Two Mothers and a Tara

I was dildo-deep in my girlfriend when Shelly, my childhood best friend, called me sobbing. This time she was done. She was leaving her husband of three years, for whom she’d quit college. My girlfriend said she had heard this story multiple times, and I told her to go fuck herself.

Vijay, my current best friend, roommate, and colleague, was more understanding. He even found another dyke who’d sublease my apartment—in our five-star residential society—to which I was contractually bound for another nine months. My boss, surprisingly, was the most understanding, as she reduced my notice period from four weeks to two.

I spent hours on parenting sites and Quora threads about how to be an adoptive parent, even though Shelly had not explicitly asked me to be one for Tara, her eight-month-old. Since I was moving back to our hometown to help Shelly raise Tara, of course, it meant that I would be the second parent. Shelly wanted to rent an apartment, but I suggested we live in my childhood home to save money. No one was living there. It made more sense anyway.

Shelly found my life and my principles—such as calling Tara my nibling instead of my niece—weird, but that didn’t matter. We both loved each other. In those two weeks before my move, Shelly called me often. She was filled with doubts, afraid her husband wouldn’t let her go. I told her to just focus on packing her and Tara’s stuff.

At the airport, Vijay hugged me tight, asked me if I was sure about all this. So I went into a heartfelt soliloquy: how I was so thankful that I had met him; that if I were not gay and he were not gay, I would have dated him; and that it was going to be difficult, sure, but this was something I had to do, even though my relatives—most of whom were dead, thank God—would raise their eyebrows. But Shelly and Tara were my family and they needed me, and if he ever became a single parent, I would uproot my life to help raise his child too.

I was back in the house I had left fifteen years ago, the same bed I used to sleep in as an adolescent. It seemed like I was living a shadow life. The first few nights in the house, I woke up dreaming of Tara falling off the stairs. But then, in the dim nightlight, I’d see them sprawled between their mother and me, and I’d go back to sleep.

It wasn’t only the nights that were an adjustment. Rohtak was a dusty, small town. We lived right in the middle of the market area—busy with hawkers and foot traffic, halwais who sold cheap samosas, jalebis, and sabjiwallas, who overcharged for their mirchi and dhaniya.

My editorial and publishing experience was of no use in this town with no public libraries or bookstores, so I looked for teaching jobs. I did have a terminal master of fine arts that was good enough to teach in colleges, but, alas, no liberal arts colleges had ever existed in Rohtak.

So I interviewed with the high school Shelly and I went to all those years ago. The chocolate-brown and pastel-yellow walls jumped at me as I walked to the principal’s office. She greeted me as if she had always known I would come back asking for a job, though, funnily, she didn’t work at the school when I went there.

“It’s not common to hire teachers without a background in education,” she said.

“My pedagogy is sound. Centering the student, giving space for students to think critically and make mistakes as they learn, in my opinion, is the most important education.”

The principal nodded, looking impressed. Her peppered bob and specs on a string were old-school sexy. Shelly had told me that the principal was a spinster—never married—but her chiseled face and confident air made me think that she must have had a colorful past.

At the end of the interview, she said, “You know, female teachers have to wear saris. It is the dress code.”

I laughed, in a manner I thought was polite, and left. I’ve worn blazers and pants to work for six months and nobody has fired me yet, probably because I am the best-dressed teacher in that entire fucking school.

*

Not too long after, Tara started to crawl. Shelly and I moved all the furniture in the house to the wall. We babyproofed the sharp glass edges of tables with Thermocol casings, packed up my old trophies and awards for brilliance in math and English extempore competitions and general-knowledge quizzes.

“Why don’t you go back to college, finish your degree?” I asked Shelly.

“I never wanted to be a doctor anyway, Anju—not a dentist at least,” she replied, so I didn’t push.

Still, much remains to be done. The house is cracking; the paint, having bubbled and burst, is chipping off the walls like diseased skin. Sometimes I just take that skin off. I am glad Tara can’t reach it yet.

Our routine is set. Every morning before going to school, I massage Tara with baby oil and move their legs in a cycling motion. They have not started walking yet, but we are not really worried. The upper limit is eighteen months. After the massage, I put Tara in the baby bathtub and give their tiny body a bath. They just play with their fishy toys as I pour water on their body, then slather them with baby soap, and then shampoo their hair. I say “close your eyes,” and they shut them tight. After school, we eat khichdi. I feed Tara some fried potatoes and eat the leftovers —they never finish all their food. Taking care of Tara comes easily to me.

Taking care of Tara comes easily to me.

Evenings, I go to the market nearby to get some groceries. Tara stays in my arms. For the first five minutes, Tara is barely a weight, but soon my arm and wrist begin to hurt. I shift Tara to my other arm, angling my hips, letting their legs fall on either side of my waist. The cars and the bikes parked on the wrong side of the road are especially difficult to navigate with a child on your hips, but the men running most of the shops know me. They come out to talk to me, offer me their hands even though I never accept them. They call me Mittal madam. I abhor the word madam used for me.

“Sir, yeh list di hai madam ne.” I hand the fruit vendor the piece of paper with Shelly’s handwriting.

The shopkeeper gives Tara a few grapes. In the beginning, I didn’t let Tara eat them—unwashed, full of pesticides. But Tara would cry; Bhagatji, the sabjiwalla, would look at me as if I deeply hurt his feelings, so I let Tara take the two grapes, one in each hand, and they would spend the next minute chewing on them.

I sit on the bench outside the shop while Bhagatji packs everything in large polythene bags. He says he’ll get everything delivered to our house; after all, we are like his daughters. My refusal toward delivery is always strong, just like my cringe, but then the palms of my hands hurt right where my astrological life lines end, so I thank the sabjiwalla and move on to the next shop.

I ask Dua, the shopkeeper, for milk, bread, eggs, and butter. He tells me I remind him of my father. That’s the most respect the neighborhood gives me. My father was the doctor who treated all his neighbors free of cost, whereas I am a stranger who doesn’t fit. Usually, Tara’s mother socializes. I stand at a distance, holding Tara in my arms.

*

Vijay is visiting us for the weekend. Before he arrived, Shelly made up the extra bedroom for him—my parents’ old room. She put on new bed covers, comforters, and duvets, but no amount of dusting and cleaning the furniture could hide its age. Like the house, the furniture is also crumbling. After Vijay freshened up, we drank wine and ate the chicken tikka Shelly had cooked as a late-afternoon snack.

“How is it living in this village?” Vijay asked.

I shook my head. Shelly fed bits of chicken to Tara.

“Well, in all honesty, I thought it would be dirt roads and brick houses with mounds of dung outside,” Vijay said.

“Then we are sorry to disappoint,” Shelly laughed.

We went out to the one restaurant decent enough to dine in, and after the dinner, the waiter walked the bill to Vijay. Usually with the three of us dining out, the waiter doesn’t realize I am a woman and then recalculates the situation quickly and sets the bill in front of me because I still seem to hold the most authority at the table. Last night, the waiter didn’t hesitate or smile nervously, not even a little bit. He walked straight to Vijay and placed the bill in front of him.

Back at the house, Shelly called it a night for herself and Tara. Vijay and I worked on the bottle of wine in the dark.

“High school in Haryana,” Vijay said, sliding down the sofa. “Teaching Haryanvi jaat English. Not being able to date any women. How the fuck are you living here?” He knows me from a different life, a life in which he struggled with his sexuality and I with my career choices.

“Well, I can date women. I found two on Tinder who were open to women. Though, yeah, I will never go out with a woman. I fear they will stone me or something.” I shifted myself just enough to make our legs touch. “But I do like the job. High school kids may not care about English, but I do. The board syllabus is the same old abridged stories from old white men and a couple Indian men, so I try to inspire a little thought, a little critical impulse, and students seem to listen. They actually attend my lectures. They even participate. Shelly often teases me, ‘They are not trying to understand literature. They are trying to understand you.’ And maybe they are. Who cares?”

I asked Vijay, “So, you and Kamal are serious?”

“Yeah. My parents like him.” Vijay seemed calm. A sudden ache for a lover entered me as Vijay talked about his happiness, his love for his boyfriend. The hairs on my arm crackled a little.

In the morning, we all went to a local farm house owned by my parents’ friends, a half-hour drive from the city. We swam in the old tube well. I put floaties around Tara’s arms and held them in water. Vijay taught them to float a little. Tara, the water angel.

Tara’s mother sat in the grass reading a book. She clicked a few pictures and then went back to sunning herself. The weather was just right; otherwise, being in the sun and the water would not be possible in the North Indian heat. She had a book in front of her face, but I could tell she was not reading. She has never been into books. That’s my thing. It was more of a show for my friend.

Vijay took laps and paddled his arms, and Tara mimicked the movement as I held their body in the water horizontally. The world in the moment was magical—Vijay, Tara, and me at the center, Shelly watching us from the edges.

The world in the moment was magical—Vijay, Tara, and me at the center, Shelly watching us from the edges.

We came out of the water and ate jamun freshly picked from the trees at the farm. Suddenly, the scene felt wrong to me, curling at its edges, as if we might be a fantasy inside somebody’s head. I could see the cords attaching us to the creator, and they bothered me. But then Tara slumped their body next to mine, their body sighing, and the feeling faded away.

“Did you ever watch that show I Dream of Jeannie?” I asked Vijay, and he nodded. “Shelly and I used to watch it as kids. I don’t know why a ’60s show aired on prime time TV in ’90s North India. I would blink just like Jeannie with my arms stacked over one another, and I would find two pieces of colored chalk sticks on my chair. Shelly kept it there, gave all her chalk to me.” I slid my hand through her hair. “Well, anyhow, the creator of the show was a writer, wrote murder mysteries. The first book of his I read, I was thirteen, and, in it, a man shoves a prostitute down to his crotch. The language is descriptive. I didn’t know anything about BJs, but I knew she took his cock in her mouth. I was horrified for days. And then another character rips the condom off of her husband’s dick—isn’t that abuse?—because she wants to get pregnant. Why did I read those books? Why did our junior library even carry those books?”

“You never told me,” Shelly said.

“I never told anybody. I was ashamed I’d ever read it, and then I thought you’d scold me. I think those characters made me a lesbian, scared me away from heterosexual relationships.”

Vijay and Shelly laughed, and Tara also laughed and lost their balance.

*

We are staying in for dinner, so Shelly has cooked mutton biryani, raita, and masala papad. We open the last two bottles of wine and this old bottle of desi whiskey, and even Shelly drinks a little tonight. Tara is already asleep in our bedroom.

“Do you miss your old life?” Shelly asks me. I give a surprised laugh.

“You’re drunk,” I say.

“Answer me.”

There’s something urgent in her voice. I am not used to such frankness from her. Our agreement has been unspoken for the most part. Tara and Shelly are mine.

“Sometimes. This was not how I imagined my life.” I don’t know why I say that.

Vijay holds my hand. His hands are large—like tennis paddles. I imagine him slapping someone, slapping me for what I said. I lean into him; my head rests somewhere on his shoulder and the space under it. The smell of his sweat makes me heady.

“So tell me. Do you miss your ex, your past life?” Vijay asks Shelly.

It is the most obvious question with the most obvious answer. Shelly says she does miss him. I chug my whole glass of whiskey—the burn inside my throat replaces the queasy feeling behind my navel. I thump my chest.

“Slow down, dude,” Vijay says, refilling my glass.

“What do you miss about him?” I slur.

“Anju’s parents often hosted family and friends in this house when we were young.” Shelly slices out the cake she has baked and passes it to Vijay. “As a kid, I loved those nights. Uncle would get all kinds of chicken dishes from this restaurant I loved, fried fish filets and whatnot.”

I snatch the plate of cake from Vijay’s hand. I want these two to take care of me, focus on me, not tell sad anecdotes about my dead parents.

“Why are you being like this?” Shelly hands Vijay another plate.

“I wanted cake.”

“You are drunk.”

“I wish we had some hash.”

They ignore me. I focus on the frosting, dipping one side of the fork in it, licking it clean and then dipping the other side. I break a chunk of the base with my two fingers and stuff it into my face. Then I slide those two fingers through the frosting and shove them inside my mouth again. I cannot taste anything; my mouth feels heavy, but the cake somehow makes it lighter. I fear that if I swallow, I won’t be able to open my mouth and that it would collapse under its own weight like a caved-in side of a mountain.

“Don’t avoid the question. What is it that you miss about your past life? You have actually never told me what happened. What did he do this time that made you finally leave him?” I interrupt some stupid conversation they are having about soaking sponge cake in rum before frosting it.

“Anjali.” Shelly never says my full name. Everything feels strange. “Can you blame me for wanting Tara to have her father in her life? For hoping to give her a whole family, not raising her by myself?”

“I didn’t know you were raising Tara by yourself. I think I should just fucking go.” I place the plate with the cake on the floor slowly; I don’t want my anger to make me clumsy. The exaggerated movements seem to work better than slamming and breaking things.

I come to the room and kiss Tara on their forehead. This child sleeps; they don’t miss their father; they barely remember that man. Tara stirs and I lay them on top of my chest. Our rhythms of breathing sync up—in and out, in and out.

Shelly comes into the room after a few minutes and turns on the night-light. She climbs onto the bed and lies next to me, smelling faintly of the day’s excursions, reminding me of the warmth of a woman’s body next to mine. Lately, my libido has gone down. Usually when I masturbate, I watch a porn clip in which a man alternates between eating out two women. The man is mostly under covers; his head and tattoos help me imagine myself in his stead even though I can in no way ever look like him. The sounds he makes going down on them fill me with desire for five minutes. And then blankness.

Shelly kisses my upper arm, softly grazing her lips across the skin. The rough skin over my biceps is made tender by her soft non-kisses, and for the first time in a long time my vagina throbs. I am entrapped by her lips rubbing against the skin of my arm, then my neck. She stops and I relax a bit, but then she takes Tara off my chest and places them in their crib. I turn to my left side away from Shelly as she changes into a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and climbs into the bed close to me. She falls asleep with her leg stacked on top of mine.

Before anyone gets up, I try to rub the appalling thoughts out of my body in the bathroom. The touch of my own clitoris, the shape of the dark-colored bean between my fingers opens chasms of desire within me to touch somebody else’s, to roll it around my tongue as she writhes in pleasure telling me that she loves me, telling me that she wants to have babies with me, that she wants to have my babies, that she would make it happen somehow, that two women will make a baby together. I come.

I feed Tara from a bottle. Getting them off Shelly’s milk required both of us to stay up for hours holding them and bouncing them as they cried for Shelly’s nipples, her warmth, her breasts. Now with Tara weaned off, everybody sleeps longer and better.

Vijay knocks on our bedroom door. I place Tara close to their mother and go outside. Vijay and I sit on the terrace drinking coffee that he made. My father used to pass around pieces of oranges, apples, pomegranates, lychees as he peeled and cut them during summer evenings. The memory makes me shift in my chair.

“Are you okay?” Vijay asks.

I nod.

“This house suits you, you know.”

Even though what he says is terrifying, I understand what he means.

“I think I want a baby,” I say.

Shelly and Tara join us. Tara crawls to me and raises their arms to be picked up by me. They call me Mama. They snuggle into my chest, coo to me, put my face between their tiny hands and kiss me on my lips. We have been wanting them to call me maasi—it translates to “someone like a mother.” But they call me Mama. Their vocabulary is limited.

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