Disowned

by Tikiri

  “I’ve got money now,” I said, turning to look Preeti directly in her eyes. “And Franky will help to get you and Aunty Shilpa out too. He knows how to take money from Mama and Papa’s account and get visas and passports and tickets and all that stuff. I don’t have to be eighteen to get my money anymore.”

  “This is madness,” Preeti said, shaking her head. “Even if we don’t agree with her decision, we must obey Grandma. It’s our duty. You have to honor Grandma’s wishes. Why don’t you understand this?”

  “Grandma’s a dictator!” I blurted out.

  “Shhhh…”

  I lowered my voice back to a whisper. “If she really loved me, she wouldn’t do this.”

  “You really don’t understand, do you? She’s ashamed she can’t take care of you like your parents did. She thinks Kristadasa will give you at least half the things you had before. Don’t you see?”

  I sat quietly trying to take this in.

  “She loves us,” Preeti said, putting an arm on my shoulder. “She’s trying to make a better life for all of us.”

  My stomach turned. No, I just can’t do this. I elbowed the fat hippo off my shoulder. I almost heard it grunt as I pushed it off. “Preeti, there’s something I need to tell you.”

  “What is it now?”

  “He attacked me.”

  “Who?”

  “Nuthead’s father.” I gulped and looked away. There. I said it.

  Preeti stared at me silently. I waited, wringing my hands and my heart. What’s she going to say? Will she think it’s my fault? Like Grandma did?

  “What do you mean?” she asked, finally.

  I looked down at my hands. “After the marriage broker came, he found me outside the door. I was alone and he pushed me against the wall, and…and…he tried to attack me. He tried to tear my…skirt. It was awful. It was horrible.” My voice faded and my heart rate quickened, as I’d remembered the terror I felt then.

  “Is this the truth?”

  “Cross my heart. You know I can’t lie.”

  “Did he hurt you? Did you see blood?”

  “It happened so fast. I pushed him away. I punched him. I hit him hard—I saw tears in his eyes. But I ran away.”

  “You, you hit him?” Preeti stared at me for a whole minute before she spoke again. “Asha,” she said, shaking her head.

  I swallowed. Does she believe me?

  She let out a sigh. “Why do you have to be so melodramatic? Grandma’s right. She’s always saying you have such an imagination.”

  I looked at her with my mouth open.

  “He’s a respectable man,” Preeti continued, “and he’s going to be your husband soon. You should never talk badly about him like this. That is such a dishonorable thing to do.”

  Didn’t she hear what I just said? “But he’s a monster!”

  Preeti put up one hand. “Please don’t say these things. This man has promised to take care of you, Grandma, me, and Aunty Shilpa. We’re all going to become part of his family. As your older cousin, I forbid you to disrespect him. You really need to learn how to—”

  “But I can’t marry him!” I was beside myself. “You’re wrong about him. I’m never going to—”

  “Asha, stop acting like a little girl. This is not even your decision to make.”

  “But…”

  “You’re wrong about him. You’re wrong about Grandma. She cares a lot, and she’s trying her best to take care of us. Besides, you have no choice.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Aunty Shilpa’s sick.”

  I stopped for a moment. “What do you mean?”

  “She’s dying.”

  I looked at her, speechless.

  “Don’t you hear her cough all the time?”

  I’d heard, but I’d thought it was because she worked too hard and was always tired.

  “Haven’t you seen her cough blood in the shower?”

  That, I had not. I put on my invisible cone of privacy as soon as I entered the washrooms, never looked more than a few inches in front me, and ran out as soon as I was done. I hadn’t seen, because I’d never looked.

  “What’s wrong with her?” I asked in a whisper.

  “She was sick before she came to live with us. Everyone says her husband died at the quarry, but he died spitting out blood. They told us he got AIDS.”

  “Oh!”

  “I think Aunty Shilpa’s sick in the same way.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Aunty doesn’t want everyone to know, so don’t go around blabbing, okay?”

  “Why can’t we do something about it?”

  “Do you think we can afford to help her?”

  I had no answer to that.

  “Grandma already spent all our savings at the clinic, but they wanted more. We had to pay extra to the government official to get an appointment, then we had to pay extra to the nurse to take her temperature, and then we had to pay extra to see the doctor. You know the money they gave us when you came here? We gave that to the doctor to pay for special medicine from America, but they never gave it to her. They chased Grandma away when she went to find out what happened to all her money. Now she’s run out of it all. We’re not made of cash, so we can’t fight these big people.”

  I sat motionless. My mind was a whirlwind.

  “When you marry Kristadasa,” Preeti continued, “he promised to help Shilpa. She won’t have to break her back working. Maybe she can stay home and rest, even get medicine. See, little cousin, Grandma’s not a dictator. She’s trying to help all of us. It’s not her fault she’s stuck with three girls. She has to find dowry for you and me and then take care of Aunty Shilpa for the rest of her life.”

  Something didn’t ring right. I spoke up. “But isn’t Aunty Shilpa the one working right now to pay for the dowry—”

  “I’ll have to get married soon, too,” Preeti continued without hearing me. “I wanted to be a doctor so I can help Aunty, but that may be too late. What’s the difference if my marriage happens now or later? It’s our destiny. At least this way, Grandma will stop worrying, and we can get help for Aunty Shilpa.”

  I stared at her.

  “Stop thinking about school and all these other crazy things. You’ll make a really good wife. You cook so well,” she said, squeezing my shoulder. “Now stop talking and go to sleep, my little cousin.”

  She gave me a sad half smile, turned away, lay down on the sofa and curled into a ball, as she always did when she went to sleep.

  I lay back against my pillow and looked up at a brown patch on the ceiling, a permanent reminder from when the floor above had flooded years ago. I stayed awake, frozen, gazing at it till early morning.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “How do we know this is going to work?”

  Aunty Shilpa was frowning at the piles of paper scattered in front of her. Her face was paler than usual and the lines on her face were more entrenched. I sat close to her, making sure her teacup was always filled.

  Franky went over the forms, forms which had taken him three weeks to sort out with the banks. I’d learned quickly that between a visa, an air ticket and “government and administrative fees,” the money I’d made from selling my cakes was not enough to get away to Dar es Salaam as quickly as I’d wished. I had to dip into my parents’ account. Each day of waiting for Franky to work his way through the “damn bank bureaucrats,” as he called them, made me more and more nervous, and I was now left with seven days before my wedding day.

  When he finally had everything in order, he read the papers out loud to Aunty Shilpa and me. These papers were written partly in English and partly in Konkani, both of which I could read now, but the documents were far more complicated than any of my schoolbooks. Just when I thought I understood one sentence, the next one would start with “notwithstanding the above, it must be duly noted that…and that…and that…,” and I became hopelessly lost.

  “This is the language of businessmen, not girls,” Fartybag said
with a condescending sniff from his corner, when Aunty Shilpa and I stopped Franky for the hundredth time to ask a question.

  “I see the company paid Asha’s parents in British pounds and American dollars to a London bank,” Franky said, licking his lips. “All we’re going to do is make simple transfer of money from Asha’s parents’ account in London to new account in Goa, and we’re converting it into rupees. Nothing more, nothing less, madam.”

  “How do we know there won’t be any problems?” Aunty Shilpa asked.

  “No problemo is my motto, madam,” Franky said, flashing his yellowed teeth. I wished he wouldn’t do that.

  Aunty Shilpa looked even more skeptical.

  “Let me assure you,” he said, taking off his glasses and speaking slowly to make sure we’d follow. “You have absolutely nothing to fear. Positively nothing. I know exactly what I am doing. As I have explained to you already, you will really have a big problem if you leave the money in these foreign banks until Miss Asha is eighteen. Are you willing to trust these foreign banks, madam?”

  Aunty Shilpa looked unsure. I wasn’t sure either.

  “Are you willing to make her lose everything to foreign fees, and taxes, and even expropriation?”

  “What’s that?” Aunty Shilpa and I said together.

  “They can take your money and run away anytime. You will never know. Never know. Who knows how much they’ve already taken out without anyone knowing, huh?”

  “Won’t they write to me or something?” I said. “I’m sure Papa and Mama wouldn’t put their money in a bad bank.”

  Franky sighed. “You are a very smart young lady, Miss Asha, but I must humbly say, also little naive. But then, you are still young. Never trust these foreign banks, that is what I say. Worse than vipers. Vipers, I tell you. I know because I am forced to do business with them on a daily basis. At the Good and Fast Immigration Broker, that is all I do, fight with these banks. English banks, American banks, Australian banks, even Japanese banks. Thieves, I tell you.”

  A loud, smelly pop came from Fartybag’s direction. We ignored him.

  “Best thing to do now is to take everything out and make sure you put it in safe place right here in India where we can see it. And put it in rupees, not this foreign money. Then you can decide to do whatever you want with it.” Franky nodded his head sideways.

  “It sounds like a good idea,” I said slowly, giving a sideways glance at Aunty Shilpa, who was still frowning at the papers.

  With my parents’ money, I could pay off the marriage broker and pay those “extras” to Aunty Shilpa’s doctors, nurses, clinics, and other people in between, as needed. I could also whisk everyone—Preeti, Aunty Shilpa, and even Grandma—away with me to Tanzania, where I remembered life as being much safer. There were no school monitors or marriage brokers over there, no men who drank feni and attacked girls, and there were no boys who harassed girls at bus stops either. For the first time in my life, I felt I had all the answers.

  “First, we need to pay off the marriage broker to stop the wedding and make sure there’s enough left for emergencies and such,” I said, giving Franky a discreet nod. He didn’t nod back. The day before, I’d told him, in no uncertain terms, that we must not talk about Aunty Shilpa’s sickness in front of her. I prayed he remembered that conversation.

  “I’m afraid, miss,” Franky said, shaking his head, “that will need a lot of money and it is not all that simple. Nothing is simple these days. I did my calculations. Your parents had money, but not enough to stop a wedding and all the peripheral and emergency things, I am so sorry to say.”

  “What’s all this perife…peri….?” Aunty Shilpa stuttered.

  Does he mean there’s not enough to pay for Aunty Shilpa’s health costs? I peered at Franky, but his face was blank.

  “How much do we need for the emer… to help, I mean to stop the, er, wedding and all that?” I said, struggling to find the right words.

  “Ten lakhs,” Franky said.

  “Ten lakhs!” I exclaimed.

  “Why do we need that much?” Aunty Shilpa asked giving Franky a dubious look.

  “If your mother didn’t already sign the legal papers with the marriage broker, madam, this would be very easy thing to do. Now, it is not going to be cheap to break the contract.”

  “Maybe I can’t read, but I know a lakh is a lot of rupees,” Aunty Shilpa said.

  “What will happen if we don’t pay the broker?” I asked.

  “Marriage is serious business in this country,” Franky said in a firm voice. “That is why we men take care of these things. It is not like the haggling for vegetables at the market that you women do every day. The broker can take you to court for breaking a contract, and then you will pay millions of lakhs. Your parents had money, but not that much, Miss Asha.”

  I listened with a sinking heart. Banks accounts, contracts, business arrangements, and courts were a whole new world to me. Judging from Aunty Shilpa’s face, they were to her as well. I wished I could ask more frank questions off Franky, but I also needed Aunty Shilpa here to sign the papers, and I didn’t have much time left.

  “In this country,” Franky was saying, “it is major offense to break a signed contract. I can assure you that you will be held in the highest legal liability. Liability, I tell you. It will definitely mean prison.”

  “Prison?” I looked at Franky with wide eyes, wondering what Grandma had got us into.

  “How much did Asha’s parents have?” Aunty Shilpa asked. We’d been asking this question all morning. Franky said the money was held in several accounts in different currencies, so he had to add them all up, and it was all rather complicated.

  “Ah, that is a very good question,” Franky said, picking up his oversized calculator for the tenth time that morning. He stared at it for a moment, scratching his head. He took his notepad and scribbled numbers on it, mumbling to himself, and he punched numbers into the calculator, one by one, as if he was afraid he’d miss the correct button. After a few hmms and umms, he put his calculator away and looked up with a sigh.

  We looked at him expectantly.

  “Well?” Aunty Shilpa asked.

  “I am really sorry to say that you will need to find another way to pay off the marriage broker in full.”

  “Oh, no!” I said.

  “Not to worry,” Franky said, rubbing his forehead. “My job is to think of options. My motto is no problemo. There is always a solution, that is what I say.”

  He shuffled the papers around and picked one up. Leaning back in his chair, he read it silently to himself, moving his lips as he went through each line while we waited quietly.

  In the background, I could hear Rambo’s booming voice and machine gun fire coming from Fartybag’s corner.

  “The problem,” Franky said thoughtfully after a few minutes of intense reading, “is that Kristadasa’s family wants to expedite this wedding. He is my neighbor, you know. He told me that he is very anxious for this marriage to take place sooner than later. Plus the marriage broker is a very respectable and powerful man in town. This does not make it easy for us.”

  He put the paper back on the desk and leaned forward. Aunty Shilpa and I leaned toward him.

  “So?” Aunty Shilpa asked.

  “We will have to act fast and quietly if we want to succeed. You only have seven days left, miss.”

  “So what do we need to do?” I asked, panic rising inside me.

  “Do you really want to stop this arrangement?”

  “Yes!” I said. Why is he even asking?

  “Here, first let’s have a cup of tea,” Franky said, passing Aunty Shilpa a teacup. He looked at me expectantly. I shook my head impatiently. This was no time for tea.

  “This is serious business we’re talking about now,” Franky said, pouring himself a cup as well. “We must make these decisions mindfully, and with the blessing of Lord Vishnu, we will solve your problems. That is what I say.”

  Aunty Shilpa took a sip of he
r tea with shaking hands. She was a nervous wreck. It had taken me days to convince her to come and speak to Franky. Fartybag’s father had been specific. I had to find a relative who was over the age of eighteen if I wanted access to the money my parents left me.

  Aunty Shilpa had not at all been happy when I told her I was getting help from the Good and Fast Immigration Broker to get away from my impending wedding. She refused to listen until I rustled up the courage to tell her of the day Kristadasa attacked me. When she heard the story, her face had clouded. She sat motionless for a whole minute with her head hung low. I stood quietly by her. When she looked up, I saw tears were running down her cheek.

  “Don’t worry, Aunty,” I said, reaching out to squeeze her hand. “He didn’t hurt me. I got a tiny scratch on my arm, but that’s all. I hit him and ran away.”

  “I remember my wedding night,” Aunty Shilpa said in a soft voice, her eyes far away. “It was the worst night of my life. I was only fourteen. I was so scared. Mother was in the room next door. Aunty Patel was in the next house. I thought if I screamed they’d come and rescue me, but no one came.”

  I listened quietly.

  “He left me on the bed with my thighs covered in blood,” Aunty Shilpa continued. “I cried all night.”

  “Did he beat you?”

  “Yes…in many ways,” she said, hesitating. “He came home drunk every night and he beat me inside and out, on my face, my back, my head even. One day he beat me so hard and I bled so much I had to throw away the sheets. I bled the next day, too, and when I went to the hospital, the nurse said I bled a baby out of my stomach.” She looked down, unable to meet my eyes. Tears were streaming down her face now.

  I reached out, put my hand over hers and held it tightly. I may not be able to take away the memories or the pain, but I could at least hold her.

  “Every night was the same,” she said in a distant voice. “I wished I was dead. That is what happens when you marry an older man. That was my life. That is the life you will have.”