Naming Maya (10 page)

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Authors: Uma Krishnaswami

BOOK: Naming Maya
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Mami, despite having calmed down after our walk, refuses to go anywhere with her daughter-in-law. “I will take the number 45B to my room in Tambaram,” she insists. It is so late, however, that the last bus to Tambaram has left.
“Maybe you should just stay here tonight,” Mom suggests.
Jana pleads with Mami. “Why won't you come and stay with us? People will say we don't look after you, your own family, isn't it? That's what they'll say.” From under the soft round mask of her face, Mami's daughter-in-law throws Mom a dagger of a look.
Lakshmi Auntie says, “Mami, they are your family. Why not go there, just for now?”
Even I, despite feeling like a traitor and a spy, add my voice. “We'll come and see you there, Mami.”
Mami considers it all. Then she delivers her pronouncement. “When Sita sat imprisoned in the garden of the demon queen, she was still a princess.” put
“Why don't you come home with me?” Jana argues. “Don't you think we'll take care of you? Why are you working in other people's houses as if you had no family to support you?”
Mami doesn't miss a beat. “They tied a firebrand to Hanuman's tail,” she snaps back, “and he ran through Lanka like a storm, burning the city up as he went.” She pauses dramatically, eyeing her audience. “And Sita the goddess, Sita the gentle, Sita of the good heart, could see her rescue was at hand.”
Not much we can say to that.
“All right,” says Jana to Mom. “Let her stay here for the night. Tell us if anything goes … wrong. Tonight you can phone my neighbor if you have to. Tomorrow I'll be at the bank. My husband can come over in the evening. Yes?” Beneath the bluster there is a tremble in her voice.
“Yes, of course,” says my mother.
Jana leaves, defeated.
 
Lakshmi Auntie offers to sleep over.
Mom agrees gratefully. Auntie pulls out her cell
phone to call her family and let them know they shouldn't expect her back. She says, “You should have a telephone handy anyway. Just in case.” Just in case of what? None of us can imagine, since Mami in her right mind is unpredictable enough.
We camp out in the living room, where Mami has settled down for the night. She is curled up on a cotton rug spread out on the floor, in the enclosed porch between the kitchen and the garden. The cooling night air wafts in through the wrought-iron grille door. She is tired, and in a short time she is snoring like a freight train.
I go upstairs to get ready for bed. There is a small glow inside me. It comes from knowing that Mom and I have worked together to make things better for Mami today. It gives my steps a bounce. It makes me smile. As I turn the bathroom light on, the gecko scrambles up the wall. It gives me a warning chirrup. “Guess what?” I tell it. “You don't frighten me a bit.”
 
When I go back down to the living room, I find that Mom and Lakshmi Auntie have made themselves comfortable. They've spread a few cotton rugs around, and created makeshift beds for the three of us. Lakshmi Auntie says, “Would you believe that Jana? So much more concerned with what four people will think than with what's going on with Mami?”
Mom says heavily, “We were all brought up with that, right? Always worrying about what others would say. Didn't you have to deal with that mentality, Lakshmi? With your in-laws?”
“Not as much as you,” she says. “We've had our share of differences, who doesn't? But you, my dear. We should build a temple to you, what you've had to put up with.”
I pretend to be occupied with fluffing up pillows.
“So many rules, so many restrictions,” says my mother. “So many expectations. I didn't meet any of them. I was unprepared for it. It was never like that in our family.”
She is digging into her past and unearthing episodes of which I am a part. The Dad voice in my head cautions me,
They're about to start on me. You know that, don't you?
Mom has never talked about these things before, perhaps because there's never been anyone to talk to.
Sure enough, Lakshmi Auntie says, “Well, Ravi should have put his foot down, yes? He did marry you. So why didn't he tell his parents to leave you alone? I mean, interfering with everything! There's a limit. You couldn't name your own daughter, you couldn't make the life you wanted to.”
Mom says, “Lakshmi, please.”
I turn my face to the wall and try to get some sleep. But Lakshmi Auntie says, “Now, don't you ‘Lakshmi, please' me. Does Maya even know what they'd planned for her?”
“Me?” I am instantly awake. Mom tries to evade the question, but I want to know. “Who? Planned what for me?”
Lakshmi Auntie shakes her head and says, “You never told her, right? I don't believe it.”
For so long, we have allowed silence to grow and take over our family. Silence and secrets, promises from one to the other and back again, not to tell this or that to someone else. And I have been part of it too.
“When your father and I decided to separate,” says Mom, finally, “his parents kept trying to tell him that it was all my fault, and that I was unfit to take care of you. They suggested that you go live with them.”
“Me? Live with Ammamma and Rangan Thatha?”
“Yes. They had it all figured out. They would raise you because they thought you shouldn't be with me. They even sent a pair of plane tickets, one for you and one for your father.”
“Dad said this was okay?” It hits me suddenly. “The letter …”
“What?”
That letter. That overnight letter that arrived the day
before we left. The one he made me promise not to tell Mom about. “The letter,” I say. “It had tickets in it.”
Now it is Mom's turn to look astonished. “You knew?”
I nod.
“He made you promise not to tell me?”
I nod again. My mother closes her eyes as if these memories are too hard to bear.
Lakshmi Auntie rolls her eyes. “You two,” she says. “How long has it been since you've talked to each other?”
“They hardly even call anymore,” I say.
“Too busy managing their bags of money,” mutters Lakshmi Auntie. “It's all they cared about.”
The ghost of my father, which has been getting blurry at the edges over the last few months, turns on its heel and walks out of my head.
All I can say is, “I wonder if that ticket was in my name or Preeta's?”
Mami is restless throughout the night, but we do manage to get some sleep. In the morning we find the city has wrapped itself in a haze that promises rain to come.
Lakshmi Auntie tells Mami she is going to arrange for her to see a doctor.
“What for?” Mami demands.
“Because at your age,” says Auntie, “it's a good idea to go for a checkup. I'm going to phone your son, and he'll make an appointment for you, all right?”
Mami grumbles, but she agrees. It seems so simple.
Mom tells Mami to go ahead and take her bath in the upstairs bathroom. After she is done, I find she has splashed so much water about that the gecko has retreated
to the farthest, highest corner of the room. Only its tail is visible from behind the hot-water heater.
 
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.

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