English Lessons and Other Stories by Shauna Singh Baldwin Page A

Mem-saab has no words left, the lady-lawyer sees Mem-saab’s embroidered hanky has turned to a useless wet ball and she offers her own. She tells me to tell her, “Be strong. I will try to help you.”
    Mem-saab’s hand seeks mine and grips it. Her fingers are cold despite the close heat.
    Now the lady-lawyer talks directly to Mem-saab. She tries to speak slowly, but I have to repeat her words sometimes for Memsaab to read them from my lips.
    â€œYou say your son now owns twenty-five percent of your house?”
    Mem-saab looks at her from beneath her black-pencilled arches, expecting reproach.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThen, legally, he can occupy the premises.”
    This is not what she wishes to read, so I have to repeat it.
    The lady-lawyer continues, “We can charge that he gained his rights by putting you under duress. And if you wish to stop him from building, we can ask the court to do that.”
    â€œNothing more?” says Mem-saab.
    I want to tell the lady-lawyer to make Balvir and Kiran and Manu evaporate like the first monsoon rain on a hot tar road, butI am just a pair of ears for my Mem-saab, and this is her family matter, and now our triangular exchange has faltered.
    Nothing more.
    Mem-saab writes a check and signs a vakalatnama appointing the lady-lawyer to begin her mukadma. She leans heavily on my arm as I lead her back to the car.
    Mem-saab is lying on her bed. The effort of getting dressed seems to have exhausted her today.
    Balvir is angry. Through the keyhole, I see him waving the papers that the lady-lawyer caused to be sent him.
    â€œThis is the thanks I get for giving up my business in Bombay, for moving my family to Delhi to live with you. How could three people live in Sardarji’s old room? If you didn’t want me to build, you should have just told me so.”
    I have locked Mem-saab’s bedroom door and he rages outside.
    â€œI’ll never try to help you again, Mama. You just wait and see. I’m going to have to defend this case and
you’ll
be the one to be sorry.”
    â€œKhansama,” I call. “Mem-saab will take breakfast in her room.”
    Now I see Balvir swallow hard, changing course. “Amma, tell her she has made a mistake, bringing this kind of money-hungry woman into our private business.” He means the lady-lawyer.
    I mouth his words for her, without sound.
    She turns her head away; there is refuge in deafness. Sometimes I think the old custom of burning widows on their husbands’ funeral pyres spared widows like my Mem-saab from the dangers of living unprotected.
    She is breathing fast and hard again. Time is not on our side of the locked bedroom door.
    *
    At the court hearing, the lady-lawyer wears a black robe that covers the swirl of her sherbet-pink sari, and her voice, in English, is shrill and indignant for Mem-saab. I sit beside Mem-saab on a chair, though keeping my distance so everyone will know her to be born high on the ladder of Karma.
    The judge is called Milord, just like in the Hindi movies we watch on Sundays, but the people in his court are not respectfully absorbed in the proceedings as they are in the films. I think the judge listens more attentively to Balvir’s lawyer, a ponderous man with spectacles and plenty of uniformed peons to bring him notes and files.
    I count eighteen fans humming on long slender stems, flowers twirled between unseen fingers, cooling the crowd in the high-ceilinged room. Mem-saab is waiting for Balvir to come to her, put his arms around her, say he will really look after her, say he and Kiran will be kind… but Balvir’s turban never tilts toward her once. No one can churn butter from soured milk.
    Afterwards, the lady-lawyer comes to my Mem-saab and takes her hands.
    â€œThe judge has decreed there will be a stay order. Status quo.”
    Mem-saab looks at me but I don’t know how to say the English words. She turns back to the lady-lawyer and