At dinner that evening, Olivia told the others all about her first day, pleased to be able to share what she considered an overall success. She dove into her potatoes and cauliflower, famished after a long day, realizing she hadn’t taken time for lunch. “I was kind of worried at first, especially when one little girl cried in the youngest class.”
Tisha tore a piece of chapati and scooped rice with it. “Lakshmi? Yes, she cried at me too. I think new faces scare her.”
“Yes, that sounds about right. I remember her being upset when I took over too,” Melanie said.
“You know the teacher you replaced left quite suddenly,” Delilah told Olivia, “so it may have been especially disruptive for Lakshmi.”
“What happened?” Olivia asked. “Is the woman okay?”
The girls exchanged glances. “She was local, not a Westerner like us,” Tisha said. “Before she disappeared, she confided that she was pregnant.”
“And she didn’t want to teach anymore?”
“She isn’t married,” Delilah said.
“Oh. She needs a paying job instead of a volunteer position?”
“No. You’re thinking like an American. Present day American. A pregnant, unmarried woman in India is in serious trouble. We . . . we’re not sure what’s happened to her, but we’re sure it isn’t good.”
Olivia put down her fork. “What do you mean?”
“Well, women are expected to marry as virgins here. A pregnancy proves she isn’t one. On top of that, her parents were actively arranging her marriage. She’s educated and smart, and they’d found a good match for her. The pregnancy ruined that.”
“She didn’t want to marry that man,” Aubra said. “Like Melanie said, she’s educated and smart. She knows Western countries don’t arrange marriages. She agreed to bow to tradition and allow her parents to arrange her marriage but then she didn’t like the man. She loved someone else.”
“That’s so sad,” Olivia said. “What do you think happened to her?”
“Honestly?” Tisha said. “She’s probably been forced to abort the pregnancy and is being hidden from the boy she loves.”
She nearly choked. “A forced abortion? That’s . . .” She didn’t have words. She couldn’t comprehend. Simply could not wrap her brain around the idea of anyone being forced to terminate a pregnancy. Of course, she knew she was biased. Her experience with pregnancy had left her reeling and with a firm grasp of just how tenuous and precious life is.
“Yes, I know. But it happens here. Gender bias results in forced abortion too.”
“Her parents forced her to end the pregnancy? Rather than let her marry the baby’s father?”
“We don’t know that for sure. We’re guessing,” Delilah said.
“But . . . why?” That’s what bothered Olivia so much. The why, the how. How could anyone do such a thing?
“Most women don’t have many options besides getting married, having children, and operating the house. Particularly in more rural areas like this one. Things are changing here, but not quickly. India is an old, old country, with thousands of years of history. You don’t change thousands of years of gender bias in a day.”
“What do you mean by ‘gender bias’?”
“Baby girls are considered a drain on impoverished families,” Tisha said. “Girls take resources away from the family and yet don’t offer any return on the investment. Once a marriage is arranged, the daughter leaves and becomes part of her husband’s family.”
Scott would love that, she couldn’t help but think. He hadn’t liked the close relationship she and her mother shared. He’d frowned at suggestions of spending holidays with Mom, preferring to spend them alone. She’d never understand his sour attitude after they married or his insistence she needed to grow up and stop leaning on her mother.
“Plus, the marriage itself is expensive. The woman’s family pays a dowry to the man’s family and pays the cost of the wedding,” Aubra said.
“Whereas sons will provide for the parents in their old age,” Delilah said. “My women’s studies paying off. We discussed this cultural difference. The man’s family receives the dowry, gains the woman who provides free labor around the house plus grandchildren. And the man’s parents will live with them once they’re unable to care for themselves. It’s their retirement plan.”
“Parents pay men to marry their daughters?” Olivia asked, not sure she understood correctly. Surely she misunderstood.
“More or less, yes,” Delilah said. “Cash doesn’t necessarily constitute the dowry, though some amount is typical. The dowry could also include appliances, furniture, or a house. And if a family wants to arrange a good marriage, they will pay a higher dowry. Men with university degrees and status and steady incomes command higher dowries. The practice is officially outlawed, but in general, the laws have been ineffective at stopping the practice. Women have historically been completely socially and financially dependent on male relatives and then their husbands after marriage. And unfortunately dowry abuse is real. With any luck, her parents will salvage the marriage arrangement. Or at least find her someone.”
“But she loves another man. Why won’t they let her marry him?”
Aubra looked around the table. “Did anyone ever hear exactly why her parents disapproved of him? I know she hinted at them not liking him, but now I can’t remember why. If she ever told us.”
“I never heard,” Melanie said.
“She really didn’t discuss it much,” Delilah said. “I didn’t pry but I was curious and tried to get her to talk about him a couple times.”
“Okay so why don’t they simply elope?”
“Oh, girl, you’re still thinking like a Westerner,” Tisha said.
“Remember,” Delilah said, “she can’t marry if her parents don’t pay her dowry. Unless the groom and groom’s parents agree to forego it. Which apparently her beau’s parents weren’t willing to do. In their minds, they invested heavily in him and his schooling, preparing him for the best match they could hope for, and now they expect to collect. If his parents demand a dowry and her parents don’t approve of the match, then the marriage will never happen.”
“She should forget all that, take her baby, and run away then,” Olivia suggested. “Why does she need a guy anyway? You said she’s educated and smart. She can get a job and take care of herself instead of being forced to have an abortion and marry a man she doesn’t like.”
“It’s just not that simple,” Tisha said. “You’re still thinking like we’ve been raised to think. Women here don’t have much recourse. Society generally frowns on single mothers or women in the workplace. Who would hire her? She’d be an outcast with no family and no support. Where would she live? How would she live? You heard us talking about why we ask Chris to drive us around and take us shopping. We’ve encountered some problems. Aubra tried to drive us once and men yelled at us and told us to get off the roads, that we made them unsafe. The stereotypical ‘woman driver’ caricature is taken as fact. Combine that with the belief that women shouldn’t be outside the home unchaperoned plus the common belief that all Western women are tramps and ready to hop in bed with any men they meet, and it didn’t go well.”
“It’s a different country and a different culture. So many things play into this—tradition, economics, religion.” Melanie shrugged.
Everything they said made sense and nothing they said made sense. She couldn’t believe Melanie shrugged off the situation as if it were nothing. Except what could any of them do? A couple of Western women up against the entire continent’s deeply entrenched belief system, many thousands of years old? Might as well spit into a hurricane and hope to knock it off course. They wouldn’t change a thing.
The scenario they described left her nauseated and unable to finish her dinner. But they were right—this wasn’t her country or her fight, and she was getting worked up over a young woman she’d never even met. The situation tormented her though. She looked around the table and watched the rest of her co-volunteers return to their food. They’d moved on. Why couldn’t she?
In her mind, she pictured the woman literally dragged to a clinic, struggling and protesting then held down while her pregnancy was terminated. She imagined the young woman weeping for the lost baby, something she was entirely too familiar with herself. She wanted to find the woman, wanted to offer her comfort, hold her and rock her and tell her it would be okay, all the while knowing it wouldn’t be.
She knew it wouldn’t be because she still wasn’t okay, nearly . . . oh God, it was nearly a year later. She quickly tallied up the months and confirmed that. Nine months, somehow an eternity and no amount of time at all. The exact amount of time the pregnancy had spanned, a huge life-altering shift in itself. How could so much have changed when so little had happened? A year—less than a year even—since her life turned upside-down completely. No, that wasn’t right. Shattered. Her life had shattered completely. And now here she was in India, trying desperately to form the broken bits back into something she could recognize as her life. Or a life. Any life, really, at this point. She’d been unable to function for some time, heart lacerated by the jagged shards. She’d finally forced herself to move, attempting to gather the pieces.
But even though she was here, moving through life, and she was showing everyone a good, solid front as if she had all her crap together, she was not okay. What if she never felt okay again? What if the huge canyon of grief rent by one horrible day, one horrible event, one atomic bomb of grief and devastation could never be traversed? Would her life be forever divided in two by one calamitous event, the years before spent as her original self, the person she remembered and longed to be again, and the years after this new, hollowed-out, aching version of herself?
She knew the teacher she’d replaced would never be the same either. Strange how one shift in life could cause a domino effect, leading from one life change to another to another, collapsing in a pile of debris kicked off by what at the time seemed like a tiny tremor, a slight quiver, a challenge to overcome, sure, but manageable. Then it turned out to be enough to cascade into an earthquake that resulted in an avalanche that left you buried and lost forever.
“You okay?” Tisha pulled her from her thoughts.
She nodded. “Yeah, just . . .”
Chris, sitting next to her like always, had tensed up and gone silent. “I’m with Olivia. Let’s talk about something else. As the sole male of the group, I feel like I’m about to be ripped apart as retribution for thousands of years of female subjugation. And I personally have never so much as insulted a woman, so I feel like that would be grossly unfair.”
“No one is going to rip you apart!” Aubra laughed.
“Yeah, who would drive us around then?” Melanie asked.
“Chris is right,” Aubra went on. “He’s the last person to atone for sins of the past. He’s a perfect gentleman.”
Olivia had the feeling Aubra wished Chris wasn’t such a perfect gentleman and would attempt to try a few ungentlemanly things with her. The girl was so obvious. Surely Chris had caught her vibe by now. Was he simply not interested? And why was she wasting any thought on the dynamic anyway? Who cared?
Tisha caught her eye. “It’s a lot to adapt to, I know. We can’t change anything, though. We’re here to teach and that’s all. Remember how happy you were a moment ago, telling us about your day. What else went well? Sounds like you really did great straight out of the gate.”
She picked up her fork again and cast a grateful glance at Tisha for bringing her back. Focus on the positive. “I mean, I don’t really know for sure, but I felt good about it. Not at first, especially not with Lakshmi crying, but by the end they hugged me and called me Auntie.”
“Auntie on the very first day?” Chris said. “That’s awesome!”
She blushed a bit at his praise, feeling heat creep across her cheeks.
“They call all the teachers Auntie,” Aubra said.
“Of course,” she said, quickly dismissing Chris’s compliment. Tension emanated from Aubra, and Olivia couldn’t cope with tension. Especially petty jealousy over what the kids called the teachers and how soon, fueled by Aubra’s obvious crush on Chris that apparently went unrequited. Olivia wanted no part of that drama. Period. “I assumed it was something standard. I didn’t even know why they were calling me that at first. Mrs. Gupta had to tell me.” She giggled a bit to show Aubra how silly she found the entire situation.
“Still, that’s great,” Chris insisted, though she wished he had picked up on the social cues and let it go. His emotional intelligence didn’t seem terribly high.
She changed the subject. “One little girl is remarkably bright. Aditi. She blew me away.”
The other teachers all spoke at once, agreeing and nodding.
“She’s brilliant,” Aubra said. “Bloody hell, she stuns me how smart she is.”
“Excellent at math too,” Chris said.
“And she’s exceptionally kind,” Tisha added. “Not that any of the kids are mean. She just always seems to notice when one of the other kids is down and goes out of her way to cheer them up.”
“She isn’t a snot either,” Delilah said. “Not an arrogant bone in her body. She will help explain to the other kids whenever they’re not quite grasping a concept.”
“She’s amazing,” Melanie agreed.
This was why she was here. To stop feeling horrible and help the kids in this little school in a little town in rural India have a chance at a better future. They weren’t her children, and she wouldn’t be here long enough to see the outcome or follow up on what became of them. Maybe her six months here would amount to a great big nothing. But she had to try. She knew, somehow, deep down, that the trying would mean something, and perhaps even benefit her in ways that attempting to forget and move on had failed.
Would she change these kids’ lives? Probably not. But she would damn sure give them her best effort. And right now, she knew she was no more prepared for her second class than she’d been for the first. Okay, maybe a little bit more prepared since the first-day nerves and anxiety were behind her. But as far as presenting a lecture—no, lessons!—she had nothing. This was something she could focus on. She would shove everything else into a closet in her mind—all the worry and fear and the horrible events that brought her here and the poor teacher she’d replaced who could have been beaten or worse for all she knew but she really couldn’t think about that right now because even starting to think about it was bringing tears to her eyes and derailing the awesome plan she’d thought of.
Nope. Stop that.
She pushed all the depressing thoughts into the closet in her mind and mentally leaned hard to close the hiding place, now crammed and over-stuffed with all the things she simply couldn’t deal with right now. Right now, she needed to focus on the kids she had agreed to teach. And she knew how she was going to do it.
As the others cleared the dishes and left for their rooms, she turned to Chris and asked, “Do you think I could catch a rickshaw to that nicer market we went to?”
Chris frowned. “Why do that? I’ll drive you.”
“I hate to keep imposing on you.”
“It’s not an imposition! Seriously. Please let me. You’ve been in the country less than a week. If you got lost or, heaven forbid, something happened, I’d feel personally responsible.”
“You know, everyone keeps saying it’s totally safe here,” she said, one eyebrow up. “And yet I’m supposed to be chaperoned and can’t go out alone.”
“It is! It is safe. But no sense inviting trouble, right? Come on! Where are we going?”
“To that bookstore we saw when we went shopping. I need some supplies.”