Behind the Beautiful Forevers_ Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity - Katherine Boo [68]
It was hard to keep secrets in a slum. As Asha understood, secrets successfully kept were a kind of currency. People could say what they liked about where she went at night, and what she did with whom, but until they caught her, she was going to deny it.
Now it was the night of her fortieth birthday—a scant moon in a low sky, no rain. Manju passed out slices of cake, a heap of potato chips on the side, and Asha put her arms around her sons. Even her husband Mahadeo was in a celebratory mood as he plundered one of her gifts, a plastic treasure chest filled with gold-wrapped chocolate coins. “They should have been real coins, since it’s my fortieth,” Asha said, smiling, as she set into her cake.
Her cellphone rang again. It had been ringing for most of the last fifteen minutes, and she’d been enfolding it ever deeper into the lap of her dark blue sari. A police officer named Wagh was impatient to see her.
“An emergency?” Manju asked after a while. “Calling so many times.”
“It’s that woman Reena, shakha work,” Asha lied. Shiv Sena women’s-wing business. Then a minute later, she said, uncertainly, “Maybe I will need to go.”
“What? Tell her you can’t come—it’s your birthday party,” Manju commanded cheerfully, just before Asha answered the phone.
“Can’t,” she said into the receiver. Long pause. “No, not possible. Tomorrow? You see—” Long pause. “Listen, I …”
Suddenly she was standing at the mirror, powdering her cheeks with talcum, adjusting her sari, combing her thick hair off her face. She could see her husband and Manju staring at her through the mirror.
“My necklace must look real,” she chattered, nervous. “A guy at the train station today told me to put it away or it would get stolen. Did you know coriander is only five rupees at the Ghatkopar market? I went to my friend’s house for tea there earlier, then missed the bus. Good, fresh coriander, better than we get here—”
“Mother,” said Manju quietly. “Don’t go.”
The cellphone rang again.
Asha said, “Yes, I said I’m coming. I am hurrying. But where?”
The talcum powder was all over the cellphone, streaking down her neck. She was sweating. Her husband’s eyes had filled with tears.
“Mother,” Manju said again, reaching for her hand. “Please. Mother.”
But Asha spun out of her daughter’s grasp, walked fast across the maidan, past the road boys in the video parlor, past the Hyatt, not pausing until she reached the bus stop outside the imperious Grand Maratha hotel.
This pink hotel was the most expensive of the lot. Golden-pink now, as hundreds of lights illuminated the curves of its Jaipur-stone front. Asha glowed, too, standing on the other side of the fence, a slash of white talc across one cheek.
She suspected, rightly, that at home, Manju’s tears were falling on a slice of chocolate cake. For years, Asha had hoped that her daughter wouldn’t guess about the men. Now she wished she had raised Manju to be worldly enough to understand. This wasn’t about lust or being modern, though she knew that many first-class people slept around. Nor was it just about feeling loved and beautiful. This was about money and power.
Her mind moved more quickly than other people’s. The politicians and policemen had eventually recognized this dexterity, come to depend on it. Even so, it had not been enough. At twenty, she was a poor, uneducated refugee from the droughtlands whose husband had no appetite for work. Tonight, at forty, she was a kindergarten teacher and the most influential woman in her slum. A woman who had given her daughter a college education and soon, she hoped, a brilliant marriage. The flourishing of Manju, alone, had justified the trade-offs. Even the nightmares about dying of AIDS.
She should get the blood test done. She knew that. She should be watching Airport Road for the arrival of the officer. But a society wedding was spilling out onto the Grand Maratha’s lawn. This day was