Honor: A Novel(49)
Before Smita could react, Rupal gestured toward their car. “Be careful on these roads,” he said. “They are hard to travel once it gets dark. All the ghosts and spirits come out at night.”
Chapter Nineteen
Smita and Mohan were quiet as they drove back toward the motel. Smita felt numb, exhausted, spent. She sifted through the interview in her mind, trying to locate the exact moment when it had gone off the rails. But the fact was, Rupal had controlled the conversation from the very start, and he had decided when to end it. Not to mention the fact that he had virtually thrown them out of the village. How dare he? And what was wrong with her that she’d let him? She was not on the top of her game, and to do Meena’s story justice, she needed to be.
Mohan groaned.
“What is it?” she asked.
He turned to her, his eyes red. “What is this country?” he cried. “How can we be this backwards? Did you hear what that bastard said? He ordered the burning? And he’s sitting there like a king, unharmed? How can this be so in this day and age?”
Smita nodded in sympathy. But some small part of her was gratified to hear Mohan’s distress, to see that this trip had pierced through his privilege. She remembered how reflexively defensive and proud of India he’d been when they’d first met. She didn’t wish this loss of innocence on him. But she was glad that they were on the same page.
Maybe even the son of a diamond merchant can be made to face the truth, she thought grimly.
Smita filled the bucket in her bathroom with hot water, then used the plastic mug to pour water over her body. She thought with longing about her hotel room at the Taj, with its powerful shower and marbled bathroom, then felt guilty about such a bourgeois desire. But who was she kidding? Soon, she would be back in her luxurious condo in Brooklyn, with its granite countertops and the rain shower in the bathroom. Papa had forced Rohit and Smita to take their share of their mother’s inheritance soon after Mummy had died. They had declined, but Papa had been insistent. Rohit had bought a car and put away the rest in Alex’s college fund; Smita had had her bathroom and kitchen remodeled.
What would little Abru’s inheritance be? The gravesite of a father she would never know, but whose specter would haunt her entire life. The ashes of her mother’s dreams, which she would taste in her own mouth. Her grandmother’s grief, which could manifest itself only as anger, in a harsh word or a quick slap whenever the little girl did something that reminded Ammi of her dead son. Abru’s life would be marked by hunger—an emotional hunger never sated, its roots in a time before her birth. And the physical hunger, the emptiness in her stomach that would feel as real to her as a shoe or a stone. Poor Abdul had thought that his daughter would be the heir to a new, modern India. Instead, she had become a symbol of the old, timeless India, a country scarred by ignorance, illiteracy, and superstition, governed by men who dropped the poison pellets of communal hatred onto a people who mistook revenge for honor, and blood lust for tradition.
Smita made a sound, sorrow bubbling up from her lips. The bathroom went blurry, and she dropped the mug into the bucket, the water splashing onto her feet. She rested her forehead against the bathroom wall and sobbed. She cried for so long that after a while, her outrage at Meena’s fate tipped over into the deep sorrow for the confused, fearful twelve-year-old child Smita herself had once been, the resurrection of a sorrow that she had spent years beating back.
She felt lighter when she emerged from the shower, as if her tears had washed away some of the pain she had been carrying around. She dressed and, with a quick glance in the mirror, left her room. She walked swiftly down the hallway and knocked on Mohan’s door before she could change her mind.
“Hi,” she said, when he answered. “Can I come in?”
“Yes, of course,” he said, letting her in and closing the door behind them.
Chapter Twenty
Two days after Abdul gifted me the mangoes, I packed a ladoo for him. I didn’t place it in our tiffin box. Instead, I wrapped it in newspaper and carried it separately. At lunchtime, I put the sweet in my pocket and walked to my usual spot under the tree. Radha was still sick, so I ate alone. I sat with my back to Abdul, but still my neck got hot as I felt his eyes on me. After I finished my lunch, I walked to where Abdul was sitting. He rose to his feet immediately. I placed the wrapped ladoo on the ground near his tree. “For your kindness,” I said to the tree trunk, my back to him. “The mangoes were very sweet.”
He replied, but the blood was rushing to my head and it drowned out his words. I walked quickly back into the factory. The old woman sitting at the machine next to me saw the sweat on my face. “Ae, chokri,” she said to me. “Are you taking sick?”
She did not know how correct she was. I was sick, but this was a sickness of the heart.
Every day after I gifted him the ladoo, Abdul and I began to find a way to talk without words. Sometimes, he would sing a love song while working that I knew was meant for my ears. Sometimes, I dropped a chocolate on the ground between our two trees on our way back from lunch. When Abdul returned to his seat, he would open the wrapper and pop the candy into his mouth, his eyes briefly meeting mine. And every evening, he would walk home behind me, remembering to stay a good distance away.
Then, one day as I finished using the outdoor latrine, he was waiting for me. He pretended to tie his shoelaces as I passed by. “I am working overtime next Sunday,” he whispered. “Maybe you can apply, too?”