A Girl Like That(63)
From the other end of the line, I heard a groggy male voice. “Mamma? Mamma, who are you talking to?”
I hung up, my stomach swirling the way it did when I’d eaten something bad.
“Who was it?” For the first time, Masi sounded quiet, almost subdued.
I shook my head. Porus hurt—no, seriously injured, because of me. I couldn’t bear to say it out loud. I knew that Masi would blame me for it. Though this time she would be fully justified in doing so.
For a moment I wondered if Rizvi was behind the attack. But even if he was, how could anyone prove it?
To my surprise, Masi did not prod me for information the way I expected her to. Instead I felt her watching me the way she had ever since I’d come back home after the incident with Rizvi, examining my flowered pajama pants, my red-and-black flannel shirt. A year before, she’d bought a dozen such shirts for me to wear outside the apartment with my baggy jeans, even though Masa had protested that the clothes made me look like a stick wearing a sack. “You can barely even see her!”
But now I got the sense that Masi was the one who wanted to see, who wanted to peel away my clothes to check for bruises or other signs of damage. Like an over-inquisitive parent, she had begun asking random questions about everything from “Did you brush your teeth?” to “What did you do at school today?” to the most important: “Did you get your period yet?”
My replies, usually monosyllabic, infuriated her. So most days I simply shrugged, saying nothing. There were days when, from the corner of my eye, I would see her hands rise and pause in midair, as if she was remembering something and then slowly backing away. It was easier to stay in my room, pretending to do homework with my textbooks than to sit at the computer in the living room under Masi’s beacon-eyed glare. Not that I had anything to look at on the computer these days.
The times I did come out of my room, I sat next to Masa on the sofa in front of the TV while he watched the world news on BBC. Normally, except for a stiff nod, he did nothing to acknowledge my presence, chatting with Masi about dinner and work at the office during commercial breaks.
The only time I saw him show any kind of emotion was during the prank phone calls—anything ranging from I want to make friendship with you to Mine’s bigger than the head boy’s.
“Wrong number!” he shouted each time, slamming down the phone.
“Rusi, we need to do something about this,” I had overheard Masi tell him once.
“What is there to do?” he asked her sharply. “They are probably bored boys who work at the Saudi PTT.” Boys who initially began dialing random numbers with the hopes of hearing female voices, boys who then grew bold enough to speak and attempt to make girlfriends in their own misguided way.
“They do not have Arabic accents,” Masi had pointed out. “They sound like they are Indian or Pakistani.” Like they were from my school, I could almost hear her hinting. As usual, Masa ignored her unspoken words.
“Don’t reply, then! Do not engage them in conversation! How many times must I tell you this? The more you talk, the more you encourage them.”
I, on the other hand, escaped to my bedroom the moment the phone rang, making no move to pick it up even when Masi ordered me to.
The night I talked to Porus’s mother, I overheard Masi making a long-distance call to the Dog Lady from the master bedroom. I quietly picked up the extension in the hallway.
“… sitting in her room every day after school doing God knows what. Rusi keeps telling me to give her space and time. But how much time can I give her?” I heard Masi saying. “Really, Persis, sometimes I think I’m going mad.”
On the other end, I heard the Dog Lady let out a sigh. “I don’t want to say much, Khorshed, in case I’m wrong. Who knows, with young people these days? But whatever it is, she is still a girl and, more important, your girl. If anything bad happens, she can bring shame on your whole family. Remember that your names are attached to her now.”
“What do I do, Persis?” Masi pleaded. “What can I do when no one tells me anything?”
“Now, now, don’t worry, my dear child. There is a good and reasonable solution to this. She’s almost eighteen now, isn’t she? No? When—in two years? Well then, it’s about time you and Rusi start thinking of getting her married. What about that boy, Porus? You told me that he likes her.”
“His mother would never approve of her,” Masi said, echoing my thoughts. “Besides, he is only eighteen and can barely support himself and his mother on his salary. How will he take on a wife?”
There was a pause before the Dog Lady spoke again. “I wouldn’t normally suggest this, but there are quite a few men in our colony, even divorced men, who are looking for younger girls to marry.”
Marriage. I imagined the word swirling around my aunt’s mind, sparking in corners and then settling within, warm and soothing, like the smell of butter and cumin in freshly cooked rice. After marriage, I would most likely have to go back to India. No one would mention my mother or my father again. Masa and Masi could continue to stay in Saudi if they wanted to, or even move to a different place, like Dubai.
Neither Persis nor Masi said it, but it was understood: after marriage, I would be my husband’s problem, not Masi’s. Better if the man in question was fifteen or twenty years older and had a steady job.