this small, airless room for almost ten minutes, and they were getting nowhere. After days of easy communication, Lakshmi had clamped up again, and Maggie had no idea why. The insurance company was throwing a fit over having to pay her hospital bills, and earlier today, Richard had called Maggie into his office and demanded to know why the Indian woman hadn’t been discharged yet.
She decided to try again. “Listen,” she said. “Unless you tell me what made you attempt to kill yourself, I can’t discharge you. Do you understand? We could resolve this in a few minutes. I know you’re as anxious to go home as we are to let you go. Right?”
In response, Lakshmi rose from her bed and wandered over to the window. She gazed out onto the lush green lawn of the hospital for a second and then turned around. “Why this cannot open?” she asked.
“We’ve been through this before, Lakshmi.” Maggie fought to keep the impatience out of her voice. “It’s for your own safety.”
The Story Hour Page 5