“It’s okay.” Ruth stroked her hair. “It’s okay, honey. Do you have a job?”
“I work only part time cleaning offices.” Somehow, the embarrassing secret that she had kept hidden from her family and Indian friends seemed safe with Ruth. She didn’t think Ruth would judge her, look down on her, or laugh at the menial nature of her job.
“Do you make enough to live on your own?”
Tara shook her head. “I go to an IT training institute in the mornings. I am training to get certification in quality assurance.”
“So, until you are certified and get a job in computers, you will need help to begin afresh. That’s what we will discuss with the advocate at the legal center.”
“So, Sanjay will not be arrested if we seek help from the legal center?”
“Not unless that is what you want. We will only discuss your options. You don’t have to act on any of them.”
Tara nodded. Her instinct told her she could trust sweet Ruth, a stranger until that morning, to do what was best for her. “All right, Miss Murphy.”
“Ruth.”
Tara managed a feeble smile. “Thank you, Ruth, for everything.”
At supper time, Tara was helping Ruth set the table for dinner, laying floral, gold-rimmed china over green-and-wine maple-leaf-patterned placemats, when Dottie Payton, who lived next door, walked in through the kitchen door. She studied Tara with curious eyes before stretching out her hand.
“Hello, hello! I am Dottie; nice to meet you.”
Dottie reminded Tara of Agatha Christie’s detective, Miss Marple, with her perfectly curled salt-and-pepper hair, crisp sea-green pant suit, flat tan pumps, and inquisitive blue eyes. Before the end of the evening, Tara had learned that Dottie and Ruth were as thick as thieves—but they belonged to different poles. Dottie was yin to Ruth’s yang. Ruth was impulsive, Dottie weighed matters carefully. Ruth was the doer, Dottie the thinker. With Ruth, words flowed in a rapid torrent, or so it seemed to Tara. Dottie spoke slowly, enunciating each word, so Tara understood her better. But they concurred over one thing—that their opposite natures were an advantage in their daily adventures. They argued, teased, and laughed at each other’s expense, but “it was all in good fun,” insisted Ruth. Dottie fussed at Ruth for leaving her behind at the church clothes closet that morning, while she drove Tara home.
“She left me behind to do all the sorting, folding, pricing—all the dirty work by myself,” she complained.
“Well Dottie, it seems like God favored me over you, didn’t he? He put me at a place where I could see Tara. He knew I needed to be with her.”
Dottie grudgingly agreed.
At six thirty, Alyona bustled in with Viktor. Tara was relieved to see them, familiar faces in a sea of newness. She threw her arms around Alyona, sinking her face into her shoulder. She felt weepy in Alyona’s comforting bear hug.
“You are not going back to him. You are not,” Alyona said. Tara nodded in agreement.
Chapter 18
Tara slept fitfully during the night, waking up in a cold sweat in Ruth’s guest bedroom, repeatedly tossing aside the wine-colored blanket, then covering herself. Like an old scratchy tape recorder, her mind kept returning to the big events of the day. The bigger shock, however, was to wake up again and again and find herself in a stranger’s bedroom—a stranger so far removed from her normal existence.
She dozed off again when dawn began to break. Sanjay was back, towering over her, peering down into her wide-open eyes, face blazing dark red, as she cowered under the sheets. He pinned her down on the bed, pressed her chest with his bare hands, until she could breathe no longer.
“Hijra,” he whispered in her ear, then roared in laughter, as he squeezed all air out of her lungs. “Die, Hijra.”
Tara tried to scream, but the guttural sounds died in her throat. She tried to move, to get away from him, but her arms were paralyzed.
“Terror,” he laughed. “Terror.”
“Tara!” Tara opened her eyes with a start. Ruth had drawn open the pretty floral curtains to allow a golden day into the room. She was bent over Tara, gently stroking her moist forehead.
“There, there. It’s all right. Did you have a nightmare?”
The strong smell of coffee and the warm aroma of sausage and eggs wafted up, rekindling Tara’s senses, slowly waking her up. She wasn’t able to eat much though, her nerves and the churning of her gut getting the better of her.
By the time she approached the women’s legal center with Ruth and Dottie later that morning, her nighttime apprehensions had subsided, and she was eager to get it over with, whatever it was that had to be gotten over with. Her heart still beat like a boom box, nonetheless. They were at the right number, but there was no sign displayed anywhere that told them they had arrived at the correct address. Besides, the building looked like a single-story home, not a legal center, and the front door was locked. The only giveaway was the intercom mounted on the front wall beside the door. Ruth buzzed the intercom and spoke into it. It turned out they were at the right place.
The women’s advocate at the center, who went simply by the name Kendra, was a thirty-something African American woman, with shoulder-length hair that was styled straight and a cobalt blue blouse over a black pencil skirt. A warm smile lit her face, but her manner was businesslike. Ruth and Dottie took turns explaining Tara’s case to her. Kendra listened with patience, made notes on her pad, and asked Tara a few pertinent questions before coming up with a plan for her.
Her solution: filing a civil restraining order against Sanjay. “That’s the best way to get an early court date,” she said.
Tara knitted her eyebrows in concentration. “Restraining order? But I don’t expect him to come after me.”
“It doesn’t matter. We are trying to get you financial compensation as quickly as we can.”
“Will he be arrested?”
Kendra shook her head. A restraining order was not a criminal case, it would not affect Sanjay’s records, she said. “Once you file the order at the county courthouse, you will be directed to the magistrate’s court, where a presiding judge will read the petition and hear your version of what happened. In your case, he has no reason not to grant you a temporary restraining order. The judge will set a date for a court hearing, which will be within the month. If you have personal belongings that you need retrieved from your house, talk to the judge about it, and a sheriff’s deputy will accompany you there on a set date. I will let you know of the procedure in detail later, but in short, once the order is signed by the judge, your husband will be served by a sheriff’s deputy, following which he will be required by the law to stay a hundred yards away from you, and also to be present in court on the day of the hearing.”
Again, a mild bout of panic. Sweat beads on her forehead. “All this—I mean going to court and all—will it affect his job or career?”
“No, sweetheart. Once again, this is a civil case. This will not affect him in any way, other than the fact that he has to stay away from you, and appear in court.”
“Will you represent me in court?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
“What will happen at the hearing?”