The Secrets Between Us

Thrity Umrigar

• Publisher: Harper
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780062442239
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Frauen in der Belletristik

" A powerful, urgent novel that wields issues of gender and class like a blade.... This intergenerational novel asks hard questions about who we are, who we can become, and what awaits on the other side of our becoming. Thrity Umrigar is known as a bold and generous writer, and The Secrets Between Us only further establishes her reputation." —Wiley Cash, author of The Last Ballad

Bhima, the unforgettable main character of Thrity Umrigar's beloved national bestseller The Space Between Us, returns in this triumphant sequel—a poignant and compelling novel in which the former servant struggles against the circumstances of class and misfortune to forge a new path for herself and her granddaughter in modern India.

Poor and illiterate, Bhima had faithfully worked for the Dubash family, an upper-middle-class Parsi household, for more than twenty years. Yet after courageously speaking the truth about a heinous crime perpetrated against her own family, the devoted servant was cruelly fired. The sting of that dismissal was made more painful coming from Sera Dubash, the temperamental employer who had long been Bhima's only confidante. A woman who has endured despair and loss with stoicism, Bhima must now find some other way to support herself and her granddaughter, Maya.

Bhima's fortunes take an unexpected turn when her path intersects with Parvati, a bitter, taciturn older woman. The two acquaintances soon form a tentative business partnership, selling fruits and vegetables at the local market. As they work together, these two women seemingly bound by fate grow closer, each confessing the truth about their lives and the wounds that haunt them. Discovering her first true friend, Bhima pieces together a new life, and together, the two women learn to stand on their own.

A dazzling story of gender, strength, friendship, and second chances, The Secrets Between Us is a powerful and perceptive novel that brilliantly evokes the complexities of life in modern India and the harsh realities faced by women born without privilege as they struggle to survive.

I

1

Although it is dawn, in Bhima’s heart it is dark.

Even as the first light of the day filters in through the crack where the tin roof meets the horizontal planks of the hovel, she makes no move to get up from the mattress on the mud floor. There is no need. It has been three days since she has carried her meager possessions out of Sera Dubash’s house, three long days of being home with her sullen, wounded granddaughter, whose every silence, every unspoken word, is an accusation that Bhima, in her dogged faithfulness to the Dubash household, in her loyalty to the fair-skinned woman who was her mistress for donkey’s years, has been wrong, has stupidly spent her life valuing the wrong family over her own. There is no need to wake up this morning because there is no job to go to, no household to manage, no floor to briskly sweep, no pots and pans to scrub until the morning sun twinkles in them, no midmorning cup of tea to share with Serabai. That is, if squatting on the floor and drinking out of the glass reserved for her, while Serabai sits at the table sipping out of her cup of fine china, can be called sharing.

But as she lies awake with her eyes wide open, tracing the morning light as it moves across her shabby one-room hut like a finger moving slowly across the written page, Bhima’s heart aches at the thought of those days spent in Serabai’s quiet, luxurious apartment, with its air conditioners and ceiling fans, its running water and toilets that flush. And yet, this is not what she has spent the last three days mourning. The loss that is the weight of an elephant, the one that sits heavily on her chest, is the loss of things that are unnamed and unnamable—the pride Serabai used to take in her work; the quiet dignity that she accorded Bhima, so that even when, on occasion, she was annoyed at Bhima’s tardiness or some other minor infraction, Serabai wrestled to control her irritation before she spoke; and the familial affection with which Sera’s daughter, Dinaz, who had grown up before her eyes, treated her, as if Bhima were a beloved aunt rather than a servant. “Bhima’s like family to us,” she’d often overheard Serabai say to her friends, and even though Bhima choked a bit on the qualifier, she was smart enough to appreciate the sheer good luck of serving a family this generous, of a mistress who was willing to incur the ridicule and even the outrage of her friends by making such a declaration.

Now, she feels that gratitude curdling into the bitterness that is her true inheritance, her parallel, shadow self. It is as if she had swallowed the seeds of some bitter fruit in childhood and they have borne a tree that grows within her, yielding its bitter harvest time and time again—in the long-ago days following the torturous deaths of her son-in-law and her daughter, Pooja, to AIDS; on the day when her Gopal left her that life-altering letter before absconding with their son, Amit; and the time before that when Gopal’s foreman had made her sign a piece of paper that cleaved their family in two.

Perhaps time has dulled these betrayals because when she thinks of them now, it’s like watching the ignorant, trusting woman she once was as you would an actress in a movie. But the recent betrayal is a fresh wound, a newly plucked fruit, and it fills her not so much with anger as with shame. Again. It has happened again. And this time, there is no God to blame, no tide of misfortune that tossed her like a coconut onto an indifferent shore. This time, she curses herself for trying to protect Dinaz baby and Serabai from Serabai’s son-in-law’s poison and instead getting poisoned herself. She should’ve revealed Viraf’s secret the day she discovered it, instead of covering it up and allowing his shame to become hers.

To dislodge the bitter pit at the base of her throat, Bhima rolls to her side and hears the familiar pop in her hip, followed by the second of stinging pain. She waits for the pain to subside and then closes her eyes. After more than sixty years of rising at dawn and stepping into the day, she can sleep in today. Soon, she will have to get a job, but at her age, she knows, it will be difficult. And if Viraf has spread his serpent-poison to the surrounding buildings, if he has fed the lies that he told Serabai to their neighbors and acquaintances, finding another job will be even harder. Bhima looks across the room and sees her granddaughter, Maya, sleeping a few feet away from her. She hears Maya’s deep breath and smiles. This is all that remains in her world now, this beautiful, clever-but-stupid girl who allowed herself to bear the serpent’s child. Who tried to fight all of them when they asked her to snuff out the child she was carrying. Who even now blazes with anger and spite at the thought of having killed her unborn baby, as if there could have been any other way out for a pregnant girl from the slums, no matter how smart she is in her studies. And this is the thing that worries her—what will she do if Maya continues to refuse to start college again. Or what will she do if Maya wishes to start college again and there is no money.

Bhima grimaces, unable to face the fearful thoughts that the encroaching morning brings. She is an old woman, unequipped to raise a young, beautiful girl-child, an incompetent custodian of someone who has to be guided through college and womanhood and marriage. How will she find a match for Maya when the time comes? In this place of walls as thin as muslin cloth, where rumors and innuendos are a sport and entertainment? Where is Gopal now, when she needs him? But then she reminds herself that Gopal, too, is now an old man, and not the laughing, singing fellow with the crooked smile whom she’d married. She can hardly believe it. Does Gopal’s hip shoot bolts of pain, also? Do his knees creak when he walks? Or are his eyes comforted by the green of his brother’s fields, a contrast to the mud-browns and crow-blacks of this wretched slum that peck at her eyes daily? Does he breathe in air that is sweet and clean, that doesn’t carry the acidic, nostril-burning fumes that blanket this mad city? Despite her anger at him, despite the knife that he stuck in her back that she’s been unable to dislodge, she hopes so. For his sake, yes, but also for the sake of Amit, all grown up, whose marriage many years ago she had not been invited to. Amit, the boy who had sucked greedily at her breast, whose fingernails she had cut for the first time, whose tiny body she had washed with a possessiveness that bordered on fury, whose every lie she could see through, whose every secret she knew, Amit, her first and last son, who was cut from the fabric of her body. He was her second self, until the day that he wasn’t.

She groans, loudly, and for a minute fears that she’s disturbed Maya, but the girl sleeps soundly. She’s always been like this, Bhima chuckles to herself. A chit of a girl she used to be, but still she would sleep the sleep of a millionaire—steady, deep, with not a care in the world.

Bhima sighs to herself. No sense in lying here any longer when the sun is hurrying across the sky. Already, the community toilet will be buzzing with flies and people, and she will have to step gingerly to avoid soaking the hem of her sari in the shit and water and piss the slum residents will have left in their wake. The thought of the queue that has surely formed already at the water taps fills Bhima with heaviness, and she rises to her feet. She thinks for a minute of sending Maya to fill their two pots of water today, then changes her mind. Maya is young, and after she marries, a lifetime of toil and drudgery awaits her. For as long as it’s possible, let her have her girlhood. Hasn’t Bhima slaved for years so that Maya doesn’t have to? Today will not be an exception.

She runs her fingers through her scanty hair and then flings open the tin door to their hut and steps outside. Already, the slum is a hive of activity. People walk past her, many carrying pots or buckets of sloshing water. Someone has a transistor radio on; a child flings a stone at a crow sitting on the newly installed electric pole, which only causes the bird to caw louder; two dogs snarl and wrestle with each other in the narrow gully, until an old man kicks at one of them as he passes by. A row of men in their undershirts and lungis sit on their haunches in front of the open gutters, brushing their teeth and spitting into the dank water. Bhima looks up at the sliver of sky and at the lucky sun that is its sole occupant. For a moment, she hates all of it—her neighbors bowing their heads as they pass the makeshift shrine to Krishna that someone has built, the harsh voices of women berating their hung-over husbands, the beady, inquisitive eyes of the unemployed men that follow her as she walks, the loud clangs of the metalsmith who has already started his workday, the piles of broken concrete that dot the landscape, the screaming, laughing children the color and odor of the muck and filth in which they play. All these years she had borne this because she knew that within two hours of waking up she would be making her way to Serabai’s tidy, clean, quiet home where she would spend most of her day. Now, there is no respite. The thought of going from house to house begging for work is inexplicable to her. She has no network of friends, no grapevine of fellow servants to call upon. For close to thirty years, hers has been a pinched, severe existence—mornings in the slum, the day at Serabai’s, and then home to cook and sleep. Her husband and son are gone, back to the ancestral land that Gopal hailed from. There is no family, other than the pretend family she imagined she had with the Dubashes. There is nothing and nobody to take its place.

Bhima nods to the old woman who lives four houses down from her. When they reach the common bathroom, a large, public room where the women crouch together as they do their business side-by-side, she allows the older woman to go ahead of her. When she follows her in, she keeps her eyes on the floor, as modesty and custom demand.

When she finally gets to the communal tap, there is a line, and by the time it’s her turn, the water is down to a trickle so that it takes forever to fill a single bucket. She attempts to fill the second one, then gives up. This is her punishment for sleeping in.

As she reaches her hut, walking slowly to avoid the loss of even a drop of precious water, she is startled by the sight of Maya waiting outside the door. “Beti,” she says. “What’s wrong? Are you sick?”

In reply, Maya shakes her head impatiently, then gestures toward the door, indicating that she wants Bhima to enter. The young woman silently takes the two buckets from her grandmother and then follows her in. After the brightness of the morning, it takes Bhima’s eyes a second to adjust to the darkness of the hut. She gasps when she recognizes the figure sitting cross-legged on the floor. It is Dinaz. Before her visitor can speak, Bhima turns to Maya. “Shameless,” she whispers. “Letting Dinaz baby squat on the floor in her condition. Go next door and ask Tara to loan us a chair.”

Maya looks insolently at the pregnant woman struggling to her feet and then back at her grandmother. But when she catches the fire in Bhima’s eyes, she capitulates and leaves to obey the older woman’s command. “Dinaz baby,” Bhima breathes. “What brings you here?”

Dinaz smiles, an unexpectedly tentative smile, as if the distance between them has grown in just three days. “You,” she says ruefully. “You’re the reason I’m here, Bhima,” she says. “To beg you to return to work.”

Bhima stiffens. She is unsure of what Serabai has told her daughter about why she was let go, or what Dinaz suspects about the serpent she has married and whose child she is carrying. So she waits, wanting to hear what Dinaz has to say.

“Mummy said Viraf accidentally thought you’d . . . stolen . . . taken some cash, Bhima,” Dinaz says. “And that you were so offended by that accusation that you quit.” She raises her right hand to stop Bhima from interrupting. “Wait. I just came to apologize for Viraf’s stupidity. Try and understand, Bhima. He’s under so much pressure at work. And with me being pregnant and all. In any case, he’s very sorry. Please come back.”

Bhima is not sure she can trust herself to speak. But Dinaz’s face is so sincere, so innocent, that she must. “Did Viraf babu say he’s sorry?”

“Yes.” Dinaz’s voice wobbles. “That is, not exactly.” She attempts a laugh. “You know how men are. Stubborn as oxen. But I’m sure he’ll be happy if—”

“And Serabai? What about her?”

There is a long silence. “She doesn’t know I’ve come here,” Dinaz says at last. “Neither of them do. I . . . I just wanted to surprise them.” Dinaz tugs at Bhima’s sari, much as she used to when she was a little girl. “Come on, na, Bhima. You know how mummy lov . . . how mummy can’t do without you. Just come back.”

But Bhima hears it all, the space between Dinaz’s words. Serabai has not told her daughter what has really happened. How Viraf had accused her falsely of stealing from them, when she would’ve no more stolen from this family than she would from the donation box at the temple. How, realizing the trap he’d set for her, she’d lashed out with an accusation of her own, this one darker, more powerful than his, because it was true. How she’d accused him of ruining Maya’s life, of staining her family honor. How Sera had flinched at her words, seen in them the ashes of her own daughter’s happiness. And rather than deal with the truth, the dangerous, life-crushing truth, Sera had sided with her corrupt son-in-law and thrown Bhima out of her home. And now Dinaz stands before her, oblivious of her husband’s treachery, Dinaz, who had fought with her parents when they wouldn’t let Bhima sit on the furniture that she dusted every day, who, as a child, would insist on taking her meals crouched next to the servant on the floor rather than eat at the table with her parents, Dinaz, who is now heavy with her first child. No, it would remain a secret between them, between her and Serabai, what Viraf had done—impregnated Maya, and then, striking the pose of a concerned but dispassionate well-wisher, planted the thought of an abortion in all their heads. She feels a fresh rush of rage at him for his duplicity.

As if she’s read her mind, Dinaz says, “Can’t you forgive him, Bhima? You were so fond of Viraf. You used to laugh at all his stupid jokes and all.”

True, Bhima wants to say, true. But that was before I learned that he slithers. I was fooled, too, she wants to say, taken in by that handsome face, that forked tongue, that duplicitous smile. Much as you are. B...