Naina pulls her heels from the stirrups and rises from vinyl padding. Dr. Johnson leaves her alone to dress.
In the reception room, Naina folds the legs of her salwar about her calves and jams her stockinged feet into moon boots. She struggles into her coat, draws the scratchy wool of her scarf across her neck as if she were adjusting a dupatta across her shoulders. Dupattas are passé in India now, her cousin-sister Sunita says, but Daddyji insisted she wear one growing up in Malton; the scarf has become a substitute dupatta.
Every time, it’s no different. The weight of her belly pressing against maternity underwear, the baby’s pull on the placenta coiled within her. She waits at the bus stop for a while, till her nose feels frozen; then she trudges to the subway, emerges three blocks from the boulangerie.
André, the landlord, is coming down the staircase, a tray of petits pains levitating over his head as he descends to meet her. “Want one?”
“No. Merci, André.” His apron leaves flour streaks on her coat as he brushes past.
The day Stanford moved out, André didn’t offer her petits pains. “You could lose a little weight, a young woman like you. Get a haircut, buy some sexy clothes at the Eaton Centre. One date with a jeune homme, you’ll forget all about Monsieur Stanford. I’ll talk to Valerie, she’ll know a few good guys.” He meant to be comforting. When reporters besieged the boulangerie, André said, “They’re good customers.” But when they came snooping for Naina, he met them stone-faced, arms folded across his chest, on this very staircase — “No trespassing, mes amis.”
Busy in her loft studio, Valerie, André’s wife, never found Naina a few good guys but instead counselled her in brief appearances on the landing, holding hands mottled with clay out from her denim smock. “Ça ne fait rien, Naina, mon amie! Some things, they take years. This one I work on now — a lifetime. I try and I try, mais … it resists me. Maybe I resist it.” Valerie’s sculpture is realist, the figures so lifelike that when a caretaker statue she sculpted was exhibited at the Art Gallery of Ontario, people stopped to ask it directions.
Mothering, Baby Care, Working Mother — magazines besiege Naina’s door. She doesn’t remember subscribing; money is not for spending on subscriptions, money is for saving. But the magazines still arrive. Do their senders somehow know she hasn’t delivered yet?
Delivered.
She has delivered so many other things in her thirty-five years, why can she not deliver the girl? Delivering is giving, from the sender to the receiver, the woman who delivers just the conduit. One job she had, soon after Stanford left, was delivering parcels. She discarded her bright salwar kameez for the drab brown slacks and shirt of a UPS uniform. Perched high above cars in her cab, long hair wound into a tight bun and hidden away under the cap. Till the dispatcher said he couldn’t understand her accent on her call-ins, and she might as well forget it because it wasn’t his fault she heard Ramana when he’d said Ramada.
Naina turns the key, flicks the light switch. Not much here, but something to call her own. A lumpy Murphy bed, its two legs permanently lowered to the parquet floor, a desk and chair she and Stanford bought together from a junk dealer on Spadina, books piled on a low-legged piri from the family home in Malton. A yeasty smell rises around her from the boulangerie below.
She lowers her weight to the seat in the bay window that bulges over Edgewood Street, not bothering to raise the blinds.
The ache again, at the small of her back.
When I know who sent you, baby, then I’ll know to whom I must deliver you. But till then, you stay with me, achcha?
Sunita — “call me Sue” — is svelte in a sage green polo-neck tunic and black tights. Arriving as emissary from her aunt, Naina’s mother, like a finger extended outdoors to test a chill wind, she is the only one who still comes to see Naina from the family. She has nothing to gain, Naina reminds herself, nothing whatsoever, by driving all the way east and spending several toonies to park her white BMW in the parking lot across the street. Nothing to gain but satisfaction.
“Why don’t you tell your Daddyji sorry — buss! That’s all it takes. One little word and you can be back ek dum, no problem.”
But this is the problem.
“I have done nothing wrong,” says Naina. “All I committed was love. There is too little of it, so I felt it. Enough for all of us.”
“Love, shove.” Sunita’s laugh could peel the dingy blue paint from the walls. “What happened to your gora guy now? Not that I’m saying you did anything wrong, mind you — you were just young and foolish. All I’m saying is now you should say sorry. Then we can all meet together — no more of this, ’I can’t tell anyone I’m going to see Naina, but everyone knows and gives me secret messages for her.’ So I’m just asking, does it hurt you to say it, or what?”
“No,” says Naina. “Saying sorry would not hurt my flesh. It would not break a bone. It will not make me bleed. It will not kill me, that is true. But, Sunita, I am not sorry. It’s important to me to mean what I say.”
“Call me Sue,” Sunita says automatically. “But I ask you, what is the harm in saying it? What does it cost you? Just to please everyone.” A frustrated click of the tongue. “You really have no sense, Naina. Fourteen years! Even Ram returned home after fourteen years exile.”
“He was a god, he was a king — men can return home once they do what they have to do.”
“Such funny ways you see things, Naina. All this women’s libber talk, see where it brought you?” Sue’s hand rising to her nose ring jingles a wristful of twenty-two-carat gold bangles. “Lose a little weight,” she advises kindly, three-inch heels clopping to the apartment door. “Otherwise, even if you make up, how will Uncle and Aunty find you a match? They’ll have to find a widower or even a divorced fellow now, but still you have a chance. Then you can have children just like mine. Think what I’m saying — one little word.”
The baby shifts appreciatively as Sunita leaves. A tiny fist punches suddenly, stretching Naina’s lost waist. She strokes it, crooning, “Chanda mama dur ho …”
In the evening, Naina puts on her hat, mittens and coat and climbs on the 509 streetcar. Downtown, she and the baby within rise in a carpeted cell to the top of a tinted glass skyscraper. There she bends and straightens, emptying garbage cans and sorting paper from plastic to ready it for rebirth. She wipes a rag gently around the computer brooding in suspended mode in the corner of each vacant cubicle. The roar of her vacuum fills empty hallways, sucking up dirt. She straps on golden yellow kneepads to kneel and polish the expanse of wood floors in corporate meeting rooms. The white fluorescence hums, “Good money, good money.”
That’s what André said when he gave her the card. “It’s good money.” Said it kindly, having printed off three late-fee notices in a row to slip beneath her door. Naina looked at the card, heart falling, realizing she was being given an option the family would find even less to their liking; the family is not of that caste of people who clean for others.
But André was being kind, and he did not know the family or its deep disgust for people who clean. And so Naina looked past the family and called the number on the card.
“It’s just temporary,” she told the baby. “Till you are ready to come into the world.”
Emptying trash, she wonders at what point in the past four or five years had the cleaning become permanent? Become an important job that deserves a dedicated army instead of a crew or two? She can aspire higher with her college degree — anyone in the family would. But she’s used to this now, it gives her mind space as her hands move, and no one demands she wear a dress or pants or hide her long black hair under a khaki cap.
It’s important work that must be done each night to offset the white-collar crimes of the day.
Stanford wore a white collar, even in those days, when they were just students. And a suit. To class. They met at a Mmuffin stand and her love reached out by itself, extended beyond the family to enfold him, when he admitted to feeling as foreign
in Toronto as she did. It took months for her to understand that he felt foreign because of “all these people from other countries coming to Canada, taking over all we’ve built.” It was Stanford who rented the apartment above the boulangerie, winking at André as he rolled out his bearskin rug, set his poufy chair before his stereo. Rented it because he said it made him feel like a thief every time he had to park a block away from her home so Daddyji wouldn’t find out she was dating a gora.
Daddyji found out, of course. Found out when her belly began growing. Her mother told Daddyji, “This is Canada, these things happen.”
“But not to my daughter,” raged Daddyji. “Have you taught her no better?”
Then Naina saw her mother’s face close, close to Naina like the door her father slammed in her face.
After graduation, Stanford took his stereo, his poufy chair and his bearskin rug and moved to Seattle, gambling on a free-trade future without encumbrances. “Mistakes happen,” he said. “You take responsibility, you move on. I’ll send you money when the child comes.”
He never did, for the child has never been delivered.
He probably thinks Naina got rid of it. Stanford, proud wearer of the yuppie label every day of the eighties, reads the Wall Street Journal, not the National Enquirer or the Journal of Medical Research.
Who sent you, baby? Where shall I deliver you?
Naina spends her mornings with her swollen feet up on the radiator, watching snow sail down on Edgewood Street, imagining tropical breezes. “You’re so smart, baby. No reason to come out into this weather.” She pats her stomach as a ring quakes the cordless phone.
“That woman I told you about?” Dr. Johnson sounds surprised. “She called again. She still thinks she can help you. She’s so insistent, Naina, I think you should see her. I’ll tell her she must come here. It can’t do any harm. It may address the psychological effect this is having on you.”
“I’m fine, I don’t need to see anyone.”
“Naina, listen to me! We’ve tried everything else for your case.”
“I’m not a case.”
“Well, you will be a case if this continues. How’s next Friday?”
“Bad.”
“Naina, I’m trying to help. We don’t know what effect your decision to allow nature to take its course may have on the baby. There could be brain damage after this long, there could be personality problems.”
“I still say — why are you not listening? — I still say, when my baby is ready, she will come.”
“All right, let’s look at it your way — don’t you want to know, Naina? Don’t you want to know what she’s waiting for? Why she’s waiting so long? This Dr. Chi says she can help us understand that.”
Naina said, “‘Maybe.”
“Next Friday, then. Be here at ten.”
Baby, talk to me. Only to me. Tell me where you come from. Say where I must deliver you.
“Hypnosis isn’t covered by the Ontario Health Insurance Plan. You’ll need to pay in advance — oh, we can worry about that later.” A well-kept petite woman of about forty-five, the doctor is jovial, not earnest; Stanford used to say all Chinese people are earnest.
But then Stanford didn’t know very many Chinese people. Stanford didn’t know Dr. Chi.
Dr. Chi is the first doctor Naina has ever talked to who has not made her repeat her entire medical history. It could be she read it before she met Naina, the simplest explanation but the least likely. It feels as if Dr. Chi just knows; she has not asked Naina a single stupid question. For instance, whether her decision not to allow a knife near her belly is occasioned by vanity or by — delicate pause — her Hindu religion? Dr. Chi has asked her to lie down, not on the vinyl-padded table with her heels in the stirrups, but on a couch in Dr. Johnson’s consulting room.
“I think you must ask the baby why she refuses to be delivered.” Dr. Chi flicks a stray lock of straight black hair from her eyes; Naina catches a whiff of camphor. Tiger Balm.
“She does not come because she is not ready” — her standard explanation.
“And we could ask her, if she were delivered by Caesarean section, would she die?”
“Why should she answer you?” Naina asks, a little jealous.
“No reason, no reason — quite right. No, she will speak through you.” Dr. Chi pauses, rubs her hands though the room is warm and the snow is outside, falling fast.
“You will use me to ask my baby to speak?”
“Yes, yes, of course. How else can it be done?” She pats Naina’s arm, gives her a buddhi-filled smile. “Lie still, now, lie still. Allow yourself to relax,” says Dr. Chi.
Allow myself?
The couch is soft beneath Naina’s shoulders. The baby’s weight settles above her. A cobweb hangs where walls and white ceiling meet. Naina holds her belly, rubs it soothingly, closes her eyes. Dr. Chi’s Tiger Balm scent grows stronger.
“You are back where you were born, far from Canada. There’s no snow outside … It’s warm, even hot. Getting hotter. The heat is so strong it sears your eyeballs, you remember that kind of heat? Yes … Allow yourself to feel your eyes become heavy … getting heavier. Smell the fragrance of dust. Can you feel a nice breeze cooling your skin?”
“Yes.”
“Allow your limbs to feel heavier and heavier … You’re going deeper into yourself.” Dr. Chi’s voice flattens. “You are looking within your womb. There, in the dark … you see her yet? Yes? See if you can move toward her. Ah, you are there? Ask her the questions you have in your heart …”
Naina can see her, very small, comma-shaped, brown-skinned, black-haired. She opens her arms.
Do you know me, baby? I am your mother.
I know you. I have known you a long time.
Why do you wait within me? Wait so long? Make me carry you everywhere?
I wait because you are not ready to receive me.
I thought you waited because you were not ready to come to me.
You were wrong.
I am ready, baby. What can I promise you that will bring you to birth?
Tell me you will love me into being. Tell me you will not be afraid.
That would be untrue, baby.
Then tell me you will live with your fear and your doubt and, even so, bring me to light.
Why have you chosen me for your birthing?
Kismat, the luck of the draw.
Who sends you to me?
The unknown.
Will you come by the knife or will you come without?
I will come when you are open wide and deep as a well.
To whom shall I deliver you, baby?
To life, to the world.
What if I fail you, baby?
You do not fail me if you try your best.
I will try.
Dr. Chi’s smile is above her.
“Oh, your bindi is smudged,” she says kindly. “It was weeping.”
The prescription Dr. Chi writes for Naina is for a broth of chicken, laced with ginger juice and brandy, to be washed down nightly with red date tea.
Naina’s baby is born in October on Diwali day, the day Ram came home from exile. Few diyas burn on the windowsills of homes, and there are no sparklers; few celebrate this festival in Toronto. After her second gestation, she comes quietly, from an unwitnessed, private labour. Labour that is joy, joy that is labour. There is no one but Naina to staunch the blood, clean the child, cut the cord and offer the gods her thanks.
All my thanks, heartfelt thanks.
And in the morning, Naina opens her door to Valerie, who cries, “Cherie, I finished it, come and see … oh, la la! What have we here?”
The bay window encircles Naina as she resumes her seat, the baby at her breast.
“Ah, your bébé and mine, they came together! I have work all night as if a beam had opened between myself and le bon dieu.”
“I too worked all night,” says Naina, smiling radiantly. “I’ll come up and visit yours soon.”
When Valerie is gone, Naina lifts the cordless phone.
It’s time she told the family; she’ll call Sunita — really shock her this time. Time to find Stanford and surprise him, tell him what she’s done without his help. Time to register the hybrid little being in her arms.
Rendezvous
Hel-lo, Jimmy! Jimmy McKuen!
It’s me, Enrico. How does this place call itself Greek and let you Irish in? Let you sit at their lunch counter, they’ll let anyone in. You sure you’re allowed this side of town? Good to see you, amigo — been one helluva long time.
You’re looking good, but that corduroy coat of yours looks like it’s from the Salvation Army. Feel mine — it’s that new microfibre. And where’d you get that shirt, buddy? Looks like the one you had on the last time I saw you. Hey, doesn’t cost much to be in style these days, but you gotta be aware. What’s in, what’s out, you know. Oh, and your hair — how come you still have so much of it? If I had my shears, I’d texturize it a little. Right here, above your ear.
Okay, I’ll sit down a minute.
By the way, you’d know something that’s been bothering me all day. What was the name of Gene Autry’s horse? Trigger? Nah, it’s about your memory, Jimmy. It just came to me — Champion, that was his name.
Yeah, coffee. I don’t know — my god, do I have to decide this fast? Decaf, I guess. What’s your name? Carlos, huh? Man, you are so Mexican.
I ain’t his kind of Mexican, Jimmy, I was always kinda laid back. This one’s so nervous, he’s ambidextrous with that coffee.
Speaking of coffee, you know my son? Met him? In and out of problems — aren’t we all! The latest one is coffee. He’s buying it from a company called Bad Ass, what a name! They sold him a sixteen thousand dollar roaster, like he’s going to roast that much coffee. He says it’s the biggest commodity in the world after oil. All those kids lining up to order grandeys and double latteys — you say anything in French it sounds better, know that? You want a little class, just get out your English-French dictionary — it’s all there, that’s the key to class, my man.