Nobody's business

Nobody’s business

“He says he wants to move.”

This was not the first time Teresa had heard that, especially from Lajita, who confided more in her, as women do.

The young couple had come from India five years ago. Bhupad had successfully worked his way up to this job. He was now a manager. The framed training certificates on the wall proudly displayed the achievements of the young man.

They had no children, not like her. But what do you know, you can’t have it both ways. Either kids, and slaving to get by for the first years, or a career.

Teresa’s career amounted to years of domestic chores, and this new job she’d had for a few months. The hours were irregular, but she was doing something she was familiar with; cleaning, scrubbing, and taking care of other people’s mess. Once the motel guests had left, she made the beds, cleaned the floors, changed the towels, and replaced the little bars of soap with the yellow and black motel logo on them.

This morning, she had taken a short break to sip hot coffee from a Styrofoam cup, and nibble at a chocolate chip cookie. She was looking at Lajita’s long glossy black hair carefully arranged in a long braid over her green silky-looking dress, a saree she thought they called it. She wondered how long it could take her every morning to do it, and felt glad hers was now short and quick to brush. No time wasted before a mirror. Teresa did not see herself any more in the mirrors she cleaned.

Lajita had started the conversation. Teresa offered polite replies, and a sympathetic ear as a fellow-victim of male domination.

“I know,” she said, “this is not the first time. Men just can’t stay put.”

Even if she was the manager’s wife, Lajita did not have much say about the running of the motel. Her husband let her take care of the reception desk in the late mornings and early afternoons. Few guests were likely to come up with complicated queries or extravagant demands. Most of the time, she seemed to be waiting for the day to end, absently.

She was a dark-skinned young woman from a southern province, with a radiant smile. She had followed her husband, asking no questions, as an obedient wife should. He had always made the decisions. Their decision to leave India had been approved by the families, his anyway. He was a good bread-winner, and she found him a good husband compared to some of her friends’ back home. The American dream, that was him. Ability, money, mobility.

“I wish we could settle down and start a family,” sighed the young woman.

“You know,” Teresa grinned, “families aren’t always a picnic, you still have some good years before you start having kids.”

Teresa knew what she was talking about; an abusive husband who’d deserted her for a younger woman, and two kids she was trying to keep from going wild. One of them, the older, seemed to blame her for not being able to keep his father home. He’d been through a phase, as they say. To be more specific, he’d been using drugs with school friends, and she’d had to spend a lot of the college money they’d been saving to put him through rehab. The boy also resented the absence of a college future, and the life he had imagined to be an extension of high school weekends.

The younger one spent much of his time in front of screens, playing solitary video games, or watching an uninterrupted flow of clips and images that did not leave much of an impression on the boy, let alone an education.

Teresa was in her early forties. She had a sad expression on her face that she was trying to hide before strangers. With Lajita it was different. She would occasionally share personal feelings or an anecdote. Generally, she kept to statements about men and what they were like. Her private life was nobody’s business anyway. And the two were separated by one generation and different lives. After all, what did she know of Indian culture and the way a wife should behave with her man? All she knew was that many white Americans she’d been around were extremely loud, and after a couple of beers, they would completely forget about you. At least, Lajita’s husband didn’t drink. She knew him as a quiet, even-tempered man with a soft voice, even when he was not happy with his employees, or with his wife at the front-desk.

Like yesterday, one of the guests had asked for directions to get to the interstate. She’d smiled shyly and let Teresa answer the question. Her husband was in the dining room. He had overheard. He gently approached his wife and said in a quiet voice that she should start learning about local geography.

“What’s the point?”, Teresa thought. She was happy to help, and they might be gone soon. She was familiar with the street names of the little town, the numbers of the roads that led to imaginary escapes, the big towns of southern California. She knew it all. But she had stayed and was proud to be able to manage her life, as she often said. She could have let go and started to drink like her friend Darlene, stopped caring about the children and the house. Small, but almost paid for.

At times, she did not understand how Lajita so passively accepted her husband’s making all he decisions. Not her idea of marriage. Even if hers was now down the drain, she had put up a fight. When that bastard had told her he’d fallen in love, she had laughed, out of anger perhaps. She remembered how he would say how much he loved her after he’d hit her. Liquor made him mushy, sometimes. She had always forgiven, until that bitch came into the picture. Ancient history. She didn’t even know if he was still alive. No letters, no phone calls. As if the kids, his kids, did not exist.

She had a new life now. As she thought about the young couple’s future, where they might be next year, she realized that her place was here. At least until the kids were raised and gone like their father.

That’s when her boss came in. She finished her coffee in a gulp. The conversation was over.

San Diego, August 2009