Daughters Inherit Silence Read online

  The vegetable seller and the lady from the big house exchanged looks of understanding. The binds of marriage were such that the more you struggled, the more they tightened around you. It took a lady of exceptional strength to rend them.

  Jaya continued, “She said, as expected, that she would have no respect in society if she left her husband. She did try going back to her parents once. You can guess how that went.”

  He nodded in understanding. The more orthodox the family, the less chance there was that they would interfere in a marriage. If she came to their house with broken bones, they would take her to the doctor, buy her the prescribed medication, and put her back on the next bus home. Or in a car, if they could afford it. Some parents might come in, plead with the in-laws, fall at the husband’s feet, beg him to treat her better. But they rarely took her back into their own homes. Once married, she no longer belonged with the parents. The parents might bleed for their daughter, cry in the privacy of their homes for her karma, but the sanctity of marriage must never be violated.

  “So,” Jaya said, “she continued to struggle to buy food for their children. One day he broke her jaw, and I couldn’t take it anymore. I took her to the hospital. After she recovered, I helped her set up a bank account so she would have a place to put her cash. We did not tell her husband about it. Then I started giving her one holiday each week. And three weeks each year so she could visit her mother.”

  Jaya also paid the school fees for the maid’s children and helped her invest her money. Compared to Jaya, the maid’s needs were few.

  “Why?” He looked at her, serious, unblinking.

  Flustered, Jaya dropped her gaze. She played with the handle of the basket idly, seeking the right words. She decided on brutal honesty. “Seven years ago, I lost my husband. It took a tragedy of that magnitude for me to notice my maid. In my in-laws’ house—back when we lived in Hyderabad—and in my parents’ house before that, the maid was part of the background, doing what she always did.”

  Jaya was taken aback by her ability to talk so freely to this man, any man. Thoughts often gathered in her head, one word at a time, till they were churning like grains of rice boiling in a cauldron over an open flame. In the years she had lived with her father-in-law—thirteen in all—she had learned to swallow her convictions: from politics to books to social justice, the words foamed in her belly. But these words, ingested and unacknowledged, did not land without consequence. They seared her insides. They caused debilitating migraines, and lately, intense pain in the inside of her ear.

  Why, then, was she able to talk to this man? A vegetable seller, of all people? Was it because he was not her social equal and, therefore, of no consequence? The thought troubled her.

  “When you grow up with something, you tend not to question it,” the man said, surprising her with his insight and compassion. “It can take a life-changing event to jolt one from that perspective. Why did you change maids? Did she get too old to work?”

  “He killed her.”

  “Where?” His voice shook.

  “In the middle of the road, right in front of the bank.”

  “Why?”

  “He found her bank passbook in the rice container and forced her to withdraw all that money for him. Then he beat her so badly, she died.”

  “When?”

  “Two weeks ago.”

  “Kids?”

  “Boy, seven. Girl, nine. They ran away.”

  The man bowed his head, eyes closed and palms joined together, his lips moving in silent prayer. He knew, and Jaya knew, the kids would blend into the streets, become part of the faceless, almost certainly exploited, never to be heard from again.

  Opening his eyes, he said, “You’ve never bargained with me in all these years. You bought the slightly bad vegetables I could never hope to sell elsewhere. I used to think you were a naïve widow. I pitied you.”

  She looked away, her mortification intense. She felt movement around her—people, vehicles—but her senses had dulled. Silence roared in her ears.

  The vegetable seller stood in front of her, motionless, the money pouch in one hand, the cash Jaya had paid him in the other. “Amma, my name is Ramu.”

  It was surreal, standing right in the middle of a busy street, rushing vehicles raining dust, in intimate conversation with her vegetable seller. With Ramu. Jaya shuffled uncomfortably, not sure how to respond.

  Reaching over, Ramu returned her money to the palm of her hand, careful not to let skin touch skin. With a respectful incline of his head, he gave the rolling cart a nudge. Pushing it past a dip in the road, he walked away.

  3

  Kovid

  San Francisco, California

  Present Day

  Kovid walked along the temporary TransBay Terminal in downtown San Francisco, trying to figure out how long it had been since he’d spent time with his older brother. Weeks, maybe months. With his brother fifty miles away in San Jose, it was hard to coordinate schedules.

  His brother had his cellphone camera out, capturing the kids in their pre-adolescent and adolescent awkwardness. Something to embarrass them with on the day of their weddings. Kovid grinned.

  A little ahead, Kovid’s daughter, Nina, skipped alongside her older cousins, undeterred by the fact that they were twins—and boys. She looked back frequently at her father, her face joyous at this unexpected treat.

  Kovid tried to tamp down his guilt; the demands of work were such that he was constantly struggling to free up time for his daughter. He sighed. No one said being a single parent was easy. And, at least, his daughter lived with him. His brother got to see his own boys only every other weekend.

  At 6' 4", his brother, Diwakar, was unusually tall for an Indian man. Kovid remembered how hard it had been for his parents to find his brother a bride he wouldn’t dwarf. Determined to not let their father bully him as Dad did Diwakar, Kovid had found his own bride—and look how that had turned out. Not that Diwakar’s marriage had fared any better.

  From the TransBay Terminal, they headed to Market Street, then turned in the direction of Yerba Buena. The view from here was something to behold: downtown high-rises towering over the gardens, a beautiful church that faced them. A lifetime in the city, and Kovid had no idea what the church looked like on the inside. He massaged the back of his neck, trying not to let the list-of-things-yet-undone guilt-trip him.

  “You okay?” Diwakar asked.

  Kovid nodded. Everything was A-OK, other than the fact that he lived in one of the most beautiful cities on earth, but couldn’t find the time to share it with his daughter.

  * * *

  The SF MOMA—the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art—was another place he meant to take his daughter to. One of these days he would also make time for the north side of Market Street, toward Union Square and Chinatown. He smiled—Diwakar and he had a few memories from their teen years—unfortunately, not the kind one shared with a pre-teen daughter, or teenaged nephews, for that matter. But Nina loved Chinese, and Chinatown did amazing things to tofu. The twins claimed not to like the soy-based product: that was reason enough to corral the boys there. Kovid grinned.

  “What?” Diwakar nudged him.

  “I was thinking of The New Wonton.”

  Diwakar snorted with laughter. Getting busted by the restaurant owners for sneaking in beer as teens wasn’t a memory they’d shared with their parents. Fortunately, the owners had let them off with a warning, first confiscating the beers.

  Kovid decided they’d take the scenic way back home, walking along 3rd Street till they hit the drawbridge and the AT&T Park. Diwakar’s twins, Rohan and Sohan—their names rhyming in true Indian fashion—groaned, as of course, they would.

  Diwakar quelled the boys with a single glance.

  Kovid raised his face to the sun. Warm days in San Francisco were about as rare as vegetarian food in the steakhouse his colleagues at work frequented. Add to that the tall buildings, and some streets saw almost no sun. Kovid was lucky. He
lived close to the Embarcadero, with nothing to block his view of the bay.

  Nina tugged her hands free from her cousins and ran back. “Can we have pizza, Dad, please, please, please?”

  Kovid raised a questioning eyebrow at his brother.

  “Pizza?” Diwakar tugged at Nina’s hair. “I’m going to have to think about that, Pipsqueak. I’m getting a little soft in the middle.”

  “Uncle!”

  Kovid snorted. Any extra pizza would redistribute itself on his brother’s frame with minimal effort. At 5'11", Kovid, who lacked his brother’s extra inches, was the one who needed to be watchful.

  Diwakar relented. “Fine, but one slice each.”

  Kovid gave his brother a look sideways.

  Diwakar winked, and Kovid grinned.

  The boys rolled their eyes in tandem, as they did pretty much everything. At fourteen, they were in the prime of their attitudinal years, though they were surprisingly gentle with their nine-year-old cousin. Good kids, all of them.

  Inside the pizza place, they bickered good-naturedly—Nina wanting cheese-stuffed crust; the boys mimicking throwing up at the talk of vegetable toppings; Diwakar drooling over pesto; and Kovid grateful to be alive on a warm sunny day, spending time with his family, and being able to call San Francisco home.

  After lunch, Kovid hustled the group out. “Let’s take the scenic route home.”

  On cue, the boys groaned in unison, “Not again!”

  Diwakar just laughed, shepherding the boys along in the direction of the China Basin behind the AT&T Park, and along the docks.

  A woman sat on a bench, bouncing a baby in her arms. As the brothers passed, she smiled up at them.

  Diwakar elbowed Kovid in the side. “You need to be doing that, Little Brother—getting yourself a wife, making more babies.”

  Kovid snorted. “And where am I going to find that wife?” His work schedule was so insane, he was grateful to have even this Sunday free.

  Another woman, a blue-eyed, frizzy-haired blonde, carted her twins in a double stroller, followed by a weary man loaded down by shopping bags.

  The toddlers snacked on quintessential American goodness: french fries.

  Kovid smiled down at the babbling children, wondering idly how it would be to have another wife, another baby.

  The boys ran along the docks, chasing a bird.

  Nina ran past the stroller, trying to catch up. Stumbling, she grabbed at the stroller to break her fall.

  “Fuck you,” the blue-eyed blonde said.

  Kovid’s head snapped up. “Excuse me?”

  The woman grabbed at Nina’s hand and shoved it off the stroller, her face twisting into a mask of viciousness. “Why don’t you and your spawn crawl back to your crime-infested country, asshole?”

  * * *

  After the kids were in bed, Diwakar and Kovid each grabbed a beer and sat on Kovid’s bay-facing balcony.

  Kovid lay back in the swing and ran a hand over his face.

  When confronted with the racist woman earlier in the day, his immediate instinct had been to verbally tear the woman apart. But his daughter had looked up at him with fearful eyes, and he couldn’t do it. Instead, he stared the woman down. “I’m saddened that the hatred within you causes you to attack an innocent child. You may not know this, but my daughter and I were both born here in the United States. Not that it would excuse your behaviour in any way if we hadn’t been.”

  Behind the woman, the man mouthed his apologies.

  Taking his daughter’s hand in his, Kovid walked away.

  On a day he’d hoped to build memories for his daughter and her cousins, he’d been forced to sit them down on the steps by the wharf and explain bigotry and hatred to them.

  A malignant end to what should have been a poignant day.

  “Not the kind of day you had in mind,” Diwakar said.

  Kovid snorted. “No kidding.”

  Diwakar sighed. In the gathering darkness he talked about wanting to getting back with his estranged wife, and how that was never going to happen.

  Kovid’s jaw tightened. Dad had destroyed Diwakar’s marriage with his constant interference. His big brother’s problem was that he was too trusting for his own good. He didn’t dig beyond the surface. Kovid was grateful for his brother’s sake that their father no longer lived within manipulating distance.

  The changing political situation had worried Mom greatly but, typical for Dad, he’d brushed aside any concern that did not directly concern him. The trigger point for Dad had been the breakup of Diwakar’s marriage: It had humiliated him enough that he’d abruptly pulled up stakes and dragged Mom off to India.

  With Dad a safe ten-thousand miles away, Kovid hoped Diwakar and Rekha would be able to work it out; she was the only woman his brother had ever loved.

  4

  Jaya

  Present Day

  The wall that separated Jaya’s courtyard from Ramani aunty’s was chest-high, which gave both a comfortable view into each other’s courtyard. This was quite unlike the ceiling-high wall that shielded her courtyard from Next-door aunty’s, which also made Jaya happy. Next-door aunty was too inquisitive for Jaya’s liking.

  Jaya leaned against the wall and rested her arms on it. “Making anything special?”

  Ramani aunty’s hand, the one holding the vegetable, slipped, barely missing the knife.

  Jaya winced. “Sorry!”

  Aunty smiled, and her eyes smiled, too. “Oh, no. Please don’t apologise. In America we lived in walled-off yards. We didn’t really have the chance to interact with neighbours over fences. Or chest-high walls. Only a quick wave as we entered and exited driveways. That was one reason I was happy to move back.”

  Aunty did not look like someone who’d lived in America most of her adult life. The big bottu adorning her forehead was real kumkum powder, not the plastic sticker more and more ladies were using for convenience, Jaya included. The cotton sari encasing her comfortable proportions was traditional Venkatagiri: elegant to look at, but a pain to maintain. The saris had to be hand-washed, starched and ironed, though, with the bi-weekly visit from the washerwoman, this wasn’t a real problem.

  Aunty sat feet-up on the hemp-rope cot in her courtyard, the upright, semicircular blade of the platform-knife gleaming menacingly in the sun. Jaya smiled in amusement as Aunty shifted this way and that, trying to find a comfortable position.

  All those years in America, and she seemed to have lost the ability to sit without having to rest her feet on the floor, which meant she could no longer efficiently operate the platform-knife. When Aunty was finally comfortable, she held down the base of the platform-knife with a foot, and reached for a brinjal. Eggplant, the Americans called it. She roughly sliced the vegetable on the upright blade of the knife—which required an expertise she clearly did not possess—and dropped the pieces into a bowl of water. “And, to answer your question, I felt like eating hot bajjis. I thought I’d fry some up before Ananta gets home.”

  “Thank you for spending so much time with her each day.” Jaya’s ten-year-old daughter adored their neighbour, treating the older lady like a beloved grandmother. Two grandmothers of her own, and her daughter felt no sense of connection to either. Jaya shook off her sense of loss.

  Little things gave away the fact that Aunty had been away from India for a significant period of time. A local lady would have blushed, flushed or stammered away the thanks, formal acceptance of it not really part of the Indian culture. Was it because acknowledging one’s own good deeds was considered prideful?

  Ramani aunty replied with typical American directness which, depending on who was doing the saying, could be refreshing. “It helps me, too. If I’m occupied with your Ananta, I’m not brooding over my Nina.” Aunty had three grandchildren who lived in America, but it was Nina whom Aunty talked about the most.

  “Every child needs a mother, but not everyone is lucky enough to have one.” Srinivas uncle tossed a bag of vegetables at his wife’s feet.
Stepping out of his leather slippers, he went to the hand pump in the corner to wash the dust off his feet. He looked at Jaya pointedly, his bushy, salt-and-pepper unibrow hovering over grey eyes that were disturbingly off-centre. “At home.”

  Jaya sighed. When she was young and foolish, she might have tried to defend her choices. But if age had taught her anything, it was that if no one was listening, talking was wasted breath. Throwing a wave over her shoulder, she started for her office.

  * * *

  “Amma, where are you? Am-ma!”

  Jaya ran into the courtyard in panic. She peered over the wall into her neighbours’ courtyard. Ananta held up a bleeding finger.

  “Oh, no!” Jaya ran out of her compound, onto the road, and into Ramani aunty’s courtyard.

  “You didn’t have to rush over for that.” Aunty clicked her tongue, reaching into a medical kit. “This is a superficial wound. Both of you, sit.”

  Jaya sat on the cot, pulling Ananta into her lap. Jaya wasn’t the kind of mother who panicked at the slightest hurt, but Ananta wasn’t the kind of girl who panicked at the slightest blood, either.

  Ananta buried her face in her mother’s chest, sniffling out little sobs.

  Jaya rocked her as Aunty stemmed the flow of blood, then bandaged the finger expertly.

  “You’re a professional at this.” Jaya surprised by the older lady’s quiet competence.

  Aunty shrugged it off. “When you’ve raised two boys who got into a lot of scrapes…”