The House of Hidden Mothers (21 page)

He whipped out his phone, preparing to capture the moment. Then he paused, jolted by the sight of the tears beginning to trickle down her cheeks. She was too defeated to move, her shoulders hunched against whatever was coming next. Her head drooped slowly, revealing the mad nest of parted hair and there, the curve of her neck, smooth as a cello.

Tamsin appeared in the doorway, lolling against the jamb with a roll-up in one hand and waving an empty beer bottle in the other. Tara quickly turned away, diving into a cabinet and rustling about in its depths. Charlie grabbed a couple of pizza cartons and began tearing them up vigorously. Voices called from the hallway, the front door opened and a wash of night traffic and cool air rolled in.

‘Wow, is Charlie actually clearing up? You've got him well trained, girlfriend. What did you do, rub his nose in it?' Tamsin's giggling at her own feeble joke was interrupted by catcalls behind her. ‘OK, people, hang on! We're out of tobacco and toffee cider and … oh, loads of stuff actually, so we're off to Tesco – you OK here, lovely homemakers?'

‘Bring us back a Snickers?' Charlie shouted at Tamsin's retreating back. She waved an acknowledgement, the door shut and calm descended.

They had left the film running; muted dialogue filtered from next door. Tara stared at Charlie, a tear dripping off the end of her nose, a roll of bin-liners in her hand. She dropped them into the congealing pond near her feet as Charlie pulled her to him, his hands in her hair. After months of having no appetite, no hunger for anything, his kisses felt like food, the bruised apples of her lips hungry beneath his, the gnawing emptiness in her gut sated for a few moments. He pushed her against the kitchen counter, his knee scissoring her legs apart. She felt cool air on her skin where layers were being unpeeled. Maybe he would keep pulling off each papery layer and find nothing inside, except her onion soul.

She tried to free her mouth, her breath smelt of him, his hands were everywhere – he seemed to have grown a couple of extra pairs. She couldn't keep track of them, tried to grab a wrist, untangle searching fingers from places they shouldn't be. He began kissing her again; now there was no air for her to speak, no opportunity to tell him this was a grope too far, further than she had ever been with anyone in her whole young life. She'd never mentioned it before, because her friends would never have believed her – not her, the gobby, grumpy smart-arse. Everyone knew the nice virgins were the ones doing medicine and possibly law, the good girls from the professional, religious, unfragmented families who joined the India Soc – even though Tara knew for a fact that some of them shagged like rabbits behind closed doors. But in public, as always, reputation was all.

Maybe she had absorbed some of her mother's defiant honesty in the wake of the divorce. Shyama's refusal to be pitied or dismissed, the way she had introduced Toby to family and friends, forcing him on them, had been her badge of defiance. But her mother had had something to kick against, a whole set of ancient expectations that she had refused to burden her daughter with. At times, Tara wished that her mother had laid down an unreasonable curfew, argued for her to drop Media Studies and pursue Pharmacy instead, dropped heavy hints about suitable marriage candidates coming round for a viewing, dressed her in a sari and made her hand out home-cooked samosas – anything that would have given Tara permission to reject and rage at her mother. Be a bitch, she'd wanted to yell at her, so I don't have to be! But no, her mother had a boyfriend, her mother was going to have a baby – life stages that Tara had yet to reach, leaving her to watch Shyama leapfrogging her way ahead of her.

She turned her face away to draw breath, to speak, but Charlie grabbed it and locked lips again, harder. Her legs were beginning to give way under her, the sharp counter edge digging into bare flesh. She struggled against him. Charlie grunted in response and held both her hands to her side, pinning her down. Suddenly she realized: he thinks I want this. An image of her Facebook page flashed across her closed lids, indistinguishable from those of all her female friends: happy party faces, a continual relentless celebration of how much fun they were all having, how amazingly popular they all were, how revealingly photogenic they all were, how, with all the choices open to them, their first priority was apparently to look pretty and available. Isn't this what independent young women did, were supposed to do? As good as any man, better than most – my body, my choice; if you want it then you should have put a ring on it. So many sound bites, so little time …

Tara managed to release an elbow and jabbed it hard into Charlie's ribs. His eyes widened as he unpuckered himself, flushed and panting. Smiling at her. He was on familiar territory now, this was how they always were, quip for quip, slap for slap. His eyes lit up with the thrill of the chase to come.

A wave of unspeakable sadness engulfed Tara as she opened her mouth to say the word she knew might be too late to save her, the ‘No' reaching no further than Charlie's mouth.

ONLY WHEN RAM
made Mala do the photograph did she know it was going to happen. He had borrowed a cell phone from Pogle sahib's son and made her stand outside their house with Seema's children under each arm, their little chicken faces staring out from under her wings. Seema's husband kept telling them to smile, promising them laddoos if they looked snappy-happy, but they just burrowed deeper into Mala's side, nestling under her hot armpits. Then he began shouting at them for spoiling the photo and wasting the battery, which just made it worse. Mala fumed. Now the
bacche
have started snivelling, asking for their real mama, who is refusing to watch our filmi-star shoot, just hiding herself away as if she is the guilty one. Maybe she is. If it wasn't for her, would we all be standing here under the lid of the sun, cooking and crumbling like
mah ki daal
?

So then Mala took charge – someone had to. She pushed a finger into the soft dough covering his ribs – obvious where most of the baby money had gone, straight on to his gut – and told him, ‘
Theklo
, if you want these kids to look like they belong to me, stop making them piss their pants with fear. They will know something is wrong. Then they will chirrup it to someone else and
bas
, the whole business is everybody else's business and you don't get your commission,
hena
?'

That shut his mouth all right. Then he opened it, then shut it again, a bullfrog with too many flies to handle. He didn't know that Ram had told Mala everything. She had teased the whole plan out of him, pinch by pinch, nibbling at his sleepy ear, so when he was properly awake and saw on her face what she knew, he got scared. Mala smiled inside as she caught him checking her feet to see if they pointed backwards, as if she was one of the demon women who are supposed to haunt the hills. How else could she have sucked out all his secrets?
Mittee
first,
mitta
after: honey works better, dirt comes later. So she held the children gently, did nice auntie chat about their favourite lessons at school (drawing and sums), their favourite snacks in Papa's big new fridge (
rasmalai
and sweet curd), told them the story of Babloo the pan-wallah's accident, how he cycled into a wasps' nest, how the wasps followed him bottom-first, stingers-out for half a mile before he threw himself into a pond and was too scared to come out until dark. When he limped back to the village, covered from head to foot in black sticky mud, the only way his wife could recognize him was by the glow of his red paan-stained teeth. That made them laugh. Mala looked over to Seema's husband, tilted her head for him to press the button, heard the metal eye of the camera-phone wink back at her, click, done.

Mala did not see the actual photo until she and Ram were on the train to Delhi. She did not know who had paid their fare – she guessed Seema's husband again. Who else did they know with money to give away? And the
chor
couldn't even pay for them to go first class. So they sat squashed up against each other, every jolt of the train throwing them together in a sweaty embrace.

Three other families were cooped up with them in the airless carriage. An elderly couple who passed little paper-wrapped cones between themselves, nibbling at roasted peanuts and griddled corn kernels like two whiskery grey mice. A worn-out mother with three children, barely months between them; she must have popped them out like winter peas, thought Mala. Of course, the whole carriage knew why: the eldest two were girls, who sat quietly and round-eyed, knife-straight partings in their plaited hair. They were obviously the rehearsal for the third child, a boy, visibly plumper than his sisters, his skin gleaming with coconut oil and with kohl around his eyes to ward off the evil-thinkers, nestling in his mama's lap, prince of them all. The third couple sat by the window, young, not long married by the way they looked at each other. But God must have been using up his leftovers when he made those two,
hena
? Him all bulgy eyes and no-chin fat neck, her more horse than woman, long-faced, lips stretched over her large teeth; both too dark to be anything but ignored. But they looked at each other like they were the luckiest people in the world. Their hands joined over their shared secret, resting on the tight drum of the woman's belly pushing out the pleats of her bright-green sari. Mala took in the woman's stick-thin arms and legs; her delicate ankles in dusty chappals resting on her husband's crossed legs contrasted with the obscenely ripe dome of her abdomen, as if the baby inside was happily sucking the life from her. Mala's hand flew instinctively to her own flat stomach in memory of those early days of her own failed pregnancy, breast-heavy and nauseous but with that sense of a gradual unfolding within her, new and inevitable all at once.

Then Ram showed her the photograph. He explained how he had got it printed from the cell phone, or rather Pogle sahib's son had – they'd had to go to the town especially, they took out some chip from the phone and put it into a machine. Mala stopped listening, intrigued by the image she held in her hand: she is standing there in mid-story, her face round and sparkling with scandal, Seema's children looking up at her with big wide grins, holding on to her sari and her hands, their eyes enchanted pools of love.
Bacche
, they love anyone who can make them laugh. And I look like a mother, their mother, thank God.

The doctor woman hadn't seemed convinced at first. She had held the photograph for a long time, looking from it to Mala and back again. She had asked Mala how old she was – twenty-four, Mala had lied. They had worked it out, so she could have been seventeen when she gave birth to Seema's eldest. Ram was more nervous than her, his leg jiggling beneath the desk. Mala kicked him, catching his ankle. God,
chalo
, be a man and stare straight back at her, what can she prove? Everyone knows we don't have paperwork where we come from and she needs us to make money for her, understand?

Ram had started getting jumpy the moment they had arrived at the clinic, seeing all the expensive cars parked outside, the silent sliding glass doors, the vases of flowers that he thought must have been plastic until a lazy bumblebee heaved itself out of one of the petal cups, heavy with its dusting of bright-yellow pollen. Then when Mala had approached the receptionist and spoken to her in English, the look he gave her made her want to burst out laughing. If they had been at home, he would have got angry at such a betrayal, showing him up in this hushed hotel place. But here, twanging with tension, ashamed of his scuffed shoes and travel-creased pyjamas, he said nothing, looking at his wife with something like admiration.
Theklo
, she stared back, there is a lot you do not know about me, husband.

Seated in the foyer on low leather sofas were the foreigners, pale and perspiring in their new cotton outfits. But the cotton didn't fool Mala, she could see the wealth in their watches, their bags, their sunglasses, even the way they sat together comfortably, like they were at home in this place that made her and Ram feel clumsy and shabby. Some were
desi
couples, homegrown she could tell, because to them she was totally invisible. Some of the
firenge
glanced up briefly as they passed: there wasn't much time to have a good look, maybe to see the ones who might choose her. A blond couple, their hair a silver-white that Mala had only seen before on the very old; but they were young, their skin already bright pink with protest at the oppressive heat. Two women sitting together, too different to be sisters, but holding hands, whispering quietly. One of them was very pretty. Mala willed her to stop talking and catch her eye, but she didn't. And one other pair. The young white man looked strong, moved like a labourer as he stood up to search in his knapsack for something. He found a bottle of water, unscrewed it and handed it to the woman next to him. Indian, but NRI-type Indian – nonresident, like they called them on the news. Mala couldn't tell her age from where she stood – sometimes it was hard to tell with the foreign women, even close up. Some of their faces stretched like wet saris on a rock, their eyebrows arched in surprise that somehow never reached their eyes. But when this woman took the water bottle from the young man, their fingers brushed in a way that told Mala everything she needed to know. What caught Mala's eye, pricked her curiosity, were the red streaks in the woman's hair, little flames glowing around her crown. She likes to be different, wears her fire on the outside; I like that, Mala thought, before an unsmiling nurse came to whisk them away.