by Sharon Maas
But she couldn’t speak any more because her face was buried in Kamal’s warm shoulder. Kamal patted her back and held her close. She let the sobs come and they broke from her in stifled, breathless gulps. Finally she moved so that her lips were free and she could speak.
‘I want to go home! I want to go home, Kamal, I can’t stand it here a day longer. I haven’t done any work on my thesis since Asha was born. Sundari and Janiki are angels, looking after Asha so well. I’m a terrible mother, Kamal. Sometimes I can’t even stand to see Asha. Sometimes I wish she’d never been born. I shouldn’t be telling you this. I hate myself. Sometimes I even hate you, but you’re all I have. I wrote to Mom and Dad and they didn’t write back! I don’t have anybody but you… and… and Asha. I’m so alone here! Asha doesn’t even like me very much, she prefers Sundari and Janiki. I don’t know how to love her. I’m such a bad mother and I’m so ashamed to admit it. I thought it would all be perfect but it isn’t!’
Kamal held her all the time, rubbing her back.
‘I can’t even finish my thesis!’ Caroline wailed. She spoke on and on, repeating herself, sometimes breaking down and crying, sometimes falling silent for a length of time only to start again. She was bored, she was restless, she was a bad mother, she couldn’t write her thesis, she missed Thanksgiving, she missed her friends, she missed her family.
When it was over Kamal spoke.
‘Caro, Caro, what have I done to you? I shouldn’t have brought you here. I shouldn’t have left you here all by yourself. I can’t bear to see you unhappy. Listen – it doesn’t have to be for ever. I don’t really mind where I live. It doesn’t have to be India. It was you who wanted to come here. It was you who had work to do here. I tell you what. We’ll go back. Back to America, get a job there. Just try to be patient. Let me work out my contract. Can you hang on that long? Just one more Christmas, and the following summer we’ll go back. Asha will be two. You’ll make it up with your parents; they’ll adore Asha. And even if they still don’t like me it doesn’t matter. I don’t have to visit them. You can spend every Christmas with them. I don’t mind – Christmas means nothing to me, you see, so I won’t feel left out. Anything you want. I can work anywhere. You can do what you want to do. You can go to work. We’ll find a way.’
‘But – what about Asha? She loves Sundari so much! And Janiki!’
‘She’ll learn to love us, her parents,’ Kamal said. ‘It’ll happen, just you wait and see. I know you’ve had a hard time as a mother but that’s normal at first and I bet it changes over the next year. You just have to make a tiny bit more effort, win her over, make sure she knows that you are Mom. If you go to work in America I’ll look after her so you can work, or study, do anything, or we’ll find another solution. Whatever you want.’
‘Oh, Kamal.’ Caroline’s voice broke, because she was laughing. ‘What did I ever do to deserve someone like you? I swear, I’m the luckiest girl in the whole world. My girlfriends should be green with envy. I’m sorry I broke down, truly. I’m so lucky. So very lucky. I think we must be the happiest family in the world.’
‘Even if things aren’t so perfect right now. But they will be, I promise. We’ll make them perfect.’
‘As long as we love each other, Kamal, everything is perfect.’
‘Then let’s hold onto this perfect moment. If we can just remember how it is now, nothing can ever go wrong.’ He chuckled. ‘Even if the Christmas tree is, well, to put it tactfully, best Indian quality.’
Caroline laughed with him. ‘And even if you can’t sing “Silent Night” with me and my family.’
‘And even if I’ve got to leave you again, the day after tomorrow. But now at least I know her.’
They both gazed in silent wonder at Asha, who had fallen asleep on her blanket. In the steady light of the candle’s flame her skin glowed softly golden. Long black lashes touched her cheek. Her chest rose and sank to the rhythm of her breathing.
‘She’s so, so, so…’ Caroline whispered, and paused, searching for the right word.
‘Sssh,’ said Kamal, and placed a finger on her lips. ‘I know.’
Chapter 13
Caroline
Perfect moments come and go, and not long after Kamal returned to the north, Caroline’s homesickness returned with a vengeance. She missed everything. Her music, her books, her friends, her parents, the winter, the trees, the springtime, the food. A little nagging voice within her began to moan and groan. About everything.
She had been so willing to adapt to local mores at first; now, they began to vex and even outrage her. Why, when the sun was so hot, was she required to wear a long skirt and keep her shoulders covered, whereas men could walk about with naked upper bodies? Why did the women do all the housework, while the men went out to work and just relaxed on the veranda with the newspaper when they came home? Viram was truly lovely, but he left the running of the household entirely to Sundari. When questioned about this, Sundari only smiled and said, ‘He works hard outside the home, I work hard inside the home. It’s a division of labour. Out there, he is boss. In here, I am boss. It’s a very fair set-up.’ But Caroline did not, could not agree. She said no more, but it rankled within her.
She tried to suppress her unkind thoughts – after all, she was not only a guest here, but a liberal, and must be accepting and even approving of other cultures – but suppression could only go so far and she thought them nevertheless.
The things about India, about Gingee, that had charmed her at first began to irritate and annoy her. Sitting on the floor to eat, for instance; she longed for a chair and table. Eating with her hands; she longed for a knife and fork. How primitive it all was! And surely unhygienic! She longed for folded napkins and her mother’s apple pie. Anyone’s apple pie. She tried baking an apple pie herself but it was a flop.
And then the toilet business. Using your left hand and water to clean your butt after a crap. Disgusting! Squatting over the Indian toilet, really just a ceramic surround of a hole in the ground. How she had enthused about this method in the beginning! So much better, from a physiological point of view, than sitting on a toilet, she wrote to her best friend Deb, ‘because squatting provides a massaging effect for the abdominal organs and stimulates the nervous action of the bowels to give a good motion. It’s simply the most natural position,’ she lectured. ‘My landlord, Viram, showed me an article in the Hindu that said squatting is scientifically proven to be better. Sitting on a toilet chokes the rectum, and that’s why bowel-related diseases like haemorrhoids, appendicitis, constipation and irritable bowel syndrome are so prevalent with us in the West.’
That was then. Now, she would give her all for a Western toilet with a roll of puppy-dog soft paper on the wall next to it.
And there was no one she could talk to about these things. Kamal, certainly not. She couldn’t criticise his country and culture to him; of course not. But who then? She couldn’t write long letters of complaint to her liberal friends at home as they were so approving of her, applauding her for choosing to live in a Third World country (although one wasn’t supposed to use that label any more, and anyway, India was supposed to be in a different category, one of the economically emerging nations). Her friends would be shocked should she betray them by letting slip even a word of complaint.
So at most, she complained of the heat. You wouldn’t believe how hot it gets here in April! I swear you could fry an egg on the street! she wrote jovially to her best friend Deb. We all now sleep on the veranda – it’s just too hot to sleep indoors. And no air-conditioning at all! At least it’s good for the environment!
She couldn’t, of course, complain to her parents and siblings, who would only say I told you so.
She could only complain to herself. The nagging voice grew louder; horrible, mean, ugly. Try as she did, she could not shut it up. She was beginning to hate India.
* * *
Most of all, the food. The food seemed to stand for everything that was inherently wrong about
her present life. Not that it was bad – Sundari was a superb cook, and the meals she prepared were invariably elaborately prepared, and delicious. But they weren’t American. Caroline simply missed good home cooking. It became almost an obsession for her. She had always been quite particular about what she ate, something of a health-food fanatic. She liked fresh vegetables, salads, seafood, home-made casseroles and never, ever ate out of a tin.
She’d been an on-and-off vegetarian back at home, and moving in with a vegetarian family had not been a problem. But during her pregnancy she had developed a craving for meat, which had not receded since the baby was born. Especially at Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Turkey! Roast chicken! Salami pizza! Even – disgraceful! – a hamburger. What she wouldn’t give for a hot dog, with all the trimmings! But you couldn’t get meat here – or not much of it. There were one or two butchers in Gingee, but just seeing the conditions in those shops – the meat lying in the open, the flies, the blood, the unwashed knives, the dirt – put her off.
Sometimes she had a chicken specially slaughtered, and she watched over it and made sure it was all done quickly, no flies, clean knives, everything. However, cooking a chicken was a bit difficult in the Iyengar household – Sundari wouldn’t touch it, and she didn’t really even like Caroline doing it herself, and sullying her cooking utensils with the carcass.
But she struggled on, and the months creaked past. Another Christmas, with Asha now a toddler, and Kamal home again for only his third visit (he had managed to come for a week in June, for Asha’s birthday). A resignation of sorts laid itself upon her soul. It was just a question of time, and time would pass. Slowly, for sure, but it would pass, and she would make it, and they would return to America. And Asha would learn to love her. Though that didn’t seem to be happening much. Asha was as ever attached mostly to Sundari, and to Janiki. Caroline felt like the visiting childless aunt, awkward and bumbling, and Asha treated her with something verging on boredom. She just didn’t have the knack, the warmth. Bad mother! said the little nagging voice within her.
* * *
Shortly after Asha’s second birthday – Kamal had managed to get leave, to come and visit for a week – Caroline discovered a supermarket in Gingee hidden away in a back street, where one could actually buy food from the city – butter, cheese, spaghetti, soy sauce and so on. She asked the shopkeeper if they could get tinned corned beef, sausages and spam. They could. She ate all the things she bought and enjoyed them. She went back and asked for more. The shopkeeper was delighted to oblige. The next time she went there he showed her a real treasure: tinned ravioli! The tin was old, dusty and slightly dented, but Caroline couldn’t care less. She couldn’t wait to get home, open it, warm it up and eat it. Delicious!
The next morning, though, she felt sick, and vomited up her breakfast. Other symptoms followed quickly – a dry mouth and throat, and then she had difficulty swallowing. Her eyelids drooped; she felt dizzy, light-headed. She went to see a doctor, and his verdict was: botulism,
food poisoning, caused by eating infected food from a damaged can.
That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Casting pride aside, Caroline rang her parents.
‘I want to come home!’ she wailed.
‘Come, darling, come!’ they said. ‘We will arrange your flight. Don’t worry about a thing. Just come home!’
It wasn’t possible to contact Kamal – he was out on location – before her flight so she sent a telegram.
SERIOUS FOOD POISONING FLYING AMERICA TOMORROW STOP LEAVING ASHA WITH SUNDARI STOP.
Chapter 14
Kamal
Kamal held the bottle to Asha’s lips but she pushed angrily against it with her little clenched fist. She kicked and wriggled, and twisted around so that her head was bent almost backwards. Kamal tried to put his arms around her, hold her in the crook of his arm to try again with the bottle, but she lashed it away again and frowned, squawking in fury. She twisted around again; she had heard sounds in the kitchen and she knew who was making them. Kamal gave up and put her on the floor. Immediately Asha was running at full speed towards the source of the sound. She disappeared into the kitchen. A moment later Sundari appeared from there, Asha in her arms.
‘She ran away again,’ she said smilingly, and held the child out to her father. Kamal reached for her but Asha kicked his hands away, squirming and struggling, refusing to be handed over.
Sundari smiled. ‘The Terrible Twos, they call it in America. Caroline told me. Besides, she just doesn’t know you well enough. It will come.’
‘And her mom’s gone,’ Kamal reminded her.
‘Yes, that is true. But to tell you the truth, I don’t know if she even noticed that. Caroline has always had problems bonding with her, and it hasn’t changed. Asha thinks I am her mother, and Janiki is a close second.’
‘I noticed that,’ said Kamal.
‘Well, what was I to do? Whenever the child cried Caroline panicked. She gave her to me and Asha was quiet. Should I have refused to take her? And then Janiki took over after Ramesh was born. And now it’s the same thing. She doesn’t know you’re her father. She won’t even let you feed her.’
Sundari bent over and picked up the bottle that was lying on the ground, wiped the teat with a corner of her sari and handed the bottle to Asha, who was already reaching for it, gurgling with anticipation.
‘The thing is,’ Kamal said slowly, ‘I don’t know how long Caroline will be gone. You don’t mind carrying on as before?’
‘Of course not. Nothing will change.’ Sundari changed Asha from one arm to the other, away from Kamal. Asha lay luxuriantly in the curve of her arm, sucking at her bottle with eyes half-closed in bliss. She looked as if she belonged there, would always belong there.
‘I’ll keep on paying you, of course, even though Caroline isn’t with you. I’ll keep paying as if nothing has changed. Room and board, till she comes back.’
‘If she comes back.’
‘What do you mean, if? Of course she’ll come back!’
‘Well, the way she was carrying on, I actually doubt that. Your wife hates India, Kamal, hadn’t you noticed? Well, I had, even if she tried to hide it. She hates India and she won’t be back. Trust me.’
‘Well, we planned on moving to America later this year anyway.’
‘Not with Asha, I assume? You will leave Asha with me.’
‘No! The plan is for all three of us to move to America as soon as my contract expires. We told you this, Sundari! Of course we’ll take Asha! We want to be a proper family at last.’
Sundari turned her back.
‘Well, good luck with that. Of course you have every right to take Asha. But you understand you will be tearing her life apart? She does not know you at all and she has a very poor relationship with her mother. I don’t know how you can even consider taking her out of the family she knows and loves. In my eyes that is child abuse.’
‘Sundari, don’t exaggerate! She will get used to us and to life in America. She’s so small! Children adapt very quickly and easily.’
‘And what do you know about children? Just because you’re a big-shot foreign-educated engineer doesn’t mean you know everything, you know. You should listen to me – I’m a mother. Her mother, she thinks. I know this child, and I know you cannot tear her from the family she knows and loves without doing her terrible damage. If you want to take that responsibility, then go ahead. But don’t blame me when the damage is done. It’s your child.’
Kamal turned and walked away. He had to think. Sundari, of course, was basically right – it was just the way she said it that bothered him. So bossy! It was true what they said, that women might have a socially inferior position in Indian society, but in the home they were the undisputed head of everything, and men the inferior. He’d known it from his own upbringing, of course –Daadi was the boss. And he saw it here, with Sundari. Sundari’s husband submitted to her without a murmur, and now she expected such submission from him, too, rega
rding his own child.
He wanted to protest, to argue, to shout, even, and yet he couldn’t, because at the heart of it she was right. It’s not biology that makes a parent, but love, bonding, care. And Asha loved Sundari more than she loved her biological parents; Sundari had cared for her more than her parents; and the bond between the Iyengars and Asha was deep and lasting, whereas the bond between Asha and her parents was loose and weak and one-sided and complicated. Yes, she was loved with a passion by both parents – but that love had never found expression in everyday life. The last thing he wanted was to cause Asha damage – would he, by taking her away, to America, in a few months’ time? But how could he – they – leave her here? Would Caroline return, once she had recovered, to help him fight for Asha, to make a renewed effort to win her affection? Somehow, he doubted it.
In the end he returned to the north. Sundari had won. Of course Asha’s needs must come first. He couldn’t tear her out of her familiar surroundings, her home, away from her amma and chinna-amma.
