The Henna Artist(21)

I told Radha about the one good thing in my marriage, Hari’s mother. How she taught me to heal women who came to her from surrounding villages. Mostly, they complained of stomach upsets, cooking burns, female pains and barren wombs. I didn’t tell Radha about the wombs they wanted to empty without their husbands’ knowledge.

I told her about Hari’s beatings and the day I walked out of his hut one afternoon, making my way to Agra on foot, hiding behind a bush or in a trench whenever I saw anyone. It took me a week. I ate whatever I could forage along the way, often at night, when no one could see me, making sure there were no wild boars around. In the city of the Taj Mahal, I told her I helped women in much the way my mother-in-law had. What I left out were the details, that most of my income had come from wrapping a few tablespoons of ground cotton root bark in muslin pouches—as my saas had done for the village women—and selling them. It wasn’t that I was ashamed of my work; if not for me, many courtesans and dancing girls would have sought cruder, and more harmful, means to keep pregnancies at bay—douching with detergents, throwing themselves down stairs or piercing the fetus with a knitting needle. But the ears of a thirteen-year-old village girl were too tender to hear such things.

I explained to her that Agra was where I learned to paint henna. I smiled as I thought of Hazi and Nasreen teaching me to paint a woman’s body to inflame desire, but I didn’t share that with Radha. I told her about the offer I’d received to paint henna for more money in Jaipur, and how I had jumped at the chance. “It allowed me to send more money back home.”

“But henna work is for Shudras, not Brahmins,” she said. “Pitaji would never have allowed you to touch other people’s feet.”

I let go of her hand then, and rolled over on my back. “It was better than being a whore, Radha.” I had intended to sound harsh, and I had.

We lay quietly for a while.

“How did Pitaji die?” I asked.

“He drowned. But he was sick, too. In his stomach.”

“What do you mean?”

“He liked his sharab,” she whispered. “He thought he was hiding it from us, but by nightfall, he was too drunk to walk. The next day, I would have to go and teach school for him.”

I knew Pitaji had started drinking around the time we came to live in Ajar, but he’d never been so drunk that I had to take over the school. “Did Maa ever forgive him?”

Radha turned her face to look at me. “For what?”

Just then, she looked so much like Maa that it was almost as if I were lying next to my mother the night I asked where her gold bangles were. I was just a little girl then, and as long as I could remember she’d never taken them off, even as she bathed, cooked and slept. I loved playing with them when we lay together like this. Maa’s eyes filled with tears at my question, and I felt fear for the first time in my life.

I stroked Radha’s cheek. “We didn’t always live in Ajar. Didn’t Maa tell you? We came from Lucknow. Pitaji had become obsessed with the independence movement. He would skip work to join the freedom marches. He spoke out against British rule at rallies. Then, when the movement needed more money, he sold Maa’s gold, the jewelry from her dowry—wedding bangles, necklaces, earrings—against her wishes. Maa was furious.

“The British, who ran the school system, hadn’t approved of his freedom fighting. So they demoted him to Ajar, this tiny, backwater place. I must have been about ten. In one fell swoop, they cut his salary and his pride.”

“But Pitaji was right, wasn’t he? India won in the end.” Radha wanted to believe in our father, to defend him, as I had.

“Of course he was right,” I said. It was people like our father, millions of them, who had made it clear to the British that Indians would no longer be held hostage in their own country.

But I could also see why Maa disapproved. So many Indians had been hurt or imprisoned for standing up against the British. She pleaded with our father: Why couldn’t he keep quiet, just take care of his family, and let others fight? But our father was fervent in his beliefs; I admired him for that. He was committed to his ideals. Unfortunately, high ideals came with a price.

Once he had depleted his savings, he sold the remainder of Maa’s only possessions, the gold that could have saved us from poverty, that was supposed to keep Maa secure in widowhood, that might have kept me from having to marry at fifteen. In a country where a woman’s gold was her security against the unforeseen, Maa’s naked earlobes and bare wrists were a constant reminder that my father had put politics before his family.

And so, we were forced to move to Ajar, where my mother buried her disappointment and my father buried his pride. Independence wouldn’t come for another twelve years, but by then, he was already broken.

Radha said, “Maa never talked about you. Never spoke your name. I didn’t even know you existed until the gossip-eaters told me you disappeared the same year I was born. As soon as I learned to read, I realized it was your letters Maa was burning whenever they arrived. The only letter of yours I read was the one you sent about the train tickets to Jaipur. You didn’t mention me in the letter at all. I knew then that you didn’t know I existed, either.”

I closed my eyes. Oh, Maa, how angry I must have made you. Your husband betrayed you. I betrayed you. If only you had opened those letters!

As soon as I was able to earn enough, I’d sent money in every envelope for my parents to spend on their needs. I’d begged their forgiveness for leaving my marriage and told them I would send for them as soon as I could. If the money had been destroyed along with my letters, no wonder Radha’s clothes had looked so threadbare when she arrived in Jaipur.