Naming Maya

by Uma Krishnaswami

  We have visitors. Prasad brings along two suited men (from Tri-Star Development Private Limited) with briefcases and shiny gold watches.

  They get down to small talk. They knew my grandfather, they say, and what a fine gentleman he was, and what a most excellent family we all are. They ask about me—“Your daughter, madam, she is how old now?” They swivel delicately around my father—“Madam, this property is in your name solely, as left to you by your late father, is it not?” “You and your daughter are living in the States? I see, I see.” And on and on, circling, circling.

  The talk moves to terms and agreements and something called a patta, which seems to be a sort of map the realtor says he has, and to advances and percentages and other technical points.

  Mami offers coffee. To our embarrassment and the startlement of Prasad and the buyers, she has added salt to it instead of sugar. Mom apologizes, and says she’ll brew a fresh pot. “No, no,” they protest. “No need for coffee.” She goes anyway.

  Mami, irritated at her kitchen being invaded, accuses my mother at the top of her voice of being a Pakistani spy Prasad tries to distract the developers, but they listen with interest. Mami is a solo theatrical performance. Mom calms her down with some difficulty, and manages to bring out fresh coffee, suitably sugared. Mami retreats to the garden with a large platter of lentils, and spends the next hour or so sifting through it for small stones and husks. Under her breath she curses spies, daughters-in-law, policemen, politicians, and several other groups of people.

  After Prasad has left with his developers, we sit on the oonjal, exhausted. Mami has curled up on the floor and is snoring gently.

  I ask Mom, “Are they going to buy the house?”

  “They are,” she says wonderingly. “It seems too good to be true. They’re going to buy it and tear down the house and build a block of flats.”

  “Flats?”

  “Apartments.” There we go again, with the naming of things.

  “Is that good?” I ask. “Tearing the house down?”

  She shrugs. “It’s okay. We can’t live here. It’s all right.”

  “You grew up here,” I point out.

  “Yes,” she says. And then, “Well, you can’t keep things like this forever. You can’t live on memories.”

  Thinking about another house whose memories I have tried to live on, I say, “But houses aren’t just houses.”

  She sighs. “True. They contain stories of people’s lives, don’t they? Like this house.”

  “Stories of Thatha’s life? And yours?”

  She nods. “But you have to move on.”

  “I don’t see why you can’t take the stories with you.”

  She gives me a surprised look. I continue, trying to keep my voice steady. “Just because we sold the house in New Jersey doesn’t mean I have to forget all about the years we lived there, does it? All about Dad? Just like you don’t have to forget this house, and Thatha.”

  A long pause stretches between us. Then she says softly, “No. Of course not.”

  I am beginning to see that the stories of people’s lives are like the ocean waves Sumati and I watched at the beach, lapping endless shores, constantly moving, changing. This summer I feel filled to overflowing with Mami’s stories, because of how alive they are, how deep and dark and scary-beautiful.

  I say, “When you first went to America, was it hard to leave India behind?”

  I know she is taken aback because she makes as if to brush the hair off her forehead when there isn’t any out of place. She says, “I think it was, but not right then. It wasn’t until years later I realized I missed it.”

  And then I have another question. “Mom, if you and Dad had stayed on in India do you think … you think you’d still be together?”

  She says, “I don’t know. I’ve often asked myself that. Maybe not, but it’s hard to tell, and sometimes I think, what’s the point of agonizing over such things? It doesn’t undo them.”

  The oonjal creaks as we swing on it slowly. We sit together, missing our fathers.

  Getting Help

  Mami’s son comes that evening as promised. Except for his head of thick black hair, and the suspicion of a mustache on his upper lip, he looks just like Mami. He has her ready laugh. He has her gestures.

  He tries to persuade her to go home with him.

  “I can’t,” she says. “I have to stay here with Prema. When she came here to sell this house I promised her I would stay here and cook for her.” She sets her chin, and will not budge.

  He says, as if he’s bargaining with a young child, “If we let you stay here tonight, will you come with me to see a doctor tomorrow?”

  Mami waves him away with a little laugh. “We’ll see. Tomorrow. All right, all right. Go home. It’s getting late.”

  “Poyittu varain,” he says, the Tamil goodbye that really means “I’ll be back.” But before he can keep his word the next day, Kamala Mami falls apart like a stack of papers in a good stiff wind. And she is not laughing.

  The day is hot and still. On her way out to check the mailbox, Mom has no doubt been trapped by Mr. Rama Rao, and is deep in a meteorological discussion with him. I go to the dining room to get myself a glass of water from the refrigerator that stands against the far wall. That’s when I see her.

  The moment I set eyes on Mami I know this is beyond anything I’ve ever seen before. She sits in a corner, bunched up close to the ground. And she weeps as if her heart is breaking. She makes no effort to cover her face or turn away. She just sits there and cries in long soft sobs.

  “Mami,” I say.

  “I couldn’t keep my word,” she says. Over and over. “I told you I would take care of your daughter. How did I know she would go so far away? How could I know?” She can’t hear me, see me.

  Think, Maya. No time to dawdle. I stand there, watching her the way I watch a horror movie—can’t look, but can’t bear not to look.

  “What a life she’s had,” she cries. “What a terrible, terrible life.”

  It’s impossible to keep a single thought in my head long enough to become a decision.

  Mami cries louder, in long jagged breaths, as if her lungs can barely fuel the sadness bursting out from inside her. I can practically see them, the ghosts in her brain that are making this happen. I see that I was right to be afraid for her, back when I first suspected something was wrong.

  No time to dawdle. I run down the hallway, fling the front door open, and race outside barefoot, not caring that the gravel hurts my feet.

  Mom is nowhere to be seen. She must be inside the Rama Raos’ house. I hesitate a moment. Should I go in there and get her? Then I remember the words of Mami’s daughter-in-law: “Tell me if anything goes wrong.” I know what I need to do.

  I head for the corner of C. P. Ramaswamy Road and the cross street with the police station and the tree with the trunk as big as a house. I take this road in the longest strides and biggest gulps of breath I can manage. The next cross street houses the bank.

  Inside the Union Bank I search the faces. From behind the counter where she’s handing papers to a teller, Mami’s daughter-in-law meets my eyes in startlement. She whispers something to the woman she’s working with and ducks out to talk to me.

  I say, all breathless, “It’s Mami. You need to come. Now.”

  She says, “Wait here.” She returns in a moment, purse in hand. “It’s all right,” she says. “Let’s go.”

  Only when I get back to the house with Jana do I realize I’m still barefoot. My feet are filthy. Perhaps Ganesha kept an eye out for me, the way I’ve tried to keep watch over Mami. I could have stepped on nails or broken glass and not even known it.

  I leave Jana alone with Mami, and go upstairs. I quickly pour water over my poor feet, and rub them against each other. The water is dark brown as it washes the dust of the street away. The gecko’s nowhere in sight.

  We get ready to take Mami to the hospital. Mom, surprised out of her conversation with Mr
. Rama Rao, goes to wave down a taxi for us. I stay with Mami while she sits and gazes into the distance, recognizing no one. Her daughter-in-law stares as if she is seeing her for the first time. Mami’s tears have stopped flowing now, but every once in a while a tatter of a sob still breaks free from her. Sometimes her hands clasp and unclasp, fluttering like monstrous moths, and then are still again.

  I am grateful when Mom returns, telling us she has a taxi waiting outside. It takes all our combined strength, Mom and me and Jana, to get Mami into the cab. For once, Mr. Rama Rao is at a loss for words. He sits on his porch and watches us openmouthed.

  At the hospital, the three of us and a doorman have to get her out and into the building. She fights like a cat.

  The hospital is crowded. Once we have her inside, Mami becomes still. She will not look at us. A nurse shuffles patients in and out of examining rooms behind green curtains. When it’s Mami’s turn, she goes without a fight.

  A resident tells us they will probably transfer Mami to an observation ward. Mami’s daughter-in-law is in a daze. “We’ll have to run a series of diagnostic tests,” says the resident, with the air of one who has explained everything perfectly. “Are you relatives?”

  “I am,” says Jana, and so of course he turns to her and ignores us completely.

  “Will she be all right?” Jana asks.

  “Don’t worry.” The resident adjusts the stethoscope hanging around his neck. “Come tomorrow. By tomorrow we might be able to tell you more.”

  In the evening, Jana and her husband both show up at Thatha’s.

  “I’m so sorry,” Mami’s son says. “So much inconvenience you’ve had to put up with.”

  “It’s all right,” replies my mother. “What will you do now?”

  He shrugs and smiles. “I will take her home with us when they discharge her from the hospital. She has always insisted she can manage on her own …” He trails off, and then says, “Thank you. Thank you for taking care of her.” He aims the words at Mom but he looks right at me.

  I think of Mami cooking for us, telling stories I can hear from my place on the oonjal, singing for herself and no one else. Mami in a rage when she was sure Prasad the real estate man was a murderer wanted by the police, an ax-wielding maniac out to get us. Mami reciting the names of the goddess, all rattly like pebbles rolling down a mountain.

  And I feel sad. Oh, not for Kamala Mami. She carries worlds around in her imagination, and why would I need to be sorry for someone who has that? I feel sorry for myself because I won’t have her around anymore, and I am fiercely jealous of the people who belong to her, as I do not.

  The Book

  The smell of disinfectant in Mahila Hospital is unimaginable. It hits us as we walk in the following morning. It is so thick it goes up my nose and lodges in my sinuses. I have the feeling I’ll be able to smell it years from now, when I am far away from this place where silk cotton trees make umbrellas over the courtyard outside, and where, inside, the walls are busy with white and green tiles.

  We check in at a counter, where a man in a blue uniform writes our names down twice, once on a form and once in a ledger. I wonder what they’ll do with the names of all the visitors who come to see the patients in this rambling red brick building. Will anyone ever read them again? Jana arrives and I snap out of my daydream.

  A nurse’s aide in a green sari, almost matching the tiles but not quite, leads us to the observation ward. She turns us over to a nurse at the desk. “Is she expecting you?” The nurse bites her words out.

  Mom dithers. Jana says, “I am her relative.”

  “And you?” Nurse Barracuda glares at us.

  “They’re friends of the family,” says Jana.

  The nurse points us to a waiting room and says, “Wait there. I’ll bring her to you.”

  Pretty soon she reappears with Kamala Mami. Jana talks to her in the loud voice people reserve for those who are deaf, foreign, or a little slow. She pronounces each word clearly and carefully. “How. Are. You?”

  Mami digs in the folds of her sari and extracts something. “What. Is. That?” enunciates her daughter-in-law, tugging her sari around herself, whoosh-whoosh.

  Mami jerks her head at me, away from everyone else. I sit down next to her. “What?” I ask. “What is it?”

  It’s a little accordion-folded book with parchment-like pages bent from age and use, Tamil letters rolling across the front.

  “I want you to have this,” she whispers to me. “Lakshmi Sahasranaman. Your name comes from there, Maya. Mahamaya. Remember that.” She opens it, and shows me, - - - , m-a-y-a. She presses the book into my hands and leans back, exhausted.

  Kamala Mami and I sit and stare companionably at the little book. My name in there! I speak, finally, and to my surprise the silence doesn’t shatter the way silence is supposed to. It just parts and makes way for what I have to say. “Are you sure you want to give me your book? Won’t you need it?”

  She smiles, and says, “I have another one, don’t you worry.” With a shock of pleasure I realize it’s a Two-Gift!

  She nods encouragingly at me and waves the little book away. I slip it into my tote bag, tucking it between my camera and my wallet.

  I take her rough hand and hold it, wanting to smell familiar smells of flowers and hair oil and diesel fumes from the bus, but I smell only hospital disinfectant.

  “You should go home,” I say.

  “Home,” agrees the nurse from the doorway. “She’ll go home soon. She’s so much better.” She beams at us, barracuda transformed into angelfish. “Illai, ma, Kamala? Isn’t that so, dear?”

  But Kamala Mami doesn’t answer. Instead she pats my hand with her dry-as-dust ones. Then she leans over and says to me, “What a terrible thing, to take a young girl like you to jail,” and I realize that her mind has gone off on its journey to the past again.

  I take a picture of her, although my hands shake so I can barely hold the camera straight. She gives a crooked grin, then asks Mom to take one of her and me together. I sit next to her, and try to smile, wondering who she thinks I am. Mom aims and clicks. The flash goes off in a little explosion of brightness, leaving small bursts of color whizzing about in my eyes.

  “The house?” she asks Mom, and I see she is back in our reality.

  “Prasad’s still talking to buyers,” Mom tells her. They look at each other a long time.

  Finally Mami waves her hand like an empress dismissing her subjects. “Sell it,” she commands. “It’s only a house. The real remembering—it’s inside.” She thumps what Sumati would call her boozum.

  I open my mouth to say something to Mami. Goodbye, maybe? Good luck? What can I possibly say?

  She spares me the trouble of figuring it out. She leans over and whispers so close in my ear her warm breath tickles, “Sometimes people leave our lives. It isn’t a thing to cry about.”

  I shush, humbled. What do I know? She is an ocean of story, filled with answers to questions I have barely begun to ask.

  The Woman on the Escalator

  A week goes by so slowly it gives me the prickles, like when you sit on a folded leg too long. Mom waits to hear from Prasad, who is waiting to hear from the Tri-Star Development people about when they need to go to the registrar’s office for one last meeting about the house. The Tri-Star people take their time because they are waiting to get a good date for the meeting—from their astrologer.

  “Astrologer?” I ask. “Really? Why?”

  She nods. “Just a custom, that’s all. They’ll call Prasad when they have a date.”

  “Perfectly normal,” Sumati reassures me. “You never begin a thing without consulting an astrologer.” Lakshmi Auntie mutters something about that being the whole problem with India because how can you make any progress when you can’t even hiccup without having to get the astrologers to pick a good day for it.

  At last the meeting happens. Finally—yes!—the house is sold. Prasad shows up with sweets to celebrate. Mr. Rama Rao leaves
his post on the porch to come and talk to him. “Prasad, my good friend,” he cries, and hurries over to shake his hand so hard the change in the real estate agent’s pockets rattles. “And how is the market treating you these days?” I wait for him to move into a discussion about the weather, but instead they talk about the old days when Mr. Rama Rao was the person to go to in the High Court for the special “stamp paper” you needed for legal documents.

  “That’s what you used to do?” I say. “I wondered why you’d work at the High Court selling stamps.” It’s a mistake. I get a half-hour lecture on the fine points of stamp paper and the importance of getting the right value of it for various things, wills and bonds and sale deeds. Mr. Rama Rao imparts this knowledge as if he is sharing valued truths with me. Prasad says a hasty goodbye and goes into the house to talk to Mom.

  Mr. Rama Rao’s wife comes out and gives me some more sweets because their grandson has just turned six, “and you will not get these real Indian sweets in America, no?” She regales me with the latest on the domestic-help front. “All is well. Radha is back working for us. She has two little kids. When you go back to America, you must send them some nice pens and pencils they can use in their school, all right? We must do what we can to help uplift these poor people.” I promise to do my bit, and eat sweets until the charge of sugar makes my head spin. I am rescued by a bloodcurdling scream that comes from inside the Rama Raos’ house.

  “No worry,” says Mrs. Rama Rao, seeing my startled look. “Tea kettle. Raoji says world coffee-bean prices are going sky-high, so we are switching to tea.” She hurries off to take care of the shrieking kettle, and I make my escape.

  The talk of stamps reminds me that I owe Joanie her postcard to go with the Two-Gift. I pick one from the lot we bought at the bookstore. I write a few lines on it, address it, and tell Mom I’m going to go mail it.