“What’s the matter?” says Sunil.
I tell him, my voice rising as the angry words tumble out. “It’s so unfair. Why is it that everyone always thinks it’s the woman’s problem? Why is it that the woman’s always guilty until proved innocent? And even after she’s proved innocent, as in Sudha’s case, she has to continue to suffer. Why?”
“There aren’t any answers to a lot of whys in the world, Anju. It’s just how things are done. Sudha’s mother-in-law isn’t as bad as some of the others. You must have heard the stories when you were growing up in Calcutta—all the things that happen to childless women—”
I glare at him. It isn’t just what he says—and the underlying insinuation of childless women that gets me. It’s his tone, infuriatingly calm, as if we’re discussing the ancient Christian martyrs instead of my cousin’s life.
Maybe it’s because I’m all worked up, but I seem to hear something else in his voice. See how lucky you are to live in this free and easy American culture, to have a magnanimous husband like me.
“You don’t care a bit about what happens to Sudha, do you?” I shout.
“You don’t know what I care about,” says Sunil, very quietly, his voice like a knife sliding from its sheath. But I’m too upset to stop.
“You probably don’t even see anything wrong in treating a woman that way,” I say. “You probably agree with all those Indian men who see a woman as nothing more than a baby machine.”
“Kindly don’t shout, Anjali,” says Sunil coldly. I can tell he’s really upset by the fact that he uses my full name. “Once in a while you should actually listen to what people are saying before attacking them. If you took a good look at your life, all the things you’re allowed to do, maybe then you’d be a little more—”
He breaks off abruptly, but of course I know the word he’s left out. Grateful, grateful, grateful.
Sunil grabs up his keys from the kitchen counter, shrugs on his jacket, opens the apartment door, and is gone almost before I realize it. Gone without kissing me as he always does when leaving, gone without saying he’ll be back.
I stand in the middle of the empty room, my lungs bursting with the words I haven’t yet had a chance to say, and feel the startled sting of tears. We’ve had some big fights before, but he’s never left me like this. I feel a prick of premonition, as though my life’s turning, like a boat in a gale. What if he doesn’t return? says a small scared voice inside my head.
“Of course he will,” I say, speaking aloud to calm myself. “See, the computer’s still on.” But when the voice asks, Now that he’s found out how easy it is to leave an argument in anger, what if he does it again? And again? I have no answer.
I pace some more, kick the furniture. End up in the kitchen where I gulp down mouthfuls of Rocky Road ice cream straight out of the carton. It’s not my fault that he can’t handle his temper, I mutter. He should have understood how upset I was about Sudha. I weep some more out of self-pity. It’s an unfair world where not only are we women expected to have husbands but we’re supposed to feel grateful for them as well.
Then I’m ashamed for indulging myself like this. Pull yourself together, Anju, I tell myself. This isn’t about you. Use the few brains you have to think of how you can help Sudha. Because you’ve got to help her, whether she asks for it or not. It doesn’t matter that she didn’t tell you what’s going on. She’s still the sister of your heart, the one you called out into the world, the one you’re responsible for.
I pick up a notepad and start jotting down ideas. I’ll make sure my mother insists on Sudha spending a few days with her in Calcutta after the checkup. I’ll call Sudha then and make her tell me the whole truth. How bad things are with her mother-in-law. What part her husband’s been playing in all this. What she herself wants. And when I’ve found it all out, I’ll know what to do.
WHEN I WAS a child, I could depend on people being a certain way. All those I was closest to—Anju, Pishi, Gouri Ma, even my mother—I knew what angered them and what made them happy. Though their actions surprised me sometimes, their motives never did. In spite of their surface complexities, at their hearts there was a certain simplicity. I had believed that was how all people were.
Now, looking at my mother-in-law, I am no longer sure.
My mother-in-law is like a sunlit field of flowers. You are drawn into it, admiring, then suddenly you are caught in the stinging tangles of a hidden bichuti vine. The roots of the poisons in her run deep, beyond my powers of digging. What vindictiveness is stored in her from the days when she was a young bride, looked down on because of her parents’ poverty? How hard is the crust which formed over her heart in the early days of her widowhood, when her husband’s relatives turned against her? What terrible vows did she make during those sleepless nights and desperate days which taught her that she could depend on no one? How naive I had been to think what such a woman extended toward me was as uncomplicated as love.
On the way to the specialist in Calcutta, my mother-in-law doesn’t say much. Mostly she stares stoically ahead, past the front seat where Ramesh is sitting beside the driver, into the hot dusty glare of noon. From the slight movement of her lips I think she’s repeating the names of God. But I am wary of guesses where she is concerned. Earlier while we waited at a level crossing for a train to pass, she told me, not unkindly, to be prepared for whatever the doctor might say. One of her friends’ daughter-in-law had to go into surgery right after an examination like this—they’d found something seriously wrong with her tubes—but then she ended up with two sets of twins.
Does she mean this as a warning, or a message of hope?
One thing I do know—she is upset that Ramesh is with us, and that he and I will stay on in Calcutta without her. She would have liked to finish my checkup, get the mandatory visit to the mothers over as quickly as possible, and take me back to Bardhaman—her territory—the same day. But when Gouri Ma had called last week, Ramesh was the one to pick up the phone. And when she told him how much the mothers missed me, and how much they would like a chance to have the two of us stay with them for a few days, he innocently promised we would do so.
Oh, what a scene there was when my mother-in-law learned what he’d agreed to.
“Am I dead?” she said to him—not shouting, no, that wasn’t her style, but her voice cold and crackling like snakeskin. “Am I dead that you think you can arrange whatever you want, do whatever people insist on without even asking my permission?”
Ramesh replied that it wasn’t just “people.” It was his wife’s aunt, whom he was supposed to respect like his own mother, wasn’t he?
My mother-in-law looked at him, her face expressionless. And Ramesh, who orders hundreds of men around every day, seemed to shrink. Who knew the history between mother and son, how long ago she had started staring him down like this? But whatever was in her glance, it worked on my husband like a nail does on a car tire. Although he did manage to say that he saw nothing wrong in us spending a little time with the mothers, his voice wavered unconvincingly, and in a few minutes he added that if she really didn’t want us to, he would call Gouri Ma and make excuses. Watching the Adam’s apple in his throat bob up and down as he swallowed, I felt pity and despair squeeze my chest like a pair of burning hands.
My husband was a kind man—I had known that for a while now—but in front of his mother he was like a leaf in a gale. If there ever came a time when she turned against me—and since Aunt Tarini’s visit such a thing no longer seemed impossible—what support could I count on from him?
Sitting in the car now, I shift my legs carefully. I am holding a large box of sandesh in my lap. They are specialties of Bardhaman, thin-shelled and sweet, and filled with rose water. A gift from my mother-in-law to the mothers, with whom Ramesh and I are to spend the night and part of tomorrow. For once Ramesh had backed down, my mother-in-law turned around and said we should go. Otherwise folks would say that the Sanyals did not keep their word. Control, that was what she
wanted, to make people dangle from her hands like puppets, and there was nothing Ramesh or I could do to stop her.
The realization had glazed my mouth with fear.
Ramesh drops us off at the specialist’s. He is to run a few errands for his mother, then pick us up. My heart sinks as I watch my only ally leave. He might be weak, but he had held me at night after the humiliation of the previous examination, and wiped away my tears. Not that he could ever gauge the depths of the aching emptiness inside me. Not that he could long for a baby as I do, every cell in my body yearning toward motherhood even while I resent the way my worth is measured by it. Now I shiver as I wonder what this doctor will find. Will I have to have an operation, as my mother-in-law hinted? Or am I barren, as the servants whisper, and thus beyond all reprieve?
The specialist is a grizzled old man with bushy white eyebrows and a booming voice which makes the nurses scurry about. But to me he speaks kindly as he checks my blood test results from Bardhaman, and his hands, examining me, are gentle. After he is done he tells my mother-in-law that absolutely nothing is wrong with my system.
“But you knew that already,” he adds impatiently. “The other doctor must have told you the same thing. Instead of dragging this poor girl uselessly all over the place, have you considered the fact that the fault might lie in your own genes?” He scribbles a name on a pad and holds it out. “Here’s the name of a colleague of mine your son should see, if you’re really interested in a grandchild.”
My mother-in-law’s face doesn’t give away her fury—only someone who has been watching her carefully, as I have these past months, would notice the way her chest rises and falls under the precise pleats of her sari. She reaches out with a polite smile to accept the paper.
The doctor puts the sheet in her hand, then takes it back and turns to me instead. “Maybe it’s better if you give it to your husband,” he says. “Men have a foolish pride about these things sometimes, and you might be able to persuade him better than his mother can.”
I almost laugh out loud at that. Oh, Doctor Babu, you might know many things about women’s bodies, but you need lessons in reading their circumstances better.
But maybe he has read something. For he looks straight into my eyes as he closes my fingers over the sheet and gives my hand a squeeze. “And don’t let anyone tell you it’s your fault that you’re not getting pregnant,” he says. “Because it isn’t.”
From behind I can feel my mother-in-law’s disapproval settle over me like a sheet of lead. I don’t dare nod agreement, but I hope he sees the gratitude in my eyes.
On the way out, I say I need to use the bathroom, and there I memorize the name and phone number on the sheet. I am glad of that, because as soon as we are out in the front office, my mother-in-law snatches the sheet from my hand and says she’ll keep it safe in her bag. I’m not to say anything about the doctor’s foolish newfangled ideas to Ramesh, she knows her son, he wouldn’t like it. If someone has to tell him, it should be her. But not until she’s tried some other things.
I nod meek agreement. I am learning my mother-in-law’s lessons well, how to hide the plans whirring busily inside my head behind a face as empty and sweet as a mask made of sugar.
That night Ramesh and I sit down to dinner with the mothers, giddy as children escaped from school. According to my plan, which no one knows, I have dressed myself in a gauzy scarlet chiffon sari and a low-cut blouse that I’d put away until now as too revealing. In celebration of the doctor’s verdict, the mothers have prepared a feast of my childhood favorites—fried brinjals, puffed-up golden luchis, sautéed red spinach, curries of shrimp and chicken and mustard fish, rice pudding with raisins and pistachios. When I see them all set out on the table, carefully arranged in the cut-glass dishes that the family has always saved for special occasions, I want to cry for love. It must have taken them the whole day, for now, except for Ramur Ma, all the house servants have been sent away. I take double helpings of everything, and as I eat, I talk and gesture animatedly with my hands to ward away the tears. Because tears are not part of my plan tonight. Nor is sadness. And so I pull my attention away from the mothers who hover around us like lost moths. The way their wrinkles—so many more than before—are like the new cracks that have appeared in the walls, as though an evil fairy had shaken an aging-dust over the whole house. I tell a joke, a really funny one, and throw back my head to laugh. My gold-drop earrings swing against the sides of my throat, long and cool and sparkling like me. I let my sari end slide just a little off my shoulder. Behind the pleasure in the mothers’ eyes I see surprise—this is not the Sudha they know. And Ramesh, I feel his eyes on me too. He watches the edge of the sari, the way my flesh gleams warm against it. There is a confused desire in his eyes. Is he thinking how different I am when I sit at his mother’s table? Is he wondering who I really am?
Ramesh, I wonder the same thing about this duplicitous, laughing self who will not let me feel all that is boiling inside, anger and sorrow and anxiety. Scintillating Sudha, witty Sudha, driven by the power of my desperate desire. For the baby I must have, the baby who is waiting inside me like the dream of a furled leaf, I will do whatever I have to tonight to charm you into agreeing to see the doctor whose name and number I’ve stamped onto my brain.
That night, for the first time, I initiate our lovemaking. For the first time too, I leave the light on, as Ramesh has often asked. Immediately I wish I had not, for he looks at me with such startled pleasure, such naked hope in his eyes, that it wrenches at me. It tears open a memory I had sealed away, another man who once looked at me like that. But I am getting better at turning from things I cannot stand to think about.
We make long and arduous love, and then, as Ramesh lies holding me tight to his chest, his breath still coming in gasps, I ask him about going to see a doctor. He agrees at once.
“I was going to suggest it myself, once we were alone,” he says, moving his arm away. “But you didn’t give me a chance.” The light has left his eyes and in the lines of his lips I read a small reproach. You didn’t have to pretend, didn’t have to use your body like that.
For a moment I feel ashamed, sullied. I put a contrite hand on his shoulder. But tonight I cannot hold on to guilt. Relief makes me float into a weightless sleep. In my dream I am a purple kite with a long spangled tail. The wind pulls me up, up, up. The clouds kiss me and I kiss them back. Baby, I whisper into the blue breathless sky, Baby, I’ve made everything ready for you. Come soon.
THE PHONE CALL home is a major disappointment.
I should’ve known. It’s always like this. I plan and plan, I even make a list of all the things I’m going to say. For sure this time, I think, we’ll communicate. I’ll get them to see what I’m saying, why it’s so important. But when I’m finally on the phone and hear the voice at the other end, Mother’s or Pishi’s, so small and tinny, it’s like we’re on different planets. We talk too fast, both sides aware of the growing phone bill. In our hurry we interrupt each other, pouring out concern and advice. Do what the doctor says, I admonish Mother. Go on a vacation, all of you. Don’t just sit in that gloomy old house, I tell Pishi. In fact, why don’t you sell it and go live in a nice new flat. Drive carefully, they say back to me. Tell our son-in-law not to stay out late. We’ve heard how dangerous the streets of America are. Aunt N comes on the phone briefly to tell me not to study too much. You’ll get dark circles under your eyes, permanent ones. After we’ve spoken our I-love-yous and hundred-blessings-to-you-boths and hung up, I wonder in frustration if we were even speaking the same language.
“It’s not their fault,” says Sunil. “You expect too much from people. You want them to understand instantly where you’re coming from. You want them to agree with everything you say. But you’ve changed since you came here. You see the world differently now. You can’t convey that over a telephone line, not without it costing a fortune.”
That’s the other problem with calls to India. Money. We’ve been short on money ever since
Sunil started sending those astronomical amounts back to his father. Now when I call home—and I make it a point to do so when Sunil’s there, because I don’t like being underhanded about such things—I can hear him counting the minutes inside his head. He won’t say anything about it openly—he’s too proud for that. And I’m too stubborn. Why should I give up speaking to my mother just because he needs to prove something to his father? But silence has never been a solution with us, and usually a day or so after I’ve called India we find a pretext to fight.
All these things are in my mind as I go into the bedroom and shut the door. I’m more nervous than usual because I’ll be speaking to Sudha, which I’ve only done once a year since I left India, on her birthday, and that didn’t count because we never could really say anything meaningful with her mother-in-law hovering like a hawk. This is my one chance and I mustn’t blow it, because who knows when that harpy will let Sudha come to Calcutta again.
It takes forever to get the connection, even though it’s Saturday morning, and then to get Sudha on the line. In the background I hear my mother asking everyone to come to the living room, she has a new Tagore tape she wants to play for them. Bless her, she knows how important it is for me to have some privacy. I hear the door close, and finally Sudha and I are on our own.
“Sudha, tell me what’s happening,” I say.
She’s a little startled by the urgency in my voice, I can tell it in her silence. But then she’s always known I’m no good at preambles.
“Everything’s okay,” she says. “The doctor said I’m fine, I can have children—”