by Sadie Sumner
Back in her room she lay down still dressed in her travel clothes and fell into a dream of crashing waves and a huge belly that rose and fell with the tide as Dotty danced with her cushion.
At dawn, she washed in the tiled wet-room with a bucket and a hand-held shower nozzle. She returned to her room and took out her new yoga clothes and removed the tags. A large bug slithered across the floor. Monica squealed and opened her door and heard laughter in the distance.
The time difference confounded her, and she missed breakfast. The dining room was empty, and she served herself a leftover wilted lentil cake and a slice of mung bean patty. The food tasted of dust, and she crunched on a small stone embedded in the patty and tipped the lot into a bin. Jetlagged and hungry she followed the blue line to the yoga class and slipped into the back.
Redolent with incense and fresh flowers the room opened onto the courtyard where Monica had sat during the night. The yogi was small, and so round it was hard to imagine she could hold a pose. Dressed in a white sari, with wisps of white hair and pudgy hands at rest in her lap, she sat perfectly still on a raised dais. The light in the room appeared to concentrate on her, and Monica looked up to check for a concealed spotlight.
She took a yoga mat from a stack propped against the wall, unrolled it, pulled her hair back into a knot and settled into child’s pose. She focused on her breath and brought herself into a semblance of balance as she pushed herself into a downward dog. Around her, the women sat on their mats in curved rows and intoned the Om Mani Padme hum in perfect harmony. Soft pale fabrics swathed their bodies, and a few wore t-shirts and shorts. Monica was the only one dressed for yoga. It felt good to be back on a mat, inside the pleat of calm her practice created. Around her, the chanting continued. She sat back in a half lotus and took up the chant.
The mantra caught in the long muslin curtains that floated on the breeze. Monica felt she could touch the sound. She closed her eyes and saw the fragrant air, bright as sunlight on water.
A series of bells slowed the chanting. When the last voice was silent, the yogi spoke. She quoted the Dalai Lama in the quietest tones, so they all leaned forward to hear. She explained the mantra and the meaning of each syllable.
“The OM is composed of three pure letters to symbolize an impure body, speech and mind.” The yogi’s tone was light and playful, and Monica was surprised with her irreverence.
“We are here to transform into our purest state.” Her voice rose above them, and the room shivered with delight. She stood and stretched her arms above her head, and her flesh moved like a wave. The class followed, floating their arms to their sides and bending till fingertips brushed the floor. Monica breathed deeply. The class moved so slowly she was out of time. On the next exhale the yogi began to giggle. The women copied her. They shook their arms and flapped their hands from the wrists and hugged each other. Monica stepped back to avoid the arms of a stranger as the yogi’s giggle grew into a full belly laugh. The sound boomed from her small body and yet she held each pose with grace and precision. One woman laughed so hard she lay on her mat. Another wiped her eyes with her t-shirt.
Monica could not focus on the poses. She felt as though she’d woken from a deep sleep into a stranger’s life.
The novice joined her. “Howdy,” she said, and Monica realized the girl was from Texas.
“I didn’t expect this.” Monica observed the women in various stages of laughter.
“It can be a little confusing, but y’all will get the hang of it.” She laughed as randomly as the women around them.
“Do we get to downward dog?” Monica asked.
“We do. But it’s not that kind of yoga. Laughter is our practice.” The girl ran her hand over her shaved head.
“It doesn’t say that in the brochure.” Monica felt out of place in her new yoga clothes.
“You must have the old version. We changed last year.” She forced a laugh to chime in with the yogi.
“Does it make you happier?” Monica moved closer to the girl.
“It reduces stress and lifts your mood.” The girl did a back bend. “And it cures, you know, like everything. Heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, allergies, asthma, bronchitis.”
“What about cancer?” Monica joked, but the novice took her seriously.
“Of course.” She bent and gripped her elbows behind her knees. “It totally cures cancer.”
Monica rolled up her mat. “Could you get me a cab?”
“But we’ve only just started.” The novice looked genuinely distressed. “It takes more than a chant and stretches to become whole.”
They walked back to Monica’s room. Through the crack of the door as she changed out of her yoga clothes she asked the girl if her mother knew she was there.
“Sort of,” the girl said and straightened her loose robes. “She would not approve. Yoga is evil, and she surely would never understand this.” She wheeled Monica’s bag to the front door. “Are you sure you can’t stay?” she asked.
“I’m not a laughing kind of person. Between you and me - it’s not very Eat, Pray, Love, is it?”
“This is India,” the girl said, “Nothing is.”
Monica prepared herself to step out into the endless sea of old cars and tuk-tuks, scooters, bicycles and trucks. A brown fog tinged the air in all directions and sullied the trees that lined the road.
The girl put two fingers in her mouth and produced a sharp whistle. A taxi slammed to a stop, and she held the door. “Namaste lady,” she said and made it sound like ‘have a nice day’ and finally, Monica laughed.
Eighteen
Dr. Devi called in the afternoon. The baby turned over at the sound of the doctor’s high-pitched voice. She wanted Kavitha to check in to the clinic immediately. A change in the client’s plan she said and agreed to send a taxi.
Kavitha’s back ached constantly, and she hardly slept. The baby was like a rock inside her, and she needed to support her stomach with both hands just to turn over. In the morning, she stayed in bed and wondered if the money would be enough to cover all of Ria’s University and to buy back some of their furniture from Mr. Batra. His grandsons had balanced the sofa on their backs with a chair under each arm while he had counted the cash onto her palm. She would pay him back with ten percent interest. Each month the interest went up by two percent. After six months, he would sell or trade each piece, and Kavitha dreaded seeing her mother’s armoire through the window of her neighbor’s flat. She gazed at Arun’s photo. “I will be gone a month, no more.” She held the frame at arm’s length. “You remember, I was on time with Ria. I was good at having her.” She struggled up from the mattress. “Okay, maybe a little early. But I had you with me. When all the other husbands waited outside, you came in and held my hand, you bloody bastard.” She blew her nose and put the photo on the floor, then changed her mind and slid it into her bag.
The flat echoed around her. All that was left were the remains of her clothes, the mattresses, the table and three chairs in the kitchen. In the living room, there was just an old Jali mirror passed down from her grandmother and destined for Ria’s home when she married. The flowers and birds carved into its wooden frame were hand-painted in the faded hues of the past. As a child, Kavitha gazed at it and wondered if all the colors in her grandmother's time were pale as petals. She remembered it now, the day she stood before the mirror with her mother by her side as they talked about the sanctity of marriage. It was a week before she was to marry Arun, and later that day her parents were both gone. From then she was convinced the mirror held her mother’s reflection as the Ganges holds the spirit of all who immerse in her.
The emptiness of Ria’s room hurt her the most, the mattress forlorn on the floor. Only her children’s books remained, too dog-eared for Mr. Batra to sell. She wrote a note for Arun, ‘away for a month, maybe less. Mr. Batra has everything,’ and left it on the kitchen table in case he returned. At the front door, she looked back at the place she had lived her whole life. Every squeak
y floorboard was known to her, every hook and hidden self in every cupboard. Now the flat was empty of all their generations, as though they were visitors in their own lives, and she could not bear the emptiness.
On the walkway, her neighbors emerged from their flats. It was the enduring mystery of their shared landing, how everyone knew the exact moment to appear. It had been the same when her time came with Ria. But then Arun had carried her bag, and the women had reached out to touch her, for their luck and hers.
Kavitha wrapped herself in a shawl and was grateful no one spoke. Their silent presence filled her with a dread that she might never return, and the baby turned over and pressed against her spine so that she gripped the railing. When she reached Mr. Batra’s door, he hobbled out and clasped his hands and bowed his head. One of his grandsons appeared and took her bag and led the way down the concrete steps to the waiting taxi.
The driver looked away, and Kavitha felt his antipathy and wondered how her shame could be so visible. We have barely left the village, she thought and wondered if she would ever wear western clothes again. The driver found every pothole and the baby kicked in protest. She spread her hands over her belly and whispered in Hindi to comfort her.
He dropped her outside the Planete Bebe clinic and pulled into the traffic so fast there was a screech of brakes behind him. Kavitha tried the door, but it was locked. She cupped her hand to the window and peered through the blinds into darkness. Food vendors and children flying kites jammed the pavements. She felt small hands on her clothes and gripped her bag and pressed the clinic bell.
A young woman hurried through the melee, dressed in a nurse’s uniform at least two sizes too big and hitched with a belt as though it was a costume. She hailed an auto rickshaw and took Kavitha’s bag and held her arm like she might escape.
They wove through the traffic behind the clinic and into a slum a few blocks away, and it occurred to Kavitha that no one knew where she was. She took out her phone but there was no one to call, and she put it away again. The baby weighed heavily, and her shoes were tight.
They stopped outside an old factory. The street was cracked, and the children were dirtier than outside the clinic. Handcarts with buckled wooden wheels slowed the traffic to a crawl, and the cacophony of horns was deafening. They stepped around a shoemaker with a last and hammer squatting beside the wall and a child with a tray of mixed Bengali sweets covered in dust.
The young woman pressed a buzzer hidden behind a loose board, and a small brown door opened. Dr. Devi pulled Kavitha inside.
She smiled and clapped her hands as though they were friends. “Come in off the street,” she said in a happy voice. “I am pleased you agreed to come in early.” She slammed the door, and the world disappeared.
Kavitha felt her body flush with tension. “I have a choice?” she asked and was surprised how clear her voice was.
“You are very feisty Kavitha. You are certainly my challenge.” The doctor made a sound that could have been a laugh. “We need to get you settled. We will see your intending mother later today, and then you can rest here till the baby comes.” She strode off down a dim corridor with trails of plaster dust and peels of paint on the floor. “What is this place?” Kavitha asked.
“This is our hostel. I mentioned it to you.”
Kavitha was sure she had not mentioned it at all. But her legs felt huge and heavy, her pelvic floor ached and she wanted to lie down. They came to a door with a window, and Dr. Devi pushed it open and held out her arm as though they were about to enter a show home.
Long lines of laundry were strung the across the narrow room, like prayer flags above an alley. Kavitha stopped short. High up, small windows were cranked open to catch a breeze and dust danced in the pale, filtered light. Iron beds filled the room, each occupied by a pregnant woman. A handful of small children played in the gaps between the beds.
“How many do you have here?” Kavitha tried to keep the shock from her voice.
“Around 30 at any given time.” The doctor showed Kavitha a makeshift bathroom with a row of cubicles just like the ones at Arun’s factory. But here, half the toilets had become showers, their cubicle doors replaced by plastic curtains emblazoned with puppies and kittens. “What was here before?” Kavitha asked.
“Clothing, I think. We found an old knitting machine in a back room. Now we consider it a lying-in home.” She was clearly proud of her hostel. The women watched in silence as Kavitha followed the doctor through the forest of laundry to a bed near the end of the row.
A woman opposite was breastfeeding an infant. She saw Kavitha looking and smiled and put the child on the floor and laughed as it toddled off to play with the others.
Arun’s photo was near the top of her bag, and she slid it to the bottom as a woman came towards her and greeted her in Hindi. “You’re Kavitha; we met on Skype. I’m Bala.”
Kavitha felt herself relax just a little.
“I came yesterday,” Bala said. “False labor. It has stopped now. Two weeks early, so they don’t want the risk. And you?”
“The mother has arrived already. I have to meet her later.”
They sat together with their backs to the wall, their legs out straight and compared their swollen ankles. The baby kicked at Kavitha, and a fist or a foot rippled the surface of her skin.
Bala laughed lightly. “This is my second time.”
Kavitha was amazed. She knew she could not do this again and she imagined her mother pregnant with her. The same image filled her when she was carrying Ria as if loss and gain played with the lines of time that separated them. She looked around the hostel. “My mother would not approve of this.”
Bala patted her hand. “None of us approves of this. How could we? It is the choice of no choice. My husband insists. It means he does not have to work so hard. His back is already breaking from the heavy work he must do. There are no happy stories here.”
“How do you cope?” Kavitha placed her hand over her heart.
“I make the feelings go away,” Bala shrugged. “At least your intending parent has arrived early. My last one, she was too busy. She came one week late.”
“I try not to think about this baby. I try to keep myself away from her.”
“I was like that with my first. I could pretend all day, but at night, at night I could not help myself, and I would sing to him. He would stop kicking, and I imagined him just floating.”
“And this one?” Kavitha was acutely aware she had spent the last months as though she were two people. She had sung to Ria every day from the moment she was conceived, and she wondered if this baby felt her rejection in the silence.
“I talk to her, I explain everything to her, I ask her to come back to me one day.” Bala spoke very quietly like her words were forbidden.
“What happens when they come for the baby?” Kavitha realized the questions had been building as the baby grew.
“My last one, the mother, she could not even look at me.” Bala stroked her belly. “She lifted the little one from the bed, my milk was still on his mouth, and I am sure she’d never held a baby before. He cried so hard when they took him. I could hear him down the hallway. I went to the window. When they put him in the car seat, he screamed like they were hurting him.” Bala wiped away tears. “I am foolish. I must remind myself this is my work; just business.”
A ball of sadness seemed to have lodged in Kavitha’s chest, and she found it hard to breathe. “They should do a psychological assessment of the intended parents,” she said. “Not us.”
“I think they want a baby like I want to travel or eat in a restaurant with a white tablecloth.”
Kavitha folded her small pile of clothes on her bed. “I feel like I’m leaking from everywhere already.”
“And do not forget dry mouth, loose bowels, sensitive teeth, aching everything. I try to remember they pay for these things, for all the discomfort and pain, not for the baby,” Bala said.
“Do you think about the other baby?” Kavit
ha put her hand in her bag and touched the photo of Arun.
“All the time,” Bala said. “You know they tell us so often these are not our babies, but how do you tell your body?”
Nineteen
From the backseat of the taxi, Monica gazed at the chaos of traffic, at the hovels and apartment blocks stacked in dirty pastels against each other. She saw the twisting roads beneath fat-leafed trees and the air that hung like smoke. She saw beggar children and an old man, barely more than a torso on a small trolley.
At the hotel, the desk clerk declared there were no rooms available for another week. He was fastidious and quick in all his movements. Monica felt a panic that threatened to topple her balance, and she gripped the counter, leaned toward him and lowered her voice. “I might have to make a scene.”
The man pressed a button, and the manager came from a back room. She was Monica’s age and immediately took her arm and steered her towards the bar area. She apologized for the misunderstanding and offered an upgrade as sparkling water arrived on a tray.
Monica drank it down immediately. “I must be dehydrated,” she said. The manager escorted her across the lobby, into the elevator and slid a key card into her door.
The bed was awash in white linen, the bathroom stocked with fluffy towels. Monica went to the floor to ceiling windows. Directly below, a slum hugged the wall that enclosed the hotel. Monica leaned her forehead against the glass and could not imagine living beneath a strip of canvas, everything she owned in a rotten basket.
She unpacked right away, hung her white shirts in the bathroom to steam out the creases and took off her clothes and stood in front of the mirror and pinched the skin above her breasts to lift them, so they were pert again. She took her lipstick and made a bindi on her forehead and smiled.