Waking in the middle of the night, she found herself alone. He was at the dining table, scrunched over their checkbook, his forehead furrowed.
“What is it?” she whispered, afraid.
“Nothing, nothing.”
She massaged his tense shoulders and waited.
“It’s the tenant,” he finally said. “He’s lost his job. We called him when he didn’t send in his check. He’s asked for a month to get the money together. I was looking to see if we have enough to pay our half of the mortgage.”
Her heart raced with anxiety. It tended to do that easily these days. “Do we?”
“Yes.”
She let out her breath.
“But only just,” he added. “We’ll have to tighten our belts. . . .”
“That might be tough right now,” she joked, patting her stomach. Inside her, the worry pulsed like a live creature. Determinedly, she pushed it into the locked part of her mind where she kept all the things she did not wish to think about. They laughed together, and the baby gave a small, responding leap. Back in bed, she held Sanjay’s hand until his breath steadied and deepened. But sleep would not come to her. Disappointment pressed on her chest like a slab of concrete. She’d have to wait until the situation improved before she could ask Sanjay if Sabitri might visit them.
The situation was worse next month. The tenant did not pay. Now he wasn’t answering their phone calls. One day, Bela saw the woman in the grocery. She wondered if she should say something. When the woman caught sight of her, however, she turned and moved quickly away, her small heels skittering on the Dur-A-Flex. Finally, one evening, Sanjay and Bishu went to the house in an attempt to talk to the tenant. When they rang the bell, no one opened the door, although Bishu was sure he caught a movement at an upstairs window. Sanjay tried their extra key, but the lock had been changed. Bishu shouted and banged on the door. It was no use. After a while a burly man came out of a neighboring house and told them to quit making such a racket and leave. Otherwise he would call the police.
Sanjay told Bela all this, pacing up and down the dining area, while Bishu sat at the table, holding his head in his hands. Bela had never seen him this way, and it frightened her.
“Can’t we go to the police ourselves?” she whispered. “Surely there’s some procedure to evict people for not paying rent?”
Bishu stared down at the table. He’d been ebullient the last time he came to the house, bringing expensive, out-of-season mangoes because Bela loved them. “You need to eat special things at this time,” he had said. “If there’s anything else you want, tell me and I’ll get it. That’s the uncle’s job.” Now his lips moved soundlessly and he dug at the tabletop with a fingernail.
Sanjay said, “Eviction is a messy process. I looked into it. First we’ll have to serve a notice, then go to court to get a judgment. Just that much would take another month. Then we’ll have to serve the judgment to the tenant, then go to the police for . . .”
Bishu shook his head. When he spoke, Bela had to lean in to hear him. “No police,” he rasped. Was it just his natural distrust of American institutions? Or had he been in some kind of trouble in the past? Did he have a record he couldn’t afford to have scrutinized?
“But Bishu-da,” Sanjay said, “I don’t have enough money in the bank for my share of next month’s mortgage. Neither do you.”
When Bela turned eighteen, Sabitri had given her a gold chain, fastening it around her neck with her cool, skillful fingers. It was a thin chain, nothing special, and Bela hadn’t cared for it much in India. But here she wore it every day because it bore her mother’s touch. Apart from her wedding ring, it was her only piece of jewelry. Now, hiding the pang she felt, she took it off and slid it along the table toward the men.
“No!” Sanjay whispered. There was a broken look in his eyes. But it was Bishu who pushed the chain back toward her.
“What kind of men would we be if we sold our women’s jewelry?” he said roughly. “I’ll borrow the money from a friend for this month.” He stretched his lips in an attempted smile. “Bela, you must not worry. Tension is bad for the baby. I’ll think of something. We’ll get that bastard out of there soon, I promise.”
It used to annoy Bela in the early days of their marriage when Sanjay exclaimed, “That Bishu-da, he’s a magician. He can get anything done!” Once she told Sanjay that, though Bishu was efficient, he was nothing like a magician. She had come across a real magician in her childhood in Assam, so she knew.
“Oh, really?” Sanjay said in an annoyed tone. “Tell me, what’s a real magician like?” But she didn’t answer. Already she was sorry that she’d brought up that distant time. Bad things had happened to her family in Assam, and she was afraid that Sanjay might ask her about matters she was not ready to discuss.
This time, though, it seemed that Sanjay was right. Within three weeks, amazingly, the tenant was gone. When Bela asked Sanjay how, he said that Bishu had waited in his car for the wife to come out of the house. He had followed her to a shopping mall and threatened her when she stepped out of her car.
“Scared her shitless, he did!” he said triumphantly. Bela winced at the unexpected coarseness of his words, but Sanjay didn’t notice. “She must have gone running back to her husband and nagged him until he agreed to move. It’s too bad we had to threaten her like that. But if you think of it, it’s really her husband’s fault. If he hadn’t been such a son of a bitch, we wouldn’t have been forced to resort to these tactics.”
Sanjay was right. Still, Bela felt a heavy unease, like the indigestion she had begun to experience nowadays and which, her doctor warned, would probably get worse. She remembered the child waving to her in the grocery. “Was her little boy with her? That would be scary for him—to see someone shouting at his mom.”
When Sanjay didn’t answer her, she repeated the question. He often seemed preoccupied nowadays. He had told her that he was working on a difficult project at the office. Now he frowned, trying to remember. Finally he said no, the woman was alone. The boy must have been in nursery school.
Her mother’s letter waited, unanswered, on the countertop. Bela felt guilty each time she passed it, but she couldn’t decide on the right words with which to soften her refusal. After some time, it was covered over by flyers and bills and passed out of her conscious mind.
Then she came down with a bad case of the flu.
As Bela tossed and turned, delirious with fever, Sabitri appeared in front of her, looking as she had on the day of her husband’s funeral. It was the first time Bela had seen her mother dressed in a coarse white widow-sari, her forehead wiped clean of the vermilion mark that was the privilege of married women. A well-meaning neighbor-woman said, “You’ve got to cry and let it out, or you’ll go mad.” Sabitri had looked at her, her face expressionless. “I won’t go mad. I have a daughter to bring up.”
That was what Sabitri dedicated her life to, from then on. Durga Sweets, Bela saw now, had been important to her mother only because it was a means of providing Bela with all she needed. And then Bela had abandoned her.
“I’m sorry,” Bela cried, thrashing about under the blanket, which felt like a sheet of iron. She was speaking to her mother, but also to her father. Her fever-mind had dredged up another half-remembered conversation, two women at the funeral, whispering about how that unfortunate incident with Bela had set him to drinking again, and then one thing had led to another. But what was the incident? What had Bela done? She couldn’t quite remember, except that it had involved a hospital. And, somehow, the magician, whom she remembered, oddly, as a dragonfly. They had never talked about his death, Sabitri and she. They never talked about the really painful things. “I’m sorry.” Now she was thinking of her brother, how he had gone into convulsions, his hot little body rigid and shaking in turns, his face splotched red and white, and then Ayah had pulled her from the room. What was his name? She couldn’t remember. In her mind he became one with the fetus inside her and she called out to t
hem both, “Baby, baby, don’t die.”
Sanjay’s worried face suddenly loomed overhead; he was laying wet rags on her forehead, across her arms. He spooned ice water into her mouth. Hush, shona, don’t stress yourself, the baby’s fine. How cool his fingers were. Bishu was there, too—or was this another day? He had brought a man with him—a friend who used to be a doctor in India, she would learn later. Give her the flu medication. If her temperature goes up any further she might have a seizure and that would be worse for the baby. Bishu held her head over a basin while Sanjay poured cold water. Hush, don’t struggle so, we’ll get through this. Water dribbled into her ears, pooled in the corners of her mouth, tasting brackish. When the fever finally broke, Sanjay helped her drink some broth, lifting the cup to her lips, running a soft hand over her hair, turning his face so she wouldn’t see his tears. All night he sat up, rubbing her back, giving her medication at the right intervals. Even her mother could not have done more. Later, when things started going bad, she would remember this. It would make her give him another chance, and then another, until the chances ran out.
After she was better, Bishu came to see her, bearing gifts. Little soaps and shampoos. Tea bags. Red-and-white-striped peppermints. He had found a job as the manager of a motel. The motel served dinner to its guests, so some nights he brought coleslaw and chicken wings. Lasagna. She ate the unfamiliar American dishes with ravenous pleasure, crunching through the thin bones. She was over the nausea now and always hungry. Sometimes she caught the men watching her approvingly. She didn’t care. She no longer resented Bishu’s intrusions. The crucible of illness had melded them, finally, into a family.
The men found a new tenant for the house. An Indian this time, thank God. Sanjay’s project turned out better than expected, and he got a promotion. With his first month’s salary, Bishu bought a secondhand crib, ignoring Sanjay and Bela’s protests. The baby was big now. Each time he moved (Bela had decided it was going to be a boy), they could see a ripple go across Bela’s stomach. When that happened, everyone stopped what they were doing and smiled.
Bela was seven months along now and hardly able to fit behind the steering wheel of the secondhand Chevy Sanjay had recently bought. He himself wasn’t comfortable with American roads yet and preferred taking BART to work. She had been scared, too, but determined. Knowing how to drive would allow her to look for a better-paying job once the baby was born, to reclaim her house-dream. She splurged and took a driver’s ed course and drove every chance she got. House, house, house, she chanted to herself when she found herself in challenging traffic situations.
Today she had used the freeway for the first time to drive to the clinic, which was some distance from their apartment, for her checkup. The doctor was pleased. Everything was progressing normally. There was a grocery near the doctor’s office, and on the way back, she decided to stop there for ice cream. She deserved a treat.
As she was sifting through the magazine rack (she did a lot of her reading at the grocery because she couldn’t afford to buy the glossy food publications she loved), she felt that someone was staring at her. She didn’t think much of it. People stared at her routinely, especially when she wore her Indian clothes. Though this annoyed Bela, she had accepted it as one of the costs of living in America. But the sensation of being watched didn’t go away, and when she turned around, she discovered that it was the tenant-wife. Scrunched up in the shopping cart she was pushing sat her son, sucking his thumb, though surely he was too old for it. There was something unkempt about them both, like birds that have had their feathers ruffled the wrong way. Bela decided it was best not to acknowledge them. She stuffed the unread magazine into the rack with regret and moved to get her treat.
But the woman followed her. Usually Bela liked to take her time in front of the ice-cream freezer, gazing at the cornucopia of choices, imagining all those fantastical tastes before she made her decision. It was one of the things she liked best about being in America. This time, though, feeling uncomfortable, she just grabbed a carton of vanilla and made her way toward the cash registers.
She had paid and was almost out the door when she heard the woman say, “Are you happy now that you have your house back, you murdering bitch?”
Bela whirled around, startled. The woman was right behind her, her grocery cart empty except for the child, who was hugging his knees and staring at her with wide eyes. Had she gone crazy? Her eyes did, indeed, hold a strange glitter. Bela’s stomach began to hurt. She found herself laboring for breath. She considered shouting for help. Instead, she found herself saying, “What do you mean?”
“Don’t act all innocent,” the woman said, glaring at Bela. But after a moment she laughed an acid laugh. “They didn’t tell you what they did, did they?”
Bela sat at the kitchen table, staring at the wall. Her hands were still shaky, though it had been some hours since she reached home. She had driven badly on her way back. Several motorists had honked at her, and one man had leaned out from the car window and shouted, making a rude gesture.
She had let the woman accompany her to the parking lot, although every instinct told her that she shouldn’t. She had stood in the glaring sun, sweating, as the woman described to her how Bishu had followed her one day to a similar parking lot and approached her when she stepped out of the car. He had shaken his fist in her face and threatened her: bad things would happen if they didn’t move out in a week’s time; worse things would happen after that. She pleaded with him, told him they didn’t have a place to go, or enough money to move to an apartment. They needed more time.
“But he didn’t care,” the woman said. “He said he wasn’t running a charity.”
Bela was torn, but finally she said, “He was right. We didn’t have enough money to keep paying the mortgage while you lived for free in our house—”
“I went home and told my husband,” the woman rushed on, as though she didn’t hear Bela. “But he wouldn’t listen to me. He never does. He said that if that man bothered me again, I should threaten him back, tell him I’d call the police.”
Bela’s feet hurt. The ice cream she had bought was melting, she was sure of it. “I have to get home,” she said. “I know all this already.”
She tried to reach her car door, but the woman blocked her way. And then she told her.
About a week after the woman’s encounter with Bishu, her son had gone into the backyard to play. She heard him scream and came running. She found him crouched over their dog, Hank, who was lying near the fence. He’d been poisoned.
The ground seemed to tilt and rush at Bela. She reached out and held tight to the nearest car, even though it was not hers.
“Maybe he just . . . died of old age,” she said. Even to her own ears, her voice sounded unconvincing.
The woman looked at her with contempt. “Hank had foam all over his mouth. And some brown caked stuff. When I checked the yard, I found that someone had thrown an open packet of baking chocolate—that’s the kind that’s most dangerous for dogs—over the side gate.”
It was evening, but the lights were not turned on in the apartment. Dinner was not cooked. Bela couldn’t focus on anything but the woman’s voice.
“Jimmy went crazy after finding Hank,” she had said. “I went pretty crazy, too. We’ve had that dog for ten years. He was family. Jimmy hasn’t talked since that day. I took him to the clinic, but they couldn’t help him. Look, just look at him! We don’t have proof, so we can’t go to the police or anything. But I want you to tell your friend I hope he rots in hell. . . .”
What was she going to do with this information, this thing that Bishu had done? If she revealed it to Sanjay, it would destroy their little world of three. Worse, because Bishu was the person Sanjay had trusted most of all, ever since he’d been an unwanted boy in his uncle’s house. He loved Bela, yes, but he depended on Bishu. How could she take that away from him? And she—she had grown close to Bishu, too, these last months. She remembered his hands steadying her fevered
head and felt, simultaneously, nausea and a sense of loss.
Bela forced herself to get up, dragging her feet like an old woman. The baby hadn’t stirred since the woman had accosted her in the store. Was he in shock, like her? What a world she was bringing him into. What if someday someone did to him what Bishu had done to Jimmy?
A frozen pizza in the oven, a carton of juice on the table. She had to save the rest of her energy so that when Sanjay came home, she could smile and kiss him as though nothing had happened. She loved him, this man who rubbed her aching back night after night, this man for whose sake she had made herself write to her mother, The apartment is too small, maybe you can visit later, knowing that Sabitri would never ask again.
But when they were in bed in the dark, Bela lying on her side and Sanjay behind her, their bodies fitted together, his hand caressing her stomach, she couldn’t hold it in. She couldn’t imagine spending the rest of her nights with this secret wedged like a shard between them.
She felt his body stiffen as the words rushed from her. But she couldn’t control her shrill outrage. “It was criminal. You should have seen that child, curled up in the shopping cart, sucking his thumb. You’ll have to tell Bishu that we found out what he did. You’ll have to tell him that he can’t come here anymore because I don’t think I can stand to look in his face. And all this while, he pretended to us that he got rid of the tenants just by talking to the wife! Please, let’s sell the house so we don’t have to be partners with him anymore. . . .”
Sanjay was saying something. It took a moment for Bela to register his unsurprised tone. “We didn’t have the money for any more mortgage payments. Bishu was afraid the house would go into foreclosure. We’d lose it, lose all our savings. Our credit would be ruined. We’d never be able to buy a house again. We had to come up with a plan that would work for sure—”