Em and the Big Hoom (4 page)

‘Is that the one?' Em asked. ‘The one in which you thought the Anglo-Indian woman was a bad actress?'

‘That's the one.'

‘Brigitte was a little like her. She was the kind of girl who thought only she had the right to wear lipstick. She was the kind who would laugh at anyone who tried out a new fashion before she did. I hadn't even known her ten minutes but I knew the kind. So I thought she would be happy that I was taking some fashion advice from her. But she grabbed my arm and snarled at me. “What's your game then, you bitch?” I was so startled I could hardly speak. “Give me back that card,” she said and her voice was like lava. And ice. Cold and angry. And her eyes were so full of hate, I flinched. I opened my handbag and began to rummage in it, frantically. Just then Andrade walked past and said, “Getting friendly, girls?” She let go of my arm and I rushed off. When I got home, my hands were still shaking. Mae looked at my face and said, “Never mind, you'll get the next one. I'm sure of it.” She thought I hadn't got the job. She thought I'd made a mess of the interview. How could I tell her that I had been terrified by a receptionist?'

‘Did you miss teaching?' Susan asked.

‘No, actually, it was a big relief.'

I raised my eyebrows.

‘You know, an office job means you don't have to carry anything home. Not if you're a steno, anyway. You do your work and you leave. Then you can forget about everything. You don't have to worry about Celestine's father who's a violent drunk and won't let him study. You don't have to bother about Fatima who's been taken out of school and her mother tells you she's too sickly to study and you know it's because they've arranged her marriage. No corrections. No papers to set. No destinies in your hands. Just some letters to type and some spellings to learn.'

‘Spellings?'

‘Machine names. They made electrostatic precipitators. I didn't even know whether they actually made the damned things or bought them from someone else. Don't look like that.'

‘Like what?' I asked.

‘You have your worst baby-Marxist look on your face.'

I had decided I was a socialist. One afternoon, the year before, I'd joined a protest march by mill workers that went past our school. I'd walked among them for fifteen minutes raising slogans and feeling light-headed, and when I came back home, I'd let Em and Susan know. I was proud of my achievement. Em had laughed. ‘Rite of passage. Next, you lose your virginity – and what a relief
that
will be.'

‘I have no such look,' I said to her. ‘You were telling me about electrostatic precipitators.'

‘You do. You look like someone who's thinking, “My mother was part of the alienated workforce and she didn't mind it.” Well, you shame me not. I was happy to type and take messages and eat my sandwiches and go for a movie on Saturdays. I didn't care whether the company made a profit or loss. I didn't care because my bonus came anyway and I got my salary anyway and I handed it over to Mae.'

‘And thus you were alienated from your labour as well as from your wages.'

‘I don't know about that. I lived the good life in my mother's house. I don't think I ever worried about how food was coming to the table or what was to be cooked. It appeared and I cribbed and I ate it and the plates went away again to be washed. I had no hand in any of that.'

‘As the wage earner?'

Em looked a bit thoughtful.

‘Oh, was that it? I thought it was just Mae's way.'

‘Maybe it was. After all, other women earn but they also do the housework.'

‘I think there was a time when she tried to teach me to cook. We were in Goa then. Some small fish had been brought from the river and there were still a few that were hopping about a bit. I couldn't bear it so I thought I'd drown them and put them out of their misery.'

‘That sounds like an apocryphal family story.'

‘It does? I thought it sounded like a really silly one. But if you know a word like apocryphal you should of course find a reason to trot it out. And there's a sequel. When Mae came in, she was horrified to find a couple of fish now swimming about so she took them down to the river and let them go again. So there.'

The wage earner was spared the housework. But this was how the money was apportioned: Imelda earned it and Mae doled out a weekly allowance.

‘Sometimes I'd save my tram fare home. It was about an hour from Fort to Byculla if I walked, so I walked and saved my pence . . .'

‘To eat dates,' I said.

‘Yes. Dates. Clever of you to remember. Is there a fruit anywhere in the world like the date? I mean, have you ever met a disappointing date? I've met apples that do not crunch and I've met pears that are too hard. I've met grapes that are sour . . .'

‘Okay, but a date is always sweet. I got that.'

‘What would I do without you to keep me on the conversational straight and narrow?' Em waved her beedi in the air with a rhetorical flourish. ‘I bought dates and I ate them as I walked.'

‘It must have helped you stay slim.'

‘You know, perhaps it was because there was so little money in the house, but I don't remember ever being worried about my figure. I knew it was okay and my face was okay and that was it. So I didn't think . . . no . . . I never thought: is this good for my figure? I never thought about that. And if someone had come up to me and offered me a lift home in his car, I would have hopped in. But only with someone respectable. We were always being told about horrible things happening to young women who got into cars with the wrong people. But no wrong people were to hand, thankfully, so there I was walking down the road from Fort to Bicks, eating a handful of dates, very slowly and very slyly, because I think it was generally felt that a woman should not eat in public.'

And one day, a car did pull up next to her.

‘It was your Big Hoom, our very own
LOS
. He opened the door for me, but before I could get in, three young ladies from the bus stop rushed past me and got in. So he did the only thing a fellow could do.'

She stopped and looked at me expectantly.

‘Which was?'

‘He got out.'

‘That must have pleased the taxi driver.'

‘He was squawking but your Big Hoom didn't care much. He said, “Are you walking home?” “Yes,” I said. “Well, I'll walk with you then.” And we began to walk.'

‘What happened to the taxi?'

‘You're getting obsessed with that taxi. But it was strange. We went into a bookshop because he wanted to check if a book he had ordered had come. When we came out, it was waiting for us.'

‘The same taxi?!'

‘
LOS
had an arrangement with a driver. Something that he'd worked out so it benefited both of them. I never did figure it out but there was always a taxi and it was always the same driver.'

‘And what happened to the women who got into the taxi? The ones from the bus stop?'

‘Your father sold them into the flesh trade. I have no idea. I suppose they got out when they figured there was going to be no free ride. Why do you want to know?'

I had no idea why. I still don't. I like details – no, it's more than that; I delight in details. I'm never sure where I am with people who may give me the large truths about themselves but not the everyday, even trivial details – the book a friend was reading in the airplane on the way to Chicago, the number of times someone sat for his degree examination, the names of the dogs a friend had when he lived with his grandfather. I've been told that I exhaust people with my curiosity. Once I was told that living with me would mean being trapped and slowly asphyxiated. Should I blame Em for this? Or would I have turned out just the way I am even if she had been whole and it had been possible to reach her?

There's that bookshop, for instance. Em never told me the name, she couldn't remember, and I'm still trying to find out.

Because that was also part of the family legend. That Augustine and Imelda spent their courtship in a variety of bookshops, that they would still have been doing that if they'd had their own way. I told The Big Hoom about this view of the two of them and he looked amused for a moment and then annoyed for a moment.

‘It wasn't like that,' he said and there was something in his voice that suggested it could never be like that. But he didn't tell me how it was exactly. He never said anything to contradict the view that neither of them seemed to want to get married; that they were content merely courting, like romantic adolescents unwilling to risk consummation.

He did tell me, though, about the time he first saw Em.

‘I saw her at the office. She was very frightened. I don't think she was very much more than eighteen years old when she came to work at
ASL
. And then she had to deal with Brigitte.'

I'd wondered about Brigitte ever since Em told me of her interview at
ASL
.

‘We knew there was something wrong,' The Big Hoom told me. ‘But no one could say what it was. We found out only later when the police came to take her. I don't remember exactly how the racket worked, but those were days of terrible unemployment. Young women, quite respectable, would come to the office asking for jobs. Brigitte would send them off to a brothel somewhere.'

So that was why Em was being sent to the dressmaker. And why Brigitte was so reluctant to give her the address later. I made a mental note to tell Em about it some time. I knew it would make her happy, to find out why. Perhaps because I always thought of her as a writer who would like her stories shaped well.

There were notebooks all over the house, stacks of them. There was writing in odd places. And books were often annotated. Our clothbound copy of
The Collected Works of Lewis Carroll
, with illustrations by John Tenniel, was filled with scribbles. I still have that book. Chapter Three of
Through the Looking Glass
 – ‘Looking-Glass Insects' – has this scrawled over the title: ‘To be or not to be, that is the question. Ha ha. I'm a humorist'. On the page where the guard is peering in at Alice and the goat through a pair of binoculars, is an inscription: ‘Horrible illustrations! I'm frightened. Help me God!' The rather cheerful poem – cheerful for Carroll, at least – ‘The Walrus and The Carpenter' has ‘Ave Maria' written after every third verse.

This we knew about her even when everything else was a mystery: Em wrote. She wrote when she was with us. She wrote when no one was around. She wrote postcards, she wrote letters in books, she wrote in other people's diaries, in telephone diaries, on the menus of takeaway places. Did she really want to be a teacher? I ask myself now. Or did she want to be a writer? In some of the letters she wrote Augustine, she was obviously flaunting her ability to write. She was demonstrating her charm, her effortlessness, her skill. She was suggesting to the world that she be taken seriously as a writer. No one did. I didn't. I didn't even see it. I thought she wrote as she broadcast, without much effort, without much thought. I have discovered since that such effortlessness is not easy to achieve and its weightlessness is in direct proportion to the effort put in. But unless she wrote drafts in secret and destroyed them, she seems to have achieved lift-off without effort. And then there was no reason for her to work at it, really. She had no audience other than us.

Why didn't we see her as a writer? Her parents had an excuse; they needed money. Why didn't we?

But then there's equally this: How could we have seen it when Em had not seen it herself? And even if she had wanted to turn to writing in those years, would her condition have allowed her the space and concentration to do so?

Or was the writing a manifestation of the condition? It often seemed like it was, the letters growing larger and larger until there was barely a word or two on a page. If we had cared to, we could have mapped her mania against her font size.

There's nothing in Em's diaries or scattered notes about the first time she went out with The Big Hoom. She never hesitated to talk about it, so I wonder if this means something. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it – maybe she did write something and sometime over ten years, or twenty or thirty, that piece of paper was lost. Or it's still in one of her cloth bags and I'll find it if I look hard enough.

The Big Hoom's version was that he had come right out and asked her. She looked frightened, he'd said, and I presume the vulnerability had attracted him.

‘The Paranjoti Choir is singing Christmas carols at the American Consulate tomorrow. Would you like to go?'

‘I would like to,' said Em. She maintained that she'd meant that she'd have liked to go but not that she'd wanted to go with him. But, she said, it was already too late: ‘Before I knew it, he was saying, “We leave the office at seventeen hours tomorrow. Dress up.”'

 • • • 

When Em talked about that first date, she seemed to remember her own panic most of all. That single casual instruction – ‘Dress up' – had thrown her into a flurry. She had four dresses, all cotton, and one Sunday suit – a coat and skirt with a white lace shirt.

‘Surely, you had your Sunday best?' Susan said.

I remember that afternoon clearly. There'd been a scene because Susan, in her first year of college, had announced that a young man had asked her out for a coffee and she'd said yes. Em had shouted at her, asking who the boy was and what business she had saying yes. For a while I feared that Susan had triggered something and Em would soon be in one of her terrifying manic rages, but Em pulled back from the edge. By the time Susan got dressed, Em was calm. Susan waited for the right time to leave. Em sat in the cane chair by the balcony door and lit a beedi. ‘I was your age,' she said, and began to talk of her first date. The tension eased as she told us of her panic, about having nothing appropriate to wear, and Susan asked about her Sunday best.

‘Yes, but it looked okay in church. I hated it but it didn't matter once you got to the hall because all the other girls were wearing the same kind of stuff. You fitted in. But I knew I couldn't wear that to the American Consulate.'

‘They would laugh?'

‘No,' said Em. ‘The Americans I met were always polite. They would never laugh. But you knew that if they weren't polite, they would be laughing at you. That's where you're embarrassed. Inside you.'

Finally, Em had consulted Gertrude who had shrugged off the whole sartorial nightmare in a single word. ‘Sa-ari,' she had said, drawing out the two syllables to indicate how obvious the whole thing was.

‘Such a relief,' said Em. ‘Of course, a sari.'

It was a minor matter that she couldn't tie one.

‘I would stand in the middle of the room and stretch my arms out and someone would tie it for me.'

There was another problem.

‘I could not go to the bathroom. I never did learn how to take a pee in a sari. I mean, the sari and the ghaghra and the pleats and the panties and the seat. It's just too much of a mess.'

Her solution? A total fast.

Gertrude liked the idea. ‘It's a good thing to suffer in the beginning,' she said. ‘Laugh in the beginning, cry at the end. Cry in the beginning, laugh at the end.'

‘He thought I was very bored because I kept sighing. I wasn't sighing. I was trying not to burp. Fasting always makes me want to burp. And there I was, sitting next to the Office Hunk.'

‘The Big Hoom?' Susan sounded doubtful.

‘What do you lot know? You don't even think
I'm
pretty. But I am, even now, if you would just get that familiarity thing out of your eyes. But I was a looker then, thin waist, big wounded eyes, and the bloom of innocence all over me. And Hizzonner was also quite something in a suit, deep black, and white shirt and glowing sapphire tie to match his eyes.'

‘You remember what he wore?'

‘He didn't wear that tie. I gave it to him some time later. That day it was a maroon tie. But when I think of him as the hunk, I think of him in a blue tie.'

At the end of the concert, The Big Hoom suggested dinner. Gertrude had assured Imelda that it was her duty to refuse. ‘He'll ask. Say no. You must say no to everything on the first date or he'll think you're easy. Say no, no, no. But let him take you for coffee and then let him order dinner.'

‘I would have done exactly that,' Em said.

‘Didn't you ask Granny?' Susan sounded a bit forlorn.

‘Mae? Ah, yes, Mae. She was no use at all,' said Em, a little cryptically, and fell silent. Then she looked at Susan, as if noticing her properly for the first time. Susan was wearing midnight blue.

‘Is that you? You look charming,' said Em and took her beedi out of her mouth.

Susan looked startled. Compliments were rare at any time. When Em was high, they were oases in the desert.

‘Come and sit by me,' Em said.

‘Go, go,' I urged Susan in my head but to give her credit, she didn't even hesitate, though Em had refused to bathe or change for three days and had been smoking incessantly. She smelled unbelievably high.

‘Only one word of advice,' said Em. ‘Do what your heart tells you. It doesn't matter if you make a mistake. The only things we regret are the things we did not do.'

Susan grinned.

‘So you're saying I should sleep with him?'

Em did not miss a beat.

‘If you love him. And if you want to.'

‘It's a first date.' Susan's insouciance began to crumple slightly around the edges. ‘How can I know?'

‘Then chances are you don't,' said Em. ‘But it's a sneaky thing. It can grow on you slowly. One day you're thinking what does his chest look like under the banny and the next day you can't bear the thought of anyone else wondering about his chest. As if you can ever stop people's minds.'

All of which seemed to be going extraordinarily well. Then Em said, ‘But if anything should go wrong . . .'

‘Like what?'

‘Oh, if he should try and rape you . . .'

‘Em!'

‘It has been known to happen,' said Em. ‘Pretend you're trying to stroke his swollen cock and then give his balls a twist. Then run.'

Susan got to her feet.

‘I'll keep that in mind.'

Em retreated too.

‘You do that,' she said and lit another beedi.

‘Don't look at me like that,' she said when Susan had gone. ‘I have to do my duty as a mother.'

She inflected the word with all the rage and contempt she felt for it. It came out
mud-dh-dha
.

Em did not have the standard attitude towards motherhood. She often used the word with a certain venomousness, as if she were working hard to turn it into an insult. On one occasion, when we were chatting about a terrifyingly possessive mother, she suddenly broke into a chant: ‘Mother most horrible, mother most terrible, mother standing at the door, mouth full of dribble.'

Suddenly, now, she began to chant the line again.

It had the ring of a litany this time, but also something else.

‘What exactly is that?'

‘It's how we would choose the den when we were children. Ugh.'

That was it – the sound of a playground.

‘Mother at the door, waiting to eat you up. It's a horrible image but maybe it has an element of truth in it, like those Greek myths.'

‘Was Granny a devouring mother?'

‘I don't know. I'm here, no?'

‘Yes.'

‘But I'm mad. That must count against her too. Maybe she did this to me. Do you think I'm that kind of mother? The kind who'd devour her infants?'