Authors: Kishore Modak
‘Mary,’ I
called, ‘are you on the phone? Can you please finish ironing so
we can get the groceries?’ I tried to be stern.
‘Yes,
mu
m
,
please give me ten more minutes,’ she replied from inside.
Why was I stern? Was it
because she was married and I disapproved of her affair with a
Bangladeshi labourer? Why
shoul
d
I be stern? I was not
her mum; I was her employer. As long as she delivered her work, why
should I bother about her sex or love life? If she slept on Sundays
with her Bongla boyfriends in exchange for cell phones and slippers,
then that was her sin to bear; I should not bother.
As things turned out, I
had to.
At the supermarket,
Mary lugged the cart while I pointed to items on the shelves for her
to pick and pile into the cart.
‘Please note the
brands and the items that we use, so if you have to come and shop,
you should always get the right things.’
‘Okay, mum. Can I
buy these noodles?’ she pointed to a package with a pair of red
prawns and a foreign label on it.
‘Yes, sure,
please get what you like.’ It was a mistake . . . not an
expensive one, but a smelly one, as we found out when the
red-prawn-noodles were cooked in our home.
‘What is that
smell of dead-dry fish?’ David was furious on the following
Saturday.
‘It is her food.
That is what
they
eat. She asked before getting it,’ I
simply replied.
‘Tell her she
can’t have it. It’s repulsive. If you can’t, then I
will tell her that myself,’ he was looking up from his paper.
‘She is a human
being. Let her eat what she likes. The smell will diffuse in a few
minutes,’ I looked back at him, getting up to swing the windows
ajar. Instinctively, I looked at the guardhouse. There was no one
there.
‘Shit, I give up.
Come, let us go to the club for a swim and some brunch. Get some
biscuits and gravy,’ he got up, smiling.
Through brunch, David
got progressively drunk; by evening, he was happy and wanted to
deliver a speech at the club. I took him home just as he got up and
began speaking. He drank some more—the better part of a
bottle—and by eight, he was playing with his gun.
‘Come here,’
he whispered, pulling me close, almost yanking my collar. He slipped
under my blouse, kneading my breasts and pinching my nipples with one
hand. With the other hand, he pointed his pistol straight at my head,
toying with the trigger like a violent intruder raping a woman at
gunpoint.
‘If you make a
move, I will kill you,’ he said, rubbing his crotch against my
buttocks, becoming stiff and erect. I was not scared, simply aroused,
these being the games that I played with my husband on some nights.
He pulled the trigger
with a familiar vacant-blank- thud, before starting to kiss, almost
like smearing a canvas in sweeping mindless strokes. His tongue was
ill directed, stretching from my lips to my armpits. He fucked me
with raw piston thrusts, scrotal-sac slapping against the inner
day-less parts of my thighs, his stamina artificially increased by
the effects of alcohol, eventually exploding in a whimper before
rolling over and falling asleep almost instantly. The orgasm, mine,
helped me sleep too, after I had tidied both of us up, longing for
the morning to wipe us clean again.
In the morning, by the
time I awoke, Mary had already sent Jay to school and David to work.
The tea was cold on the table; she reheated it, dutifully keeping an
aspirin alongside.
In the evening, the
maids clustered around the kids’ play area, exchanging notes,
maybe discussing the love lives of their sirs and mums, apart from
their own, as they watched over kids.
Enough of background.
Let me come to the main point of this narrative.
What I am about to tell
you is filled, first with shame, then acceptance and finally humour.
Shame, when it came,
was sudden and completely unexpected.
It happened on a
Saturday morning when Jay was away for his swimming lesson; and I was
heading up to the gym. Having forgotten my music player and my towel,
I decided to head back home and get the same. At the front door, I
turned the keys gently. Not wanting to wake David, I tiptoed up to
the bedroom. He was not in bed. He must have woken up, but there
wasn’t any sound from the toilet or the tele in the second
bedroom.
‘David,’ I
almost called out for him, aloud. I should have, it would have
stopped a chain of reactions that led to the shame I am confessing to
you. Not that it remained a secret; the papers make the most of any
scoop, before moving on, chasing daily gossip, leaving mineable
articles for all to search and relish in the future.
Through the kitchen, I
peeped into the maid’s room; there were stirrings inside. The
door was not shut and bolted because it could not be shut and bolted.
The bedpost protruded through the doorway, leaving the door hinged
like a wooden flag on a mast, a sliver slit of an opening, enough for
the interiors to be left un-private, ajar enough for a good view, in
any position. Her room was large enough to hold only one article of
furniture, a small bed.
On that bed, Mary was
on all fours, completely naked; David was on his knees, fucking her.
His right hand was holding the gun, which would have felt cold,
pressed against the right cheek of her arse.
‘David,’ I
finally called, my mobile phone slipping from my hand, landing on the
floor with a crash. He stood up, jerkily collecting his clothes and
left for the bedroom, mumbling. Mary grabbed her clothes, trying to
cover up, receding to the relative safely of the bed’s
headrest. She started to say something, but I had left by then.
The shock of discovery
left an instant sheen of sweat on my skin, and when I bent to pick
the mobile, my hands had a tremble to them.
The shame and anger of
being cheated upon did not lead to an immediate, loud confrontation.
After all, were we to slug it out while she heard us shouting and I
crying, maybe with a slight smile on her face as she did the dishes,
inside? Or were we expected to sit down and discuss this,
w
e
the three of us. Now there was a third person in our adult life, an
intruder who was similar to me, ready to be semi-raped by
th
e
man at gunpoint. Two objects for the man to play with, like enjoying
the mastery of two musical instruments.
When David emerged from
the bedroom, he was dressed and shaved. I was sitting on the couch,
face screwed in the pain of anger.
‘You are not in a
state to speak right now. We will talk about it later,’ he
picked up his bag and left for a Saturday at work.
I went down to the
pool, changed Jay and took him out for lunch; he sensed my
disturbance and was quiet through lunch, a bit tired, too, after the
thirty laps.
‘Will be late
getting home, go to bed, will speak later,’ his sms read. I did
not reply, simply imagining myself sending him an mms of me being
defiled by the guard or the gardener or the barber. Would that make
him drop what he was doing and rush home? All the while, our son ate
the ham sandwich with soft powerless child bites.
In the morning, I
delivered my caveat, ‘I am leaving, with Jay, heading back to
my mum’s place.’ My mum was almost eighty, but
clear-minded, a problem, since I would have to share my shame with
eighty years of calm, calculated reason. Of course, she would ponder
over it, talking to me about it before laughing it off.
‘You can’t
leave me now; I need your support and help. What if the maid files a
complaint against me? I will need you next to me. I am not saying
that she will, but what if she does?’ Self-preservation—that
is a banker ’s build, even at the cost of a global recession or
a family meltdown.
What should have been
screaming matches with my husband became whispers, since we did not
want Mary to hear us. What should have been wails of sorrow were
muted sniffs and sobs.
Was David actually
raping the maid, living out his dark fantasies, finally? Was my
compliance not enough to quench his sexual deviance—pleasurably
I confess, but pliable where another may have grown frigid? Maybe
they had simple sex . . . I was away and the maid got frisky seeing
sir’s early morning erection when delivering the tea. A few
hints dropped like sugar cubes
. . . maybe a stir and
the game would have begun.
Simpl
e
se
x
, what is that? A myth or a missionary mantra
all covered in sheets, with only the feet sticking out?
‘Did you rape
her?’ I asked.
‘Look, I don’t
know. All I know is that it was a genuine mistake, one that I am
paying for. She has already started the blackmails. I have already
given her a thousand dollars.’
Al
read
y
,
a new word, learnt recently in a new place
. . . already trite and
jarring.
I was stunned, like
when emotions and logic coexist. They don’t coexist; they
simply collide, stunning us as they sandwich us. Yes, I was angry,
but I had to get the woman out of our lives without ruining us. Wait
a minute . . . if he was wrong, why was he not facing up to his
responsibilities? Or was he, by paying her off?
‘Please, we can
do whatever you like, but only after this episode is behind us. I
need you,’ he was almost pleading.
I imagined myself in
the papers, like Hillary, or all the other wives who accompany their
cheating-celeb- husbands in what gets depicted as a
pilla
r
o
f
strengt
h
, trussing up
familial piety.
The maid would simply
appear well dressed, alone with her lawyers, or with her Bangladeshi
boyfriend, right alongside.
The boyfriend wouldn’t
bother; he would find another girl, with lesser complications, making
this mess a threesome of two women tied to one white man.
‘Are there
others, apart from her whom you have been with?’ I asked. Was
it not logical that there would be others, like a habit, acceptable
and repeatable after the first few times one had done it?
‘Look, it is not
how you think it is. It was a genuine mistake, you have to
understand,’ he spoke, acting genuinely distraught.
Yes, there were others
. . . in massage parlours and in the upstairs shacks of seedy bars.
There had to be. How else can a man embolden himself for enacting
rape on his employee, in her workplace?
I was full of questions
filled with angst. ‘Who hinted it, she or you? How can you say
this is a mistake, so casually? Where did it begin? In our bedroom,
in the kitchen or in her room?’
I dreaded option c,
since that meant he went to her.
A
mistak
e
is a loss of judgment like forgetting to slam the brakes before a
quick-turning traffic signal, or the errant swing on the squash
court. How can it include kneeling as if in front of God and gyrating
inside another person, strokes laid out in timely beats of audible
slaps?
It is good that I saw
it, and heard the slaps of their hips; else, I would have unanswered
visions of imagination all my life.
As regards my
questions, he deflected them well, underplaying the whole episode.
Infidelity, one way or
the other, eventually surfaces. Or would his have gone unnoticed had
I not walked in on them? Were they going to continue having sex,
fantasies evolving, convoluting with time, behind my back?
Me at the gym, is that
all that their planning demanded? Or, was it spontaneous lust, one
that does not need planning at all?
Most cheating partners
have a common theme of self-justification:
it
is
only a natural ac
t
. Isn’t
natu
r
e
the final explanation that all unacceptable events in our life settle
for, from a cancer-stricken patient to a whoring man? Both their
diseases are natural, aren’t they?
At the agent’s
office, things fell apart.
‘Why do you want
to let Mary go? She has been with you for a few months now and you
liked her work,’ Ms Goh asked a valid question.
She saw me shifting,
answering in meaningless drivel. She could probably sense the prick
that I felt behind my eyes. I was near tears.
‘Come, let us get
some coffee.’ She got up and I followed her. She left a soapy,
comforting trail in her wake.
I made a sketchy
confession, leaving out the bits about the gun and the kneeling . . .
those were too debased to narrate, unnecessary. I was glad to share
and lightened up, even if it was only with the agent and even if it
was only in small part.
‘Ms Goh, you have
to help us get rid of her. Please can you send her back to her home
country immediately?’ I finally concluded, in tears.
‘
Aiy
a
,
another one of those cases. I am really sorry to hear that.’ Ms
Goh sipped her coffee. I simply stared down at mine. ‘My advice
is for you to transfer her to another house in this city. Don’t
deport her. She may turn vindictive and concoct all sorts of stories
for the police,’ she continued.
‘What sort of
stories? What do you mean, police?’ I asked her.
‘Well, if she
makes claims of assault, or harassment or, worse still, rape, then
things will turn very ugly, very quickly. On the other hand, if she
simply wants to continue in another household and keep sending money
home, then the whole matter will get buried.’ Ms Goh reached
out and kept her hand on mine. ‘Let us be tactful and simply
transfer her within the city. She needs the money and I am quite
certain she will keep quiet as long as her livelihood is not
disrupted.’
I teared freely, tissue
in hand.
So I was to stay
behind, while she left for greener pastures.
W
a
h
,
I thought in Hindi! We would stay back, picking up the pieces, while
she built a new life. Why could I not leave, making a new life? It
was because I did not earn, and depended on a judge to grant me the
custody of my son and my rightful share of our savings, which was of
course all the money.