The Vine of Desire (30 page)

But maybe the women in the writers’ group, having come from fringes and borderlands, having seen themselves pulled out of shape by the funhouse mirrors of the American imagination, would be different? Maybe with them Anju could talk about how it is when you love parts of your heritage so much that it tingles in your fingertips like pins and needles. You’re ready to kill anyone who criticizes it. And then there are days when things about it make you want to drive your fist through a window.

“It’s supposed to be a really good movie, entertaining and serious at the same time.”

“What’s it about?” Anju asks cautiously.

“It’s about a group of Indian women in England, ordinary women, each with problems of her own, who decide they want to forget it all and enjoy a day at the beach.”

That’s what she, too, needs, Anju thinks. To forget it all and
have a fun day. And the women from the writers’ group, who know and like her just enough that their presence puts no pressure on her (unlike Sudha, she can’t stop herself from thinking), would be perfect companions for this brief oblivion.

“There’s a show today at six-thirty,” says one of the group. “Shall we, then?”

“I should go home,” says Anju.

“It’s just for one evening,” someone says. “Surely you can be late for once? Doesn’t your husband ever come home late?”

“Leave a message for him,” says another.

Anju is annoyed at the twinge of guilt she feels. Why shouldn’t she go? Pleasure isn’t illegal, is it? She deserves an evening out with her friends—it’s not like she does it all the time. Sunil will probably work late and not even know that she was gone. And didn’t Sudha herself go out with Lalit all day, just this past weekend? “Okay,” she says. “I’ll call home.”

She stands inside the phone booth, whose slick plastic walls and low dome make her feel as if she’s been stuffed into a capsule. The walls are covered with furious swirls of gangland graffiti, done in different colors by different hands, presumably at different times. She reads the words, cryptic as code:
DNA, Killer Luz, +KTBS+.
The calligraphies are oddly similar, as though the graffitans all went to the same school for urban mural design.

In the apartment the phone rings and rings. Half of her is relieved. She hates to apologize—and she knows that’s what she’ll end up doing if she talks to Sudha. But where has Sudha gone in this rain with Dayita, especially when the child was feverish over the weekend? Anju runs an anxious nail over the reptilian ridges of the metal phone cord. She must be in the basement with the laundry, even though Anju has begged her over and
over to wait until she can get home from school and help her. She lets out a sigh at her cousin’s stubbornness. Things with Sudha have not gone the way she hoped when she invited her to America. She had wanted something else for her cousin. What was it? Something grand, like the arch of a spread-out sky, the one they watched together months back, peopled with those winged women, soaring. But things—people (okay,
he)—
had gotten in the way. She needs to sit down with Sudha soon, talk to her about her future. (Something practical and concrete, back in India, that would be the best. Perhaps she could find out where Sudha could get a loan? There are co-ops, she’s read recently, in Calcutta and Bombay, where they try to help women who want to own their own businesses.) But not today. She can only fix one life at a time. (There’s an image in her mind as she thinks this; a jewelry box with a broken hinge, a woman’s hand picking up a tiny golden clasp with a pair of tweezers, her steadfast brown fingers.) And she must start with her own.

She hears the sound of falling water as she enters the house. She looks around. Has someone left a tap on somewhere? Then she sees it. Bas-relief on a slab of greenish slate: a mountain, a tree, fruit shaped like teardrops. Under the tree sits a meditating Buddha, an intricate halo around his head. The whole of it so tiny, she could hold it in her palm. Water flows over it all, pooling into a shallow, rocky basin, then siphoned under to begin its journey again. She puts down the car seat in which her daughter is sleeping and kneels for a closer look. She can’t help it. It’s too beautiful, and she’s been starved of beauty for too long.

“Do you like my water sculpture?”

Sudha tilts her head to look at the speaker, a petite redhead
with intense blue eyes, her potential employer. Her name, she has just told Sudha, is Myra. She is dressed in a wraparound silk batik skirt, the velvety blossoms on which match her short, crackly hair. “Trideep got it for my last birthday. He knows how much I love Eastern things. The sound of water is so soothing after a day with my clients, so filled with prana energy. Here, sit and relax for a moment while I make us some tea.”

She disappears down a paneled corridor to the tinkle of silver anklet bells. Sudha sits, as instructed, on the edge of a deep leather chair, her elbows pressed to her body. The chair is so white. Has anyone ever sat in it? She touches the armrest surreptitiously, hungrily, with a single finger. It is clear that this house, all stone and wood and angled upswept ceilings and strategically lighted art objects, fills her with uneasy awe.

“I’ve never seen a house like this before,” she whispers to Lupe. “It’s so … dramatic. I didn’t even know such things could be done.” She gestures to the ceiling, where an enormous skylight allows in a drizzle of soft gray light.

“Hmmm,” says Lupe, who is less impressed.

“It scares me a bit. All these beautiful art pieces. What if Dayita gets her hands on one of them and breaks it? And that water sound—I keep thinking I need to turn something off.”

“Calm down. It’s just a house. They’re people, just like you and me. Breakable things can be put away.”

“Thank God Dayita’s still asleep. Otherwise she’d never let me talk properly to the lady. What should I say to her, anyway?”

“As little as possible.”

“What if she doesn’t like me? What if she wants someone with experience? I can’t go back to—”

“We’ll worry about that when it happens. I have a feeling she needs you more than you need her.”

Sudha gives her a pale, unconvinced smile.

“Here we are,” Myra says, coming in from the kitchen. She carries, on an elegantly hand-carved wooden tray, ceramic mugs filled with a bright red liquid that looks like no tea Sudha has ever seen.

“I do hope you like it,” she says. She sets down the tray a bit hard, spilling liquid. “It’s a strengthening tea, made from hibiscus and ginseng. God knows, nowadays I need all the strength I can get.”

“I’ll pass, thanks,” says Lupe, who has long decided that politeness needs only to extend so far. Sudha takes a sip and suppresses a grimace. Fortunately, Myra has launched into a speech and does not notice.

“Oh, what a lovely baby! How old is she? Can she walk? Does she talk yet?” Her fingers make little butterfly motions in the air. Why, she’s almost as nervous as Sudha. “We considered having a baby, but finally decided against it. Sometimes I feel it was a selfish decision, but my therapist tells me that that’s an unproductive way of thinking. I’m probably too high-strung to be a good mother, anyway. Not like you. Indian women are so tranquil.”

Sudha gives Lupe a look. Lupe shrugs. She doesn’t care what delusions employers hold, as long as they treat her women right.

“Like I was telling you,” Myra continues, playing with her ring, which is ornately carved in Indian gold, “ever since his mother passed away three years ago, Trideep’s been asking his dad to come visit us. The old man kept putting it off. Then finally, this summer, he says okay. Tree’s really excited—me, too, of course. We buy all kinds of Indian groceries, Tree rents a bunch of Bengali videos from Bombay Bazaar. He gets here, everything’s going really well, he likes the neighborhood, goes
for walks, even cooks for us. A bit spicy for me, but, still, it’s sweet of him, and I make it a point to tell him how much I appreciate it. Weekends, Tree takes him around—that’s my busiest time, as you can imagine. Did I tell you I’m a Realtor? I work for David Helm. It’s a privately owned company—I couldn’t stand a chain—with offices in San Francisco and Berkeley. We deal only in custom homes. But it’s getting too much for me. The clients are so demanding—that’s the problem with people who have too much money—by the time I get home I have the worst migraines. Tree keeps telling me I should change my field to something calmer, more sattvic and artistic.”

“You were telling us about the patient,” Lupe says.

“Right, right. Well, Tree takes his dad everywhere—Napa Valley, up the coast to Mendocino, Hearst Castle. They even fly down to Disneyland one weekend. The dad’s a fun guy, tells us lots of Indian jokes each night at the dinner table. I don’t understand all of them, but we’re having a good time. Then he has a stroke—bam! just like that—which lands him in the hospital.” Myra pauses to catch her breath. “It changes everything.” Her face loses its animation and becomes all hollowed bone. “We bring him home from the hospital, and suddenly he hates everyone, especially me, like it’s all my fault that he can’t move the right side of his body. Like I—”

“What exactly do you need Sudha to do?” Lupe asks.

“Just the regular. Bathe him, give him his food and medicines, keep him cheerful. The doctor says a lot of this is mental. People can get better a lot faster if they’re motivated.” Myra puts a hand on Sudha’s arm, appealingly. “That doesn’t sound too tough, does it?”

“Not at all,” Sudha begins, but Lupe interrupts.

“What happened to the woman who was here before this?”

Myra looks unhappy. “I didn’t want to bring that up—you know how it is, negative thoughts create bad energy …”

Lupe waits, arms folded.

“She quit after a week,” Myra says, speaking fast. “Said he was too difficult. Not that we can blame him. You’d be cranky, too, if you were stuck in bed all day, wouldn’t you? Anyway, she wasn’t Indian. He’ll probably take to Sudha right away.” She clasps her hands, then unclasps them. When she looks at Sudha, her eyes are wide with worry.

“About the pay …” says Lupe.

“Oh, right. I was thinking of a thousand dollars a month….”

There’s a stunned look on Sudha’s face. There’s a total of thirty dollars in her purse—ten of which she came with, and a twenty that Anju gave her some time back, in case she had to go to the grocery when Anju was at school. That, and a bit of cheap jewelry and her return ticket to India. This would change everything.

“Uh-uh.” Lupe comes in smoothly before Sudha can speak. “Too little. Wasn’t there something about the old man throwing a TV remote at her? Left a bruise big as a plum on her upper arm.”

Myra flashes a startled look at Lupe, bites her thumb.

“I have my sources, you see.” Lupe allows herself a quick, wolfish grin. “Nothing less than twelve hundred.”

Sudha sucks in her breath at Lupe’s audacity, but, amazingly, Myra agrees. They go on to other details. Sudha is to be paid in cash, Lupe stipulates. Weekly.

“She’s not going to do any housecleaning, or any cooking—except for the old man. She’s not going to be held responsible for anything the kid breaks. It’s your job to put your valuables
away. Anything the old man needs after ten
P.M.
and before six
A.M.
, you folks have to handle. She gets every Sunday off.”

Myra assents meekly to everything. They go into the other room so she can pay Lupe her fee. Sudha continues to sit on the edge of the leather chair, dazed at the speed with which things have happened. She has a job, a beautiful house to live in, and an employer who seems hearteningly malleable. Most important of all, for the first time in her life, she has her own money. She’s finally starting her new life in America. The excitement of that, surely, must be coursing through her like a drug. Why, then, does her back slump in a dispirited curve? What makes her grind her knuckles into her eyes? What is it she’s thinking of?

Only when Lupe comes to say good-bye does she pull herself from her thoughts to catch hold of her hands.

“You saved my life,” she tells her. Her voice is hoarse, as though after a day of shouting. “I can’t thank you enough—”

“Hey, hey,” says Lupe, freeing herself. “No big deal. Besides, you shouldn’t thank me yet. You haven’t even started work—you might not like it.”

“Not like it!” Sudha attempts a smile. “That’d be like a drowning person complaining about the color of the rope thrown to her.”

Lupe doesn’t comment on this. She tucks in a corner of the sleeping Dayita’s blanket. “Good luck,” she says, putting a hand around Sudha’s shoulders and giving her a surprising half-hug. Then she disappears into the rain, and Sudha is truly on her own.

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