The Unknown Errors of Our Lives Read online

  Washing clothes has been a problem for Mrs. Dutta ever since she arrived in California.

  “We can’t, Mother,” Shyamoli had said with a sigh when Mrs. Dutta asked Sagar to put up a clothesline for her in the backyard. (Shyamoli sighed often nowadays. Perhaps it was an American habit? Mrs. Dutta did not remember the Indian Shyamoli, the docile bride she’d mothered for a month before putting her on a Pan Am flight to join her husband, pursing her lips in quite this way to let out a breath at once patient and vexed.) “It’s just not done, not in a nice neighborhood like this one. And being the only Indian family on the street, we have to be extra careful. People here, sometimes—.” She’d broken off with a shake of her head. “Why don’t you just keep your dirty clothes in the hamper I’ve put in your room, and I’ll wash them on Sunday along with everyone else’s.”

  Afraid of causing another sigh, Mrs. Dutta had agreed reluctantly. But she knew she should not store unclean clothes in the same room where she kept the pictures of her gods. That brought bad luck. And the odor. Lying in bed at night she could smell it distinctly, even though Shyamoli claimed the hamper was airtight. The sour, starchy old-woman smell embarrassed her.

  What embarrassed her more was when, Sunday afternoons, Shyamoli brought the laundry into the family room to fold. Mrs. Dutta would bend intensely over her knitting, face tingling with shame, as her daughter-in-law nonchalantly shook out the wisps of lace, magenta and sea-green and black, that were her panties, laying them next to a stack of Sagar’s briefs. And when, right in front of everyone, Shyamoli pulled out Mrs. Dutta’s own crumpled, baggy bras from the clothes heap, she wished the ground would open up and swallow her, like the Sita of mythology.

  Then one day Shyamoli set the clothes basket down in front of Sagar.

  “Can you do them today, Sagar?” (Mrs. Dutta, who had never, through the forty-two years of her marriage, addressed Sagar’s father by name, tried not to wince.) “I’ve got to get that sales report into the computer by tonight.”

  Before Sagar could respond, Mrs. Dutta was out of her chair, knitting needles dropping to the floor.

  “No no no, clothes and all is no work for the man of the house. I’ll do it.” The thought of her son’s hands searching through the basket and lifting up his wife’s—and her own—underclothes filled her with horror.

  “Mother!” Shyamoli said. “This is why Indian men are so useless around the house. Here in America we don’t believe in men’s work and women’s work. Don’t I work outside all day, just like Sagar? How’ll I manage if he doesn’t help me at home?”

  “I’ll help you instead,” Mrs. Dutta ventured.

  “You don’t understand, do you, Mother?” Shyamoli said with a shaky smile. Then she went into the study.

  Mrs. Dutta sat down in her chair and tried to understand. But after a while she gave up and whispered to Sagar that she wanted him to teach her how to run the washer and dryer.

  “Why, Mother? Molli’s quite happy to . . .”

  “I’ve got to learn it. . . .” Her voice warped with distress as she rummaged through the tangled heap for her clothes.

  Her son began to object, then shrugged. “Oh very well. If that’s what you really want.”

  But later, when she faced them alone, the machines with their cryptic symbols and rows of gleaming knobs terrified her. What if she pressed the wrong button and flooded the entire floor with soapsuds? What if she couldn’t turn the machines off and they kept going, whirring maniacally, until they exploded? (This had happened to a woman on a TV show just the other day, and she had jumped up and down, screaming. Everyone else found it hilarious, but Mrs. Dutta sat stiff-spined, gripping the armrest of her chair.) So she took to washing her clothes in the bathtub when she was alone. She had never done such a chore before, but she remembered how the village washerwomen of her childhood would beat their saris clean against river rocks. And a curious satisfaction filled her as her clothes hit the porcelain with the same solid wet thunk.

  My small victory, my secret.

  This is why everything must be dried and put safely away before Shyamoli returns. Ignorance, as Mrs. Dutta knows well from years of managing a household, is a great promoter of harmony. So she keeps an eye on the menacing advance of the clouds as she hangs up her blouse and underwear. As she drapes her sari along the redwood fence that separates her son’s property from the neighbor’s, first wiping it clean with a dish towel she has secretly taken from the bottom drawer of the kitchen. But she isn’t too worried. Hasn’t she managed every time, even after that freak hailstorm last month when she had to use the iron from the laundry closet to press everything dry? The memory pleases her. In her mind she writes to Mrs. Basu, I’m fitting in so well here, you’d never guess I came only two months back. I’ve found new ways of doing things, of solving problems creatively. You would be most proud if you saw me.

  WHEN MRS. DUTTA decided to give up her home of forty-five years, her relatives showed far less surprise than she had expected.

  “Oh, we all knew you’d end up in America sooner or later,” they said. “It was a foolishness to stay on alone so long after Sagar’s father, may he find eternal peace, passed away. Good thing that boy of yours came to his senses and called you to join him. Everyone knows a wife’s place is with her husband, and a widow’s with her son.”

  Mrs. Dutta had nodded meek agreement, ashamed to let anyone know that the night before she had awakened weeping.

  “Well, now that you’re going, what’ll happen to all your things?”

  Mrs. Dutta, still troubled over those treacherous tears, had offered up her household effects in propitiation. “Here, Didi, you take this cutwork bedspread. Mashima, for a long time I meant for you to have these Corning Ware dishes, I know how much you admire them. And, Boudi, this tape recorder that Sagar sent a year back is for you. Yes yes, I’m quite sure. I can always tell Sagar to buy me another one when I get there.”

  Mrs. Basu, coming in just as a cousin made off triumphantly with a bone china tea set, had protested. “Prameela, have you gone crazy? That tea set used to belong to your mother-in-law.”

  “But what’ll I do with it in America? Shyamoli has her own set—”

  A look that Mrs. Dutta couldn’t read flitted across Mrs. Basu’s face. “But do you want to drink from it for the rest of your life?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Mrs. Basu hesitated. Then she said, “What if you don’t like it there?”

  “How can I not like it, Roma?” Mrs. Dutta’s voice was strident, even to her own ears. With an effort she controlled it and continued, “I’ll miss my friends, I know—and you most of all. The things we do together—evening tea, our walk around Rabindra Sarobar Lake, Thursday night Bhagavat Geeta class. But Sagar—they’re my only family. And blood is blood after all.”

  “I wonder,” Mrs. Basu said dryly, and Mrs. Dutta recalled that though both of Mrs. Basu’s children lived just a day’s journey away, they came to see her only on occasions when common decency demanded their presence. Perhaps they were tightfisted in money matters too. Perhaps that was why Mrs. Basu had started renting out her downstairs a few years ago, even though, as anyone in Calcutta knew, tenants were more trouble than they were worth. Such filial neglect must be hard to take, though Mrs. Basu, loyal to her children as indeed a mother should be, never complained. In a way Mrs. Dutta had been better off, with Sagar too far away for her to put his love to the test.

  “At least don’t give up the house,” Mrs. Basu was saying. “It’ll be impossible to find another place in case—”

  “In case what?” Mrs. Dutta asked, her words like stone chips. She was surprised to find that she was angrier with Mrs. Basu than she’d ever been. Or was it fear? My son isn’t like yours, she’d been on the verge of spitting out. She took a deep breath and made herself smile, made herself remember that she might never see her friend again.

  “Ah, Roma,” she said, putting her arm around Mrs. Basu, “you think I’m such an old wi
tch that my Sagar and my Shyamoli will be unable to live with me?”

  MRS. DUTTA HUMS a popular Rabindra Sangeet as she pulls her sari from the fence. It’s been a good day, as good as it can be in a country where you might stare out the window for hours and not see one living soul. No vegetable vendors with wicker baskets balanced on their heads, no knife-sharpeners calling scissors-knives-choppers, scissors-knives-choppers to bring the children running. No dehati women with tattoos on their arms to sell you cookware in exchange for your old silk saris. Why, even the animals that frequented Ghoshpara Lane had personality. Stray dogs that knew to line up outside the kitchen door just when leftovers were likely to be thrown out, the goat who maneuvered its head through the garden grille hoping to get at her dahlias, cows who planted themselves majestically in the center of the road, ignoring honking drivers. And right across the street was Mrs. Basu’s two-story house, which Mrs. Dutta knew as well as her own. How many times had she walked up the stairs to that airy room painted sea-green and filled with plants where her friend would be waiting for her.

  What took you so long today, Prameela? Your tea is cold already.

  Wait till you hear what happened, Roma. Then you won’t scold me for being late. . . .

  Stop it, you silly woman, Mrs. Dutta tells herself severely. Every single one of your relatives would give an arm and a leg to be in your place, you know that. After lunch you’re going to write a nice, long letter to Roma, telling her exactly how delighted you are to be here.

  From where Mrs. Dutta stands, gathering up petticoats and blouses, she can look into the next yard. Not that there’s much to see, just tidy grass and a few pale-blue flowers whose name she doesn’t know. There are two wooden chairs under a tree, but Mrs. Dutta has never seen anyone using them. What’s the point of having such a big yard if you’re not even going to sit in it? she thinks. Calcutta pushes itself into her mind again, Calcutta with its narrow, blackened flats where families of six and eight and ten squeeze themselves into two tiny rooms, and her heart fills with a sense of loss she knows to be illogical.

  When she first arrived in Sagar’s home, Mrs. Dutta wanted to go over and meet her next-door neighbors, maybe take them some of her special rose-water rasogollahs, as she’d often done with Mrs. Basu. But Shyamoli said she shouldn’t. Such things were not the custom in California, she explained earnestly. You didn’t just drop in on people without calling ahead. Here everyone was busy, they didn’t sit around chatting, drinking endless cups of sugar tea. Why, they might even say something unpleasant to her.

  “For what?” Mrs. Dutta had asked disbelievingly, and Shyamoli had said, “Because Americans don’t like neighbors to”—here she used an English phrase—“invade their privacy.” Mrs. Dutta, who didn’t fully understand the word privacy because there was no such term in Bengali, had gazed at her daughter-in-law in some bewilderment. But she understood enough to not ask again. In the following months, though, she often looked over the fence, hoping to make contact. People were people, whether in India or America, and everyone appreciated a friendly face. When Shyamoli was as old as Mrs. Dutta, she would know that, too.

  Today, just as she is about to turn away, out of the corner of her eye Mrs. Dutta notices a movement. At one of the windows a woman is standing, her hair a sleek gold like that of the TV heroines whose exploits baffle Mrs. Dutta when sometimes she tunes in to an afternoon serial. She is smoking a cigarette, and a curl of gray rises lazily, elegantly from her fingers. Mrs. Dutta is so happy to see another human being in the middle of her solitary day that she forgets how much she disapproves of smoking, especially in women. She lifts her hand in the gesture she has seen her grandchildren use to wave an eager hello.

  The woman stares back at Mrs. Dutta. Her lips are a perfect-painted red, and when she raises her cigarette to her mouth, its tip glows like an animal’s eye. She does not wave back or smile. Perhaps she is not well? Mrs. Dutta feels sorry for her, alone in her illness in a silent house with only cigarettes for solace, and she wishes the etiquette of America had not prevented her from walking over with a word of cheer and a bowl of her fresh-cooked alu dum.

  MRS. DUTTA RARELY gets a chance to be alone with her son. In the morning he is in too much of a hurry even to drink the fragrant cardamom tea which she (remembering how as a child he would always beg for a sip from her cup) offers to make him. He doesn’t return until dinnertime, and afterward he must help the children with their homework, read the paper, hear the details of Shyamoli’s day, watch his favorite TV crime show in order to unwind, and take out the garbage. In between, for he is a solicitous son, he converses with Mrs. Dutta. In response to his questions she assures him that her arthritis is much better now; no, no, she’s not growing bored being at home all the time; she was everything she needs—Shyamoli has been so kind—but perhaps he could pick up a few aerograms on his way back tomorrow? She recites obediently for him an edited list of her day’s activities and smiles when he praises her cooking. But when he says, “Oh, well, time to turn in, another working day tomorrow,” she is racked by a vague pain, like hunger, in the region of her heart.

  So it is with the delighted air of a child who has been offered an unexpected gift that she leaves her half-written letter to greet Sagar at the door today, a good hour before Shyamoli is due back. The children are busy in the family room doing homework and watching cartoons (mostly the latter, Mrs. Dutta suspects). But for once she doesn’t mind because they race in to give their father hurried hugs and then race back again. And she has him, her son, all to herself in a kitchen filled with the familiar, pungent odors of tamarind sauce and chopped coriander leaves.

  “Khoka,” she says, calling him by the childhood name she hasn’t used in years, “I could fry you two-three hot-hot luchis, if you like.” As she waits for his reply she can feel, in the hollow of her throat, the rapid beat of her blood. And when he says yes, that would be very nice, she shuts her eyes and takes a deep breath, and it is as though merciful time has given her back her youth, that sweet, aching urgency of being needed again.

  MRS. DUTTA IS telling Sagar a story.

  “When you were a child, how scared you were of injections! One time, when the government doctor came to give us compulsory typhoid shots, you locked yourself in the bathroom and refused to come out. Do you remember what your father finally did? He went into the garden and caught a lizard and threw it in the bathroom window, because you were even more scared of lizards than of shots. And in exactly one second you ran out screaming—right into the waiting doctor’s arms.”

  Sagar laughs so hard that he almost upsets his tea (made with real sugar, because Mrs. Dutta knows it is better for her son than that chemical powder Shyamoli likes to use). There are tears in his eyes, and Mrs. Dutta, who had not dared to hope he would find her story so amusing, feels gratified. When he takes off his glasses to wipe them, his face is oddly young, not like a father’s at all, or even a husband’s, and she has to suppress an impulse to put out her hand and rub away the indentations the glasses have left on his nose.

  “I’d totally forgotten,” says Sagar. “How can you keep track of those old, old things?”

  Because it is the lot of mothers to remember what no one else cares to, Mrs. Dutta thinks. To tell them over and over until they are lodged, perforce, in family lore. We are the keepers of the heart’s dusty corners.

  But as she starts to say this, the front door creaks open, and she hears the faint click of Shyamoli’s high heels. Mrs. Dutta rises, collecting the dirty dishes.

  “Call me fifteen minutes before you’re ready to eat so I can fry fresh luchis for everyone,” she tells Sagar.

  “You don’t have to leave, Mother,” he says.

  Mrs. Dutta smiles her pleasure but doesn’t stop. She knows Shyamoli likes to be alone with her husband at this time, and today in her happiness she does not grudge her this.

  “You think I’ve nothing to do, only sit and gossip with you?” she mock-scolds. “I want you to know I have a ve
ry important letter to finish.”

  Somewhere behind her she hears a thud, a briefcase falling over. This surprises her. Shyamoli is always so careful with her case because it was a gift from Sagar when she was finally made a manager in her company.

  “Hi!” Sagar calls, and when there’s no answer, “Hey, Molli, you okay?”

  Shyamoli comes into the room slowly, her hair disheveled as though she’s been running her fingers through it. A hectic color blotches her cheeks.

  “What’s the matter, Molli?” Sagar walks over to give her a kiss. “Bad day at work?” Mrs. Dutta, embarrassed as always by this display of marital affection, turns toward the window, but not before she sees Shyamoli move her face away.

  “Leave me alone.” Her voice is wobbly. “Just leave me alone.”

  “But what is it?” Sagar says in concern.

  “I don’t want to talk about it right now.” Shyamoli lowers herself into a kitchen chair and puts her face in her hands. Sagar stands in the middle of the room, looking helpless. He raises his hand and lets it fall, as though he wants to comfort his wife but is afraid of what she might do.

  A protective anger for her son surges inside Mrs. Dutta, but she leaves the room silently. In her mind-letter she writes, Women need to be strong, not react to every little thing like this. You and I, Roma, we had far worse to cry about, but we shed our tears invisibly. We were good wives and daughters-in-law, good mothers. Dutiful, uncomplaining. Never putting ourselves first.

  A sudden memory comes to her, one she hasn’t thought of in years, a day when she scorched a special kheer dessert. Her mother-in-law had shouted at her, “Didn’t your mother teach you anything, you useless girl?” As punishment she refused to let Mrs. Dutta go with Mrs. Basu to the cinema, even though Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam, which all Calcutta was crazy about, was playing, and their tickets were bought already. Mrs. Dutta had wept the entire afternoon, but before Sagar’s father came home she washed her face carefully with cold water and applied kajal to her eyes so he wouldn’t know.