Around midday I can’t hold out any longer. I call my mother. But just as I guessed, she knows nothing. She thinks I’m overreacting. Still, she promises to phone Sudha right away, and to call me back if anything’s wrong. But I have a feeling she won’t get through to my cousin past that dragon of a mother-in-law.
By evening I’m exhausted from waiting. My shoulders ache like I’ve been pushing a huge rock uphill. All I’ve managed to force myself to eat are some Saltines dipped in milk.
Sunil’s face grows heavy when he returns from work and sees me lying on the sofa by the phone, still in my nightgown, wads of Kleenex strewn around me. “Anjali,” he snaps. “This is ridiculous. This kind of obsessive behavior won’t help either you or your cousin. All it’ll do is hurt my son.”
His son. Worried as I am, the statement intrigues me. This little life inside of me, which I’ve been thinking of as totally mine, already belongs to so many others. Grandson, cousin, son of his father. It’s the same with Sudha’s baby.
While I mull over the complexity of these claims, Sunil pushes me into the bathroom. “Take a long, hot shower,” he orders. “I’ll call you if the phone rings.” He hands me a new bar of the Mysore sandalwood soap that we save for special occasions. By the time I come out, he’s made me some tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich.
I’m suddenly ravenous. I take a big bite of the sandwich. “It’s the best grilled cheese I’ve ever tasted,” I tell him. A sweet, long-ago memory resonates in the air between us, and over the steaming soup we smile at each other.
I’m having a nightmare, one of those where you know you’re dreaming, but that doesn’t make it any less scary. In my nightmare my baby’s trapped somewhere underwater, far from me. He lifts a tiny black receiver to call me for help. I hear the muffled ringing of the phone and try to run to it, but my limbs are like stone. A submarine wind starts to blow. The water, quiet till now, rushes swirling around my little boy, rips the phone from his fingers. There are faces in the torrent, human faces—Ramesh, Sudha’s mother-in-law, Aunt N, Sunil. But as I watch, their features flatten out, their skin grows black and scaly, and their tongues forked. They’re serpents now, throwing their coils around my baby, pulling at him. His face crumples as he begins to disappear into the writhing, looped mass of their bodies. Anju, he cries. Anju-Anju-Anju. Then he’s gone.
“Anju, wake up,” Sunil says. He’s leaning over me, shaking my arm gently. I jerk my arm away with a stifled scream—I can’t help it—the dream’s still too vivid in my mind. “Come on,” he says impatiently. “It’s a person-to-person call for you from India. Maybe it’s Sudha.” He thrusts the phone into my numb hand and settles himself at the foot of the bed. Please go, I mouth at him, but he’s busy clipping his nails.
There’s a lot of disturbance on the line. I can hardly hear Sudha’s voice as she says hello.
“Speak up,” I say. “We’ve got a bad connection.” But then I realize that’s not it. She’s in some kind of public place—there are bells ringing, people shouting questions, the clang of machines, the distant roar of a bus. My heart begins to pound crazily. Her mother-in-law would never let Sudha go somewhere like that—and certainly not alone.
“I’m at the main post office,” says Sudha, her sentences short and jerky. “Couldn’t talk from home. Took a cycle-rickshaw here while she was taking her afternoon nap.”
“Sudha, what’s wrong? I’ve been worried sick. Has something happened to Ramesh, or your mother-in-law?”
“No,” Sudha says. “They’re fine,” she adds with venom.
Then she says, “They want to kill my baby.”
“What?” I’m sure I’ve heard it wrong.
“My mother-in-law wants me to have an abortion.”
The bed tilts and rocks, threatens to throw me off. The room turns brown at the edges, like burning paper. I grope dizzily for Sunil’s hand. It feels stiff and cold.
“Sudha, how can that be?” I finally manage to say. “After all the pressure she’s been putting on you to get pregnant—?” But a part of me knows already.
“When the test showed that it was a girl,” Sudha’s voice is a hollow echo, “my mother-in-law said the eldest child of the Sanyal family has to be male—that’s how it’s been in the last five generations. She said it’s not fitting, it’ll bring the family shame and ill luck. But I think it’s really because of Aunt Tarini’s grandson—”
Aunt Tarini’s grandson? I’ll have to ask Sudha to explain that some other time.
“Isn’t she afraid that you might not have a baby at all?”
“No. She says that once Goddess Shashti has smiled on a woman, there’s no fear of that.”
“But Ramesh?” I say, my voice high and cracked with outrage. “What about him? He’s a good man, a modern man. Surely he doesn’t think the same way as—”
Sudha laughs. It’s a terrible sound, full of bitterness and relinquished hope. “He is a good man. But he’s no match for his mother. When he told her it wasn’t necessary, he’d be happy with a girl, she just looked at him with those hooded, dispassionate hawk-eyes until he looked away. Then she said I wouldn’t even have conceived the baby if she hadn’t taken me to Shashti’s shrine. I waited for him to tell her about the doctor he’d been seeing, about the special vitamins and injections, but I guess he didn’t dare. She accused him of forgetting all the hardships she’d been through after his father died—the times she’d gone hungry so the children could eat, the nights she’d lain awake worrying, the insults she’d endured. She asked him if a pretty face outweighed all of that. Oh, she was cruel. She chose words that went right into him, like steel hooks with poisoned tips, until finally he just gave up.”
“What d’you mean, gave up?”
“He covered his ears with his hands and walked out. I ran after him—I was beyond shame by now. You can’t let her do this to me, I said. He looked at me and his eyes were funny, as if he didn’t quite know where he was. Remember the time when our cousin Poltu put his finger into an electrical outlet and almost died? Remember the look in his eyes right after? That was how Ramesh looked. He said to me, Please, Sudha, let me be for a little while. I put my hands on his arm and shook him. I can’t let you be, I shouted. I need you to help me, to protect our daughter. But he plucked my fingers off his arm as though I was speaking a strange language he’d never heard before and walked out of the house. He came back some time late last night, I don’t know when, and shut himself up in the library. I haven’t talked to him since. I can’t depend on him, Anju. I know my mother-in-law’s made the appointment for the abortion already. She’s not telling me when. If I don’t go of my own will, she’ll find some other way of getting me there—maybe drug me, who knows. She’s capable of anything, once she makes up her mind.”
I’m too stunned to speak. I know about the abortion of girl babies. Every once in a while there’ll be a story about it in India West. And last month “60 Minutes” had featured the abortion clinics that have sprung up all over India, now that amnio tests are so easily available. I’d been outraged as I watched the rows of cots lined up against a dirty wall, the women lying on them with their faces turned away. But it was a remote outrage, and the scene, dim and greenish as though taken in underwater light, was something that could never happen to me, or to anyone I loved. So I had believed.
“Your time is up, madam,” interrupts the operator’s voice with its heavy Indian accent.
“Anju,” Sudha calls desperately, “what am I going to do?”
My brain is like stone, my tongue also.
“I’ve put in three more minutes’ worth of change. That’s all I have,” Sudha says. “Hurry, Anju. Anju! Are you there?”
I’m trying desperately to think. “Do you have anything else with you? Any other money?” I ask finally. I’m afraid to hear her reply. From her letters I know already that her mother-in-law keeps the keys to the safe.
But Sudha surprises me.
“I have five hundred rupees.
I took them from Ramesh’s desk drawer. And all my jewelry that wasn’t in the safe. Just in case.”
“Just in case what?” I want her to say it. I need her to say it.
“Just in case I decided not to go back.” Sudha’s voice is stronger now. I think she needed to hear herself say it too.
“Well then, that solves our immediate problem. Take the next train to Howrah station, then take a cab home. The mothers will take care of you.”
“It’s not so simple, Anju.” Sudha’s voice has a catch in it. “Just before I called you, I called Calcutta. Mother picked up the phone. When I told her, she said I mustn’t leave, absolutely not. My place is with my in-laws, for better or worse. She’s afraid they’ll never take me back, and then what would happen to me? Everyone will think they threw me out because I did something bad. They’ll think my baby is a bastard—” Her voice breaks on the last word.
I’m breathless with disbelief. “You should have told her they’re forcing you to have an abortion,” I finally manage to say. Surely even Aunt N would then see Sudha has no choice but to leave.
“I did. She thinks it’s the lesser of the two evils.” Sudha starts crying in great gasps. “My own mother.”
“Time’s up,” comes the operator’s bored voice. For a moment I wonder if she’d been listening in, and what she made of our predicament. But maybe she heard calls like this all the time, lives breaking, certainties destroyed, disillusionment staining the air like smoke from a house you thought would never burn.
“One step at a time,” I tell Sudha, putting all the confidence I don’t feel into my voice. “Things will work out somehow, you’ll see. I’ll call you in Calcutta.”
Then the line goes dead.
“You shouldn’t have told her to go back to your house,” Sunil says even before I’ve replaced the receiver. “She might have been able to work things out with her husband had she stayed. Now her mother-in-law will have the perfect excuse to convince Ramesh to get a divorce—”
I’m so angry my whole body’s shaking. I start to tell Sunil exactly how stupid his thinking is, just like a man’s. How could a man understand what Sudha’s suffering? How could a man, who’d never held life inside him, know what it would mean to be forced to give up that life?
Then I feel it, a small but definite movement, deep in my belly, cool and silver as a fish jumping. My baby! He reminds me of what’s most important.
I clamp my lips shut. Once I start to fight with Sunil, I won’t be able to stop, and right now I need to focus positive energy on Sudha. Sudha, who’s taking a rickshaw to the train station. Sudha, who’s leaving the security of wifehood with nothing but a bag clutched in her hand.
I pick up a pillow and go to the living room. I lie down on the sofa and close my eyes. I keep my palm pressed tight against my belly, drawing warmth from my baby, drawing strength. Against the dark lining of my eyelids Sudha stands on a dust-choked platform as the Calcutta train pulls up with its shrill whistle and hot diesel smell. She places her small foot—so elegant, so fragile—on the compartment steps, and begins her hard journey.
AS I STAND under the cavernous, soot-stained ceiling of Howrah station, which magnifies every sound into an eerie echo, it comes to me that in all my life I’ve never traveled anywhere alone. I am shocked by the enormous noisiness of this place: the huge wall clock whose minute hand moves in reluctant jerks, the yells of the vendors pushing carts stacked with yellow mausambi fruit over which clouds of flies buzz excitedly, the red-uniformed coolies who think nothing of shoving you aside as they run up the platform carrying fat hold-alls on their heads. The entire place smells of sweat and urine—and hopelessness. The odor is intensified when I pass the homeless families huddled on their jute bedding, holding out begging bowls. Pity and nausea rise in me as I fumble for a coin, and I cannot repress a shudder. If it weren’t for the frail protection of the mothers, would I too be on a pavement by now?
And the men—the station is full of men. They brush against me purposely, they spit out wads of betel leaf near my feet and bare their teeth in a grin when I jump away, their bold, leering eyes travel over my body—a woman alone is fair game, after all—as they wonder why I have no baggage. Why no one has come to meet me. There’s a sinking feeling inside me. Is this too something I will have to get used to? For a moment I am tempted to climb back on the train and return to the seeming-safety of the big brick house in Bardhaman.
Somehow I find my way through the press of the crowd to the taxi stand. There’s no line—there never is in Calcutta—and the only way to get a taxi is to push past the others and jump into one. I watch helplessly for about fifteen minutes, then plunge into the fray in desperation, shouldering my way between strangers, no longer caring whose foot I step on. My hair comes loose, someone’s kurta button scratches my cheek, someone else whose face I cannot see in the crowd takes advantage of the melee to grope at my breast. I swat his hand away furiously and kick at the ankles of a fat man blocking my path. He turns to say something nasty, but his mouth falls open at the ferocious scowl on my face. I jab at his paunch with a determined elbow, and finally I’m in a taxi, mopping the sweat from my neck, trembling. Maybe this is how the Rani of Jhansi felt the first time she went to war. I give the driver the address, using my sternest voice so he will not be tempted to take me around the long way, and sink back into the seat.
Being alone in a taxi is a little frightening. I remember stories I’ve overheard, Mother’s friends whispering about girls who had been kidnapped and sent to the Middle East. But I cannot afford fear. Who knows how many places I’ll have to go alone, now that I am no longer the daughter-in-law of the Sanyals? Then I remember I’m not alone. My daughter is with me, my sweet daughter, a flame flickering in the center of my body. When I remember that for her my in-laws’ house, guarded by its hosts of weaponed yakshas, is the most dangerous place of all, I am no longer doubtful about what I have done.
Ramur Ma opens the door when I ring the bell. She gives a shriek of surprise and clutches at her bosom, so I know my mother hasn’t told anyone about my phone call. “Sudha Didi, goodness, is it really you! Where’s Ramesh Dada Babu? Don’t tell me he let you travel all by yourself in your condition! O Nalini Ma, Gouri Ma, O Pishi Ma, come quickly, see who’s here!”
I sit awkwardly on the edge of the sofa in the living room, holding my purse tightly with both my hands, feeling like a stranger in the house where I was born. And like a stranger, I am not sure of my welcome.
“O my God,” says my mother, who’s the first to arrive. Her hand flies to her mouth. “So you went ahead and did it, you stubborn, impetuous girl. O my God, what’ll we do now?”
It’s what I expected, but it still stings. I blink away the tears as though I were a girl of twelve. Can’t she tell, can’t she ever tell, that I need someone to hold and comfort me?
“What do you mean?” asks Pishi, who has followed close behind. “And what kind of way is that to greet your daughter who’s visiting you after so many months? Come, Sudha Ma, let me see how pretty you’ve grown now that you’re about to become a mother. Oh, how happy I am to see you! But Ramur Ma’s right, our son-in-law shouldn’t have let you come all by yourself. You look terribly tired.” She rubs my back and gratefully I let my head sink onto her shoulder.
Gouri Ma hurries in now, her welcoming smile a little perplexed. I can see her searching the room for my baggage. She’s wondering why Ramesh’s driver hasn’t brought it in yet from the outside.
This is the most painful part, having to go over all the sordid details again, watching the horror growing in Gouri Ma’s eyes, watching Pishi clenching a corner of her sari in her fists.
“I told her not to,” hisses my mother. “I told her to grit her teeth and put up with it, and try for another pregnancy. A woman can have many children, after all, but a husband is forever. But no, Madam had to do it her own way. Now what’ll we tell our relatives? Uff, she’s smeared kali forever on the Chatterjee family, to say nothing of
my ancestors.”
I want to say something barbed about her ancestors, but it’s too much effort. My back aches dully, and all I want is to lie down in the familiar room of my childhood and pull the bedcover up over my head.
“Enough now, Nalini,” says Gouri Ma. Her breath comes unevenly and I feel wretched for having added to her troubles. “Sudha’s old enough to make her own decision, and I can see why she’s made it. It’s up to us to support her—”
“There you go again, Didi,” my mother says, “encouraging her to be headstrong. No wonder she’s been having trouble with her mother-in-law—”
It’s like my childhood replaying itself. I would laugh if it were not so painful.
“Bas, bas, Nalini,” says Pishi. “The poor girl’s about to faint, she’s that tired, can’t you see? Let’s feed her and get her into bed, then you can cry and call on the gods all you want.” She takes me by the hand and guides me down a corridor. “Here, Sudha, wash up in this bathroom. There have been some changes in the house. We’ve had to close off the upstairs—there were a lot of leaks after the monsoons. I’ll tell you more about all that tomorrow.”
Dinner passes in a daze, a frugal meal of rice and dal and sautéed spinach, sadly revealing of the mothers’ financial circumstance. I brush away Pishi’s apologies—the unun has been put out for the night, she says, or else they’d send Singhji to the market for some fish to fry up hot for me.
“It’s delicious, just like this,” I tell her, and it is. I didn’t know how starved I had been for food served with love, food I could eat without choking on the strings attached to it. Food for Sudha, not for a receptacle for the heir of the Sanyal family.
After dinner I lie down in the makeshift bed the mothers have fixed in the pantry. Tomorrow they’ll have a bed carried down, Gouri Ma says. She bends over to ruffle my hair. “We’re all glad you’re here, Sudha,” she smiles. “Even your mother. It’s just her habit to complain—you know that.”