Page 11 of Six Days in Bombay

Chapter 7

The next day, I arrived early for my shift to see Matron, dreading the meeting with her. I looked in every room of the hospital on two floors before I spotted her. She was instructing two junior nurses about the Nightingale method of bathing a patient. While she was the same height as the nurses, she had such an imposing presence that she seemed to tower over them. They looked from her to the waiting patient, an elderly woman with frightened eyes.

“Hot water and a towel like this.” Matron pointed to the rough washcloth sitting next to the washbasin on the rolling table. “Rub and rub hard. No fancy soap or soft sponges. With those, people tend not to rub as hard and then clean is just a dream.” She glanced at the patient, who was now clutching her bedsheet.

Matron turned around to leave the room, saw me waiting by the door and motioned for me to follow her to her office.

She indicated for me to take the seat in front of her desk, then settled in her chair behind it.

She pulled out a drawer to her left and took out some paperwork. “It is my responsibility at Wadia Hospital to ensure the well-being of our patients while they’re in my care. I have failed in my duty with regard to Miss Novak. She was an important personage, a national treasure, and her death will be mourned by many.

“I informed the hospital board that I accept that responsibility. Of course, they realize mistakes are made from time to time. They want to make absolutely sure it never happens again. And in order to comply with their request, they’re demanding that you be released from your duties effective immediately.” Her pale face mottled. Either she was angry at being put in this position or embarrassed to be foisting the blame on me. She looked down at her paperwork as if it contained another part of her script.

I felt numb. My pulse wasn’t racing. My breath was even. I glanced at my hands. They were steady. I looked at the floor. White marble with flecks of gray. My scuffed shoes. Amit had prepared me for this. Even so, some part of me had wondered if it had all been an imagining—Amit coming to our flat last night, telling me about the board meeting, telling me about Dr. Stoddard and the Istanbul offer. Now, all I could think was: Would I forever be shunned by every place I worked?

Matron didn’t meet my eyes when she said, “Even if you didn’t administer the fatal dose, you left a syringe and a bottle of morphine in plain sight in the room. That was a monumental oversight.” She touched the cross on her necklace. Was she seeking support from above?

For a moment, I couldn’t speak. I had left the room longer than was acceptable. The morphine had been lying in the open. Twenty minutes would have allowed anyone to walk in and inject a sleeping patient. But did I leave Mira unprotected? Did I do that to her? Other nurses left their rooms all the time to grab something from the stockroom or break for a cuppa. Nothing happened to their patients. I was the unlucky one.

But what about the conversation between Amit and Dr. Holbrook? Holbrook had made a judgment call where Mira’s health was concerned.

I cleared my throat. “The six days Miss Novak wasn’t responding to treatment…”

She frowned. “What about it?”

Heat crept up my neck. Last night, Mum told me she’d shielded me all my life; she’d stood up for me when I couldn’t. She wanted me to be braver, tougher, to take a chance. Well, here was my chance. And even though every sensible part of old Sona was telling me to stop talking, my mouth wasn’t listening. I cleared my throat and leveled a hard gaze at the old woman. “Miss Novak was a young woman in pain, looking to us for help. But she was judged to be unworthy of our utmost care.” My voice had risen.

The older woman across from me flushed red. “Whatever are you saying, girl? Casting aspersions on our staff won’t help your situation. It’s insulting and baseless.”

“Baseless? You and Dr. Holbrook were talking about her the other day. How Miss Novak wasn’t a proper painter. Wasn’t British enough. Wasn’t a proper woman. She was our patient, Matron!”

“So you were spying on us?”

“And to think that she might have been dosed with second-rate medication from the pharmacy—”

“Really, you are too much!” She rose from her chair, staring down at me. “You will clear out your locker at once. And if you’re looking for a reference, you won’t get one from me.”

I stood, without taking my eyes off her. I needed a moment to steady the shaking in my legs. I said, “Miss Novak was a friend. She was kind. She was gracious. She mattered. She mattered to me. She mattered to India. I will miss her terribly.”

She looked away, coloring, and touched her cross again.

I made my way to the nurses’ changing room in a daze. Had I just stood up for myself? And for Mira? Mira had been nothing but generous with her friendship, making me laugh even as she was in pain, warming me with her words of appreciation, thanking me for taking care of her. She taught me things. Her stories seemed disordered, flowing this way and that, until they arrived at the point she wanted to make. Once, I’d found her drawing on her sketch pad. Without taking her eyes off her drawing, she said, “It takes three to five years for cardamom plants to produce bright green pods. Those pods look nothing like the shriveled tough-skinned pods we break open to remove the seeds, the ones used to flavor chai or burfi or chicken curry. I learned that from a female farmer in Kerala.” She paused to see if I was following her before continuing. “Josephine once asked me to produce something posthaste for a client who was eager to purchase one of my paintings. I told her I couldn’t do it. She said Picasso paints or sketches hundreds of artworks every year. I told her about the cardamom plants. How long they take to mature. ‘I can be both European and Indian, Jo, but not at the same time. Here in India, I’m Indian. I am the cardamom.’” Mira turned her pad around to let me see what she’d been sketching. It was a likeness of me. I took the drawing pad from her and stared at it. It was like looking in the mirror. The features of my face that could either have been Indian or English.

Now Matron’s words rang in my head, a cruel merry-go-round of you left a syringe and a bottle of morphine in plain sight in the room . How would I ever get past the accusation? Could I live with the knowledge of my failure? You left the room, you left the room, you left the room.

Mum’s words came back to me too. The blame will rest on you.

I opened my locker. A cocoa herringbone skirt my mother had made, a beige blouse inherited from a coworker back in Calcutta, low-heeled brown Bata shoes. A pair of coffee--colored stockings. An extra pinafore. No photos of exotic places. Or beaus. Or friends laughing together. Not much to show for two years at Wadia’s. Oh, how I wished Mira were still here! We could laugh about how my pinafore was almost as long as I was tall. I could see her, eyes shining, cheeks flushed. I slipped on my skirt, buttoned my blouse, tugged my woven stockings on, folded my uniform and put it all in my rucksack.

As I shut the door to my locker, Rebecca entered the room.

“So you’re leaving us?” She said it as pleasantly as if she were asking me whether I’d noticed the poppies blooming. As if my leaving were a choice. She removed her nurse’s cap and unpinned her hair, stuffing hairpins in her pockets, checking her reflection in the wall mirror. She shook her light brown hair loose. It looked pretty like that, down around her shoulders. “Looks like I’ll get the rich patients now.” She laughed.

From her locker, Rebecca extracted a wide-toothed tortoiseshell comb. As she brushed her hair, I asked, “What were you doing in Miss Novak’s room before it happened?”

Her eyebrows shot up. Her look was wary. “What are you talking about?”

“I saw you leaving her room. Right before I went in and saw that she was in critical condition.”

She reared her chin and shrugged self-consciously. “Probably thought I heard her calling me. Realized I was wrong.” She put her comb back in the locker, avoiding my eyes. She busied herself with her hairpins and her nurse’s cap while I looked on, waiting.

I tightened the cord of my rucksack. My throat was dry. My eyes hurt. I had no more fight left in me. What good would it do? My word was no good anymore. “You should wear your hair down more often. It suits you.” With that, I left the changing room.

I tried to put off going home for as long as possible. Now I would have to tell my mother it was done. I had lost. Although I had a feeling she already knew.

When I got to our street, Chameli Marg (an ambitious name for a street with no sweet-smelling flowers), a cluster of neighbors were gathered at the entrance to our building. My landlady was holding court. Even from a distance, I could tell by the tenor of her voice that she was angry or aggrieved about something.

As I neared, I heard her say, “…I had to pay for the doctor. Who is going to pay me back?” the landlady was saying, her underarm flesh jiggling with each movement of her hands. When she saw me, she said, “Here is the daughter. Well, Miss Fancy Nurse, you can clear out now. I don’t want the burree aatma in my house!”

I brushed past her, my heart skipping a beat. I sprinted up the stairs, rucksack flapping against my body. The door to our flat was open. There was no one in the room but my mother, laid out on our bed. Her eyes were closed. She was completely still.

“No, no, please, no!” I prayed out loud. I felt for a pulse on her wrist. There was none. I tried her neck, just under her jaw. Nothing.

“The doctor has come and gone.” The landlady was standing at the door. “He said it was a heart attack. No need to take her to the hospital.” She spoke as if it were my mother’s fault for dying.

“Get out!” I screamed. I flew to the door and slammed it in her face. I turned the lock so she couldn’t come in. With my back against the door, I regarded my mother’s body on the bed. How could this have happened? She’d had a weak heart but as long as she took her medicine, she was fine. Was it because of Mira’s death? She knew I would lose my job over it? I’d seen the resignation and the fear in her face. Oh, Mum. Did I do this to you?

From the other side of the door, the landlady shouted, “You need to get that body out of here. I won’t have it in my house!”

“Leave her in peace,” I whispered into the room. The person who cared for me most in this world was gone. Tears blurred my vision. Who would love me now? Who would ask about my day? Listen to my stories? What would I do without her? I wiped my nose with the back of my hand.

I eased my body away from the door toward the bed I’d shared with my mother for as long as I could remember. I lay down on the bed and nestled my body against hers on the narrow mattress. I whispered in her ear, “Remember when I was old enough to sit on the carousel horse by myself? I must have been four. You said it was time. Time for what? I asked. Time for you to do things by yourself, you said. But I like doing things with you, I said. I know, you said. But you have so many things you will enjoy doing, and I won’t always be there to do them with you.”

Water ran from the corners of my eyes, down my nose and into my mouth. I tasted salt and sadness and aloneness. “Mum, I’m still not ready to do all those things by myself. I need you. I need you to stay. Can’t you stay just a little while longer? Please? Please stay.” I wrapped my arm around her waist and held her tight. I sobbed wet, sloppy tears into her shoulder and her flower-print sari, the one I said made her look like a field of lavender when I was nine. I had so much to tell her: being let go at the hospital, Dr. Mishra’s promise of an opportunity, how I felt about him—really felt about him—how much I needed her, how much I loved her. None of that made any difference now.

***

I decided on a burial instead of cremation. I had the feeling that my mother thought herself more Anglo than Indian as she got older, and a funeral would be a better choice. Our neighbors across the hall—Fatima and her husband—and a wealthy matron, a client of my mother’s—attended the last rites. The matron wanted me to know how sorry she was and would her dress be ready in time for her daughter’s wedding?

I paid a priest from the nearby Christian church to deliver the eulogy, which I wrote for him. And then it was over.

Within one week, I had lost my mother, my friend Mira and my position at the hospital. I was an orphan without a friend.

Once I packed up all the fabric scraps and the few dishes we had, the flat was almost empty. I would give the fabric and my mother’s sewing machine to the school next to the Mohatta cloth market, where my mother sometimes tutored novice seamstresses. I had no need for dishes. I gave our bed, table and chairs to the couple who cleaned the building. To my landlady, I gave the Primus stove in return for what she’d paid the doctor. The Primus was worth much more, but I preferred to overpay my debt rather than risk her returning for more.

My last task was to pack our clothes in the battered trunk we’d brought from Calcutta. Then, it had contained our clothes, sheets, towels, and a few pots and pans. I took stock of what was still packed inside. On the top was the evening gown my mother had made for me from the wedding sari she never had the chance to wear. I held the dress up so I could admire her handiwork. A heavy cloth pouch and a photo tumbled out. I picked up the black-and-white photo. Thick paper. Crinkled edges. It was the photo of a man around thirty years of age. White. He was in a military uniform. His hair was parted down the middle.

Him? I dropped the photo as if I’d been scorched.

Gingerly, I squatted on the floor to study the photo without touching it. There were my eyebrows that angled steeply toward my temples. Lips that were neither thin nor full. The hairline that cut straight across the forehead instead of forming an M.

Using my fingernail, I flipped the photo over. Owen Falstaff, Royal Garrison Artillery.

I sat back on my haunches. My mother had kept a photo of him all this time. Because she still loved him? After all these years? Even though he had betrayed her? Why didn’t she ever show it to me? I squeezed my eyes shut. Now that I had an image of him, could I recall any memories of us together? I waited. Nothing.

I opened my eyes again. Did my mother hide the photo in the green gown deliberately so I would find it after she was gone? But she wouldn’t have known when she would die, so that didn’t make sense. I contemplated tearing up the photo and throwing it away. He’d been a rotten father and a rotten husband. What did I owe him? Some small part of me though—perhaps the three-year-old me, the girl who must have felt loved before he left—wanted to keep it. In the end, I buried the photo in the suitcase.

I opened the cloth purse. Inside was the English money from my father. “You need to clear your name, beti ,” my mother had said. “And for that, you’ll need your father’s money.”

The only thing I kept of my mother’s was that green sari—now the only evening gown I owned. I paid for three red roses, the petals of which I sprinkled among the folds.

She had no jewelry, no gold to call her own, no parents or in-laws who would have gifted it to her upon her marriage.

A week later, I was on the RMS Viceroy of India setting sail for Istanbul.