Olivia’s head whipped in the direction of the altercation. She hadn’t heard anyone shout since she’d arrived in India. Something serious must’ve sparked this exchange.
At the end of the market, just past the final stall, a man stood behind a simple card table. She couldn’t tell what he had spread across the table, but she recognized the shouting man—Aditi’s father.
She cringed as he shouted again, this time reverting back to a native tongue she couldn’t understand, shaking a fist at the man behind the stall.
Her stomach tightened in on itself, as if she were shrinking back to her younger self, terrified of her screaming father. Even as she assured herself nothing threatened her, her body flipped into panic mode, heart pounding, pulse racing, fear infusing every cell in her body. Hormones cascaded, communicating loud and clear to her muscles that she needed to get out of there, as if a tiny megaphone in her brain screamed, “Run!” She grappled with the visceral response, attempting to regain control of her body. Her breathing increased to a race-running pace, though she stood absolutely still, terrified to move. Her body would not listen to reason.
Tisha seemed to notice her response. The woman placed a gentle hand on her arm and whispered, “Just breathe. Slow, easy breaths. Slowly in and slowly out.”
Olivia tried to smile but feared it more resembled a grimace. She didn’t want attention. She shook her head as if to say she was fine.
Aditi held her younger sister by the hand and hid behind their mother, who jostled a wailing baby on her shoulder—and appeared to be pregnant again, judging by her swollen waistline. Aditi stared at the ground and stood still as a statue. Olivia suspected she was looking at a mirror into her past, that her younger self had resembled the young girl before her now, resolutely gazing anywhere but at the angry man, attempting to will invisibility as a protective shield, praying stillness would prevent becoming the next target of his rage. Her heart broke for her former student, knowing full well what life at home must be like and wishing she could do something to help. But like Aditi, like the remnant of her younger self cowering and quaking inside, she remained in the same place, helpless to intervene.
The vendor also watched the exchange and sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Not good.”
Aditi’s mother plucked at her husband’s sleeve, clearly mortified. When he slapped her away and yelled at her, Olivia gasped. She noticed the others shuffled their feet, uncomfortable but unclear what to do.
“What’s happening?” Chris asked.
“Strange man talk to wife,” the vendor said. He tipped his head and clicked his tongue.
Olivia turned back and watched the scene unfold, unable to look away, despite the continuing emotional storm lighting up every nerve in her body. The continued shouting spurred her pulse, until blood galloped through her veins like a spooked horse.
More men joined Aditi’s father, facing off against the stranger behind the table. The vendor said something she couldn’t quite follow, but she thought she heard the words “beat him up.” The stranger held up his hands, the universal signal for defeat and submission. Though she couldn’t hear the entire exchange, and wouldn’t be able to understand the words if she could, she understood the gist of it. Threatened with physical violence, the man gave up whatever he’d hoped to accomplish.
Aditi’s father, indignation and fury still blazing in his eyes, grabbed his wife by the wrist and stalked away, dragging his family in tow behind him. The additional supporters he’d amassed drifted away in his wake.
Aditi glanced up at her as the angry ensemble paraded past and waved at Olivia, a sweet, secretive gesture that reminded her how much she missed having the bright girl in her class. She nodded in response, keeping the quiet exchange just between them.
“What was that all about?” she asked the vendor as she paid him for her light strings. A quick, sideways jerk of his head indicated he didn’t wish to answer.
Her heartbeat slowed, now that the argument ended without further escalation. She could breathe normally again. She stared at the lone man behind his table. He lifted a hand in greeting. He seemed nice enough from a distance, and she had trouble imagining what he’d done to bring down such anger on his head.
Chris appeared at her elbow. “The vendor seems to think those guys were threatening to beat that man up. But he wouldn’t say why, other than something about talking to his wife.”
The other teachers joined them, all clutching their treasures.
She stared at the docile-looking man, curiosity piqued. “I mean, we have to go see what that was about, right? It’ll drive me crazy not knowing.”
“I thought I was the only nosy one,” Delilah said. “I’ll walk over if you will.”
Tisha looked less enthusiastic about the idea. “Maybe we should stay out of it.”
Melanie squinted at the man. “Maybe. But I’m with Olivia. This will really bother me. Besides, look at him. Chris can totally take him.”
“Oh, thanks!” Chris said.
“For real, though,” Delilah said. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
“That’s not a literary quote,” Chris chided her. “That’s just a thing people say.”
Olivia tried to maintain a neutral countenance and pretend they were simply continuing on their merry way, but couldn’t stop glancing at the man, who watched them approach. He seemed awfully calm and laid back for someone who had just been threatened with a beating.
The man, probably in his forties she guessed, with dark black hair combed to the side and a clipped mustache, broke into a wide grin when they approached his table.
“Hello! My name is Mukesh. I am sure you ladies use napkins.”
Napkins? How did he incite ire and fury by selling napkins? She edged closer to the table and blinked a few times, her mind struggling to make sense of the unexpected sight in front of her—pads prominently displayed on the table. Thinking back on her experience at the pharmacy, when that vendor behaved so strangely while selling packages of pads to her, things clicked into place. A little bit.
“You’re selling pads?” she asked.
“And you’re pretty ballsy about it, laying them out in the open like this,” Tisha ventured.
The man, rather than looking abashed, smiled at Tisha. “You know the difficulties, what I am up against. No woman in India will discuss this subject with me. It is simply not done. But I am not selling pads, but rather the machine which makes them.”
Exuberance infused every word he spoke. He handed a flyer to her. The flimsy paper left ink smudges on her fingers as she looked at it.
Olivia picked up one of the pads on display. A plain rectangle, nothing fancy, yet it seemed functional and perfectly fine. “And you have a machine that makes these?”
“Yes, madam. When I married, I knew nothing of a woman’s menses. Have you tried to discuss this with Indian woman? They will look down at ground or up in sky. They will not look at you. When I married, I knew nothing. But I saw my wife try to hide the bloody cloths she used and asked her about it. That was when I learned that women bleed. It is normal. What woman can stop her body from bleeding? But a woman is made to hide and feel shame and men are not told about it.”
“You were a married adult when you learned about menstruation?”
“In my thirties, madam, yes. I learned about sanitary napkin and went to my wife, so happy I have solved her problem, and told her about this and she said I am a fool. ‘Yes, I know,’ she told me. ‘But if I buy these napkins at the market, it will take the money you give me for food. Then what will we eat?’ Indian women are not as ignorant as I was. But they cannot afford the napkins. So I decide to make napkins for my wife, so she can be healthy and safe.”
“And you’ve succeeded,” she noted.
“Indian women deserve what women in other countries have.” The man launched into his sales spiel. “Only ten percent of Indian women use sanitary napkins. Most women cannot afford even cheapest option from the market. Most women use cloth, but they do not have a way to sterilize them. They could lay them in the sun to dry, but that would advertise to the entire community that they are menstruating. The subject is simply too sensitive and taboo. But some women do not even have cloth. They use leaves or garbage or worse.”
“Worse than garbage? What could be worse?” Melanie asked.
“Exactly, madam. Women with no sanitary napkins, who use cloths and worse, experience high rates of serious infection which sometimes results in sterility. And in India, a woman’s worth is all contained in her pants—honor, discretion, virginity, and producing children.”
“The girls in my classroom are disappearing,” Olivia said. “They start their periods and they never come back.”
“You are teacher?”
She nodded and gestured to the others. “We all are. At the English-language school.”
Aubra felt the need to add, “She’s new. The rest of us have been here for some time.”
“Drop-out rate for girls is quite high. This is normal. Less in big cities, but higher for small communities. Girls are taught to stay home, forbidden to go out. That they are unclean. They cannot even hand something to their family.”
“This is even worse than what I’d heard about,” Tisha said, echoing the shock apparent on the others’ faces.
“I knew we shouldn’t discuss it with the children,” Delilah said, taking a flyer, “but this is far worse than I realized.”
“I mostly teach boys,” Chris said. “I didn’t know. I mean, I knew, but I didn’t know.”
Olivia glanced in the direction she’d watched Aditi’s father drag her away. “How exactly does this work?”
“I install the machine and train women to operate it.”
She cocked her head. “Women? Only women?”
He tipped his head, waving a hand for extra emphasis. “Only women, madam. Women operate the machine, make the napkins, and sell to other women. That is the only way.”
She thought of Meena, helpless and dependent, no one in town willing to defy her father and employ her. Well, perhaps one person in town was. Her thoughts began to race as an idea clicked into place.
“You’ve installed these elsewhere?”
He tipped his head again. “Yes, madam. Most successfully. Not many people know yet, but someday I want to make India all napkin country. Yesterday a company offered me many U.S. dollars for the rights to my machine, to distribute the machine. I said no. I want to help women, not help Mukesh. If big company buys, they only want to make money. I only want to help women. You see? India needed high school dropout to solve this problem. An educated person would be smart enough to quit.” His eyes lit up at his own joke, and he cracked a grin.
She laughed but then grew serious again. Smart people know when to quit, Scott’s voice echoed in her mind. What would Scott think of Mukesh? Because he seemed pretty damned smart to her.
“And the women where you’ve installed machines, they use the pads?”
“Madam, yes. It is most successful. The women have income source, have napkins they can afford to buy. Everything is better. They go to other villages now and talk to women and show them napkins are much better. Someday, my dream is India will be all napkin country.”
“You did this for your wife?” Tisha asked. Olivia heard wistfulness in her tone and thought she understood. Her heart melted to hear a man demonstrate such concern and devotion.
Olivia mentally compared this man to Scott. Mukesh had learned about periods and set out to make life better for his wife. Scott wrinkled his nose in disgust at any mention of “that time of the month” or “girl things.” The man couldn’t even bring himself to say the words pads or tampons. Mukesh may joke lightly about being uneducated, but she found him far more enlightened than the highly educated department chair she’d been married to.
“For my wife, yes.” Mukesh looked down, a shadow crossing over his face. “My mother too. I quit school in ninth grade after my father died. My mother could not get a good job, cleaner only, and could not support us, so I quit and took factory job. I wish job like this had been available for my mother.”
Chris nodded. “I was raised by a single mother, too. It’s tough.” Doubt tugged at the corners of his eyes and furrowed his brow. Was he questioning his decision to let her handle her issues alone, in the face of Mukesh’s determination to make life better for his wife and mother?
Olivia tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “And you did it? Just like that? Now you make pads Indian women can afford?”
“Not just like that, madam. Six years I work on it.”
“Your wife must be so grateful and proud. Why isn’t she here helping you?” Olivia looked around, half expecting to see the woman skulking somewhere in the shadows.
“Yeah,” Melanie said. “She could approach the women and then maybe their husbands wouldn’t threaten to beat you up.”
The man’s mouth twisted into a wry grin. “Now we see the gods’ sense of humor. I started this project for my wife, and she has left me because of the project.”
Olivia, thinking that Scott would never have devoted so much as six minutes to something designed only to improve her life and health, sucked in a breath. Surely not. Maybe she misunderstood or perhaps the language barrier caused confusion. “She left you?”
“She went back to her parents. My mother left too. I am alone now, both women I try to help abandoned me.”
“But why?”
“I try to solve a problem I will never experience. When I made napkins, I needed someone to test them. I cannot do. I give to my wife. I think women bleed every day. She tells me, ‘No. Not possible. You have to wait.’ But if I have only one woman to test them, I would not be here today. I would still be trying to find the right material. I need more women to test. But of course in India, a man approaching women is not acceptable. In our village, tongues wagged with gossip. My interest in women as test subjects twisted into dishonorable intentions. My wife listened and believed and left me. A few months later my mother saw me examining used napkins, packed her things, and left me too. When the rest of the village saw me carry buckets of goats’ blood to my home, they decide I need an exorcism. I had to move before they tied me upside down to a tree.” He cracked a smile again.
This time, Olivia didn’t laugh. Was that last bit a joke? She didn’t understand how he could make light of the situation. Perhaps he’d learned how to successfully lock away painful memories. Perhaps he could teach her something.
She didn’t know. But she knew one thing, sure and crystal clear. From the moment she’d seen the announcement for an open teacher’s position in the middle of nowhere, India, she’d known in her heart she was meant to come. The universe intended her to be here, even if no one else understood—even if she herself hadn’t completely understood until this moment. And even if Scott’s incessant disapproval glared at her from the depths of her memories. Smart people don’t make rash decisions. You won’t be able to make this work. Why try?
Olivia wearied of being criticized and doubted by men. Breathing heavily, she mentally crossed her arms and told Scott’s memory he no longer got a say. This time, insisting on doing things her way would work, she knew it. It had to. As a spark of excitement licked into determination, she knew she needed this.
She handed the flyer back to Mukesh. “I want to buy one of your machines.”