The Story Hour by Thrity Umrigar

my husband? What he do if he know I likes Bobby in the bad ways, in the way married wife must not like other man? He be angry and mean, or he make joke about it. Either way, he hurt me.
    I cannot tell her about Bobby, who is beautiful like ice to me. You putting ice in the sunshine, where other people can see, and it melt. Bobby is secret, one of two secret in my life, that I will never tell.
    â€œLakshmi,” she say again, and I know she waiting for me.
    â€œWhat?” I say. “What you wanting to know?”
    She lean toward me. “I want to know,” she say, “if your husband beat you. Is that why . . . ?”
    I shakes my head no. “Never,” I say. “Husband, good man. He never doing any beatings.”
    â€œSo what made you? Take the pills, I mean?”
    And suddenly, the pain in my heart so big, it comes out of my eyes and roll down my face. “I’s alone,” I say. “I have no family relations in this desh. I alone.”
    The black lady’s face is so kind, it making me cry more. “I’m sorry, sweetie,” she say. “I understand. It’s very hard.”
    â€œI used to call my Shilpa sweetie. When I was the teaching her English.”
    â€œWho’s Shilpa?”
    I want to say: Shilpa is reason I’m in this jail of Am’rica. “Shilpa is my sister.”
    â€œI see. And she’s still in India?”
    I am surprise by question. “I thinks so.”
    â€œYou’re not sure?”
    I look at the floor. “We not talking anymore. Husband not allow. After marriage, he say I not talking to Dada or Shilpa.”
    She let out breath. “You have no contact with your family in India?”
    â€œHusband not allow.”
    She look angry. “Why ever not?”
    I look at the floor.
    We sit nice quiet for many minute. Then she say, “Tell me about your village. Tell me about where you grew up.”
    Even Bobby not ask so many question about my life. No one ever take interest. I close my eyes and I smell the earth of my village after the rainy season. And the first thing I am seeing is the well.

6
    I T RAINING SIX days nonstop and my father’s field is flooding. He sit at home and Ma say he drive her mad with his worry and kitpit. He telling her how to light coal stove properly, how to bake rotis correct way, how to sweep floor. She so irritate, she throw broom at him and say, “You so good, mister, you sweep this mud floor until it become Taj Mahal.” Shilpa and I think what Ma say so funny, we laugh and laugh, until Dada make strong eyes at us and raise his hand. But we not afraid of Dada because he never beating us. One time when my report card not good and Ma slap me, it is Dada who cry like a girl, not me.
    On six day of rain, Menon sahib come to our house in his blue Ambassador and ask if I can go to his big house for cleaning. His wife in city for few days and Munna and he alone in dirty house. I see Ma is sad that I leaf my schoolwork to help Menon sahib, but she cannot do extra work now. Both her feets having the ’rthritis and it paining her. I am so happy to leaf house and go sit in backseat of big car with Munna. It is only second time I sits inside a car—first time was taxi that we took from train station one time when we went to city. But the taxi was small and crowding and the smell of the agarbatti that the taxi driver was burning make me sneeze and sneeze. Menon sahib’s car is big as my house and Munna is my friend, although he being only five and I am eight.
    This is first time I goes to Menon sahib’s house without my ma, but I am knowing exact what to do. First I takes the jharu and sweep whole house. I collects the kachra in newspaper and then I get the rag and start to wash floor. I scrubs and scrubs until I am seeing my face in the white tile. Munna sit with me for some time and then he go to other room to play. Menon sahib’s house having many rooms.