“You will come with us to my family home in Surat tonight, Ammi,” Mohan said. “Tomorrow, we can decide what you will do.”
“Allah has brought you into my life, beta,” Ammi said. “May He bless you and your children’s children.” The old woman sobbed in gratitude. “Perhaps you can drive me tomorrow morning to my employer’s home? If I don’t have to worry about the child, they may give me a live-in position.”
“Let’s see,” Mohan said, and Smita was thankful that he was not encouraging Ammi. Meena’s body was likely still smoldering in the straw hut. It felt indecent to make plans about any of their futures so soon. Even as she was dying, Meena had saved the lives of her daughter and mother-in-law. But no use telling this to Ammi. Smita lowered her window a little as she struggled to keep her nausea at bay. The night air blew in, warm and innocuous, and the sweet, cloying perfume of harsingar, night jasmine, filled the car. It made Smita furious, that fragrance, how it masked the sinister enmities that defiled this land.
Ammi was saying something about Abru, and Smita forced herself to listen. It was clear that the old woman had no interest in keeping the child. Smita was relieved. If they could settle Ammi somewhere, she might be able to keep her promise to Meena. Meena. Smita saw again the young woman’s writhing, tortured body. Would she ever be able to forget that image? She shook her head, trying to concentrate on the child in her arms, pulling her in even closer. There was no possibility of taking Abru with her to America, as Meena had asked. But once they got back to Mumbai, she would do her best to place Abru in a home. Mohan would help. Surely, Anjali would help, also. Maybe Shannon would have some contacts. Between all of them, they would work something out.
Abru had fallen asleep. She smelled of grass and the earth, a rich, loamy smell.
But the small gesture of pulling the child closer had awakened the girl, and she looked deeply into Smita’s face. Her eyes grew wide with confusion. For a few seconds, they stared at each other solemnly.
And then the child who never said a word—who, according to her mother, even cried silently—was suddenly wailing at the top of her lungs and spoke.
After a moment or two, Smita could distinguish the repeated word: Mamaaaaaaamamaaaaaaaamamaaaaaammamamamamamamamama.
Abru was crying for her mother. But she was staring into Smita’s face.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Even though it was late when they reached Mohan’s home in Surat, Smita phoned Anjali as soon as they got there to share the news of Meena’s murder. Anjali was distraught, inconsolable, her usual cool cracking like a thin sheet of ice. “Why didn’t I anticipate this?” she said. “Why didn’t I?” she kept repeating. “I should have arranged protection for her. Oh God, oh God, oh God. I can’t believe this. How did I let this happen?”
There is enough guilt to go around, Smita thought when she finally hung up.
She next called Cliff in New York. “She’s dead?” Cliff said. “And you witnessed it? Oh my God. This is one helluva story, Smita.”
There was a time when she would have shared Cliff’s enthusiasm. Now, his reaction felt voyeuristic, macabre. A woman was dead. A child was orphaned.
“How quickly can you file?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Not tonight. This isn’t a breaking news story. Let’s not treat it as one.”
“It’s not?” Cliff sounded shocked. “Smita? Are you kidding me?”
Smita gritted her teeth in frustration. “I would like to hold the story until we figure out what we’re doing with the child,” she said.
“Hold it? Hell no. I want to run it as soon as you can file it.”
“What if the brothers find out that she’s with us? What if they claim family rights?”
“How are they going to do that?” She could hear the bafflement in Cliff’s voice. “Didn’t you say they’re almost illiterate? They probably don’t even know where America is on the map. And who the hell is going to give them custody?”
Smita fell quiet, wondering if the horror of what she had witnessed was clouding her professional judgment. Cliff sounded so damn sure. “I envision this as a long narrative piece,” she finally said. “I need a few days to work on it, to get quotes from people on the record. I mean, Meena is not famous. Her death is not breaking news. No one else is covering this story. I’d prefer to situate her story within a larger context.”
She pictured Cliff chewing on his pen as he considered the shape of the piece. “You gonna write it as a first-person account?” he asked.
“Cliff. It’s been a very long day. I—there’s a lot going on here. I won’t know until I start writing it. You’re going to have to trust my judgment on this.”
Cliff exhaled. “All right, kiddo. Let’s talk again tomorrow.”
Smita grimaced. Kiddo? Cliff was just two years older than she was.
“And hey, Smita? Good work.”
Yeah, Smita thought, as she hung up. Good work that your source is dead. It makes for a better story. She shook her head, knowing she was being unfair to Cliff and that she was being cynical about a profession she loved. Meena was dead. Nothing could change that fact. Smita’s failure to reach Meena in time would haunt her the rest of her life.
She went out into the living room, walking quietly so as to not disturb Ammi and Abru, who slept together on a pallet on the kitchen floor. (Smita had looked askance when Mohan had suggested this arrangement during the ride home, until he had reminded her that Ammi—who had slept on a mud floor her entire life—would find the softness of a bed intolerable.) The house was dark and quiet, and Smita felt ghostlike as she went looking for Mohan. She had not changed out of her clothes since arriving, and they smelled of smoke and gasoline. She shivered at the thought of Meena’s incendiary death. Still, she didn’t want to go back into her room to change. The numb, hollow spot in her chest felt as if it was growing.
Mohan wasn’t in the living room. Surely, he couldn’t have gone to bed, leaving her alone to deal with the horror of what they’d been through? Smita’s throat ached. Vodka, she thought. I need a shot of vodka. In her travels, it was her drink of choice—after a long day, the foreign correspondents would gather in a hotel bar, ordering shots. Or, if she was on assignment alone, she’d return to her room and raid the minibar as soon as she walked in. She needed a stiff drink to forget what her eyes had seen: Meena’s brutalized, bloodied body. Her hand seeking Smita’s. The foot smashing Meena’s jaw. The hut exploding in flames. Abru’s face as she screamed for her mother—the first spoken words out of the child’s mouth an elongated river of longing, an endless cry of grief and loss.
What good did Anjali’s involvement do Meena? Smita wondered. In fact, had the court trial hastened Meena’s death? Anjali’s justification for taking on the legal case was similar to what Smita had herself often said—that she had become a journalist to be a voice for voiceless women like Meena. But as Cliff had reminded her, it was a fine line they walked between journalism and voyeurism. Poverty porn. Is that what she did, ultimately, in her travels to the far-flung places of the world—sell poverty porn to her white middle-class readers back home? So that they could feel better about their own “civilized” lives and country, even as they tsk-tsked while reading about oppressed women like Meena? Smita herself had repeated the platitudes about the humanizing effects of literature and narrative journalism, how each medium cultivated empathy in readers. But toward what end? The world remained as sad and brutal a place as ever. Was it simply vanity that made her believe that her work made a difference?