“Are you jealous of your brother?” asked Zeenat.
Tara wasn’t sure of what was in her heart for her brother. She rushed toward Zeenat instead.
“There’s a worm near your foot.”
The millipede had just started to coil, realizing the danger it was in, when death came suddenly, between damp cement and Tara’s Bata slipper.
Tara cried for the poor dead worm that night, under the safety of her handloom blanket. Her cruelty had been sudden, and shocking to her. And even though some lives seemed as senseless as death, Tara vowed never to harm another worm again.
Zeenat was a fascinating storyteller, even in her less than perfect Kannada, and Tara was drawn to her new friend even though she put disturbing thoughts in her head.
“Do you know why I only go to the madrasa in the evening and not to an English school?” Zeenat asked one day.
“Because you are a girl?” Tara suggested helpfully.
“No, no. Do you know that a bee entered my head through my right ear when I was small? The doctors could not get it out. It lives in my head, buzzing about, eating my brain. How can I study with half my brain gone?”
Tara was horrified. “Will it eat all your brain?”
Zeenat nodded gravely. “Yes, as I grow up it will eat more and more of my brain until there will be nothing left.”
Tara could not sleep well that night. She wondered how poor Zeenat lived and looked so pretty with half her brain gone. But the next morning, Zeenat had another riveting story to tell, so the bee flew out of Tara’s head.
“You know what my Kuwaiti uncle bought me for my birthday? A magic doll. You turn her left arm, and orange candy appears out of her left palm. You turn her right arm, and lemon candy appears out of her right palm.”
“Really!” Tara cried. “Can I see her?”
“Sure. I will bring her tomorrow. You can turn her arms if you wish.”
But tomorrow never came. Each morning Tara asked, and each morning Zeenat slapped her forehead and said, “Oh I forgot. The bee must have eaten the remembering part of my brain.” By the seventh day, Zeenat had changed her mind about bringing the doll.
“It is a precious doll. I don’t want to break or lose her,” she said. “Why should I take chances for you? Your father is rich. Ask him to buy you a doll from Dubai.”
Tara looked away to hide her disappointment. “I had a doll,” she whispered. “She got lost.”
No, Alyona was not like Zeenat. Alyona was generous and loving. She whispered a silent sorry to her Russian friend for making the unfair comparison. Perhaps she had a point. Nadya’s proposition seemed like an easy way to earn some dollars to cover needs other than her daily bread. But she knew Sanjay would be horrified if she told him, and so would her parents. Could she pull it off without telling anybody?
Nadya had four girls to help her in her cleaning business, but only two could make it to clean a row of offices off Mountain Valley Way near Lindbergh, three miles away. A third pair of hands would make things easier for Nadya. Tara would be picked up at four thirty in the afternoon and dropped back home by seven thirty at the latest.
Tara knew she’d be back home much earlier than Sanjay, who got home really late these days. He would probably never find out, if she played it smart. But a wordless whisper at the back of her head put a damper on her devious plan. A marriage was built on honesty and trust. She couldn’t possibly live a double life. But then, he would say no. Toward dawn, from her ceaseless circle of thoughts, her tired mind picked a solution. She would work with Nadya for a week without telling Sanjay or Amma. At the end of the week, if she liked the job, she would talk to Sanjay. Her dilemma resolved, Tara finally turned a few times and slept.
Nadya was an efficient cleaner and a good teacher, even with the language barrier between them. She gave Tara a pair of yellow latex gloves to put on, and showed her the tricks of the trade. Together they went from office to office, dusted and sanitized the office furniture and equipment, vacuumed the carpet and mopped the floors, cleaned the mirrors and glass surfaces until they shone, emptied and removed the trash. Then they cleaned and disinfected the restrooms.
Most of the offices were small tech firms, but there was also a tax firm and a law office in the building. The offices were mostly empty by the time they went in to clean. Sometimes they encountered a lone techie or two working away on the computer, who rarely even acknowledged the presence of Nadya, but looked curiously at Tara.
“An Indian cleaner?” a lanky Indian techie with a goatee commented once, a smirk on his face. Tara turned red. She wished she didn’t have to encounter other Indians at her job. It embarrassed her no end. She stretched her lips into a thin smile and kept her gaze on the job at hand, moving the vacuum quickly around the room.
“Why don’t you work in a motel instead?” he asked loudly, over the white noise of the vacuum. “You might end up buying one someday, ha-ha.” Tara kept her head down and escaped to the next room as soon as she could.
Nadya was happy with her trainee’s progress and diligence. By Thursday, she had enough confidence in Tara to allow her to take on some chores independently.
“Monday, you clean tax office,” she said, as she handed over $75 in cash in a sealed envelope. Tara had finally earned her first dollars in the US. For a while, it made her feel like she had been rewarded for a secret mission of great importance. It was exhilarating, even more so than her first paycheck from the Morning Herald.
“Thank you, Nadya!” She was genuinely grateful to the grave-faced, kind Russian woman for giving her a sense of self-worth, of freedom, even if it was with a job she was ashamed of doing.
Nadya’s approval felt like a badge of honor, but Tara still had to tell Sanjay. She thought and rethought of ways to broach the topic. She could wait for him to be in a good mood, but he was so rigid and vacant these days. She could wait until they had made love, but then, they had not made love in over two months. The new project at work was killing him, and Tara wondered why Sanjay’s employers had to slave drive him. Was it even legal?
On Monday morning, she stood behind the doorway to Sanjay’s closet where he was picking out his clothes after a shower. The booming of her heart, the dryness of her mouth made her feel stupid, as did the fact that she had spent an entire weekend fretting over this conversation.
“Sanjay?”
“Mmmm?”
“Sanjay, Alyona’s friend has a cleaning agency, and she has kind of offered me a job, and I was wondering. . .”
He didn’t let her finish.
“Yeah, it might be a good idea for you to get financially independent.”
He had not looked in her direction once, as if finding the right pair of socks from the box he was rummaging through were more important. What in the world did he mean by good idea? Did he even pay full attention to what she had said? She felt relief, and a tiny feeling of dejection. Did he not care about what kind of job she took up? Didn’t he care about anything at all anymore?
She tried again. “I am starting work this afternoon from four thirty to seven thirty in a cleaning agency. As a cleaner.”
“Good.” He came out into the bedroom and busied himself buttoning up his gray shirt. Tara said nothing more. The feeling of dejection expanded and gave way to anger. It was as if she didn’t exist for this man.