Beneath My Mother's Feet Page 9

  “He’s sick, baji. He’s burning with fever.”

  “You tell him to go get the naan. He should have been back by now with the bread. Everything will be cold now if we wait for him.”

  “But baji, he can’t move,” Nazia implored. “Can’t you ask one of the drivers to get it?”

  Seema slapped Nazia hard. Nazia’s hands flew to her stinging cheek, and she stumbled until her back hit the edge of the counter. She stared at the memsahib, her eyes smarting. Amma held the water pitcher in midair. The guests went on talking, taking no notice of the incident.

  “Don’t you ever tell me how to run my house.” Seema shot Amma a quick look, then turned back to Nazia. “You’d better teach your daughter to know her place, Naseem. Or there will be no place for her here.”

  “Gee, baji,” Amma mumbled. “She’s only worried about the boy.”

  “She’d better only worry about herself.”

  Amma lowered her gaze and turned back to pouring water slowly into the remaining glasses.

  “Go drag that boy from his room and bring him to me.”

  “Baji, he can’t move.” Nazia’s voice trembled.

  Seema’s face reddened as she threw off her apron, revealing a pale-blue chiffon kameeze with silver beadwork glittering across the bodice. The delicate fabric swirled around her as she grabbed Nazia’s arm and dragged her out the side door. Nazia bit back a yelp when she stubbed her bare toe as she stumbled down the kitchen steps.

  Nazia ran alongside Seema baji to keep from being dragged on the walk as they made their way to the front of the house. A lamp tied to an overhead electric line illuminated the lawn, where chairs were set up to accommodate the men who preferred to stay outdoors. Every chair was taken, and many men stood in clumps laughing, their voices filling the air with a steady hum. Children ran, weaving among the bamboo chairs, their play spilling over into the driveway.

  Seema slowed, walking stiffly past the guests so as not to attract their attention. When she reached the small room beside the gate, she released Nazia and strode in to find Sherzad sitting up, holding his head.

  Nazia watched as the memsahib grabbed the boy’s thin wrists and yanked him from the charpai. Sherzad’s eyes fluttered open. He stumbled and caught himself, then stepped onto the driveway, his body swaying slightly.

  “Didn’t I tell you to get the bread?” Seema’s voice was low and harsh. “Where’s the money I gave you? Answer me!” She shook his shoulders. “You could have at least given the money to one of the drivers to fetch the naan if you were so sick.”

  Nazia saw a few of the guests watching them casually.

  Sherzad mumbled something that only made the memsahib more furious.

  “Just give me the money back, you idiot. I’ll send someone else.” She tugged at Sherzad’s shirt, trying to pull the wadded-up rupees from his pocket. Sherzad moaned and suddenly doubled over to vomit. The vomit spewed all over the bottom of Seema’s new shalwar. She screamed as the vomit fell onto her sandals and slipped between her toes.

  Nazia grabbed Sherzad, bearing his weight as he slumped against her. He clung to her while she helped him back into his room and laid him on the bed. When she was sure he wouldn’t be sick again, she grabbed his blanket and dashed outside to wipe the putrid bile off the baji’s clothes.

  Seema screamed again, this time gaining the attention of everyone in the yard. Nazia could hear the gasps from the crowd, but all she could see was baji’s red face and her bulging eyes. “Get away from me!” Nazia stepped back before the memsahib could strike her again.

  Seema stumbled back to the house while Nazia stood in the driveway, unsure of what to do. Should she see if Sherzad was okay, or should she follow the baji? She knew that Seema would send someone’s driver to get the bread and that Sherzad’s vomit proved that he really was sick. Nothing more would be expected of him tonight. He would be left alone to sleep in peace while the party raged on.

  Nazia washed her hands in the outside basin. Thankfully, none of the vomit had splashed on her. For the rest of the evening she worked in the kitchen, washing, serving, and answering to the beck and call of every guest. Long after the last one departed, Nazia worked late into the night beside her mother, cleaning up the house in the aftermath of the party. By the time she was finished, Nazia was too tired to eat the succulent food that had been set aside for the servants.

  She carried her plate of rice, chicken tikka, and sautéed cauliflower along with a glass of warm cola to Sherzad’s room. Empty chairs, dirty glasses, and discarded paper napkins were strewn across the yard. As she passed the debris, she made a note to herself to clean it up before she went to bed — it would be one less thing that the servant boy would get scolded for tomorrow.

  Sherzad was staring up at the ceiling and lying on the charpai, an arm and a leg hanging carelessly off the bed. Nazia stayed by his door. “Brought you some food.”

  He did not look at her. “So many stars out tonight,” he murmured. “Have you noticed?”

  Nazia peered up at the dark ceiling and wondered if he’d lost his mind. “I’m in no mood to play.”

  Sherzad finally tore his gaze away from the ceiling and looked at her. “Come see.” Gingerly he moved to the far edge of the bed, where the bamboo frame pressed up against the wall. A fine stream of crumbling cement fell like loose sand onto his kurta, and he brushed it away. “You can see the stars through the hole in the roof. There’s no light in here, so they shine even brighter.”

  Nazia wanted to ask how anything could look brighter or more wondrous from such a dismal vantage point. Instead she put the plate on the ground and entered the cramped room. She sat on the edge of the bamboo frame and craned her neck upward, seeing nothing but blackness.

  “You can’t see it from there. You have to scoot down a bit.”

  Nazia glanced at him. His fever had broken. His hair was matted with sweat, and his shirt stuck to his chest. The air in the room was still, and she wondered how he survived sleeping in the dark, alone, night after night with no one to comfort him. She placed a hand on his forehead and was glad that his skin felt cool. “You cold?” She looked about for his blanket, then stopped when she remembered that she had used it earlier to wipe the vomit from the memsahib’s shalwar.

  He shook his head.

  She ran a hand across her cheek, recalling the stinging slap she’d received when she had tried to tell Seema that Sherzad was sick. The boy didn’t know what she had endured in order to find him help. One of the guests — a doctor — had eventually taken pity on him and informed the sahib of Sherzad’s condition. The sahib had immediately given him the medicine to reduce the fever.

  Nazia lay back on the knotty bed, her head pressed close to the boy’s. He was so small that she wanted to curl him up against her the way she did with Isha every night. She pushed aside the thought and looked straight up to the ceiling, where a brilliant display of celestial magic played out in the gaping hole of the corrugated tin roof.

  The opening had been deliberately cut, the malleable metal bent up and out to make a private window. A beam that held the roof in place blocked the view from the doorway, and she imagined that whoever had cut the opening — Sherzad himself? one of his predecessors? — had taken that small but important fact into consideration.

  “It’s beautiful.” She struggled with her thoughts before finally summoning up the courage to ask the question that had swirled around her mind for days. “Why do you stay here?”

  He shrugged. “No choice.”

  “But where’s your family?”

  “My amma and abbu live near the railway station. My dadi lives in Punjab.” His voice was soft at the thought of his father’s mother. “My brothers and sisters are spread out from Clifton Beach to beyond Zainab Market. Don’t know exactly where. We haven’t all been together in a long time.”

  His words tumbled around Nazia. She couldn’t imagine being his age, her little sister’s age, growing up among strangers. An image of her old
er brother flashed in her mind, a smiling brother who used to play cricket with her and help her with her homework. Could Bilal see the stars from wherever he lay tonight?

  “Why does everyone live apart?”

  “You know how it is. Your brother’s gone. Your abbu is back. Families split to earn a living. My amma promised baji that I would stay here for three full harvest seasons before I could go home.”

  “Three years?” she asked. “They pay you to work here; they can’t force you to stay.”

  Sherzad snorted. “I may be younger than you, but I’ve been doing this a lot longer than you have.”

  “You can leave anytime.”

  Sherzad sat up and hugged his knees close to his chest. “It’s not the memsahib that makes me stay. It’s my amma. Amma bound each of her children to one family or another, so that she always has money coming in. She spends her time going from one house to the next all around the city, collecting our pay.”

  How could a mother do that to her own children? Didn’t she realize how badly Sherzad was being treated? Who knew how the others lived? “How many of you are there?” Nazia asked.

  “Seven. Four sisters and three brothers, including me.”

  “Are you the youngest?”

  “Of course not.” He puffed out his chest the same way he had done on the first day they met. “I’ve two sisters — babies — younger than me.”

  “Are they with your mother?”

  “No. The babies stay with my dadi in Punjab. But when they are old enough, Amma will bring them to the city to work.”

  “Not all ammas are as cruel and selfish as yours. I bet if you asked your mother, she’d let you find work near her.”

  He rested his chin on his knees. “Yes they are, Nazia. All mothers are that cruel. Look at baji. She’s an amma. She’s so mean that all her kids have grown up and run away. None of them come to visit, not even the ones still in Pakistan.”

  That was true. Seema baji always talked about her children and what a great success they were in all corners of the world, but not one ever came to visit, and only rarely did an operator patch through a telephone call from outside the country.

  “Well, you haven’t known many good women, Sherzad. Look at my mother. She would never hand us to strangers to feed herself.”

  “No? All the mothers want to marry off the girls so they can get rid of you and have one less mouth to feed.”

  “My mother’s not like that!” Nazia sat up. “She’s not trying to get rid of me. She just wants to see me settled and happy.”

  Sherzad laughed. “I have two older sisters. Amma married them both in Punjab. One of them lives just outside of Multan. She works in the fields, tends to the goats, and cares for her husband’s entire family. The other is barely older than you. She stays at a haveli and looks after the children from the sarkar’s other wives. None of them are happy. Nobody cares if you’re happy.”

  Nazia suddenly remembered Shenaz. Had she cared for her husband’s other wife and their children before deciding that she’d rather be free of them?

  “We all follow whatever path our mothers have laid out for us,” Sherzad continued. “We all do whatever our ammas tell us, just like you do.”

  What if he was right? Amma had pulled her out of school and forced her to work with her. Now that her engagement had fallen through, was Amma relieved to have her daughter with her for a few more months, or was she worried about how to get rid of her? She pushed aside the thought, unwilling to believe that her own mother could ever become as cruel and heartless as Sherzad’s. She scooted off the charpai and stepped out of the room. The plate of food in the driveway was cold, but she retrieved it anyway and set it on Sherzad’s charpai. “Eat this. You need to build up your strength after the fever.”

  Without a word the boy began shoveling the food into his mouth with his fingers. Nazia headed to the lawn to clean up the debris. In the distance a bicycle guard’s shrill whistle blew strong, then trailed off into nothingness as he pedaled away down the street. While she picked up the shredded napkins and discarded glasses, a single thought nagged her. Why had Amma turned away and done nothing when Seema had slapped her?

  Shafts of sunlight pierced between the wooden slats of the door and penetrated deep into the servant quarters. A sharp rapping sound woke Nazia, and she groaned, feeling the stiff muscles in her arms and shoulders protest as she stretched.

  The door banged open and late-morning sunlight flooded the room. She shielded her eyes until they adjusted to the intense light, and squinted at the figure in the doorway.

  “Wake up, Nazia. You’ve had enough sleep to last a week.” Amma moved into the room and patted her shoulder. “Get up.”

  Despite the fact that the room was already stifling, a wave of air even more humid enveloped Nazia like a wet sheet. She groaned again as Amma helped her sit up. “I hardly slept,” she mumbled.

  “Go wash, and do it quickly. Seema is taking you to the Sunday bazaar.” Amma lifted the rumpled sheet and folded it before tossing it onto the foot of the bed.

  Nazia rubbed the sleep from her eyes. Seema always took Sherzad to the bazaar. Was the baji regretting her behavior last night and allowing the boy a day’s rest?

  She kissed her mother and slipped into her chappals before hurrying to the washroom. She smoothed her hair and kept the same clothes, remembering that the Sunday bazaar was held in an open field where the wind lifted up the tethered tents in waves and sand swept through the bazaar in swirls.

  When she reached the front gate, Amma handed her two hundred rupees and ran through a list of items for Nazia to buy for the family. As she listened, she noticed that the door to Sherzad’s room was closed. How could he sleep with the door closed? He would die in the heat. She moved to open it, but Amma grabbed her arm.

  “He’s not there.”

  Nazia looked at her. “What?”

  “He’s not there,” she repeated. “That’s why baji is taking you. He ran away.”

  Nazia smiled. “Good for him!” She leaned closer to her mother. “We talked last night. I’m sure he went to ask his mother if he could stay with her.”

  “Did you tell him to run away?”

  “Of course not! He’s not a slave, Amma. He should be allowed to come and go as he pleases.” She told her about how Sherzad’s mother had practically sold him to baji. “I told him that he should ask his mother if he could live with her. Maybe she could find him work close by.”

  Nazia’s mother shook her head. “You have no business interfering with that boy’s life. He knows no other way of living.”

  “But I only wanted him to see that not all mothers are as mean as his.”

  “You are giving him hope for a life that is not his fate.”

  “How can you know what his fate holds?”

  “Nazia, don’t push me. He’s too young to see beyond the present. If you force him, then he can never be happy no matter where he is.”

  “What are you talking about? He has a right to hope for something better. Do you think I want to spend the rest of my life cleaning houses? I hope for something better too, Amma. So should you.”

  “All you can hope for is to get married to a good man and pray that he treats you well. That is your fate.”

  “That is your fate for me. What if I want something different?”

  Amma’s fingers dug into Nazia’s flesh. “What else could you possibly want? You’ve always known how your life would be. Don’t start thinking too much, or I warn you, you will be responsible for your own unhappiness just as you will be responsible for ruining Sherzad’s life. His mother put him here for a reason. She knows what is best for him.”

  Nazia jerked her arm away from Amma and stalked off to gather the baskets. Before Amma had pulled her out of school, Nazia would have believed everything that her mother said or did without a second thought. But things were different now. Amma was doing what she thought she had to do to keep them fed and warm at night, but was it the right thing
to do?

  When did Nazia have the right to start thinking on her own? Was there some unwritten law that said even when things were going wrong, when the choices that her parents made led to one disaster after another, she had to ride the waves, holding her breath? Even if it meant being pulled in by their reckless current, never knowing when or where she would surface?

  Seema stepped outside, already fanning herself. With the sahib using their only car, Seema had borrowed the neighbor’s driver to take them to the market. Nazia grabbed the baskets and slipped into the backseat next to Seema. As Amma closed the gate behind them and the driver pulled away, Nazia prayed that Sherzad’s mother would welcome him home and that the little boy would never return. Her fingers twisted around the basket handles, surprised at the boy’s boldness. At least he had the courage to choose his own road.

  The bazaar was spread out on a large tract of barren land north of the housing development. Green canvas sheeting tied to bamboo poles offered some respite from the blazing sun, but the sand still whipped through the tents with every gust of wind.

  The driver stayed with the car, too high up on the servant scale to help carry bags for a baji who was not his own. Nazia carried the baskets through the maze of stalls while Seema haggled with the vendors to cut the prices on potatoes, garlic, and tomatoes. It wasn’t long before both baskets were full and the weight was almost too much for Nazia to bear. As the midday heat permeated the bazaar, her feet slowed and her head began to ache.

  A group of Afghani boys in brown kurtas and bare feet trailed after them, begging to help carry the baskets.

  A particularly persistent boy with dirty blond hair and hazel eyes, just barely taller than herself, tugged at the basket on her aching shoulder.

  “Baji, mazdoor?” he asked, his eyes sparkling.

  Nazia longed to say yes, but Seema baji smacked his hand away.

  “We can carry it ourselves.” Seema yanked up her dupatta and wiped it over her grim face.