Monsoon Summer (24 page)

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CHAPTER 33
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O
n the front of our calendar at home, there was a beaming lady in an orange sari floating down the Ganges and advertising Horlick's. And when I looked at her (
Horlick's is good for you!)
I went cold inside. Now there were only three weeks until my mother would heave into view aboard the
Strathdene
from Bombay. Our brief little idyll was over, and I felt like a selfish bitch for minding, but I did.

One of my new freedoms I particularly relished was my daily commute from Rose Street to the Moonstone. I liked the feeling of sun on my arms and saying good morning to the knife sharpener who sat outside the hardware shop on the corner, then to Murali on the next corner, the fruit seller who loved to instruct me on what to eat and how to cook it, and who sometimes chased me down the street with a ripe mango or a passion fruit, shouting, “Madam, your ladyship, stop! Special treat for you.” The mangos tasted of roses, of honey and summer.

I liked the view from the seafront; the ships from China and Europe and Africa, laden with cedar and spices and oil; the sight of the Chinese nets rising and falling like prehistoric creatures against the sky. I liked saying hello to the old lady who cooked for the fishermen who now waved and beamed at me toothlessly when I passed.

Mind you, I was still sometimes an object of curiosity, and occasionally followed by overzealous traders who were irritating rather than frightening, so I didn't worry much that morning when I noticed three young men who seemed to be walking with deliber
ate casualness behind me. When I stepped from the curb into the road, I could hear the
flip, flap, flop
of their sandals.

When I stopped at a small kiosk on the corner of Fort Street to buy some of the sweets Anto likes, one of the boys stopped too. He was wearing a cheap shirt and had a thin mustache and an odd affectless stare as if he were looking straight through me.

“Take care of yourself, Mrs. Queen,” was all he said, yet it sent a brief spasm of fear through me.

But one of the bonuses of working at the Moonstone was that the work was so intense, as soon as I'd stepped over the pile of dusty sandals in the doorway, I'd forgotten all about it.

We had five soon-to-be-delivered mothers on the wards, and eight new midwives in training. That morning, as I put on my overall, I could hear them singing with a fervor and a joy that was humbling.

Dr. A. had encouraged dancing in the group, and when I walked into the room, I saw our new group of trainees, their arms waving luxuriously above their heads, worn hennaed feet moving for nothing but pleasure. I knew by now that Achamma—eyes ecstatically closed, wheeling, stamping—usually slept on the floor of a cramped hut shared with ten other people in a nearby fishing village. When she wasn't delivering babies she did backbreaking work in paddy fields. Rama, from Quilon, now making beautiful sinuous movements with her wrists and fingers, had produced five children in rapid succession. Watching them dance was like seeing their secret selves come to life, and it always moved me.

This morning, after a tiffin of soft rice idlis and coconut chutney, the question posed was “What was your quickest delivery ever?”

“Two minutes from waters breaking,” answered Rama, who had delivered hundreds of babies. “Slowest, three and a half days.”

Low sympathetic moans at this.

“Did you take her to hospital?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Doctors jump on you there.”

Raucous laughter from some, timid shushings from Rama, who seems wary of upsetting me—the English memsahib taking notes.

“Be serious now.” Maya gave them her stern look through the horn-rimmed glasses. “Mother has been in labor now for over twenty-four hours: what will you do?”

Rama said, “I would put ginger in her chai. I would get her up and walking. I would observe her vital signs, by taking pulses.” (Some of the midwives follow the ayurvedic principle that the human being has seventy-seven pulse points, all of them vital to health.)

This worry about hospitals cropped up again and again and was probably why Dr. A. estimates ninety-nine percent of all births in India are home births.

A short but violent debate on contraception followed.

Madhavi, whose nose ring made her look like a stubborn old bull, listed some on her fingers: a stone placed in the vagina, sponges, and for many women, anal sex. Achamma pipes up that she thinks contraception is fine for some city people, but she doesn't feel country people need it.

A furious discussion then took place, lots of finger-pointing and flashing eyes. In the lunch break, Maya filled me in. Achamma was, she said, talking codswallop of course, but contraception is “a big blank” for many of these women.

“What was making them so angry earlier?” I asked.

“Abortions,” she said. “In country areas, many midwives have to do them, and some are very primitive: sticks in the womb, stones, poisonous concoctions. We must stop them,” she said simply. “Bad for their conscience, worse for the mothers.”

* * *

After class, Maya and I flopped in the dispensary room and drank chai together. When she took off her glasses and polished them, I saw large blue circles under her eyes.

“You look tired, Maya,” I said. “Is everything all right at home?”

“Yes, thank you, ma'am,” she replied politely. She hardly ever called me ma'am nowadays.

“My son has not been well, but he is getting better.”

“Does he still drop you off in the morning?”

“No, ma'am.” She looked at the floor.

“How do you get to work?”

“Boat and bus and walk.”

“But isn't it miles away?” I had only the foggiest memory of the village where Maya lived. “Couldn't we ask for some extra money from the kitty to get you here?”

“No.” She was always nervous about rocking the boat. For her, being singled out for education, for training had already been a magic carpet ride powered by Dr. A. “Don't do that. If I lose this job, I have nothing.”

She closed her eyes; she didn't want to talk anymore. I took our two cups to the sink. I was getting water from the old Ascot heater when I looked up and saw, from the corner of my eye, the backs of two young males scrambling over the wall that separates our land from the alleyway that leads to the street.

My shout was heard by Dr. A. She came rushing in with the night watchman, who bared his teeth convincingly.

“What happened?” Dr. A. had what looked like a hockey stick in her hand.

“I saw two men jumping the wall. I could only see their backs.”

“Anyone hurt?”

“No, Doctor.” Maya leapt to her feet; she was trembling.

“No crisis,” Dr. A. told me, “just local boys.”

“But shouldn't we call the police?” I asked.

“No!” she snapped with her position-closed face on. “Get on with your work. We'll put more barbed wire up later.”

I understood Dr. A.'s reluctance better than I had a few months ago. Calling the police might mean a bribe we could ill afford or
long negotiations with the new Ministry of Health officials, who already watched us like hawks. And for me there was a new fear—one which brought me out in a cold sweat when I thought about it. I was here, officially, to write reports, not to deliver babies. I was two deliveries shy of my full midwifery certificate. Dr. A. had assured me she would write to the relevant examining bodies in England to see if an Indian delivery would be accepted, but I had never asked if I could see the actual papers. Now I wondered if the letter had been sent at all or whether staff shortages, and her new respect for my fine stitching, meant she'd chosen to ignore it. If the rubber-stampers found out, I could lose my job and my reputation and close the Home down.

* * *

I seemed to be making a habit of secrecy. I didn't mention the intruders to Anto when I got home, even though the sight of their skinny backs, the speed with which they'd shimmied up that wall had replayed itself several times in my mind.

Walking up the path, through the mild peach-colored air of early evening, I saw Anto on the veranda playing chess with Uncle Josekutty, and the sight of them—whiskies, bare feet, dark heads bent together—was a comforting one. Later, after Uncle Josekutty had gone home, Anto and I sat in the courtyard at the back of the house and enjoyed the soft jasmine-scented breeze from the plant that now scrambled over our walls. I loved this time of day with him: the thrill, still, of our own house, the talk, him smoking a cigarette with the long fingers that would later touch me there and there.

“Do you mind being the new boy at work?” I asked him.

“No,” he said. “I'm very much on probation still with some of the doctors. They think I chose to live in England, so with them, beta minus minus at the moment but trying hard.”

Anto was strong like that: he'd learned how to be a survivor in
a nonmean way; it was something I admired tremendously about him. He went on to talk eagerly about his work with his new boss, Dr. Sastry, whom he revered. “I can really work with him, and achieve,” he told me. They'd had a long conversation that day about the African sleeping sickness, and Anto had promised to dig out his PhD thesis and show it to him.

When he asked about my day, I gave him selected highlights of the group discussions. He told me he was surprised at how open the women were with us. I took a puff of his cigarette and immediately put it down, it made me feel so sick.

“There are definite taboo subjects,” I said, when I'd gone to get myself a glass of water. “Like today, when we talked about the imbalance of boys and girls in their villages, they were close as clams about it.”

“I'm not surprised,” Anto said. “Laws are changing all the time and these women will be useful scapegoats: some could even be had up for murder.”

He put his hand on my hair. There was a long, considering silence. “It would never bother me to have a little girl.” His voice was soft in the darkness. “Or a boy for that matter, if he came. It would be the greatest thing in the world.”

And I felt like the worst sneaky wife in the world.

I was still using my diaphragm, but not every time. I longed for children too. But not yet, not now, with things so very interesting at the Home.

Four days after this conversation I was sick in the morning. Kamalam had brought in fresh bananas, a mango, some dosas. Instead of eating them, I felt sweat break out along my hairline, a mild state of panic. Five minutes later, I was panting beside the commode. I did a few sums in my head, and if I hadn't been feeling so lousy, I would have laughed, or cried. I was going to have a baby!

Deep in thought on my way to work, I decided I would tell
Anto in a day or two. I wanted time to collect myself, to feel as thrilled as he would, because now everything would change.

Amma had already warned me that Thekkeden women always spent the last six weeks of their confinement at Mangalath. This might drive me mad. Who owns your body? Not me. Not now. I was excited but fizzing with nervous tension that morning.

Later, calmer and at home again, I sat on the swing on the veranda and the cards seemed to change inside my head, and it came to me in a blaze of happiness that this dazzling spot of consciousness inside me would soon be my first child.

* * *

I was in this strange jumble of emotions when I arrived at the Moonstone. Before I had time to unlatch the gate, Maya ran out to meet me, sunlight bouncing off her specs.

“Quickly!” she said. “Come! Mrs. Saraswati Nair is here, her waters have broken, she's in a state. She is calling for you.”

“For me?”

“She says she wants the Englishwoman.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.”

My heart sank. All of us were a little scared of Mrs. Saraswati Nair, who had already attended two antenatal clinics. Small, politically passionate, and of a peppery disposition, she was cut from a different cloth than most of our patients. Originally from a high-caste Brahman family, she had declared herself a feminist and a campaigner before Independence, and she had married, for love, a prominent local lawyer.

During an early examination, she had asked Dr. A. rather peevishly what I, an Englishwoman, was doing there. Dr. A. had, for once, inflated my importance.

“She is part of worldwide gorement initiative to improve standards for village women, a highly trained midwife.”

“Are you quite sure she wants me?” I'd asked Dr. A. before she'd bustled off to another appointment.

Now as I changed into my white coat, I tried hard to control a wave of panic. Mrs. Saraswati Nair, with her clever, shrewd look and her legal training, had the power to raise my pulse without my even thinking about it. I knew she'd throw the rule book at me if anything went wrong.

I found her sitting in a chair beside the bed with a small suitcase beside her. Apart from a light sheen of perspiration on her forehead, she looked composed. Anu, a new nurse, came in and together we helped Mrs. Nair put on a hospital gown. While I was tying the straps behind her, we both laughed as her stomach bucked vigorously.

“So definitely a boy this time,” Mrs. Nair joked.

She already had a much older girl who was away studying at university. Her husband, she said, wanted a boy.

She was only one and a half fingers dilated, so I told her she could either lie down or walk. While she was walking, her contractions came irregularly for the next hour, and when we could, we walked arm in arm around the room and talked.

“I had no wish at first to become a lawyer,” she said. “It was my father who insisted on educating me. Now I like it.”

She stopped, blew out air, smiled, talked again. “I approve of what you women are doing here,”—puff, groan, puff—“but you must be very careful.” She sat down heavily, her face gleaming with sweat. “You can't just take the traditional form and put a hammer to it. That's a dangerous thing to do, particularly now.”