Mother Land

by Leah Franqui

  So she should have enjoyed the meal, served right at one p.m., with relish, but her anxiety seasoned it badly. She had known that friends like Akanksha might come visit, yes, but she hadn’t known she would come that day, or have them over to lunch, and as much as she enjoyed the food, she hadn’t had any time to prepare Rachel as to what she should and should not say.

  Strange as it was to Swati, Rachel did not have the social consciousness that was so much a part of the way Swati thought about the world. Swati had never known that there were people who didn’t know such things. Certainly Swati herself never remembered her mother telling her what she could or could not say, and she had never had to explain these things to Dhruv. But Rachel, open, American Rachel, had none of their instincts.

  Just a few days before, Rachel had been in the kitchen speaking on the phone as Swati made tea, and Swati could hear Rachel’s side of the conversation.

  “She’s going to be with us for a bit, Mom. I guess she wasn’t happy with Vinod, and this is a place for her to land,” Rachel said in a hushed tone. Swati didn’t understand why Rachel had to explain anything. Surely one’s mother-in-law’s staying with them was a normal thing?

  “I guess she’s not comfortable in a hotel,” Rachel said in response to some question. Why would they be talking about a hotel, Swati wondered, when her son was there? Hotels were for weddings in cities where you had no family.

  “No, it’s fine, it’s nice, even. I’m so new here, anyway, so, really, it’s fine. No, well, she doesn’t know Mumbai all that well, but still. She knows India, so. Yeah. No, really, I’m fine. Really. I promise. So, you were saying, they opened a High Line project in Philadelphia? What does it look like? How was the opening party?”

  Swati stopped listening after that. She didn’t need to hear how active Rachel’s mother was, the fact that she worked and did things and knew what this High Line was; it only made her feel inadequate and defensive.

  If Rachel had been Indian, Swati would have died, knowing her in-laws knew about her leaving Vinod. Luckily Rachel’s parents were American, and couldn’t tell anyone in India, and therefore didn’t matter, but still. After the call, Rachel told her that her mother had said Good for you and Hope you feel strong and happy. How inappropriate, to wish someone well at the end of their settled life! What ridiculous things to say about the ending of a marriage! Swati would have liked no one to ever mention it again, if at all possible. She didn’t understand the point of discussing things after they had been decided, especially bad things. Talking about leaving Vinod might just remind her of all the reasons why she shouldn’t have done it, why it was wrong. She had no interest in that.

  However, Rachel, to her relief, didn’t seem interested in talking about Swati’s personal life with Akanksha. She didn’t seem interested in talking at all, really. She sat, her plate covered in the remains of the meal, politely refusing to take more food, looking around the dining room of Akanksha’s ornate Mumbai apartment with curiosity. Akanksha, despite the fact that she could speak English, seemed to forget that Rachel didn’t speak anything but, because she slipped in and out of Hindi broadly, effectively excluding Rachel from the conversation.

  Not that she was missing much. Swati had always thought that Akanksha was a silly woman, delighted and offended easily. They were not particularly close, and Swati could only imagine the look on her face if she told Akanksha that she had left her husband. Her small eyes would widen, and her cheeks would puff, and she would nod and frown and swear to be discreet and the news would be all over the Marwari community of Mumbai within hours. Still, part of her wished she had the courage to say something, to tell people that she had made a choice, that she had done something. She wished she was firmer in her resolve, so she wouldn’t fear that any mention of her choice might compromise it.

  Until other people knew, did it really mean anything? She could take it back at any time, she knew. It was perfectly normal that she would be visiting her son and his new wife in Mumbai. If she changed her mind, no one would have to know she had even thought about this. Vinod would forgive her. He might be angry at first, but mostly, he would be relieved that she had come home, that the calm motions of their lives could resume, that everything could go back to the way it had always been. She could be on a plane within hours, she could be in her own dining room, eating her own home food by dinnertime. If she wanted to.

  But she didn’t. She wanted to be the kind of person who could sit across from the Akankshas of the world, so many of them as there were, too, and declare herself. She wanted to try being the wrong kind of woman, with a desperation that felt like a live thing inside of her. Wasn’t it that thing that had led her out of her door, out of her life, and to Mumbai? It chafed against her rib cage even now, ready to be let out. I’ve left my husband, she wanted to shout out, but instead, she just asked for another helping of paneer bhurji.

  Life was supposed to resemble a snail shell, curling into itself, coming into a center. But Swati had come to the center and found nothing there except herself, asking to be let out. Now she was going to be doing something totally different. Swati’s life was going to be different. Better. Her own. If only she could tell Akanksha that.

  But instead, she filled her mouth with the dal she had missed so much, blocking the words before they could explode all over the table.

  Sitting in the car after lunch, for Akanksha had insisted that she and Rachel use her car and driver to return to their own apartment, Swati looked at the slip of paper upon which Akanksha had written the information for a cook she could call.

  The streets of Mumbai were bumpy with potholes, speed bumps to slow down fast-moving motorcycles and derail bicycle delivery boys. Every few seconds a bump or depression would rip through the car, jolting Rachel and Swati against each other. Each woman clutched the side of the car as a matter of course. The seat belts never functioned in these cars, or the black-and-yellow taxis, let alone a rickshaw. As she had grown older, Swati had felt her body protesting Kolkata’s ill-kept streets, but somehow Mumbai, wealthy, shiny Mumbai, was even worse. Looking out, though, the breeze from the sea caught the trees and the sun felt strong, even though it was autumn. That was nothing like Kolkata’s chilly gloom, and Swati found herself smiling out into the bright day, enjoying how the light hit the bright magenta bougainvillea growing like weeds from every balcony and over every fence.

  Rachel, too, was looking out the window, as quiet as she had been all day.

  “Doesn’t she talk?” Akanksha had asked earlier, in Hindi.

  “Of course she does,” Swati had replied. Who was Akanksha to insult her daughter-in-law?

  “Anuj could marry one like her, easily, all the girls like him, but Papa and I pleaded with him not to. What would we talk to her about? He is a good boy, he understood,” Akanksha said smugly, as if a white daughter-in-law were a trophy they had been too superior to want to compete for.

  “Rachel makes Dhruv very happy,” Swati said, hoping to end the conversation, but Akanksha smiled slyly.

  “I know what such things mean. This is the problem, foreign girls are not like good Indian girls, they know tricks and things. They make the men want them, and then they can’t go back to good girls. That’s why I told our Anuj not to go with those girls, and he always listens to me. Of course, I’m sure she’s not like that.” Here Akanksha cast a pitying glance at Rachel that made it clear to Swati she did indeed think Rachel was little better than a woman selling herself on the street. “Well. So kind of you to come help them. Imagine, all this time here without a cook? How does she do it? They must be starving all the time.”

  “She makes very nice food.” Swati defended her daughter-in-law. Despite her own complaints about Rachel’s cooking, Swati wasn’t about to let her be insulted. Akanksha had shrugged and given her the information about the cook that Swati held now.

  “What is that?” Rachel’s voice sounded loud in the quiet of the car.

  “The number of a cook,” Swati sa
id.

  “Why?” Rachel said, her voice sharp.

  Swati looked at her in surprise. “You don’t have a cook, so I thought you might like to have the information to hire one,” Swati said, quite reasonably, in her opinion.

  “We don’t have a cook because I don’t want a cook,” Rachel said firmly.

  Now it was Swati’s turn to be sharp. “Why?” she said crisply.

  “Because we don’t need one,” Rachel said.

  “How will we eat?” Swati asked, trying to stay calm. Hadn’t Rachel had lunch with her today? Hadn’t she seen how nice it was, how much better the food had been when someone else made it?

  “How have we been eating?” Rachel retorted.

  “But, this way there will always be a hot lunch. And all of the things that are important to have every day. And you won’t have to do any of it. This is better. A cook is better.” How could that possibly be denied?

  “I don’t need someone to come and cook for me every day. I can cook for myself.” Rachel was clearly trying to calm herself but spoke through gritted teeth.

  “And what about me? What about Dhruv?” Swati was also losing her patience.

  Rachel smiled stiffly. “We can cook together. You can teach me what to do,” Rachel said, as if it were the simplest thing in the world.

  “It’s too much work.”

  “I have time. I don’t even have a job,” Rachel said, her voice calm, happy, even. “You can teach me Dhruv’s favorite dishes. I love learning new foods. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

  “You don’t understand. This is what it’s like, only.”

  Rachel shook her head at Swati’s helpless explanation. “I have time to make food. I’m volunteering, here! I’m literally offering to cook for you, to make whatever you want. Isn’t that enough?” Rachel said.

  Swati didn’t understand. What did the girl want, praise for that? When she had first married, she had cooked for her in-laws daily. Getting help had been a godsend. She was offering to save Rachel labor, to make her life easier, better, and she said no. The girl was cracked. “It’s so much work,” Swati said again.

  “I made my own food every day in America.”

  “That is all right for there but you are here now.” Why didn’t she understand? Swati thought, wanting to cry. It was different. Rachel had to be different here. Whatever she had done in America, that was for there. Here she had to do what was done. “In America you have to do so much for yourself, but here you don’t have to. So why would you? It is better here. It is better to have a cook. I am saying, I know.”

  “You won’t convince me it’s better just by telling me it’s better,” Rachel said, crossing her arms over her chest protectively.

  “It will make our life better. I know this. You don’t. You will have to trust me,” Swati said, proud of herself. She was insisting, she was demanding, she would get what she wanted, what was the right thing to have. She would call the cook herself, and the woman would come, and Rachel would understand once she experienced it. She would live it, and she would learn that she loved it. Perhaps one meal was too few. Swati would be there to help her adapt and become Indian. As Indian, of course, as an American could be.

  “We aren’t getting a cook. I don’t want one,” Rachel said, her voice low. She sounded like a child. Swati nodded, distracted. She didn’t need to listen to her daughter-in-law. Why should she, when she knew best? Rachel needed Swati to teach her what to do. Once it was part of her life, it would be fine. She would thank her. Of that, Swati was sure.

  When they returned home, Swati declared that it was time for her postlunch nap, and Rachel nodded, distracted. But Swati had no actual intention of napping. She was wound tightly, unhappy that she had wasted the delicious lunch stewed in her own worry, and she felt pent up with something. She decided to call her friend Bunny and tell her she had left Vinod, say everything to her that she hadn’t been able to confess to Akanksha. Someone had to know that she had left her husband, not someone like Rachel, but someone who mattered, so that she would not go back to him. She could not leave herself an escape route or she might be tempted to take it. So she picked up the phone to call her oldest friend and tell her that she had broken her own home.

  Bunny’s real name was Bhanu, but she liked Bunny better. They had grown up together, and Bunny had been one of those girls who had never shut up about love. She had imagined herself in love with everyone, from the milkman to their fellow passengers on the bus, and had flirted shamelessly with the boys at the school near their own, unbuttoning the top button of her starched blouses. When Bunny’s father had arranged a match for her with Pranay, a plump, good-natured candy factory owner, she had cried, which made her eyes look red in all the photographs. Then, two weeks later, Bunny had declared herself wildly in love with her husband and had maintained that assertion ever since, even as his stomach swelled and his hair receded. Love, it seemed, for Bunny, was an act of will. She had been determined to love, and so she did.

  Ultimately, Bunny was a romantic. In Kolkata, she and Swati had spent their Saturday afternoons at the movies, and Bunny always demanded to see the stories of star-crossed lovers and epic romances, sighing and crying for the most fortunate and unfortunate of couples alike. Swati was sure—well, mostly sure—that she of all the people Swati knew would understand her choice to leave her husband.

  The phone rang, and rang, and just as Swati wondered if she should try another time, Bunny, who usually picked up immediately, answered.

  “Hello? Swati?” Her voice sounded muffled, choked. Maybe she was eating?

  “Bunny, are you all right?” The only response was a caterwauling cry. Not eating, then, Swati thought, uncomfortable with the high emotion.

  “Oh, Swati, where are you? Everything has fallen apart and you aren’t here. How long can one trip be?”

  “What has happened? Why are you crying?” Swati felt panicked. Did Bunny already know about her and Vinod? But surely she wouldn’t be this upset, would she?

  “It’s Arjun and—and Neera. Oh, Swati, I don’t want to let the words leave my mouth, it makes them more true.” Bunny dissolved into a fresh spate of tears. Arjun was Bunny’s son, and Neera his wife. Had something happened to one of them?

  Swati had always thought Arjun was the perfect son. He was older than Dhruv by four years, making him almost forty now, and Swati had always wanted Dhruv to follow his example. Although she loved her son, she could admit that he had not always done what was expected of him, what his parents would have wanted. Vinod had wanted to give Dhruv advantages so that he would return enriched, investing that initial cost back into their family and company. But Dhruv had refused to do so. Bunny’s son, Arjun, though, had gone to America for school but then come back right away and used his newfound knowledge to expand the confection factory and business, even moving the company, which had trafficked in hard candy and chocolate, into the competitive jellied-items market. He started looking at local girls to marry at the age of twenty-seven, which was, everyone agreed, a good age for a young man, and the bride he picked, Neera, was from a good family, as well as fair, sweet, thin, and pretty.

  Now Arjun and Neera lived with Bunny and Pranay, and had already dutifully produced two grandchildren, both boys. The business thrived, and Neera and Bunny sported the latest Marc Jacobs purses, Burberry watches, shoes from Tory Burch, and new jewelry at every festival and wedding. Arjun had stayed handsome, staving off his father’s propensity for weight gain with trips to the gym to play tennis, while Neera had kept her girlish figure despite both pregnancies, and if her still-thick hair was hennaed to keep it dark, it was impossible to tell.

  In short, they couldn’t have been more perfect if they tried, and they were certainly no cause for crying.

  “What’s happened?” Swati said again, cutting through Bunny’s wailing.

  “I’m amazed you don’t already know. I suppose because you are still visiting your son. Arjun has not been—not been good to Neera. He
has not been respectful of her, and now she is going to stay with her parents for a time,” Bunny confessed, sniffling.

  “What do you mean, he hasn’t been good to her?” Swati was floored. Who could be a better husband than Arjun? What did Bunny mean?

  “Oh, Swati,” Bunny sighed, using the tone of voice she always used when she felt Swati was being an idiot. “He’s been with someone else. Repeatedly. For years!”

  “Been with?” Swati knew she was being obtuse, but she couldn’t help it, she didn’t understand.

  “He’s having an affair, you fool,” Bunny said wearily, but there was no heat to her insult, only sadness.

  “Oh, Bunny,” Swati said, her heart hurting for her.

  “I’m just so ashamed of him,” Bunny confessed. “I thought he was better than this. His father can’t even look at him. So disrespectful, he is. She’s given him children, everything. I don’t know what to say.”

  “I’m sorry, Bunny,” Swati said, and she was. But part of her knew that the thing she was really sorry about was that he had not been more discreet. To wave this sort of thing in one’s wife’s face, that wasn’t done. She wondered what she would have done, would do, if Vinod had had an affair, and knew that she wouldn’t have cared much at all, really, at least not if no one knew about it. It made her sad that the thought didn’t make her sadder.

  “Still, I don’t understand how Neera can leave him. I just don’t. Arjun has been horrible, yes, we know that, Pranay and I said that, but to leave? When we are here, when we are her family? She is the one who has broken her home, destroyed her children’s chance at happiness. I don’t understand her at all,” Bunny said.

  “She must be very upset,” Swati offered. She felt another pang in her chest. She could not understand caring so much about her own husband, and she envied Neera, poor betrayed Neera, just a bit. It struck her that something fundamental must be very wrong with her, to feel so little about the man who had been the father of her child, who shared her home and her bed and her whole destiny. To be jealous of someone’s pain because they could feel it. If she told this to Vinod, perhaps he would stop calling her. Perhaps he would understand. But could she hurt him so much? Which would hurt more, telling him everything or telling him nothing? It was impossible to know.