Miss New India - Bharati Mukherjee [89]
Minnie grabbed Anjali by the shoulders. "You have the audacity to lie to me? You think I'm a blind and cuckoo-in-the head old lady you can cheat? I recognized your clothes. Husseina would never dress like you or that Goanese." She let go of Anjali and shoved her down hard on the cot. "It's a matter of breeding, simple breeding. You are the sad outcome."
Anjali's first impulse was to throttle Mad Minnie and stuff her Raj-era vocabulary back down her gullet. Her fingers itched to circle the scrawny throat, its papery wrinkles caked with pink foundation. Anjali's father died because she had brought dishonor to the family. Guilt reheated itself into rage against everything that Bagehot House stood for.
"Breeding?" She could feel her voice rising. "You want to talk about breeding? You stupid old cow! You are not God. You are not even British—ha! You are one of us, and you are living on Indian goodwill!"
Minnie backed away, perhaps startled by the sudden increase in volume. She lived inside a bubble and had selective hearing. She didn't respond to words, to insult, or to anger. "I haven't the slightest idea of what that little outburst was about. What are you trying to tell me? A rich Mohammedan stole your clothes and ran off without paying her bill?"
Anjali could hear the unspoken implication:stole from the likes of you? "I haven't the p'oggiest notion why, but she wanted to trade clothes."
"Preposterous!" But for the first time, Minnie looked perplexed. She shuffled toward the door curtain. "I'm sure there's a simple explanation."
"Things like that are never simple. It is just a mystery." Let it go at that, for now.
Minnie dismissed complications with a wave of her hand, like a spoiled child. Or like self-appointed royalty with severe memory loss. Her self-confidence bounced back. "Perhaps I misidentified the culprit."
"Culprit, madam? What is the crime? She left without saying good-bye? We pay you a month's rent in advance."
Minnie's voice dropped to a soft, conspiratorial mumble. "Just yesterday, I came to a very difficult decision. It's that prostie, that Goanese. I should never have let her in. I'm sure she's conspiring with dark forces. She has to go." Then Minnie explained that since Anjali was the protégée of that dear boy Peter, she was willing to hold off on collecting rent until she'd found a suitable position. ("I do hope you're looking. There was a time when I could call on governors and ministers for favors, but they've all...") Anjali could pay all that was owed from her first paycheck.
That fabled first paycheck already bore unrealistic burdens, so why not add a few more?
Strange negotiations first with Husseina, next with Mad Minnie, but in both cases Anjali was coming through the winner.
"You don't have to thank me," the landlady continued. "I too was once a young woman of modest means on my own in an unfamiliar town. I too have been the beneficiary of kindness." It was her Christian duty to repay the grace she'd once received.
"Christian duty" was a concept alien to Anjali. Duty meant dharma and a host of caste and social restrictions she'd never seriously observed. Squatting in a cracked, dingy bathtub used by generations of Christians and Muslims, then submitting to Subodh Mitra and not resisting with her life, had wiped the slate clean of any remaining dharmic duties.
"Bangalore's become an evil place. Remember the way it used to be when Maxie and Bunty were in charge?"
Bunty—wasn't that the widow Philpott's husband? Mad Minnie really had lost her marbles. Or was retreating into the past another one of her tricks of survival? "Gone to the dogs," Anjali snickered, in the best All-India Radio news-anchor Britishy accent she could manage. "My Bunty would go bonkers if he were still around."
"There are goondahs resident on the property," Minnie fumed. "I'm a prisoner in my own house. I don't dare shut my eyes in my own bed." From inside the soiled lace glove on