Miss Timmins' School for Girls (10 page)

Nelly sat at her fixed place at her table, which for dinner was the Superior White Table. At lunch it was like the captain's table, by invitation only.

I shrugged my shoulders regretfully at Pin and followed Nelson like a little lamb, my fleece as white as snow.

The teachers came in and distributed themselves around the room. I was backing Pin, but I turned to see that not one teacher deigned to sit at her table for four. Even the Sunbeam teachers stayed away. I sat across from Miss Nelson as tensely as at a birthday party with a bunch of rowdy boys—dreading the loud pop of a burst balloon behind my ear.

It happened ten minutes into the meal. “Mallu,” she called to the bearer, and said in her perfect Marathi, “take away my plate. The dal is raw.” She slapped her napkin on the table. “Bring me the fruit,” she said, scraping her chair back with a screech that hurt your heart. She picked an orange from the tray and strode out of the room.

“I do not know how all of you can eat this rubbish day in and day out,” she called over her shoulder to the entire room. There was a minute of cowed silence before we put our spoons into our mouths.

Thank god they can't see me flush, I thought. Thank god my blot is not raw these days. After lunch, I grabbed my raincoat and ran down Oak Lane to Merch's, because it seemed the first logical place to look for her. Sunbeam was too far, and I knew she would not be lounging in the staff room. I found Merch's room locked and Pin sitting on the top step. I sat down next to her, my thigh running along hers.

She was drawing letters with a stick on the stone step below her, her chin resting on her knees, the soft white nape of her neck exposed. A drop of rain slid off the angled eave and fell plop upon her head. I wanted to reach out and brush it off, but a perky little five-year-old was staring up at us from the dispensary window, and I kept my hands to myself.

“I'm sorry,” I said again. “You know, I don't think she meant to hurt you. She was quite welcoming, in fact.”

Pin ignored me for a few minutes. Then she stood up. “OK, Miss Tinker Bell, if that is how you see it,” she said without looking at me and ran down the stairs. I caught up with her, but she turned towards the bazaar and I had to go back to school for class. She did not say good-bye, just walked on with a stony face.

I had not seen her since.

Ayi moaned. It was one soft sigh, but it brought me back to my senses. I must be the good daughter. It was the first time my mother needed me, and I would stay with her. I would cheer her up. The monsoon term ended on the ninth of September. Three more weeks of class, then three weeks of holidays. Ayi would get stronger, and I would go back to school. I would go back to Timmins for the winter term.

As soon as I made up my mind to stay, and decided that it was really not bad at all, the six weeks without Pin began to stretch out for a lifetime. I wanted to run back to tell her that she was right.

“I don't go because Nelson can't eat if I am in the same room,” Pin had said to me when I first asked her why she never came to the staff lunch. I had thought her paranoid or, at best, flippant. But I believed her now. Nelson had humiliated her. It was a public lashing. She had ensured that Pin would never come to lunch again. The two of them must have a tangled past, and Pin was right. I was Tinker Bell to think I could just come in and wave a small wand.

But I wanted to hug her to me. “I believe you now,” I wanted to say. “Nelson
is
twisted.” I wanted to protect her. Anything could happen in six weeks. No, I could not wait so long. I would go back on Sunday to get my things. Kolhapur was close enough; I could take a bus. I would go back every weekend. Yes, I thought, happily ordering the world, I would go back for the weekends and spend the weekdays with Ayi. Maybe Merch could teach in my place. Although the missionaries rarely allowed men into the hallowed halls, except for servants and priests, they had, for some unknown reason, allowed the Mystery Man access to the outer sanctum. He filled in at times for suddenly sick or called-away teachers. But of course he never strayed from the upper level, where the classrooms were. He said he had never even seen the staff dining room. So I slept in peace, and woke up deep into the night and had a sweet private little orgasm.

My ayi was up before me. She was sitting erect on her bed, meditating. She had started this a few years ago, said it made her feel much stronger. I watched her, pretending to be asleep. Her shoulders were straight, which I felt was a good sign. She got out of bed and went out to the bathroom. She walked with purpose, as usual. She was up. She was going to be strong, for me. I thought this was an excellent first step. I would cheer her up. I would patch her up and soon send her back to Baba, I thought, for I was still intent on stuffing it all back into the box.

“Let's go shopping. I want to buy a Maharashtrian sari, with a border,” I said to Ayi as we sat with our morning tea. It was a way to draw her out, and I really did want a cotton sari. I was fed up with wearing my teaching outfits from Indore; I felt that they were tight and badly cut. Samar's wife, a quiet girl who sometimes joined the group, wore traditional cotton border saris of different regions. I thought she looked most elegant. It was the new fashion among Bombay girls, I gathered, called ethnic chic. We went to the old market where the nine-yard sari ladies still shopped and sat on white cushions, our legs folded beneath us. I bought a deep green border sari, planning to wear it with a red shoe-flower behind my ear. I saw myself sitting demurely in a corner in Merch's room. We then went looking for what was rumored to be the first shop that ever made the original Kolhapuri chappals now worn by all the Bombay girls. We found it finally, an intense hole-in-the-wall run by two doddering brothers. It was in the heart of the old city, and the narrow road was a noisy jumble of cows, bicycles, rickshaws, and vendors selling cheap plastic toys. It was easier to walk, and so we sent the protesting driver home, wandered around instead, and had tea and samosas at Rainbow Lunch Home. I was nearly boisterous, so eager was I to make Ayi laugh. And she did. She did laugh often, but I sensed that it was just a sound, made to keep me happy.

We returned by rickshaw in the evening, laden with packages. In the monsoons, when the courtyard could not be used, the action was usually in the wide, covered back veranda outside the kitchen. The drawing-room lights were turned on only when the men came home from work. The veranda was noisy with aunts and servants and children eating fresh fried fritters from a steel plate. There was a dip in the sound when we walked in. Everyone pretended not to look at Ayi. I knew they were cheering me on. It was as if a bed of nails had opened up to reveal a plump mattress inside. The comfort of a large family I felt that day for the first time.

“Really, Charu, you should go back and finish the term. No sense in giving up like that in the middle,” Ayi said that night when we had both gotten into our beds and tucked the mosquito nets around us.

“No, I want to stay,” I said.

“No, I tell you, I will be just fine. I will stay here for three weeks, and then, when your holidays come, you come here first, and then we will both go together to Indore.” She did not say “to Baba,” and again I began to wonder if Baba's secret past had somehow come into focus again. Maybe the looming shadow had pounced.

Ayi was too fragile. I could not ask her now, of all times. But perhaps I could ask Tai.

I looked for a chance to find Tai alone, which was difficult since she was not a contemplative woman. Finally the next evening I came upon her combing her hair with a little bowl of oil beside her. Turned out she wanted to talk to me.

“Come here, Charu,” she called, “come, sit down.” She pointed beside her. “I want to ask you, has Shalini said anything to you?”

I shook my head. “No, nothing,” I said, my heart fluttering like the wings of a trapped parrot. “Why, did—did something new come up?”

Tai appraised me with a shrewd look. “Well, they have to tell you when they want to,” she muttered, scowling, as she always did when my little family was mentioned. But then her eyes softened. “She will be stronger, soon, don't worry. You know, Charu, it is a woman's job to protect her family. Everyone has to do it. Soon it will be your turn. Then you'll understand. At a certain age, a woman begins to feel tired of it all. Sometimes you have to put your load down. Your mother is tired. Now you have to help her. We all have to help her.”

Tai's hair was done. Oiled, plaited, and wound into a small bun with a net around it. She wrapped up the conversation with a Tai special. Tai was famous for ending all conversations with a broader lecture on life. “I told your ayi. Some things we women just have to ignore. I told her, don't look up. In life, one must always look down at those below you, and be happy.”

I had no choice but to be content with that for now.

By Sunday morning Ayi was so much better that Tai herself thought it was wise for me to finish my stint and come back. “It is only three weeks, and we will all look after her,” she said.

Tai, of course, chalked this up as a personal triumph. She had come in and solved the family problem, yet again. Her power remained intact. She decided that morning, quite abruptly, which was the way she made most of her decisions, to go to Igatpuri for a week. Surekha, the second sister, lived there, and she had found a prospective girl for Tai's son. Tai was in the midst of choosing a bride for her son and was dashing around looking for the right girl. Her son would then view the selected ones.

“After that, I am going to find you a boy. I have a very good family in mind,” she said, and smiled ominously. I was sure it would be a widower from Surat with two young children. He would comb his oily black hair in a Rajesh Khanna puff.

She waddled out of the house in triumph, her breasts preceding her like wind-puffed sails.

From the time I was a baby, the custom had been set. I was taken to touch Dada's feet when I came to Kolhapur, and I went in to touch his feet when I left. So I went into his room to say good-bye. The old man teared up again a bit, but he smiled. “Shabash, Charu, you will be a strong girl,” he said. “I am glad, because you will need it.” He patted my back. I took it for what it was: It was the truth. He looked into my face again. I knew now he always would.

I left in the afternoon, in the white Ambassador with Sayed driving, the combination always considered safest for long-distance travel. Ayi stood at the gate until my car turned the corner, and I knew that her eyes would be wet. I knew she had put on a brave front; I hoped her front would harden into a shell. But she will be just fine, I assured myself. I was armed with fresh-ground garlic chutney, a bag of good Kolhapur rice, and a knack for making bhakarwadi. Tai, Ayi, and I had rolled them out for a huge Sunday lunch.

“Shalini tai is much better as soon as she saw you,” said Sayed while driving back. He had always been the driver trusted with the girls. I think he had even carried me as a child, from the car to my mother as she shopped for saris with her sisters, and I felt he was proud of me. I realized this was the first time in Kolhapur when I had not felt that the blot covered my entire face.

As we turned the corner on the ghat up from Vai, the fog became thick, and soon we could see almost nothing. The rain became heavier as we climbed up the ghat, and Sayed slowed the car to a crawl. It was a like a punch to the head, diving back into the Panchgani rain.

Eleven

Transport

I
walked in just as the school was sitting down for dinner. The tin-roofed rain walk led straight down through the center of the school, plunging me into the post-grace chatter of the dining room. The lights had gone off. The dining room was lit by four hissing gas lanterns hung on hooks from the ceiling. I took a candle from the dispensary, called a cheery “hello” to Sister Richards, and put down my bags, meaning to change and go for dinner. But I could not. I could not even stay in my room for more than a minute. I washed my face, smoothed my hair, and walked out into the wet night. I felt an urgent need to see her. I feared that something terrible had happened to her.

I decided to go to Merch. Maybe she would be there. I stood outside, the rain dripping down my nose, and looked in to see Samar and his wife laughing on the carpet, but not her. I could not go in. I went on to Sunbeam. Let her be there, I prayed to my emergency god. Let her be there, and I will hug her, hold her, feel her heart beat against mine, and leave.

She was wearing a loose white khadi shirt, her sleeves rolled up to the elbow. She was sitting on a mattress, smoking a joint. Her knees were folded up to her chin, her lips pouting. She did not see me at the back window. I walked through the dank, dark kitchen and burst into her room. I do not know when she jumped up. But, lithe as a cat, she was at the door. We hugged and hugged and hugged again, and then were on the bed. And it was I who made love to her. After all those kisses, after all those stolen kisses, all those times in the backseat of a wet car, or wet outside my bedroom door, or in the wind on Merch's balcony, after all those times when I had pulled away in fear or guilt, we traveled a new world together that night, this I know. Our lovemaking was so smooth and sweet, it was a night dipped in honey.

Before dawn, while she was still sleeping, snoring softly, with her nose in the pillow, I sneaked out and walked back to my room, followed by barking dogs. The rain had turned light, but it still dripped around my raincoat hood like a curtain. The town was asleep. I was afraid for my life, but I held her body like a warm shield under my raincoat. As I was going down Oak Lane, I heard a swish, and a long minute later, a bicycle went careening down the slippery slope, the milkman whistling above his jangling cans.

From then on, we could not stay apart. We started meeting in the afternoons, on the days I did not have class. I would walk out from the back, straight after lunch. I felt invisible in the pouring rain. She had the keys to Merch's rooms and would be waiting for me, listening to music.

Merch, she always said, was playing bridge with Mr. Blind Irani. I did not once ask her if Merch knew about us. I did not want to know. I felt I loved Merch too, in a fashion. There was a romance between us, but it was like lace.

It was a flirtation of smiles and small confidences. I thought of myself as a listener, but I found that with him, I talked. Our friendship was mellow and light, like the cigarette smoke that curled between us beside the table lamp.

If Merch was air, Prince was fire.

On a voluptuous afternoon, she slid my hair around my body. “Charulata unbound,” she said.

She did not talk about her past. When she brooded, I did not enter. I could see the shift in her brittle eyes.

I was shuttling between green eyes. But they are so very different, the green eyes of the two people I love most, I thought. Ayi's eyes were transparent. They were like two little conductors. They passed on her love, her laughter, her sadness. Everyone—government clerks, vegetable vendors, neighbors and schoolteachers—everyone was always enchanted by Ayi. My mother was the lovely lady with the light eyes.

Pin's eyes were flecked with yellow. They were like marbles, glassy with hidden secrets. “What does it feel like,” she whispered once, as we lay in bed, “to be loved without conditions?”

“Nobody is loved without conditions,” I said, automatically.

“I bet you are,” she quipped, licking my shoulder.

“Well, I guess I am,” I conceded at first, and then thought about it. “I guess I am the center of their universe. I mean my parents'. But it is conditional. As long as I go along with their values. I suppose as long as I am a good girl.”

“You are?” she mocked.

I don't know if she ever guessed the sudden turmoil that could sometimes overtake me. I put our secret world in a separate compartment and tried to pretend it did not exist.

“And if you were not a good girl, would they love you?” she asked. She always played with my hair.

I broke into a sweat. If Ayi Baba saw me now, could they love me?

“Parents must love their children. Even if they cast them out, deep down, they love them. It's the nature of life,” I said, hoping it was true.

“Nope,” said Pin. “Not true. I don't think
they
did. In any way whatsoever.” She did not refer to them as parents.

It was a part of the romance of her, the brooding and the mystery. “I'm certifiably unlovable. You should know that,” she added, flippantly.

“
I love you
,” I could have said, but did not have that kind of confidence. “Why, were you terribly naughty?” I asked instead.

“I was flawed goods to them. From the beginning, I think,” she said, shrugging her shoulders to show she did not care. “They just loved the Lord. I was always different from them. I remember thinking they were idiots when I was about seven.” And then she changed the subject.

I did not understand. If her parents died when she was an adult, she was not an orphan in the traditional sense. So why was she tied to Nelson? I brought it up once, on a late night cigarette run with Merch, when we had left Pin behind with a gray cloud perched upon her head, angry about some slight from Nelly.

“Why does she have to hate Nelly so much? Nobody is
forcing
her to stay here,” I said, though of course I did not want her to go, I just wanted to dig deeper. “Why does she have to take everything Nelly does as a personal insult?”

Merch did not answer at once. He watched his gum boots squelching in the mud. “She's going through a tough time. She feels alone in the world. She feels they all betrayed her.”

“And did they?” I prompted, after a pause in which he added nothing.

“It's her story, really,” said Merch gently. “She'll tell you when she is ready.” I imagined a small reproof in this and decided to ask no more. But I always felt safe with Merch after that, knowing how he guarded his confidences.

“At least if they had died when she was a child, she could have imagined how they would have loved her,” he said.

“So you think it's true that they did not love her?” It popped right out, though I had promised myself a minute ago to delve no more.

“It is true,” he said, handing me the umbrella to hold while he took out two cigarettes. “It's her truth.” The rain splashed around our ankles, and our heads almost touched as we lit our cigarettes with a single match.

The bidi stall was just a five-minute walk from Merch's. At around eleven, just before the bidiwala closed for the night, Merch would usually offer to go and replenish the cigarette stock. I would stand up and walk out with him. We took Merch's large black umbrella and walked in step, our faces wet with windblown drizzle.

I had begun smoking cigarettes. I liked Wills, though Merch and Prince smoked Charminars. I started just because the smoke, the lighting, inhaling, and languid curling, was so much a part of those nights. But I had not smoked a joint yet. I would always smile and shake my head when it was passed around. I helped Merch make the joints, though, mostly because it gave me something to do. I would empty the cigarettes, Merch would burn and soften a part of some large ball of hash of which he seemed to have a steady supply, and I would mix it into the tobacco. He would refill the cigarettes with the mixture. We always made three joints at a time.

Sometimes, in the days of the long rains, when we did not feel like slicing through to the bidi stand, we would assure each other that we had quite enough cigarettes of all brands and would just end the party when they were over. Then, deep into the night, we would set off in the Fiat, searching for cigarettes and strong sweet chai. They were always wonderful nights.

I can cut my time in Panchgani into two with a warm knife. The second half began after Kolhapur. I was in hell one minute, and in heaven the next. When I was not with her, I felt I should not see her again. It was her fault. She was turning me into a depraved person. No wonder her parents hated her. I must stop making love to her, or I would turn into her. I could not even bring myself to say the word in the recesses of my mind. A lesbian, branded for my whole entire life as a fallen woman. But then I ran to her, and wanted nothing else, except her.

My blot began to change. I slept so little, and went through the days in a haze. The long hours I spent composing my face and attending and containing my blot were no more. One morning, I noticed it had turned darker. Then, the edges started wavering and spreading. It began to change from day to day. I studied it every morning with detachment. Once a tight pink coin, it turned into a dark brown amoeba whose edges seeped into my face.

I wondered if Ayi would notice the changed blot when I saw her in two weeks. I wrote her short bursts of notes, dashing off two-liners on postcards before I went for dinner. “
Counting the days to seeing you
,” and “
Remembered you today when I made aloo puri at Sunbeam
.” She wrote once, a letter that gave no indication of her state of mind and ended with “
You must be busy with end of term work. Do not worry about me. The two Bhabhis look after me so well, always making my favorite dishes
.” I chose to find the letter reassuring.

I was tired and dazed during the day, and sometimes short-tempered with the girls, but discovered to my delight that they were better for it. They were less inclined to be cheeky. I began to go into the class with almost no preparation. I went with the flow. In standard ten, we read
Macbeth
and dissected it backward and forward and sideways—guilt and war and A-line dresses, and Indira Gandhi's non-effect on changing the role of women in India. I beamed specifically to Nandita, who seemed to process every word.

I often came across Nandita with two other girls, Ramona and Akhila, after class. Ramona was a gangly, high-strung girl who was prone to giggling fits. Akhila was a cheeky chimp of a girl who always drew a smile after her name. In their free time, the three of them often sat on the covered steps leading down to the hospital. They were always engrossed in secrets, and stopped abruptly as I passed them on my way to my room. “Good evening, Miss Apte,” they chorused, waiting until I turned the corner before resuming.

Miss Nelson smiled at me one day in the staff dining room, and said, loud enough for all to hear, “Charulata, you are doing very well with the tens. I heard you as I passed by yesterday.” Praise from her was enough to puff you out for a day or two.

But my spot in the sun was getting increasingly precarious.

Soon it became difficult to restrain Pin in school. She would run up to me and pull my plait from behind. She tried to kiss me in the staff room one morning when we found ourselves alone.

“Can't you please, please behave in school?” I begged. The last place I would choose for a kiss would be the staff room in the morning.

“Now you want to put me back in the box, Miss Charu?” she would say darkly at times, and “OK, promise, ayi chi shappat,” another.

But she would not stop. I lived between the dread of being caught and the pure excitement of running into her in a hallway. The rain was liberating. We walked away from the covered corridors and broke out into the rain as soon as we spotted each other. The hockey pitch and lower gardens were always deserted. The rain became our very own portable curtain.

Miss Henderson accosted me near the long steps one afternoon. “Where are you these days, dear? Come and have tea with me,” she said, adjusting her ringlets. “You never come now.” Her smile seemed a bit cold.

“Everything fine with your family, dear?” she asked as I bit into the biscuit. “Too bad I missed Padmaja. She, now, has the stamp of breeding. I told the girls, I always said, all the girls from that family have it.” And then, after a stitch, she said, “Even you, my dear, I know that stamp of breeding when I see it.”

Then, looking intensely down at her table runner, she said, her voice soft and firm, “I am sure you feel far from home here, but you must be careful about the company you keep. People talk too much here.” I did not ask her what she meant. I pretended I had not heard and talked nervously about Padmaja's daughter for a short while before standing up abruptly and saying good-bye.

I wanted to sneak into my room and lie down and think for some time, and was tiptoeing down the hospital steps, quaking, when Sister Richards called, “Come and have a brandy, child, to dry the bones. This wretched rain. Pah. All my life.”

Sister would often hear me bustling in my room in the evenings before dinner, and call out to me. “Come and join, my girl,” she would say. I did go in sometimes and listen to her rambling. I always refused the drink.

“In the war, of course, we all drank,” she would say every single time. “And then, got so used to it, can't sleep without it, you know. Mind you, I never drink more than two.”

The dinner bell rang at seven. I always left her drinking her “second” drink as she waited for the ayah to bring her dinner.

Today, still turning hot and cold from Hendy's meeting, I accepted a brandy from Sister. “You were as timid as a rabbit when you first came. Used to scoot out backwards when I asked you for a drink,” said Sister, smacking her lips after the first long sip.

“That's what I said to that Raswani woman. I told her, ‘They're youngsters, why not be friends?' I like Moira. She stayed here when she was sick. She would come down and have a drink with me. She's been to England a few times, you know,” she added, approvingly.