She did not have sex with Robert that day. But she almost wished to. It was not their relationship, not quite, that she could have sex with him on days like this. She was not worried about getting pregnant by accident. She did not think she would be alive to worry about it soon enough. And Robert was always careful.
Still, they were merely colleagues, and nothing more; and she could find no comfort in him but the physical, and now not even that. She ached for a touch, something gentle and grounding like the tip of fingers on her arm, light and steady and there; but she had no one that could give her that.
Her family might, but they did not know her. No. Her family couldn't; their touch was too heavy, their grip too unsteady; they knew they had lost her and so they held her tighter still.
She would have to visit them tomorrow. She would have to, and she stood for an endless span of time at the closet looking between her everyday clothes and the one churidaar she hadn't thrown out. It was printed bright and gaudy and she had gotten tired of being so bright. It was not her. But she would wear it anyway, tomorrow, and so she threw it angrily onto the bed.
"Iron it," she said.
"Yes, mistress," Jack replied. He picked the pieces up over his arm, treating it with utmost care. Purposefully, because he knew she couldn't help but watch, and see the difference. It was as mocking as he was.
"Won't you call me Helen?" she said.
"Of course, Helen, whatever you wish."
She walked into the other room. She preferred mistress, though it angered her, for it was the only thing Jack said that was not mocking. He was quite serious, and that was what she was to him, and so there were no illusions.
A low chuckle followed her out the door. Then Jack followed, proper and calm, as though he had not heard her thoughts. And put everything onto the ironing board, and pressed it flat.
/
He drove her part way there, and then she walked the rest. She did not want her mother and father and brothers and whatever cousins and uncles and aunts might be visiting to look and exclaim over the government car, and she did not want them to see Jack. She knocked sharply on the door, but before she had even rapped twice the door was being whisked open and her mother hugged her on the doorstep. "Deepika, I thought you would never arrive! Food is waiting."
She did not say anything, but smiled and followed her mother inside. It was an unspoken rule: she did not argue about names when she came in dressed in her one churidaar. She was being Deepika today, and if she was not perfect, she was at least valued, and that was something. The weight of her job circled like a stormcloud, like a hawk over its prey, and she turned aside purposefully, and helped make paratha and serve chai and everything was almost fine. She even laughed, and she did not remember the last time she had laughed, and when Dhruv came and called her his favorite sister she said "I'm your only sister"—like she always did—and did not say he was her favorite brother. What would she say, even if she could speak of her job? Sometimes we put earplugs in to drown out the screams, and my favorite subjects are the animals, because their pain is simpler, so much easier to put aside or to imagine away. It wasn't, though. If anything, it was merely more grotesque, yet that at least offered some mental relief, some imaginative avenue down which to dwell.
No one noticed anything amiss. Only—as they passed the upstairs hall, listening to the ever-present chatter of voices—her grandmother, who with sharp eyes stared her down. "Deepika, something is wrong," her grandmother said.
"Nothing is wrong, dado," she said.
"Then why are you so sad? You've been sad since you got this job; since last year I've seen you grow sadder. One day you'll disappear. Won't you change your mind?" Her voice was hushed, quiet, quick. Helen pinched her palms with her nails and breathed shakily.
"I can't," she said, which was not what she was going to say at all, and she burst into tears.
/
Laid up on her grandmother's bed with the curtains drawn, Helen sipped her tea while they sat together quietly, and felt the brush moving softly through her hair, and then those firm, effective movements plaiting it down her back, and neither spoke. It was what she had told herself she could not have; that no one could offer. She wondered how she had fooled herself so effectively, and how, after this, she would leave the house in two days and climb back into the government car and meet Jack's eyes.
She did not know how, but she would; for if she didn't, the contract would be over, and she would be dead before another day.
.
.
.