Bharati Mukherjee - Miss New India

Anjali's first impulse was to throttle Mad Minnie and stuff her Raj-era vocabulary back down her gullet. Her fingers itched to circle the scrawny throat, its papery wrinkles caked with pink foundation. Anjali's father died because she had brought dishonor to the family. Guilt reheated itself into rage against everything that Bagehot House stood for.

"Breeding?" She could feel her voice rising. "You want to talk about breeding? You stupid old cow! You are not God. You are not even British-ha! You are one of us, and you are living on Indian goodwill!"

Minnie backed away, perhaps startled by the sudden increase in volume. She lived inside a bubble and had selective hearing. She didn't respond to words, to insult, or to anger. "I haven't the slightest idea of what that little outburst was about. What are you trying to tell me? A rich Mohammedan stole your clothes and ran off without paying her bill?"

Anjali could hear the unspoken implication: stole from the likes of you? "I haven't the p'oggiest notion why, but she wanted to trade clothes."

"Preposterous!" But for the first time, Minnie looked perplexed. She shuffled toward the door curtain. "I'm sure there's a simple explanation."

"Things like that are never simple. It is just a mystery." Let it go at that, for now.

Minnie dismissed complications with a wave of her hand, like a spoiled child. Or like self-appointed royalty with severe memory loss. Her self-confidence bounced back. "Perhaps I misidentified the culprit."

"Culprit, madam? What is the crime? She left without saying good-bye? We pay you a month's rent in advance."

Minnie's voice dropped to a soft, conspiratorial mumble. "Just yesterday, I came to a very difficult decision. It's that prostie, that Goanese. I should never have let her in. I'm sure she's conspiring with dark forces. She has to go." Then Minnie explained that since Anjali was the protégée of that dear boy Peter, she was willing to hold off on collecting rent until she'd found a suitable position. ("I do hope you're looking. There was a time when I could call on governors and ministers for favors, but they've all…") Anjali could pay all that was owed from her first paycheck.

That fabled first paycheck already bore unrealistic burdens, so why not add a few more?

Strange negotiations first with Husseina, next with Mad Minnie, but in both cases Anjali was coming through the winner.

"You don't have to thank me," the landlady continued. "I too was once a young woman of modest means on my own in an unfamiliar town. I too have been the beneficiary of kindness." It was her Christian duty to repay the grace she'd once received.

"Christian duty" was a concept alien to Anjali. Duty meant dharma and a host of caste and social restrictions she'd never seriously observed. Squatting in a cracked, dingy bathtub used by generations of Christians and Muslims, then submitting to Subodh Mitra and not resisting with her life, had wiped the slate clean of any remaining dharmic duties.

"Bangalore's become an evil place. Remember the way it used to be when Maxie and Bunty were in charge?"

Bunty-wasn't that the widow Philpott's husband? Mad Minnie really had lost her marbles. Or was retreating into the past another one of her tricks of survival? "Gone to the dogs," Anjali snickered, in the best All-India Radio news-anchor Britishy accent she could manage. "My Bunty would go bonkers if he were still around."

"There are goondahs resident on the property," Minnie fumed. "I'm a prisoner in my own house. I don't dare shut my eyes in my own bed." From inside the soiled lace glove on her left hand, she extracted a sheer white handkerchief embroidered with a pink B inside a lilac floral ring, and blotted her anxious, watery eyes. "Forces are gathering," she warned. "It's no use, Opal. We're doomed."

Cut the melodrama, Minnie. All you are is a cobweb about to be swept away! One good housecleaning and you're gone!

But Minnie babbled on. "You've seen what the vermin have done to my rose garden. It's a jungle! And to think that the Prince of Wales himself brought me cuttings from England! The vermin have taken over the compound. I see their lights from my window. I call the police, but they do nothing. They won't, or can't, who knows? No good Christian deed goes unpunished. A long time ago Asoke begged me to let some of his village brothers rest up for a night or two. Those peasants were making their way on foot to Madras, walking, can you believe, with their women and children and bundles and body lice and oozy sores. Now they think they own my compound. The Bagehot name doesn't strike terror anymore. Maxie would have had them flogged. They mock me when I catch them with loot. I'm missing a silver goblet, but who cares? What they don't cart off and sell, they destroy. I keep my eyes peeled, what else can I do?"

So, it was true after all that Minnie sat by her window all night and kept watch! What the Bagehot Girls had got wrong was why and whom she was watching. "Vermin!" Minnie repeated. "They're keeping a death watch." So, her clinging to nasty imperial prejudices was another trick of survival. Minnie knew just how powerless she was in Bang-a-Buck Bangalore. Anjali held out a conciliatory hand. "I think I understand, madam," she said, meaning it. She too hailed from the heartland of suspiciousness; she'd spent a lifetime publicly agreeing with, and privately dismissing, the not-dissimilar prejudices of her parents concerning the threat posed by anyone not of their blood. But to understand was not to approve.

The old lady grasped Anjali's hand in both of hers. "You'll be my eyes and ears. I must write your benefactor and thank him for sending you to me all the way from the mofussils. The dear Lord works in mysterious ways."

Minnie inhabited an impenetrable, Minnie-centric universe. Why take offense? Better for Anjali to press her momentary advantage. "I wonder, madam, if I might ask for one more favor?" The old lady seemed receptive. "I wonder… when Husseina left, she said I could take over her room. Would that be possible?"

Minnie's eyes were closed behind her thick glasses-her way of quelling dissent or reaching a decision in her own sweet time. "I don't see why not."

I'm undumpable! It was a high-five moment, with no one to share it. So she could keep a luxury room and have it for next to nothing, so long as Minnie trusted her to spy on the squatters.

End of supplication. End of begging. She was ready to take her place. And not just in Bagehot House.

SHE AWOKE AGAIN at ten o'clock in Husseina's bed, with the feeling that the night before and the early-morning intervention had been dreams of a future, and that today's the day! This day would be different from any other in her nineteen years. She indulged herself with Husseina's imported shampoo and conditioner, lipstick and mascara. She slipped on Husseina's wispy bikini briefs and lifted and separated her breasts with Husseina's expensive black bra. From the full-length mirror, a tall, languid lingerie model smiled back at her. The mirror-woman was definitely Angie, not Anjali. Anjali was an insecure, dumpwary tenant; Angie was an entitled squatter and scavenger.

She suddenly realized why the teenage girl seated in the shed's window frame in firelight had stirred a visceral kinship. From a silver tray on the dressing table, she picked up Husseina's comb and smoothed the tangles from her long, wavy hair. In Gauripur her mother used to massage syrupy red hibiscus-scented hair oil into her scalp every single morning, a pre-bath mother-daughter ritual. A full head of thick, black hair is a woman's wealth, her mother insisted, as she concocted home remedies for all kinds of hair damage: yogurt-rub to cure dandruff, pastes made from oily berries to add luster to frizzy hair, seed-soaked potions to reverse hair loss. At bedtime, her mother had forced her to wrap her braids with thick cotton tape to prevent split ends.