“I know. She meant to. But she didn’t get home in time last week to catch you. Sorry.”
The older woman shrugs. “It’s your business,” she says.
Chitra raises her eyebrow. “And you don’t have a problem with it?”
Bhima looks perplexed. “It’s her home, bai,” she says. “How I can have a problem?”
Chitra opens her mouth, then simply smiles. “Good,” she says. She pulls out a pot and says, “Will you take a cup of tea with me, Bhima?”
She knows that the young woman is being friendly, but Bhima doesn’t want her in the kitchen anymore. She is already behind on dinner; at this rate, it will be eight o’clock before she can start on her own meal when she gets home. She grabs the pot out of Chitra’s hand. “You go relax in the living room, bai,” she says. “I will serve you tea. And then I must to start frying the potato patties.”
But Chitra doesn’t take the hint. “Don’t be silly. I’m perfectly capable of making my own tea.” She opens the fridge and pulls out a sprig of mint, then measures the water and puts it to boil.
Bhima swallows her resentment. She is getting old, she thinks. There was a time when any gesture of kindness—the young Dinaz joining her on the floor to eat lunch, Serabai slipping a chocolate into her bag to take home to Maya—used to soften her heart with gratitude. Now, kindness or rudeness, love or contempt, it all feels the same to her. She can no longer see Chitra’s gesture as anything but inconvenience. Please get out of my kitchen, she wants to yell, but of course, it’s not her kitchen.
“You have children, Bhima?” Chitra asks, as she waits for the water to boil, and Bhima freezes. Unlucky woman, she chides herself, that you cannot easily answer the simplest question in the world. “No,” she says. “Just a granddaughter. My daughter’s daughter.”
“Where is your daughter?”
Bhima grits her teeth. “She’s dead.” And, knowing that Chitra will not be content with this, she adds, “She and my son-in-law both died from the AIDS.”
Chitra doesn’t extend her sympathies. Instead, she says, “I had a friend who died of AIDS.” Bhima gasps. All the people in the AIDS ward in that Delhi hospital had been poor people like her, wasted figures out of a nightmare. How could someone like Chitrabai’s friend—educated, wealthy, smart, she is sure—also have died of that same disease?
“He die in Delhi?” she asks.
“What? No. In Australia.”
Bhima rubs her forehead. “But this Austala . . . how you say . . . that’s a different muluk, no? How he getting the AIDS there?”
“It’s everywhere in the world, Bhima,” Chitra says gently. “Don’t you know?”
She didn’t know. She is nothing but an ignorant, unschooled woman, who signed away her husband’s future, who couldn’t save either one of her children, who didn’t know until this minute that the darkness that swallowed up her beautiful Pooja roamed the whole world. “How old was your friend, beti?” she asks.
If Chitra notices that Bhima has called her daughter instead of the usual bai or madam, she doesn’t comment on it. Bhima herself is unaware of the slip, because right now they are tied together by grief, two women generations apart, afraid to know the full weight of the other’s loss. Then, Chitra says, “He was twenty-eight,” and Bhima wishes she hadn’t asked.
She turns away abruptly, blinking back the tears burning in her eyes. She has almost succeeded when she hears herself say, “I am still having a son. But he has left me, also.”
“Aw, Bhima, I’m sorry,” Chitra says and lays a hand on the bony shoulder, and perhaps it’s the realization that no one has ever apologized to her for the loss of Amit or the fact that other than Maya, no human has laid a friendly hand on her in a very long time, but without warning, Bhima loses her battle with her tears. She sobs quietly, facing away from Chitra, the shaking of her shoulders the only indication that she is crying. She understands now what Maya finds unbearable about their life together—not the poverty, not the horror of slum life, but the dreadful isolation. There is no one in their life who worries about them, who asks about their past, who lays a sympathetic hand on them. She and Maya are disposable people, and if they disappeared tomorrow, no one would mourn them or miss them. The thought chills Bhima’s heart.
“Maaf karo, didi.” Chitra’s voice is tentative. “I shouldn’t have poked my nose in your business.”
Bhima turns around slowly, surprised by this young woman who seems to understand so much and so little. “You did not do anything wrong, child,” she says. “You are just reminding me of things that are best left unremembered.”
“I know what you mean,” Chitra murmurs, as she pours the hot water over a tea bag, and again, Bhima is surprised. She knows from her years spent in Serabai’s house that the rich have their problems, too; she well remembers the bruises that Sera’s now-dead husband, Feroz, used to leave like tattoos on her pale skin. But close as they were, Serabai never discussed her problems with Bhima, never displayed her bruised heart to her. She is unused to someone like Chitra, the honest way in which she speaks to her.
They both jump as they hear the key turn in the latch. They hear Sunita as she walks into the living room and then comes into the kitchen. “Namaste, Bhima,” she says, an embarrassed look on her face. “I see you’ve met my friend.”
Bhima decides it’s better for her to come clean. “Dinner is not ready yet, bai,” she says in a rush. “What to do, bai? The old lady I work for keep me there longer today. And then I . . .”
“What?” Sunita seems distracted. She turns to face Chitra and Bhima sees her face soften. “Hi,” she whispers and Chitra immediately comes up to her and gives her a peck on the cheek. “Hi, baby. How was your day?”
Sunita flushes visibly. “Fine. I got off a bit early.” She eyes Bhima warily. “So . . . everything is okay?”
Bhima nods as she lets out the steam from the pressure cooker. “I finish the dinner fatta-faat, bai.” She takes the untouched glass of water from the kitchen counter and offers it to Sunita. “You want me to make you lime water, bai? Or just plain ice water?”
“Bhima. It’s okay. I just came home earlier than usual. I’m not even hungry yet.” Sunita flashes a look at Chitra. “Can I talk to you for a moment?” she says, and leaves the kitchen with the other woman following in tow.
Alone in the kitchen, Bhima mops her face with the border of her sari. She used to love letting herself into this apartment, performing her chores and leaving before Sunitabai even came home. She had come to value the solitary hours she spent here, flanked as her days were by Mrs. Motorcyclewalla’s idiotic chatter at one end and the endless commotion of the slum at the other. But with Chitrabai here now, that short period of relative quiet is about to end. Stupid woman, she berates herself, it wasn’t your quiet to enjoy. She begins to mash the daal, even as she puts the rice to boil. Cooking for two people instead of just Sunitabai is also going to take more time. Most evenings, Maya gets home from college around the same time that she does, and tired as she is, Bhima must cook them a meal. She sighs. Sometimes she thinks she was put here on earth to simply chop onions and cilantro, boil rice and daal, wash dishes, and then have the whole cycle begin again. And now the days will be even longer. But still, she reasons with herself, this new Chitrabai seems nice. She cannot say how much longer she can put up with Mrs. Motorcyclewalla’s suspicion and madness. Since the last week, the old lady has taken to pulling up a chair into the kitchen and praying from her book while Bhima works, occasionally looking up and glowering at her. Bhima can handle even this, but what she cannot abide is the under-the-breath murmuring of the prayers, recited in an ancient language that neither of them understand. There is something sinister about the murmuring; it reminds Bhima of the mutterings of Serabai’s bedridden mother-in-law, who used to provoke equal parts of pity and dread in Bhima each time she went to her apartment to minister to her.
Bhima shakes her head to clear her thoughts. In this past year, she has regretted
every occasion when she had been ungrateful to the Dubashes or taken offense at some slight, such as when Serabai would chastise her for being late to work or when Viraf baba would throw in the wash a shirt that he’d worn for a mere twenty minutes. Now, she sees those things for what they were—the small bruisings of life, the happy consequence of working in close quarters with another family. Now, she would give one of her kidneys to have her biggest complaint about Viraf be an extra shirt to wash.
Sunita has come up behind her so quietly that when she says, “Bhima,” the older woman jumps so hard that some of the daal spills from the bowl she is holding onto the counter. “God. Sorry,” Sunita says.
Bhima mops up the daal up hurriedly. “Yes, bai?”
“We’ve decided to go out to dinner tonight,” Sunita says. “So you can leave now, if you like.”
Bhima feels her eyes well with tears. “I swear to God, I did not ask her to clean the dishes, Sunitabai,” she says. “I was just a few minutes late coming here and she already washed all of them. If you want, I do them again, bai.”
Sunita looks worried. “Are you all right, Bhima? Is there a problem with Chitra?”
Bhima looks at her miserably. “Please don’t throw me out, bai,” she whispers. “I have a grandchild to feed. I’m an old woman . . .”
“What the . . . ? Bhima. I’m not firing you. In fact, I’m just . . . Chitra said you looked really tired today. So we decided to go out, that’s all. To give you a break. You understand? We—we just feel bad. That you work this hard. That’s all.”
As the air rushes back into her lungs, Bhima feels the weight of her bones. She stands mutely, staring at Sunita, as Chitra strides back into the room. “Go on home, Bhima,” she smiles. “Unless you want to join us at dinner?”
Both Bhima and Sunita frown at the outrageousness of that statement, and Chitra looks chastised. “Well, I guess that’s a no.” She takes a step forward. “In that case, Bhima, let’s put the food away. You can finish up tomorrow.”
Bhima looks helplessly at Sunita, who notices her discomfort and pushes Chitra out of the kitchen. “Let Bhima do her job,” she scolds. She turns back with a grin. “You have to forgive her, Bhima,” she says. “She’s lived abroad for so long, she’s forgotten our customs.”
As she leaves the apartment building and steps onto the pavement, carrying her little bundle, Bhima reflects on those words. Chitrabai is not soft in the head, she decides. No, her problem is that she’s soft in the heart. She sighs. A few months in Mumbai will straighten Chitrabai out. The soil of this city doesn’t allow for the growth of tender, green saplings.
It will take her at least a half hour to reach home. On the way, she stops to pick up a few vegetables and a fistful of rice for tonight’s dinner. She hopes that Maya has homework to do because Chitrabai has wrung all the words out of her and she wants to pass the evening in silence. But the sensation of Chitra’s comforting, steadying hand on the shoulder follows her home, like the impression of a child’s hand pressed in clay.
4
The doodhwalla’s arrival tells Parvati that she has overslept. She hears him stomping up the wooden stairs, hears the clanging of the large aluminum container of milk that he drags alongside him. She is rubbing the sleep out of her eyes when he arrives at Meena Swami’s flat and rings the doorbell. Although she is covered by the shadows of the stairwell, modesty makes Parvati pull the thin cotton sheet over herself, even as she scrambles to roll off the cardboard sheet and rise to her feet. If she doesn’t get to the wholesale market within the next hour, she may be too late to pick up the six cauliflowers that are usually set aside for her.
As she begins to rise, Parvati is assailed by a wave of dizziness and nausea. She sits on her haunches, and waits for the dizzy spell to pass, when, without warning, she vomits. The projectile vomit hits the stone floor and the wall between the two apartments, and even though he is not within its range, the doodhwalla lets out an indignant cry, just as Meena Swami answers her door. “Achoot, achoot,” the milkman yells, his lip curling in disgust. “Dirtifying everything early in the morning.” He turns toward Meena. “Bai, this used to be a decent building. What for you letting such peoples sleep here? Turning your building into a public toilet, you are.”
Parvati opens her mouth to explain, to defend herself, but what shoots out is more vomit. Meena Swami screams in horror. “Too much,” she yells. “This is too much. Even the milkman can see our suffering.” Parvati groans, and rests her head on her knees, unable to respond, as Meena Swami holds her nose dramatically. “Who’s going to clean up this mess?” she asks. “Not that maharani that your nephew has married.”
Parvati raises her head. “I will,” she says. “If you just let me sit still for one minute, I will clean everything.”
“No,” Meena declares. “Enough is enough. This is too much of a nuisance.” Still holding her nose with her right hand, she lifts the hem of her sari with her left, and crosses over the puddle of vomit. “I don’t care how early it is,” she mutters. “Praful has to end this matter once and for all.”
“Please, bhenji,” Parvati says, raising a tentative hand to stop her. “My nephew is sleeping. Please forgive. I will make everything right.”
The doodhwalla clucks his tongue impatiently. “Meenabai,” he says. “You wanting the milk or not? Already I am late.”
Meena glares at Parvati, her hand on her neighbor’s doorbell. She turns back and goes into her apartment, emerges with a bowl. “The usual, bhaiya,” she says. “One liter.”
Parvati shuts her eyes in thanks at the reprieve. Perhaps Meenabai will take the milk and go inside. She will use the bucket of water she usually uses for her bath to clean up the vomit. “Meenabai,” she says weakly. “If I can trouble you for some newspaper, I will start wiping up the floor.”
“And where you are planning on throwing the dirty newspaper? Not in my flat.”
Parvati wishes she could lie back down and wait for this dizziness to pass. “I’ll carry it to the garbage dump, bhenji,” she says. “Please, not to trouble yourself. I will manage everything.”
Grumbling under her breath, Meena returns with an old newspaper. “And get rid of this foul smell,” she says as Parvati nods wordlessly. She has always kept her distance from Meena, ever since the woman created a row when Praful first offered her a place to lay her head. Praful and Meena’s husband play cards together once a week, and it is that friendship that had made the man overrule his wife. Parvati sighs as she spreads the newspaper across the floor. There was a time when her life was as solid as the house she had then lived in. That life, too, had come with its share of miseries, but she had not had to worry about where she would rest her head the following night, did not have to listen to the curses and insults of strangers, nor rely on the whims of their charity or compassion. It is not cleaning up her own vomit that she minds—that, she sees as her duty. It is the fact that her future now depends on whether Meena Swami will still be thinking about the incident a half hour from now or whether she will be distracted by the demands of her children and husband; whether Meena’s husband will smile or frown at her when he awakens; whether she has ever forgiven him for siding with his friend even when she’d made her displeasure known about Praful’s homeless aunt sleeping in their stairwell. This randomness makes her feel like vapor, someone inconsequential and invisible.
She rolls the dirty newspaper into a ball and carries it down the three flights of stairs, dreading running into the butcher or the baker or the newspaper carrier, fearing the open doors of the other residents who will accuse her of fouling up their own entrances and who may join forces with Meena Swami and demand that she be evicted right then and there. She wishes there was something she could offer them in exchange for their silence, but there is nothing, not even a beautiful visage upon which they can rest their eyes. There is just an old woman with brown teeth, tall and gnarly as a tree, with a growth that horrifies the neighbors, terrifies their children, and makes them gossi
p about curses and divine punishment.
After Parvati throws away the balled-up newspaper, she walks down to where Joseph, a chauffeur for one of the families who live in the new, tall building across the street, is washing a blue Honda City. “You’re late today, auntie,” Joseph says to her. “Water is all cold-cold.” Every morning, Joseph brings down two buckets of hot water from the apartment building to wash the car. He sells one of the buckets to Parvati for half a rupee. Usually, while it is still dark, Parvati carries the bucket over to a deserted compound next to her nephew’s building and takes a quick and discreet bath, slipping her hands under the blouse and sari to wash. But today, the water must go to rinse the floor and walls outside Meena Swami’s apartment. “I have to take the bucket upstairs today,” she mutters. “I will return it as soon as I can.”
Joseph turns to face her. The whites of his eyes are yellow and his brow is creased. “What you saying, auntie?” he says. “As it is you are late. My boss is just waiting for me to finish washing the car so I can drive him to work.”
“I will return in five minutes,” she pleads, sweat building on her face. “Please, it is important.”
Joseph frowns. “It will take you five minutes just to reach your building. No, I’m sorry, I cannot help you. As it is if they find out our . . . arrangement . . . I will lose my job. Rich people think everyone is trying to rob them.” He shakes his head. “Sorry, auntie. Too risky for me.”
Parvati looks around in desperation; she must get rid of the foul smell before more neighbors awake to it. She walks faster, looking for another cleaner who might let her have even a little water. She rounds the corner and spots the two brothers, young men in their late teens. She doesn’t know their names, but often when she comes home from the market in the late evening, she has smelled the daru on their breath and heard their taunts and jeers. Today, she forces herself to forget these insults and walks up to the younger of the two. “Beta,” she says, “I am having a bit of emergency. Can you spare some water after you’ve washed the cars?”
The Secrets Between Us Page 4