The Henna Artist(25)
In the end, I repeated my saas’s words. “They have no one else to turn to.”
After a full minute of silence, each of us lost in our own thoughts, I said quietly, “Let’s go up to the roof to clean up.” I whipped the stained sheet off the cot. Joyce Harris’s blood had seeped into the jute below. I would have to scrub it with a mixture of ghee and ash. “Radha?”
She looked up from the soiled charpoy. Her eyes were troubled.
“You did well tonight. But we must keep this to ourselves, accha?”
I hated having to ask this of her, but keeping this secret was too important to my livelihood. One word of Mrs. Harris’s misfortune would put a full stop to my business.
At first, I thought Radha would argue with me. Then, so quietly that I almost didn’t hear, she said, “Hahn-ji.”
FOUR
November 17, 1955
The next day I woke Radha at dawn, even though neither of us had slept very long, or very well. I showed her how to grind the henna, and to my surprise, she created a finer henna paste than I ever had. Apparently, old man Munchi had not been exaggerating. My sister even suggested adding more lemon juice to make the color stronger. When I complimented her, she looked alarmed, as if she weren’t used to praise.
I couldn’t enroll her in school until January, so I was taking her with me and Malik to my henna appointments.
My first appointment that day was with Kanta, one of a handful of clients who treated me as an equal. Perhaps it was because I was a little older than her—Kanta had just turned twenty-six. Perhaps it was because, like me, she was a transplant to Jaipur, having been raised in Calcutta and educated in England. Or perhaps it was because she was also childless, although, more than anything, she wanted to be a mother.
Kanta came from a long line of Bengali poets and writers; her father and grandfather had passed their time composing sonnets and organizing literary salons. “The only thing Jaipur women read is Readers Digest,” she’d once complained.
Now, before I’d even stepped foot on her veranda, Kanta herself opened the door, edging her seventy-year-old servant, Baju, out of the way. He straightened his Marwari turban and stroked his long mustache. “Really, Madam!”
She was tingling with anticipation. “Lakshmi! I can’t wait to hear what happened at Parvati’s. Baju, don’t just stand there! Take Malik into the kitchen and feed him a snack.” Finally, she noticed Radha standing behind me. Looking from my eyes to Radha’s, she cried, “Arré! I’m seeing double?”
I introduced Kanta to my sister, telling her that Radha had come to Jaipur to study at the government school here. I glanced at Radha to see how the explanation sat with her. I needn’t have worried. She was staring at Kanta, fascinated. She was studying Kanta’s shoulder-length bob, her slim capri pants, the sleeveless shirt tied across her exposed midriff. (Traditional women, like Parvati, who covered their plump midsections alluringly with saris, would sooner have joined a brothel than bare their stomachs.)
Kanta’s lipsticked mouth stretched wide. She grinned at Radha. “I heartily approve of education for women!” Kanta’s Brahmin family had always prized its daughters, never raising them as the lesser gender. They had sent her to England for her graduate studies.
While Kanta led the way to her bedroom, I kept an eye on Radha, who was soaking up her surroundings like a parched gazelle. The airy bungalow, with its squared settees and bare floors, not one painting of a raja or rani or a god or goddess on the walls, might have been common in Calcutta or Bombay, but not in Jaipur.
Radha slowed down to study the framed photos on the walls: a large one of Gandhi-ji, one of Kanta and her husband, Manu, in front of their college, one of Rabindranath Tagore—a distant relative of Kanta’s and one of India’s most famous literary figures.
When Radha came to the photo of two men standing together, one in a splendid headdress, she tapped my shoulder. I stopped to look.
Kanta, who had been watching us, said, “That’s Manu on the left. And his boss, the Maharaja of Jaipur. Handsome, aren’t they?” She chuckled merrily, on the move again toward her bedroom.
Kanta’s husband worked for the palace as the Director of Facilities. It was because of his elevated position that the Agarwals lived rent free in one of the impressive colonials where a British family had once lived. The original six-bedroom house and grounds had been divided down the middle into two dwellings to accommodate two families.
As we entered her bedroom, Kanta asked, “Well, Lakshmi? Will Manu get his wish?” She was closing the door as she said it, but her mother-in-law pushed the door from the other side, barging in.
“Yes, Lakshmi, will Manu get his wish for a baby boy?” She shot a pointed glance at Kanta. It was customary for widowed mothers to live with their oldest son, and since Manu was her eldest, his mother lived with them. Kanta rolled her eyes at me over her saas’s head.
I smiled. “I’m working on it.”
Kanta’s saas pointed her sandalwood rosary at her daughter-in-law’s stomach. “If there’s a baby in there, he’s probably afraid to come out. Just look at her. She doesn’t cover her head when elders enter the room. She lets strange men see her buttocks in trousers. If my husband were still alive—”
“He would have picked out a girl Manu would have rejected,” Kanta teased, smiling.