The Weight of Heaven

by Thrity Umrigar

“Avoidance of a question is not the same as answering it.”

  “And what is that? Something you read in a Chinese fortune cookie?”

  “Yup. Confucius say: Avoidance of a question is not the same as answering it.”

  Ellie laughed again. “You must’ve been one heck of an investigative reporter.”

  “That I was. Guilty as charged.” Nandita paused for a moment. “Speaking of which. I got a call from a journalist in Mumbai this morning. He works for a small political weekly. I’m sorry to tell you this, El, but he was asking me what I’d heard about the death of a young political worker in police custody. And what the mood in the village was and all that.”

  Ellie suddenly had a sour feeling in her stomach. “What did you say?”

  “I didn’t know what to say. So I told him I was a friend of yours and that it would be a conflict for me to talk about the situation. He wasn’t too happy.”

  Ellie knew what it must’ve cost Nandita not to help a fellow journalist, not to weigh in on an incident that ordinarily she would have done her best to publicize. She felt a lump form in her throat and waited for it to clear before she spoke. “Thank you, Nandita,” she said. “I know that must have been really hard for you. And I’m sorry you’re getting dragged into this mess.”

  Nandita shrugged. “I’ve been dragged into worse messes, believe me,” she said lightly. “And anyway, I never took a pledge to help every journalist who comes looking for me. So to hell with it. I’m sitting this one out.” She patted Ellie’s thigh. “Now, cheer up, won’t you? Otherwise I’ll regret having said anything to you.”

  “Don’t. You know me. I don’t care how painful the truth is—I’d rather know something than be in the dark.”

  “I’m the same way.” Nandita smiled, swerving to avoid an on-coming car. “I think that’s why I became a reporter.”

  As always, a crowd of children gathered around the car as they pulled into the dirt road that led to the NIRAL clinic. “Hello, Binu, hi Raja,” Ellie called as she recognized some of the children who had come to greet them. “How are all of you?”

  In reply, she heard a chorus of voices say, in that singsong manner of theirs, “Fine.” The way they stretched the word out into two syllables made Ellie laugh. She was happy to be here, had missed this place and these children more than she’d known, she realized.

  Several of the kids grabbed her forearm so that they looked like a round cloud of dust as they made their way into the classroom at one end of the building. Ellie looked over to where Nandita was standing with her own young charges. “Shall I run the class with the children first?” she called. “Meet with the women later?”

  “Sure. I have to do some paperwork, anyway. Ordered the vaccines this week, and I want to make sure they’re here. I’ll send Rakesh out to let the women know you’re in today.”

  “Make sure he informs Radha,” she called as she opened the blue wooden door that led to the small classroom. “She was really having a hard time the last time I saw her. I want to follow up with her today.”

  It was hot inside the room. Ellie opened the single window and turned on a table fan. “Haven’t you been meeting in here last week?” she asked and was greeted by a chorus of, “No, miss.”

  “So Asha didn’t run the class?” Asha was a shy nineteen-year-old villager who had finished high school and was now employed by NIRAL to tutor the younger kids.

  “No, miss.”

  “Well, then we have a lot of work to do.” She looked over the class, which had students ranging from four to twelve. She sorted the children according to their reading proficiencies and began with the first group. Some of the kids were learning the alphabet; others were reading on their own; a few of the really bright ones were able to comprehend the science and history textbooks she had purchased for them. Anu, one of the older girls, raised her hand and asked for permission to work on a jigsaw puzzle while Ellie was tending to the younger kids. Ellie hesitated, loath to give up any more valuable reading time, but the pleading look on Anu’s face made her say yes. “Ten minutes on the puzzle,” she instructed them, ignoring their groans of protest. “Then, start reading.”

  An hour and a half later, Asha entered the classroom and stood in the back, Ellie’s cue to wrap up the class. “Okay,” she said. “See you all on Wednesday.”

  She and Asha walked out of the stuffy classroom into the bright light of the day. “How come there was no class last week?” Ellie asked.

  Asha looked at her dust-covered feet. “We were too busy with the AIDS prevention class, miss,” she mumbled.

  Shit. She had forgotten. Last week had been AIDS education week. And Nandita had been too decent to mention it to her.

  “Shall we start our rounds, miss?” Asha asked. “Many-many women waiting to see you today.”

  “Sure,” Ellie replied. “But listen, did you find Radha? She was here two weeks ago. I need to spend some extra time with her.” Radha had come to the clinic bearing black marks on her chocolate brown skin, signatures of her husband’s violence. Those big, dark eyes, glistening with unshed tears, had haunted Ellie, had made her want to confront Radha’s husband, even while she knew that doing so would only make life harder for the girl.

  “She afraid to come to the clinic, miss. Says we should come to her house.”

  Ellie glanced at her watch. “Okay. Let’s attend to the women at the clinic first. I’ll make sure to keep some time to go see Radha after that.”

  It was almost three thirty by the time they got done at the clinic. As always, Ellie left the building drained in a way she never had been even after spending a full day at her practice in Ann Arbor. The problems of the women of Girbaug seemed so intractable to her—impoverished mothers-in-law demanding more dowries from the penniless girls who married into their families; drunken husbands who routinely beat their wives and children to relieve their frustration at being squeezed by ruthless landlords and moneylenders; women who had given birth to three consecutive daughters being shunned by the community; middle-aged women who cried for no apparent reason and carried themselves in that listless way that Ellie recognized as depression.

  Most of the time, Ellie was at a loss as to what advice to give them. All the things that she had suggested to her mostly white, middle-class clientele in Michigan seemed laughable here. What could she ask these women to do? Go to the gym to combat depression? Take Prozac when they could barely afford wheat for their bread? Join Al Anon to learn to accept the things and behaviors they couldn’t change? These women were masters of acceptance—already they accepted droughts and floods and infections and disease and hunger. As for asking them to change their own behaviors, what would that do? There were no shelters for battered women that they could go to, no twelve-step programs that their husbands could enter, no social institutions to support women who deviated from the norm. So Ellie mostly listened while they spoke their woes, nodding sympathetically, sometimes cradling them as they sobbed and cursed their bad luck. She told herself that simply giving these women, who nobody saw as anything beyond mother-sister-wife, a chance to vent was worth something. Once in a while she suggested some small behavior modification, and mostly they told her why that wouldn’t work, but sometimes a woman returned the following week with a story of minor success, thanking Ellie for the suggestion. Those small victories Ellie carried around with her the rest of the week.

  Now, she staggered out of the clinic with Asha, who acted as her translator, by her side. She squinted at the sun and at the dry, dusty road that stretched before them. Despite the recent rains, the land looked as parched and thirsty as ever. “Where does Radha live?” she asked.

  “Very close by, only,” Asha said.

  As always, Ellie was impressed by the simplicity and cleanliness of the mud huts that stood near each other as they entered the main area of the village. A few dogs were lying on their sides under the shade of a large tree near the cluster of houses, but they merely raised their heads and yawned luxuriousl
y as the two women walked past. Ellie recalled what Nandita said—how rural poverty looked much cleaner than urban poverty—and, remembering the slums that she’d seen during her visits to Bombay, she agreed. Radha’s house had a traditional grass roof, one of the few of its kind. Most of the houses around hers had metal sheeting, which raised the indoor temperature much more than the cooling grass. But Asha had explained to Ellie that the grass roof had to be replaced each year, and in the last few years, the grass was not growing as abundantly as it always had. A few chickens pecked near their feet as Asha knocked on the door. A weak voice answered in Hindi, asking them to enter. They opened the bamboo door and walked in.

  It was dark inside the house—like many in the village, Radha’s house had no electricity. A kerosene lamp blazed in front of the girl, who sat on her haunches on the floor, which Ellie knew the villagers made out of a plaster of mud and cow dung. Despite the darkness in the room, Ellie sensed that the girl appeared even more dejected than a few weeks ago. “Namaste, Radha,” Asha said, and the girl replied, “Namaste,” as she rose off the floor. Her voice was dull, her movements slow.

  Ellie grabbed the girl’s hand and squeezed it in greeting, noticing the marks on her forearm as she did so. “Please to sit,” Radha said, her glance including both Asha and Ellie, and all three women sat on the floor, Radha and Asha on their haunches and Ellie cross-legged. “How are you, Radha?” Ellie asked, Asha translating for her.

  In reply, Radha lowered the pallov of her sari and opened a button on her blouse so that the other two could see the marks on her chest. Ellie swallowed the gasp of horror that sprang to her lips. Instead, she asked, “Has he always beaten you, Radha? And how long have you two been married?” She looked around the hut. “Who else lives here?”

  “We married when I was sixteen, didi,” the girl replied in Hindi. “And first few years my husband was very nice. After the birth of my son, we were very happy.” Her face fell. “But what to do, didi? He lost his job six months ago, and now we have no income. All day he goes out looking for the leaves, but the guards chase him away.”

  “What guards? What did he do for a living?” Ellie asked, marveling at the sudden torrent of words that spilled from Radha’s mouth. She looked expectantly at Asha, waiting for her to interpret Radha’s words. But Asha looked uncharacteristically embarrassed. “All rubbish she’s saying, miss,” she mumbled.

  “Hey,” Ellie said. “I need to know what Radha said. Otherwise, we can’t help her, can we?”

  Radha continued to speak and Asha gazed quickly from one woman to the next before translating. “She says her husband used to cut leaves from the girbal tree, make a bundle, and sell to other villages nearby, miss,” she said. “Villagers use the paste of those leaves for medicine. But then the company say that the trees now belong to them, not to the villagers. Put up big signs saying, ‘Private Property. No trespassing.’ So he is trying to steal some leaves when the guards are not looking, but they find him and give him a beating. Now he is afraid to go back, miss. So no moneys in the family plus peoples getting sick without the leaf paste.”

  Ellie felt her heart pounding. “What’s the name of the company?” But before Asha could reply, “It’s HerbalSolutions, isn’t it?”

  Asha bowed her head. “Yes, miss,” she said simply.

  Despite herself, she heard herself asking, “Does—does she know my husband is—that he works for the company?”

  Asha was twisting the pallov of her sari in embarrassment. “That I don’t know, miss.”

  Ellie stared into the flame of the kerosene lamp, aware that Radha was looking at her, waiting for her to speak. There was a sour taste in her mouth. Who are you kidding? she said to herself. Pretending to help these people when your very presence, perhaps even your very existence, causes them grief and misery?

  The door opened, and a tall, gaunt-looking man with a drooping mustache walked in. Ellie saw that it took a second for his eyes to adjust to the dark room, but as his eyes fell upon them, his slack face grew suddenly animated. He turned to Radha and spoke to her in rapid-fire Hindi, all the while locking eyes with Ellie. Radha answered him in a dull, heavy voice, staring at the floor the whole time. Ellie took advantage of this exchange to whisper to Asha, “Is this her husband?” to which Asha nodded yes.

  But the man must have heard her because now he loomed over her, his breathing heavy and jagged. Wagging his index finger, he spoke to Asha, a deluge of angry words, hard and biting, that brought a scowl to Asha’s usually calm face. She tried to interrupt him several times, but he cut her off, gesticulating wildly, and finally Asha gave up and grew silent. The man went on and on, occasionally slipping in a word that Ellie understood. She thought she heard him say “company” and “police.” After what seemed like an interminable length of time, he finally fell silent, although his eyes were still wild-looking. Nobody spoke for a second, and then he said, “Bolo,” to Asha, pointing to Ellie with his chin. Ellie knew that bolo meant to speak, so she understood that he wanted her to translate for him.

  But she would not give him that satisfaction. Leaping to her feet, she grabbed Asha’s hand. “Come on, Asha,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  “Go, go,” the man said, having understood what she’d said in English. And then, deliberately, looking her straight in the eye, “America, go home.”

  A small crowd had gathered outside Radha’s hut, but nobody said a word as Asha and Ellie emerged. Even the children and chickens seemed subdued. The two women walked rapidly and silently away from the cluster of houses. Behind them, they could still hear the man shouting from the doorway. Ellie felt a twinge of fear at having left Radha alone with her angry husband but comforted herself by believing that the crowd would intervene. It struck her that that could be a strategy that she could teach the village’s many victims of domestic abuse—they come to each other’s help. Could they? Would they? she wondered.

  They were at a safe distance from the houses, now. She turned to the young woman walking next to her. “Asha, I need you to tell me everything the husband said. Please, don’t be embarrassed. You won’t hurt my feelings, honest.”

  Asha didn’t seem too convinced. “He’s mad man, miss,” she started, but seeing the look on Ellie’s face, she stopped. And started again. “He says the company ruin him twice—first it take away his leaf business and also, it kill his best friend. He says that Anand, the boy who was killed by police, was his best friend since day he was born. So he hate the company.” Asha looked shocked and afraid, as if she was the one who had expressed these sentiments.

  “Go on,” Ellie said. “Tell me everything.”

  “Nothing more to tell, miss. He says he doesn’t want us entering his home again. Says English peoples brings bad luck wherever they go—in Iraq and in Girbaug.”

  “Oh, please,” Ellie said. “That’s a bit of a stretch.”

  Asha was not familiar with the expression. “Excuse, miss?”

  Ellie shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. Tell me, do—do the others in the village feel the same way about me?” She was surprised to hear the tremor in her voice.

  “All the women like you, miss,” Asha said eagerly. “They say you help them. But ever since Anand die, there is much anger. Peoples say, our life do not matter to the big sahibs. And we all use the girbal tree our whole lives, miss. We boil it in our tea, make paste out of it. Some of the older peoples chew it. They our trees, miss. How can a company come and buy our trees?”

  Ellie was quiet, unsure of how to answer that question, unable to tell Asha that she had asked the same question of Frank.

  Asha touched Ellie’s shoulder. “That man is total stupid,” she said. “You stay with us, miss.”

  Ellie heard in the young woman’s voice the desire to appease, the natural hospitality and generosity that seemed to come so naturally to the Indians she’d met. She smiled. “I’m not going anywhere,” she said lightly. “Don’t you worry.”

  Nandita was walking rapidly to
ward them as they approached the clinic’s compound. “What happened?” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to Radha’s house?” She looked angry.

  “Wow, news certainly travels fast in these parts,” Ellie said. Turning to Asha, she said, “Thanks for all your help today, sweetie. You worked so hard. I’ll see you Wednesday?”

  “Okay, miss,” Asha said. “Good evening.” The woman glanced at Nandita, nodded, and walked briskly away.

  “What happened?” Nandita said again, as soon as Asha was out of hearing range.

  “I’ll tell you in a minute. But can I have a cup of tea first?”

  Nandita must have heard something in her voice because she was immediately solicitous. “Of course. Come on.”

  In Nandita’s small office, Ellie blew on the hot glass of tea she had been handed on their way in. She took a few sips, trying to get her emotions under control before she told Nandita about her encounter with Radha’s husband. When she finished, Nandita looked at her for a full minute and then exhaled loudly. “I’m so sorry, Ellie. I don’t know what we could’ve done to prevent this.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Ellie protested. “You had nothing to do with this, Nan.” She closed her eyes for a second, trying to gather her thoughts. “I don’t even know who to blame for this mess. I know Pete Timberlake, the guy who started HerbalSolutions. I’ve known him for years. He and Frank went to college together. Pete’s a great guy. He’d be shocked if he knew how much grief he’s brought into the lives of people like Radha and her husband. If I know Pete, all he knew was that he’d bought a bunch of trees that nobody wanted and that seemed to have magical properties that helped Americans with diabetes. And yet, having met Radha and the others, I’m mad that people like them always seem to pay the price for someone else’s ignorance.”

  “But it isn’t an isolated instance, El,” Nandita said gently. Her voice was strained, as if she was torn between trying not to injure her friend’s feelings while also speaking the truth. “The West has such a terrible history of—”