Mother Land

by Leah Franqui

  So, not really believing that she was actually doing it, she packed her bags and left.

  And now she was here, with the foreign daughter-in-law she had never thought she would like, who looked at her like she was a stranger and asked her to explain herself. Well, she certainly didn’t have to do a thing like that to someone decades younger than her.

  “Once you throw that away, I’d like some more water, please,” Swati said.

  “The kitchen is just through there. You can see it,” Rachel said.

  Swati stared at her. This was not an appropriate way for a daughter-in-law to talk to her mother-in-law. “I’m very tired from my journey,” Swati said, inflecting her voice with a bit of steel. Rachel looked at her oddly but walked into the kitchen and disposed of the dustbin of glass, then poured Swati a new serving of water.

  “You can get yourself some, too,” Swati said generously.

  Rachel looked up at her, eyes narrowed. “Thank you so much,” she said, smiling sweetly, acid in her tone. “But I would prefer something stronger.”

  Swati watched, her eyes wide, as Rachel poured herself a measure of something pale yellow out of a green bottle from the refrigerator.

  The girl crossed back to the living room and handed Swati her water, sipping her own drink.

  “What is that?” Swati asked, her tone reproving.

  “Wine.”

  “I never would have had a drink in front of my mother-in-law,” Swati said, almost to herself.

  “Well. I suppose I’m not much like you,” Rachel said, smiling again.

  “No. I suppose not. What a strange thing for women to do together,” Swati said, taking a gulp of her water.

  “My mother and I drink together all the time,” Rachel said, her tone neutral but her eyes hard.

  “That’s all right over there. But here . . .” Swati trailed off, looking away. “It’s not something good women do.”

  “I must be quite bad, then,” Rachel said, sarcasm dripping over her tone.

  “No, not at all. It is different over there.”

  “But I’m not over there. I’m over here,” Rachel said, her voice almost taunting, daring Swati to say more, to tell her she was a bad person because of the wine in her glass.

  “Yes! So maybe you shouldn’t. In front of others, that is, it is not respectful. For me it is okay, I understand that you are not from here, but other people might not,” Swati said, happy to be able to explain this to Rachel. It wasn’t that she was bad, per se, it was just that there was a time and a place and it was important that Rachel know such things. Swati felt a surge of happiness. It was truly essential that she be here, living with her son and his new wife. She would be able to guide Rachel, to help her understand India. It was right that she had left Vinod and come. It was destiny.

  “I fail to see how respect has anything to do with it,” Rachel said.

  “It takes time to understand things,” Swati said, magnanimously, to her mind. Rachel looked away, inhaling deeply and letting out the air in a long, thin stream. Swati wondered if that was some sort of Western way of breathing. Rachel looked back at her, inhaling again.

  “Why are you breathing like that?” Swati asked, curious.

  “It’s yogic breathing. To calm myself.”

  “I see,” Swati said, bemused. What did Rachel know about yoga?

  “Do you want to talk, perhaps? About all this?” Rachel said, her tone strained with the effort to sound cheerful and helpful. Talking was the last thing Swati wanted to do. Why did people want to talk about things all the time? She had made her decision, she had left, what else was there to say? She was here now. That was all.

  But Westerners were different, she had heard. Rachel looked at her like she was owed an explanation and Swati sighed. She would give the girl something; that should quiet her down. She racked her brain, trying to find something she thought Rachel might understand, or at least like. Flattery never hurt; didn’t everyone want to feel that they had influenced others?

  “It was because of something you said. About happiness,” Swati said.

  “What did I say?” Rachel said.

  “You don’t remember?” Swati was surprised.

  Rachel shook her head. “I talk a lot,” she said by way of explanation.

  Swati couldn’t imagine talking so much that you forgot something you’d talked about. How odd, she thought in disapproval. She looked away, marshaling her thoughts.

  “I thought my son would have a life like mine, and it would be a good one, because mine was good. There would be happy things here and there, good moments, and that would be enough. But when I see Dhruv now, he has something more. You said that happiness wasn’t a finite quality. That you had thought it was. But being with Dhruv had made you feel as if it wasn’t. I can see that in him, too. How his life is more than just a few happy moments. But my life is not. So I left. Because now I can see there can be more, and that is what I want. That’s all there is. There is nothing more to talk about,” Swati said. Surely that would be enough for Rachel, it had to be. It was the longest speech Swati had ever given about her emotions in her life.

  “So, you are looking for happiness?” Rachel asked, her face skeptical.

  “I suppose so,” Swati said. Put that way it sounded stupid, but it wasn’t; it was like buzzing in her blood, something that had pushed into her body and moved her out of the house and onto the plane and here, to Mumbai, to a new life, letting her world crumble behind her, knowing she could never go back to it.

  “Swati, are you sure this is what you want? Because it doesn’t seem like you. Not that I know you well, but . . .”

  The words, the doubt on her face, made Swati feel like Rachel had slapped her. What did she know of her? What did she know about anything? Did she think that Swati would do this, destroy everything, if she wasn’t sure? Swati stood suddenly. “I would like to go to bed now, if you don’t mind.”

  “Oh, but it’s so early! Would you like something for dinner first?”

  “No, thank you.” Swati deliberately placed her water glass on the table. She, at least, did not break things. “Where should I sleep?”

  Rachel led her to a room that looked like a disaster zone, and they both looked at it, from the threshold.

  “That’s our spare bedroom, but it’s not really . . . okay, here, you take our room tonight and we’ll get this ready for you soon, okay? I just have to grab some things.”

  They turned, and Rachel opened another door, this time to a room that looked decently clean, if not as spotless as Swati’s own in Kolkata. Still, it was better than the alternative.

  Rachel grabbed a few things, a pair of pajamas, a book, as Swati stood uncertainly in the center of the room. This was the bed her son shared with his wife. Swati felt uncomfortable and hoped Rachel would change the sheets.

  “My suitcase?”

  Rachel nodded and wheeled it into her own bedroom. They hadn’t decorated the bedroom much, or at all. The one piece of furniture in the room other than the bed was a bookcase, and that was quite full, but otherwise there were a few objects scattered along the windowsills, an aloe plant craning toward the sun, and nothing else.

  “Do you need anything?”

  “New sheets?” She would have to do it herself, then. Should she ask Rachel to change them? But before she could, Rachel was making the bed with a new set.

  “I think you should tuck them in more,” Swati pointed out helpfully.

  Rachel looked at her, her face grim. “I’m sure you can adjust them to your needs when I go.”

  Swati’s mother-in-law would have slapped her if she’d said that to her. She drew herself up proudly. “Thank you. Good night.” Swati shut the door as Rachel left and leaned against it, breathing hard.

  How dare Rachel ask her if she was sure this was what she wanted? Did she think this was so easy, leaving one’s husband? Perhaps it was in America, because everyone knew that marriage didn’t mean anything over there. But here, where
people had good values, marriage was life. Swati had turned her back on a good life, left it behind to come and guide her son and daughter-in-law, given up her own household and marriage, and Rachel had asked if she was sure. As if there was anything else that she could possibly have been.

  What was wrong with the girl? Didn’t she know anything at all?

  Three

  What was wrong with her mother-in-law? Rachel wondered, looking at the closed door of her own bedroom. I have come to stay with you and Dhruv. And that’s all there is to say about that. It simply wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be. Parents didn’t just come live with their children.

  Here they do, Rachel’s mind reminded her, and she wished she could slap the voice in her head. But people did do that here, they did it all the time. Or really, the other way around. People lived with their parents until their parents died, and by that point they were the parents, living with their children. Everyone just stayed layered on top of each other like a parfait until the parts ran together and life all tasted the same.

  She was going out of her mind. Swati could not live with them forever. She tried to calm the rising tide of panic moving up her body. Panic made her vomit, and she didn’t want to do that. She checked her phone and saw Dhruv had texted her. Dhruv. Of course. Her husband. She had almost forgotten that he existed, and of course he would come home and they would talk and figure out what to do about this. Of course he wouldn’t allow this to happen. He would know what to say to Swati; they would figure this out. He always knew what the right thing was, especially here in India; he would know what to do now. She had a sudden desperate need to hear his voice, to tell him all about this, and she called him, but he didn’t pick up. It was fine. He would be home soon. They would talk. They would “sort it,” as he’d say. It would be done and dusted in no time.

  Rachel drank deeply, finishing her glass of wine. She would have to order more. There, that was something she could do, something she could focus on. What was the wine store that delivered? Dhruv usually does it for me, she thought with a grimace. Here he had all the phone numbers, and he spoke Hindi, was even learning Marathi himself to get by. It was so easy to let him do things. He liked doing things, liked being in control, and Rachel, who had felt less and less sure of her life with every year, found immense comfort in Dhruv’s certainty. When Rachel thought of her younger self, she did not feel jealous of her skin or her weight or her ability to shrug off hangovers, but she did long for her previous certainty. It was so easy to be sure of things when you were twenty. Rachel had turned thirty just before they had flown to India and she was certain of nothing, except how nice it was to be with someone—Dhruv—more sure than she was.

  Unable to find the number to call for wine tonight, though, she would have to content herself with rum. She poured herself a glass. Sipping, Rachel missed her mother, Ruth, with a sharpness that felt like physical pain. Rum was Ruth’s nightcap; she drank a glass, with ice, before bed on the weekends. Sometimes, when Rachel was alone in Brooklyn, she would call her mother on a Friday night and she would have a glass of wine with Ruth over the phone, in separate cities, a hundred miles away from each other. They could never do that now that Rachel was in India. It was morning for Rachel when Ruth was having her rum, and morning for Ruth now, as Rachel was comforting herself with alcohol.

  Rachel wished she could call her mother. Ruth would just be sitting down to breakfast, the ten minutes or so that she took to eat every day. She could picture her, in a brightly textured sweater and knit pants, perfect for Philadelphia in October and for a woman who was always cold. But she knew if she called her mother too much, complained too often, Ruth would urge her to just come home.

  She had married Dhruv so quickly, agreeing to love and honor and obey and move to India all in one go, changing her whole life in minutes. She had told her family, her friends, everyone she knew, that she knew what she was doing. To admit doubt now, to waver, that would be defeat. So she could only tell her mother good news, only talk about how great things were, how good Dhruv was, how kind Swati was to come get them settled in. That was how she would choose to see this, a temporary act of kindness, a stopover for Swati on her road to freedom. She had no problem with Swati’s decision to leave her husband; she knew nothing about the relationship beyond what Dhruv had said, so why should she? She only disliked where that decision had led her mother-in-law geographically.

  Her mind raced to the logistics once again, thinking about the things she would need to buy to make their houseguest comfortable. What would Swati want to eat? She was a vegetarian, which in India also meant no eggs. Would she want something traditional? Would she want the lentils they had bought for dal, or a different kind? Would she want to make her own roti or did she like rice more? Everyone Rachel met drank milk, which she thought was bizarre because they were all adults, but would Swati want milk? Rachel was exhausted by all that she didn’t know, couldn’t plan.

  Perhaps it was just some marital tiff, some fight that had gotten out of hand. She hadn’t thought that Swati was a dramatic person, but this must be some sort of episode. Rachel hadn’t known the right words, hadn’t said the right things, that was all.

  Perhaps, she thought morosely, that would always be the case here. Dhruv had taken a three-year contract in Mumbai, with the thought that if they liked it, loved it, he would extend it, stay forever, maybe. But now the thought of that, which had been exciting, an adventure even, was depressing. Years and years of her life never saying the right thing, never knowing what was happening around her—could she live with that? Did she want to?

  The door opened, and her husband walked in. For a moment she smiled at him, savoring the sight of him. His hair was ruffled and his tie loosened, sweat dripping down his temples. She loved him after work more than she loved him before work. Before work he was polished, professional, but after work he was hers. Always reserved, he would let go of things after the office, displaying anger, frustration, affection, in little bursts. She loved that; that was the part of him she craved the most and got the least, especially since they had moved. Unguarded emotion was rare from him, and therefore it was precious.

  You were the one who thought happiness shouldn’t be a finite quality, a voice inside her whispered. He was looking at her happily, smiling at the rum in her glass, pouring himself a drink, eager to toast to the end of a long day. But it wouldn’t be. She wished she didn’t have to tell him, wished she could bask in his happiness for a little longer.

  “Honey? There is something I need to tell you.”

  Ten seconds later her words were interrupted by the sound of something shattering.

  They would, indeed, need to buy new glasses at the rate they were breaking them.

  Four

  Rachel swept up glass for the second time that evening as her husband paced around their small living room, crushing small pieces into powder, making her job harder. She wanted to stop him, but there didn’t really seem to be a point to trying. Energy crackled through him; if she had touched him, she would have sparked. And besides, she couldn’t blame him for not taking this well. What was a good way to take this, really?

  Dhruv’s first conclusion was that his father was beating his mother, and his second was that Vinod had cheated on Swati. Either way, he had betrayed her fundamentally, hurt her deeply, Dhruv was certain, and he was furious. Rachel asked him questions about Vinod; how likely were either of these things? She had met him only once, her father-in-law, but when Dhruv had talked about his parents in the past, he had always described his father as gloriously average, frustratingly morally upright in a country of bent men, and that his worst quality was an inability to adapt to new routines. Her father-in-law had drunk his tea by six thirty a.m. every day of Dhruv’s life, and the idea of tea at six forty-five, or even seven, was blasphemy to him. Dhruv had always said his father was like a mechanical man, and content to be so. That didn’t really correspond to the wife-beating adulterer Dhruv was so ready to paint him as. Ye
t here Dhruv was, ready to get on a plane to Kolkata and confront him, checking flights as he peppered Rachel with questions she didn’t know how to answer.

  “I promise, she didn’t seem upset, Dhruv. I mean, she was upset, but not . . . traumatized, or anything. She seemed determined. No, I promise, I didn’t see any bruises or anything. Do you think your father would do that? He didn’t seem like a violent man to me, did I miss something?”

  As she asked, Rachel reminded herself that she really didn’t know her in-laws well at all, certainly not well enough to speculate on their behavior or pasts. She had never met them before that brief visit to Kolkata, so her only real sense of them had come from speaking with Dhruv. She had asked before they got married why his parents had decided not to come visit them in New York. They had money, she knew, but Dhruv could have paid, and it seemed like the sort of thing people did when their child got married, or even just when their child lived in another country. But Dhruv had told her his parents had no interest in America. Rachel had wondered, if they had no interest in America, what interest would they have in her?

  “I didn’t think so. I’ve never thought so. I’ve never even seen my father slap someone.”

  A rather low bar, Rachel thought, but she said nothing. “Dhruv, why don’t you just wait until your mother wakes up in the morning and talk to her? I don’t know what she’s thinking, and no one can tell you but her.”

  “I’m going to call Papa,” he said, still determined.

  “It’s midnight. Will he be up this late?”

  “I don’t give a fuck about disturbing his sleep!” Dhruv rarely cursed, and Rachel knew his anger was vibrating out of him violently. She wanted to hug him, hold him, but he would have hated that. Touch wasn’t comforting to Dhruv. Come to think of it, she had never had to comfort him before and wasn’t really sure what would make him feel better. He had always been so solid, so steady. Now he seemed like a lost child, angry at the world for letting him go astray.