Women's Work

by Megan K. Stack

  And cry she did. I found her weeping in the bathroom, curled on the floor by the washing machine. Watching her, I remembered that Xiao Li had also withdrawn to the washing machine to cry. The sturdy box of clean white angles, the sizzling rush of water and soap; a triumph over the wringing and banging and scraping done by poor women around the world—maybe a machine like that offered some solace.

  “Mary,” I said.

  She stumbled to her feet. I wrapped my arms around her awkwardly.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I said. It was a stupid thing to say. I had no idea whether it was going to be okay. I remembered Mary’s panicked outrage when Pooja dumped a man. Mary believed in an absolute truth: Better any man than no man. Now her man was gone, and she’d eventually have to look for another. This time she was not only a widow with kids, but a widow with kids who’d lived with—and been dumped by—an African man. This time she was older and sturdier. All of that would cost her dearly on the Indian dating market, if such a phrase could be applied to a system still dictated by pitiless codes of family and caste and dowries and marriage brokers. Her face was thick from crying, and she pulled away from me as if stung.

  “I’m okay.”

  “Do you want to take a break?”

  “No, Madame.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m okay.”

  Her boyfriend ended up in Houston.

  “I think I’ve been where he is,” I told Mary.

  I remembered a neighborhood of Nigerian immigrants who’d made their homes in the abandoned infrastructure of down-at-heels shopping centers and cracker-box apartments. I remembered a pungent dish of goat stew in a dimly lit diner on a long-lost Saturday afternoon when the thick salt air crept up the bayous off the Gulf of Mexico. I imagined Mary’s boyfriend there, another Nigerian immigrant in Houston. This coincidence felt like another fold in the weave of our household, binding our lives together. Time was coincidence and geography an illusion, or perhaps the other way around.

  Mary was alone now, and being alone was her greatest fear. Still she showed up every morning. In between crying jags, she still laughed. Once a door closed or an option disappeared, it was dead to her, and her brain heaved forward, combing through alternate possibilities without perceptible regret or frustration.

  I was grateful that my children were growing up in her shadow. I hoped she would rub off on them.

  I hoped she would rub off on me, too.

  Chapter 23

  “Ma’am,” Pooja said very quickly one morning. “My family is coming.”

  “What?” Couldn’t anybody ever, just once, let me drink my first cup of coffee before hurling complex topics in my direction? “Who’s coming? Coming where?”

  “My son,” she said. “And my father.”

  “That’s great! To Delhi?” This didn’t sound great at all, especially at seven in the morning.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “When?”

  “Next week they will come.”

  “They’re coming on the train?” I didn’t care how they were coming. It was just something to say while I glared at the stove-top coffeepot, willing it to boil.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You must be really happy.” My cheeks were frozen in the grin. This grin is too much, I thought.

  “Yes, ma’am.” She grinned back, gentle and bashful and crooked of tooth, and my trepidation softened.

  Of course, this is good, I scolded myself.

  Pooja loved her family. She told stories about them. She cried over them. She showed me their pictures and complained about them and worried over them. She screamed at them, sometimes, on the phone in our kitchen. She eulogized them, other times, as if they were already dead.

  But Pooja’s life in Delhi was hardly an Indian family ideal. She had taken at least one lover, partied in clubs, gone forth and let the city knock her around. She drank and lost things. She kept breaking her glasses. I supposed that some of that, most of that, must be hidden from her father. And now Pooja would show her life in all its prosaic details—where she bought her food, the house she cleaned for a living, and she’d be forced to see it fresh through their eyes. And they would show themselves, too, rough against the city backdrop, and they would all sleep together in Pooja’s tiny rooms in our backyard.

  I’d lived away from my own family long enough to know that a single visit can destabilize everything. Visitors raise questions without saying a word—their presence, their eyes, their unspoken thoughts. Pooja might be knocked askew. After the recent traumas of the beating and the drinking, I couldn’t stand the idea of Pooja becoming any less stable. And then, too, I didn’t know what would be expected of me. They were coming because Pooja’s father needed eye surgery. A botched cataract operation back home had left a stray eyelash embedded in his eyeball.

  “Take them out to lunch,” counseled a friend. “Take them to, like, Pizza Express.”

  “You think they’d like that?”

  “I think so,” she said. “It’s a nice gesture.”

  “It might be awkward.”

  “Definitely, it will be awkward,” she agreed. “But afterward everybody will be glad.”

  This was sensible advice, but I couldn’t bring myself to suggest it to Pooja. I worried that she’d find the invitation condescending, but would nevertheless feel obliged to accept. I pictured us all eating mediocre pizza and forcing small talk. I tried to imagine whether my kids would come and, if they did, whether Pooja would help wash their hands and cut up their food. I imagined her son watching her, and imagined myself watching her son watch Pooja. I did not invite Pooja and her family to Pizza Express.

  Anyway, Tom had other ideas.

  “Let’s send Pooja and her family to Agra,” he suggested one night as we brushed our teeth.

  “What?” I was flummoxed. “Why?”

  “Don’t you think they would like to see the Taj Mahal?” His tone implied that my question was truly moronic.

  “Ummm.” My immediate reaction was—no, they would not like to see the Taj Mahal! Fresh off a long and uncomfortable train journey, they’d be plunged into one of the world’s most crowded tourist sites to be pestered by hawkers and sold overpriced food that might very well give them diarrhea, all so they could crane their necks for a glimpse of the familiar marble walls.

  I had to admit, though, Tom had a sense about these things, and he and Pooja seemed to understand each other. Perhaps he intuited some unsatisfied yearning. Tom enjoys iconic sightseeing more than anybody I’ve ever known. Museums and monuments were a staple of our courtship and family life. Maybe this was another way Pooja and Tom were alike.

  “Tom and I were talking,” I told Pooja the next day. “He thought your family might like to see the Taj Mahal.”

  Her face was carefully empty.

  “While they’re in town.”

  She said nothing.

  “I mean—we’d pay! We’d be happy to—”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “It’s not—I mean—it was Tom’s idea—”

  “Thank you, ma’am. No, I mean—”

  “I know it’s a hard trip.”

  “No, ma’am. It’s nice of Sir. It’s just, you know, we have to get my father’s surgery done. We can’t travel.”

  “Of course.”

  I was relieved. During this exchange, I’d imagined the uncomfortable logistics of such a trip. I’d have to arrange a car, or book train tickets. I’d have to choose a hotel. I’d have to calculate the cost of entrance tickets and meals, and put cash in an envelope. Every decision would be fraught with awareness of how much we’d spend for our own family as opposed to what we spent on Pooja’s family.

  “Oh,” Tom said disapprovingly when I passed along her regrets. I knew that, in her place, he’d have borne any inconvenience and o
verlooked every awkward moment—just for the memory of taking his family to the Taj Mahal.

  Maybe Pooja wasn’t so much like Tom, after all.

  * * *

  ————

  The day of her family’s arrival finally came, and Pooja moved through the rooms restlessly. She scrubbed the frying pan, washed coffee cups, made beds. Then, at last, it was time.

  “I’ll be back in two hours,” she said and headed for the station.

  Two hours passed, then three, then four, and still she didn’t come back. I picked up the phone and put it down again. Stop. Pooja hadn’t seen her son in more than a year, and I wanted to interrupt their reunion just so Pooja could steam broccoli and fry chicken for our dinner? Leave her alone, I lectured myself. Be happy for her.

  But she has a job, she has responsibilities, I argued. She was the one who volunteered to come back in two hours. She was blowing her own deadline.

  I have work, too. I argued with air.

  “Have you called just to check?” Tom asked when I interrupted his work to consult.

  “I feel guilty.”

  “Calling to politely let her know you’re still aware that she works for us isn’t a bad idea,” Tom said.

  “You don’t think it’s unkind?”

  “I think it’s fine to say, ‘Hi, Pooja. I just wanted to check how things are going.’ ”

  “I’m making lunch,” Pooja explained giddily when I called. “I’ll be back at three.”

  “Okay,” I said coldly.

  “Is that all right?”

  “Of course!” Now I was embarrassed. Pooja could hear everything—my pettiness, my ambivalence.

  “Bye, ma’am,” she said. In the background I heard the laughter and clank of family.

  * * *

  ————

  Pooja’s father and son were waiting on the street when I came back from school drop. They stood at a distance, as if they had nothing to do with each other. It was the morning of the surgery, and they were waiting for my car.

  Pooja’s father was not, as I’d envisioned, a towering man of thick hands and a majestic head. He was short and slight, and his back curved in a subservient stoop. The eye was taped shut, and his head bobbed and rocked as if he were a bird pecking for grain. Pooja’s son, Aryan, the small boy of my imagination, towered over his grandfather. He had a long, lean frame, trendy sports clothes, and a hard jaw.

  I climbed out of the car, and we all said hello.

  “You’re okay? Comfortable?” I said.

  “Yes, yes.”

  “Thank you,” added Pooja’s father, too sincerely for comfort. In the end, we’d paid for the surgery instead of the trip to Agra. The money made everything strange.

  The surgery was quick. They were back from the clinic before lunch. Pooja fed Patrick peas and pasta, spooned yogurt into his mouth, and sang his favorite Hindi song about a wooden rocking horse that turns into a real horse and runs away.

  In the servants’ quarter out back, Aryan looked after his grandfather. It was understood that Pooja had to work.

  * * *

  ————

  The January sky hung drab and dirty over the city. Winter flowers bloomed in the gardens: brilliant, bitter blossoms of chrysanthemum and marigold. Aryan played soccer in the park, a stretch of slicked mud and scabbing grass. When the sun punctured the clouds our neighbors prowled back and forth, barking into their iPhones and taking vitamins from the faint rays.

  Aryan was bored. Our neighborhood was just a place for rich people to live. There was no teahouse; no cheap café; no lively shopping center. Soon he left to stay with his aunt, who worked in a neighboring city full of skyscrapers and shopping malls.

  “It’s okay.” Pooja seemed to mean it. “There’s more for him to do there.”

  I lurked on Facebook as Pooja’s sister posted pictures of Aryan’s adventures. Mugging at the mall in knockoff Timberlands and skinny jeans. Pushing a cart at the supermarket. Infinite in an amusement hall of mirrors.

  Then he came back to Pooja, and she swooned around the kitchen like a teenager in love.

  “He’s like a little boy,” she gushed. “He sits by me. He stays close. He says, ‘Mommy, let me take care of you.’ He says, ‘Mommy, you won’t have to work forever.’ ”

  “He missed you,” I said. “That’s so sweet.” I, too, clung to these affectionate anecdotes. I badly wanted to believe their relationship could thrive despite the separation, that it was perfectly fine for Aryan to live with his grandfather in the mountains while Pooja played a bit part in raising my children.

  “I’m so happy,” Pooja said, and I believed her.

  A few days later she was yelling on the phone.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Sorry, ma’am,” she said. “It’s my sister.”

  “You’re fighting with your sister?”

  She grinned sheepishly. “We together had a fight with my father.”

  “Oh no,” I said. “What happened?”

  “He’s just like that,” she said, defiant but evasive. “He got upset the other night. He was yelling at me, ‘You’re no daughter of mine!’ And my sister defended me. So now everybody is upset.”

  “That sounds bad.”

  “Yes, ma’am. But it’s okay. We’re always like that.”

  “Fighting?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Oh. Well, I hope it gets better.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  * * *

  ————

  I thought Pooja might crash into another depression after her son left, but instead there was a lingering lightness.

  “Aryan was talking to me seriously about his plans,” she told me. “He wants to play football. He wants to try out for the teams. If he doesn’t make it, he wants to join the army.”

  “The army!”

  “He was saying like that. He was telling me, ‘Don’t worry, Mommy. I will take care of you.’ ”

  These possibilities glittered in her palm like gathered shells, various and thrilling. Her son the soldier. Her son the student. Her son the soccer star.

  “What about you?” I asked. “What do you want to do?”

  Sometimes I tried to imagine Pooja in her old age, but the picture never came. I had a vague idea of villages, mountains, grandchildren. I didn’t know if these images were realistic.

  “I dunno,” Pooja said. Her fingers fiddled with our jars of sugar and salt; tea and coffee. “It would be good if I could work overseas. I could save a lot of money then.”

  “You mean with a family?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Maybe that will happen,” I said lightly. I knew we’d never take any of these women out of India. “But your son—”

  “That’s the problem.”

  “He’s getting bigger now,” I pointed out.

  “If I could go out for a few years and save some real money, I know what I would do.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I’d open a guesthouse back in Darjeeling,” she said. “A guesthouse and restaurant. My sister and I always talk about it.”

  “Fantastic idea,” I enthused. “You’d be so good at that.”

  “You think so?” Pooja said.

  “Definitely,” I said. “Amazing. You should be in charge of the food.”

  We are perfectly programmed, we Americans, to pour enthusiasm on every plan that comes our way. We believe decent manners require us to tell one another, constantly, that we can do anything, we deserve better, we must never relinquish our dreams. I have often wondered, during these long years abroad, whether this habit is useful or even kind. Still I am a product of my upbringing.

  “I don’t know,” Pooja demurred. “That’s what
I’d like to do.”

  I knew Tom would be interested in this exchange.

  “We’re not taking Pooja back to America,” he said immediately.

  “Of course not.” What was he even talking about?

  “I actually would think it was a great idea—”

  “I wouldn’t.” The hell?

  “—but there’s no way we’re taking an alcoholic back to the U.S.”

  “There’s no way we’re taking anybody back to the U.S.”

  “I don’t know,” Tom mused.

  I tucked this conversation away for future argument. I was still thinking about Pooja.

  “I was struck by her guesthouse idea.”

  “It would be great,” Tom agreed. “She’d do it just right.”

  “I think so, too.”

  “If she can control the drinking.”

  “Right.”

  “You know what we could do?”

  A rush of happiness opened through my belly. I knew before he said it that, for once, we had exactly the same idea.

  “What?” I couldn’t bear to be wrong.

  “When we finally leave here, we could give her a chunk of cash. It wouldn’t take that much to open a place like that here.”

  “I was thinking exactly the same thing,” I said, beaming.

  “It would be nice to do something for Pooja.”

  “It could be life changing for her.”

  “She deserves it.”

  “And it would be good for us.”

  “I hear you,” Tom said.

  “I always think, with every woman, that when we say good-bye I’ll give her a lot of money,” I said. “I’ll make it so, in the end, it was good for her. But somehow we never get that far. Things always fall apart first.”

  “Well,” said Tom. “Let’s see how it goes.”

  “Yeah.”

  Chapter 24

  That spring we experimented with “staycations”—leaving the boys with Mary and checking into a hotel overnight. This, of course, was Tom’s idea. I was too neurotic to pretend we had no children, even for a few hours. But in the interest of marital upkeep, I tried. I’d dab on a little makeup and wear something other than jeans, and upon seeing an immaculate king bed in a chamber swaddled in silence, I’d refrain from suggesting we tuck ourselves under the covers immediately and sleep until lunchtime the next day. I tried to relish his-and-hers massages and dinners in lush gardens even though I, for one, was far too tense to experience any recreation.