Motherland (13 page)

My aunt paused, then leaned forward across the row of plants toward me. “I'll come in with you. Take my glasses, will you. I don't want to touch my face.”

1 reached out and slipped the glasses over her ears and off. She walked with me to the door, motioning for me to open it. I trailed her to the kitchen, where she put the peppers next to the sink and lathered her hands with soap.

“These things are difficult to talk about,” she said.

“What things?” I said.

My aunt took my hands in her chapped wet ones and looked straight at me. “We love Madhu, but she is not any kind of example. We could never take her to a company party or the nice places we take you. She would make too many people upset with her opinions and the things she does.”

“But—”

“Look, Maya,” my aunt said, with an edge of exasperation. “It's up to you. You can come here and be a tourist, do whatever you like to do, or you can come here and be a member of this family, with responsibilities and obligations. You choose.”

My aunt's watch had accidentally gotten wet. I took my hand out of her grip to use the hem of my kameez to swab at her watch. My aunt took the watch off her arm, shaking it, holding it up to her ear.

“Can you hear something,” I said.

“No, I guess not. I always think I should be able to hear the sound of time passing, but I don't think this watch ever made sounds. I think it's working still.”

“That grandfather clock in the hall makes enough sound for everyone to hear time passing,” I said, trying to find something safe to talk about.

“We bought that last summer, at Brindha's request. When your grandmother had her heart problems, Brindha was upset, she was afraid Ammamma would leave us at any time. She wanted a clock that rang out the hours, so she could break from her games and her studies and go and check on Ammamma and make sure she was resting and breathing easily, that everything was okay. Brindha wanted to sleep in Ammamma's room, but she's too restless a sleeper, she woke Ammamma too often, so we convinced her to stay in her own room.”

I felt bad about the last few weeks, about not having paid more attention, been more aware of my grandmother's presence. I would be better about it, even if it meant staying home more, doing less fun things.

“So maybe 1 should stay here with Ammamma while Madhu and you and Sanjay uncle are away?” I wanted to make peace with Reema auntie.

“That would be good, it would make us worry less about her.”

We didn't talk about what she had said about Madhu, and I didn't tell Madhu either. I wanted to tell Reema auntie she didn't understand. One day would she say about me what she said about Madhu? “We love Maya, but…” But what?

Everyone was leaving. On the verandah were Madhu's luggage and big orange steel-frame backpack, my aunt's carpetbags and vanity case, my uncle's lone black carryall looking like an oversized dob kit. The assembly of servants and Ammamma, and me. I held on to Boli, waving goodbye as the car muttered to itself, slowly gathering speed.

Watching for the car to come up over the neighboring hill, I saw movement among the teabushes. The pluckers, who worked section by section throughout the day, emerged en masse like a cloud of grasshoppers. I finally saw the car pop up on the horizon, just the profile outlined sharply by morning glare, and then it was gone.

I turned to go back in the house, and my grandmother was standing in the doorway, her eyes on the same horizon. We were alone now.

She asked, “Shall I have Matthew serve breakfast?”

I was not hungry yet, and preferred a bath first. But I wanted to keep her company, start things out on the right foot. I said, “Yes, sure, we can eat now.”

“Actually,” my grandmother said, “today is a fast day for me.”

I had forgotten this. I realized that meant all day I would eat my meals alone.

“But come have breakfast,” my grandmother said. “I'll sit with you, drink some water.”

“No, that's not necessary,” I said. “Besides, won't it be tempting to sit in front of food? When Mother's on a diet, she never comes to the dinner table, she says it's too dangerous.”

“It's not like a diet,” my grandmother said.

“Oh,” I said, as if I understood. If I was the only one eating, and I wasn't keeping her waiting, then I'd do what I wanted. I said, “I think I'll bathe first.”

“Of course,” my grandmother said. “Whatever you want to do is fine.”

I told Vasani to bring hot water into my bathroom. I was out of shampoo, and I looked at the shampoo bottles Brindha had left on the window ledge, “Fair Beauty” and “Beautisoft.” I opened one and it smelled strong, the way a perm smelled the first day you washed it after the salon and there was still a lot of chemicals.

I went to the guestroom and the bathroom there to see if Madhu had left any good shampoo behind. There was nothing on the countertops or on the sink. I looked on the shelf under the sink, and there were some things there. No shampoo, but a bottle of sunblock. I also saw Madhu had left her hairbrush behind, it was a nice wood-handled one with a wide paddle, it made her hair straight and smooth. Looking at the brush closely, I saw blonde hair mixed in with the black. There was also a wheel of pills on the shelf, and looking at the dates, and the punched out spots for each of them, I could tell they were birth-control pills, just like the ones Jennifer brought home after trips to the doctor with her mom.

Madhu thought I was so young. She wouldn't think to tell me—she would say sex wasn't a big deal anyway—but I sort of wish she had. Just to talk to someone. I collected the sunblock, and the hairbrush, and the pills, and took them to my room. I dragged out my suitcase from under the bed, and I dumped Madhu's stuff in a side pocket, alongside Brindha's Tiger clippings and her movie magazines. Then I took my bath, resigned to the noxious shampoo.

CHAPTER FIVE

Solitude

T
HE HOUSE WAS
quiet. No kids, no guests, no visitors. My grandmother and I talked in low tones. Boli was subdued. The servants still came every day. Even with just us here, they had a lot to do. Less laundry and less ironing, but the house needed cleaning every day—dust and insects resettled on every surface soon after it was swept. And the garden still grew at its furious pace, fruit needed to be picked, flowers to be weeded, grass to be cut with the shiny dull-bladed scythe. And food—Matthew still cooked as if we had a full house. Ammamma and I sat down to tea and Matthew had made banana appam, two kinds of vada, and three kinds of chutney.

“Ammamma, you have to tell him to stop making so much food for us.”

“He must know we can't eat all this. I think he's calculated so that Sunil can eat to his heart's content while Reema's away, “Ammamma said. Usually Matthew and Sunil and the other servants would eat whatever rice or vegetable we ate, but not the chicken or fish at dinner, unless there was some small piece left over, not the teatime snacks or the desserts. Now, because Reema auntie was not here to oversee the cooking, they were getting five-course dinners out of it.

“Wouldn't Reema auntie want us to say something?”

“She might, but I can't be bothered, it's not that big an infringement. They don't mean any harm, they never steal outright from us. When Reema's back in three weeks, she can run a tight ship again, but it's not in my nature.”

My grandmother said things like that, “it's not in my nature.” It sounded permanent and immutable, like no one could ever make her be a different kind of person. I could not say things like that. “My nature” could change at any time, I felt like I was made up of the drops of mercury that were inside a thermometer that could move—shoot rapidly up or down, break into pieces, re-form—when you least expected it.

We'd had two days already of breakfasts, lunches, teas, and dinners. Four-hour blocks of time in between each of those meals needed to be filled. I tried sitting with my grandmother, but I was nervous that if we talked between meals then we might run out of things to say at the table. Food, the servants, the weather. My mother, my father, my school, my summer assignments. I had to think a few sentences ahead, so I didn't say anything stupid. I spoke slowly and made my vowels very round and my consonants very hard so she followed everything. She was polite and nonjudgmental about everything, but when I talked about New York to her, it was watered down, drained of life. I told her a version of my life filmed in black and white.

She was also nervous with me, she was worried she didn't know how to entertain me. She was relieved when I told her 1 was going to read or listen to music, these were things I liked doing, and they didn't require anything of her, and we were both happy.

She was less happy when I went outside. The garden was okay, safe enough, but I liked to go outside the gate, to walk around, check things out. She wasn't able to keep up with me and she didn't want me out there alone. She feared I would lose my way or maybe get hurt.

In the early evening on the second day, I went jogging. I'd done almost no exercise since coming here, and swim team tryouts were the week before school started. There was nowhere to swim, but at least running helped my breathing, my endurance. To remember my path home, I ran directly into the sun, picking the westward side of every fork.

On the third day, after breakfast, there was a girl on the front porch. It was Rupa, Brindha's ayah.

“What's she doing here? She must know Brindha's back at school, “I asked.

“I called Rupa here to show you around when you go walking,” my grandmother said.

“You mean, to follow me around? I don't need her, send her back down the mountain.”

“Maya, please, it's better to have someone with you.”

“A babysitter? Brindha's ten, Ammamma, I'm fifteen. I don't believe this.”

“She's not babysitting you. When you're here at the house, you can go about as you please. But when you go outside, she'll go with you, I'll tell her to stay ten steps behind if you want, so she won't disturb you.”

“I can't even talk to her, she doesn't speak any English. This is a crazy idea.” It was an even crazier idea that Ammamma was inviting a Tamil Tiger back into our home. Or someone with Tiger connections. But I couldn't tell her that.

“Maya, we're five miles from any neighbor, and there's snakes and wild animals out there, someone should be with you.”

“There's snakes out there when Reema auntie goes walking, too. She just takes her chances. That's what living's about, Ammamma.”

“But Reema knows what to look for, and she's lived in places like this all her life. Please, Maya, I don't want anything to happen while we're up here alone that will make Reema or Sanjay or your mother have to worry …”

“Okay, okay. But how will we talk?”

Ammamma said Rupa could speak a little English and decent Malayalam, besides being fluent in Tamil and Kannada. Like most servants, she adapted to her employers, and picked up languages like new uniforms as she moved from household to household.

Rupa sat on the porch all morning. I was trying to make a mix tape on my uncle's stereo from his old albums so that I could listen to it on my Walkman. He had old Simon and Garfunkel albums, and the Beatles and the Carpenters. He had tapes too, of recent stuff, but nothing I liked.

After tea, I changed into Nikes and a T-shirt, and put on light cotton salwar pants, wishing I could wear shorts. I went out onto the front verandah and, without even glancing at Rupa sitting there, walked down the steps to the driveway. She got up, folded the clothes she was mending, and left them on a cane chair. She walked after me as I opened the gate. I didn't wait for her, but I left the gate open behind me.

I started with a light jog. I took light rabbit steps, trying to keep from kicking up dust. The sun was far down in the sky, but it was still hot, and I felt wetness at my ears, my neck, under my arms. Rupa was not far behind me, if she walked at a brisk pace, she was able to keep up. I thought about the bright red, rubberized track at my high school, and I stepped more deeply, pretending that the ground gave energy back to me, charged me for the next forward motion. My heart pulsed rapidly, trying to keep up with my lungs, absorb all the air I took in, pump air through and out, heart contracting, squeezing. My legs moved effortlessly, leaving me to concentrate on breathing, on trying to keep my mouth lubricated with saliva, resisting and finally giving in to the dry sharpness. My tongue was heavy in my mouth, tasting the dust and the tears that the dust brought to my eyes.

After another mile or so, I stopped, my hands on my hips, my skin hot. I held my T-shirt away from my body, blew air down the neckhole. I turned around, and Rupa was far behind, panting. As she came closer, I could see she was drenched in sweat, her breathing loud and labored. And she was limping. Thinking she might have hurt herself, I stayed put to let her catch up. But she was limping because the heel on her left chapal had broken. She reached me and stood bent over, taking heavy, heaving breaths.

“Why don't you stay here and I'll finish my run and come back here?” I said.

She looked at me not comprehending. I pointed at her, and pointed for her to sit where she was. She sat. I pointed at myself, then at the horizon, moved my finger in a circle and then pointed at the ground. She said nothing.

I turned toward the horizon and started running. When I turned around, she was many paces behind me, running, her chapals held out in front of her. I kept going, and we ran like that, like the engine and caboose of a train, changing speeds in tandem but with hundreds of feet of a long invisible link between us, over and up and down and through the hills.

R
UPA CAME THE
next day again. As long as she was here anyway, I wanted to do something adventurous. I'd seen a waterfall on our car trips, Brindha had told me she'd been in the water at the base of it, and that it was cold and clean. I didn't want my grandmother to worry herself, so I put my swimsuit on under a salwar kameez and didn't tell her what I was planning. On the verandah, Rupa was playing with a deck of old cards. I beckoned for her to come, and we started walking.

I walked the same path that we'd taken the previous night, even though I had no idea which direction the waterfall was in. After we'd gotten some distance from the house, I stopped and said to Rupa, “Please take me to the waterfalls.”

She stopped short right behind me. She had been staring at the ground and walking mechanically, and now she raised her eyes up to look at me.

“Is there problem, mem?” she asked in English.

“I want to go to the waterfall,"I said slowly, “you know, where Brindha swims in the water?”

“Water, mem?” she asked.

“Pani, water, do you understand?” I said. She looked at me without any recognition in her eyes. I remembered
pani
was water in Hindi, not in Malayalam. What was the word in Malayalam?

“Kuli,” I tried the word for “bath,” not able to remember the word for water.

She understood this, but it did not explain what I wanted her to do.

I made swimming motions with my arms. I held my nose as if I was going underwater. She giggled. I said, “Evda?”

She looked back to where we had just come from, toward the house, as if seeking permission from my grandmother. I repeated my question more insistently. I could tell she was trying to decide what kind of violation this was, what size the crime, and what size the possible punishment.

Finally she nodded and said, “ba,” and I followed behind her on scratchy dirt paths through the thick teabushes. She gestured for me to walk very close behind her, so her shadow would protect me from direct sun. We walked for a long time, almost an hour, and I was beginning to doubt she had understood me after all. Then I heard what sounded like wind chimes tinkling, and Rupa pushed through another few bushes and the waterfall was there in front of us. It wasn't much of a waterfall right now, the water slowed to gentle trickles over a wall of rock, splashing into the basin at the bottom. On the surface, perfect circles rippled away from unseen magnetic forces, and ended up as lacy foam decorating the point of division between water and shore.

I stepped out of my salwar pants and pulled the kameez off over my head. I threw these on the ground, but Rupa picked them up and folded them. She sat on a rock nearby with my clothes on her lap, watching me in the water. The water was shallow, five feet in the deepest part, and I tried to stay afloat as much of the time as possible so as not to scrape my feet on the rough stones at the bottom.

“Why don't you come in the water,” I said. Rupa shook her head and looked at the ground. She seemed uncomforlable at the thought of having any fun while she was working. She was only a couple of years older than me, though I hadn't really noticed that before. After the long hot walk, her dark navy salwar was covered in chalky dust up to the knees.

I splashed her with some water, and it made spots on her clothes. She looked up and smiled, wiping her face clear of the spray with the back of her arm, her face shiny in the sun.

“Come in the water,” I said in a loud commanding voice. 1 wanted her to feel the force of my voice, to relieve her of responsibility for her actions, so that she could just say later “Maya told me to.” She hesitated, put my clothes down on a flat part of a rock, and stepped out of her chapals. In quick motions, she undressed, and then leapt into the water so that it enveloped her nakedness. She stayed some distance from me in the water, and I kept to my side to respect her modesty, but gestured to her to race me across the basin from her parallel position. I swam a butterfly stroke across and she paddled, but she was strong, and kept up with me until the halfway point. Then, determined to win, I pushed hard into the strokes, breathed deeply, lunged back for the starting side and reached it first.

Rupa dove under a few times and came up with beautiful purple pebbles and a translucent white stone with one dark vein running through it. She moved right under one of the streams of water coming down so that it was like a tap turned open over her head. “We can come after rains,” she said in Malayalam. “Real waterfall then.” We settled into a routine of her speaking Malayalam to me and my speaking English to her with a few Malayalam words thrown in. Her Malayalam was basic, you could see her making the mental translations in her head, but I envied her unselfconsciousness. I understood everything said around me, but I had not tried to form a whole sentence in Malayalam in years, embarrassed by my childlike grammar.

We swam around for a while. I got out first and walked a little ways with my back to her so that she could get out and get dressed. I came back to the water's edge and sat on the rock next to my clothes, waiting for the sun to dry me a little before dressing. Rupa pointed at my legs, and there were two black marks on my left ankle and one on my calf, black marks that were the length and width of large industrial-strength staples. I peered at them closely, lifting my leg across my lap. She pointed to her own wrist, where there was a similar black staple, and with a quick pinching motion, she pulled it off, and threw it in the sand where it began to wriggle. A wave of repulsion came over me. They were leeches. I asked Rupa to take them off my leg. She looked at me strangely. “Please, mem,” she said shaking her head. “Your family would not want that I do it, better your grandmother do it when we reach the house,” she said.