by Alka Joshi
She crossed her arms over her chest but instantly regretted it; her breasts hurt.
They were filled with milk because I hadn’t let her feed the baby. It was as if she needed him as much as he needed her. But I’d seen what Radha hadn’t: desperate women begging my saas to rid them of their burdens. Where she saw joy, I saw hardship. Where she saw love, I saw responsibility, obligation. Could they be two sides of the same coin? Hadn’t I experienced both love and duty, delight and exasperation, since she entered my life?
I stood up. “I brought something for you.” I removed two thermoses from my carrier, unscrewed the cup from one and poured the steaming liquid into it.
“Drink this. It’s bitter, but it will help with the soreness in your breasts.”
She wrinkled her nose.
“Please.”
“What’s in it?” She took the cup from me and sniffed it.
“Burdock root. Mullein leaves. A little dandelion root. It will make the swelling go down.”
As she sipped, she watched me pour hot liquid from the other thermos into a cup. I dipped two strips of flannel in the liquid, one at a time, wetting them thoroughly. “Open your gown.”
She set her cup on the side table and wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands. She unbuttoned her gown, exposing her breasts. Her nipples were twice as large as they had been when she first came to Jaipur. Her face flushed in embarrassment, but I pretended not to notice. Tenderly, I placed a warm compress on each breast.
Radha let out a sigh and closed her eyes. “Ginger?”
“Chamomile oil, too. And calendula flower.”
Her face relaxed. She took a deep breath.
This was how my saas had taught me to show my love. Not with words or touch but through healing.
Outside, a green warbler tweeted, and we turned to see it fly past the window.
“Auntie’s breasts are filled with milk, too.”
I sighed. “I offered her the compresses, but she doesn’t want them. She wants to feel the pain. I think it’s her way of saying goodbye to her baby. Her breasts will be hard and sore for a while, but her milk will eventually dry up.”
Fresh tears sprang to her eyes. “I feel so guilty because my baby is alive.”
“That’s not your fault.”
“She came to Shimla because of me—so far from her husband. And look what happened.”
“Lady Bradley is far better equipped than the hospital in Jaipur. The air here is better for her asthma. Besides, she wanted to be here with you.”
The warbler returned with its mate; both landed on a rhododendron near the window. He stood guard while she scratched under her feathers with her beak.
“She can try again, can’t she?”
Someone had to tell her. “Dr. Kumar doesn’t think it likely.”
“Oh.”
We watched as the female warbler turned toward us. She was either gazing at us or admiring her reflection in the window.
“I wanted Auntie to replace you as my jiji, you know.”
It hurt to hear her say it, but it didn’t surprise me.
“But the day I sent the telegram I’d never been more glad that you were my sister.”
I met her eyes. She didn’t look away.
“I knew you’d make everything all right.”
Something hard inside me yielded. She depended on me to be there for her, even when she was angry and told me she hated me. I smoothed her coverlet, scratchy from too many washings and ironings. Her hand lay on her lap, and I clasped it. She let me.
“How’s Malik?” she asked.
“Busy. Delivers a few orders—hair tonic, that sort of thing. He’s always coming around. Thinks I need the company.”
“Do you?”
I shrugged. I replaced the warm compresses on her breasts with cooler ones. I could tell by her exhalations that the ache had lessened, and, with it, the urge to breastfeed.
“You said the ladies aren’t coming to you for henna anymore?”
I thought Kanta had told her. “They don’t trust me. They think I steal.”
She raised her brows. “That’s ridiculous! Why would they think such a thing?”
“Gossip-eaters.” Crocodile lies.
I removed the cool compresses. Radha buttoned her gown, lost in thought.
I looked past the bed, out the window. Dark clouds breezed past the sun, blotting out the light. I could see my reflection. There were purple bruises under my eyes and lines at the corners of my mouth. The fluorescent lights overhead caught a few strands of silver in my hair and the groove of a wrinkle on my forehead. There was a slight stoop to my spine. I was getting older. I looked at my hands. No longer smooth, the skin was like a rutted path, grooved and bumpy with veins.
Dr. Kumar walked in. He stood, uncertain, as if he might have intruded on a private moment.
“All is well?” He looked at my sister. “Radha, how are you feeling?”
“Better.” She told him about my herb compresses.
“You’re a woman of many talents, Mrs. Shastri,” he said.
When he realized he was staring at me, he turned his attention to Radha, to Kanta’s empty bed, then to the stack of paper in his hands. “I need your signature.”
Ah. The official forms, certifying the birth of the new crown prince. I stood to take them, but my legs felt unsteady, and I sat down again.
“If you’ll just give us a moment, Doctor.”
He nodded and left the room.
Radha smiled.
“What’s so funny?”
“He is.” She lifted her chin to indicate Dr. Kumar. “He was always saying my baby would be an all-rounder, and he does have sturdy little legs.”
Of course Radha had given thought to her baby’s future. He would be a cricketeer. A star bowler. Would he ask for kicheri or aloo tikki at breakfast? His hair might grow straight, like hers, or curly like his father’s.
“Jiji?” she asked shyly. “Could we see the baby again? I promise not to make another scene.”
I started to rise from the bed, but Radha grabbed my hand with a strength that surprised me. She squeezed my fingers. Her hand was warm and slightly damp. I sat back down.
“Jiji, I know I took you by surprise. I must have been four or five—I was stirring the boiling milk for yogurt when the postman delivered one of your letters. Maa took one look at the envelope and threw it in the cooking fire. I asked why she didn’t open it, and she just shrugged and said, ‘Someone who died in my heart a long time ago.’
“I wondered who she was talking about. After that, I started listening, more closely, to the gossip-eaters, and realized Maa was taking about you. I thought how brave you must be—how very strong—to leave everything behind. And then I met you. You were everything I’d imagined. Smart. Beautiful. Funny. I was proud. You could do so much. I loved you from the moment I laid eyes on you. See, I’d had time to get used to the idea of you.”
My eyes filled. No one had ever said they loved me. Oh, I knew Maa and Pitaji loved me, but it wasn’t something they said aloud. In his own way, Hari had loved me, or thought he had, but his hadn’t been a selfless love. He’d wanted to own me, make me a part of him. And Samir didn’t love me; he wanted me in bed.
“I want children. I want to be tired at the end of the day because I’ve had to boil milk for their kheer and play hopscotch with them and put turmeric on their hurts and listen to the stories they make up and teach them how to read Ramayana and catch fireflies. And it makes me sadder than you can imagine to think I’ll never be able to do that with this baby.”
Her persistence was wearing me down. Was I being too narrow-minded? Maybe she and I could raise that beautiful baby together. Radha could go to school while I took care of the boy. No, I couldn’t. I’d have to keep working to pay off Samir’s debt. And now
that I thought about it, no school in Jaipur would take a girl who’d had a baby. She wouldn’t be able to complete her education. With an illegitimate baby in tow, we’d be pariahs, shunned from society, any and all celebrations, weddings and funerals, even a way to make a living. No one would want me to do their henna or their mandala or arrange their marriage. We wouldn’t be able to feed ourselves! No matter how I looked at it, it just wasn’t possible for us to take Radha’s baby home.
I looked out the window. Outside, sunlight was peeking through the clouds. Scarlet minivets bathed in the garden fountain, with nervous little movements of their heads, a furtive splash of feathers.
I watched Kanta and Manu as they sat on a bench in the Lady Bradley garden, a wool blanket covering their knees. Kanta had her head on her husband’s shoulder. Her eyes were closed.
Kanta had wanted to be a mother so desperately. And she would have been such a wonderful one. She was good-natured, funny, generous. She had Manu, her mother-in-law and Baju to help her at home. And she could afford to hire an ayah for the baby. If only she could take Radha’s baby home. She would love that little boy as if it were hers.
I felt my pulse quicken.
She and Manu had the means, the time and the energy to give the baby a good home.
It was absurd to think such a thing! I had signed a contract.
Unless...
Sweat beaded along my hairline.
“Radha,” I whispered. If I said it, I could never take it back.
I turned to face her.
I told myself that I knew what I was doing. If I went ahead with this and the royal family discovered the truth, I risked a legal breach of contract, hefty fines and even imprisonment.
She must have seen the excitement in my face. “Yes?”
I was giving up thirty thousand rupees and a secure future for Radha! But the baby would have a far more loving home.
I pointed at the window with my chin. Kanta and Manu had risen from the bench. They were walking to the far side of the hospital, where the nursery was.
“Kanta never got to hold her baby. That’s why she loves going to the nursery to hold yours.”
Radha lifted her eyebrows and looked out the window.
“She sings to him. He seems to like it,” I said.
Radha smiled. “She made up all kinds of silly songs when the babies were in our bellies. Just like Pitaji used to.”
“If Kanta were raising your baby...” I looked at Radha. My heart beat fast in my ribs. “Would she read Shakespeare or the Tales of Krishna to him?”
Her eyes flickered.
I took her hands in mine. “Would she feed him sweets or savories?”
Radha’s lips parted. “She loves my laddus.” Her voice was a whisper.
“Would her saas feed him rose milk, too?”
Her eyes were full of wonder and hope. “Till he turned pink.”
I smiled and touched my forehead to hers. “Wouldn’t Kanta just love him to pieces?”
My choti behen nodded slowly. She gripped my hands. “But, Jiji, what about the family who wanted to adopt the baby?”
“Leave that to me.”
* * *
Kanta was looking at some point beyond me, as if I’d become transparent. I wondered, for a moment, if she’d heard me. Then she said, “But, Lakshmi, what about the contract with the pala—”
“I’ll handle it.” Radha still didn’t know that the palace was the adoptive party. Now, I would never tell her.
I watched the struggle on Kanta’s face: she wanted it to be true, but should she believe her luck?
Manu, looking dazed, said to Radha, “Are you sure?”
“You’ll treat him as your own.” Radha meant it. Only I noticed how her hands clutched the bedsheets, how white her knuckles were. Until this moment, others had made choices for her; now she had made one of her own, the hardest decision of her young life.
“You were right, Auntie. I can’t take care of him—not in Jaipur, not in Ajar, not in Shimla. But you can, Auntie. You can, Uncle.”
In their excitement, Kanta and Manu couldn’t conceal their joy; they answered at the same time, speaking over one another. I clasped my hands in front of my lips, happy for them.
“We will take the best care—”
“—already, he’s one of the family—”
“—I know he favors salted cashews—”
“Of course, we’ll wait until he has teeth...”
If I had known what Kanta was going to say next, I would have stopped her, told her that it was rash—the sort of gesture made by the heart, not the head. But Radha nodded excitedly, accepting the offer: Radha wouldn’t be going back to school. She would stay with Kanta to be the baby’s ayah.
Kanta and Manu rushed to embrace Radha, the three of them laughing and crying at the same time, wiping the tears from each other’s cheeks.
* * *
Dr. Kumar was seated at his desk, pen in hand, when I walked into his office.
“I’ve thought about your offer. I will consult with you on a professional basis, Doctor.”
He dropped his pen and tried, unsuccessfully, to keep from looking overjoyed. “That’s smashing! Absolutely...”
“But there’s been a change in plans.”
“Change?”
I braced myself for his reaction. “Mr. and Mrs. Agarwal will adopt Radha’s baby.”
Now he looked confused. “I—I don’t understand. The palace—”
“I was hoping you could... The papers you’re submitting to them...”
He put both hands to his temples and looked down at his desk. “Mrs. Shastri? May I ask, what are you—”
“I need to know reasons why the palace would reject the baby. Medical reasons.” I knew the contract by heart, but he would know the proper terminology.
His hands slid from his temples to his cheeks. He left them there, his skin stretched clownishly. Abruptly, he got up and went around the desk to check his office door, though I’d made sure to pull it closed behind me.
“You realize you’re asking me to do—”
“The proper thing.”
He took his seat again, behind his desk, and folded his hands together. He picked up the fountain pen and capped it, tapped it lightly on the piece of paper in front of him, smudging his hand and whatever he’d been writing.
“Radha has made this decision?”
“Yes.”
His gaze landed on the bookshelf behind me. “I told you something like this might happen. Before the baby arrived, we could have canceled the contract. It’s too late now.”
“Haven’t you discovered, Dr. Kumar, that the wrong course can, at times, turn out to be the right one? The baby is better off with a woman who loves him than with a palace full of strangers. The royal family can adopt another baby from the Kshatriya caste with the right bloodline.”
It was difficult to read Jay Kumar’s expression. His eyes were gray pearls, the outer rim luminescent. He chewed his lower lip, pushed his lanky frame out of the chair and started to pace, rubbing his jaw with his ink-stained hand.
“Dr. Kumar,” I said. “Please.”
He sat again, picked up the letter he was writing and noticed the smudge. He blew out a breath, tore the page in half. Then he searched through the stack of papers to his left and pulled out a sheet; I saw that it was a form, embossed with the royal seal. He uncapped the fountain pen, threw a hasty glance in my direction and carefully amended a number on the form.
“A newborn’s heartbeat generally ranges from a hundred to a hundred and twenty beats per minute,” he said. “However, when the heart is enlarged, the heart rate is much slower.”
He tore a clean sheet from his writing tablet. His pen glided across the paper and filled the page in less than two minutes. He lifted the finished letter
in his hands, blew on it to dry the ink, then handed it to me.
September 3, 1956
My Dear Dr. Ram,
At 6:20 a.m., September 2, 1956, the patient you had entrusted in my care delivered a baby boy weighing six pounds, fifteen ounces. While there were no apparent physical defects, the vital statistics revealed a heartbeat of 84 bpm. As you are well aware, hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy or asymmetric septal hypertrophy are indicated in cases such as these—if not now, then in the future when the myocardium has been compromised.
I attribute the complication to an early birth, as the baby was three weeks premature. I wish I had better news for you. Mrs. Shastri will be in touch regarding contract closure.
Please convey my sincerest condolences to the palace. A thousand thanks to you for entrusting me with such a privileged and providential task.
Respectfully,
Jay Kumar, M.D.
I read it twice. No one would lose face: the royal family, Dr. Kumar or the Singhs. But who would pay Radha’s medical bills now? Hastily, I pushed the thought aside. One thing at a time.
I read the letter a third time. Only then did it occur to me that Jay Kumar was passing up his opportunity for fame. He would have been the doctor who delivered the new Crown Prince of Jaipur.
I looked up at him. “I’m sorry.”
He returned my gaze.
“Mrs. Agarwal,” he said, “will make a fine mother. Very fine indeed.”
He pushed the letter and the form across the desk. All that was missing was my signature. He passed me the fountain pen.
TWENTY
Jaipur, State of Rajistan, India
October 15, 1956
I stayed two weeks in Shimla. On my return to Jaipur in late September, I felt happier, lighter, than I had in a long time. In Shimla, I had worked with people who needed me, who valued what I had to offer. The Himalayan people had welcomed my suggestions eagerly, the way parched soil welcomes rain. A few had arrived at Dr. Kumar’s clinic, bearing gifts of wildflowers and home-cooked treats, to thank me. Not since my time with my saas had I experienced such joy in healing others.
