The Secrets Between Us

by Thrity Umrigar

  The first thing Bhima notices when they arrive at her home is that the front door is open. It takes her a second to recognize the strange sound that wafts her way. It is laughter. Parvati is saying something in her low, guttural voice, and Maya is laughing. Bhima bends her head and enters first. “Ah, Ma-ma,” Maya says guiltily, stopping midlaugh. “We were just chitchatting.”

  Bhima smiles at Parvati. “Welcome, sister.” She turns toward the door. “We are having another guest, also. Please, come in.”

  “Chitra. Oh my God, I’m so happy to see you.” Maya scrambles to her feet and gives her a hug. Bhima is shocked by this easy familiarity, is about to scold her granddaughter for forgetting her place, when she sees Chitra returning the hug. “I came to see you,” she says.

  “Chitra baby, this here is Parvati.”

  “Namaste-ji,” Chitra says.

  “Hello,” Parvati replies in English.

  Bhima looks around. “Let me go borrow a chair for you, baby,” she says, but before she can move, Chitra plops herself down on Maya’s mattress. “Don’t bother. I’m fine right here.”

  Maya lets out a laugh, and hearing it, Bhima feels a tug at her heart that’s equal parts joy and regret. How happy it makes Maya to see a face other than her old grandmother’s. She moves toward the door and steps out. “Chalo, shoo,” she yells at the children still gathered outside. “This is not a cinema hall for you to gawk. Jao, go home.”

  “Shall we start supper, Ma-ma?” Maya asks when she comes in and shuts the door behind her.

  Bhima crooks her finger at her. “Come here.” She moves to a corner, unties the knot of her sari, and hands the cash to Maya. “Go to Mughal Kitchen,” she whispers. “You pick whatever dishes you think they will like. Make sure they give extra plates and forks. Then come straight home, understand?”

  “What guss-puss are you two doing, ji?” Parvati calls.

  “Bhima.” Chitra gets to her feet. “What are you doing?” She looks at the money in Maya’s hands. “If you are not cooking, this has to be my treat. I was the one who invited myself, remember?”

  “Chitra baby. You please make yourself comfortable. You are our guest tonight.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Please, baby. It is the first time you have honored us. Do not insult us.”

  “Arre, jaane do. Leave it be,” Parvati says, startling all of them. “During all this fightum-fighting over who will pay, we could’ve killed and skinned three chickens.”

  Maya giggles, Chitra grins, and Bhima gives a sigh of relief. “Go beta,” she says.

  “Okay. Like that only, I will go and come,” Maya says.

  “And be careful. And keep your eyes down. Don’t look at anyone, left or right.”

  Maya sighs theatrically. “Yes, yes, Ma-ma.” She pulls a face and looks at Chitra. “Same lecture every day.”

  “Arre, besharam.” Bhima raises her hand in mock anger. But she is smiling.

  “Shall I go with you?” Chitra offers, but Bhima shakes her head no. “You relax, baby. Just now only you have come.”

  “Nice girl,” Parvati says after Maya leaves. “Found a boy for her, yet?”

  “What?” Chitra says. “She’s just a kid. She’s not even done with college.”

  Parvati acts like she hasn’t heard. “What about that Rajeev’s son? He stopped by the market the other evening. Polite, handsome boy.”

  Chitra looks from one of them to the other. “You wouldn’t do that, would you, Bhima? Marry Maya off?”

  Bhima smiles at the distress she hears in Chitra’s voice. “One thing you should know about this one here,” she says as she pokes at Parvati with her toes, “is she is a first-class trouble master. Best to let everything go in one ear and out the other.”

  “Arre, wah,” Parvati says. “What a thing to say.”

  Chitra grins. “How do you two know each other? Are you childhood friends or what?”

  Parvati lets out a loud snort. “Arre, beti, until two years ago, this one here wouldn’t even acknowledge my existence. Mrs. Nose-in-the-Air, I used to call her.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, even now she doesn’t like me.” The laughter in Parvati’s voice removes the edge from her words. “It’s just her need that makes her keep me around.”

  Bhima rolls her eyes. “Bewakoof,” she says to no one in particular. “Yogurt-for-brains.”

  Parvati chuckles. Then she says, “And where is your missus tonight?”

  Chitra looks taken aback. “My missus?”

  “Hah. Bhima says you have a missus.”

  “Parvati. Chup. Keep your trap shut,” Bhima scolds. She turns to face Chitra. “Please don’t take offense, baby. I told you, this woman here is pagal.”

  Chitra licks her lips nervously, then looks Parvati dead in the eye. “She will be happy to know you inquired about her. She is at a business dinner. Otherwise, you could have called her my missus to her face.”

  Parvati raises an eyebrow appreciatively. “This one here is a firecracker,” she says to Bhima.

  “Any other personal questions you want to ask?” Chitra says.

  Parvati has the grace to look embarrassed. “I am having no quarrel with you and your type.”

  “Good. Because I have no quarrel with your type, either.”

  It is an innocent remark, a simple parry and thrust, but Parvati gasps and swings around. “What did you tell her about me?” she asks Bhima, who is dumbfounded by the direction the conversation has taken.

  “Nothing. I have said nothing.”

  “Parvatiji,” Chitra says. “Relax, yaar. The only thing I know about you is that you were sick earlier today. I was just joking back with you.”

  Parvati exhales slowly. “Theek hai,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, I’m sorry. That you were sick,” Chitra says smoothly. “How are you feeling now?”

  “A little tired.” Parvati fakes a yawn. “I should be making my way home, sister.”

  Bhima is about to protest when Maya walks in, carrying bags of food. “I am so hungry,” she says loudly, and they all chuckle as the atmosphere in the room rights itself.

  Bhima gasps inwardly at the amount of food the girl has purchased. “Are others joining us for dinner?” Chitra says drily, and Maya shakes her head. “Just us,” she says happily. “Just us.”

  All four of them sit on their haunches on the edge of the mattress and eat with their plates on the floor. Despite the cutlery Maya has brought, Chitra eats with her hands like the rest of them, though Bhima can tell she is inexperienced at doing so. “I like your floor tile, Bhima,” Chitra says after a few moments. “Is it new?”

  Bhima glances at Maya, who is choking with pride. “Thank you,” the girl says. “We buy it from one of our neighbors. He is working for a contractor.”

  Despite the solitary overhead light in the hut, Maya now reaches to light one of the two oil lamps. “I use this to read after Ma-ma goes to sleep,” she tells Chitra.

  “You study under the light of the oil lamp?”

  Maya nods, and Chitra smiles ruefully. “And yet you’re first in your class. Good thing your classmates don’t know. Otherwise, they’d all study under oil lamps.”

  Bhima can see Maya flush at the compliment. She feels Parvati’s eyes on the girl, also. “Not just smart but beautiful, too,” the old woman says, and now Maya can’t take it anymore. “Stoppit, all of you,” she says, shaking her body like a wet dog, as if to cast off their caresses.

  The others laugh. “I like being here,” Chitra says suddenly. “It feels—safe.”

  Bhima gives a start of surprise. In all her years of living in the basti, she has never thought of it as safe. But as she looks at the four of them in this room, the light of the lamps casting their shadows on the walls, she thinks she knows what Chitra means.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Parvati reaching for more of the biryani and feels a deep satisfaction. How is it possible to have this much feelin
g for someone who is not a relation? As she watches her, Parvati is gripped by one of those painful spasms that seem to be emitting from her lower back more and more frequently. When she sees that the spasm has passed, she whispers, “Everything all right, sister?”

  “Of course.”

  Soon after they finish dinner and wash up, Parvati rises. “Accha, I will take my leave,” she says. “It is getting late.”

  “I’ll drop you home,” Chitra says immediately. “Where do you live?”

  Parvati freezes. “Nearby, only,” she mutters vaguely.

  “Good. My car is not too far away. No need for you to walk alone at night.”

  Bhima exchanges a look with Parvati. “You don’t have to trouble her to take you to your door,” she says. “Just have her drop you off at the end of your street.”

  Parvati stares back at Bhima, then gives in. “As you wish.”

  Chitra leans in to hug Bhima, who stiffens by habit and then offers a lukewarm hug back. “Thanks for a wonderful evening,” the girl says. “Ready?” she asks Parvati, then takes her by the elbow and the old woman throws Bhima a dumbfounded look before she allows herself to be led out of the house and toward the main road.

  When it is just the two of them again, the little room feels empty, still holding the ghosts of their laughter. As Bhima readies for bed, she hears Maya say, “After I become a lawyer and get a job, we will throw such parties every week.”

  “What were you and Chitra baby whispering nonstop in the corner?”

  Maya shakes her head. “Just girl talk, Ma-ma. You wouldn’t understand.” And she is so earnest that Bhima chokes back her laughter.

  “Chalo. I’m off to bed,” she says. She turns over her pillow and something falls out—three bills of a hundred rupees each. Three hundred rupees. Chitra baby has left the money to pay for everybody’s dinner. Even as she is grateful for the girl’s generosity, Bhima feels a thread of disappointment undercut her gratitude. Wasn’t it just earlier today that Serabai had tried to force money on her? She shakes her head. She has begun to think of herself as a successful businesswoman. But truly rich women, like Serabai and Chitra, still see her as someone who needs their help.

  28

  Three weeks later she is grateful for the extra three hundred rupees. It will help pay for Parvati’s medicines at the government hospital.

  It is not the same hospital that had treated Gopal after his industrial accident, and for this Bhima is grateful. After all these years, the memory of that episode—the indifference of the nurses, the callousness of the doctors, her own clammy fear upon finding a delirious Gopal drenched in sweat and three fingers gone, lying on sheets stained with blood and pus—still burns like acid.

  Bhima sits on the hard, wooden bench beside Parvati, who had fainted this morning during a conversation with a customer, simply dropped like a stone, hitting her head on the steps leading to Vishnu’s shop. Bhima, who was less than a foot away from her, had been unable to prevent the fall. She had cradled the old woman’s head in her lap, willing Parvati to open her eyes, even while fighting the terror that she was dead. After a few awful minutes, Parvati had finally come to, dazed and disoriented at first but then looking around with growing awareness. She had insisted she was fine, that she had been affected by sunstroke, but Bhima had had enough. She had called Rajeev over and asked him to take over because she was taking Parvati to the government hospital.

  Waiting for Parvati to be seen by a doctor, Bhima feels as if she’s fighting on two fronts—one, with the ghosts of the past: the nurse who had told her that Gopal had an infection, the harried doctor who had withheld the antibiotics, until Serabai’s late husband, Feroz, had bullied the doctor into submission—and two, with the woman who fumes and grumbles beside her. “Whole day we are wasting,” Parvati says. “As if we are having no kaam-dhandha. Sitting here like nawabs while our produce rots in the sun.”

  “Rajeev is there. He will manage.”

  Parvati hoots in derision. “That limp piece of lettuce? For all we know, he’s giving money to the customers instead of taking.”

  Bhima’s face is tight with anxiety and anger. “Why you must fight me on everything? Twice in one month something bad has happened to you, hai na?”

  “Sister, I’m an old woman. A little bit of trouble here and there is to be expected, no?”

  Bhima looks her squarely in the eye. “And this pain you are having nonstop in your back? That is also a little problem, only? All day long you sit rubbing it.”

  “Pshaw. It’s nothing. Whatever this lump is below my face, it’s now on my back. Years ago, the doctor tell me it’s nothing.”

  “Years ago, when?”

  Parvati thinks. “Before I was married. Maybe when I was forty?” She falls silent, shocked at her own words. “Hai Ram. How can that be? So long ago. But I still remember the doctor’s face?”

  “You see?” Bhima says. “Now just sit here chup-chap until they call us.”

  The doctor is a short, bearded man with an impatient manner. He makes Parvati lie down so he can examine her, but when he asks her to lie on her back, she cannot. He lowers her sari to investigate why, and Bhima gasps when she sees it—a fat, dark, ugly mass. The doctor looks up to meet her eyes. He frowns, shakes his head. “We need to aspirate this,” he says. “I am admitting you tonight.”

  “No need,” Parvati says immediately.

  The doctor gnashes his teeth. “Okay, I’m telling you straight—don’t waste my time. Okay? A hundred more patients are outside waiting to see me. If you come to hospital, you must follow what I say. Understand? I have no time for this nonsense. Now, yes or no?”

  “Yes.” Bhima glares at Parvati, defying her to contradict her. “Please, doctor sahib. Whatever you can do to make her well.”

  “Okay. No drama.” He scribbles on his notepad and tears off the sheet. “Here. You hand this at the admissions window. But remember, they will ask for a cash deposit before they will admit her.”

  “Tear it up,” Parvati grumbles as they walk down the hallway. “Tear it up and let’s go back to our work. I’m telling you sister, you throw me in here, these wolves will return my dead body to you.”

  Bhima remembers the funeral pyres, first Raju’s and then Pooja’s. The hospital in Delhi had taken in her daughter and her son-in-law and returned their ashes. Maybe Parvati is right. Why should they court death if there is no need?

  “One night only,” she says without conviction. “Let’s do this test he wants to do. Then we ask for some medicine and treatment as outpatient. Accha?”

  Parvati smiles a strange, distant smile. “Whatever you wish, sister.”

  They have to wait for seven hours before a bed is available. Everybody at this hospital seems to move slowly, as if they are underwater. The slightest request is taken as an affront, and Bhima wonders if they are being punished because of Parvati’s caustic queries. But then she looks around and sees that the other patients are treated with the same indifference.

  As the day goes on, Parvati gets more and more quiet. When a nurse finally approaches and tells them they will be admitted in fifteen minutes, the old woman automatically clenches Bhima’s hand. She’s scared, Bhima thinks with wonder. This woman who had stood stone-faced in the middle of a riot is scared at the thought of spending the night in the hospital. “I’ll stay with you,” she finds herself saying.

  “Don’t be stupid. What about Maya?”

  “I will make arrangements.” She pauses, half hoping that Parvati will put up a fight, but the woman simply stares at her feet. Bhima gets up with a sigh and calls Chitra baby. Before she can even frame her request, Chitra has offered to go pick up Maya and have her spend the night at her house. In fact, she will leave immediately and let Maya know herself. “I am so indebted to you, baby,” Bhima begins, but Chitra cuts her off. “Please. Maya is like my own niece.”

  Bhima cradles the receiver of the phone after she hangs up. How nonchalantly Chitra had referred to Maya as her n
iece. Could this be a sign that finally, after decades of drought, their luck may be turning? Her heart stops at another thought: If Amit has children of his own, then Maya herself is an aunt. More than anything, this is what rankles her—that through no fault of the girl’s, Maya is alone in the world. It is bad enough that the poor child is an orphan. But Maya has also missed out on the love of her family because of her grandmother’s recklessness. If only she had allowed Gopal to live out his days in a state of drunkenness, accepting that this was the price she would pay for signing that fatal piece of paper. If only she had not followed him to the bootlegger’s and embarrassed him in public. She would still have a husband. She would still have her son. And Maya would’ve had a family beyond her desiccated, humorless grandmother.

  No wonder Maya was forever asking her to smile. How hard it must be for a young girl to spend her evenings with a woman with a face as sour as a guava.

  When Parvati lifts her face to her, Bhima sees the fear lurking in those eyes and knows that she has made the right decision to stay the night. Unable to say anything that will chase that fear away, she takes Parvati’s hand in hers and holds it there, until the nurse comes back for them.

  This hospital’s general ward is different from the AIDS ward where Pooja had died. But some things are painfully familiar—the sharp smell of the pesticide they spray to keep the mosquitoes away; the quiet moans and rustlings of the other patients; the thump of the bare-footed ward boys as they race from bed to bed, clearing bedpans.

  “Lost in your thoughts, sister?” Parvati inquires, those milky eyes still sharp, missing nothing.

  Bhima shakes her head. “Just remembering my daughter. She was in the AIDS ward. In Delhi, not here. But it, too, was a big, open room like this one.”

  “Did your husband leave before or after her death?” Parvati’s voice is gentle.

  “Before. I raised her, married her off, all on my own.” Bhima hears her voice, thick with the tears she is trying not to shed.

  “It sounds like you have fulfilled your obligations to everyone, sister. There will be no more births for you to take after this one. You have earned eternal rest.”