An Obedient Father (29 page)

Rohit was the first to see them. "Hello," he shouted, and led them into Bittu Mamaji's rooms. Vibha came out of a back room at his shout. "Kusum, sister," he said, and shook Ben's hand. Then he lifted Carolyn and said, "You're the one in the photos." They moved into Bittu Mamaji's rooms.

Bittu Mamaji appeared, putting on a shirt. He had sandalwood paste smeared on his forehead and was a round head on a round body. Sharmila followed him. Soon they were all sitting in the main room drinking tea. The bags of gifts were placed in a line against a wall and nobody mentioned them for a while.

The talk first scratched across the details of life in America. Was Morris Plains near enough to Jersey City for Kusum to deliver a rose to a friend of Bittu Mamaji's. "I could, if you wanted, Mamaji. But it's not nearby." Kusum had never liked Bittu. She had thought he was lazy and so had no right to the condescending voice he had always used. But for some reason she now wanted to please him. She wanted Bittu Mamaji to admire her.

"Have you seen an Indian rose?" Bittu Mamaji asked Carolyn.

No, she shook her head.

"We'll show you that. Yes, Rohit?"

"Yes."

"Come sit beside me," Bittu said to Carolyn, and she joined him on the bed. "We'll show you Indian clouds. We'll show you some Indian birds."

"So now you are a full believer in the BJP," Kusum said.

"I love my country. Yes," he replied quickly. "I would never leave where I was born."

"Why is Sonia Gandhi running for Parliament?" Ben asked.

"Some files about her husband's bribery are about to be released and she wants to stop that," Bittu Mamaji answered, his voice soft and polite before the family's son-in-law. "And this way she keeps enough power to let her daughter run for office later if Priyanka wants to."

Relatives began arriving. Among them was Koko Naniji, Kusum's grandfather's sister, the woman in the family Kusum liked most. Koko Naniji was well past eighty, with a deeply pockmarked face. "Namaste, daughter," she said, and squatted easily in one corner. She believed chairs made you sick.

"Namaste," Kusum answered. "Carolyn, go touch Koko Naniji's feet." Koko Naniji's smile broadened. Because Koko Naniji was so old, as far back as Kusum could remember she had always been more of the bully than the victim. She occupied a large room on the ground floor of the house Bittu Mamaji lived in. Periodically family members tried taking over the room. Once, when she was away on a pilgrimage, a nephew and his wife had been moved into her room. Upon returning and discovering this and finding that her demands that the room be returned to her were being ignored, she took a stick and broke everything that could be shattered in the room. Then she went out on the street and began shouting that her family was making her homeless and that she needed a place to sleep. All those years of authority had made Koko Naniji's craziness seem amiable.

Everyone was nervous around Ben's whiteness, and so the conversation remained at the level of facts. Ben explained his work.

Someone asked him if he knew that Indians had invented the airplane. He said it didn't surprise him, and there was a pleased murmur in the room. People spoke one at a time.

When enough of a crowd had gathered, Kusum began handing out gifts. Everyone was impressed by the wrapping and the little taped cards with their names on them. Somehow when the gift wrap was carefully eased off and the requested portable phone or the iron with the automatic off was discovered, there was a sense of surprise. A blood-pressure measurer was passed around. "Thank you, Mr. Ben," said people who felt uncomfortable applying the ji to a white man's name. A few acknowledged Kusum, but quietly, so as not to offend him. Koko Naniji received an elegantly thin shortwave radio, and she was so pleased that she clapped her hands and refused to let anyone touch it, even to put in batteries. "This is a good gift," she said to Ben, "but not enough for an educated girl who can go out and earn money."

Someone translated for Ben and he joked, "You haven't been getting my checks?" He acted so shocked that when this was translated back, Koko Naniji was convinced that somebody had been taking the envelopes in which the checks arrived.

Kusum had known that the vast majority of the compliments would go to Ben just because he was a man. But the meagerness of the praise she received left her impatient.

The gift-giving had released some of the tension in the room, so that multiple conversations, conversations over people's shoulders and between talking faces, started. Women came up to Kusum and offered her information about the vast extended network of relatives. But the girls she had grown up with had long since married and left the house. Those who spoke to her were either women so much older than she, or women who were introduced as the mother of some child or as capable of making an incredibly thin cauliflower paratha, that politeness kept Kusum from saying much.

Eventually lunch was served. Kusum sat on the floor next to Koko Naniji. The joy of the radio was still with her, and after the

batteries were put in, Koko Naniji was delighted enough to tell a lie: "I dream of you all the time."

"What do you dream?" Kusum asked, puzzled.

"Things," Koko Naniji answered, looking at the radio in her hands and flipping through its stations. Kusum was disappointed despite herself at this halfhearted flattery. "Will you have one or two more children, daughter?"

"He doesn't want to," Kusum said, and then, deciding she should not act as needy as she felt, changed her answer to "We don't want to."

"A daughter is other people's wealth. If I had had sons, I would own my own house."

"I earn more than he does."

Urgently Koko Naniji said, "Don't tell people that. They gossip."

Kusum had not hoped to find much satisfaction from Koko Naniji and so did not continue asserting herself "Anita wants me to adopt Asha and take her to America."

"The way we took you."

This suggestion of quid pro quo angered Kusum, and without thinking she said, "I was a servant in this house." Immediately regretting her words, she tried to distract Koko Naniji from the topic. "Rajesh says not to trust Anita."

"That wretch will say anything. He's gotten rich with his restaurants and so he acts better than everyone."

"Asha is strange."

"You're not running an orphanage. Make her work." Koko Naniji smiled slyly as she said this. Kusum was so hurt she felt lonely.

Anita's shrieks were jabbing in and out of Rajesh's shouts.

Asha stood on the gallery in front of the flat. When Kusum and her family stopped just inside the compound's main gate, Asha called, "Carolyn, you want to see two monkeys dance?" A few of the compound's denizens were standing in the courtyard, talking to one another and regarding Asha. Now they turned their gazes on Kusum.

"The reason I wanted to be a grown-up," Ben said with a sigh, "was so I wouldn't have to listen to people fighting."

"I am going to stop them," Kusum replied. The rage she had not felt at Koko Naniji now made her light-headed.

"Let's go to a hotel," Ben said.

"You stay here."

Kusum hurried up the stairs to the gallery.

Anita was sitting on the sofa in the living room and Rajesh was standing near the common-room door. On the low table between the sofa and the love seats were two teacups and a plate of biscuits. "Fatso. How much more will you eat, fatso?" Anita was screeching.

Kusum came into the living room. "The whole world can hear."

"Let them die," Anita answered in a scream.

"Rajesh," Kusum said.

"I keep quiet while she goes on."

"I'm not stopping."

"What happened?"

"He wants me to pay for the food when we live together. I have to cook his food, of course, but I can't eat what I cook unless I pay."

"I want her to pay half the electricity and water, but she won't, so I say, pay for something, pay for the food."

"You're forcing me out of my home," Anita shrieked.

"This flat is mine also."

"What did you pay for it? What I have done and suffered."

"What did the will say?" Kusum asked.

"You. You," Anita hissed, shaking her finger at Kusum. "I don't have to follow that dead animal's will. This is not your business."

Kusum could feel the blood pulsing behind her eyeballs. "Where are the saris?"

"What saris?"

"Ma's."

"That was seven years ago. They were cheap cotton. Were you going to spend your days starching them?"

"They are fighting about saris," Asha called to the audience listening in the courtyard. "Saris that Ma left." Then she translated this into English for Carolyn and Ben.

Kusum looked at Asha standing in the sun on the gallery. Kusum hissed, "All the saris were bad?"

"Now they are whispering," Asha cried. "Unfair."

"Come in here," Kusum said.

"Neighbors, they want to keep secrets."

Kusum turned away from the gallery. "All the saris were bad?"

"They were mine."

"No, they weren't," Rajesh interceded.

"Ma wanted us to share."

"Why should I care about Ma?"

"You hate Ma, too?" Kusum was astonished at this, because she had never given Ma enough thought to imagine her capable of being disliked.

Before Anita could say anything, Rajesh spoke: "Ma was a saint. Ma loved all of us."

"Ma loved nobody."

"All you are is anger and unhappiness," Rajesh spat.

"What do you know about my life?" Kusum said.

"Who's talking about you?" Anita asked.

"What I've done? What people have done to me?" Kusum continued. Asha summarized this for the crowd. "Show me some kindness for even thinking about taking Asha. That lunatic who's shouting everything to the neighbors." Asha translated this as well, and Kusum felt her own cruelty.

"You want thank yous. Thank you. Thank you. Those saris were mine, but if you take Asha to America, I will say thank you all my life."

Ben entered the room. His whiteness brought instant silence. He sat on the bed. The silence continued. Carolyn remained on the gallery with Asha. Rajesh sat down on one of the love seats. Kusum settled beside Ben.

"Kusum." Ben rarely used her name, almost always preferring an endearment. "You don't wear saris. What would you have done with them, tear them and make bandages?" At first Kusum thought she had not heard him. The joke felt like an insult, like being called a fool before people who were trying to swindle her.

He opened his mouth, but the look on her face must have stopped him.

Anita laughed.

"The world you live in," Kusum said slowly to Ben. "What's a joke there, in your world—that's the only reality in this world. It's the only reality one can think about, that one can imagine." Then she turned back to Anita and, wanting to cry, hissed, "My saris."

"I don't have them anymore." Anita waved a hand in the air.

"None of them?"

"Thank you. Thank you," Anita said, and laughed. "I want some thank yous also. At least twelve. I want thank yous for living this life while you lived yours."

Kusum watched Anita and wondered why she had believed kindness could matter to Anita.

"You're whining, Kusum," Ben said.

"Whining," Kusum repeated.

"Whining like a baby," Anita said.

"You don't care about saris," Ben added. Kusum looked at Ben and thought he did not love her. She wanted to cry but decided she would not.

Ben was packing a nylon duffel bag with what they might need for the trip to the Taj Mahal. They were going to stay overnight in Agra and then return to a hotel in Delhi. Kusum was sitting on a chair in the front bedroom watching Ben.

Anita hurried between them down the aisle to the gallery She had a plastic bag full of trash in one hand. She went down the gallery to the courtyard.

"I love you," Kusum said, wanting him to tell her he loved her and wondering whether she would believe him if he did.

"We have so many years to lean against. A fight doesn't matter," Ben said.

"We're rich so we can waste."

"I love you." He smiled and kept packing.

The words were not enough. Her world was a joke to him.

A few minutes later Anita returned, closed the door, and went to the kitchen.

"Am I wonderful?" Kusum asked.

"Perfect."

"I need specifics." Kusum looked at Ben and wondered how long it would take for the fear she was feeling to dissipate.

"Your shoulders are especially nice."

"So I can carry heavy things. I need more."

"No matter how much love you need, I can love you more."

Kusum did not believe him. Her world was ridiculous and abject, and if he could love anyone, why love someone like her?

The doorbell rang, and Kusum stood and opened the door. The garbage woman was standing there. She looked surprised to see Ben. "You live here?" she asked Kusum.

"I'm visiting."

The garbage woman, tiny, with hands so rough they appeared yellow, stinking of rot, regarded them suspiciously. "Who lives here?"

"Why?"

"First, you answer my question."

"Anita," Kusum shouted, and Anita instantly appeared.

The garbage woman opened her fist and a ShopRite plastic bag dangled forth. "This is yours?" she asked Anita, using the informal you.

"No."

"Whitey didn't bring it?"

"No."

"Whore." The garbage woman turned to Ben and held up the ShopRite bag. She pointed at him and then at the bag.

Ben asked Kusum to explain what was happening. The garbage

woman must have guessed the meaning of the exchange, because she said, "This woman doesn't want to pay me to take out the garbage and so throws it in my wheelbarrow when I'm not looking."

"Every two months she raises the prices," Anita said. "This is extortion."

Kusum explained the accusations to Ben, and he started laughing. He laughed so much he sat down on the bed.

The garbage woman appeared amazed at the sight of a white man laughing.

Ben picked up his camera from the bed and said, "Let's take a photo of her hitting Anita."