by Anita Desai
Then Mother Agnes came round the corner and down the passage, walking in long, rustling strides towards her. Uma did not know why she should be out at this time, what she might be doing. Certainly she could not have been looking for Uma, and yet that was what she seemed to be doing, her face emerging from her coif, her voice calling, 'Child?'
Uma hurled herself at Mother Agnes, threw her arms around her waist, hid her face in the starched white cotton skirts, and howled aloud. She was a messy weeper: her face was wet, her hair distraught. Her mouth was twisted and her eyes and nose ran. She knotted her hands in Mother's skirts and girdle. All the time she howled. 'Mother, oh Mother,' she wailed, and when Mother Agnes tried to pluck her off her skirts and hold her aside, she flung herself down at the nun's sandalled feet and lay on the floor, abjectly wailing.
'Uma!' the nun recognised her at last—and seemed quite resigned to dealing with yet another child who had failed her exams and come to plead for promotion. 'Will you get up, please? Come into my room, please. This is no way, you know, child—' and she bent and pulled Uma to her feet, then took her face and pressed it to her bosom. Uma, startled, breathed in the smell of antiseptic soap and starch and a whiff of something else—some kind of scent, musky, religious—while Mother Agnes muttered a prayer (it sounded like a prayer) into her hair.
But when she heard why Uma had run to her, what Uma wished her to do, she tapped a brass paperknife on the edge of the desk and her eyes became hooded while her face receded into her coif. 'Hmm, hmm,' she said, listening to Uma's sobs. 'Yes, your father wrote to me—I know. He says that because you have failed once again—'
Uma let out another howl because she had forgotten about that failure and only now remembered. 'But I will work very hard!' she yelled. 'I will pass next time. Please tell him, Mother—I will pass next time!'
The more she yelled, the more dubious Mother looked. When Uma gabbled about the baby, not knowing how to bathe the baby, about being afraid to pin on his nappy, she began to grow impatient. 'Girls have to learn these things too, you know,' she said.
Uma was thunderstruck. It was the last thing she ever expected Mother Agnes to say. Now Mother Agnes was talking about the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus—but surely she did not think the Virgin Mary was a mother like Mama was a mother? Surely she did not think baby Jesus ever lay squalling in his crib with his hair growing down his forehead and over his ears, with dribble running out of the corner of his mouth like a sick cat? That he had to have his nappies changed and that they smelt? Uma stared at Mother Agnes in dismay. It was what Mother was saying. And if she wound up by giving Uma a holy picture out of the drawer in her desk—a small, gilt-edged card with a waxily pink Jesus on a waxily white Virgin Mary's blue lap, and advising her to pray for strength, pray to the Virgin Mary for strength, never forget to pray, she was nevertheless dismissing her, not only from her presence, her protection, but even from her school.
She got to her feet, drawing Uma up too. But as she held Uma by her shoulders, trying to convey her own belief and her strength to her, Uma suddenly went limp and crumpled and the next thing that Mother Agnes knew was that Uma was lying stretched out on the cotton rug by her desk. Nor had she simply fainted—she was writhing, frothing a little at the mouth and moaning, banging her head to one side, then the other. When Mother Agnes tried to lift her, she began to roll so violently that Mother Agnes had to go to the door and call for help.
THEN the ignominy of her return, in the school van, accompanied by Sister Teresa and the school nurse, with Aruna wide-eyed and Mama scolding like a madwoman, blaming it all on the pink and blue and gilt picture that Mother Agnes had given Uma and that she still held clenched in her fist. The way Mama railed against it, it would seem the holy picture was a poison potion, or some evil charm that had cast a spell on her daughter. 'See what these nuns do,' she raged to Papa. 'What ideas they fill in the girls' heads! I always said don't send them to a convent school. Keep them at home, I said—but who listened? And now —!'
WHEN Mama was calm again, she showed Uma how to pour a little oil on her fingertips and then massage it into the baby's limbs. Massaging made him ticklish; he wriggled and writhed under her fingers like a fish trying to escape, and after biting her lips in an attempt not to, Uma did burst out laughing after all.
Mama turned away with a sigh of relief: clearly she felt all was well now—the baby could be left to his elder sister.
'But ayah can do this—ayah can do that—' Uma tried to protest when the orders began to come thick and fast. This made Mama look stern again. 'You know we can't leave the baby to the servant,' she said severely. 'He needs proper attention.' When Uma pointed out that ayah had looked after her and Aruna as babies, Mama's expression made it clear it was quite a different matter now, and she repeated threateningly: 'Proper attention.'
PROPER attention. It was with a steely determination that Mama turned this upon her son as if making sure no one could accuse her of any lapse in his care or recall the reluctance with which she had borne him. Even when she turned him over to Uma, or the ayah, to be bathed or dressed, she remained sharply vigilant of their performance. As for his meals, she watched over him like a dragon, determined that a fixed quantity of milk was poured down his gullet whether he wanted it or not and, later, the prescribed boiled egg and meat broth. Then, when Papa returned from the office, he would demand to know how much his son had consumed and an answer had to be given: it had to be precise and it had to be one that pleased.
For Arun's birth did not mean that MamaPapa were finally separated into two entities—Mama Papa—not at all: Arun appeared to be the glue that held them together even more inextricably. If Mama managed to have a little private life of her own—those games of rummy, those secret betel leaves, 'female' talk with her daughters when the occasion arose—then, where Arun was concerned, she and Papa became one again. He would ask the questions about his son's rearing and care, she would supply the answers: all her duties and responsibilities neatly accounted for like so many laundered sheets back from the wash.
More than ever now, she was Papa's helpmeet, his consort. He had not only made her his wife, he had made her the mother of his son. What honour, what status. Mama's chin lifted a little into the air, she looked around her to make sure everyone saw and noticed. She might have been wearing a medal.
It was not that their lives changed in more than a few details such as their shared concern for their son. No, their social life did not miss a beat; Mama continued to deck herself in silks and jewellery and accompany Papa to the club, to dinner parties and weddings. After all, Uma and Aruna and the ayah were there to stand in for her at Arun's cot. It seemed to them that Mama sailed out with an added air of achievement. She had matched Papa's achievement, you could say, and they were now more equal than ever.
Was this love? Uma wondered disgustedly, was this romance? Then she sighed, knowing such concepts had never occurred to Mama: she did not read, and she did not go to the cinema. When her friends or neighbours gossiped about a 'love marriage' they had heard of, she lifted her upper lip a little bit, to convey her scorn. Love marriage indeed, she knew better.
Uma also noticed how Mama and Papa looked upon Arun with an identical expression: a kind of nervous, questioning, somewhat doubtful but determined pride. He was their son, surely an object of pride. Surely? Then, seeing this puny creature who appeared to take forever to raise his head, or get to his knees, finally to stand upon his legs, a kind of secret doubt would enter their eyes, even a panic—quickly suppressed, quickly brushed away.
Mama developed a nervous fear on the subject of Arun's feeding: the exercise always left her spent, and after it she still had to face Papa's interrogation regarding its success or failure. Arun seemed to become infected by her nervousness, the tension surrounding the whole occasion. As soon as the boiled egg in a cup or the bowl of broth appeared, he clenched his teeth and turned away, pretending to be engrossed in play from which no one could distract him. They took it in
turns to try—Mama, Uma and the ayah—to spoon mouthfuls into him when he was not looking. Occasionally they managed to catch him unawares so that he would swallow before he knew it, but mostly he averted his face at just the right moment, or else spat out what they had forced in. Mama was often in tears by the end of it, and Uma in a raging temper, while Papa would say, 'And have you seen the Joshis' son? He is already playing cricket!'
It was years before they understood what Arun's tastes were, and accepted the fact that he would not touch the meat Papa insisted he should eat: Arun was a Vegetarian.
Papa was confounded. A meat diet had been one of the revolutionary changes brought about in his life, and his brother's, by their education. Raised amongst traditional vegetarians, their eyes had been opened to the benefits of meat along with that of cricket and the English language: the three were linked inextricably in their minds. They had even succeeded in convincing the wives they married of this novel concept of progress, and passed it on to their children. Papa was always scornful of those of their relatives who came to visit and insisted on clinging to their cereal- and vegetable-eating ways, shying away from the meat dishes Papa insisted on having cooked for dinner.
Now his own son, his one son, displayed this completely baffling desire to return to the ways of his forefathers, meek and puny men who had got nowhere in life. Papa was deeply vexed. He prescribed cod liver oil. Mama and Uma were to spoon it down his throat. Somehow. Holding his nose pinched between her fingers, Uma was to force it between his teeth. He did open his mouth—but snapped his teeth shut on her finger. Withdrawing it with a yell, she stared at the blood trickling down. 'Did you see?' she gasped. 'Did you see what he did?'
'YOU remember, you bit me once?' she reminded him, holding a quarter of green guava just out of his reach.
They were hiding in a clump of bougainvillaeas, she with the guava she had picked unripe and cut into quarters and eighths and sprinkled with salt for a treat.
A strongly forbidden treat. Suffering as he did from an endless procession of ills—he had already run through mumps, measles, chicken pox, bronchitis, malaria, 'flu, asthma, nosebleeds and more—it was the last thing Arun ought to have been given as a treat: fruit so unripe that it set the teeth on edge and turned the gullet sore. Yet she was pushing the slices into his mouth, and her own, wickedly irresponsible. They closed their eyes and winced as the tartness rasped the tastebuds at the roots of their tongues. Even their ears crept, the fruit was so sour. They blinked their eyes shut and tears pricked the corners with salt. They opened them and laughed.
'See my finger? See where you bit me?' Uma waved it under his nose, not wanting him to forget because she had not forgotten.
Arun narrowed his eyes in a way that made Uma shift uncomfortably on her haunches: she ought not to have expected Arun to enjoy the joke.
'Shall I tell MamaPapa what you gave me to eat?' he retaliated craftily. 'What will MamaPapa do if they know what you gave me to eat?'
Uma jumped up so quickly that her hair caught in the thorny bougainvillaeas and lifted it off her head so that she seemed to be hanging by it. Arun screamed with laughter.
Four
MAMA and Papa are at a wedding reception to which Uma has refused to go: now that Papa is retired, there are so few occasions when they leave the house, Uma has grown to prize them. She has eaten her supper on a tray; she has looked through her card and her bangle collection. Hearing someone move about in the other room, she has quickly put these out of sight. But it is only ayah. Ayah has brought in some laundry from the washerman and come to put it away. She brings in an armful of petticoats for Uma. Uma picks up her brush and starts brushing her hair to show ayah she is getting ready for bed.
'Come, Baby, I will do it for you,' ayah offers.
Uma begins to refuse with annoyance—she does not particularly want ayah around, she had thought she was alone in the house—but when ayah takes the brush from her, she surrenders it. Sitting down, with ayah rhythmically slapping at her head with the brush, she feels about six years old.
Ayah came to them when Uma was three years old and Aruna was born. Retired, she returned to help with Arun when Mama was so distraught over his birth, and stayed on after he outgrew her and left home. Mama has grown used to having her around and likes having her do little things around the house—'top work' she calls it, although Papa thinks these could be done by Uma, at a saving. Ayah knows she had better show him she earns her keep; whenever anyone looks her way, she instantly finds something to do. Mama has to keep up the pretence, too, and can always think up something. 'Go and see if the washerman has our things ready,' she will say, or, 'Tell cook to cut up some mangoes for tea.' When she can think of absolutely nothing else, she will lie back with a little sigh; then ayah edges forward, knowing this is a sign she wants her feet pressed, and she squats down and begins to knead and massage the feet Mama does not exactly proffer—in fact, she makes an irritated sound of refusal, but not strongly enough to be meant.
Uma does not care for such physical attention. She pulls her head away: it is beginning to feel battered. 'Where's Lakshmi?' she asks, about the daughter who is a perennial source of drama.
'Oh, Baby, don't ask about that Lakshmi,' ayah sighs, and the hand that wields the brush comes to a stop, heavily. 'That wretch, she will see me dead soon. Trouble, trouble—what else to expect from Lakshmi? The day she was born was a cursed day.'
'Why? What's happened now?' Uma murmurs, reluctantly agreeing to listen to another tale.
'Oh, Baby, why ask? Do you want to hear what she has done now? Left that husband I managed to get for her, and run off. To find herself work, she says. What work is she to find, eh, tell me? Is she willing to lift even a finger to work? But she thinks she can get a job in some house and they will feed her and clothe her. As if having a job means becoming the daughter of the house.' Ayah sighs sadly. 'I have told her beatings are what she will get—'
'Why? Why do you say that? Maybe she'll find a good home to work in.'
'What good home will take her?' ayah snaps back. 'One look at her is enough to tell you what she is good for! The other day, I asked her, where'd you get that bangle that you're jingling in my ears, eh? Just tell me where it comes from! I beat her and beat her till blood ran from her nose, but did she tell me? Not that one, curse of my life—'
'Why do you beat her?' Uma snatches her brush away from ayah. 'You are always beating that poor girl.'
'You think she is poor—not I, her mother, who has suffered all these years, spent good money on her wedding, gone without food and clothing to raise her—'
'No, you haven't. You get food in our kitchen and Mama gives you clothes. You are very well dressed.'
Ayah stares at her, scandalised, holding out her ripped and faded sari. 'You call these clothes? I call it a shame. It is an immodesty to dress in these rags. But what can I do? I must take what I can get. We are not all born fortunate—' and here she strikes the heel of her palm against her forehead and groans.
Uma gets up, annoyed. She has fallen into ayah's trap again. She marches up to her cupboard and flings it open. 'Oh, all right, take my saris off me. Ask, ask, till you have all I can give. Then you may be satisfied—' and she pulls out two or three cotton saris and flings them at ayah with a show of temper she has learnt from Mama. With a quick afterthought, she snatches back one that is almost new and that she particularly likes—a pretty marigold yellow with a purple border—and shoves it out of sight at the back of the shelf.
Ayah is all smiles and beams. She picks them off the floor and clutches them to her, then vanishes from the room before her good fortune runs out. Uma bangs the cupboard door shut and locks it fiercely: her evening is spoilt.
***
AT regular intervals through the years, a yellow postcard would arrive from Mira-masi to say she would be stopping with them on her way from one pilgrimage place to another. Uma would invariably cry out 'Mira-masi? Oh, I love Mira-masi—she makes the very best ladoos. Mm
, so round and big and sweet!' Mama was always incensed, a slur having been cast on the ladoos made in her kitchen. 'What a greedy child you are, Uma! I'm not going to let Mira-masi into the kitchen. She turns everything upside down and demands a new set of cooking pots, as if ours are unclean. And she won't eat what the cook makes—she is so old-fashioned.' Mama looked thoroughly put out.
Mira-masi was not her sister but a very distant relative, the second or possibly even the third wife of a relative Mama preferred not to acknowledge at all. He, fortunately, had been content to live in obscurity till—eventually, conveniently—he died, but this wife of his had in her widowhood developed an unsettling habit of travelling all over the country, quite alone, safe in her widow's white garments, visiting one place of pilgrimage after another like an obsessed tourist of the spirit, and only too often her hapless relatives by marriage found themselves in her way, at convenient stopping places. 'She never writes to ask if she may come,' Mama fumed, 'only to say that she is coming.' Since Mama generally enjoyed visitors, especially relatives with whom she could gossip about all the branches of the family and who put her in touch with them so that she did not feel so sorry for herself for being the one who lived far from them all, exiled by Papa and his career, Uma wondered why Mira-masi was the exception.