by Sadie Sumner
In the shower, she scrubbed her face. My last child-free days, she thought, and wrapped herself in the fluffy hotel robe and lay on the bed and imagined the baby, warm from the sun, its eyes wide open as it stared at her.
In the dining room, Monica ordered a late breakfast. Through the windows, a boy sprayed a white substance along the curbing of the forecourt while another wiped the broad leaves of potted palms with a soft cloth. Beyond them, the world rushed past, and she felt relief at her comfort and the safety of the glass. When the cappuccino came, it was surprisingly good, and she calmed herself and wondered why she had gone to a yoga retreat. She called the clinic and when the doctor answered Monica remembered her perfect hair and teeth from the Skype. “You are a little early,” she said. “I’m sure you understand; our women need rest. We don’t like to disturb them in this last stage.”
An image from a science fiction film assailed Monica, of babies grown in suspended pods. “I understand. I don’t want to rush Kavitha. How about later this afternoon?” The doctor put her on hold. Monica sipped her coffee and noticed an older woman observing her from the next table, her designer handbag on display.
“I just want to feel her kick. Is that too much to ask?” The woman turned away with a shrug. The doctor came back on the line, solicitous and encouraging and they made an appointment.
Monica hung up and considered her options. She could take a sightseeing bus and acquaint herself with the city. Or go shopping at the department store on the hotel brochure. But it was the street markets that drew her. She wanted the real India, absorbed into the flow of lives, into the culture Dotty brought home every year. And she wanted to discover it for herself, to find the perfect place down an alley, tucked away into the corner of other people’s lives. A place she could show Gil when he arrived.
Monica finished her breakfast and stood under the portico of the hotel for a moment, then started walking, circling the hotel to find the line of canvas shelters and huts made from salvaged wood and tin that she could see from her room.
The ground around the slum was thick with garbage and rats scuttled without fear. Monica followed an alley down the side of the hotel that led to a drainage ditch filled with putrid water in front of the shacks. From high above, the water had seemed blue, a brook meandering around boulders and trees. Monica stopped to watch children bath, and a woman who rubbed a shirt over a slab of concrete and hung it to dry on a line strung between wilted trees. Everyone ignored her. She turned a bend, and there was a party in full swing. A family gathered around an old lady who sat on a plastic chair with a garland of flowers in her hair. Her lined face was happy, and she twisted her hands in the cotton of her faded orange sari. Monica stood in the shade of a brick wall and watched as the younger women danced around the elder. Small children stroked her hair and face as a procession of older women arrived with platters of sweets and fruit. The circle opened, and each one presented her tray, and the old woman smiled and nodded and clasped their hands in her bent fingers. A girl saw Monica and approached her and pointed back to the party and mimed eating. When Monica shook her head, the girl took her arm and pulled her towards the circle. They gave her a fresh garland of flowers and indicated she should present it to the old woman.
Monica hesitated then crouched in front of her as she bent her head to accept the gift. “Happy birthday,” she said, and the woman’s smile was sweet with nothing but gums in her mouth. Monica repeated the salutation under her breath and imagined Dotty kneeling before the elder, her hands painted with henna, flowers woven in her hair in celebration of a stranger’s birthday.
Around her, the singing resumed, and they swept Monica into their circle. The midday heat pressed her into the stony ground beside the drainage ditch. A putrid smell rose from the murky water and leached from the soil and grass between the rocks, but none of it mattered. As the singing slowed, she turned and looked up and saw the back of the hotel, the cladding faded and speckled with bird shit.
Monica checked the time. The hours till the meeting stacked up like cumulous clouds. She was determined to find the local market, and she said goodbye to her new friends and found the main road again. A crowd of schoolgirls, each with her hair pulled back into two neat plaits, flowed past her. They held hands and giggled, and their uniforms were clean and pressed. Sweat ran down Monica’s back as she followed them.
Old trees lined the road, their trunks banded with thick lines of white paint that Monica assumed were to stop people driving into them. The air smelled sickly and acidic all at once with a tang that caught in the back of her throat. The schoolgirls turned and ran down sweeping steps and into the market. Monica lost them in the jumble of stalls so close together they shut out the light. Packed with fabrics, watches, clothes, electronics, shoes, jewelry, and DVDs, the airspace above the stalls was woven with wires and cables to keep it all running. Competing music blared from each stall. Monica kept walking until she was deep inside the labyrinth. Children plucked at her sleeves; a woman tried to pull her into a stall stacked with cheap cotton saris of every known color. Another took her arm and pushed a handful of gold bracelets onto her wrist. She pulled them off and handed them back, then changed her mind. The money made no sense, so she thrust a bunch of notes at the woman, who looked at them and then peered closely into Monica’s face. She shook her head, and Monica reached into her purse. The woman clicked her tongue and counted off some of the notes and handed the rest back. Monica looked at her in amazement and smiled, and the woman smiled back and gave her another clutch of bangles.
Disoriented, Monica turned in a circle and found herself in the midst of a thicket of dry matter hung from strings. The smell was overwhelming, and she realized they were hops, and she had stumbled into a vinegar factory. She tried to breathe just through her nose. Her hair stood out from her head in a way that made her look mad, and her jeans chafed with the humidity while her shirt hung limp and creased. There was nothing to buy here that was appropriate for Kavitha. It all looked garish and dusty. Why had she not bought something from home? Maple syrup or soaps in the shape of a bear with a fish in its mouth, or a hockey shirt for her husband. Anything that revealed she had thought of Kavitha and had been thinking of her every day for almost nine months. But she knew nothing about Kavitha, except that she spoke English.
The market became a dream where every line was blurred, where buildings dissolved as she reached them, where the surfaces of brick and concrete and wood could not be trusted. She stumbled through and found herself miraculously back on the street a few blocks from the hotel, and returned there deflated. The bangles left black marks on her skin.
The time crept on. Monica went to the gym in the hotel and pounded the treadmill till her legs shook with the exertion. In the pool, she swam half an hour without stopping. The rhythm calmed her, and at each turn, she pushed off from the tiles and glided through the water. For those moments, it felt like she slipped from her skin and everything that held her back.
In her room, she ordered fresh towels. Under the hot water, she scrubbed her body with a loofah until she was red and glowing and realized she had nothing for the baby. No clothes, no diapers, no bottles, not even a soft blanket. She leaned against the glass and slid down and turned her face to the water and let out a long stream of sound. The anguish burned her throat, and for a moment she wondered if you could drown in a shower. She dried herself and scraped her wet curls back from her forehead and tied them tight and closed the curtains without glancing at the slum.
The pleasure of crisp white sheets in the middle of the day made her sigh, and she held a pillow tight and remembered coming home from school in summer. The blinds would be closed and edged with a strip of sunlight with Dotty beneath the covers. Monica took off her school shoes and climbed in. Dotty wrapped her in her arms and sang Somewhere Over the Rainbow right into her ear as if they were alone at the end of the world.
She woke an hour later and glanced at her laptop. She’d not opened it or checked her emails in
two days. It was a foolish way to run her business. They had enough orders for wedding gowns to keep them busy for months. She thought of Chloe using her treadmill and Rufus conferring with her over fabrics and notions, cut and style, and knew that none of it mattered. It felt as though that part of her life was no more than a place she visited. A wave of desperation, of not belonging or fitting anywhere, swept over her. She dressed in simple black pants and a white shirt and went down and sat at the bar and watched the boys washing down the forecourt. Their uniforms were mismatched, but no one took notice of them, and she wondered if they lived at the back of the hotel and if the slum acted as a labor pool. The desk clerk stood in front of her with a note from Dr. Devi. We have a slight delay, it said. A car will come for you in an hour.
The document file from Planete Bebe was in her bag, and she took it out and reread the information. The market along from the hotel was dangerous. Hawkers were dangerous. Motorized rickshaws were dangerous. In other words, Monica thought, do not leave your hotel, go straight to the clinic, collect your baby and leave behind the vast unknown of India before you become Dotty, forever trapped in its mystery. When she looked up from the file, there was Gil, climbing from a taxi. He had shaved his head and his white t-shirt was stained and crumpled.
Twenty
At the end of the hostel, a commotion broke out. The nurse in the oversized uniform tried to grab the arm of a girl who pushed past her and ran between the rows of beds.
“Ma,” Ria called.
Kavitha struggled up. A cotton sari hung from a wire floated across Ria’s face. The children stopped playing, and their mothers watched silently.
Kavitha was confused. Why was Ria here? She felt faint and held the bed frame to stop from falling. “Daughter?”
Ria had cut her hair even shorter and dyed it dark purple. In tight jeans, her eyes black with kohl, Kavitha hardly recognized her.
“Why have you done this?” Kavitha pointed to Ria’s hair. The glossy spikes made her want to reach up and touch. The women shifted on their beds and did not hide their curiosity.
“You are in this place, and you care about my hair?” Ria spat the words. She whirled and glared at the rows of women. Kavitha was shocked. She wanted to hold her and comfort her, but the baby twisted inside and her lower back cramped.
“What are you doing here, daughter?” Kavitha shut her eyes.
“I’ve come for you, Ma, to take you from this terrible place.”
The baby kicked, and Kavitha wanted to scratch at her skin, at the stretch marks that itched all the time. “How did you find me?”
“I came home, and you had just left. Mr. Batra told me where the clinic was. I went there, and you were outside, waiting. Then I followed you.”
Kavitha was amazed at her daughter’s spirit, and she had no idea how old Mr. Batra knew about the clinic.
“You have to leave here,” Ria said.
Kavitha felt a distance open between them and for the first time, she saw Ria as separate, as someone she barely knew. She loved her daughter with every fiber, but her presence was somehow an affront to the child she carried. And it made her want to protect the new baby. To keep her safe from her daughter who would never be a sister, even though they had shared her body equally.
Kavitha wrapped her arms around herself. “You can’t be here Ria.” The desperation made her voice shake.
Bala went to Ria. “Come,” she said, “Come and sit and talk with us.” She touched Ria’s arm, and Ria pulled away as though burned, but she allowed herself to be led to her mother’s bed. Bala patted the mattress, but Ria remained standing, her eyes still wild with unspent anger.
Bala introduced herself. “I know it is not easy to understand.” She spoke in Hindi.
“I understand perfectly. You have sold your bodies. It is a new slavery, a new colonialism.”
“Hush, daughter. Do not say these things.” Kavitha’s face flushed with embarrassment.
Bala held up her hand. “Perhaps we should let her speak.” She turned to Ria, “Please, the things you say are important.”
Her words calmed Ria, and she sat quietly on the bed.
“Please do not do this, not now.” Kavitha moved next to her daughter and held her hand. Ria wilted under her mother's touch. “Ma, look at this place, these poor women.”
“I know daughter. I know. But don’t be angry with them. No one does this by choice. You must understand that.”
Ria nodded and dropped her head to her mother’s lap as though she were still a small child.
Over the rise of her belly, Kavitha stroked the spikes of Ria’s hair. “Your hair is still very beautiful. When you were small, I would brush all the time.” Kavitha could feel Ria’s tears on her leg. “Do you know, sometimes when you were asleep I would come into your room and comb your hair, very gently, so I did not wake you.”
“I know, Ma, I was always awake. Every night I would try to use the power of my mind to bring you into my room,” Ria said, and Kavitha began to cry.
“Ma. Please don’t cry.” Ria wiped her eyes and sat up.
“It is for this baby,” Kavitha said. “I feel she is stranded. If you do not even belong in the womb, where do you belong? I fear for her.”
Ria looked at her in amazement. “Ma, you never tell me your feelings.”
Kavitha smiled. “I will try more.” She spread her hands over her belly. “You have always been part of me, but this poor baby is...” She ran out of words to describe her feelings as the nurse appeared.
“We are calling the police.” She straightened her over-sized uniform.
“Do it!” Ria jumped up. “It is illegal to farm babies like this, to exploit these poor women.”
“Ria, you must leave.” Kavitha stood up. “You can see, the only family allowed are the small ones still breastfeeding. And I have to meet the intending parents. I will be home soon. You need to go on the train to daddy’s family. They are expecting you. And do not tell them. Not a word. Promise me.”
Ria lowered her head. “I promise.” She said in the soft voice of her childhood.
Dr. Devi arrived, and a murmur ran like a wave past the beds as she marched the length of the dormitory and took Ria’s arm and pulled her roughly into the middle of the space.
“How dare you barge in here. You are hurting the feelings of these brave women. You are putting the babies at risk.” The doctor stretched up on her toes as she spoke. “You are causing distress.”
Kavitha felt all her outrage coalesce. “How dare you pull my daughter, leave her alone.” She plucked at the doctor’s sleeve.
Ria took a brochure from her backpack. “If it is not illegal, it is still abuse.” She held out the document.
The doctor snatched it from Ria’s hand, screwed it up and threw it on the floor. “You are so naive. We are helping women to achieve financial independence.”
Ria turned to her mother. “You can’t believe that! Ma?”
“I don’t know what I believe anymore, daughter.” An image of Arun in his white shirt came to her as he leaned over to help a woman at a sewing machine. She shook her head. “Everything has changed for us. Go now. I will call you when I have returned home.” A wave of dizziness filled her, and her vision became blurry.
“We cannot have you getting upset,” the doctor said to Kavitha. She turned to Ria. “See, you have disturbed your mother.”
Kavitha felt herself sway, then lost the feeling in her legs. Dr. Devi caught her before she fell and, with Ria’s help, they supported her to the bed. Kavitha lay flat and saw the shafts of light that streamed through the dirty windows, and she saw herself as a child on her mother’s lap as they sat on a stool in the sun on the landing. She remembered the sounds of all her friends as they ran squealing in and out of each other’s flats, and it occurred to her that all the small children were gone. The flats were full of silent old people. And Kavitha knew she had stayed on to keep her parents alive as if they were just out visiting, and would one day retu
rn.
The dizziness receded, and her eyes came back into focus, and she saw Ria and Bala and Dr. Devi as they stood over her. She took Ria’s hand. “I need to rest now.”
Ria bent and kissed her mother. “I love you Ma. I am staying at the flat. I will look after you when you come home.” Then she touched the tips of her fingers to her lips and placed them on the roundness of her mother’s belly. “Poor baby,” she whispered.
Kavitha smiled at Ria. “Daughter, I am sorry.” Kavitha looked around at the women, mute on their beds. Those with small children held their hands, and everyone watched as Ria turned from her mother’s bed.
Dr. Devi said as she patted her hair back into place. “Do you see how you have hurt your mother?”
Ria kept her voice low. “It is you who hurt these women. You are a baby, farmer. You are a monster.”
“You need to leave now. We do nothing illegal here. My nurse has already called the police.”
Ria walked through the aisle of beds with her head down and when she was gone Kavitha turned to Bala. “My daughter, she is very political.”
Bala nodded, and the other women around them smiled and clicked their tongues, and Kavitha realized she was among friends. Bala picked up the brochure and smoothed it out. “You have an excellent daughter,” she said. “You are a lucky woman.”
Kavitha placed her hand on her belly and turned on her side and nudged the baby into a better position. She closed her eyes and drifted. Arun took her hand and crooned to her in a soft voice as she gave birth to Ria; my chucklee, my little chucklee.
The nurse woke her. “It is time to go to the clinic,” she said.
Outside the afternoon heat struck Kavitha. It felt like she had been in the hostel for days, months even, and not just a few hours. The child with the tray of dusty sweets was still there, and Kavitha fervently wished she had money to give her. The traffic seemed impenetrable and the air too thick to breath. A car was waiting. The nurse held the door for her, and she climbed gratefully into its air conditioning.