10.4
‘What time is this?’ raged Mrs Singh when her husband finally arrived home, wandering into his house wearily, the whites of his eyes nearly red, ‘I called you four hours ago.’
He looked back at her, surprised, wondering about her welcome. ‘I just got delayed,’ he mumbled, desperate for a drink and something to eat.
‘With what?’ she cried, waving her arms about in front of him, ‘What can possibly be more important than your family?’
‘Please,’ he sighed, ‘I’ve had a very stressful day. I don’t need this now.’
‘You don’t need what now? You don’t need me asking you why you took four hours to come home when I said we had an emergency? Am I not allowed to be angry, Vijay?’ She glared at him irately. ‘Four hours.’
‘You know how my business is,’ he murmured.
‘Your Bloody Business. You have a family here. Haven’t you noticed? Night after night it’s the same. I’m running out of patience. Just let it go. Let the bank take it. Let them take the house. You have a family here. But I don’t know for how much longer.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You wouldn’t know because you’re never here. I’m the one holding this family together, and all you care about is your bloody business.’
‘If my business falls through, we’ll have nothing.’ He tried to look at her lovingly. ‘I’m doing this for you,’ he said. ‘For all of you,’ he added.
‘You’re doing it for yourself,’ she cried back at him. ‘I don’t care what you do. You can be a dustman for all I care. It’s a steady income. It’s more than we get from you. At least we’d have you at home when we need you.’ She followed him along the hall and into the kitchen, observing his search for leftovers. ‘I told you what your beloved daughter has been up to,’ she yelled at him, ‘I called you twice. I thought maybe you didn’t understand the first time. But even after all that, you still couldn’t drop your bloody business.’ When he lifted the lids on the pans on the cooker, she lunged towards him and slammed them shut. ‘Night after night it’s the same, Vijay,’ she moaned, ‘I go to bed alone, I wake up alone. Your dinner’s always cold and you never eat it. And every day, I have to hold this family together. Every single bloody day, Satya and Sukhbir are at each other’s throats, and every day I have to intervene and shout at them and keep them apart, and stop them from fighting. And you’re never here to see it. I try my best to keep the peace. I try not to take sides. I try to be fair to your beloved Satya, but it drains me. I’m completely drained, Vijay.’ She pushed herself between him and the cooker. ‘And tonight was the one night you had to come home. The one night out of all these nights when I’ve had to deal with your bloody children, and you just couldn’t drag yourself away from your shop. Why, Vijay, why?’
‘I came as soon as I could.’
‘What I don’t understand, Vijay, is what you’re doing down there night after night. Do people buy washing machines at this time of day? It’s not like you run a corner shop. People pop out for a pint of milk. They don’t pop out for a dishwasher. Or do they? Maybe I’m wrong. Is that what happens? Your customers all flood in at night to stock up on fridge freezers and microwave ovens? Is that how it works, Vijay?’
‘I’m doing my accounts.’
‘Your accounts?’ she sneered, pushing him backwards, ‘You’ve been doing them for months and months. How complicated can it be? Write down your rent and your bank loan. There you are: done. You don’t sell anything.’
‘It’s the computer. It’s complicated.’
‘Well I don’t know why you bought that bloody thing. You managed okay before you had it. You wouldn’t have arrears if you hadn’t blown all that money on that bloody thing. And now you’re telling me it doesn’t even work.’
‘I didn’t say it doesn’t work. I said it’s complicated. You have to learn special commands. It has this special program called a spreadsheet, but it’s complicated. Sometimes it just disappears for no reason and I have to start all over again. It’s just temperamental. Tonight the ribbon got all tangled up in the printer. It’s not easy. It’s all new.’
‘It’s your bloody business, Vijay. Nobody forced you to buy that bloody thing. Why throw away all your money on something that doesn’t even work? You could’ve kept your beloved daughter at her old school if it wasn’t for your bloody experiments.’ She flung her hands in the air and tossed her head sideways. ‘I’ve had enough, Vijay. I don’t care about your bloody computer. I asked you to come home four hours ago. I’m in crisis. All I asked of you was to come home and deal with your daughter. Was that really too much to ask?’
‘I’m here now.’
‘Yes, but they’ve all bloody well gone to bed. They have school tomorrow. I asked you to come home four hours ago.’ Furiously she paced towards the kitchen door and back again. ‘You know, Vijay, sometimes I really have to ask myself what you’re up to. Am I such a bad wife? Am I not good enough for you? Is that why you don’t come home? Don’t I do enough for you? Don’t I wash your clothes well enough? Is my cooking offensive? Is the garden not tidy enough? What have I done that makes you stay away night after night? What is it? Do I smell? Am I ugly to you now? Am I too fat? Do I repulse you? Night after night I go to bed alone. And I lie there wondering what I’ve done to deserve this.’ She stared into his eyes. ‘And then it comes to me,’ she whined, ‘are you really working? Are you really spending all those hours on your accounts, recording your meagre sales? You know, Vijay, sometimes I have to ask myself this: are you seeing another woman?’
‘You what?’
‘What else should I think, Vijay? I’m not a fat old auntie. I haven’t let myself go. I dress nicely for you, Vijay. I exercise, I keep myself in check. I cook for you. I clean for you. I look after your children. There’s nothing I don’t do for you, Vijay, but still you stay away.’ She stared at him so intensely now that he almost stumbled backwards. ‘Do you have someone else?’ she wailed.
‘Of course I don’t,’ he scowled, ‘No. Of course not. How can you even ask me that?’
‘I had to ask, Vijay, because I’m so incredibly lonely. And you just don’t seem to notice. All you care about is your bloody business. You never ask me how I am. You never ask me how the children have been. You never say sorry when you come home late.’ She wanted him to notice her. ‘I’m not a demanding woman, Vijay. I don’t demand flowers. I don’t ask you to buy me clothes. I don’t fritter away your money on junk for the house. We have what we need, nothing more. Do I beg you for more?’ She wanted him to notice her, but it seemed futile. ‘All I asked this evening was for you to come home and deal with a family crisis. That’s all. Nothing more.’ She cried within. ‘Shall I remind you of our conversation back in September? Do you need reminding?’
‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I don’t need reminding.’
‘I think you do. It took you four hours to get here, after all.’
‘I don’t need reminding. I’ll deal with her.’
‘But when?’ she snapped, her hands on her hips, her head shaking from side to side. ‘You won’t do it, will you? You threaten her, but you never follow through. It’s no wonder they fight with her, but I’m the one who has to deal with it and keep them apart, night after night. Have you any idea what dinner’s like when you’re not here? It’s mayhem. And all because you won’t do what you have to do.’
‘Listen: I’ve already said I’m going to deal with her. I’ll deal with her tomorrow.’
‘Yes, of course. Tomorrow. It’s always tomorrow, and never. We could’ve solved this months ago if you weren’t so bloody stubborn. All you had to do was tell Sukhbir you were sorry. That’s all you were required to do. Why couldn’t you just admit that you flew into a rage and lost control of your senses? Why couldn’t you just’ve said you were wrong? Why couldn’t you just say you made a mistake? But no, Vijay, you always have to be right. And so here you are. Now you’re faced with punishing your daughter like you punished your son, and you can’t bring yourself to do it. And you can’t do it because in your heart of hearts, you know you were wrong to beat him like you did.’ Scoffing at him, she turned away. ‘But it’s okay, isn’t it, Vijay, because you won’t be here to deal with the fallout? Your wife will do all that. She’ll watch as it just gets worse and worse, as this family splits apart. It’ll be me. And I always wonder what tomorrow will hold. Will Sukhbir just take it too far and do something stupid? Or will Satya have enough and do something stupid. Sukhbir is so angry, Vijay. It scares me. And it all goes back to that day you flew into a rage. Now he resents his sister so much. She can’t move an inch without him jumping on her. I can’t even say one nice word to her, without him taking it as a reason to attack her. I’m trying so hard to be fair with your beloved Satya, Vijay, but it’s impossible. And so now you have no choice. You have to punish her now like you said you would, because if you don’t Sukhbir will explode.’ She might turn back to him, she might not: she did not want to see him now. ‘Every night I ask myself, “Why couldn’t Vijay just admit he was wrong?” Every night I ask myself this, because every day I deal with the fallout. Why couldn’t you just say sorry? Now we’re stuck.’ No, she would look at him now, she decided, to remind him that she was there. ‘I don’t want you to beat Satya,’ she purred, ‘We’ve had our difficult moments, but I love her as much as you do. I don’t want to see her hurt. But this is all your doing, Vijay. This mess is all yours. Even your father says this. You flew into a rage for half an hour, and I’ve had to deal with it ever since.’
If only he would say something, she complained within. If only he would look like he was listening, instead of worrying about his empty stomach. She could see that his eyes were still searching for his dinner, darting around the room in search of a plate hidden under an upturned bowl or a dish veiled beneath a tea towel.
‘Well say something, Vijay,’ she shouted urgently. ‘Tell me how you’re going to get out of this mess of your own making. Tell me. Or is your bloody business all you care about now?’
But Mrs Singh just watched as her husband flew into a rage of his own and stormed back into the hall. ‘I’m not justifying myself to you,’ he yelled back at her, heading for the front door. ‘I will deal with her in the morning, before she goes to school. I wasn’t wrong to punish Sukhbir as I did. It was the right thing to do. And it will be the right thing for Satya too.’
Pulling the door wide open, he headed out into the night, slamming it closed behind him. He would not see the way his wife collapsed onto a chair in the living room; the way she began to sob. He would not witness the palpations in her chest, or the way she almost fainted, the colour draining from her face. He would not comfort her as an aching pain shot across her brow, and he would not witness her wrath.
Suddenly she was on her feet again and stomping up the stairs. Suddenly she was charging into the girls’ room, her ire unrestrained, scaring her daughters from their places on the ends of their beds, where they had knelt looking miserable throughout the entire frenzied exchange. Suddenly, she grabbed Satya and found herself dragging her by her ankle across the floor. Wrestling herself free and leaping to her feet, Satya would not escape her mother. Before she knew what was happening, she had been dragged before the mirror in the bathroom, her hair locked in her mother’s grip. ‘Look at yourself,’ she shouted furiously, ‘just look at yourself.’ She tugged at Satya’s long ponytail, jolting her head backwards and forwards, and then tugged it harder, pulling her down towards the edge of the bath. ‘Let’s put an end to this lie, once and for all,’ she screamed, ‘Pious Satya! I haven’t seen pious Satya for years. Only self-righteous Satya. But self-righteous for what? I see nothing to be proud of here.’
With a pair of scissors retrieved from the drawer beneath the sink, her mother hacked and hacked at Satya’s ponytail, holding it tightly no matter how she struggled. She cut through a layer of hair and then another, breaking the bonds in two. When she finally breached the final strand, she tossed the entire detached rope into the bath, scattering the dark locks like sand. ‘There,’ she said, exhausted, ‘that’s it. The end of this pretence. No more pious Satya.’
As her mother fumed back to her daughters’ room, Satya fell to the floor, wailing and blubbering, seizing the back of her head with her hand desperately. Soon she was hysterical, but her mother had not yet finished. In her room, she was emptying Satya’s wardrobe of all her salwar suits, flinging them onto the bed. Succumbing to her fury, she gathered them together into a large ball, tucking them under her left arm. With her free arm, she dragged Satya from the bathroom again, kicking and pushing her down the stairs. Blustering out of the house, Mrs Singh deposited Satya’s clothes in the dustbin, slamming the lid closed on top of them. ‘No more,’ she cried at her daughter, pushing past her as she returned inside, abandoning her on the doorstep, shivering in the cold in her white camisole and tartan shorts.
When she finally sauntered in again with her clothes in her arms, she could hear her mother crying in the kitchen, but they would not exchange words. Satya just moped up the stairs again, wrapped her duvet over her, and sobbed through the night.
