He tried to summon up the old exhilaration of taking her out into the world: she'd been like a kitten let outdoors for the first time, running her hands over the plush velvet seats in the Lido Theatre, eating her popcorn kernel by kernel. When he'd asked her for her opinions about the films they saw together in those days, she'd tucked stray wisps of hair behind her ears, smoothed down her skirt, and hazarded halting sentences that trailed off: "Funny names they all have, no? Toothpick and Spats and whatnot ... Aiyo, not nice lah to see men dressed as women ... Must be a frightening place, America, don't you think?"
He'd found her tentativeness charming then; now, not having heard a complete, worthwhile thought from her in months, he felt himself turning to dust every time he looked at her across the dining table. Nothing, no joke he could tell or treat he could offer her rekindled the old exhilaration in him. He brought her ice kacang, cendol, char kuay teow from the same stall in front of which he'd proposed to her. She ate two or three bites, rolling each one doubtfully around in her mouth as if these were all foreign foods. "So stingy they are with the coconut milk nowadays," she said about the cendol. And, pushing away the plate of char kuay teow: "I can count the prawns with one hand. You got nicely cheated."
Appa concluded that his plunging affections were not his memory's fault; he could remember the old Vasanthi quite well and still muster a fierce fondness for that vanished creature. But that girl was not the one opposite whom he found himself sitting every day at the dining table. Some spiteful black magic had left this soured wife in place of the girl whose cool hand he'd held in the Lido, that woman-child haloed in delight and gratitude. He did not entertain the possibility that he had done anything to deserve these disagreeable moods, or he might have pored over the record of their days more thoroughly and thereby guessed what she was thinking: Now you can sit there and try to be nice to me, but at the club it's all "Let me get you a drink Lily, oh Claudine you're too much," while I stand like a coconut tree in the corner. Think you can still buy me with a plate of char kuay teow? Well, those days are over. Outside you treat them all to oysters and lamb chops and who knows what else you eat, and then very nicely you come home with one packet of char kuay teow for me.
He began to let her wander off on her own at parties and club nights and open houses, to think her own thoughts and make her own friends. The first time he saw who these friends would be, his single-malt scotch turned brackish on his tongue. He was holding some sort of fussy hors d'oeuvre on a toothpick; when he glimpsed Amma's misguided overtures from across the room, the task of eating it suddenly seemed insurmountable. He put the topheavy toothpick in his empty glass and, still watching Amma, surreptitiously abandoned the glass on top of the piano. They were at the Tambun mansion of Dr. Surgeon Jeganathan, whose Chinese wife, Daisy, Amma was questioning about her tailor's rates. "I must ask that Daisy which tailor she goes to," she'd said to him the previous week. "Her husband is one famous topdoctor, isn't it?" And now, watching them, Appa saw Daisy's thoughts flutter above her head, a crown of vivid butterflies: Yes, I suppose this girl can afford my tailor, husband a toplawyer after all. "So reasonable!" Amma squealed. "Not bad at all, man! I mean I'm prepared to pay quite a bit more for workmanship like that, you know?" Daisy Jeganathan narrowed her eyes at Amma, half appreciative, half disdainful. "So reasonable," Amma insisted. "I'm delighted to hear it."
I bet she's had nothing but ice cream soda, Appa told himself as he watched Amma finish with a series of overly sincere nods. She's drunk on something else entirely. So that's the only way she wishes to improve herself, eh? Learning from the equally stupid wives of my equally unfortunate colleagues. Fancy that. She's capable of learning, after all, when it suits her. For among the rich wives of Ipoh, Amma's face took on an alert, cat-like cast; he could see her mind's gleaming wheels turning more smoothly than they ever had as she absorbed all those women's rules and rituals. The preferred makeup brands, the favored hairdressers, the fashionable saree colors. Did she realize they weren't even friends with each other? Did she understand the reptilian dynamics at play in their every interaction? And finally—most important of all—was she really as enthralled as she seemed to be by their non-conversation, their Ha-ha-hee-hee-I-paid-four-hundred-for-this-saree-even-on-sale-you-know, their tetchy flattery and undeclared tests?
He made a few final valiant efforts to take charge of her intellectual development at home. Surely she wanted to become one of those women only because she'd so little faith in anything else. But he was accustomed to cynical women; he knew how to stir them into a contrarian passion. Perhaps if he could make her understand how the nation's fate would affect her, Lawyer Rajasekharan's wife, even sitting at home doing nothing, gadding about town eating curry puffs, even so, yes indeed—"The problem with their racial politics," he began, "is that—"
"Aiyo, all this politics all I don't know lah," she said. "Whatever they want to do as long as they leave us alone it's okay isn't it?"
"Leave us alone? Leave us alone? You call this leaving us alone? Their bloody Article 153 and their ketuanan Melayu, yes yes I know you'll insist you can't understand a word of Malay, so let me explain it to you, let me tell you what it means: it means Malays are the masters of this land, do you understand? Our masters! With that kind of language—"
"Tsk, after all it's their country, what, so why shouldn't they be the masters? Just because you cannot sit at home and keep quiet means—"
"But it's our country just as much as the bloody Malays'! Do you realize some of our families have been here longer than theirs? Ask the Straits Chinese—"
"Tsk, all these grand ideas..."
Grand ideas. The sin of which he'd always stood accused, by Lily and Nalini and Claudine, by others before and after them. The difference was that Amma's own ideas really did stop there. Her very thoughts trailed off into nothingness, not just her sentences.
Appa tried to conceal his disenchantment from his mother, but her eager eyes saw the signs. "What did you expect?" she asked him every other day, not quite out of Amma's earshot. And one afternoon: "Now you and I are stuck with her for good. Satisfied?"
"For heaven's sake," said Appa, doing his best to bristle. "Stuck with her for good! You talk about human beings as if they were furniture. I knew what sort of woman I was marrying, thank you very much." All three of them could hear the desperation in his voice, and yet he went on: "If I'd wanted a wife like Marie Curie I'd have found one. Please keep your narrow-mindedness to yourself. Just because she's not like you doesn't mean—" He stopped, as though startled by his own sentence.
After a pause Paati said, "Lourdesmary bought some lovely pisang raja to fry for tea."
But Amma could not let Paati's deft you and I go. As soon as she had spoken those words, flesh sheathed their white skeleton, blood filled the ready webbing of their veins, and the dull throb of their heart beat all day in Amma's head. He and she, she and he, mother and son: it was them against her. She was still the interloper, the bloody clerk's daughter from next door.
All she could do against the intransigent order of the universe was to concentrate on her transformation into rich man's wife, which she had begun promptly upon her arrival at the Big House. Just a week after her wedding—even before she'd had examples to follow—her father had seen her emerge, kajaled and clad in bright, streaming silks, from her gilt cocoon. She had climbed into the Morris Minor, given her orders to the driver, and returned an hour later with her hair cut short.
Now that she'd stored copious mental notes from her evenings in the presence of Ipoh's wealthy wives, she lay in bed till ten-thirty every morning, reading Woman's Own and eating cling peaches from a crystal bowl. At least I don't have to get up, she kept reminding herself. I don't have to go downstairs and face that witch. I could stay in bed all day if I wanted, there are servants to do all the work. Nevertheless, she rose at noon and went out saree-shopping, then to a beauty salon for a manicure or pedicure or facial. Anything to escape Paati's supercilious shadow.
Paati was not one of the dreaded mothers-in-law of Tamil films and newspaper reports, whose insufficiently dowried daughters-in-law died in mysterious fires or disappeared suddenly. She had no problem with her daughter-in-law's life of leisure: it was only fitting that Amma should sleep in and leave her plate on the table after lunch, for these were markers of Appa's status. Amma could not be berated for bad cooking; neither Paati nor Amma had any need to set foot in the kitchen. No, Paati reserved her bile for immutable truths: for Amma's origins rather than her destination, for who she was rather than what she did.
"You seem to like these bright-bright colors," Paati remarked offhandedly one afternoon, glancing at the marigold silk saree in which Amma had arrayed herself for a garden party at the club. "I think so I'm just behind the times when it comes to fashion. In my day those were the colors laborer women would wear for Deepavali, you know? So in my silly old fuddy-duddy head I still think of them as rubber-estate colors."
And another time, picking up the latest issue of Woman's Own where Amma had left it lying on the coffee table: "So this is what you bury your nose in all day, is it? Quite entertaining it seems. Lots of nice colored pictures. Romantic stories too. It's good you can find reading material for your level. After all Raju has his own friends with whom he can discuss his philosophy and politics and whatnot."
Amma's only response to these comments was to add twice-weekly Ladies' Coffee Mornings to her schedule, as well as a solitary tea at the FMS Bar and Restaurant. Braving the men's furtive glances, she made her way to the same table every time and spent exactly sixty seconds studying the menu—turning its pages so steadily she could've been using an under-the-table metronome—before ordering two curry puffs and a pot of tea. Isn't that Lawyer Rajasekharan's wife? some fellow would always murmur. Yah, that's the one, another, in the know, would reply. Don't know why she comes here every day to sit and watch us drinking our beer.
She'd answer silently: Don't know means I'll tell you: I come here because I've nowhere else to go. What do you think of that? Lawyer Rajasekharan's wife has to seek refuge at the FMS Bar. But she never did tell them. She covered her mouth so that they could not see her chew her curry puff, and at some point every afternoon, despite the late mornings and the cling peaches and the servants, she found herself thinking: I'm even worse off than before. At least in my father's house no one was watching me like this.
They were waiting for her to show her low-class roots; she would do nothing of the sort. She acquired a servant-addressing voice, somehow both crisp and languid, at once high and muted. She learned to call Mat Din Driver instead of by his name. As long as she could avoid Paati's eyes, even she was convinced by her metamorphosis.
Six months after her wedding, she threw her first tea party for the Ladies. She knew they came only because their husbands wished to curry favor with Appa. In their fluttering false lashes, in their feverish enthusiasm for every cushion cover in her house, every photo frame, every finger sandwich she served, she saw what an unnatural strain they were under. "Our husbands," they said to her that first afternoon, "our husbands are all sure Raju will be a minister one day." They spoke in this way—each sentence delivered in that breezy first-person plural by a spokeswoman who appeared to have been selected in advance, or mysteriously agreed upon with no need for discussion—to mark the separation between themselves and Amma, for all of them resented her, and yet each one wanted to be her special favorite. Amma persevered: she covered herself in custom-made jewelry, bought an authentic Persian rug for the sitting room, and commissioned original artwork for the entryway. Why shouldn't I? she thought. Doesn't he give me his checkbook to distract me from everything he can't give me? I'm just doing what he wants. This way he doesn't have to feel guilty about anything. At the parties she threw and the ones to which she was—grudgingly at first—invited, she made passing references to Appa's golf games with party members and club nights with ministers. She met all flattery with a serene smile and did not reciprocate.
Sure enough, the acid undertone of the women's admiration was gone within a few months, leaving behind nothing but a velvet envy. She'd become the gold standard against which they measured their own lives. I've fooled them all, she thought. Even better than I fooled myself. How easily they've forgotten where I came from. We only pretend history matters; in the end all that matters is money.
All that mattered to the world at large, at least. It was not what mattered at home; she could not expect Appa and his mother to be impressed by her flaunting of their own money. At the dinner table every evening, an immense melancholy choked her; it was all she could do to swallow Lourdesmary's exquisite peritals and kurmas without gagging. When she looked straight ahead she saw Appa's deepening listlessness, his fish-darting eyes and eight o'clock yawns. When she turned to her right, there was Paati, chewing with the dignity and precision of a thoroughbred mare, contempt glinting in her eyes. So she trained her gaze on the portrait of Tata to her left. Old man, she thought, if you hadn't kicked the bucket you also would be sitting here looking down on me, yes or not?
At bedtime, Appa yawned still more and pleaded exhaustion. She'd wished for such respite from the beginning, but now she was torn between relief and anxiety. When Appa began to stay out until two, three, four in the morning, even the old blessing of his missing sense of smell turned into a curse. He would climb into bed without having tried to conceal the scents of whiskey and women's perfume on his skin, and Amma, keeping her eyes closed and her breath slow to feign deep sleep, would turn slightly to bury her nostrils in her pillow.
Never mind, she tried to reassure herself. It's not important anymore. I've got better things to do. It's not as if I'm sitting around all day pining for him. I'm a different person now. But the more complete Amma's transformation—for, after a point, all that was left was fine-tuning, the substitution of one brand of tea for another at her parties, the favoring of certain cakes above others—the sharper grew the pain of the few details she could not change. Each of her father's teatime visits—once a week while Appa was at work—was a swallowed thumbtack, pricking tiny holes in corners she'd forgotten she had.
As soon as her father walked through the front door, Paati sent Lourdesmary out with a tray. Occasionally she graced him with a vague greeting before retiring to her room. But Amma's father seemed not to notice these pointed snubs; he cracked groundnut shells between his teeth and began the conversation, each week, with the same airy question: "So tell me, Vasanthi, what is it like being a rich lady?" Amma, confused by all the unfamiliar feelings doing battle in her chest—embarrassment, pity for this old man who waited for these visits all week because he was too cheap to buy his own groundnuts, hatred for Paati for making her feel sorry for her father, and mingling freely with all these, an illogical nostalgia for her childhood—always had to take a nap after he left. "Well, Vasanthi, how are your parents?" Paati inquired sweetly each week as soon as the front grille had closed behind her father, but Amma was already climbing the stairs, murmuring "Fine, all okay" over her shoulder before getting into bed and pulling her blue blanket up to her chin.
With a little effort and some unprecedented honesty, Amma could have answered her father's favorite question. She could have told him that even in the privacy of her own home, months after her promotion to Rich Lady, she felt like the first-time star of a primary-school play, her skin burning under the greasepaint, the bright lights stinging her eyes. That hiding in bed until noon or sitting alone in the FMS Bar and Restaurant, she missed his house, where at least she'd had a purpose; here she spent her days building toy castles with blocks too big for her hands.
My mother-in-law, she could have told him, does not wield a leather belt or knock my head with her knuckles. But that's because she's a high-class lady: her belly secretes just as much scorn as yours, but her tongue is a thousand times subtler.
IN THE DIM VACUUM of their days, what a miracle Uma's conception seemed to Appa and Amma! To Appa it was a suspension of the la
ws of logic: not a virgin birth, but close enough. A life created out of the striking together of their bodies like two cold rocks. A sapling sprouting in a desert, in a body that shriveled like a salt-sprinkled snail when you touched it.
A thin stream of hope trickled through Amma: At least now I won't be all alone. I can keep busy with a baby. And I'll have one person on my side in this house. One person who won't think I'm a useless numskull.
And Uma's fittingly spectacular arrival fed Appa's pride and Am-ma's dreams. At four in the morning, as the hospital groundskeeper's roosters roused themselves, stretched their necks, and heralded the dawn, Uma somersaulted out into the harsh fluorescent light. In Amma's arms she snuffled and squirmed, fat, wide-eyed, alert as a seven-year-old. Her newborn face teetered playfully on the edge of a smile. "Foof!" yelped Dr. Sharma after performing the customary series of tests. "Weight in the ninetieth percentile, length and reaction times in the ninety-eighth, a real Superwoman baby you've got yourselves, man!" In a fit of uncharacteristic humor he held Uma aloft and trumpeted a superhero fanfare: "Ta-ra-ra-RA! Here comes Superbaby!" The nurses giggled and covered their mouths with their hands, all except the matron, who bustled forward, gasping, to seize Uma. "Tsk tsk tsk! Careful, careful, Doctor! What's got into you? Tired is it? Working too much is it? Better you go and sit down and rest, go!" And it was true: this unprecedented jollity was a bad omen, for Uma was the last baby Dr. Sharma would deliver. Two days later, he was in one of his own hospital beds slurping pureed chicken from a plastic spoon, paralyzed from the neck down by a massive stroke.
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