by Sadie Sumner
“As opposed to what? Loving me?” The bitterness seeped out.
Mitchell rubbed his beard. “You scared her. She worked hard to construct her identity. I think she was afraid the man-in-a-suit genes would undo all that hard work.”
“And then I turned out exactly like that.” Monica pulled her suit jacket tighter.
“Maybe. Or maybe you just need to think that,” Mitchell said.
Monica remembered his wise pragmatism. “It wasn’t my genes. I just wanted to be different from her. I think I was in opposition to her every day of my life, of her life.”
He smiled the old smile like the world was perfect. “That’s a good thing to realize.” He hugged her again. “We should get on with this, or we’ll all freeze.” He cleared his throat, and the friends pushed in closer. Gil hung back with his camera at the ready.
“This woman…” Mitchell’s voice boomed out over the wind as he ran his hand along the plain pine of the coffin. “…this woman never, ever, not even once fitted into the box our society made for her.” The friends swung their joined hands in unison, while their kaftans and shawls flapped in the cold gusts.
“We think of this as a shutting down, but what if it was a grand expansion, the moment we return to fullness. Dotty’s spirit…” Mitchell’s voice rose as the humming grew. “…that spirit we all loved so much…” he paused for effect. “…will not be contained, even now.” He made to open the lid of the coffin, and the circle broke into laughter. Monica swayed and wondered if she would faint. Gil found his way into the circle and threaded his arm through hers. “This is nice,” he whispered into her ear.
“It’s a funeral, Gil.” Monica shook her head. “Do you know, last week she said it was my fault I ruined my fertility.”
“She was losing it.” Gil lifted his camera to adjust the lens. “Anyway, you don’t even like kids.”
“Well, perhaps I do like kids after all. What if I want a baby?”
Gil continued to click off frames of the coffin resting on the kitchen chairs in the middle of the field. “Is this your new obsession? Seriously Mon, it’s the grief. No one has a baby at 40.”
“They do. All the time,” Monica said as the woman beside her took her chilled hand and pulled her towards the group. Monica felt the scratch of a palm devoid of lotions.
“Do you remember me?” the woman asked.
Monica nodded but could not recall her name.
“You were a lovely child. It’s my only regret. I missed out on that. You know, I begged your mother to let me take the baby, but…” the woman stopped mid-sentence.
Monica felt the shock of it afresh. Mitchell clapped his hands for attention. “Friends, we have a job here today.” A silken mist reached them, and the world beyond the mountain field disappeared. “None of us wants to let our loved ones go. But we must release our dear friend, our lover and our mother. We must free her spirit from our earthly concerns. If you have unresolved conflict, even a flicker of resentment towards Dotty now is the time to let it go. Do this, and you will live more fully. And she will be released to the adventure beyond, to her journey with no return.”
The woman beside Monica took a deep breath and exhaled with a loud yoga huff as the wind flapped at her lace top. Dotty’s friends copied her, till all of them were exhaling in collective sighs of agreement.
Mitchell turned to Monica and held his hands as if in prayer. “My dear, we understand how deep your grief must be.” His voice stilled her, and she could no longer remember why she cut these people from her life. “We want you to know we all love you, we always have. We are family. Would you like to say a few words?”
Gil had moved away to take more photos and Rufus nudged her to respond as Dog twisted the lead around her ruined shoes. “I haven’t prepared anything.”
“Just wing it. It would be healing.” Rufus squeezed her arm and nodded to Mitchell.
“I’d like to introduce Monica, Dotty’s only child.” On cue, the mist rolled away, and Mitchell stood in a patch of sunshine. “Many of you will remember the day of her birth. Of course, we haven’t seen her for many years, but we welcome her here today, and we thank her for allowing us to share her grief.”
Monica teetered on the soft ground and shivered as she touched the coffin. “Dotty. My mother. My mother was…” She stared at the photograph, struggling to reconcile it with the pine box. “Sad.” She latched onto the single word. “I think she was sad for a long time. Look, you can see it in this picture.” She ran her hand over the frame. “It’s like she has seen beyond the lens to some new truth. And I think that fearless search for truth, that’s what made her sad.” Her voice caught. “She was always reaching for it, for that one pure moment.” Perhaps it was a mistake, and the box was empty, and for a moment she wanted to open it, to check inside. “Dotty was hard on people; on me for sure, but all of you as well. She was like…” Monica struggled to complete the sentence, but then it came to her. “Like the bitter taste of coffee after the promise of roasting beans.” Mitchell laughed out loud, and Monica smiled at him. The friends swung their joined hands. Nearby, Gil photographed them all and Rufus swayed with Puffy in his arms as his black-rimmed glasses reflected the wan light.
Monica wanted to continue. She tapped the top of the coffin. “You have to accept a lot when you love Dotty. But she was just as hard on herself, and I think that’s why we all loved her. She was a unique woman.” She cast her eye around the circle, and everyone nodded. “I have seen her be the warmest and friendliest person on the planet. I’ve seen her be kind and loving. She could make people laugh. She was the life of a lot of parties. There were many lovers. And friends.” She touched her blind eye. “We grow like weeds beside the road, dragged down by soil, barely lifted up by the sun. We’re here for such a short time, yet we’re barely here, and even then it is not easy for the heart to give up its beats.” The words surprised her, lurking all along in a kind of faux spirituality. Dotty would have approved. “Thank you all for being here today.” She bowed her head and Dotty’s friends applauded her.
When she looked up, the phantom baby stood on top of the coffin, dressed in just a diaper. It smiled and waved. Monica grabbed the side of the box and knocked the photos into the mud. Mitchell picked them up and wiped them clean with the hem of his shirt, and the baby disappeared. He held up a bottle of Dotty’s favorite Campari. “Thank you, Monica. That was truly beautiful. And now, a toast.” The friends pulled mugs from their bags, someone handed one to Monica and Rufus, and the bottle made the rounds while Gil lurked nearby, with his camera held ready.
“To a life well lived,” Mitchell said, and the friends echoed him. Monica sipped the bitter liquid. She’d disliked Campari, ever since she was a child stealing nips from Dotty’s glass. Mitchell adjusted the dials on the cassette player. “We listened to this together last week; always her favorite.” He pushed play. Leonard Cohen. The one song Monica avoided. She closed her eyes and heard it waft up the stairs to her bedroom. She got out of bed and went down. Take This Longing played to the empty room. In the kitchen her mother was slumped against the door, a pillow clasped like a lover to her chest as she cried. When she saw Monica, she wiped at her face and threw the pillow away and swung her daughter into her arms and held her tight, and together they danced as if time stood still.
Six
Kavitha got up before dawn, stiff-limbed and exhausted. She made a small bowl of gruel and sat in the dark and wondered if Arun would return today. Then she dressed in her work clothes and put on her walking shoes. She considered taking her laptop but instead locked it in the hidden security drawer Arun had installed under the bed, grateful the repossession men had missed it.
She closed her front door and stood on the landing and breathed in the early city. The air was musty with rain and soil. It always amazed her that even here in the middle of the chaos, nature forced itself upon them. Shrubs grew in every crack and mosses colonized the gaps between the concrete. Her neighbors grew herbs in pots that hung from th
e railing and birds made their homes in the nearby trees and under the eaves of every building.
A handcart now occupied the gap left by her car, selling jhiri jhiri alu bhaja, the local thinly sliced fried potato specialty. The owner was asleep between the wheels, curled around a sack of potatoes. Kavitha wondered where he had come from and how he knew her space was vacant.
The streets were wet, and the air chilled. Walking to work was unknown, and the city felt new, like she was a tourist who’d ventured out too soon. Metal shutters rolled up as she walked by while entire families curled in doorways. Dogs roamed in packs, waiting for the first scraps of food and a few auto rickshaws putted past. She was pleased for the sneakers Arun had made her buy on one of his Americanizing crusades. He wanted to exchange her parents’ old furniture for modern and to eat at the fast food places that sprang up in their neighborhood. But she resisted, except for the shoes and her clothes. She had long ago given away the traditional sari her mother wore and replaced it with comfortable Western styles. She prided herself on her skirts and blouses as much as she did Arun’s suits. And the American style coffee.
Near the factory, she saw the Starbucks was open. She stood in the doorway and smelled the aroma of freshly baked muffins. The girl behind the counter waved. “You’re here early,” she said, “A busy day at your factory?” Kavitha nodded and tried to keep her face impassive as her stomach twisted with hunger. She felt the money in her pocket and considered all she had hidden at home. She would have to be careful, at least until Arun returned.
She ordered her favorite, a tall coffee with milk that foamed over the sides. It was too early to go to the factory, and she took her coffee and warm muffin to a seat outside. It was a new thing for her, to sit outside and eat in this manner before the heat became trapped between the pavement and the buildings. Kavitha savored it. She must bring Ria here, so she could see how cosmopolitan her mother had become.
The sun rose over the gates of the park across the street. The unruffled trees seem to suspend the city in their foliage. Not even the shriek of a peafowl that lived in the undergrowth could disturb the moment. It was, she realized, the perfect time to be out and she wondered why she had never ventured so early before. A bus pulled up in front and belched a cloud of diesel fumes as it discharged a load of commuters. Behind the bus, a wall of traffic appeared. The pavement filled with a rush of humanity and from a niche in the wall beside the café, a small child emerged and rubbed her eyes. Mud caked her hair, and she smiled at Kavitha and held out a grubby hand and rubbed her tummy. Kavitha went back into the café and waited in line and bought another muffin. Outside the child snatched if from her and was gone, a shadow in the traffic that now clogged the road. Kavitha looked both ways and crossed through the wall of horns and walked alongside the metal railings of the park to approach the factory from the side street. She did not have a key. Mr. Maity, Arun’s foreman, would have one.
The workers were already there. The women clustered in a tight group while a policeman stood in front of the door. Beside him, a tall man in a suit clasped a battered briefcase to his chest. They parted as she arrived, their chatter stilled. No one would catch her eye.
“You are Mrs. Atwal I presume?” the tall man said.
Kavitha nodded, and he half bowed to her, like a servant. “I’m a lawyer. I’m here to oversee this process.”
His suit was cheap, and the neck of his shirt frayed. Kavitha frowned. She would never have let Arun dress like that. He held out his hand, and she declined to shake it.
Her rejection made him stand taller. “I will need your workers gone within the hour,” he said, and Kavitha realized she had made a mistake. She inclined her head, and the lawyer followed her to one side, away from the women.
“I am sorry,” she began. “You are a lawyer for whom?” She used her best English.
“For the owners, of course,” he answered in heavily accented English.
“I see,” she said, “Will you let us enter?”
He made a note on the pad attached to his clipboard. “You have one hour inside to collect your things. Personal items only.”
“I’ll need a moment alone with the workers so that I can tell them in a civilized way.” She was surprised at how confident she sounded.
“What has happened?” Mr. Maity arrived, out of breath with beads of sweat on his upper lip. His shirt clung to his overlarge belly. He glanced at the policeman. “Where is Arun? We waited here all day yesterday. They would not let us in, and he did not return my calls.” He turned away to cough up the phlegm that lived in his lungs.
Kavitha was always surprised by their first name basis, but Arun had insisted on it. “He is unwell,” she said and asked him to gather everyone in the lunchroom.
The lawyer made a show of taking the key from Mr. Maity then opened the door and stood like a sentry as they filed into the gloom of the factory.
In Arun’s office, Kavitha saw the police had already been. The drawers were open, and his computer gone. They had taken her desktop computer as well. She tidied her office and put away the fabric samples and the cardboard displays of buttons and zips. She arranged all her orders in a pile.
The company lawyer brought in papers. “We will make a list of everything and sell it all.”
“And the building?”
“The lease was fortuitously up for renewal. Please sign.” He spread the paperwork over her desk. It was her employment termination and Arun’s too. She signed hers and threw Arun’s back to the man. “You will have to find him yourself,” she said.
“You should not be angry at me,” the lawyer smiled. “Your husband is the one to blame.”
Kavitha wanted to cry, but she turned on him. “If the owners did not pay such low wages this would not have happened.”
The lawyer looked at her and laughed. “You are as naive as your husband. He will go to jail for this.”
Kavitha sat down. She loved her desk and her chair with the swivel seat. She spun around. “Who will take the deliveries due today and who will tell the suppliers?” she asked.
“It has all been taken care of.” He gave a small dry cough. “There is nothing here for you now.”
“And the wages owed to these women?” Kavitha asked.
The lawyer shook his head. “There is nothing for them.”
Mr. Maity walked in. “We are all here now.” He surveyed the mess. “We have been burgled? Is that what it is about?” He straightened a picture on the wall.
“No,” Kavitha said. She followed him past the long sewing room and into the lunchroom. No one had lit the candles on the small altar in the corner, and the room felt cold and empty without them.
It was Arun’s job to manage the women who sewed; most had been with them from the beginning. He knew all their names and the names of their children. He knew whose husband had absconded, who drank too much or was violent. Sometimes Kavitha wondered if he loved them and their problems more than her. They needed him, and now Ria was almost grown up, he thrived on caring for them.
A policeman and the lawyer stood at the back of the room.
“The factory is closed,” Kavitha said and heard the little sounds of shock and imagined the women’s cupboards as bare as hers.
She decided to tell the truth. “Arun stole from this company. He did it to pay you more. He has gone. The police are looking for him.” She looked up to the skylight to stop herself from crying and saw a small bird, a house swift, trapped beneath the glass.
“We will call you when we have news. I promise I will try to get your wages owed, and when we resolve this problem, we will have you all back.”
The women whispered to each other and picked up their bags and wrapped their shawls tight like they’d always expected bad news. “Please take everything that belongs to you.” She saw the dismay on their faces; their children pulled from school, the uniforms sold to stave off hunger. And she cursed Arun for all he had done.
Mr. Maity sat at the table and dropped h
is head into his arms, and Kavitha knew he was crying. She touched his shoulder. “We must leave now, or they will throw us out.” The policeman checked every bag at the door, to ensure not even a spool of thread left the sewing room and escorted them to the street. The lawyer passed her a file of papers.
“What is this?” She held her bag tight under her arm.
“Trespass notices.”
“How long have you known about this?” she asked, but he turned away, like she’d already left. She walked through the empty sewing room and saw the bird again. It fluttered against a window, gave up and drifted down and perched on a sewing machine. The whirr of the machines had filled them all for so long she knew she could never return to this new silence.
Arun did not return. Kavitha waited up each night until the tiredness caught her off guard. She stayed in Ria’s room, hidden behind the cupboard, with its tiny window up high. It was unthinkable to sleep in her marriage bed, her whole adult life and the falsehood of their intimacy within its springs.
In the first weeks, she dressed up and went looking for work. But no one would hire her. If she mentioned the factory, everyone knew and assumed she was in on the theft. Without the factory, she had no skills. She draped a shawl over her head and went into the crowds in the hope of spotting Arun, his perfectly parted hair and white shirt darting through the turmoil of the streets.
There was so little money left from her hidden stash she could hold the coins in one hand. Mr. Batra’s grandsons came after dark and took her parents’ prized furniture, one piece at a time, and each time gave her a little more than it was worth. But it was not enough. The next step was a corner of the city, claimed for her own with her hand extended for alms. But the idea of a neighbor seeing her, or worse, Ria, was too much to bear.
The rainy season arrived in full and each day thunderclouds dark as a bruise would push up against the buildings and cling to the treetops. Kavitha walked in the daily downpours, all sense of time gone. People scattered as the first fat drops exploded on the hot roofs of cars. She needed to be outside at the very moment of the cloudburst. She walked with her clothes glued to her skin, and her face washed clean as she reviewed her life. There was a mistake in there somewhere, and she was determined to find it. She had been a good daughter, and without complaint, she married the man her parents chose.