Honor: A Novel(28)

Surely, Meena meant the last part as a figure of speech? Smita couldn’t tell. “Meena,” she said gently. “Do you think you could call me by my name instead of memsahib? After all, you called Shannon by hers, correct?”

“That was different,” Meena said with a bashful smile. “Shannon was a foreigner.”

“Well, if you insist on calling me memsahib, I will have to do the same.”

Meena’s hand flew to her mouth as she choked back a scandalized laugh. “Memsahib . . . sorry, Smita. Ammi will faint if she hears you call me memsahib.”

Even though only one half of her face moved, Meena looked much younger when she laughed.

“So how do you spend your days?” Smita said. “What do you do all day?”

Meena’s face went blank. “Nothing. I just cook and clean for my mother-in-law and my little one.”

“You don’t work at all?”

Meena pointed to her face. “In this condition, Didi?” Smita noticed that Meena had switched to calling her Didi, for “older sister.” “Tell me, who will hire me? Also, nobody knows what to think of me. After my marriage, the Hindus treat me like I am a Muslim. But the Muslims in this village still consider me Hindu.” She swallowed, then said something in a dialect that Smita didn’t understand.

“I’m sorry?” Smita said. “The last thing you said—I couldn’t follow?”

Meena brushed away the single tear on her cheek with the back of her hand. “I said, ‘I’m the dog who belongs neither in the house nor on the streets,’ ” she repeated in Hindi. “You understand?”

“I do.”

“You see that hovel down there, Didi?” Meena said. “To your left? That’s the only place on this sad earth where I am still at home.”

Smita followed the line of Meena’s pointing finger, squinting in the sun to see better. All she could see were the blackened remains of a straw hut that stood diagonally across from where they sat, a good distance away from Ammi’s shack. Piles of rubbish were strewn around it. It took Smita a moment to realize what it was. “Is that your . . . is that where it . . . happened?” she asked.

Meena nodded. “That was our home. It was even more modest than my mother-in-law’s home, Didi, but I tell you the truth—I was never happier than the four months I lived there with Abdul. Every morning he would wake up before me and make me a cup of tea. Cooking beside my husband, walking to the factory together, made me feel like the richest woman in Hindustan.”

Smita looked around. “May I ask you something? Why do you and Ammi live on the outskirts, so far from the main village?”

Meena bit down on her lip as her nose turned red. “Abdul bought this land when it came up for sale Didi,” she said at last. “His plan was to build his mother a pucca house here, out of his factory earnings. As for our little shack? He and Kabir built that in a few days after I ran away from my brothers’ house. With both boys and myself all working, we were planning on giving poor Ammi a restful old age.”

“Man plans and God laughs.” Papa used to say this all the time. Smita wanted to translate this for Meena but she wasn’t sure she was up to the task. She was doing well without Mohan’s help so far; she didn’t want to push her luck. “Your husband sounds like a very good man,” she murmured.

Meena didn’t answer. After a few minutes she said, “May I ask? What is your earliest memory, Didi?”

Smita knew the answer immediately—it was going with Papa to one of his lectures at Bombay University. Mummy had to take Rohit to the doctor that day, so Papa had taken her to work with him. She had sat quietly in the front row of his classroom, and when they left his college that day, he had bought her a Cadbury fruit-and-nut chocolate bar for being so good.

But she didn’t want to get sidetracked. “I’m not sure,” she said. “What’s yours?”

“It is not a firm memory as such,” Meena replied. “It’s more a feeling. What I remember most from my childhood is the feeling of loneliness. Even after my sister, Radha, was born, I still felt alone, even though she was my best friend. Evening time, when it was time for Dada to come home from the fields, I would wait outside our hut to greet him. While waiting, I’d look up at the evening sky. I could hear the birds cawing as they made their way home. And it seemed to me that everything—every stalk of wheat, every stone on the ground, every bird in the sky—had its place in this world. Except me. That my true home was inside this loneliness. You understand me?”

“I do.”

Meena smiled. “I know you do, Didi,” she said. “From the minute you walked into our home, I saw it in your eyes—you have known this curse of loneliness, also.”

Smita reddened and looked away.

“I’m telling you this because you asked about my Abdul,” Meena continued, her voice a low, steady drone. “He was like a magician. From the time I met him, my lonely disappeared.”

“Would he . . . would he have supported you in filing this lawsuit?” Smita asked.

Meena’s face crumpled. “He would be so ashamed of me, Didi,” she said. “He so badly wanted peace between our two families. After we found out about our baby, he insisted we go to my brothers’ house with a big box of mithai. He believed they would come around once they understood that he was a good husband.” Suddenly, Meena slapped her forehead. “But I should’ve known better.”