He brought her two misoprostols and made sure that she took them in front of him. Nothing happened. She got really bad diarrhoea. After she recovered, he managed to secure a Mifeprex injection from the hospital pharmacy. She suffered six hours of gruelling pain and felt as if glass was being ground in her lower abdomen. He stood above her and watched as she rolled the corner of the bedsheet around her hand, bit it with her teeth, tried to shove her fist into her throat, then gave up and started screaming. She screamed at him to stop staring at her. And when he shut his eyes, she shouted at him for being a coward. “Why are you standing there like that? Watching a monkey show? Do you think I want to see that face of yours?”
She swore off doctors with leftist tendencies and penetrative sex for the rest of her time at the nursing school.
♦
She has never talked babies with Teddy and now she knows why. It would have involved a discussion about names, how the child would be brought up, in what religion. Would it be circumcised or baptised or first circumcised then baptised? Would it be easier if it were a girl? She would have settled easily on some neutral name, no Joseph or Judith obviously, but something that would have worked for both of them, something neutral like Salamat or Saleem maybe. But who gives their firstborn a neutral name? Does she even like the sound of Saleem or Salamat? They remind her of those people in French Colony who give their children these names in the hope that they’ll pass as Muslas. As if there weren’t already enough Muslas who were called Saleem or Salamat and who were as poor as the poorest Choohra.
And it would seem like a concession. Shouldn’t a baby be a blessing and not some kind of half-baked deal? What kind of life begins with a compromise?
Like her own.
Her stomach settles down after a while and she craves an omelette. She has seen enough pregnant women that these contradictory cravings don’t surprise her. The idea of a baby lolling around on her stomach fills her with a longing that she has never felt before. But the thought of naming that baby, bringing it up in Teddy’s world, fills her with a nameless dread. And then a strange feeling. She tries to suppress it and tells herself that it’s her hormones babbling, but the thought refuses to go away: she feels that she wants the baby but not the baby’s father. And the only way to keep her baby is to get away from the baby’s father.
Maybe she can take Little Yassoo and her own baby and live in the nursing hostel. The rooms there are tiny, though, and rat-infested. Her house in French Colony? Maybe she can get Joseph Bhatti to babysit them while she goes to work. She can see two little babies in Joseph Bhatti’s arms. She forgets for a moment how hard she had tried to escape that place. She feels that if she was in French Colony, she could have given them whatever names she liked.
Baby’s father barges in on the fourth day, when Alice has packed half a bag, made half a plan and counted all her money. The way Teddy goes straight to his cupboard makes it clear to her that he has only come for a change of clothes, not to reclaim his wife or hear the news about his imminent fatherhood. He rummages through the cupboard with such desperation, it seems his life depends on finding the right shirt.
“I have a lead to the target that we lost,” he says, still going through his wardrobe.
“What did you lose?” Alice says, eyeing her half-packed bag.
“We lost a high-value target. We had him and then we lost him. Actually, I lost him,” Teddy says, having found a lifesaving dull green silk shirt that always reminds Alice of the colour of steaming horseshit. He takes off his T-shirt and then sits down to unlace his sneakers. Alice pushes her half-packed bag under the bed with a sneaky shove of her toe. She is surprised at what she has just done. Then she realises it’s not the bag she is trying to hide, but her anger. She doesn’t want to ask him where he has been. How will she raise a child with a man whom she cannot ask a question as simple as that?
“You lost a high-value what? That sounds like a lottery or some kind of gambling. What are your friends up to now? Running gambling dens?”
“A prisoner escaped. A very dangerous man. Actually a boy, but a very dangerous boy. I have to find him or I am buggered. But I have a lead now.” He starts to unbutton his green silk shirt. “I have to meet the superintendent of the police. They might announce some kind of prize for arresting him. Apparently this boy is wanted in three countries. Did anyone tell me that? He said he was just the driver, but now it turns out that he’s a very dangerous driver. And I do believe that he was just a driver. If I don’t find him, I guess I’ll get buggered by three countries.”
It seems Teddy is desperately trying to tell her something. Alice has always known that Teddy never quite tells her what he has been asked to do at work. She wants to understand his situation. He never shares this kind of work information with her, especially when he has choices to make like now: catch a boy or get buggered by three countries. What is this stuff about three countries? Will three countries get together to deal with this lousy husband of hers? About time.
Alice also realises that he seems strangely excited, as if all his work so far has been a preparation for catching this boy.
Teddy disappears into the bathroom carrying his green silk shirt hoisted over a hanger and held high like a flag.
Alice picks up his T-shirt to put it away, and a piece of folded paper falls on the floor. She has never really looked into his pockets or opened his wallet to find clues to where he goes when he’s away. It had never occurred to her that he was capable of hiding anything from her. She unfolds the piece of paper without thinking, then looks up at the closed bathroom door and waits to hear the sound of the shower. It’s a pencil drawing of a boy’s face, broad forehead, tiny sunken eyes, sparse beard on his pointy chin. It could be any boy in his age group, even Teddy if he was unshaven.
The face that stares back at her from the paper makes her anxious for the future of her own baby.
She begins to worry about Teddy. She begins to worry about herself. She realises that she hasn’t thought about the logistics of raising a baby. Who will take care of the baby when she is at work? Certainly not her father, she has decided. She can send her to a nursery, but where will the money come from? She will drop her at school, and she can imagine herself walking a little girl in a blue school uniform, hugging her goodbye at the gates of St Xavier. But who will pick her up from school? She wouldn’t want to take her baby girl to the Sacred. Noor could probably play with her or keep her busy, but the Sacred is full of all kinds of infections and diseases and ambulance sirens. The Sacred is no place for a baby to hang out. She resolves that maybe she should tell Teddy and see how he responds. Men change when they have babies. Her own father, Joseph Bhatti, hasn’t been an ideal dad, a bit crazy at times, but he held down a job till the age of sixty-five, and even after retiring he kept doing whatever freelance work he could get. She looks at the sketch again, shudders, then folds it and puts it in the shirt’s pocket. You are going to become a father: she whispers these words to herself. They seem fake to her, words remembered from a TV soap perhaps. Is this how people tell their partners when they find out they have been knocked up?
She is still struggling to find the right words when the WC in the bathroom flushes twice and Teddy comes out rubbing his face with a towel. “I need some money. And if somebody comes asking for me, tell them that I haven’t been back, that you haven’t seen me since I left with the G Squad.”