The Selector of Souls (45 page)

When the priest is gone, Sister Bethany opens a packet of mail from Shimla. “For you,” she crows holding an envelope out of reach. “Guess who it’s from?”

“Give it here! It must be from Rano.”

But it’s from Mumma, forwarded by Mrs. Nadkarni. Sister Anu talks to Mumma on the phone every week, but Mumma doesn’t usually write. Anu slits the envelope, unfolds several newspaper cuttings within.

There is no note. “Nice of Mumma to be worried for her daughter,” says Anu.

“Now, Sister, no sarcasm,” says Bethany. “She’s a mother; she’s concerned. She just has … strange ways of showing it.”

S
UNSET BURNISHES THE CHURCH BELL FRAMED IN THE
window above Sister Anu’s desk.

Dr. Gupta has left for the day and she is about to finish her paperwork and go home as well. But here’s Damini, pushing open the gates of Bread of Healing. She leads in a doubled-over Goldina.

Sister Anu helps the young woman to a bed in the women’s ward, then draws the curtains. When she returns to Goldina’s side, Goldina’s strong hands grip hers as contractions come. No need for Pitocin. Damini unbinds the woman’s hair, loosens her sari.

Anu wipes Goldina’s brow with a wet towel. She’d feel more comfortable if Dr. Gupta were here to advise, but reminds herself she’s usually the one delivering the babies because women prefer being attended by a woman. It won’t be long now—Goldina’s pelvic muscles are stretched from earlier births, her body supple from squatting. Sadly, only the mother of god can give birth without dilating her cervix.

Damini begins massaging Goldina’s stomach to move the child downwards, but Sister Anu stops her. “Massaging can cause the womb to fall forward later on,” she explains. Damini looks unconvinced, but steps back.

With a last howling contraction from Goldina, the baby comes through, into the world.

Damini sniffs as if she expected a sewer smell, but there’s only the usual. She checks that the infant is breathing, then pats Goldina’s shoulder.

“Shabash!”
she says, in congratulations.

Sister Anu holds the child up to confirm—sometimes genitalia can be swollen—but it is a boy.

She holds the baby up before Goldina, “Kya hai yeh bachcha?” she says, asking the mother to identify the sex of the child.

“A boy,” says Goldina. No joy in her voice—well, she must be tired.

Damini holds the child still for the cutting. Sister Anu works quickly, clamping the cord with a toothed artery forceps and cutting it with surgical scissors.

Please notice, Damini. Women of our caste can and do perform polluting acts
.

Sister Anu drops the afterbirth in a receptacle for incineration. Damini stands beside the waste bin as if guarding it.

“Come here and help, Damini,” says Sister Anu.

Anu clears the mucus from the baby’s nostrils with a suction tube. She adjusts the pads beneath Goldina to soak up the blood. Damini doesn’t come forward to help.

After Sister Anu takes the baby’s footprint, then wraps him in a sterile swaddling cloth, Damini leaves her corner and takes him from Sister Anu. She places the child on his mother’s breast. His skin is wavy and puckered from swimming for nine months. He looks like a sheaf of pale wheat lying across his mother’s honey-brown belly. He will turn darker as he gets older and works in the sun.

He’s sleek, strong and demanding, already moving to suckle. Sister Anu lets him—ignoring Damini’s silent disapproval. “Have you decided on a name?” she asks Goldina.

“Moses,” says Goldina, caressing the baby’s cheek with her finger.

“
Hein
?” says Damini. “Already you’re naming?”

“Yes, he’ll live. Daughters don’t.”

“Actually, more girls survive than boys,” says Sister Anu. “But you don’t have to name the child today. You can name him officially when you apply for a birth certificate—you have a few weeks’ time. And Father Pashan will be here in a few days—he’ll baptize your baby.

“No, not in a few days,” says Goldina. “I’ll baptize him myself.” She takes a water bottle from her cloth bag and pours a little water on the baby’s head. “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,” she says. The baby stirs slightly, yawns. “Now,” she says, “Father Pashan can’t refuse to bury him if he dies.” She glances at Damini.

“He won’t die, Goldina. And Moses is a very nice name.” Sister Anu takes a seat beside Goldina. She has to weigh the child, fill in the birth record, write in the nurses’ log, record birth weight … she passes the back of her hand across her brow.

Goldina must be even more exhausted. She’s taking in the presence of the baby, gazing down at the boy with half-closed eyes. But after a few minutes, Goldina rises up, supporting herself on her elbows, black hair unbound and silver nose rings jingling. “Now I will go home, sister.”

“Now? Doesn’t Samuel know you’re here?”

“Yes, he knows.”

“Are you worried about him or your children?”

“Oh, no—his mother, his sister are there to look after him and the children.”

“Then rest.”

“No—” Goldina’s eyes redden and fill. Her tears are falling on Sister Anu’s hands.

“What are you afraid of?” Sister Anu asks.

“Nothing,” Goldina swallows, then makes a wide arm-gesture that includes the baby. “The worst has already happened.”

“What—what do you mean?”

But Goldina won’t say.

“It’s gabrahat,” says Damini.

That word describes everything from anxiety to worry to madness. Maybe it’s postpartum shock. Goldina isn’t usually weepy. “You can’t walk downhill in the dark with a newborn,” says Sister Anu.

Damini says, “I’ll sleep beside her.”

Goldina says, “No need.” Nevertheless, Damini lies down on the foot carpet beside the bed.

It takes all Sister Anu’s gentle coaxing to draw Moses from Goldina’s arms. She places the baby in a crib in the corner of the ward then brings Goldina a glass of warm milk with honey. “Rest now.” Authority colours Sister Anu’s voice. She leaves a Petromax lamp burning and turns off the lights to conserve electricity.

In the adjoining room, she turns the coals in the bukhari and takes her seat at her desk. She hopes Bethany ate dinner without her, and hasn’t fallen asleep waiting in the reading chair. Oh, for the warmth of her cotton quilt and her own bed.

“Kholo, Kholo!” Someone is banging on the door.

Sister Anu’s nurse cap has come unpinned—she must have dozed off.

A car is honking right outside the clinic.

She gropes beneath the table. The cap has rolled almost under the bukhari and is streaked with ash. She glances through the door into the women’s ward—Damini is on her feet, startled awake too. Goldina sits up, sweeps her hair back into a bun.

“I’ll see—you sleep,” says Sister Anu.

Mr. Amanjit Singh’s driver is at the door with Mr. Amanjit Singh beside him. When she opens up, Amanjit almost drags her down the path to his car. A moaning body wrapped in a cotton quilt lies on the back seat, illuminated by the dome light in the roof. At her approach, the quilt opens to reveal a pink nightie and large furry pink slippers
and Mrs. Kiran Singh, crying, panting, almost unrecognizable without sunglasses.

Mr. Amanjit Singh helps his wife from the car. Kiran leans on Sister Anu.

“She’s not due yet, not for a whole month,” Amanjit says as they stagger back down the path like a six-legged animal. “I can’t get her to Shimla. Not in this condition.” He is wide-eyed with worry, the pleats on his forehead rising into his turban. He helps Kiran up the stairs to the veranda and deposits her on a chair. He strokes his rolled beard as if he doesn’t know what to do with his hands. “Dr. Gupta said she needs a Caesarean.”

“Dr. Gupta has left, ji,” says Sister Anu. Panic rises in her. “I can’t perform a C-section.”

“Driver!” Amanjit Singh shouts over his shoulder. “Go to Jalawaaz and fetch Dr. Gupta.”

“Then how will you go home, sir?”

“I’ll walk, you ass,” says Amanjit. “Now, go!”

“Sir, how will I find the doctor’s home?”

“You don’t know where he lives?”

“No, sir.”

“Ask in the village—oh, never mind. I’ll come with you.”

He mutters under his breath about a shortage of Muslim brainpower, reaches for his wife again and half-carries her into the clinic. He looks relieved at the sight of Damini.

“Damini-amma!” Kiran groans with another contraction. “Come sit with me.” But when she sees Goldina occupying one of the three beds in the women’s ward, she says, “Is the men’s ward empty?”

Sister Anu says, “Right now it is, but Dr. Gupta will come tomorrow, and …” If there are complications, please god, let there be answers in
The 5 Minute Clinical Consult
.

“Put Kiran-ji in the men’s ward and tell Dr. Gupta the men’s ward is occupied,” says Amanjit Singh. “Amma, you look after Kiran-ji. Make sure she is not shaved. And here, look after her handbag and
this kit bag. Careful now, here’s her gutka.” He hands Damini a prayer book wrapped in silk. “I’ll be back with the doctor soon.”

A typhoon withdraws with Aman’s departure.

Sister Anu and Damini help Kiran to a bed. Damini brings black tea laced with cardamom and jaiphal. She kisses Kiran’s prayer book, touches it to her forehead, and places it on the nightstand. Kiran reaches her right hand to touch the book, then her forehead. Sister Anu has the urge to touch the talisman as well.

But she barely has time to prep Kiran with an enema. The baby refuses to wait for Dr. Gupta. The baby doesn’t know it should arrive by C-section, and surprises everyone by arriving through the normal gateway.

“It’s a girl!” Sister Anu says joyfully, relieved and proud of a smooth delivery.

Kiran gives a low moan. Her face sinks behind her upheld hands.

Kiran has been asked the same question as Goldina, “Yeh baccha kya hai,” and was too tired to answer. The girl has been cleaned and swaddled. Damini and Sister Anu are standing side by side with the infants on an examination table before them.

Sister Anu circles the boy’s ankle with a strip of white Johnsonplast.

“Did your husband ever return?” asks Damini.

“No,” says Anu. She can’t find a pen so she adds a blue thread.

“He won’t come here again,” says Damini, taping the girl’s ankle. Sister Anu ties a pink thread. “Men can’t take pain. Not like us.” Damini surveys her handiwork, then takes a reel of black thread from between her breasts, and adds a black thread on the boy’s arm to prevent the evil eye. Should Sister Anu object? It’s a harmless superstition. But if Damini is going to do it, she should do it for the girl as well.

“I’m still nervous,” says Sister Anu, holding the girl’s arm out. “But
right now, I’m wondering where is Dr. Gupta? The car should have been back from Jalawaaz by now.”

“Aman-ji won’t find him in Jalawaaz,” says Damini, tying a black thread on the baby girl’s wrist. “Dr. Gupta went to his cousin-uncle’s wedding in Shimla.”

“Oh,” says Sister Anu. “Poor Aman-ji. You should have said something.”

“Aman-ji would have called me a moron, or told me it was my fault—let him go to Shimla.”

“But it’s dark and the roads are dangerous.”

Damini looks unmoved. Sister Anu clenches her jaw in frustration. Damini can be so kind, then suddenly so harsh. “Well what to do now? I wish we could reach him to tell him Kiran is all right.”

“I am here, you are here. Of course she is all right. What would he do if he were here? When Loveleen was born, he came the next day.”

“But you will look after Kiran-ji?”

Damini cocks her head in assent. “Yes, I have to look after Mem-saab’s family.” This from the woman who has just sent Mem-saab’s son on a wild goose chase on winding hill roads in the dark.

“By the time Dr. Gupta comes tomorrow or day after,” Damini says, “we women will have finished all the work. He can just check Kiran-ji and get his fee and tip from Aman-ji. He can check Goldina, too.”