fear

fear. It stays tucked away in the pit of her stomach, never to leave after the first time he raised his hand and chased her through the rooms of their second home with the baby four months old. The night-long thoughts of suicide clear up at dawn, impelled by visions of her child losing her mother. 28 years later, her cousin and her aunt watch him lose his temper in front of them and they intervene, asking her to leave him. He tells them it's in the past and it will be a fresh start. He removes her from the aunt's house and drives her back to his home, telling her through the six-hour drive that she will do as he says. She sits quietly, waiting for the horrific drive to reach its end, reliving similar excruciating drives over the course of their marriage. Yet, he does not hit anymore and begins giving her money for the household after ten years. He has calculated that he has paid her 25 lakh Indian rupees for household expenses over the years. They have been back in India for ten years. She has kept no account of her incomes which she made while freelancing without inconveniencing him. She has no account how much she has spent on the household and on their daughter's wedding that year - the last straw on her back. Fear after the physical abuse stops is like a rock; not a pesky pebble that she can kick merrily out of the way. The more she fears, the more he senses it. Like an animal, he pounces on the smell of fear in her and whips it up into thick mists of self-doubt and fear of the outside world. There are weeks when he accuses her of eating out on her evening walks - and on some days, he tells her she doesn't walk enough. There are four full meals for which she must be present to serve hot and to clean up after. Days when he tells her, "I don't need so many dishes," and eats only one of the many she has cooked without having no way of knowing if it's a day when he will say there's nothing to eat. Days when she has forgotten to order his brand of milk early enough to boil and chill for his tea twice a day. It cannot be hot or lukewarm, but must be refrigerated. It must be heated only after it is mixed with the tea he has steeped. Days when he screams at the older maid because he senses her fear of men - the husband who tries to strangulate her when he is drunk has conditioned her into accepting the dictates of her employer. The younger maid has not yet known fear and he knows not to bully her. For the first time in the marriage, she has gathered courage to hire two maids for two hours each, so that she would have guaranteed help every day. The poor fall ill often and rare is the month when one or the other of them don't fall prey to peculiarly third-world diseases. Gastro-enteritis, typhoid, backache for the older maid, the one with six babies, fever, beatings by husbands. She feels she can afford it now that she has built up her portfolio without his knowledge and has projects she can make a living by. She ignores his jibes at her having two maids and tries to meet her deadlines but the maids, she finds, are in straits direr than hers. After 25 years of keeping the house clean and cooking on her own without respite, she is grateful for the days when they both come to work.