English Lessons and Other Stories

by Shauna Singh Baldwin

  She manages a smile, and she says in Punjabi so the words sound sweeter, more intimate. “Don’t worry, Amma. It is my duty to look after you.” I bring my palms together and raise them high to my forehead. I call on all my Gods to bless her, and now she laughs.

  This is my role in the movie of her life.

  A Krishna-blue night shares his sky with the moon. I wrap them away behind curtains; the deaf must banish all light to find sleep.

  The heat coils round us and the fan is stilled by another municipal power cut. Still Mem-saab complains she is cold — so cold. She says a train is roaring through her head but we both know that is impossible. She cannot hear Balvir or Kiran’s party laughter or the tumult in her candlelit drawing room. I bring her sleeping pills and shawls and then blankets, but there is no rest, no peace.

  At dawn, I bring her a glass of warm lemon juice and honey, as I did for her sons when they had fevers.

  She asks for more pills and I bring her the old mithai-tin with its picture of Vaishnudevi, the many-armed, many-weaponed goddess astride a tiger.

  When she takes her pills she tears at their plastic wrapping, trying to find the kernel. She looks at them carefully, holding them in her palm, examining their red, pink and white granules in the capsule-skin as though trying to fathom their power. She takes one to her mouth, sets it delicately within the fold of her lower lip.

  She turns to me and asks for water, and I offer the silver glass. I watch the kernel pass her throat, then another and another, her head swung upwards, eyes closed as though in prayer. I have never seen her take so many pills, but then she has never been so sick.

  When the pills are gone, we wait a moment together.

  She hands the silver glass back to me and drops the capsule peels in my upturned hands. Discarded silver foil and plastic with English writing on the back. Letters that sit squat, round and comfortable, unlike our letters that hang from tired arms like rows of ragged kameezes fluttering upon a clothes line. It is my left, my unclean hand, that has learned to make Hindi letters, and so I only make them when I have to write something for Mem-saab.

  She lies back and closes her eyes.

  “Shall I bring oil for your massage, Mem-saab?”

  “Not today, Amma. Stay with me.”

  I am too old for such sleepless nights; she cannot hear the cracking of my joints as I take my place on the floor on her foot-carpet. I take her soft hand in my calloused ugly ones and I begin to rub gently. “I am with you, Mem-saab, Amma is here. I am with you, na. I am here. Amma is here.”

  A dying fragrance from the kitchen recalls the turmeric I rubbed on my Leela’s arms before I gave her to her husband. She has given me grandchildren, but I cannot recall their faces. Sleep-summoned images dance across my inner eye: Shiv’s long lashes — or were those Jai’s? Sardarji’s haughty gaze, Balvir’s eyes downcast before it. Fragments of soft chappati fall from Balvir’s hands and shrivel before I can reach them. My tongue seems afire with hot chillies. I cannot speak — and if I speak, who will listen to Amma?

  People’s voices in my ears. Balvir, shouting, “Amma, tell her…” Kiran shrieking I am a fool because I cannot read English. The lady-lawyer: “Be strong. I will try to help you.” Manu’s voice: “Daddy says you are nobody…” Khansama: “You too are becoming deaf…”

  I am becoming deaf, too.

  There is silence. Inert, static silence — a constant silence I thought only Mem-saab had ever known.

  I stop massaging. Her arm droops heavy over the curve of the bed. I put my hands to my ears. I shake my head. I hear no sound. There is no sound.

  No breath, no sound.

  I rise, and the peels of Mem-saab’s pills scatter from my lap. I discover I am weeping. I must not weep. Amma, you must not weep!

  Ganesh, Krishna, Vishnudevi, Vaheguru, Guru Tegh Bahadur… an old woman begs you, give me strength.

  I bring her kajal pencils and I draw her eyebrows dark above her eyes. I bring colour for her cheeks and lipstick to make her lips hibiscus-red. I take her hair in my hands, hair the colour of spent fire-coals, and I braid it for her though she is a widow.

  When she is beautiful, I cover her face.

  Outside her room, the empty drawing room echoes the taunting revelry of the evening past. I go to the kitchen. Khansama must still be sleeping in the servant’s quarter; his new wristwatch never brings him too early to work. I take a sharp knife and return to Mem-saab’s room.

  “Be strong, Mem-saab,” I say. There is always the revenge of the powerless.

  I cut her wrist slowly, as though I cut my own. I massage her arm from armpit to wrist with deep, powerful strokes of both hands to fill her silver water glass full of blood. She will not need it now.

  In the drawing room, I struggle to climb on a low table. I manage to stand, with the glass in my hands.

  Then I whirl. Round, with the silver glass aloft, I am a Katha-kali dance-girl of twenty. Blood spatters on the gold silk sofa. On crystal. On fine Kashmiri carpets. On white walls, on the raw-silk shimmer of curtains. I bend and I twist in soundless fury, till there is only a little of her blood left in the glass.

  Then, suddenly, I am tired.

  I slump to my knees. I climb off the table.

  At the door to Mem-saab’s room, I dip the index finger of my unclean hand in what is left. I squat again. I paint slowly — for this is important — slowly I paint a rangoli design in my Mem-saab’s blood on the white chip-marble floor.

  The design that says, “Welcome to this house and may you be happy.”

  Balvir, Kiran and Manu still sleep when I finish.

  I wash my hands, using water sparingly from Mem-saab’s bathroom till I remember she doesn’t need water anymore. And she no longer needs a pair of ears.

  Down the stairs to the concrete driveway. I strain at the double gates. They open for me. As I walk through, I picture Balvir and Kiran waking, finding their treasure soiled and cursed. One woman will tell her God and this one — dark, quiet old Amma — will now tell anyone who has ears to hear.

  At Jorbagh market, morning ripens from a mango-blush sky. The narrow caverns of shop stalls are still closed, their rippling silver garage doors padlocked to the ground. The only open shop is the one that sells marigold garlands for worshippers to offer at the temple before work, but today I pass it by.

  I climb into the back seat of a scooter-rickshaw, shaking its dozing driver. Weary again now, I settle back in my chariot, Arjun returning from battle. The scooter driver stretches and yawns. He takes his time pouring a soothing libation of oil into the tank. Then he winds a scarf about his neck with a flourish like Amitabh Bachhan and steadies the eager bounce of the scooter’s green plastic-tasselled handles.

  “Where are you going, Amma?” he shouts over the engine.

  For a second, I hesitate. Shiv is closer. Then my mind clears; a woman will understand. “To the railway station,” I say.

  “Luggage?”

  “No luggage,” I say. Just a pair of ears and a very long memory.

  Leela will be surprised to see me.

  Nothing Must Spoil This Visit

  “Watch it!”

  Janet winced as the Maruti swerved onto gravel to avoid another overburdened truck. She turned to glare at its driver, but all she could see were the words painted on the back: “Horn Please OK TA TA.” In Toronto he’d have been stopped for speeding, not wearing a seat belt, reckless endangerment, driving on the wrong side of the road, you name it.

  “Relax,” unflappable Arvind said. “Pretend you’re on a ride at Canada’s Wonderland.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “Wait till we get off the GT Road — the climb to Shimla is fabulous. You’ll love it.”

  A rose-silver dawn edged out the dark and Janet peered at the parched barren flatness of the north Indian plain. A slow tickle of sweat began its daily crawl at her temples. Soon, the sun knifed the sky and a fine dust jetted from the car’s useless air conditioner and began to settle t
hick on her contact lenses. She leaned forward and turned it off. Arvind had begun another lesson in Indian history.

  “We’re passing through Panipat. Three battles were fought on those fields.” He pointed, but all she could see were roadside shacks, three-wheeled tempos carrying loads cloaked in jute bags, men on bicycles, always more bicycles. She rolled down the window, unfettering the hot breath of May; it flattened her into the black vinyl.

  “Want some sun screen?” She offered him the plastic tube she’d thought to buy at Shoppers Drug Mart; Arvind waved it away as he wove the car between plodding bullock carts and listing, vomit-streaked buses.

  India, up close. Ugliness, dirt, poverty, people. Janet closed smarting eyes.

  At the white-marbled Indira Gandhi International Airport a week ago, they had been met by Kamal and his wife, Chaya. Janet had expected the brothers to be more demonstrative after ten years apart, but they’d given one another a ritual hug, no more. She’d said to Kamal, “I didn’t expect you to be taller than Arvind — he always calls you his little brother.”

  She hadn’t been able to tell if Kamal’s reply was sarcastic or just overly formal. “Arvind is shorter only because he no longer wears a turban.”

  Chaya had sparked to life briefly under that fluorescent glare — and never since. Bedecked and a-jingle with gold bracelets, gold anklets and gold chains for their 4 a.m. arrival, she had first held Arvind close and then scanned Janet with a curiosity that took in her travel-crumpled jeans, clear-plastic-rimmed spectacles and the remnant of a perm in her brown hair.

  “She’s very fair,” she said to Arvind.

  “She’ll get a tan on this trip!” he replied.

  Janet found herself snapping at Arvind, “Come on, let’s get going.”

  Chaya still held Arvind’s arm.

  They followed Kamal’s jeans and kurta and let his glowering intensity cut through the press of the crowds. He hailed a darting brown uniform to carry the luggage, which was full of 220-volt appliances Arvind had bought in Little India, and took custody himself of the duty-free liquor bag, saying to Arvind, “Doctorsahib still drinks all Papaji’s whisky.”

  Janet could not imagine spry, gallant Papaji ever needing a doctor, but during their week in Delhi she’d realized Doctorsahib was Mumji’s buddy. He dropped in punctually at seven every evening to ask about Mumji’s blood pressure and to lean his coconut-oiled head on the back of her crimson velvet sofa, swirling a two-inch Patiala-peg of prohibited pleasure.

  Mumji was as youthful and charming and gracious as Janet remembered her from that week in Montreal at their wedding five years ago, petite and perfumed in a starched cotton sari, her hair-netted bun of black hair firm at the nape of her neck, her Nina Ricci sunglasses and a solid silver box of sweet-smelling supari always within reach.

  Really, Arvind’s family had been welcoming and kind.

  At the sandbagged black-and-white-striped blockade at the Punjab border, Arvind wasn’t questioned after the AK-47-toting policeman looked at his brown skin and mustache through the driver’s window. He didn’t volunteer his Canadian passport when Janet’s was requested for a check of its special visa for the state of Punjab. The policeman raked her bare legs with a lecherous eye and permitted her, finally, to return to the car. He spoke briefly to Arvind in Hindi.

  “What did he say?” Janet asked.

  “He said I picked up a mame.” He grinned at her.

  “Aunty Mame?” Surely the policeman couldn’t have seen that film.

  “No. A mame is a contraction of mem-sahib.”

  “Not meant as a polite term, I’m sure.”

  “It’s what they call all white women.”

  “Why didn’t you show him your passport?” Her sense of fairness was offended.

  “He didn’t ask.”

  “Why not?”

  “He took me for a Hindu, since I no longer wear a turban.”

  “Why didn’t you correct him?”

  Arvind slowed for bright orange Escort tractors rainbowed with the turbans of farmers, but he didn’t answer.

  It wasn’t a bit like him and it wasn’t fair to her — she wasn’t some ignorant tourist who’d read just one guide book; she was a woman who’d learned to make perfect samosas for him from Mrs. Yogi Bhajan’s cookbook and who’d studied the art and the history of India.

  “Why didn’t you correct him?” she repeated.

  Arvind still didn’t answer.

  “Look! Stop, Arvind! There’s a pottery stall.”

  Arvind pulled over and watched Janet bound out of the car, rupees at the ready. Those gaudy Hindu idols weren’t the calibre of the artifacts she worked to restore at the Royal Ontario Museum, but they would feed her thirst for the exotic for a while. He checked the car’s water level while he waited — what Janet called his engineer’s tinkering was all the meditation or prayer he ever needed. Anyu, strange old Hungarian bird, had waited till Janet was ten to break the news about Santa Claus, but she’d never taught Janet to pray.

  “Arvind, come see the baskets. Such beautiful baskets.”

  Janet didn’t wait for him anyway. She, who wouldn’t trust herself to bargain with a Yonge Street junk dealer, would bargain in broken Hindi for baskets, as if a dollar here or there would make a difference to their life.

  She was as excited in India as he’d been when he first arrived in Montreal. He’d met her the month after he’d bought his first Jaguar. She’d read to him from her art history textbooks while he lay, asphalt cool at his back, under the car, and she’d trusted he’d take her someplace beautiful… eventually. He’d tried to show her the rhyme and the reason of that Jag’s engine, but she couldn’t find beauty under all that dirt and grease.

  How could he expect her to understand why he hadn’t shown the policeman his passport with the visa permitting him to enter his home state, the visa so stamped and official? There she was, aglow in that inviolable cocoon of Canadian niceness. Whereas he and the policeman were like the twigs of those baskets in the stall — woven together, yet tense with a contained rebellion. You couldn’t pull one twig from those baskets without unravelling the whole. He couldn’t talk about possible danger and unpleasantness if it were obvious he was a Sikh, couldn’t remind her about the articles she’d clipped from the paper for him — articles on the massacre of Sikhs at the Golden Temple just two years ago, articles that referred to all Sikhs as terrorists. Honesty may be the best policy when you’re faced with a Mountie, but here… nothing must spoil this visit.

  “How much is pachas rupaya?” The shopkeeper’s English vocabulary was proving as limited as Janet’s Hindi.

  “Fifty,” he said. Somewhere between Montreal and Toronto, he’d given up arguing against her belief that people all over the world are the same, just with different languages, art and music. When they’d abandoned his turbans and left long arcs of his brown-black hair on the floor of a Greek barbershop in Montreal, a city become hostile to his English, hadn’t she suppressed her French, ignoring Toronto’s bilingual road signs? She who spoke Hungarian on her Sunday long-distance phone calls to Anyu now called herself an anglophone.

  “Can we fit these in the back seat?” Janet beamed, a basket under each arm.

  In Montreal, Janet had been enchanted when he had bent his (then) turbaned head over a sitar, cross-legged on his sole item of furniture, a mattress. It must have been Anyu who’d made her daughter this seeker of beautiful things, past and present. Anyu, who must have taken a vow on arriving in Canada to fashion her Janet’s life into a procession of perfect, agreeable, beautiful experiences. Somehow, Anyu had protected her daughter’s illusions through the seventies, and now he had the job.

  “Move the garment bag, would you?” Janet’s triumph was palpable.

  But he knew Anyu still warned from Montreal, “Don’t have children yet, it may not work out.” Janet hadn’t told Anyu yet (and neither had he) that it wasn’t a matter of choice.

  Looking out at earth-tone people blending int
o earth-tone villages — some with TV antennae rising from thatch — Janet remembered how enthusiastic she’d been about this trip. She wanted to experience India with him, his India, the India he’d told her of so many times. As soon as they’d arrived at his parents’ home, Arvind had changed from pants and a jacket and tie to a white kurta-pyjama and sandals. When she’d worn a sari, thinking to please Papaji, the whole family had applauded.

  Only Chaya remarked, “She walks so funny in a sari.”

  It was true, of course. Arvind tried to teach her to glide a little more gracefully, but she’d reverted to pants and a T-shirt the next day.

  Mumji, always so charming, had tried to persuade her to return to the unaccustomed garb or at least try a salwar kameez, murmuring, “The best clothes for heat and modesty have been tested over centuries, dear.”

  Arvind had come to her defence. “Janet comes from a young country, Mumji. Women in Canada believe in learning by experience.”

  She’d seen Kamal then, looking over at Chaya as though afraid this remark was inappropriate for her ears, but Chaya sat with her vacuous smile, stroking her son’s handkerchiefed topknot.

  Mumji had coaxed everyone back into harmony with a teasing smile at Arvind.

  “Not everything needs to be reinvented, even by engineers.” She had gone on to admire the width of Janet’s hips, venturing the ever-so-gentle reminder that it was “high time” she provided Arvind’s family with grandchildren. Mumji was right — like Arvind, Janet was four years away from forty — but…. Now Janet told herself she should expect Mumji’s gentle intrusions, and anyway, Mumji was in Delhi, probably fanning herself in the languid dark of her air-conditioned bedroom with one of her Femina magazines. Janet imagined herself telling Anyu that her daughter had poured mustard-seed oil on a wood threshold and touched the feet of her husband’s mother. Anyu, who had lived under Communists, would say, “You start bowing your head once, it gets easier and easier.”