Flowers in the Blood (14 page)

She grinned. “No matter. When you hold the baby, you might get it soiled.”

The baby! I held myself perfectly still. There were no longer howls in the corridors. Nor were there infant cries. “Is it here?”

“Yes, Dinah-baba, she waits for you.”

“A sister?”

“Yes, a sister-baba.”

I flew down the hall. As I entered, the midwife and the ayah were busily tending a prostrate Mozelle. Selima sat on the other bed, the one I often slept in, with a baby to her breast. Grandmother Helene moved beside me. She was wearing a crisp blue gown and her hair was freshly washed. “Here comes Dinah. Ruby, look up and meet your big sister.”

Selima turned the baby to face me. The infant was plump and pink, with damp tendrils of black hair that made her look much older.

“Ruby? Is that her name?”

“Yes, do you like it?” Mozelle said hoarsely.

I spun around. “She's pretty. A pretty little Ruby.” I turned back to the infant and became transfixed by the alert expression in the dark pools that were her newly opened eyes.

 

That night Ruby slept in the nursery next to my room. Mozelle was too weak to care for her own baby, but fortunately Selima had plenty of milk because she had given birth to a son of her own six months earlier. There were enough people rushing in and out of Mozelle's room—her mother, the doctor, the midwife, most of the servants, and relatives of her family—that I was content to stay away and watch the newborn's bathing and feeding and changing.

Perhaps I should have realized something was wrong, but it had been so long since Mozelle had been a normal part of family life that her absence at meals or her long recovery did not seem peculiar. I popped in for a wave or to bring her an especially lush flower from the garden or to tell her how sweet the baby looked sleeping, without noticing how weak she actually was. Since the heat was as awful as ever, nobody was lively, and her sweating and prostration seemed normal to me.

Only when the Raymond carriage pulled up the semicircular driveway did I feel the first frisson of fear. I rushed to greet them in the front hall. “I'm so glad you have come to see Ruby. I will never tell Papa, I promise.”

Grandfather Raymond was walking with a cane, supported by Dr. Hyam. “You may tell your f-f-father anything you l-l-like,” he stuttered.

“Wait till you see her. She is the biggest baby ever.”

Nani's eyes lifted over my head and met Dr. Hyam's sharp gaze.

“Come, take me to the nursery, Dinah,” she said while indicating the men should follow Selima to Mozelle's bedroom.

“Aren't you coining, Nana?”

“Later. I must see to M-Mozelle.”

I proudly showed off Ruby, who lay on her tummy, her tiny rump poking up under several layers of netting. “She's sleeping.”

Nani unfurled Ruby's tiny hand and placed a silver rupee in her palm. The sleeping infant clasped it.

“Why did you do that?”

“It s a charm against the evil eye.”

“Shall I take you to Mozelle now?”

“Not just yet, Dinah. Let's have a glass of
lassi.”
Turning, she handed me the cool rosewater-and-yogurt drink that was waiting for us on a brass tray.

I pushed it away, for the tension in her voice had terrified me. I flung my arms around her wide waist and held on fast. “Why did you come?”

“To see what could be done for poor Mozelle.”

“What is wrong with Mozelle?”

“She has not recovered from the baby as well as she might. You know that.”

“She's just tired,” I protested, clutching at her even more tightly. When Grandmother Flora did not push me away, when she did not say I was being a silly girl, I knew that Mozelle was going to die.

Mozelle never rose from her bed. Racked with childbed fever, she was beyond the help of Dr. Hyam or Grandfather or any of the specialists they brought in. She was buried ten days after she had given birth.

The period of mourning for her had barely passed when I was told my grandfather had died in his sleep. Numbed by the birth and the events that culminated in losing my little mother, Nana's passing was but one more misery I added to my list.

10

 

W
hat did I ever do to deserve two mothers-in-law? Promise me you shall never join the conspiracy of women who plague me,” Papa said a few weeks after his return home. We were walking in the gardens, which were more elaborate since Grandmother Helene had had them replanted to her specifications.

I would have promised him anything if I had understood his request. Everything was so confusing. Everybody had been behaving differently from the way I had expected. I had dreaded Papa's return, thinking there would be a tumult similar to the aftermath of my mother's death. Why was he so composed? Was a natural death less upsetting than a murder? Or was it because my father had been with Mozelle such a short time that his attachment was less than to his first wife? Was this the conspiracy he meant? Was he asking me never to grow up, never to leave him in life—or in death?

“You aren't angry with me, are you?” I asked.

He laughed lightly. “Should I be?”

“No.”

“You shouldn't be angry with Grandmother Helene either,” I said seriously.

“I'm not.-1 was joking before.”

“But Aunt Bellore and the other Sassoons are.”

He ruffled my hair. “They were for a time, but they aren't anymore.”

I bit my lip as I thought about the confusion during the four months before he had returned. It had started when the Arakies gathered at Theatre Road to console Grandmother Helene. For weeks the tables sagged under the elaborate platters that were set out noon and night for the Arakies' large circle of family and friends. I kept my ears open for any news that might affect me.

“Two women in two years!” I overheard one Arakie say.

“At least Helene can enjoy some comfort,” her cousin added.

“Unlucky house, unlucky children,” another commented under her breath.

Despite these worrisome words, the clatter of the boisterous Arakies was a wonderful tonic. With a game or conversation or amusement always under way, there had been little time to reflect on the loss of my two mothers, my adored grandfather, my faraway father. Then one Sabbath afternoon—we had all attended services that morning, requiring eleven carriages, some making several trips—Aunt Bellore and her brothers Uncle Saul and Uncle Reuben arrived unexpectedly. Their interview with Helene was short and grim. By that evening I learned what had transpired: she had been ordered to leave before my father arrived a few weeks hence. The running of the house was to be taken over by my far-less-profligate Grandmother Flora.

I was so excited to have Nani back that I am afraid I did not show the proper appreciation or remorse I should have at Grandmother Helene's departure.

I have known indiscriminate women, have even been given that epithet myself by those who became jealous of my attainments, yet even today I believe Grandmother Helene was unfairly maligned by the Sassoons. Neither before nor after her daughter's death had she ever enriched her private purse. Her dress was modest and she took few personal belongings with her. If she fed too many people or overpaid at the market or purchased the finest food and beverages or indulged the servants with baksheesh or days off to visit their families, her motives had been benevolent.

“There is no point to life but to live,” she had said when I had asked permission to resume classes at the Jewish Girls' School after the mourning periods for Mozelle and my grandfather had passed. “What did my Mazal-Tob have? Less than eighteen years. She barely saw her daughter. Her marriage was so brief she hardly knew her husband. Should she have eaten fewer sweets? No! She should have eaten more! Did I indulge her shamelessly during the time she carried her child? No! I should have given more selflessly. Was the doctor right in refusing her the comforts of laudanum? No! She should not have suffered for a moment if there was anything in God's power to spare her.”

In the garden, I looked up at my father and wondered if Mozelle would be alive if he had been there. Seeing my tense expression, he took my hand and led me toward the roses. The older mali was clipping their stalks with shears while the younger lifted the thorny branches into the cart. “Papa, are you going to send Grandmother Flora away now?”

“Do you want her to stay, Dinah?”

“Yes. I am tired of people going away. Besides, she is lonely living by herself.”

“I know, Dinah. I am lonely too.”

He turned away and stared off into the distance, where Selima sat beside Ruby's carriage. Asher and Jonah were rolling a large ball on the lawn. “At least I have my children,” he said, pleasing me enormously. Papa did not need any more wives or mothers-in-law. Everything he required, he already had.

 

To prove this to me further, Papa did not return to China for the next two years. All his journeys to the opium fields were brief, and his brother Reuben went east in his stead. He took his responsibility as head of our household with utter seriousness. He did not revert to being the companion he had been in Patna, but he was in Theatre Road most every night. Grandmother Flora brought an order and peacefulness to the house that had never existed before. Grandmother Helene visited often, and the older children were permitted to go to her house whenever we wanted. I don't think there were better times for me, except those sublime moments in my mother's arms.

When I was almost eleven, Grandmother Helene prevailed upon my father to take us to Darjeeling. Though I was delighted not to spend another hot season in Calcutta, I was also a bit worried that our trip to Darjeeling might wreak new turmoil in our lives. For me the name conjured up the image of a bazaar where wives were bartered.

The carriage already had been ordered on the morning I woke with a rash. Nobody was allowed to see me until Dr. Hyam arrived. “Chicken-pox,” he pronounced.

“But the high fever, the unusual spots . . .” Nani fretted.

“No, no. Come, look . . .” He waved her to my bedside. “With smallpox the vesicles are depressed in the center, much like a navel. These are flatter.”

Nani sighed with relief. “I suppose she may not travel.”

“Absolutely not. She'd be miserable, and she's infectious. The other children must remain behind, just in case.”

“What about me? Am I in danger?” Papa asked.

“Did you have the pox when you were young?”

“We all did.”

“Then you will not contract it again. Why don't you proceed to the hills? I'll look in on the children every day.”

“No, don't go without me!” I protested, on guard against my father's meeting another woman.

They paid not the slightest attention to me. The heat at that ferocious peak of a Bengali summer caused my skin to swell and scab and itch in an agonizing succession of bumps. I spent days wrapped in a woolen blanket and covered by a linen sheet moistened with sulfur-brewed tepid water. My dreams were of soaring mountains, of fresh white snows, of climbing up and up, holding my father's firm hand. The Darjeeling of my febrile imaginings was a wonderland of jewel-tipped peaks, sugary frosts, peppermint winds, and nubile young girls being poked like melons by men searching for wives. When the fever broke and my worst complaint was the infernal itch, I was bound in a sheet lined with rice flour so I could not scratch. From a tray at my bedside I was dosed with an array of vile-tasting concoctions, including belladonna for headaches and aconitum for the fever. As I endured the cosmoline-lotion soaks and saffron-tea infusions, I berated myself for my lack of compassion for Mozelle's prickly-heat attacks. After the scabs began to form, then fall away, I was horrified to find the little pits that were left behind. Immediately my grandmother began giving me masks of mercurial plaster to avoid permanent pockmarks.

Grandmother Flora set amulets beside the pillows of the healthy children, but just when everyone thought they would be spared, Ruby came down with a horrid case. Pustules formed in her throat, around her eyes—which swelled shut—and spread over every inch of her chubby body. So sick was she that Dr. Hyam sent for Grandmother Helene, who tended her grandchild herself through two long nights of tantrums.

“At least I was quiet,” I bragged to Yali.

“You take after your mother; she takes after hers” was Yali's reply.

At the end of two weeks, Ruby's fevers and spots receded. In the meantime, Dr. Hyam checked Jonah and Asher daily. Pale and skinny Jonah, whose nose ran continuously and whose tummy was the most sensitive in the family, was in high spirits and looked as though he was healthier than ever. “Maybe they will skip this bout,” the doctor said as he left on Monday morning. “If the boys are clear on Thursday, you may leave.”

Thursday morning Asher blossomed. Jonah frolicked during his brother's illness, not succumbing himself until three more weeks had passed. By then we had missed almost the entire season in Darjeeling, but we sent word to Papa that we would soon be on our way. Father posted a letter with a separate card addressed to me: “Dearest Dinah, do not depart. Give this letter to your grandmother and tell her to await our return to Calcutta. Your loving father.”

Our
return? I had expected it!

I knew what had happened when my father breathed the thin air of the high hills.

He had gone to the marketplace and had found himself another wife.

 

“She's black!” Nani gasped as she and I watched my father's arrival. I had been ready to rush out to meet the gharry, but she held me back.

“No, Nani, that must be the ayah.”

“Look,” she hissed, “there is but one woman in the carriage. Anyway, what ayah rides next to the man of the house, eh? An ayah would be sitting on the seat with the children.”

Any last hope crumbled as Father assisted the lady down with a tender maneuver. My stomach churned queerly. They paused together and took in the house, their eyes locked on the roof peak, then lowering—in unison—to include my grandmother and me. My father wore a gray suit. She was wearing a pale blue sari with a darker blue border shot with silver threads. Side by side they were the same height, both slender, with straight backs. They could have been brother and sister—if the woman's skin was not the caramel hue of the typical Indian. Gracefully she took his arm, and at the signal of her touch, he steered her toward us.

“Flora”—his face was impassive—”Dinah”—his mouth twitched—”I would like you to meet my wife, Zilpah.”

“Zilpah?” Nani's breathing came in small staccato bursts.

“Zilpah Kehimkar Tassie Sassoon,” said my father, as though he were making a point.

Unable to speak further, Nani merely nodded. I myself was unable to tolerate the sight of either of them and turned to watch the driver lift two boys out of the carriage. Their skin was a honey color—more like that of a Baghdadi Jew who had been too long in the sun.

My father beamed at the boys, waving them forward. Reluctantly they came and stood by their mother. “These are Zilpah's sons, Pinhas and Simon Tassie. Pinhas is almost the same age as Jonah, Simon as Asher.”

A cart drew up, filled with dozens of trunks and cases. “Shall we go in?” Father asked as he guided his newest wife ahead of my grandmother, ahead of me. Even the skinny boys were over the threshold before I was.

Zilpah had not said a word. She glided in my father's wake through the downstairs rooms. Nani disappeared, while I moved in their shadow, trembling as though I had taken a chill as he pointed out the features of the mansion. “. . . I've had the gardens redone . . .” he droned on, crediting Grandmother Helene's designs as his own. From the glacial expression on the woman's face, I could not tell if she was impressed with her new surroundings or merely bored by them. We ended up in the hall.

“Bearer!” Papa called. “Brandy and soda,
burra peg,”
he said, ordering a large shot. Then he leaned close to the woman's face. “Something for you, my dear?”

Her head tilted slightly, as though she was deferring to him.

“A
chota peg
, a little something to welcome you to your new home?” he coaxed.

Her black eyes glinted up at him as though he had offered her a jewel. I waited for him to ask what I might like, but he ignored me. When Abdul served them, my father saluted the woman. She raised her glass to his, all the while staring at him so raptly it seemed as though she feared that if she blinked, he might disappear.