Yes, she seduced me. She brushed her lips against mine in sudden tight corners, she threw me insolent smiles across a crowded room, she pulled my hair as I passed her in the staff room. I should be feeling shame and guilt and worse, dreaming so wild with a depressed mother in the room beside me. But I held a pillow to my stomach and longed for her, the air around her.
I wanted to go back and sit beside her on Merch’s steps and run my hand through her hair. It was just yesterday, although it had drifted quite far away already.
I had sat beside Pin on the step, contrite. The stone was damp from all the rain, I could feel it through the thick cotton of my salwar. “I’m sorry,” I said.
She did not look up. Her eyes were red-rimmed. I could see she had been crying. She was angry with me, and she had every right to be.
I had coaxed and cajoled her into coming to the staff dining room for lunch. All sorts of business, such as announcements, plans, and duty-swaps were conducted at this time, and all teachers, including the day teachers, were supposed to attend. Pin never did. As I spent more time with her, I realized that she avoided Nelson.
I had been working on her for weeks, in subtle and not so subtle ways, trying to get her to come for lunch. In my grand plan, this was the first step towards social rehabilitation. I did it because I thought that if she calmed down and saw how easy it was to stick to the rules and be accepted, she would be less angry at the world. I thought, naïvely, that it was all as simple as that. And if I am honest with myself, I must admit that I thought it would earn me a brownie point. Miss Nelson would know I was a “good influence” on the wayward Miss Moira Prince.
In the end, Pin came to lunch to make me happy. Protocol was more relaxed at lunch, teachers straggled in and sat wherever they liked. I was about to sit down at the table on the far right with Pin when Miss Nelson walked in. I sensed Pin stiffen in anticipation of what she might say. Nelson walked towards our table, rubbing her hands. “Ah, Moira! Well, good afternoon, Moira,” she said with what I imagined to be a welcoming stress on the “good,” and a pleased expression on her wide face. I sensed Pin straighten up, fill out. I felt vindicated.
And then, Nelson turned to me. “Charulata, I need to discuss taking over some of Miss Debabushnam’s classes with you,” she said, putting a hand on my shoulder, ignoring the Prince. “She is going to be away next week. She has a family situation. Why don’t you sit with me, and we can go over the details,” she said, guiding me to her table.
Nelly sat at her fixed place at her table, which for dinner was the Superior White Table. At lunch it was like the captain’s table, by invitation only.
I shrugged my shoulders regretfully at Pin and followed Nelson like a little lamb, my fleece as white as snow.
The teachers came in and distributed themselves around the room. I was backing Pin, but I turned to see that not one teacher deigned to sit at her table for four. Even the Sunbeam teachers stayed away. I sat across from Miss Nelson as tensely as at a birthday party with a bunch of rowdy boys—dreading the loud pop of a burst balloon behind my ear.
It happened ten minutes into the meal. “Mallu,” she called to the bearer, and said in her perfect Marathi, “take away my plate. The dal is raw.” She slapped her napkin on the table. “Bring me the fruit,” she said, scraping her chair back with a screech that hurt your heart. She picked an orange from the tray and strode out of the room.
“I do not know how all of you can eat this rubbish day in and day out,” she called over her shoulder to the entire room. There was a minute of cowed silence before we put our spoons into our mouths.
Thank god they can’t see me flush, I thought. Thank god my blot is not raw these days. After lunch, I grabbed my raincoat and ran down Oak Lane to Merch’s, because it seemed the first logical place to look for her. Sunbeam was too far, and I knew she would not be lounging in the staff room. I found Merch’s room locked and Pin sitting on the top step. I sat down next to her, my thigh running along hers.
She was drawing letters with a stick on the stone step below her, her chin resting on her knees, the soft white nape of her neck exposed. A drop of rain slid off the angled eave and fell plop upon her head. I wanted to reach out and brush it off, but a perky little five-year-old was staring up at us from the dispensary window, and I kept my hands to myself.
“I’m sorry,” I said again. “You know, I don’t think she meant to hurt you. She was quite welcoming, in fact.”
Pin ignored me for a few minutes. Then she stood up. “OK, Miss Tinker Bell, if that is how you see it,” she said without looking at me and ran down the stairs. I caught up with her, but she turned towards the bazaar and I had to go back to school for class. She did not say good-bye, just walked on with a stony face.
I had not seen her since.
Ayi moaned. It was one soft sigh, but it brought me back to my senses. I must be the good daughter. It was the first time my mother needed me, and I would stay with her. I would cheer her up. The monsoon term ended on the ninth of September. Three more weeks of class, then three weeks of holidays. Ayi would get stronger, and I would go back to school. I would go back to Timmins for the winter term.
As soon as I made up my mind to stay, and decided that it was really not bad at all, the six weeks without Pin began to stretch out for a lifetime. I wanted to run back to tell her that she was right.
“I don’t go because Nelson can’t eat if I am in the same room,” Pin had said to me when I first asked her why she never came to the staff lunch. I had thought her paranoid or, at best, flippant. But I believed her now. Nelson had humiliated her. It was a public lashing. She had ensured that Pin would never come to lunch again. The two of them must have a tangled past, and Pin was right. I was Tinker Bell to think I could just come in and wave a small wand.
But I wanted to hug her to me. “I believe you now,” I wanted to say. “Nelson is twisted.” I wanted to protect her. Anything could happen in six weeks. No, I could not wait so long. I would go back on Sunday to get my things. Kolhapur was close enough; I could take a bus. I would go back every weekend. Yes, I thought, happily ordering the world, I would go back for the weekends and spend the weekdays with Ayi. Maybe Merch could teach in my place. Although the missionaries rarely allowed men into the hallowed halls, except for servants and priests, they had, for some unknown reason, allowed the Mystery Man access to the outer sanctum. He filled in at times for suddenly sick or called-away teachers. But of course he never strayed from the upper level, where the classrooms were. He said he had never even seen the staff dining room. So I slept in peace, and woke up deep into the night and had a sweet private little orgasm.
My ayi was up before me. She was sitting erect on her bed, meditating. She had started this a few years ago, said it made her feel much stronger. I watched her, pretending to be asleep. Her shoulders were straight, which I felt was a good sign. She got out of bed and went out to the bathroom. She walked with purpose, as usual. She was up. She was going to be strong, for me. I thought this was an excellent first step. I would cheer her up. I would patch her up and soon send her back to Baba, I thought, for I was still intent on stuffing it all back into the box.
“Let’s go shopping. I want to buy a Maharashtrian sari, with a border,” I said to Ayi as we sat with our morning tea. It was a way to draw her out, and I really did want a cotton sari. I was fed up with wearing my teaching outfits from Indore; I felt that they were tight and badly cut. Samar’s wife, a quiet girl who sometimes joined the group, wore traditional cotton border saris of different regions. I thought she looked most elegant. It was the new fashion among Bombay girls, I gathered, called ethnic chic. We went to the old market where the nine-yard sari ladies still shopped and sat on white cushions, our legs folded beneath us. I bought a deep green border sari, planning to wear it with a red shoe-flower behind my ear. I saw myself sitting demurely in a corner in Merch’s room. We then went looking for what was rumo
red to be the first shop that ever made the original Kolhapuri chappals now worn by all the Bombay girls. We found it finally, an intense hole-in-the-wall run by two doddering brothers. It was in the heart of the old city, and the narrow road was a noisy jumble of cows, bicycles, rickshaws, and vendors selling cheap plastic toys. It was easier to walk, and so we sent the protesting driver home, wandered around instead, and had tea and samosas at Rainbow Lunch Home. I was nearly boisterous, so eager was I to make Ayi laugh. And she did. She did laugh often, but I sensed that it was just a sound, made to keep me happy.
We returned by rickshaw in the evening, laden with packages. In the monsoons, when the courtyard could not be used, the action was usually in the wide, covered back veranda outside the kitchen. The drawing-room lights were turned on only when the men came home from work. The veranda was noisy with aunts and servants and children eating fresh fried fritters from a steel plate. There was a dip in the sound when we walked in. Everyone pretended not to look at Ayi. I knew they were cheering me on. It was as if a bed of nails had opened up to reveal a plump mattress inside. The comfort of a large family I felt that day for the first time.
“Really, Charu, you should go back and finish the term. No sense in giving up like that in the middle,” Ayi said that night when we had both gotten into our beds and tucked the mosquito nets around us.
“No, I want to stay,” I said.
“No, I tell you, I will be just fine. I will stay here for three weeks, and then, when your holidays come, you come here first, and then we will both go together to Indore.” She did not say “to Baba,” and again I began to wonder if Baba’s secret past had somehow come into focus again. Maybe the looming shadow had pounced.
Ayi was too fragile. I could not ask her now, of all times. But perhaps I could ask Tai.
I looked for a chance to find Tai alone, which was difficult since she was not a contemplative woman. Finally the next evening I came upon her combing her hair with a little bowl of oil beside her. Turned out she wanted to talk to me.
“Come here, Charu,” she called, “come, sit down.” She pointed beside her. “I want to ask you, has Shalini said anything to you?”
I shook my head. “No, nothing,” I said, my heart fluttering like the wings of a trapped parrot. “Why, did—did something new come up?”
Tai appraised me with a shrewd look. “Well, they have to tell you when they want to,” she muttered, scowling, as she always did when my little family was mentioned. But then her eyes softened. “She will be stronger, soon, don’t worry. You know, Charu, it is a woman’s job to protect her family. Everyone has to do it. Soon it will be your turn. Then you’ll understand. At a certain age, a woman begins to feel tired of it all. Sometimes you have to put your load down. Your mother is tired. Now you have to help her. We all have to help her.”
Tai’s hair was done. Oiled, plaited, and wound into a small bun with a net around it. She wrapped up the conversation with a Tai special. Tai was famous for ending all conversations with a broader lecture on life. “I told your ayi. Some things we women just have to ignore. I told her, don’t look up. In life, one must always look down at those below you, and be happy.”
I had no choice but to be content with that for now.
By Sunday morning Ayi was so much better that Tai herself thought it was wise for me to finish my stint and come back. “It is only three weeks, and we will all look after her,” she said.
Tai, of course, chalked this up as a personal triumph. She had come in and solved the family problem, yet again. Her power remained intact. She decided that morning, quite abruptly, which was the way she made most of her decisions, to go to Igatpuri for a week. Surekha, the second sister, lived there, and she had found a prospective girl for Tai’s son. Tai was in the midst of choosing a bride for her son and was dashing around looking for the right girl. Her son would then view the selected ones.
“After that, I am going to find you a boy. I have a very good family in mind,” she said, and smiled ominously. I was sure it would be a widower from Surat with two young children. He would comb his oily black hair in a Rajesh Khanna puff.
She waddled out of the house in triumph, her breasts preceding her like wind-puffed sails.
From the time I was a baby, the custom had been set. I was taken to touch Dada’s feet when I came to Kolhapur, and I went in to touch his feet when I left. So I went into his room to say good-bye. The old man teared up again a bit, but he smiled. “Shabash, Charu, you will be a strong girl,” he said. “I am glad, because you will need it.” He patted my back. I took it for what it was: It was the truth. He looked into my face again. I knew now he always would.
I left in the afternoon, in the white Ambassador with Sayed driving, the combination always considered safest for long-distance travel. Ayi stood at the gate until my car turned the corner, and I knew that her eyes would be wet. I knew she had put on a brave front; I hoped her front would harden into a shell. But she will be just fine, I assured myself. I was armed with fresh-ground garlic chutney, a bag of good Kolhapur rice, and a knack for making bhakarwadi. Tai, Ayi, and I had rolled them out for a huge Sunday lunch.
“Shalini tai is much better as soon as she saw you,” said Sayed while driving back. He had always been the driver trusted with the girls. I think he had even carried me as a child, from the car to my mother as she shopped for saris with her sisters, and I felt he was proud of me. I realized this was the first time in Kolhapur when I had not felt that the blot covered my entire face.
As we turned the corner on the ghat up from Vai, the fog became thick, and soon we could see almost nothing. The rain became heavier as we climbed up the ghat, and Sayed slowed the car to a crawl. It was a like a punch to the head, diving back into the Panchgani rain.
Eleven
Transport
I walked in just as the school was sitting down for dinner. The tin-roofed rain walk led straight down through the center of the school, plunging me into the post-grace chatter of the dining room. The lights had gone off. The dining room was lit by four hissing gas lanterns hung on hooks from the ceiling. I took a candle from the dispensary, called a cheery “hello” to Sister Richards, and put down my bags, meaning to change and go for dinner. But I could not. I could not even stay in my room for more than a minute. I washed my face, smoothed my hair, and walked out into the wet night. I felt an urgent need to see her. I feared that something terrible had happened to her.
I decided to go to Merch. Maybe she would be there. I stood outside, the rain dripping down my nose, and looked in to see Samar and his wife laughing on the carpet, but not her. I could not go in. I went on to Sunbeam. Let her be there, I prayed to my emergency god. Let her be there, and I will hug her, hold her, feel her heart beat against mine, and leave.
She was wearing a loose white khadi shirt, her sleeves rolled up to the elbow. She was sitting on a mattress, smoking a joint. Her knees were folded up to her chin, her lips pouting. She did not see me at the back window. I walked through the dank, dark kitchen and burst into her room. I do not know when she jumped up. But, lithe as a cat, she was at the door. We hugged and hugged and hugged again, and then were on the bed. And it was I who made love to her. After all those kisses, after all those stolen kisses, all those times in the backseat of a wet car, or wet outside my bedroom door, or in the wind on Merch’s balcony, after all those times when I had pulled away in fear or guilt, we traveled a new world together that night, this I know. Our lovemaking was so smooth and sweet, it was a night dipped in honey.
Before dawn, while she was still sleeping, snoring softly, with her nose in the pillow, I sneaked out and walked back to my room, followed by barking dogs. The rain had turned light, but it still dripped around my raincoat hood like a curtain. The town was asleep. I was afraid for my life, but I held her body like a warm shield under my raincoat. As I was going down Oak Lane, I heard a swish, and a long minute later, a bicycle went care
ening down the slippery slope, the milkman whistling above his jangling cans.
From then on, we could not stay apart. We started meeting in the afternoons, on the days I did not have class. I would walk out from the back, straight after lunch. I felt invisible in the pouring rain. She had the keys to Merch’s rooms and would be waiting for me, listening to music.
Merch, she always said, was playing bridge with Mr. Blind Irani. I did not once ask her if Merch knew about us. I did not want to know. I felt I loved Merch too, in a fashion. There was a romance between us, but it was like lace.
It was a flirtation of smiles and small confidences. I thought of myself as a listener, but I found that with him, I talked. Our friendship was mellow and light, like the cigarette smoke that curled between us beside the table lamp.
If Merch was air, Prince was fire.
On a voluptuous afternoon, she slid my hair around my body. “Charulata unbound,” she said.
She did not talk about her past. When she brooded, I did not enter. I could see the shift in her brittle eyes.
I was shuttling between green eyes. But they are so very different, the green eyes of the two people I love most, I thought. Ayi’s eyes were transparent. They were like two little conductors. They passed on her love, her laughter, her sadness. Everyone—government clerks, vegetable vendors, neighbors and schoolteachers—everyone was always enchanted by Ayi. My mother was the lovely lady with the light eyes.
Pin’s eyes were flecked with yellow. They were like marbles, glassy with hidden secrets. “What does it feel like,” she whispered once, as we lay in bed, “to be loved without conditions?”
“Nobody is loved without conditions,” I said, automatically.
“I bet you are,” she quipped, licking my shoulder.
“Well, I guess I am,” I conceded at first, and then thought about it. “I guess I am the center of their universe. I mean my parents’. But it is conditional. As long as I go along with their values. I suppose as long as I am a good girl.”
Miss Timmins' School for Girls Page 11