The Sleeping Dictionary (30 page)

“I came up with it,” Mummy said, beaming. “It’s the perfect name for a pretty Anglo-Indian girl. Her skin is perfect: tea brewed for a half minute with plenty of milk! I wouldn’t have thought, Pamela, you could produce a daughter so fair—”

“Hazel,” I repeated, not liking how the word started out like a cough and ended with a dull consonant. “May I feed her?”

“Of course. You should learn this, as every mother must.” Dr. DeCruz turned to address Lina, who had been squatting in the corner of the storeroom. “Girl, go to your kitchen and see that water is brought to full boil. You must watch it bubble for several minutes before you take it off the fire. And the flask must be cleaned with boiling water before the rest of the water is added.”

“Yes, Doctor-saheb. I understand!” Lina skipped out of the room, looking excited to fulfill such a task.

Mummy sighed and rose to her feet. “I must be leaving in order
to greet tonight’s guests. Doctor, when should Pamela return to work?”

“At least three more weeks for healing. However, she would be more comfortable resting at Rose Villa than this place.” He looked at her significantly.

“If you came alone, I suppose—” Mummy began.

“Do you mean for me to return there now
without
my baby?” Through my pain, another feeling was emerging. It was protection.

“Of course! That has always been the plan,” Mummy said in a friendly way, but with an expression that didn’t match. “Hazel can stay here with Jayshree through the early years. After that, you may pay for her schooling somewhere. Literate girls are more attractive. In fact . . .”

I lost the rest of what Mummy said because yellow spots were appearing behind my eyes. I had never been so angry. Mummy must have sensed my distress because all of a sudden she stopped speaking but waved her fingers and swept out.

Lina came in straight afterward, carrying the flask of boiled water in one hand and my bundled baby in the crook of her other arm. Dr. DeCruz chided her for the casual manner in which Hazel was being handled and took the baby from her and placed her into my arms. Then he fiddled with some milk powder and a glass bottle that were in his doctor’s big leather bag. He said the drink was too hot; it would have to wait twenty minutes before Hazel could take it.

I could barely pay attention to his lesson in making and serving baby milk because I finally had the chance to examine my daughter. How well she looked. The thin mat of hair I remembered had grown into a robust thatch of dark brown curls. Her pale, plump arms waved in the air as the doctor tapped at them. I thought how perfect her lashes were, surrounding eyes that were lotus-shaped like mine but so much lighter; there was green mixed with the golden brown. I wondered if this color would stay or change as years went on. I wanted to know. I had not wanted this child while she was in me, but now that I’d
seen her, I felt as if there was a magical silken cord knotting us together.

The doctor ordered Lina to leave the room. After we were alone, he closed the door and said, “I want to ask you something in confidence. Do you wish to leave your child to be raised here?”

I looked at him, trying to sense if this was a kind of test Mummy had asked him to use with me. And how did he know about my true secret feelings?

The doctor’s voice was soft. “Leaving her here is not your only choice. I can help.”

My body collapsed with relief, and the words rushed out of me. “Doctor, I cannot keep her with these people. I would rather us both die than that happen!”

“You shouldn’t stay here, either, but I know that you won’t be able to find any kind of decent home or work for yourself with babe in arms. That is why I want to bring Hazel to a very good home.” The doctor reached into his case and withdrew a crisp paper.

It was an official birth certificate issued by the Railway Hospital. On it was typed the name
Hazel Mary Smith, Date of Birth 15 May 1938, Bengal Nagpur Railway Hospital, Khargpur. Race Anglo-Indian.
John Smith was listed as
deceased father, nationality, English.
I was listed as Pamela Barker,
mother born 1920, Anglo-Indian
.

“She is so fair, nobody has to know that you are Indian,” Dr. DeCruz said, when I looked up at him in dismay. “It’s only to make things easier for her.”

“Who is this Mr. Smith?” I felt confused. “And you know that I did not give birth at the hospital!”

“I typed and signed this all myself.” Dr. DeCruz’s gaze was stern. “If the document is used outside Kharagpur limits, no one will think to challenge it. The child is obviously Anglo-Indian.”

“Where will our home be?” How much I wanted a real home; it was all that I had longed for, ever since the tidal wave.

Stroking his silver-black mustache, Dr. DeCruz said, “I shall bring
Hazel to one of the church homes for Anglo-Indian children in the hills. In these places, Anglo-Indian children receive housing, food, and religious education. She will be cared for until maturity.”

The idea of the strange place, so far away, was frightening, but it did not sound as if Hazel would be made into a servant. And at a school, I might be allowed to tutor or teach, especially if I managed to get the Cambridge certificate. Hesitantly, I asked, “May I live and work at this place, too?”

“No. These schools bring up children in a completely English fashion, so they are never confused as to their identity. Hazel is quite lucky to qualify for a place like this. Many of the children get scholarships that lead to higher education and good jobs in the railways and schools and even hospitals.”

I shivered, thinking about how my daughter might grow up to become like one of the Anglo-Indian nurses at the Railway Hospital. If she saw me on the street, she would recognize me only as a native below her. Should she ever learn that she was my flesh and blood, she would weep. Pushing down my sorrow, I spoke carefully. “There is so much to think about. I must make sure my baby is getting enough milk and growing strong. She needs my care and cannot travel now.”

“And you are still recovering!” Dr. DeCruz said, his voice smooth in the same way as when he prepared me for my life in prostitution. “Take all the time you need to heal, Pamela. When you are of sound mind and body, the right decision will be obvious.”

He had spoken of a school in the hills; but what kind of school would take an infant less than a month old? I studied the doctor, thinking that he could do anything he pleased with her. He might be planning to sell or give her to an Anglo-Indian family. Because I would have no further contact with her, I’d never know.

The baby made a rude noise, breaking my train of thought.

Dr. DeCruz laughed. “Hazel may be ready for the bottle now. What do you think?”

“Let me try.” I tilted the bottle again, and her rosebud lips
fluttered against it a few times. But then she took it, and as she drank, her eyes looked up at me. It was as if she were saying,
This does not make any sense, but I am doing it for you
.

“She’s a clever little one.” Dr. DeCruz sounded approving. “Now, before she spits on it, I’ll take back her birth certificate.”

“Here you are.” I handed it to him, and watched it disappear into his deep leather bag, thinking that this would be all he’d ever get of the girl he’d named Hazel Mary Smith.

CHAPTER

17

FUGITIVE:
1. Apt or tending to flee; given to, or in the act of, running away.

—Oxford English Dictionary
, Vol. 4, 1933

T
here was so much to do for my daughter that I could hardly keep track. Fortunately, Lina helped: reminding me when to take my medicine, bringing water and the baby’s milk, and washing the baby’s and my laundry. I thanked her over and over, knowing that, without her, both the baby and I would fail. Then a large box from Rose Villa was delivered. It contained baby clothes, skin cream for me, and at the bottom of the basket, one hundred rupees hidden inside a bottle. The congratulations card was from Lucky-Short-for-Lakshmi. I was overwhelmed by the kindness of the gift and hoped Lucky would come to see the baby.

The hundred rupees were more than enough to get passage to Calcutta. But it would not be enough to pay rent for a decent place, to buy food, and to pay for school fees, although how could I even
attend school with a baby? I wished so much for advice from Bidushi, because she understood money and knew a little about Calcutta. But now I would have to rely on Lucky. After the first big gift, I waited in vain for her to come. When she stayed away, I realized she must be under orders to do so. Mummy wouldn’t like Lucky or any of the girls to feel the kind of maternal yearnings that could lead to a professional mistake.

Out of the money Lucky had gifted me, I paid Lina ten annas each week with strict instructions to hide it for herself. I told her she might want to leave the brothel someday; that to clean houses or care for a family’s babies might be better suited to her nature. Lina said nothing but looked as if she were thinking about it.

TWENTY-ONE DAYS WAS all the time I had left before returning to Rose Villa. And I found that as much as I had wanted to get out of the dancing girls’ house, I regretted the end date coming because of leaving my daughter. I could not leave her with Jayshree; nor did I want to give her to Dr. DeCruz. I avoided thinking about them, instead spending hours memorizing her small face with its sparking green-gold eyes. The eyes had made me fall in love and dream of how beautifully and happily she might grow.

As a girl, I used to hide in an imaginary gold almirah; as a mother, the sanctuary of my dreams changed into a tall white bungalow. In such a home, I imagined that my daughter would inhale only good smells: saffron from rice at the table, jasmine from the garlands twined in her hair, and ink from her school notebook. How different it would be from this brothel, where we were always on the run from the opium fumes that curled their way under my door if people smoked nearby.

As my strength improved, I was able to do more for my child. I bathed her several times each day and, afterward, rubbed her skin with mustard oil until it gleamed. I sent Lina to the bazar to buy the baby
tiny cotton smocks, and I made nappies and swaddling cloths from my own old saris. The brothel women called this frivolous waste and said that the baby was too young to hear stories. But she fed beautifully when I recited poems. And that joy she gave me led to my understanding of what her first name should be: Kabita, which meant poem. Her middle name was Lina, after the little girl who had saved us both.

Dear Kabita! Sweet Kabita!
I whispered into her tiny pink shell of an ear, willing her to do the improbable and learn her name to hold inside her always.

Twenty-one days shrank to eleven and then to only five. I knew that I could not linger on, yet I knew I could not give Kabita up to Jayshree or Dr. DeCruz. Surely there was a better situation. A bud of an idea grew secretly inside me, just like Kabita had. And just like before, there was no one I dared tell.

I WAS NERVOUS to leave Kabita on the day of my medical appointment with Dr. DeCruz; but I feared bringing her with me would be more dangerous, lest the doctor seize her from my arms. So I kept her home under Lina’s care.