*
The lotus grows so thick in the pond that the fish rise close to the skin of the water, their scales dull, their movements sluggish. The guavas drop from the tree until the ground under it is sludgy. I miss Samson as much as the garden does. No one to cavort with on the grass or at the river’s edge. No one to pour buckets of silver well water over my head. I sit in the kitchen and sigh until Sita sends me away. Two weeks after he is gone, the news comes to us that his mother has died. Now Sita too must go for the funeral. My mother sits and stares at the river. She does not talk to us and we keep out of her way.
*
It’s two months later and I am sitting next to her when he comes back. We look up and there he is, thinner than before, sparse as if he has not eaten well since he left. There is something new in the way he walks, flat-footed, as if careful to walk anchored so that some rage will not lift him aloft and carry him away. Amma says, “Well, what the hell happened to you? Why didn’t you just ask me if you could go?”
He looks at the floor and says, “Sorry, Madame.”
“I would have let you go if I knew Kusuma was dying. She looked after my husband when he was small, after all. We would have let you go.” But something in his eye tells me he doesn’t believe this.
She raises her hand, says, “Okay, you can go back to the garden now. It’s running riot. You’ll have to work hard to get it in hand.”
But he stands there so that she cannot go on reading her newspaper, sipping her tea. She must instead look up at him, and then through gritted teeth he says, “You think you own us? You think that just because we are your servants, you own us?”
My mother’s hard laugh is loud. “What, Samson, have you turned into a communist? My goodness, what a speech.” Her eyes turn down to her newspaper. “Get out, Samson, go before I get very angry and throw you out. Your people have been with the family for a long time. But I don’t need to keep you. I could throw you out at any time. And there are no jobs for people like you out there. Don’t forget that.” He leaves then and she pets my hair, says, “Servants, one has to know how to deal with them. Otherwise they can go out of control, no?” I nod. Yes, whatever she says, I agree with.
*
I had missed Samson while he was gone. But now I see a new quality quivering in his eyes, something frustrated and dark. He cuts the grass or tends the plants in silence and refuses to play with me. Now there are no walks in the garden, no wading thigh-high into the pond, no gathering of frog’s eggs. His face is stormy, and when I dare ask about the trip to the village, he says, “What’s to tell? We had the funeral. We burnt my mother. By the time I went, that’s all there was to do,” and turns away.
One day after hours of silence he says quietly, “Baby Madame, do you know how they train the wild elephant?”
I’m delighted that he’s talking to me again. “No, Samson.”
“They tie a big log to its leg when it’s small. It pulls and pulls, but the log will not move. It fights so hard. But at some time it will give up, and then later, when it is very much bigger than the little men who control it, they will not need that log. It will remember the weight on its leg and it will not fight. It will just remember the weight. Do you understand?”
I don’t. I stand there waiting and he says, “Samson is like that elephant. Maybe I could have done something else. Maybe had a trishaw or a small shop? A wife. A woman of my own. Maybe children. Something. So now I’m like that elephant. Even my mother I couldn’t see before she died. I went out to see if I could have a life away from your family, but there was nothing. Not even a job. I almost starved.”
He turns and walks away from me, and I am suddenly and irrevocably shattered by loneliness.
Three
Another photo on the wall. Three rows of girls, the tall ones in the back, the short ones sitting in front with crossed ankles, hands on knees. Our teacher, Sister Angelica, is poised in the very center, her hands held together, her hair hidden under the nun’s habit. Around her so many hunched shoulders, thin bodies, white short-sleeved shirts bisected by the dark blue school tie. Schoolgirls with identical postures, the glint of glasses, short hair or plaits, skirts hanging to our knees, many shades of brown skin. Here I am in the second row. Hair middle-parted, braids running down to my waist. Weak-tea-colored skin, which is fair enough that the girls laugh and call me sudhi, white girl. Big eyes and a pointed chin, angular lines I share with every other girl in this picture. None of us smiling. This is not a smiling moment. This is a serious moment. We are being educated. We are good girls of good families going to a good school, and it is all very, very serious.