We left Madras for Erode on Halloween, the same day, had I been at home in Pittsburgh, that I would have been out in the city trying to scrap up what was left of the mini Snickers, the Reeces, the candy corn. Other more prepared homeowners would have already ravaged the shelves, leaving chocolate mixed up with twislers and plastic pumpkins. I'd take whatever I found and return home to look out into the streets while the sky went from blue gray to black, and the streetlights came on. I'd watch as the sidewalks grew infested with child witches, princesses, fairies, clowns. This year I was in the train station in India, where I passed gypsies on the ground, asleep. Whole families had laid down red, blue, and yellow woven rugs. I stepped over a pair of feet, the rest of the body was entirely shrouded and the feet were so black they appeared charred. The lines on the soles were a deeper black than wet soil. In the traditional Hindu caste system, the highest classes, the well- educated priests of the Brahman caste, were supposed to have emerged from the head and shoulders of the deities, while the lower castes, the Untouchables, had emerged from the feet.
We boarded the overnight sleeper train, first class. The outside of the train looked like a shell, rusted into dilapidation. The windows were so thick with grime I couldn't see out. I slept on the top bunk and laid my palm flat on the wall to watch it shaking with the train as it fumbled into the night.
Within several hours, (I had no idea what time because I'd buried my watch, with all my other valuables, in the pack beneath my pillow,) I woke up and stumbled to the bathroom. On the way back to bed I pulled back the first curtain on my left and stood in the wrong compartment, bewildered at the sight of the soft light brown sole of a child's foot. A silver bangle adorned each ankle. In a moment I realized my mistake, yet those feet were burned into my memory. I can still see the toes curled tightly toward the little wrinkles of the heels.
A day later I found another baby sleeping, this one in the village of Jayamapuram, in Erode. He was suspended in a dirty white hammock hanging from the ceiling by a thick silver spring. Raji and Pudney, my hosts, daughters of the village landlord, brought me into town in the heat of the early afternoon. They convinced a village woman to give me a look around her home. The woman was embarrassed, Pudney translated for me that she was afraid it was too much of a mess, that there was nothing for me to see. Her home seemed surreal, just stonewalls around a dirt floor. It was almost entirely empty, except for the kitchen stove and some pots. She made me promise not to wake the baby, whom she said could scream so loud the whole village would come out. I promised and left my shoes at the door.
The heat in Erode is stifling by 6 A.M. I woke up in white sheets, in the large farmhouse of my host family. Pudney and her family took us on a walk before breakfast, and I tagged along close to her because she was originally a city girl from Northern India, and like me, not entirely at home with the lush green of the palm trees and the black snakes. She told me she'd lived on the farm in Erode since her marriage, and said that she had adapted to the vegetarian regime of her husband's house, though she'd eaten meat for 24 years before the wedding. We talked about her home in the city, how her parents helped her choose a husband of equal social and economic status, and how it was important to find a liberal household, one that allowed her to eat with the family instead of after them. A dowry was not required of her.
We stopped near the well to watch one of the workers climb a coconut tree. He wrapped his feet and palms around the tree, attaching himself at the wrists and ankles with chains. We watched him scale the trunk like an animal. Pudney's husband announced, "Twice a year he gets to be a hero. He loves this." It was clear from his tone that the worker didn't speak English. Pudney wrinkled her nose. She cut her hair short after her wedding, so short she practically looked like a kid sometimes. She told me earlier that her in-laws had difficulty accepting her decision not to wear her hair long. She looked up at the man shimmying up the tree and whispered, "He beats his wife. She works in the house. She tells us."
Later, after the sun went down, we drank tea with boiled milk out on the porch and the women of the house gathered around. Pudney acted as hostess while her sister-in-law Raji told stories in English. Raji's mother, the lady of the house, looked on smiling, but understanding little. Pudney's three- year- old daughter Vedica played on the floor nearby. Raji sat in front of me on a low stool. She straightened her back and leaned forward, her legs splayed, the folds of her deep green saree tracing the ground between them. Her black hair hung around her hips. She's sexy, I thought, in the way she swiveled her head and spoke of her husband in Chennai. She told me how long it took her to realize she didn't love him after they'd married (one week). She bore a child two years into the marriage and lived with him for eight years beyond that. Her daughter, Sungomia, came shyly in and out of the room as her mother spoke. She seemed to be somewhere between a woman and a child. She was pretty and dark like her mother but quieter and more serious. When Sungme, (as they nicknamed her) turned eight, Raji took her out of the city and moved to a quieter place, away from the pollution and the husband. Now they shared a place two hours south of Chennai with her cousin and her cousin's ten- year- old twins. The cousin had been divorced for several years and taught school in Erode. Raji said she wouldn't consider a divorce for herself. She seemed resigned to accepting her fate of marriage to a man she did not love. She wasn't shy about what she'd look for in a second husband, though, if she ever did divorce. A tall, dark, rich, green -eyed Jew. "Sounds exotic, eh?" she winked. She said she knew plenty of women who'd trade their Indian men for a Jew.
We talked about babies and she told me that traditionally, an expectant mother returned to her parent's home three months before giving birth. She would prepare for the child there, and during this time no one should allow the woman to lift a finger. Raji said she wasn't even expected to get herself a glass of water before giving birth to Sungme. "Everything you need is taken care of for you," Raji said. "Anything you want. Voila, at your fingertips. India is the best place to have a baby," she exuded, looking at Pudney. "The best place." Pudney and her mother-in-law approved with nods and smiles.
**********
The memory of Raji in her parent's farmhouse splices itself in my head with Saroma, the barefoot eight-year-old who took me to the post office my last day in Chennai. I think of the noisy heat of the city, the thick layer of dust that constantly rose and then resettled over the rickshaws and cars and bikes and people. It is still heavy and thick in my memory, breathed into my lungs like the smoke and incense of a temple.
He tagged along on my right, the traffic side. A stream of auto rickshaws and blue city buses with their motors and horns grinding and blasting rushed by us. The streets were unbelievably dense with people. I had never seen anything like it. I watched the boy and was overwhelmed by him, by his dark skin and bright eyes, by how black and dirty his feet were. Probably he had never worn a pair of shoes in his life. It broke my heart how hard he tried to be useful; he pointed to the Post Office every three steps. One of the girls I was walking with tossed back "He's going to ask you for money since he's our tour guide now."
I heard her the same moment I heard a bus approach from behind. I pulled Saroma closer to me, to the protected part of the road. I touched his shirt, noticing the dingy brown color of the white material, worn to translucency. There were two rust colored streaks behind the collar, on the inside, where the shirt stood away from his neck. At the time I thought, dirt? Paint? Maybe it wasn't even his shirt. But now, as I think back, the streaks are so vivid in my mind I see them and all I can think is: blood.
We arrived at the post office, but we still had to cross the road. Saroma and my two friends wove across the traffic and I was left behind, staring into an endless succession of rickshaws and buses, packed and without any glass in the windows. I couldn't see my friends, but Saroma was back in the middle of the street, his arms spread wide apart, signaling to get me from curb to curb, a shepherd in the maze. I thought of the pavement under his feet, how maybe his nerves didn't even register the heat anymore.
On the way out of the Post Office I handed my tour guide, who'd been hanging around outside, a dollar bill. And I did get mobbed, the way travelers are warned they will in India. The boys climbed out of the walls when they saw the dollar, and suddenly I had hands all over my body. One wrapped his hand around my watch. Another reached around my waist, fingering the white flap of my money belt. I felt their hands pile on top of each other, all pulling, groping.
Their touch made me feel invaded in the way I've felt with men: my vulnerability was real, present, but I desired its full effect. Though I had to remember that things are different here: Pudney told me of her first night with her husband. "To you maybe it seems strange, when you've just married and you've never been to bed with a man. To me, it seems strange to be just married and already know what to expect."
I found a rickshaw driver and he shooed the boys away after we climbed in his cart. Saroma appeared out of nowhere and spoke to me. He was embarrassed, I think, guilty at the boys' frenzied begging. "Madam, Madam," he appealed to me "where do you want to go?" He pointed in the direction we were already headed in the rickshaw. I looked at his face long after we had driven down the road and around the corner.
*************
Later, on the way back, through the darkening streets of Chennai, I lit a cigarette in the back of another rickshaw and thought of the gold that Raji had shown me. She wore layers and layers of it on her wedding day. I thought of the ring Saroma wore on his middle finger. It was bronze; pounded so thin it could have been crushed with my thumb. I asked where he had gotten it, and he had looked hard at his hand without responding. Mom? I suggested, maybe just to convince myself I wasn't the only one who had ever tried to shelter him from deadly Chennai traffic. Dad?, I tried. Still no answer. Finally, he put his hand to his side and looked up.
"India" he said.
India, I turned over the word in my head as though it was new. Of course, I thought. India. The best place to have a baby.
