What the hell is wrong with you? Smita chastised herself as she walked toward the hovel. She had interviewed refugees, displaced people, and war victims over the years, and despite the grievous injuries and trauma she had witnessed, had always managed to keep her composure. But it was impossible to keep the same emotional distance here. There was a reason she didn’t cover stories in India, a reason why she’d asked her editors for that exemption. Her feelings were too biased, too complicated, for her to maintain objectivity. And yet, despite her earlier reservations, she was glad to be here in Birwad and to have met Meena. Already, she was composing the lede to her story in her head. Shannon’s stories about Meena had been well written. Her reporting was impersonal and factual, and she had expertly situated Meena’s story within the larger story of the treatment of women in India. In fact, Shannon’s reporting was like Shannon herself—dispassionate, tough, no-nonsense. But she had not quite brought Meena to life, had not conveyed that combination of vulnerability and courage. Smita knew she could, would, be able to do fuller justice to Meena. She understood Meena’s plight in her bones, felt that sense of kinship like connective tissue. Her fingers itched at the thought of going back to the motel and getting to work on her laptop.
She bent and entered through the low doorway, then waited for her eyes to adjust to the dark. As soon as they did, she gave a start of surprise—Mohan was sitting cross-legged on a floor mat in front of Meena’s erstwhile sulky mother-in-law, who was giggling at whatever he was saying. They both looked up guiltily, conspirators, as she entered. “Will you also take a cup of tea?” the woman asked, and Smita noticed the tea glasses in front of them.
She was about to say no when she thought better of it. “Many thanks,” she said. “I would love some.” She paused for a beat and added, “And so will Meena.”
The old woman scowled. “I cannot waste precious sugar and milk on that cow,” she said. “I work like a dog seven days a week in my mistress’s home to feed this family. I’m only home today because my mistress is out of town. As it is, she is not paying me while she is gone.”
“Then it’s okay, ji,” Smita said as politely as she could. “I don’t need any chai pani. I am fine.”
Ammi looked conflicted, torn between the ancient impulse toward hospitality and her animosity toward her daughter-in-law. Finally, she rose with a grunt and went to relight the stove, grumbling under her breath. As she watched the woman put the pot on the stove, Smita remembered that it was customary for many rural and tribal women to nurse their children well past infancy. “Is Meena still breastfeeding your grandchild?” she asked.
“Sometimes,” Ammi replied as she added the tea to the water. “That was all the heifer was good for, but now she claims her milk is drying up. So yet another mouth to feed.”
Her journalistic ethics forbade it, but Smita longed to slip a few hundred-rupee bills into this querulous woman’s hands. Who, she wondered, would Ammi be if one could remove the financial stressors from her life? Would the better angels of her nature prevail, would she be able to set the grievous loss of her son alongside Meena’s loss of her husband, and realize their common pain? Or would she still resent her daughter-in-law for the calamitous event that had been visited upon her household?
As if he’d read her mind, Mohan opened his wallet. Smita pretended not to see as he pulled out several hundred rupees and set the bundle on the floor. “This is for you, Ammi,” he said. “To help with the upkeep of your young charges.”
Ammi rolled up the money and slipped it into her blouse. “A million thanks, beta,” she said, placing her hand on Mohan’s head. “A thousand blessings to you. When you call me Ammi, it is as if I hear my Abdul and Kabir’s voices in my ear.”
Cliff or Shannon would have been aghast at this breach of professional ethics. But Mohan is not here on assignment, Smita imagined arguing with them, as if they were here in this tiny room. What am I supposed to do, scold him in the old woman’s presence? She’d kick me out of her home and cut off our access to Meena, who is in no position to defy her orders.
Mohan looked at her, one eyebrow raised inquiringly. Smita gazed at him impassively, neither endorsing nor chastising him for his generosity. “I still need another half hour or so,” she whispered as Ammi poured the tea into thick glasses.
“Take as much time as you need,” he said. “We are having a good time here.”
“Thanks. I really appreciate this.”
Smita carried out two glasses of tea. “For me?” Meena said. “She allowed it?”
“For you.”
“Thank you, Didi. See? Already, you have brought good fortune into my life.”
Smita looked again at the charred shack in the distance, feeling the incongruity of Meena’s gratitude for a cup of chai. She thought of the self-help books preaching the importance of gratitude that millions of Americans bought each year. How many of them could muster gratitude for a cup of tea? She thought of the prosperity evangelists who preached about God wanting His flock to be fabulously wealthy. What would that God have to say about women like Meena, who let a cup of tea register as good fortune?
She watched as Meena blew into the glass to cool it and then offered a few sips to Abru. It struck Smita suddenly that she had not heard the little girl speak. “Does she talk?” she said, rubbing the little girl’s back as she asked.
Meena looked crestfallen. “Not yet,” she said. “Doctor said not to worry. Some children talk late, she said. She is not a mute, Didi. Thanks God.” She frowned. “But I am worried. My Abru is fifteen months old. Too old to not talk, no? I think it’s because she heard my crying for help during the fire, when she was still in my womb. Or she heard my screams in the hospital when I found out Abdul was dead. And maybe she thinks: What do I want to say to a world where my own uncles can kill my father and destroy my mother’s heart? What good are words in such a world?”
Smita nodded, even as she wished for a good pediatrician in Mumbai to check out this little girl. “What are your plans for after the verdict comes?” she asked, to change the subject.
“What use making plans? This is my life now. Abdul and I had planned to shift to Mumbai after Abru was born. He used to say that Mumbai was built for people like us, who are unafraid of hard work. We were both angutha chhap, Didi. But we dreamed of our Abru becoming a doctor or a lawyer. Abdul said that there was so much money to be made in Mumbai that we could build a brick home for Ammi and Kabir here, and still send Abru to a good school there. But the fire destroyed those dreams.”
Smita looked up from her notebook, her eyes moist with understanding. “I’m sorry,” she said. She looked away. “What’s ‘angutha chhap’ mean?”
“Oh. That is what they call people like us, who don’t know how to read or write. When we opened our bank account, we must make an ink thumb impression because we cannot sign our names. That is what the words mean—‘thumb impression.’ ”
“You have a bank account?” Smita asked.
Something flashed in Meena’s eyes. “Had. Ammi made me empty it after I came home from the hospital. Otherwise, she said, she would sell Abru to the Christian nuns after she was born. She said rich women in foreign places pay lots of money for Hindustani babies.”
“She said . . . what?” Smita fought the urge to spit out her tea.
Meena nodded grimly. Then, her face softened. “What to do, Didi? That poor woman suffered a miserable loss, no? Imagine losing both her sons. All because of me. And in any case, she is the only grandma Abru has. So I let bygones be bygones.”
“Does she still threaten to—?”
“No. Not since I gave the money to her. Besides, my Abru takes after her father. Sometimes, when I catch Ammi’s eyes resting on my daughter’s face, I know she is missing her son. Every day, she is going half mad, trying to decide whether she loves or hates Abru for looking so much like Abdul.”
Could an Upper West Side therapist have shown greater psychological insight than Meena had? Could any priest, rabbi, or imam have shown a greater generosity of spirit than she had demonstrated? Smita wanted to set down her pen to take Meena’s hands in hers. Instead, she asked, “What exactly happened to Abdul’s younger brother? Ammi said . . . ?”
Meena’s eye turned cloudy. “He ran away, after he saved my life by taking me to the hospital. Kabir is the reason I am still living.” She paused for a long time, then said quietly, “I am tired, Didi. What to do, I am unused to exercising my tongue so much, these days. Also, I must go in and start cooking. I will tell you the rest of my story next time?”
“Of course,” Smita said, shutting her notebook.
But the truth was, she was disappointed by this abrupt end to the interview. She had earned the younger woman’s trust, but she wanted to know so much more. Would it be better to file a preliminary story immediately and do a follow-up after the actual verdict, as Shannon had suggested? Or should she file a single long narrative piece after the verdict?