The Secrets Between Us

by Thrity Umrigar

  “You ask-fask on someone else’s time,” Parvati interrupts.

  The man’s tone is placating. “Calm down, na. You know I meant no harm.”

  But Parvati is still scowling. “I know nothing but what I’m seeing with my own two eyes. And what I’m seeing is you still standing in front of my place, driving away my customers.”

  To Bhima’s astonishment, the man turns around and walks away without another word. She turns around to thank Parvati, but the woman is still breathing hard and has such an angry look on her face, she thinks better of it. A moment later, Bhima spots Rajeev and beckons to him to hurry. “Best if you unload the rest of the stuff now, beta,” she says to him. “Then we can all go home.”

  Rajeev stares at her, puzzled. “But mausi,” he complains. “There’s more of our fruit in the godown. If you say the word, I go now and come back with another full basket.”

  Bhima shakes her head. “I have my regular job to go to,” she says. “Already, I’m going to be late.” She sighs, soothed by the thought of being in Sunitabai’s cool apartment, a respite from the clamor and heat of this place.

  Before Rajeev can respond, Parvati speaks. “If you wish, you can rent this stall again, tomorrow. Until you finish your supply. Same rate as today.”

  Bhima scratches her head as she considers. “I can’t,” she says at last. “As it is I’ve not gone to my morning job in two days. Too much money I am losing. That old Parsi woman I work for is as mean as a mosquito. She will cut from my salary, for sure.”

  Parvati has not made eye contact with Bhima, but now she looks her fully in the face. “And what about your profit from today? You not counting that?”

  Bhima looks at her in confusion. “I pay you,” she says. “I pay this one here. And the rest of money I give to Bibi. Where is profit for me?”

  The older woman blows her nose on the edge of her sari. Then she looks at Rajeev. “You. Go to that baniya’s shop and borrow a paper and pencil. Go and come, quickly.”

  Rajeev and Bhima look at each other mutely and then stare at Parvati in befuddlement as she writes on the scrap of paper before her. The old familiar shame at her own illiteracy rises in Bhima. If Parvati had turned into a princess before Bhima’s disbelieving eyes, she would not have been more stunned. Who would have thought that this old witch, with the ugly fruit growing on her neck, could read and write? Despite herself, Bhima hears herself say, “Your father must have been a great man to have educated a girl. That too, in the old days.”

  The pencil clatters on the pavement as Parvati sets it down and fixes Bhima a baleful glare. “The pile of dung that was my father,” she says, “may he be reincarnated many times over as a cockroach. He had nothing to do with my education.”

  Bhima stares openmouthed at the woman in front of her. “May God forgive you,” she begins, but Parvati stops her with a vigorous shake of her head. “No,” she says. “May I forgive Him.”

  Beside them, Reshma lets out a cackle. “Now you see whom you’re dealing with,” she says to Bhima. “This woman is . . .”

  “Yes,” Parvati says softly, staring directly at Bhima. “Now you see.” She points toward the piece of paper in her lap. “You still wanting to deal with me?”

  Bhima looks to Rajeev for help, but he looks as stunned as she feels. After a moment, she nods. And Parvati resumes her writing.

  “How much did the widow’s husband pay for his consignment?” she asks at one point, and Bhima tells her. “And how many you bring today?”

  “Forty-eight,” Bhima says. “Minus the five that are left.”

  “Two of which belong to me,” Parvati says immediately.

  Bhima feels the power drain away from herself and toward this woman who is at least ten years older than her. The disdain she has always felt toward Parvati has given way to growing respect and awe. “Yes,” she says simply. She glances at Rajeev’s tired face, his stooped body. “And two of these belong to him,” she says, gratified by the shock of joy she sees on the man’s face. “I will take the last one home to my granddaughter.”

  “It’s fine,” Parvati says briskly and scribbles some more. After a few moments she stops and sticks the pencil behind her ear, a gesture that Bhima has always associated with educated people. Serabai used to do this, after she made shopping lists for Dinaz and Viraf. If this woman can read and write, what for is she selling these cauliflowers in this wretched marketplace? Bhima wonders. And when she glances at the tablecloth, she gets another shock—the vegetables have disappeared. Somehow in the course of this busy, heady day, Parvati has managed to sell her daily wares.

  “Are you listening?” Parvati’s plaintive voice breaks through her thoughts. “I’m saying that even after paying the widow her initial investment, you have made yourself a little extra money.”

  Bhima blinks, unsure of whether to believe this good fortune. She wishes she were somewhere safe and private, where she could count the day’s earnings to see whether Parvati is correct. Well, she can request Chitra baby to look over this woman’s figures when she gets to her second job. If she ever gets there today.

  “Chalo, let’s settle up,” she says briskly, trying to reclaim some of her lost authority. She counts the money as surreptitiously as she can in the open marketplace. “Here’s your share,” she says, handing the bills to Parvati. “And this is yours,” to Rajeev.

  “Shukriya, mausi,” Rajeev says, touching his forehead in thanks.

  “No, beta. It is I who am in your debt.”

  She marvels at how Rajeev’s face transforms when he smiles. “So, same arrangement again, tomorrow, mausi?” he asks.

  Bhima thinks. The choice is between spending the morning sitting next to this clever but blasphemous woman, or listening to the dark mutterings of another crazy old woman who waves her madness like a flag. With its closed windows and her strictures against turning on the lights, Mrs. Motorcyclewalla’s musty apartment is as lifeless as a grave. Here, there is the incessant sound of blaring horns and the rumbling of the jackhammers working across the street. “Yes,” she says, coming to a decision. “See you at the godown.”

  After Rajeev is gone, Bhima forces herself to look at Parvati’s misbegotten face. “Thank you,” she says.

  “No mention,” Parvati says as she turns away.

  Bhima picks up a custard apple, rises to her feet, waits for her hip to pop, and bites her lip against the pain that follows. She feels Parvati’s eyes follow her as she makes her way down the winding path of the marketplace and to her second job.

  10

  Bhima knocks on Bibi’s door that evening before entering her own hut. The little boy answers the door and wordlessly lets her in, so that she has no choice but to enter. Bhima has made it a habit to not enter her neighbors’ homes because she does not wish to become part of the informal network of slum life. She eschews the small talk and idle gossip and does not partake in the rituals of drop-by visits like her neighbors do, as if they are birds alighting from one wire to another. As best she can, she holds herself aloof, mostly for Maya’s sake, but also for her own, as a reminder that unlike many of her neighbors she has known better days, has lived in a small flat in a real building, where she shared a bathroom with just one other family, instead of this communal bathroom they now use, shitting as if they are cattle in a field. All these years she has conducted herself as if she were just a visitor to this basti, and now that Maya is back in college, there is hope that someday her granddaughter will land a job that will carry them out of this place. How realistic this hope is Bhima is not sure—in the old days Serabai would talk about the lack of jobs even among the highly educated—but Bhima clings to it because without hope she may as well be dead. And after all, it costs as much to dream big as to dream small.

  But now she is in Bibi’s one-room shack with its neat, tiled floor, and an uncharacteristic envy rises in her. There are many rich people in the slum—the bootleggers with their new TV sets and those with political connections who ride aro
und on shiny new motorbikes—but Bhima has never wanted their dishonest wages of sin. She envies Bibi’s humble but clean home precisely because it is the house built by two honest and hardworking people, every tile on the floor paid for with their sweat. And so, she smiles warmly when Bibi raises her worried eyes to her and says, “Kya hua, mausi? Any luck?”

  “God is great, beti,” she says, handing her the money that is rightfully hers. Earlier this afternoon, Chitra baby had gone over Parvati’s math and pronounced it correct. Then, she had helped Bhima divide the money into two shares—hers and what she owed Bibi. Chitra had laughed as Bhima had tied the money into two separate knots on her sari. “Did you ever carry a purse, Bhima?” she had asked mischievously.

  “Yes,” Bhima had answered. “When I was younger. My husband bought one for me, from a man on Chowpatty Beach.” She noticed with satisfaction the look of surprise on Chitra’s face. And then, before the girl could start with her usual questions, Bhima had shooed her out of the kitchen. She had only known Chitra baby for a month but already she felt comfortable doing so. Otherwise, she would have never asked her to shelter Maya the night of Ram’s funeral. Chitra was like a child—there was no sludge, no meanness in her heart.

  Bibi’s shriek of happiness brings Bhima back into the present. Before she can stop her, Bibi has taken her hand and is kissing it. “O Bhagwan,” she breathes. “How can I ever repay your kindness, mausi?”

  Bhima hesitates, debating whether to tell Bibi about her share of the money. What is her obligation? she wonders. Does this money also belong to the young widow? She eyes the young boy, looking at her with his solemn face, and comes to a resolution. Untying the knot, she removes the rest of the money and pushes it into Bibi’s hands. “What’s this?” Bibi says suspiciously.

  Bhima tries to remember how Parvati had described the surplus money. She gropes for the right words, then it comes to her. “We sold the fruit for more money than Ram pay, beti,” she says. “That money is the profit. This is also yours by right.”

  Bibi gets a pained expression on her face. “No, mausi,” she says. “These are your earnings. Your reward for your effort. This I cannot touch.”

  Bhima stares at the younger woman, cut in half between gratitude and obligation. “If Ram had sold the fruit, this is what he would bring home,” she says at last.

  Bibi’s eyes flash around the room. “But Ram is not here,” she says. “He did not spend the whole day at the market. You did.”

  “But beti. Think of the little one. How will you manage . . .”

  Bibi folds her hands. “Many thanks, mausi. But this is your money, not ours.” She pulls the little boy in front of her and rests a hand on each shoulder. “We now have one less income, mausi. But also, one less mouth to feed, hai na? So, we will manage.”

  The thickness that forms at the base of Bhima’s throat tastes warm and metallic. Sorrow, grief, gratitude, admiration, all gather there, leaving her wordless. The two women look at each other, each humbled and held by the other. “You are an honorable woman, Bibi,” Bhima says, as she makes to exit the hut.

  Bibi smiles wanly. “Without our honor, who are we, mausi?” she says. “Life has stolen everything else from us. Let’s pray it leaves us with our swaman.”

  Bhima is thinking about Bibi’s words as she enters her own house and grunts a greeting to her granddaughter. “What time did you get home?” she says after she has poured herself a glass of water.

  Maya stretches. “About an hour ago.”

  Bhima takes in the unlit stove, the flour that has not been kneaded for tonight’s meal. “And what have you been doing?”

  Maya shrugs. “Relaxing.”

  Now, Bhima notices the magazine in the corner of the hut. It is a film magazine, she can tell, with the photo of a movie star whose face she has seen on billboards all over town. A thread of anger runs through her, so sharp that she has to fight the urge to remove her slipper and slap Maya’s face with it. “Good,” she says bitterly. “You relax while your old grandmother slogs all day until her bones break. You can relax on my deathbed, too, you good-for-nothing girl.”

  Maya’s eyes fill with tears. “I work hard at college, too,” she yells. “I was happy to get a job. You’re the one who is forcing me to finish college.”

  “Chup. Keep your voice down, you ungrateful girl. Just like these animals around us, you are sounding.”

  But Maya raises her voice even more. “I am an animal. You are an animal. Look around you, Ma-ma. Where you thinking we live? At the Taj? We live in the zoo, in this slum. We are no different from anyone else here. You can walk with your head held high as much as you want, but in the end . . .” Maya is sobbing so hard, she is unable to finish.

  Bhima stares in shock at her granddaughter. Some days she feels so close to Maya it is as if the girl is a layer of her own skin. Other times, Maya is as unknown as a star. “It’s not true, what you say,” she says at last. “There is honor—there is even nobility—right here, where we live.” She squats on her mattress, then pats it. “Here. Come sit here, next to your Ma-ma. I will tell you a story.”

  Maya eyes her warily, but as Bhima knows, she cannot resist a story. So she sits next to her grandmother and Bhima tells her about her whole day, including the part about Bibi. But to her disappointment, Maya is not impressed. “So? She just gave you what was yours by right.”

  Bhima is speechless. Who is this arrogant stranger that she has raised? She opens her mouth to berate the girl again, then stops. She takes in Maya’s long, dark hair, the large, innocent eyes, the fleshy lips, the plump, soft hands that have still retained their youthful fat. She is still a girl, she reminds herself. Who has not seen enough of this wicked world to appreciate goodness when she encounters it. But she will. She is Pooja’s daughter, after all. The blood of her mother gushes through this girl’s good heart. “Come on,” she says, smacking Maya lightly on her shoulder. “Go put the rice to boil. Perhaps we will have vegetables with rice tonight instead of rotis.”

  They eat sitting on their haunches, side-by-side. Bhima scoops a ball of rice with her fingers, mixes it with a little eggplant, and pops it into her mouth. As always, she synchronizes her eating to her granddaughter’s, anxious to sweep some of her meal into Maya’s plate if the girl is still hungry. She can always make a glass of tea for herself to assuage her own hunger.

  “How are Chitra and Sunita?” Maya asks with her mouth full.

  Bhima raises her eyebrow. “Arre. You spend one night there and call them by their names? The proper term of respect is bai. They are your superiors.”

  Maya gives her a sidelong glance. “But they only tell me to call them that.”

  “It’s that foreign nonsense that Chitrabai says,” Bhima says, aware that she has almost slipped and called the woman Chitra baby. “Ignore it.”

  “She’s not a foreigner. She’s—”

  “She lived in that foreign place so long she forget—”

  “It’s called Australia, Ma-ma. But that’s not why she thinks the way she does.”

  “Then what?”

  Maya eyes her grandmother carefully. “Don’t you know, Ma-ma? Chitra and Sunita—they love each other.”

  “Silly girl. Of course they love each other. They’re friends, no?”

  Maya swallows her rice before she speaks. “Not like that, Ma-ma. They love each other, like, a woman love a man. Like you loved Gopal dada.”

  Bhima jumps so violently she knocks her plate, spilling the rice on the floor. “You dirty girl,” she scolds. “Mind like a sewer. What filth you speak. This is why I send you to college?”

  Maya opens her mouth to speak, but Bhima raises her hand to stop her. “Bas. Enough. Those women take you into their home and this is how you repay them? By telling lies?”

  “But Ma-ma . . .”

  “Girl. Are you deaf?” Bhima rises, eyes the spilled food. “You clean up this mess.”

  “Ma-ma,” Maya says in her appeasing voice. “I will share my
food with you.”

  But Bhima is headed toward the door. “Not hungry,” she says, and it is true. Maya’s terrible accusation has looted her hunger. “I am going to the baniya’s place,” she says. “I need to pick up some sugar.” And she is out of the house before the girl can protest.

  There is sugar in the house, but Bhima heads toward the grocer’s shop anyway. She walks fast, as if to flee her own wicked recollections: The neighbor’s caustic comments about Chitra baby the day she’d met her for the first time. Last week, when Chitra had rested her hand on the small of Sunitabai’s back while all three of them were in the kitchen. Even at that time, the tenderness of the gesture had registered, but Bhima’s mind had blocked out the suspicion that had arisen. But now the images roll into her mind like shots from a movie—the quick, worried look Sunita had cast toward Bhima when Chitra had called her “sweetie,” the banter between the two women, the manner in which Chitra’s face lit up when Sunita came home earlier than expected, the glances, touches, murmurs that bespoke of an intimacy, a sweetness, that reminded Bhima of—she walks faster, trying to outpace her brain from the conclusion it is racing toward—the sweetness she had enjoyed for years with her Gopal. Bhima stops walking; she cries out loud. It can’t be, she thinks. How can two women . . . what would they do . . . Chitra’s painting of the naked woman that hangs over their bed . . . maybe the rules of life were different in this Australia . . . but if they were, how were they the rules of life, inviolate? The blood rushes to her head. She had left her precious Maya with those two fallen women. In order to protect her from the wild animals prowling around the slum, she had taken her into the home of these two . . . two what? Unnatural women. Another thought assails her, clangs like a gong in her head. A passerby casts her a curious look and hurries past her, but Bhima barely sees. Instead, she spins around on her heels and hurries home.

  She has barely entered the hut and shut the door when she blurts out her question. “Did those two—did they touch you?”