The Selector of Souls

by Shauna Singh Baldwin

  “Hai! Can a woman end up cleaning out a son?” says Damini. She has never considered this. Why has she never considered this?

  Kiran sits up, smoothing the coverlet over her still-swollen belly. “Goldina—how much money will it take to make you shut up?”

  Damini’s jaw drops and Sister Anu’s hand goes to her mouth.

  Goldina looks up from her squat by Kiran’s bedside. “How much?” Her weathered hand clutches Kiran’s blanket. “How much will you pay for his penis? How much are his strong arms worth? How much is his hungry stomach worth? What will you give me for those little loins? You don’t even know if he will be a good man or an intelligent one. You don’t know if he will treat his older sister with love or marry her off to merge his bijness with another man’s.”

  Kiran rolls her eyes. She says to Sister Anu in English, “If this is the way you run things here, we’ll just close the clinic and tell the whole village you Christians weren’t running it properly. You wait till my husband comes. I’ll tell him what you’re trying to do.”

  Sister Anu should use her English to explain to Kiran, because Damini can’t snatch Moses from Kiran and Goldina must be too afraid of Kiran and of injuring her son.

  “Give Moses to you,” says Goldina, “and he’ll wear silk while your daughter wears cotton. Give him to you and I’ll have to call my own son ‘Moses-ji’ and be ordered to clean his home someday. Give him to you and he’ll eat chicken every day while in my home your little daughter will drink the water used to boil rice and sometimes a little daal. Give Moses to you and he’ll learn to say ‘I want’ while your daughter learns to keep silent.”

  Damini’s heart bounds for Goldina, but she braces just in case she has to restrain the distraught mother again.

  “I know, I know. In time, I’ll pretend to forget who he really is and so will you. We know how to pretend. You’re a woman, I’m a woman—we learn it at our mother’s knee! As he grows up, I will lower my eyes in his presence, but our secret will bind us to each other, so I can never leave you or your employ. And you—how will you forget your baby daughter? When she comes to learn my trade, will you make her clean your toilet?”

  Kiran says, “She’s yours. What do I care what you teach her?”

  Goldina shrugs. “This baby girl wasn’t what you wanted so you’ll give her to me the way you give me rubbish to take away from your home.

  “But if I give my son to you, he’ll learn to be a vee-eye-pee at three, and a vee-vee-eye-pee by ten. His friends will be the sons of your friends, and there’ll always be someone below him he can shout at or squeeze or hit. He’ll learn to order others, slam doors and cuff anyone in his way. I see such patterns. But I’ll teach your daughter sweetness and grovelling and silence to protect her. If she grows up even half as beautiful as you, she’ll be raped by some caste Hindu just to ‘teach her a lesson’ or ‘show her her place.’ She’ll learn to eat from the same plate as Samuel and me, instead of having her own. She’ll complain a little when I send her away with her husband, but not very much, because by then she will know how little Samuel and I can do for her.”

  She takes a deep shuddering breath.

  “But when Moses devours whatever he claims, or bribes and fights those who cross him—will you blame my low-caste blood or your high-caste ways? When this boy learns to believe his servants are lazy and steal and have no brains, will that be because of my blood or your saab ways? And when he turns more vicious than a mad dog whenever he doesn’t get what he wants, when he changes his whims like the wind just to make others jump, will you blame his blood or your saab ways?”

  Kiran turns on her side, shielding Moses from their clutches. Her head covered with the blanket mimics the shape of the swaddled baby.

  But Goldina continues, “Only you and I will know he has no right to act like a saab, but by the time Moses grows up, we’ll both be too afraid of him to tell anyone. And what if he ever learns who he is? Then will he come to Samuel and me? Will he be shamed to know his mother is a sweeper-woman? Tell me, how will he know himself?

  “And what if one day your daughter learns who her parents are, and that she never learned more than her alphabet because she was just a little girl from the sweeper colony. Maybe she will want the kind of toys your daughter has today—just years too late. Do you think she will want what your Loveleen has? Think how one sister will hate the other.

  “So you want to pay me for this boy, Kiran-ji? Will that stop your taking? Who will you take from next time?”

  “I’m trying to sleep,” says Kiran’s muffled voice.

  “How long will it be before I come to you for more money? How will you keep me from telling Aman-ji and the rest of the world? When you run out of money, will you have me killed?”

  Damini says, “Goldina! Don’t talk like that to Kiran-ji.”

  Goldina rounds on her. “And you, where will you stop? Will you keep taking women for the test until every woman produces a son? What kind of world are you making? A world full of men, a world with no kindness, no gentleness—no sweetness?”

  No sweetness. Damini already lives in that kind of world.

  “Always there are highs and lows, Goldina,” Damini whispers. “The gods made the mountains to show us that.”

  “Which god says that people higher up deserve to be there? Which god says that people higher up are better than us? Which god says she has a right to my child? I clean her shit—it smells as bad as mine.”

  “Chi! Dirty talk!” Kiran rolls back the covers and sits up, still holding Moses close. “All of you go away, just leave me with my son.”

  No one moves.

  Both babies begin to cry.

  Kiran opens her nightgown and the ward turns into an echo chamber of Goldina’s shrieks. Sister Anu starts forward, then draws back—she can’t wrench the boy from Kiran’s arms without hurting him. Kiran ignores everyone and begins to feed the boy.

  Goldina begins to wail, then to moan.

  The baby girl looks up at Damini. She shakes her head from side to side. Her eyes flash, eyes that have seen all this before. Her lips pucker—she’s hungry too. Sister Anu whispers to Damini. Damini tears herself away, goes to the next room and mixes some Nestlé powder.

  When she brings the formula, Sister Anu sits down in sight of the two mothers and feeds the baby girl.

  ANU

  THE BABIES HAVE BEEN FED, STROKED AND SOOTHED but the men’s ward resounds with Goldina’s moaning. Anu could snatch the baby. But if Kiran is too mighty to understand Goldina’s pain she might not care if she hurts Moses.

  The whole affair has gone beyond Anu’s experience or training. She is here for community support and charity work. If Dr. Gupta were here, he could order Kiran to return Moses to Goldina, and Kiran might have some trouble firing him.

  Amanjit Singh owns the carpet of land on which this clinic stands and Kiran can pull it out from under all of them. Without Kiran’s support, all that Father Pashan and Anu and Bethany have worked for will be gone. Only a few hours ago, Goldina said the worst had already happened—but she could not have imagined what Kiran was about to do. But Goldina should be supported, Kiran should be held accountable—you can’t just go around stealing other women’s babies and abandoning your own. If a high-caste woman steals a village woman’s baby at Bread of Healing, women will stop coming, and again only men will come with reports of their wives’ and daughters’ symptoms.

  “When Dr. Gupta comes,” Anu says, “I will send the driver to the police station in Jalawaaz and ask them to send a constable. Goldina has a complaint, and she should lodge it.”

  “No, sister, no!” Goldina scrambles up and lunges forward to touch Sister Anu’s feet. “No puliss, no, no!” Her fingers grip Sister Anu’s ankles tight. “They’ll beat me. They’ll believe Kiran mem-saab, not me. Don’t let them rape me also. They all know Moses’ father—you probably know him too. He’s a respected man, a caste Hindu. A teacher.”

  “Ha!” says Kiran.


  So that is the source of the boy’s light skin.

  “You need more explaining?” says Goldina, wiping her cheeks.

  Sister Anu almost lifts Goldina to her feet. How thin are Goldina’s shoulders in the circle of her arms. “Rape,” she tells Goldina, “is not a woman’s fault. It’s the man who does the harm.”

  “Hé Vaheguru!” says Kiran. “Take all your Bollywood-movie scenes somewhere else, and let me sleep!”

  DAMINI

  WHICH TEACHER IN JALAWAAZ? THERE COULD BE TWO or three—so why does Damini immediately suspect her son?

  Because he’s unmarried. Unmarried men get the heat.

  No, not Suresh. He probably talked to her kindly and she thought he was luring her. These low-caste people begin sitting beside you if you talk to them for a minute. Call her Hindu, harijan, dalit, shudra, valmiki, bhangi, chura, chamar, chandal, pariah or dom. Make her sit on a chair instead of on the ground. Bathe her, clean her. Nothing can change what she is: a sweeper.

  Suresh probably mistook Goldina for a loose woman—everyone knows sweeper-women actually enjoy making children.

  Making children. Making this child. This boy. This boy who could be Damini’s grandson.

  “If you were really raped,” says Damini, “you could tell the doctor at the government clinic or the private clinic in Jalawaaz that you wanted a cleaning and she would have done it like that.” She snaps her fingers. “Why didn’t you?”

  “I confessed to Father Pashan I didn’t know if my husband is the father and he said I’d fry in hell if I had a cleaning. He made me swear to have this baby. He said he would pray that I would have a boy, and that the child would be auspicious for me. His prayers gave me a boy, but see his face—Moses is not dark enough to be auspicious.”

  Suresh must hardly have touched Goldina, but now she’s crying rape, thinks Damini. Maybe he rolled around with her or something—boys do these things. Backward-caste sweeper-women just accuse boys from forward-castes, good boys like Suresh, all the time, all the time.

  It’s all my fault—I should have married him off years ago.

  “I can’t believe Father would counsel you not to tell your husband,” says Sister Anu.

  “He just said I should do what my conscience told me.”

  “Who is that?” says Damini.

  “A voice inside you,” says Sister Anu.

  “A spirit was talking?” asks Damini.

  “The Holy Spirit,” says Goldina. “And Anamika Devi.”

  “Anamika Devi spoke to you?”

  Goldina tilts her head in assent. “I lit a candle before her avatar, Mary Devi. Mary Devi said to bring my mind and heart together. So I thought: the padri said not to have a cleaning because he’s a man. What does he know about my body, and whether I should have a cleaning or not? I said I will do what I feel is right, not what any man says.”

  “Then?”

  “Mary Devi made a son for me.”

  “Such bullshit,” Kiran says in English. “The Holy Ghost, and now goddesses and Mother Mary. This woman is completely irrational. She’s not only stupid but mad as well.” She turns to Sister Anu. “Look, it’s very simple. Either you get her away from me and my son, or I’ll have this place shut down tomorrow.”

  Though it’s said in English, Damini understands the threat.

  Sister Anu shakes her head, and doesn’t shrink.

  ANU

  “YOU NUNS DON’T HAVE CHILDREN,” GOLDINA SAYS TO Sister Anu. “You don’t want children. How can women who don’t want children understand anything about having children?”

  “But I do have a child,” Sister Anu says, shocking herself and the three other women out of their wrangling. She’s feeling weak and hungry and at the end of her patience. And now she’s being told she doesn’t understand and can’t understand because how can an upper-caste woman possibly have compassion?

  Maybe her story can help this woman, one woman. She cannot know unless she tells it. Hers is a child of rape just like Moses. The story lifts like a sheer dupatta let loose on the wind. As she tells, Sister Anu’s scar flushes and twitches with embarrassment for Vikas. Why is she still ashamed for him? Shouldn’t he be ashamed of himself, for himself?

  “And here I thought you were a saab-woman who can’t see bangles she’s not wearing,” says Damini.

  Let even one woman know that she can be optimistic because she still survives. The telling slings a rope-bridge from herself to each woman. She mentions god’s role in saving her, though the Christian god means little to two of the three-woman audience, and as she tells them, she learns why she believes in miracles—it is a miracle she had the courage to leave Vikas, a miracle she is here.

  At the end, she says to Kiran, “Once Chetna was born, I did love her.”

  “Oh yes?” says Goldina, “Then where is the girl now? Why is she not with you? Did you get rid of her?”

  “When I left my husband to join the convent, I sent her to my cousin-sister in Canada.”

  “No wonder you seem to think I should give up my son to Kiran mem-saab,” says Goldina. “You think Moses will have a better life with her, don’t you? But if I take the mem-saab’s girl home with me—what kind of life do you think she’ll have? My husband and I share everything equally amongst our children, but I tell you this girl will not lead the same life as little Loveleen. Why do you not care for the baby girl’s betterment as much as for the boy’s?”

  DAMINI

  IF KIRAN TAKES DAMINI’S GRANDCHILD, HE WILL GROW up contemptuous of her, and those who struggle. He will have no obligation to look after Damini in her old age. If Goldina keeps the child, the boy will at least be near. In a mud hut, not a brick home as he deserves, but she will see him, know him, guide him.

  This boy is surely the avatar of the baby girl Damini returned to brahman. Damini must not betray this second grandchild, son of her own son, however he came to be. The gods are giving her a chance to balance her karma.

  “The boy is light-skinned,” Damini says to Kiran, “and you’re right that he looks too light-skinned to be Goldina’s. But I tell you, he’s too dark to be Mem-saab’s grandchild. Even if you rename him, no one will believe this is your son. Goldina can be thrown out of her home if you send your girl baby home with her, but you have nothing to fear. Aman-ji can afford a second daughter. If he beats you up or throws you out, you can go to a lawyer and complain. You can go to the police. You can go home to your rich parents. Goldina has only her old mother, a sweeper in Delhi.”

  “I can’t believe you are taking this woman’s side. You, our ancestral servant, you who have eaten our salt. You, who are wearing my mother-in-law’s kara.” Kiran says to Sister Anu in English, “You can’t trust these women. All of them just lie and lie.”

  Goldina sniffles and hugs her shins, shifting weight on her large feet. She adjusts her kerchief and glares at Kiran.

  Damini says, “Kiran-ji, maybe you lied when you told Aman the ultra-soon said it’s a boy. Maybe the doctor lied. But if you take Goldina’s child, I will tell Aman-ji that a man you liked before you were married came to see you. Yes, I will tell him he was here, in Gurkot, that he came in his saffron-orange car. My son told me he saw you meeting him at the chai-stall. Maybe he came before. Maybe he came nine months ago? I saw him here once, but I just remembered where I first saw him. His photo was in Mem-saab’s home in Delhi, in your dressing-table drawer. Remember I asked which member of your family had cut his hair besides your father, and you didn’t answer. Because he was no relative, na? Because he was a Hindu, na?”

  She holds Kiran’s gaze.

  ANU

  SISTER ANU HAS TO SIT DOWN.

  How often did Anu wonder what Vikas’s first love looked like and what sort of woman was That-girl? Well, now she knows. That-girl is Kiran, a woman who would stoop to steal another woman’s son.

  Anu could never have been like her. But more importantly, nor would she ever want to be like Kiran.

  It is easy to congratulate herse
lf, since she actually brought a daughter into the world. But did Anu act as gateway to the world from courage, or from fear of damnation?

  She must collect her thoughts, set aside this discovery. For the sake of two women and two babies. Her job is to understand the pressure Kiran is under. With no mother-in-law or father-in-law, with a husband who appears to dote on his older daughter Loveleen, why has Kiran felt so much pressure to conform?

  Maybe Goldina is right—we learn to want only what we can have in this life, so we tell ourselves to want only boys.

  DAMINI

  “KIRAN-JI, IF YOU DON’T GIVE ME THE CHILD NOW,” SAYS Damini, “I will tell Aman he doesn’t resemble Mem-saab or him.”

  Still holding the baby, Kiran reaches beneath her pillow for a small silver box. “Why should he believe you?” She flips the box open with her thumbnail and pops a pinch of paan masala into her mouth. “Just because of your age?” She closes her fist over the box. She turns to Sister Anu and says in English, “I always thought she looks like a red monkey—don’t you?”

  Damini understands what Kiran said, even if she cannot answer in English.

  It’s karma because of her paap, she thinks. The continuous load on her heart is her paap.

  “I don’t think so,” says Sister Anu who should agree with Kiran before she disagrees.

  “Amanjit-ji will believe me,” Damini says to Kiran. “Because of my years in his family, years in which I protected his family’s honour by being Mem-saab’s ears. Mem-saab’s spirit is in this clinic, and I swear to you on her spirit that I will do it.” Kiran opens her fist and stares down at the box. Damini draws close to her bedside. “And because I am faithful to her memory, and because our family has been faithful to Sardar-saab’s for so many generations, I ask you …”

  Damini holds out her arms for the child and waits.

  Kiran hesitates, searching Damini’s face. Damini’s nerves crackle as if in terror of the next moment