English Lessons and Other Stories (21 page)

“Asha wants a massage,” said Ratan, and closed the door.

He sat in the little room for a long, long while, looking at the open closet with the high-heeled cowboy boots, the black patent leather shoes, the jean jacket, the motorcycle helmet, the bikini underwear, the printed socks, the lace camisole, the red velvet swing coat, the lipsticks and the rhinestone tiara and all the other trinkets she had made him buy… for Asha. And he wished Asha were a real person who would love him, Ratan.

But she wasn't.

So he went back to Devika, saying, “Give her an aspirin.”

Devika, memorizer of TV commercials, said, “Tylenol is better.”

Why, if she were pretending, couldn't she also pretend to be jealous? Every picture she took was of Ratan, every minute of her
day was spent in cooking, cleaning and waiting for him. She listened every time he had something to tell her. Everyone knows love isn't what's shown in the movies, but all the same, it's just
courteous
to be jealous if your husband suggests giving another woman, even an imaginary one, a massage.

Peter Kendall said the snow had come early. He'd said that last year and probably would say it every year with that same look of glad surprise. Ratan, however, wasn't quite as thrilled. Slippery-grey slush pocked Highway 401 for the weekly visits to Brampton, Malton or Mississauga, and he wasn't very good at steering in the direction of the car's slide. And Toronto was grey, grey, grey as Peter Kendall's Establishment hair. While his was black and falling. He was leaving pieces of himself everywhere, all over Toronto, and what parts of him were left were being taken from him slowly, surreptitiously, with Devika's damnable pictures, the flash going off from crazy angles into his sleep-dazed or blinking eyes.

It had to stop.

“Asha thinks you should get a life insurance policy,” Devika said on Sunday morning.

“And what do
you
think?”

“I?” She was caught unawares. It was a question he had never asked before.

“Yes, you. I don't see anyone else here.”

“Asha…” she began.

“No. Not Asha. You. What do
you
think? You think I should buy a life insurance policy?”

“As you wish,” said Devika.

Why could the women in his life not tell him things, tell him what they wanted, instead of hinting to him, poking at him with their sly insinuations, their arch expectations, their snide challenging,
their sultry little silences and their sweet little games, as though he were a cobra with drained poison sacs and they the snake-charmers pretending to fear, pretending to worship, pretending, pretending. Women's shakti is dangerous unless harnessed or wounded.

“Chalo,” he said. “Vandana Di will be waiting.”

“Asha is ready.”

She looked so convent-girl
Indian
, constantly adjusting that impractical marigold-yellow silk dupatta, that he wanted to shake her. She'd forget her coat as usual; he wouldn't remind her. Let the Canadian winter teach her the lesson it had taught him; next time she'd remember her coat.

“Are
you
ready?”

“Mmmhmm.” Again that surprise.

They were picking up speed on the ramp to the 401 when she looked at her lap in dismay.

“Just a minute. My dupatta is caught in the door.”

Before he could stop her, she had pulled at the handle. The Tempo door flew open and there was a whirr as the automatic shoulder strap released her. The car slithered over an ice patch and veered away from her flying body. He saw the unused lap belt glisten in the corner of his eye as he tried to brake, tried to call, tried to stop her going away from him.

When he reached her, she had struggled to her knees, one hand covering her naked throat. And she was crawling, sobbing, dishevelled, towards the sodden shreds of her dupatta. She was almost to it, scrabbling in the muck like a madwoman for any passing Canadian to see, and he heard himself snarl, “See what happens when you don't listen to me.”

That stopped her, stopped her crawling and that awful, vulnerable whimper, and she lay quiet, shocked, along the melting snowbank.

For the first time, she suffered him to touch her in daylight. So he held her, small and shivering in the cold grey foreignness, until the ambulance came.

A vase of plastic flowers stood, determinedly cheerful, on the night-stand. A woman doctor's voice. “Some concussion, bruises and a broken arm. You're very lucky you weren't killed, but we'll have to watch you over the next few weeks.”

An earnest white policeman with a cold took her statement.

“You say you opened the door —”

“My dupatta was caught in the door,” she explained.

The policeman sneezed. He wrote, “Scarf… caught… in… passenger… door.”

She pointed to his pad with an effort.

“Not my scarf, my dupatta.”

“How do you spell that?” The policeman wiped his nose.

“D-U-P-A-T-T-A,” she intoned.

A dupatta is more, so much more than a scarf. It is a woman's modesty, her goodness, to be protected, cherished by her husband. She wanted her mother, her father, and at least twenty solicitous relatives telling her what to do, how to do it, how to live, how to be good, how to be loved.

But here there was only Ratan,
Canadian
Ratan, sitting in the sterile whiteness watching the green glow of digital displays on the monitor and the slow weave of the plotter recording her brain wave patterns from the greased electrodes at her temples.

There was only Ratan, and Canada, and herself. No one else.

Ratan loomed over her.

“How are you, Devika?” he asked.

She tried to smile then, but the bruises on her face were too painful. She felt him sit next to her on the bed and winced as he took her hand. How was she?

“I am Asha,” she said, voice low and husky. “Devika was afraid of living here, so she just… flew away.”

Ratan came closer. Asha, Devika — all the same to him. “Asha,” he said, as though testing the name. The name means hope.

“When you look better, Asha,” he told her, “I will invite Peter Kendall and his wife to dinner.”

“When I feel better,” said Asha, “I want…” Speaking was difficult. “I want… to go to Niagara Falls.” And because Asha could live even if Ratan were to die, she said, “I want to take pictures of the falls and send them home to India.”

Then Asha closed her swollen eyes and felt Devika drift away as though she had never been.

by
KULDIP GILL

Opening the pages of Shauna Singh Baldwin's
English Lessons and Other Stories
is like taking a pilgrimage, a journey, or even a walking tour. Along the way, one encounters many contexts where one lingers or revisits and experiences the plight of many characters, each more interesting than the last.

The first time I sat down to read this collection, I could not start the second story until I had read “Rawalpindi, 1919” at least three times. It moved me in a very personal way — something I had not previously felt with any other story. I asked myself, “Why?” and I found that Shauna Singh Baldwin had captured my attention through details and imagery.

In the story she describes how an Indian woman makes chapatti dough, which acts as a symbol that sheds light upon the narrative. To follow the story, we must pay attention to the chappati dough. I know how it feels to make the dough — know how once I've finished kneading it, I too form a ball of it and turn its rough side down, patting the top to make it shine. I've also taken a small piece out and gone through the steps the author describes. If the phone rings or something else interrupts the process, the
small piece, exposed to air, will quickly begin to develop a looser structure and a different colour, taking on a different complexion from the main body of dough.

As I read, my hands could feel the dough and itched to move as Baldwin gave the details of the process. She wants the reader to experience the act of making dough, and so uses all her artistry as a writer.

The dough is a metaphor for life, family, and universal values. For the metaphor to convey the meanings intended, we must be attentive to cultural nuances. In this story, Baldwin includes compelling scenes that portray collectivist cultural values. Separated from his family, the boy Sarup will take on the individualist values of the West. His mother knows that if they refuse to let their son go to England, he may remain more true to family values.

Despite this intuitive knowledge, the mother knows she must be prepared to let him go, but will not do so without making her husband, who wants the son to be educated in England, aware of what they can anticipate on their son's return. She takes food to her husband in the manner of an Indian wife. As she observes the family values of service to a husband, she talks to him in culturally specific ways. She suggests to him that if the boy goes away to an English school, he will return with foreign tastes and different needs and desires. There is a hint of threat that the husband had better be prepared. In fact, they had better buy some china dinnerware (the old metal thali won't do). When their son returns, he will not be content with pillows on the floor — a sofa had better be in the plans, as well.

Through this first story we also learn of and adjust to the evocative language used and familiarize ourselves with Baldwin's style and the riches of the Punjabi language.

Baldwin uses words, images, and concepts from different languages or dialects throughout her work, and different registers within these languages. I was constantly surprised at how easy
she made it appear to show the thoughts of particular individuals as well as the dialogue between them. This seeming effortlessness exists despite the breadth: stories are told about different classes of people, in diverse voices. We hear the voices of an old woman, a young girl, a young married woman, and the voice of a woman about to be engaged. The ease belies a well-honed writing style — how else could she tell of ground-level relationships, with characters emerging through confessional modes of thought? She knows each character's inner language at an intimate level and allows us to enter it. Familiar with these languages and cultures, I found the range of stories immensely credible and satisfying to read, in all their complexity.

I can't help but notice the details in these stories. One insightful passage from “Family Ties” illustrates Baldwin's expertise in presenting important particulars. The story opens in the voice of the narrator — a ten-year-old girl who is “absurdly happy” with her father's attention to her as his beti (daughter). He calls her by a pet name, his little “kukri
”
(a small hen) because she is a fearful little thing. She tells us later that she is entrusted to go to the market with their driver, and to the chicken-seller to buy the meat for dinner.

The hens all look the same to me — brownish-white with frightened eyes, silly kukris just like me. I look at the closest cage and one steps forward. She holds her head high when she crows, thrusts her breast at the cage and seems unafraid to die, so I say, “That one.” A moment later her head is severed and Nand Singh throws her in his shopping bag. Although Mummy's frown at my plate warns that no one will marry a fatty, I eat the curried kukri that night, hoping her courage will nourish mine.

*

As I read, I attend to details such as pet names and words, for this is how Baldwin foreshadows the unfolding plot. These rich elements provide us with the life of the family sequentially through the teenage years of our young narrator, who tells us of the lessons she accumulates: “But I have learned, learned that to be part of a family you have to agree to keep its secrets. Because there are penalties to be paid by kukris who crow.” She has imbibed what Baldwin shows us in other stories throughout this collection: that traditionally, women had to learn silence, for women who didn't comply with traditional modes of living were severely punished.

I felt that each of the women protagonists in Baldwin's stories, though sometimes simple, showed that every person has unique, even extraordinary qualities. Human nature and dignity are qualities we must value and respect; they inspire a “bottomless well of empathy and compassion” for all of mankind.

Shauna Singh Baldwin has a good measure of compassion for the characters, especially the women she depicts in her complex and multi-layered stories; a lesson in good literature. A story that best demonstrates this is “A Pair of Ears,” where Baldwin shows insight into human nature. She shows us the compassion, empathy, and love a housekeeper (Amma) has for her dead mistress who was treated badly by her greedy son and daughter-in-law. Amma says, “I squat again. I paint slowly — for this is important — slowly I paint a rangoli design in my Mem-saab's blood on the white chip marble floor.” Baldwin can empathize with the maid-servant's desire to leave a vengeful symbol for them — a symbol in the blood of a woman whose son put her through agony.

In a recent essay on Dostoevsky published in
Brick
magazine, Orhan Pamuk writes, “he refused to offer up his wisdom in the abstract, instead he locates these truths inside characters that give every impression of being real.” Similarly, in this collection
of short stories, time and again, Baldwin gives us characters we believe in, who live on in our minds.

She reveals the complicated textures of the lives of South Asian women in all of their absurdities and painful truths through these tales. Her particular style of writing, humorous at times, is also full of fresh similes and metaphors that can only come from a writer knowledgeable in a number of languages — their peculiar idioms and puns. Again and again I enjoyed her use of literature's many conventions, such as figurative language. In “Gayatri,” she opens the story with the protagonist “cocooned in a sulk.” Then she tells us that the “heat of a new delhi morning panted like a waiting dog.” Suddenly, we feel the bodily discomfort caused by an oppressively hot day in India.