The Red Carpet Page 5

  “Mrs. Kapur,” Mr. D’Costa finally found refuge in formality. “Please excuse, but. . . . Your house . . . everything, is it okay?”

  What happened? Where are your servants? Your baby? What happened to you?

  The ghost of a smile on Rohini’s face was not echoed in her voice, as she answered the questions he could not voice. “The baby is at my mother’s house in Delhi, and the servants are on leave.”

  And your husband?

  But there was no further explanation.

  It appeared she was waiting for him to leave.

  Mr. D’Costa wandered back into the street, tightly clutching his plastic shopping bag. The gleaming white apartment building reared up behind him, and he kept his back to it, resolutely facing the pastel pink house from which he came. His gaze rested on the dark trails that edged the top of the walls. Every monsoon lengthened these trails, the rain dragging the dirt of the roof down with it, in filthy fat tears that coated the house in relentless, ever-narrowing stains until it looked like blackened fungal icing on pink cake. A long time ago, Mr. D’Costa had asked his son for a few extra dollars to repaint the house. If the money arrived soon, perhaps he would paint the house white this time. Or perhaps he wouldn’t repaint at all, for, pink or white, the rain would surely strike again and again.

  Mr. D’Costa felt a dismay creep through his body, but before he could dwell on it, he sighted a familiar neighborhood figure turning the corner.

  “Oh, Mrs. Gnanakan,” he called, and walked briskly over to inquire about her husband’s state of health.

  TWO FOUR SIX EIGHT

  Mary and Mrs. Rafter died within a week of each other. I learned about Mrs. Rafter’s demise from the Old Girls’ Newsletter. “May she rest in pece,” it said beneath her photograph, quaintly and hurriedly, or perhaps simply in wry acknowledgment that she would never rest in peace. The blurb went on to mention her forty years of devoted service; the scar tissue resulting thereby still evident, no doubt, in two generations of old school girls.

  Mary had no such obituary. The news of her death was brought to us by her daughter, Rosamma, a few days after it happened, along with an unstated hope that her former employers might wish to do something for Mary’s family.

  “Give this woman something,” said my brother Ramu, “and get rid of her.”

  “Poor thing,” said my mother. “She was not so old to die. Not well, is it? You are a naughty sweetie baby.”

  Rosamma dutifully crooned to the child on my mother’s lap. “Baby-amma,” she said. “Baby-ammu-kutty. Yes, Ma,” she said. “She was very sick. So we took her to the government hospital, they gave some injection, she died, Ma.”

  “Terrible . . . See, what plump legs she has.”

  Rosamma plucked at the baby’s thigh with her fingers and kissed them. She held her hands out, but I got there before she could take the child from my mother.

  Rosamma was the spitting image of Mary. Short, sturdy, as dark as the bark on the shemaram tree, the strength of ten elephants quiescent in her arms.

  Rosamma, dressed in a white saree bordered with blue, long dark hair oiled and twisted into a tight bun at the back of her neck, funereal, rice-christianized, radiating competence and the warm smell of sun-baked skin that cannot afford to bathe more than three times a week, squatted at my mother’s feet and smiled up at me as I carefully gathered my child into my arms.

  I could not bring myself to smile back.

  Too much like her mother, Rosamma was.

  Mary first came to us when I was three. The previous ayah had been dismissed by my mother in a fit of temper. For four days afterwards, my mother muttered and scolded. “That lying good-for-nothing!” she would say, as she dragged a comb painfully through my hair. “That thieving mongrel, taking advantage of my goodness, just like everybody else. Who else will let her get away with so much, tell me? Hurry up, do you think I have time for nothing else?” And her palm would smack me hard across the arm in her impatience to get me ready. On the fifth day, she relaxed. “Such a problem, finding a good servant,” she told my father. “But I think this one will do. She looks clean and polite.”

  I missed my old ayah and stared resentfully at this replacement, refusing to go to her when she sat on the floor and smiled and tried to tempt me into her arms. I hid behind my mother, and heard her say:

  “She doesn’t like you. I thought you said you were good with children.”

  She’ll come to me, Ma, Mary said. She’ll come.

  “We’ll see,” said my mother. “If she doesn’t settle with you quickly, I can’t pay you so much.”

  Mary was engaged at a hundred rupees a month, as much, in those days, as my mother spent on a cotton saree. Far more, as my mother unfailingly pointed out, than she would get anywhere else. I ended up clasped in her arms before the day was through, sucking on the sweet that had tempted me there, and she stayed with us for years, turning quickly into an extension of my body, her smell as familiar to me as my own.

  By the time I was ten, however, I didn’t need her for much. I dressed, bathed, and fed myself. She no longer slept on the floor beside my bed at night, wrapped in an old sheet like a soon-to-be-burned corpse. I wouldn’t be shushed, I didn’t listen when she scolded. Instead, I learnt to scold her back, carelessly, imitating my mother’s voice and querulous intonation.

  Mary, to me, was nothing. I had other, more important things to think about—like school. That was all I talked about at home, school, chattering to my mother, ignoring everything else. In the afternoons, when my mother rested on her bed under the slow-soughing fan that gently stirred the stewy summer heat, Mary squatted on the floor by her side, massaging her feet. I didn’t notice that, every afternoon, Mary’s strong dark hands eased the pain out of my mother’s ankles and, at the same time, massaged her opinions about me deep into my mother’s skin.

  It is a shame, she said, that missy does not like the tasty food you are putting on the table. So much effort you put, one bite in this house is worth ten in others, but when you are not at home, missy complains of it to me.

  And: It is a shame that missy does not learn your good manners. See how she speaks to the cook. I don’t mind, what else do I live for but to serve this family, but the cook is threatening to quit if she shouts at him again.

  Lately, I could not even ask Mary to bring me a glass of water without my mother saying: “Go bring it yourself. You have legs. Use your legs as much as you do your mouth.”

  I would sulk, but briefly, my attention wandering immediately back to the most important place on earth, school, where even parents, when they visited, had to be attentive, mind their manners, and pay attention to what was said.

  School was where we went to get a “convent education,” which meant, as far as I could tell, learning mathematics, English, geography, history, science, Hindi, a choice of Sanskrit OR French OR Kannada, singing, painting, How to Be English, and How to Be Good. The last two items were not officially on the syllabus, but there was no mistaking their importance. School was founded a hundred years previously, by the English church, for little English girls residing in the army cantonment of Bangalore. The English had left, but their ghosts remained.

  Fee-fi-fo-fum

  Kiss the arse of the Englishman

  It was a curious puzzle, one that I never resolved. Be proud of your country, they said. Democratic. Republic. Independent. And be proud of the English traditions of your school. Remember the greatness of Indians dead, they said: Mahatma Gandhi, Akbar-Ashoka-Chandragupta, and use your fork, not your fingers. No, my girl, we don’t call it the Sepoy Mutiny; for us, it was the First War of Independence, and if the Queen of England were to see you slouching like that, would she be pleased? Even the slightest infraction of rules meant scoldings, and a loss of house points.

  In retrospect I suppose at least some of the trouble could have been avoided if I hadn’t been late that particular day. I could have stood in my proper place during chapel services, right between Tara and
Freny, and Tara would have handed me the note directly. Instead of which, I remained at the back along with the other latecomers, next to Mrs. Rafter, whose malignant eyes magnified the slightest infraction. Tara’s note was passed in my direction through the softly moving hands of several girls, one of whom opened it, read it, and kept it in shocked delight.

  To turn it in, the very next day, to the last place on earth that notes passed in chapel should go, directly to Mrs. Rafter.

  Of course, being late to school that morning was not my fault. If Mary hadn’t spoiled my uniform, I would have been on time. She didn’t spoil my uniform by accident, either. The scorch marks left on my shirt by the iron were painstakingly achieved.

  The previous evening my mother had returned from the stores and dropped her handbag on her bed before going to the hall to make a telephone call.

  I waited patiently for her to slide deep into conversation with her friend. This was usually good for at least twenty minutes. I had plenty of time. I walked softly to the bedroom and slipped inside.

  Mary had beaten me to it. There she was, her hand deep inside my mother’s purse.

  This purse was a magnet for all the dependants in the house. My mother would go shopping, and then carelessly leave it lying around her bedroom while she had a cup of tea out on the verandah, or discussed menus with the cook. She never remembered to check the contents or to keep it locked.

  The servants presumably used that money to feed their children. My brother and I used it for play. Once a week, my mother pressed a ten-paisa coin into my hand. In the school tuck shop, this would buy me two boiled sweets. Once a week, I would further supplement this allowance from her handbag, and treat myself to an iced lolly stick for twenty-five paise. Or, if I was really lucky, a one-rupee coin would buy me a bottle of Double Seven Cola, or a slim bar of Cadbury’s Milk Chocolate, wrapped in gold, and again in purple paper, and smelling of heaven. My brother Ramu, four years older, made purchases of a larger magnitude, and was considered by his friends to be a very lucky fellow.

  This time my need was urgent. Sports Day was just two days away, which meant an enticing array of snack stalls, just waiting for me to supply myself with spending money from my mother’s purse. With my mother on the phone and her bag unattended, this was the chance I’d been waiting for.

  Mary hid her surprise calmly. Her eyes held mine as her hand continued to explore the contents of the handbag. As I watched, she slowly pulled out two five-rupee notes from the bag. She glanced at them, and walked towards the door. Two days’ salary, gained in twenty seconds.

  I called her name.

  What, she said. What missy, as though I have not seen you in here a hundred times, just like this.

  I tried to block her path. “Put that money back,” I said.

  Move, she said.

  “I’ll tell my mother,” I said.

  Do that, she said, and you see what I will do. She pushed one of the notes into my hand. Here, keep this, she said. Keep quiet. If you tell your mother, Terrible Things will happen to you.

  Mary tucked the other note into her saree blouse and walked away, leaving me staring at the five rupees she had put in my hand, more money than I had ever handled at one time.

  My mother turned the corner just as Mary left the room. My hand slipped the five-rupee note into my pocket. My mother didn’t see Mary. She walked into the bedroom and noticed the bag lying on the bed, the clasp undone. She stared at the bag, and then stared at me.

  It took me five seconds to tell my mother that I had seen Mary stealing.

  It took Mary half an hour. Crying, wailing, loosening her hair, beating her chest, telling my mother that she was innocent, but if my mother had any doubts to please search her, and if after that, there were still any doubts, to please take the money from her salary, for though she was innocent, she would gladly cut her entire salary to please my mother. Why, if my mother wished, she could cut Mary’s hands off, and Mary would not mind. She was only there to serve. And all the while, her eyes never leaving me.

  Half an hour to convince my mother of her innocence.

  My mother was never a conscientious accountant, and couldn’t tell exactly how much was missing. And the next morning, my school shirt was stained brown by the iron, my regulation white underwear was inexplicably torn, and my school shoes were left unpolished.

  I wanted to complain to my mother, but her face that morning still carried traces of the upset of the evening before. So I said nothing. I looked hurriedly for a new shirt, changed into colored underwear, and desperately rubbed a piece of chalk over my white Keds to disguise the dirt. I was late to breakfast.

  I was late to school.

  I believed in Jesus.

  It was difficult not to, given what the teachers said. Damnation and all. And I wasn’t the only one, either. By the time I was in middle school, almost everyone I knew abandoned, for eight hours, the ganeshas and allahs and mahaveers and zoroasters that peopled our homes, to clad ourselves in a uniform designed for a much colder, straitlaced climate, and cheerfully (emblazered, en-tied) congregate in the school chapel first thing in the morning to watch a Senior Prefect step behind the lectern to chant ThisMorning’sLesson is from Proverbs, chapter thirty-one, verses ten to thirty-one, and then read out, heathen voice bell-like in the wood-paneled chapel, Who can find a virtuous woman For her price is far above rubies.

  And as we learned to cross ourselves, thus, with the tips of our fingers: forehead to clavicle, left to right (no, idiot, not right to left), we were worried not by our rampant infidelness, but rather by the doubt: were we, in spite of all our efforts, really English enough?

  We straightened our blazers tightened our ties and took comfort in the notion that so too did all our favorite characters—in the Gospel according to Enid Blyton.

  For hers was the Power and the Glory, and all of us knew it. St. Enid, the true Messiah, who wrote of the frozen-in-time nineteen forties English childhood that we aspired to and were perpetually excluded from. We ate her alive. Swallowed her down. And the teachers in class may have droned on about the greatness of Indian culture (This Morning’s Lesson: the history of India, volume two, chapter eight), but we always knew that, given a choice, we would: study in Malory Towers and St. Clare’s, spend our holidays as part of the Famous Five, the Five Find-Outers, and the Secret Seven, and have romantic, outlandish names like Jane.

  With scorched shirt tucked carefully inside my pinafore, I kept my eyes on the chapel lectern and tried to look like I was paying attention. Every now and then, like a searchlight in a prison camp, I felt Mrs. Rafter’s gaze sweep over me. After chapel, I was among those who had to stay behind to be scolded by the house captains (two points lost for coming late, one for unpolished shoes. And later, five more for wearing the wrong underwear) while the rest of the school filed out quietly. Tara tried to catch my eye meaningfully, and I smiled inquiringly back.

  I didn’t know she had sent me a note.

  She didn’t know I hadn’t received it.

  Mrs. Rafter was Anglo-Indian, like half the teachers in the school, but she pretended to be English. By our conservative estimate, she was at least as old as the school. She dyed what was left of her gray hair brown, hid the liver spots on her face with a dusty powder several shades paler than her skin, and stained her lips with pink lipstick. She wore shapeless dresses in floral patterns and plastic Bata slippers. She ate spicy fish sandwiches for lunch and perfumed her classes with her breath. She talked of her English grandfather, forbearing to recognize that he had slept with a village woman in the hills of Kemmanagundi to produce her mother. She was supposed to teach us Home Science, or how to be good wives and mothers, but actually it was her mission in life to mold the girls under her charge into little ladies. She taught us Deportment, and labored to correct the myriad regional accents in her classes: Sn-acks, children, not snakes. Raylways, not rilevays. She made her point with a long wooden ruler. Rilevays received one stroke on the palm. A chatty vaat yaar?
in casual conversation, two.

  When the Queen of England finally recognized her efforts on behalf of English Culture and invited her to tea, Mrs. Rafter would have nothing to be ashamed of.

  Our parents kept out of her way, and agreed with everything she said. It was hard not to. Who could object to her high moral standards? And certainly, a convent-educated accent was an asset. It would give the girls better marriage options. Most of all, they agreed with Mrs. Rafter’s view that girls must be Good. It dovetailed nicely with their own notions of the fitness of things.

  As in, Boys Will Be Boys,

  but Girls Must Be Good.

  This involved, primarily, keeping our knees together, and our minds pure. Pure, as in virginal. Innocent of the depredations of Man (or Boy), at least until their parental duty was done. Delivered, one girl, unsullied, to the marital bed. Her price far above rubies.

  When Mrs. Rafter walked onto the sports field, we already knew that she was in a bad mood. Forty minutes of Mrs. Rafter’s class first thing in the morning had resulted in:

  Two copybooks flung out of the window for untidy writing.

  Two girls punished with her ruler: on the legs to keep their knees together, on the arm to keep their backs from touching the chair. You creatures, she said, will never be Ladies. Why are you crying? You think good marks excuse bad behavior? Write one hundred times: I will learn to act like a Lady.

  Sports Day practice sessions had intensified every day. Now, just two days before the big event, we did nothing else. The whole school spent hours out on the big field, practicing, training, running, jumping. The three school houses would be competing head-to-head, winning and losing points with every event. This was the only time of the year when the School Goddesses, the older girls, the House Captains, the Prefects, the School Captain, who chatted with such ease and familiarity with the teachers, would condescend to notice us, the junior girls. “Good jump!” they would call. “Well done,” and we would look to see if our friends had noticed.