The Space Between Us (5 page)

Banu groans in her sleep, as if she is tormented by her own thoughts and dreams. For a split second her eyes fly open, but they
are unfocused and the next second she is snoring again. Still, Sera knows that the old woman will be awake any minute now. She can hear Edna balancing the two cups of tea, getting ready to enter the room. She looks around quickly, guiltily. Edna is almost in the room when Sera bends toward the sleeping woman, as if to caress her forehead. She casts a last, furtive look around before her hand changes its trajectory. Her open palm narrows, so that her thumb and index finger come together like tweezers.

Just as Edna enters the room, Sera takes Banu’s soft, droopy, lifeless cheek between her fingers and pinches her. Hard. Her heart pounds in her chest. She waits for the old woman to wake up with a scream even as she knows that Banu’s paralyzed face hasn’t felt her harsh rebuke. Banu sleeps on, lost in her own fetid world of dreams. Remorse and shame at her juvenile behavior trickle into Sera’s veins like gray smoke. Still, she knows she will perform the same ritual again, tomorrow. It is her only way of chalking up a minor victory for the idealistic, hopeful girl who lies buried inside this graveyard of a house.

Her guilt makes Sera reach into her purse and pull out a hundred-rupee bill. “This is for your children,” she tells Edna. “Buy them some chocolates on your way home today.”

S
hyam, the pockmark-faced neighbor who lives on the other side of the open drain, stops Bhima as she is about to enter her hut. “Namaste, mausi,” he says. “Long day today?” Bhima nods. “Every day is a long day when you’re working,” she replies. Then, remembering that Shyam lost his job two months ago, she smiles ruefully, to make sure he does not read any hint of chastisement into her reply.

But her neighbor does not seem offended. “Hahji,” he says. “Right you are. So, Bhima mausi, are you going to attend our meeting with the corporator tomorrow afternoon?”

“What meeting?” Bhima asks, but even before she finishes asking, she remembers. Bibi had told her a few days ago that the slum dwellers had managed to secure a meeting with one of the municipality big shots, who was to tour the slum. Among the many demands, the slum residents were asking the city to install a few more water taps. “Hah, yes, I remember now,” she says to Shyam before the man can answer. “Someone had mentioned something. But what to do, Shyam, I have to be at work at my mistress’s place. If I don’t work, I don’t eat.”

Shyam winces, and Bhima curses herself for her insensitivity. “Yes, mausi, I know what you are saying,” he says, his voice thick with irony. “For the sake of this whorish stomach, one must do any
thing and everything. But the welfare of this slum is also a worthy cause, no? Surely your mistress can give you a few hours off.”

Bhima feels cornered. Her earlier sympathy for Shyam corrodes into resentment. She is tired, drained, and she is eager to step inside her little hut and shut the door upon the world. Her throat tickles in anticipation of a hot cup of sweet, milky tea, which she hopes the girl Maya has remembered to prepare. She does not want to waste any more time with this unemployed fool. “My mistress needs me,” she says sharply. “As for the slum, that’s why we have you menfolks—to take care of our needs and to talk and debate with the big bosses. I’m just a poor, illiterate woman, only good for chopping onions and using a broom. And speaking of onions, I have to cook dinner for myself and my granddaughter. So, with your permission, I’ll take your leave.”

She has one hand on her door when the sound of Maya’s name on Shyam’s tongue stops her. “Oh, by the way,” he says, and even in the dying light of the day, she can see that his mouth is twisted into a simmering cruelty. “Speaking of Maya…My Rehka went over to your house earlier today. We were out of sugar, and the missus asked Rehka to run over and borrow some. We’ve been noticing Maya doesn’t leave for college these days, so the missus was sure someone would be home.”

Bhima feels her stomach muscles clench. Something is coming, and she is sure it isn’t good. “What’s this got to do with Maya?” she says and does not try to keep the sharpness out of her voice.

“Slow down, slow down, mausi.” Shyam’s voice slithers like a snake through the gathering darkness. “I’m telling you, na? What I’m trying to say is my little Rehka entered your place only to find your Maya throwing up in a corner and holding her belly. And when my Rehku tried to help, your Maya turned on her like a viper
and chased her away. Now is this any way to treat someone living next door to you in a basti?”

“I’ll talk to Maya,” Bhima says. “She’s had the flu for many days, poor girl.”

“Flu, is it?” The voice is even smoother now. “Strange kind of flu, to linger this long. Some of the folks in the basti are saying she’s been throwing up for a month or two now. Still, what with the flies and rats and dirty water in this slum, anything is possible, I suppose.”

Bhima resists the urge to claw at his pockmarked face. Instead, she says in a calm, measured voice, “Send Rehka over, Shyam. I’ll let her have some sugar.”

Shyam brightens immediately. His transformation reminds Bhima of the cobra at Mahalati temple, who lowers his hood as soon as the high priest puts a silver bowl of milk before him. “Bhima mausi. I knew I could count on you.” He grins. “Once I get a job, I intend to repay all my debts. The child will be over in a few minutes.”

Bhima waits until Rehka has left with the half cup of sugar before she turns to Maya. Her eyes sweep across the small room. She notices that her granddaughter has not made her the much-anticipated cup of tea. “What did you do today?” she asks, and the tightness in her voice is a warning.

“Nothing,” the girl replies cautiously.

“Nothing,” Bhima repeats to the air. “The big-bellied princess lay around all day doing nothing.”

Maya’s face is as flat as a table but her eyes are welling with tears. But Bhima is not satisfied. “Did you hear what that badmaash Shyam was saying to me about you?” she hisses.

“Leave me alone, Ma,” Maya says. “I’m not feeling well.” Her voice is as brittle as a clay pot.

Bhima opens her mouth to respond and then closes it. The girl really does look sick.

“Come on,” she says gruffly. “You lie down for a few minutes while I make dinner.”

As if she has detected the shift in her grandmother’s tone, a light comes into Maya’s eyes. “I can help, Ma-ma,” she says. “You must be tired.”

This girl is like an eager-to-please dog, Bhima marvels. Wary when you kick her, but the minute you stop the kicking, her tail wags again. “Okay then, chop up two onions,” she says. “And put the rice to boil. I’ll cook a vegetable for dinner.”

Crouching near the stove next to her granddaughter, Bhima hears Maya’s stomach growl. “Did you eat today?” she asks sharply.

“Yes. No. I mean, I tried.” Maya looks miserable. “For lunch, I craved a hard-boiled egg. But there were no eggs at home and I—I didn’t feel like going to the shop down the lane. So I tried eating a chappati instead. But it just made me sick.”

Remembering the omelet Serabai had made for her earlier today, Bhima feels her heart twist with shame. “Silly girl,” she scolds. “Lazy you are getting. What, you can’t walk to the corner to buy an egg?”

Suddenly, without explanation, Maya bursts into tears. “Walk to the corner? Sometimes I wish I could just walk out of this room and keep walking until my feet turn into wings. Go somewhere where nobody knows me, where a hundred prying eyes are not following me. You don’t know what it’s like to sit here all day with the door shut, hearing the sounds of the outside world, hearing doors slam, children playing games, the women in the basti talking, and wondering if they’re gossiping about me. I feel like a prisoner, but then I ask myself, Who is my jailer? I am my own jailer. I don’t know which is darker, Ma-ma—this room with no electricity or the veil of shame that hangs over me.”

Her granddaughter’s sobs are landing on Bhima’s chest like fists, but still, she is glad. Let the girl cry. Let her repent for what she has done. She puts a plate of food before the weeping girl, resolutely looking away from the tears that fall into Maya’s rice. “Eat,” she grunts. “A girl in your condition must eat.”

After dinner, Bhima reaches for the tobacco tin and stuffs a wad into her mouth. Chewing slowly, she gazes at her granddaughter. “Hear me,” she says. “People are talking. And you can’t hide your shame in this room forever. Soon, even your salwar-khamez won’t be able to hide your belly. Already, too much time has passed. We need to get you to the doctor soon.”

To her great surprise, Maya does not fight her. “I’ll go,” she says. “I just have one condition—I want Serabai to go to the hospital with me instead of you.”

Bhima is amazed at how much this rejection stings. To cover up her feelings, she says gruffly, “Serabai has a hajaar things to do more important than taking a shameless girl to an abortion doctor. I would be too embarrassed to ask her. Anyway, this is our family matter. Why do you want to involve that poor woman? Hasn’t she done you enough favors already?”

Maya looks tired. “Just ask her. I know she won’t say no. I beg you, Ma-ma.” Then, seeing the stubborn look on her grandmother’s face, she adds, “You know they’ll take better care of me if someone like her is with me. I want this to go as well as possible.”

Bhima flushes. She remembers the day Gopal had lain desperately ill and neglected in the government hospital. Sera and Feroz Dubash had stridden in like movie stars and made sure that he got the best care. Maya is right. Rich, confident, and well-spoken, Serabai has a way of making doors open like a magician. Bhima resolves to speak to her in the morning.

Lying on her thin cotton mattress that night, Bhima replays the conversation with Shyam. She has managed to defang the serpent for now, has purchased his silence with a cup of sugar. But for how long? Shyam is not the sharpest of men. If he has noticed Maya’s morning illness, surely it has come to the attention of the eagleeyed women with the paan-stained teeth and gossiping tongues who populate the slum colony. Are they keeping silent out of respect for her, Bhima? If so, how long will the silence hold? Or is she simply the last to know? Are rumors flying around the slum like black kites and is she too stupid and ignorant to know about them? After all, she has no real friends in this basti. Ever since she moved out of her two-room apartment in the chawl where she and Gopal lived and descended into this hell, she has carried herself in a manner that suggests she is not from here. That is one of the reasons she has no interest in attending their stupid meetings with this corporator or that. Even with five more water taps, the slum will still be a slum. And she had been used to something better than this. She knows that her aloof manner makes her a target for her neighbors’ recriminations, but she doesn’t care. If not for her own sake, then for Maya’s, she has to believe that their life here is temporary. Sometimes, while she is stepping over an open gutter or shooing away the flies when squatting to take a shit, it is hard to believe that. But she had clung to that belief, at least until the day she came home and found Maya crouching on the floor, a pool of vomit next to her. When the vomiting hadn’t stopped three days later, she had dragged her granddaughter to Dr. Premchand’s clinic, thinking it was an acute case of stomach flu or food poisoning. Instead, she had found out that Maya was pregnant.

Thinking about the slum makes Bhima think of her apartment in
the chawl, her lost kingdom, and she feels the old, familiar yearning for what she has left behind.

Gopal. It’s funny, but she has thought more about her husband since Maya’s pregnancy than in all the years before. She had thought that she had gotten used to the loneliness of her life, that she had accepted the numb spot on her heart, as if a doctor had sprayed it with ether. But perhaps the sting of Maya’s betrayal has salted the sting of an earlier betrayal. Perhaps it is that, right now, she needs a man to help her navigate these murky waters that her thoughtless granddaughter has led them both into. Or perhaps it is that time doesn’t heal wounds at all, perhaps that is the biggest lie of them all, and instead what happens is that each wound penetrates the body deeper and deeper until one day you find that the sheer geography of your bones—the angle of your head, the jutting of your hips, the sharpness of your shoulders, as well as the luster of your eyes, the texture of your skin, the openness of your smile—has collapsed under the weight of your griefs.

Gopal. If she closes her eyes for a moment, she can still hear the tring-tring of his bicycle bell on the day he had launched his strange, earnest courtship of her, when she was twenty and all of life stretched out like a green garden before her.

She had met him for the first time the previous day, at her best friend Sujata’s wedding. Now, she was waiting for the number 5 bus to take her to the home of Dinu Shroff, the woman she worked for. Bhima leaned against the railing of the bus stop and shut her tired eyes. They had gotten home so late from Sujata’s wedding that she had slept for barely five hours. She had dozed off for a minute when she heard the clanging of a bicycle bell. “Wake up, wake up,”
an unfamiliar voice said. “Or else the sleep monsters will be tempted to kidnap you away.”

Bhima opened her eyes and then immediately shut them when she saw Gopal’s face before her. It was Sujata’s cousin, that impudent idiot who had winked at her and asked her to dance with him yesterday, as if she was a girl from a bad family. Oh, Bhagwan, let him be gone when I open my eyes again, she prayed.

Her prayers went unanswered. When she opened her eyes, he was still grinning and perched on his bicycle. “Namaste,” he said. “I was compelled to wake you up. Any more beauty sleep and your beauty would blind even the sun.”

Bhima groaned. “Please keep your khata jokes to yourself,” she replied. “I’m in no mood for this.”

“In no mood for jokes? Now that’s a sad state of affairs, my Bhima. I suppose it’s my duty, then, to bring you back in the mood.”

How did he know her name? Before she could ask, the man in line ahead of her turned around and spoke to her. “Is this ruffian bothering you, miss?”

Immediately, Gopal spoke up. “Ae, mind your own business, yaar. Coming between a man and his betrothed, for no good reason. Private family mammala this is, understand?”

The man wilted under Gopal’s stern stare. “Okay, sorry. I just was trying to—”

“Trying-frying, nothing.” Gopal pressed home his advantage. “That’s the trouble with our Bombay, too many people interfering in other people’s private matters.” And as the man turned away, he winked at Bhima.

She looked away from him and saw a red single-decker BEST bus approaching. It was a number 5. She would be rid of this pest in less than a minute.

This early in the day, the bus was half empty. Bhima knew that
within an hour the bus would be so crowded that people would be spilling out of the open doorway and it would be hard to find even room to gain a foothold while boarding it. But at this time, she had her choice of seats, and she made her way to a window seat in the front. She untied the knot at the tip of her sari to remove the coins to pay for the ticket.

The next second, she nearly jumped out of her skin as a hand gripped the metal bar on her window. For a moment she thought it was someone from the outside trying to steal her bus money. But it was Gopal, on his bike, pedaling furiously to keep up with the bus, one hand on the metal bar, the other gripping his handlebar.