“What happened?” Dr. A. had what looked like a hockey stick in her hand.
“I saw two men jumping the wall. I could only see their backs.”
“Anyone hurt?”
“No, Doctor.” Maya leapt to her feet; she was trembling.
“No crisis,” Dr. A. told me, “just local boys.”
“But shouldn’t we call the police?” I asked.
“No!” she snapped with her position-closed face on. “Get on with your work. We’ll put more barbed wire up later.”
I understood Dr. A.’s reluctance better than I had a few months ago. Calling the police might mean a bribe we could ill afford or long negotiations with the new Ministry of Health officials, who already watched us like hawks. And for me there was a new fear—one which brought me out in a cold sweat when I thought about it. I was here, officially, to write reports, not to deliver babies. I was two deliveries shy of my full midwifery certificate. Dr. A. had assured me she would write to the relevant examining bodies in England to see if an Indian delivery would be accepted, but I had never asked if I could see the actual papers. Now I wondered if the letter had been sent at all or whether staff shortages, and her new respect for my fine stitching, meant she’d chosen to ignore it. If the rubber-stampers found out, I could lose my job and my reputation and close the Home down.
* * *
I seemed to be making a habit of secrecy. I didn’t mention the intruders to Anto when I got home, even though the sight of their skinny backs, the speed with which they’d shimmied up that wall had replayed itself several times in my mind.
Walking up the path, through the mild peach-colored air of early evening, I saw Anto on the veranda playing chess with Uncle Josekutty, and the sight of them—whiskies, bare feet, dark heads bent together—was a comforting one. Later, after Uncle Josekutty had gone home, Anto and I sat in the courtyard at the back of the house and enjoyed the soft jasmine-scented breeze from the plant that now scrambled over our walls. I loved this time of day with him: the thrill, still, of our own house, the talk, him smoking a cigarette with the long fingers that would later touch me there and there.
“Do you mind being the new boy at work?” I asked him.
“No,” he said. “I’m very much on probation still with some of the doctors. They think I chose to live in England, so with them, beta minus minus at the moment but trying hard.”
Anto was strong like that: he’d learned how to be a survivor in a nonmean way; it was something I admired tremendously about him. He went on to talk eagerly about his work with his new boss, Dr. Sastry, whom he revered. “I can really work with him, and achieve,” he told me. They’d had a long conversation that day about the African sleeping sickness, and Anto had promised to dig out his PhD thesis and show it to him.
When he asked about my day, I gave him selected highlights of the group discussions. He told me he was surprised at how open the women were with us. I took a puff of his cigarette and immediately put it down, it made me feel so sick.
“There are definite taboo subjects,” I said, when I’d gone to get myself a glass of water. “Like today, when we talked about the imbalance of boys and girls in their villages, they were close as clams about it.”
“I’m not surprised,” Anto said. “Laws are changing all the time and these women will be useful scapegoats: some could even be had up for murder.”
He put his hand on my hair. There was a long, considering silence. “It would never bother me to have a little girl.” His voice was soft in the darkness. “Or a boy for that matter, if he came. It would be the greatest thing in the world.”
And I felt like the worst sneaky wife in the world.
I was still using my diaphragm, but not every time. I longed for children too. But not yet, not now, with things so very interesting at the Home.
Four days after this conversation I was sick in the morning. Kamalam had brought in fresh bananas, a mango, some dosas. Instead of eating them, I felt sweat break out along my hairline, a mild state of panic. Five minutes later, I was panting beside the commode. I did a few sums in my head, and if I hadn’t been feeling so lousy, I would have laughed, or cried. I was going to have a baby!
Deep in thought on my way to work, I decided I would tell Anto in a day or two. I wanted time to collect myself, to feel as thrilled as he would, because now everything would change.
Amma had already warned me that Thekkeden women always spent the last six weeks of their confinement at Mangalath. This might drive me mad. Who owns your body? Not me. Not now. I was excited but fizzing with nervous tension that morning.
Later, calmer and at home again, I sat on the swing on the veranda and the cards seemed to change inside my head, and it came to me in a blaze of happiness that this dazzling spot of consciousness inside me would soon be my first child.
* * *
I was in this strange jumble of emotions when I arrived at the Moonstone. Before I had time to unlatch the gate, Maya ran out to meet me, sunlight bouncing off her specs.
“Quickly!” she said. “Come! Mrs. Saraswati Nair is here, her waters have broken, she’s in a state. She is calling for you.”
“For me?”
“She says she wants the Englishwoman.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.”
My heart sank. All of us were a little scared of Mrs. Saraswati Nair, who had already attended two antenatal clinics. Small, politically passionate, and of a peppery disposition, she was cut from a different cloth than most of our patients. Originally from a high-caste Brahman family, she had declared herself a feminist and a campaigner before Independence, and she had married, for love, a prominent local lawyer.
During an early examination, she had asked Dr. A. rather peevishly what I, an Englishwoman, was doing there. Dr. A. had, for once, inflated my importance.
“She is part of worldwide gorement initiative to improve standards for village women, a highly trained midwife.”
“Are you quite sure she wants me?” I’d asked Dr. A. before she’d bustled off to another appointment.
Now as I changed into my white coat, I tried hard to control a wave of panic. Mrs. Saraswati Nair, with her clever, shrewd look and her legal training, had the power to raise my pulse without my even thinking about it. I knew she’d throw the rule book at me if anything went wrong.
I found her sitting in a chair beside the bed with a small suitcase beside her. Apart from a light sheen of perspiration on her forehead, she looked composed. Anu, a new nurse, came in and together we helped Mrs. Nair put on a hospital gown. While I was tying the straps behind her, we both laughed as her stomach bucked vigorously.
“So definitely a boy this time,” Mrs. Nair joked.
She already had a much older girl who was away studying at university. Her husband, she said, wanted a boy.
She was only one and a half fingers dilated, so I told her she could either lie down or walk. While she was walking, her contractions came irregularly for the next hour, and when we could, we walked arm in arm around the room and talked.
“I had no wish at first to become a lawyer,” she said. “It was my father who insisted on educating me. Now I like it.”
She stopped, blew out air, smiled, talked again. “I approve of what you women are doing here,”—puff, groan, puff—“but you must be very careful.” She sat down heavily, her face gleaming with sweat. “You can’t just take the traditional form and put a hammer to it. That’s a dangerous thing to do, particularly now.”
“Are any of your family members coming in?” I asked when she was two fingers dilated.
“No.” Her mouth turned down. “My family don’t speak to me now.”
“Why not?”
Mrs. Nair had begun to pant softly, like a marathon runner who knows there could be miles and miles ahead. I relaxed a little; she was a good patient.
�
��They are very traditional high-caste, so many rules . . .” She wiped her face with a towel. “Before my daughter was born, I had to stay with my mother-in-law for three months. Very boring, and I was not allowed out after dark. After the baby was born, I had to stay in for forty days. My parents-in-law wanted many grandchildren, so the whole thing would have taken up months and years of my life and made it impossible for me to work.”
“My husband and I have both broken with the past,” she continued after a pause. “We made our own wedding, and he supported all my law studies. Law is my language now,” she added fiercely, and then after a wince, “and this is my last baby.”
By eleven twenty-five Mrs. Nair, who at thirty-nine was an ancient mother by Indian standards, was still not in active labor. She lay on the bed, eyes wide open, looking pale and sweaty. After missing breakfast, I was starting to feel light-headed myself, and for one spiraling, panicky moment, my mind emptied as if I knew nothing, before I pulled myself together. I made myself breathe and wait.
“How is it going?” Maya poked her head around the door.
“Slow,” I whispered. “Contractions every ten to twelve minutes, lasting about fifty seconds. When will Dr. A. will be back?”
“Don’t know. Do you want food? Your face is pale.”
“No, thanks, not hungry. A glass of water.”
But Maya sent a nurse for a tiffin anyway. “I’ll sit with her for ten minutes,” she said, “if you need to rest.”
It felt too early to tell Maya or anyone at the Home that I might be having a baby too, but she was looking anxiously at me.
“It’s very hot in here. Nurse, a fan,” Maya snapped at Anusha. Like Dr. A., Maya didn’t waste her charm on underlings. “More towels too.”
I took a short break. When I got back, Mrs. Nair was crouched beside the bed, head resting on her arms, howling like a dog.
“A word, please,” Maya said curtly. We’d moved towards the end of the bed out of earshot. “The baby has turned. I have a mother and daughter in the class,” she whispered. “Name of Charu and Ammini. They are very experienced in massage. I’m going to get them.”
When the door closed, I turned to Mrs. Nair, held her damp hand, and heard my own heart beating.
“How are you feeling?”
“Horrible,” she gasped. “Worse than last time.”
“So, listen.” My heart was flipping around in my chest. “Everything is going to be all right, but your baby’s bottom will come out first, unless we try to turn it.” I blew out a couple of puffs of air.
When Charu and Ammini came silently into the room, they put the palms of their hands together, bowed low, scrubbed up at the sink, and moved, without panic, towards Mrs. Nair, now rolling her eyes in agony. They poured coconut oil into the palms of their hands and I watched in awe as they performed their massage with the confidence of two pianists who had duetted together for years. It was a beautiful thing to see, but after a while, Mrs. Nair pushed their hands away.
“I must leave the bed.” Her mouth was a rictus of pain.
When we’d helped her out, she got down on her knees and began to hug herself and howl.
“Try not to do that,” I told her, peeling her arms away from her side. “Keep your tummy open.” It was an instruction I’d learned from the Moonstone midwives. She gave me a look of ferocious dislike and was sick all over the floor.
“Check we have enough sterilized implements in the autoclave,” I told Maya a few moments later.
When Mrs. Nair was half lying on the bed again, breathing in short, anguished gasps, I saw Charu give the baby one last beefy shove, and joy of joys, I could feel through her tummy the knobs of a spinal cord. The baby had turned itself like an eel in a basket.
Less than twenty minutes later, Mrs. Nair gave a guttural cry. Her legs began to tremble.
“You’re doing wonderfully, Saraswati.” I rubbed her legs.
“Ippo varum—you good girl, almost there,” Maya assured her.
She closed her eyes; I thought she was going to give up, then came a string of words that sounded like desperate pleas to the gods she said she’d abandoned. It was the longest three or four moments of my life before she started to push again violently.
“Slow it down,” Maya told her. “Hold for a moment and then push.” A few seconds later: “Tulleh umm! Tulleh onnum! Loodi ippo varum! Push once more, about to come!”
After three more contractions, the baby’s head appeared, then nose, shoulders, a tiny hand, a perfect baby boy with a shock of black hair.
I suctioned the baby’s mouth, felt around his neck for the umbilical cord, and cut it, and then, because the baby wasn’t crying, Maya held him up by both heels and slapped him briskly on the bottom and he bawled. It was a beautiful sound that made everybody laugh, and then he was anointed with gold and honey. Maya said if he’d been born in his Brahman home, a lemon would have been tossed out the window.
Mrs. Nair lay in an ecstasy of exhaustion on the bed, her baby’s naked breast on hers. “My boy, my baby,” she crooned.
* * *
It was late by the time I left the Moonstone. I was charged with energy: I had delivered a perfectly formed baby in difficult circumstances, and I was having a baby myself!
But my legs felt leaden and achy when I started to walk, so I took a shortcut home, through the iron gate that led into the English Club, and out onto Saint Francis Street. The guards who sat near the gate usually let me through with a quiet, “Good night, madam,” but there was no one there tonight, and it looked deserted inside the gardens, the shadows lengthening.
In the tufty grass at the edge of the once-manicured lawn, I saw a pile of rusted croquet hoops, an old wooden tennis racquet press, and a faded cap. Some of the veranda’s rails had been chopped down, presumably for firewood. A mournful sight, like a still life for summer’s end, except I wasn’t feeling mournful at all. I was in a semi-ecstatic mood, thinking of the new baby, feeling a part of the abundant trees springing from the earth around me, all manner of trees—the palms, the banyan, the Indian bean tree with its fat waxy flowers—thinking how beautiful this country was and how much had changed in my life.
When I reached the clubhouse, I sat down on a bench in front of it, wanting to savor the moment. It was then that I felt the light changing behind me, the sound of an opening door.
“Madam.” The boy with the thin mustache who had called me Mrs. Queen when I’d bought sweets for Anto the other morning stood over me. I gazed up at skinny thighs in wrinkled trousers, a smiling face with cool calculating eyes.
“Don’t be frightened,” he said when he saw me jump. “I’ve been waiting for your return.” He handed me the light muslin scarf I often wore to protect my head from the heat. “You dropped it this morning.” He smiled as I took it. I wasn’t too alarmed; I’d grown used to being tracked in India. Only the week before I’d been cashing a check at the bank when a voice behind me barked, “Wrong date, madam.” A funny story saved for Daisy, but not now.
“How very kind,” I said to the boy in what Anto calls my toff voice. “Thank you so much.” I put the scarf in my handbag and got up to walk away.
“Do you walk here often, missus?” His sandals clattered down the steps behind me.
“No,” I said walking a little faster. “My husband is an Indian man. He’s very strict.”
“That’s good.” He fell into step beside me, shot me a glance. “You are too pretty lady to walk on your own. Please don’t run, I only want to talk to you.”
“My husband is waiting for me.”
“Lady, stop running!” His voice rose. “You’re safe with me. There are bad men on the street who can hurt you.”
“The guard on the gate knows me.” I tried to sound calm. “He’s there,” I pretended. When he jerked his head towards the club, the line of angry pimples on his neck made him look young
er than I’d thought at first: seventeen, maybe eighteen at the most.
“There’s no one there,” he crooned in a singsong voice.
“Look.” I fumbled in my bag for my wallet. “You’ve been awfully kind to find my scarf, I’d like to—”
“Put it away, madam,” he said, very offended. He smiled and looked down at the bulge in his trousers, which was growing. He grabbed my arm and pulled me towards a large banyan tree. Its thick leaves and impenetrable roots formed a small, dark room where I sat sometimes on the bench, to read a book or to get shelter from the sun.
“This is what I like from English girls.” He pushed me down on the bench, sat beside me, and with the sly smile of a dog about to steal the Sunday joint, put his arm round me. I thought my best bet was to be polite, to talk him out of it, until his free hand dived up my skirt and pulled at the edge of my knickers. In the scuffle that followed, the contents of my handbag scattered in the dust: wallet, mirror, notes for Daisy.
Maya had warned me about Eve teasing, the practice of groping women in the street. “If it happens,” she’d advised, “slap the miscreant hard, I mean really slap him.” She’d demonstrated with a sharp crack on her palm.
“Doesn’t that makes things worse?” I’d asked.
“No.” She’d cracked her palm again with a stinging sound. “If you give in, they’ll hurt you.”
When I hit him hard on the side of his face, Biff! went crazily through my mind Biff! Biff! Biff! as if I were Desperate Dan in The Dandy. I swore the worst words I could think, and I had plenty to choose from after nursing in the wards. When the mark of my hand bloomed on his face, I was shocked. He looked towards the street, hesitated, his head wobbling on his neck, and then he hit me back, thud, thud, thud, on my arms and head.
“Don’t!” I shouted, “Stop it! I’m having a baby.” He raised his fist, and when it came towards my stomach, I grabbed his wrist and shouted, “You bloody bastard! Don’t you dare!” He shook me off and landed a punch just below my ribs.
“I know who you are,” he sneered. “You are the foreign lady who teaches our Indian girls bad things. We don’t want you. Go home!” Then he saw my purse in the dust. He dropped to his knees and scrabbled crab-like towards it.
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