When she had married Vinod and moved into his house, it had come as a shock to see her mother-in-law look her father-in-law in the eye and ask him to pass her the salt. For months she struggled to ask Vinod direct questions, having been taught for so long that this was rude and disrespectful of her husband. She had spoken to her in-laws through her dupatta, stretching it along the side of her face with her right hand like a slanted roof. She had felt that meeting anyone’s gaze was shocking, and her face flushed every time she did it.
Vinod had been impatient with her, and his impatience had been a kind of kindness. He had found her reluctance irritating, and told her so, and she had been so worried about irritating him that she had tried her hardest, no matter how uncomfortable she was. But that was Vinod, concerned with his own comfort. He was not cruel, by any means, but neither was he caring. He wanted no ill to come to her, she knew; he wanted to give her the best of things, but he wanted to determine what those were. When she had gotten sick once as a young wife, just a few months out of her parents’ house and missing its familiar comfort daily, she had asked him to get a medicine from a homeopathic doctor she had grown up close to. It was something she had taken every time she had been sick in her life before her wedding, and it was something that always made her feel better. Vinod had brought her something else instead, claiming it was more efficient for illness, and besides, going to her doctor would have been far out of his way. He had been right, the medicine worked much faster, but for Swati there was no comfort in a man who hadn’t seen that what she really wanted was a taste of home, a piece of her past, that could live with her in the present. He was like that. Someone who couldn’t see anything beyond the literal. She had never explained to him how disappointing it had been to receive that, even though it healed her, and to know he did not know how to care for her because he could not hear what she was really asking for.
Gradually she had stopped talking to her in-laws through a veil, but she had felt a pinch of fear, every time. How ashamed her mother would have been of her.
It was only recently, in the past few years, that that fear had taken on a new quality, and she knew it for what it was. It was anger. Anger that she had thought Vinod so deserving of respect when he had not tried to care for her, to give her what she asked for. Anger that her mother never asked for anything directly and that she had taught her daughter the same habits that had kept her a beggar in her own home, her hand out, never looking her own husband in the eye.
Now he was the one with his hand out. On her phone she had fifteen missed calls from her husband, and even some attempts at texting. He had never really learned how to do it, so the messages were indecipherable, but she knew what he was trying to say: Come back home right now. Well, she didn’t have to listen to him. She was home. As long as her son let her stay.
No matter how angry she was, though, she didn’t know how she would say no if Dhruv tried to send her back. Really, she wouldn’t have even questioned if he would or not if he hadn’t married a foreigner, who might have turned his heart from the values with which he had been raised to something bad. Impious. Undutiful.
She wondered if perhaps a flood of tears, or a faint, could circumvent the issue. Everyone hated to see their mother cry, didn’t they? In preparation, she thought about the sad things that usually made her cry—doomed love stories from movies, a sad scene from one of her favorite serialized shows from Pakistan, her favorite ghazal sung sadly over the radio—as she emerged for breakfast.
Her son was sitting on the couch, looking dreadful.
“You didn’t sleep well?” she said in Hindi.
He looked up at her, startled. “Mum!”
She hugged him. “I have a medicine for that. All one hundred percent homeopathic. You take it, you’ll sleep better. It’s from Dr. Mehta.” Her doctor from all those years ago.
“He’s still practicing? I thought he must have retired by now.”
“His son has taken the business. And his grandson.”
“Of course he has,” Dhruv said under his breath.
“That’s what good boys do,” Swati said reprovingly.
Dhruv looked at her. “Well, I bet you’re happy I didn’t do that now,” he pointed out, shocking her. Perhaps his wife had taught him to be so direct, so rude. She looked away.
“Mum . . .” Dhruv said, his eyes pleading. Oh dear, he was going to want to talk about it, wasn’t he? Should she start crying now? “Are you all right?”
“I am fine,” she said. “Would you like tea?”
“Mum. Please. Don’t you think we should talk?”
“It would be better to talk with tea.” She walked to the kitchen, which was curiously open to the living room. Who wanted to see their cook while she was cooking? Perhaps she could get a screen of some kind.
She opened the drawers, noting what would need to be moved to improve the kitchen’s organization, and found a pot for tea, busying herself making it rich and strong, with spices. They had a kind she wasn’t familiar with, in a pretty box covered in flowers and elephants. She made a note in her mind to tell Rachel they needed to buy some good old-fashioned Red Label.
“I thought you were happy,” Dhruv said, looking confused.
“I am happy to be here,” Swati said.
“I meant with Papa,” Dhruv said, stating the obvious. Swati sighed. It must be the influence of his American wife, it really must. She hadn’t raised her son to want to talk about things all the time, or question his elders.
“Your father was a fine husband. He took good care of me. But I will be staying here now. It’s better that I stay here. I will help you. Rachel doesn’t know how things are in India. I will teach her.”
“Did you have a fight? Did something happen, did he—”
“I made a decision. I did not want to stay with your father any longer. So I left. It is like that, only.” She looked up at him, her eyes pleading. “It was difficult.”
“Oh, Mum—”
“But I have made it.” She held his gaze, willing him to understand, to stop trying to ask her what had happened, to prevent him from telling her to go back. She could not go back now. Having come, she had closed that door. She was letting go of everything in Kolkata by leaving, and she could not have it back. The city might as well not exist for her anymore. By leaving it, she had destroyed it. There was no marriage to go back to, there was no house left to unbreak. To leave her husband meant leaving her life. That was what she had done and it could not be undone. He must see that, mustn’t he?
Dhruv dropped his gaze. A relief such as she had never felt washed over her. He understood.
“Have your tea,” she said happily. She was doing it, she was insisting to her adult son. And it wasn’t so hard, after all. She put the cup in his hands and watched him sip.
“It’s perfect,” he said, smiling weakly.
“Everything is better with tea,” she told him.
She felt wonderful. Everything was settled, the house would soon be just as she wanted it to be, and she had not had to cry, after all. She sipped her own cup. It was good. But it would be better with Red Label.
Six
Rachel had been up for an hour, but she wasn’t sure whether to leave the room or not. Listening intently, she heard murmuring in the living room, words she didn’t understand, a conversation in Hindi. She heard more Hindi than English most days; it was a shame she still hadn’t learned much. She wasn’t good with languages, not like Dhruv was. Everything just passed her by; she could feel things washing over her, nothing sticking in her mind. But now that there were two Hindi speakers in her house, maybe she would get better. She listened for a few long moments and then told herself firmly that she should go out, that this was her own home and she couldn’t let anyone hold her hostage in her bedroom, or guest room, as it was.