Read The Weight of Heaven Online
Authors: Thrity Umrigar
Tags: #Americans - India, #Murder, #Psychological Fiction, #Married People, #India, #Family Life, #Crime, #Psychological, #Family & Relationships, #General, #Americans, #Bereavement, #Death; Grief; Bereavement, #Adoption, #Fiction
was a common enough occurrence—Europeans coming to Goa for
a visit and falling in love with the beauty of the place and the warm
friendliness of the people, which they mistook for a childlike innocence. Next thing you knew, they were buying up beachfront prop-Th e We i g h t o f H e av e n
6 9
erty on their accountants’ and nurses’ and plumbers’ salaries. They
lived in Goa for years until one day, a sudden urge to eat fish and
chips at the Blackheath pub or to see the Seine at dawn or to revisit
the Cologne cathedral came over them, and they heard themselves
tell a nephew or a niece they had last seen thirty-five years ago that
they were coming home.
“Why you looking like someone dead, men?” Edna had said to
Prakash. “The old man has to go home, no?”
Prakash shook his head. “I thought his home here.”
Edna laughed. “He live here twenty-five years and never speak
the language. And you think this his home? At least Olaf is a decent
fellow—told me today he giving us ten thousand rupees. The British gent my mama cook for for years, you know what he leave her?
A picture of himself. Say he not want to insult their friendship by
giving money. Can you imagine?”
Before leaving, Olaf also told them in his broken English that
he’d sold the house to an American company called HerbalSolutions
and that someone from the company would soon be living there.
He had highly recommended Prakash and Edna to the new owners.
The ten thousand rupees was to tide them over in the eventuality
that there would be a delay in the arrival of the new occupants.
Now, thinking of Olaf as Edna finished sweeping the kitchen,
Prakash said to her, “Do you remember—”
“Do you remember, do you remember?” she mimicked him.
She got up from the floor and straightened herself. “All I remember is you come home at eleven last night, like an ordinary ruffian.
Drunker than the devil himself.”
He had to look away from the fury he saw in her eyes. How to
explain to her what had made him stagger out of the house and head
to the bootlegger’s joint, last night? He had been in the courtyard
pruning the bushes when Ramesh had returned to their shack after
knocking and knocking on the door of the main house. “
Arre, bewa-
koof
, I told you they not home,” he’d called out to his son.
7 0 Th r i t y U m r i g a r
Ramesh’s forehead was creased with worry. “But I am needing
help on a maths problem, dada,” he said. And then, “How come you
cannot help me?”
The shame had risen in him, like acid from the stomach. Unable
to speak, he had instead smacked his son on the head. “Go inside
and study,” he said. He lingered in the courtyard for a few minutes,
knowing that he was not going into their one-room shack, that he
was too embarrassed to face his son. He gave the bush one savage
clip, put away the shears, and walked to the village instead.
Edna was still staring at him. “In Goa they at least have AA
meetings,” she said. “In this godforsaken place, nothing.”
“Goa, Goa,” he said, forgetting to keep his voice down. “If your
Goa so good, pack your bags and go. See who will marry an old
boodhi
like you.”
“And who made me an old
boodhi
, you rascal? So young and
plump I was when I met you . . .” And Edna was down the road
that she walked at least once a week, a path full of recriminations
and accusations and blame and nostalgia for the Goa of her youth.
Usually, he simply ignored her, made his mind fly like a kite to some
other place, but today he felt pity for his wife, heard in her lament
for her lost youth something that he himself was feeling. Stopping
her mid-sentence, he put his arms around her. “
Chup, chup
, Edna,”
he said softly. “I understand the reason for all this
gussa
. You is just
missing your mummy and papa.”
Her eyes filled immediately with tears, and he knew he had diagnosed the problem accurately. But how to solve it, he didn’t know.
Not for the first time, he cursed the pigheaded father-in-law he had
never met.
Feeling her relax and soften, glad that he had been able to interrupt her tirade, he continued. “Listen, my bride,” he said to her in
Hindi. “Our son doesn’t lack for anything, does he? Together, we
provide him with all the love in the world.”
Th e We i g h t o f H e av e n
7 1
She pulled away from him. “Yah, and what are you knowing
about family love, you stupid orphan?”
He flinched and moved away from her, the same expression on
his face that the stray dogs wore after they had been kicked in the
ribs by one of the village children. “Prakash,” Edna began, but he
shook his head fiercely.
“Go,” he hissed. “Get out of the kitchen. Take your sad face out
of my sight.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“You go, I say. Before I lift my hand to you.”
She picked up the broom and left the room. He stood in the
kitchen for a few moments, forcing the sting of her words to lessen.
He noticed that the rice was done and turned off the burner. He
heard Edna and Ellie in the living room. It sounded like Ellie was
giving Edna some instructions. He eyed the door.
It would take only a minute to cross the courtyard to their shack
and take a long swig of the
daru
bottle that he had hidden in the
kitchen. He could come back and finish cooking the rest of the food
before Edna was done talking to the memsahib. He moved stealthily
across the floor and shut the door quietly behind him.
Ellie crossed the courtyard behind the house and opened the wooden
gate that led to the driveway where Nandita was waiting in her car.
Edna followed behind her. “What time will you be home, madam?”
she called.
Ellie felt a wave of irritation. She hated how Edna kept track of
her all the time. “I don’t know,” she said.
Nandita leaned over to give her a peck on the cheek after she
climbed into the car. “You know, I think you’re wise to not have
live-in help,” Ellie grumbled as Nandita backed out of the driveway.
“Why? What happened?”
“Oh, Edna’s so fucking controlling at times. And witnessing this
hostility between her and Prakash gives me a headache. It’s like—
shit, it’s hard enough to run my own marriage, without having to
watch those two every morning.”
“Uh-oh. What has happened to my kind-hearted, high-minded
friend this morning? How come she’s sounding like the rest of us
mortals?”
“Oh, shut up.”
Th e We i g h t o f H e av e n
7 3
“Wow. You
are
a grouch today. But speaking of marriages . . .
you and Frank seemed pretty lovey-dovey last night.”
“It was the weed.”
“Bullshit. You two were making eyes at each other from the
moment he walked in.” She looked away from the road to glance at
Ellie. “So. Did you get some action last night?”
Ellie laughed. “You’re baaaaad.”
“Avoidance of a question is not the same as answering it.”
“And what is that? Something you read in a Chinese fortune
cookie?”
“Yup. Confucius say: Avoidance of a question is not the same as
answering it.”
Ellie laughed again. “You must’ve been one heck of an investigative reporter.”
“That I was. Guilty as charged.” Nandita paused for a moment.
“Speaking of which. I got a call from a journalist in Mumbai this
morning. He works for a small political weekly. I’m sorry to tell you
this, El, but he was asking me what I’d heard about the death of a
young political worker in police custody. And what the mood in the
village was and all that.”
Ellie suddenly had a sour feeling in her stomach. “What did you
say?”
“I didn’t know what to say. So I told him I was a friend of yours
and that it would be a conflict for me to talk about the situation. He
wasn’t too happy.”
Ellie knew what it must’ve cost Nandita not to help a fellow journalist, not to weigh in on an incident that ordinarily she would have
done her best to publicize. She felt a lump form in her throat and
waited for it to clear before she spoke. “Thank you, Nandita,” she
said. “I know that must have been really hard for you. And I’m sorry
you’re getting dragged into this mess.”
Nandita shrugged. “I’ve been dragged into worse messes, believe
7 4 Th r i t y U m r i g a r
me,” she said lightly. “And anyway, I never took a pledge to help
every journalist who comes looking for me. So to hell with it. I’m
sitting this one out.” She patted Ellie’s thigh. “Now, cheer up, won’t
you? Otherwise I’ll regret having said anything to you.”
“Don’t. You know me. I don’t care how painful the truth is—I’d
rather know something than be in the dark.”
“I’m the same way.” Nandita smiled, swerving to avoid an oncoming car. “I think that’s why I became a reporter.”
As always, a crowd of children gathered around the car as they
pulled into the dirt road that led to the NIRAL clinic. “Hello, Binu,
hi Raja,” Ellie called as she recognized some of the children who
had come to greet them. “How are all of you?”
In reply, she heard a chorus of voices say, in that singsong manner
of theirs, “Fine.” The way they stretched the word out into two syllables made Ellie laugh. She was happy to be here, had missed this
place and these children more than she’d known, she realized.
Several of the kids grabbed her forearm so that they looked like
a round cloud of dust as they made their way into the classroom at
one end of the building. Ellie looked over to where Nandita was
standing with her own young charges. “Shall I run the class with
the children first?” she called. “Meet with the women later?”
“Sure. I have to do some paperwork, anyway. Ordered the vaccines this week, and I want to make sure they’re here. I’ll send
Rakesh out to let the women know you’re in today.”
“Make sure he informs Radha,” she called as she opened the blue
wooden door that led to the small classroom. “She was really having
a hard time the last time I saw her. I want to follow up with her
today.”
It was hot inside the room. Ellie opened the single window and
turned on a table fan. “Haven’t you been meeting in here last week?”
she asked and was greeted by a chorus of, “No, miss.”
“So Asha didn’t run the class?” Asha was a shy nineteen-year-Th e We i g h t o f H e av e n
7 5
old villager who had finished high school and was now employed by
NIRAL to tutor the younger kids.
“No, miss.”
“Well, then we have a lot of work to do.” She looked over the
class, which had students ranging from four to twelve. She sorted
the children according to their reading proficiencies and began with
the first group. Some of the kids were learning the alphabet; others
were reading on their own; a few of the really bright ones were able
to comprehend the science and history textbooks she had purchased
for them. Anu, one of the older girls, raised her hand and asked for
permission to work on a jigsaw puzzle while Ellie was tending to
the younger kids. Ellie hesitated, loath to give up any more valuable
reading time, but the pleading look on Anu’s face made her say yes.
“Ten minutes on the puzzle,” she instructed them, ignoring their
groans of protest. “Then, start reading.”
An hour and a half later, Asha entered the classroom and stood
in the back, Ellie’s cue to wrap up the class. “Okay,” she said. “See
you all on Wednesday.”
She and Asha walked out of the stuffy classroom into the bright
light of the day. “How come there was no class last week?” Ellie
asked.
Asha looked at her dust-covered feet. “We were too busy with
the AIDS prevention class, miss,” she mumbled.
Shit. She had forgotten. Last week had been AIDS education
week. And Nandita had been too decent to mention it to her.
“Shall we start our rounds, miss?” Asha asked. “Many-many
women waiting to see you today.”
“Sure,” Ellie replied. “But listen, did you find Radha? She was
here two weeks ago. I need to spend some extra time with her.”
Radha had come to the clinic bearing black marks on her chocolate
brown skin, signatures of her husband’s violence. Those big, dark
eyes, glistening with unshed tears, had haunted Ellie, had made her
7 6 Th r i t y U m r i g a r
want to confront Radha’s husband, even while she knew that doing
so would only make life harder for the girl.
“She afraid to come to the clinic, miss. Says we should come to
her house.”
Ellie glanced at her watch. “Okay. Let’s attend to the women at
the clinic first. I’ll make sure to keep some time to go see Radha
after that.”
It was almost three thirty by the time they got done at the clinic.
As always, Ellie left the building drained in a way she never had
been even after spending a full day at her practice in Ann Arbor.
The problems of the women of Girbaug seemed so intractable to
her—impoverished mothers-in-law demanding more dowries from
the penniless girls who married into their families; drunken husbands who routinely beat their wives and children to relieve their