CHAPTER 16.
“Miss Russell?” a small voice whispered as I struggled to focus on the task at hand. “Are you alright?”
“Hmm…?” I glanced up warily. I hadn’t slept a wink the night before, too terrified to close my eyes lest the shadows find me. The voice belonged to Sally, the youngest in my class of third-year students. She was the daughter of a widower and had difficulty with her multiplication. I adored her. “I’m just tired, Sally,” I said, hastening to reassure her. “The wind is awful loud where I live.”
She smiled and held out her slate. I didn’t have the heart to correct her work. “That’s fine, Sally. Why don’t you focus on the word of the day? Use the dictionary this time to write out a short composition.”
“All right,” she said, skipping happily back to her desk.
Miss Russell indeed.
I used my mother’s maiden name to apply for the teaching position. Now, I wonder if I wasn’t being punished for lying about that. I gazed forlornly at the small heads bent over their work and wished I could take it all back. I was lying to them each time I asked them to address me as “Miss Russell.”
And I was lying to myself, too.
I dismissed school twenty minutes early and locked myself in. It was a Friday and there was a folding cot and what was left in my dinner pail. I figured since I couldn’t sleep in my own bed, maybe I could get a few hours in the back of a schoolhouse.
I closed the calico curtain and settled in for the night. It was peaceful here, with the smells of chalk dust and books. I thought if I ever tired of teaching, I could always be a librarian. It would give me an excuse to earn an English degree. There was no blanket, but I needed none. Still fairly warm, I unhooked my boots and stretched out on the narrow cot, determined to get a good night’s sleep.
My eyes closed, and I slept.
But my slumber was far from peaceful. I dreamed of Anjuli again. This time, she and Joseph had fled to an abandoned estate in Ireland. Expecting a castle and a knight, Anjuli received a rundown stone tenant’s cottage with a wood stove, no running water, and a dissolute young man with no money. Joseph told her it was only temporary. Once his parents discovered his betrayal, his father cut him off. All he had was an annuity from his grandmother and he had gone through most of it already.
“Jojo,” Anjuli fretted, gathering a threadbare shawl about her slender shoulders. “I’m cold.”
Joseph, though sympathetic to her plight, was growing impatient with her constant whining. “I told you, it’s only temporary.”
“That’s what you said last week,” she pouted, used to servants bringing her tea and samosas for breakfast. “I want to go home. To India.”
“And where would we get the money?” he replied irritably, having just come from the bank. The last of his money wouldn’t buy a teapot. “It takes money to travel to India. And I doubt your father would welcome us. His last letter was—how shall I say?—discouraging to say the least.”
“He didn’t mean it!” Anjuli cried, blowing on her hands to warm them. It was the coldest February on record with incessant rain that left her longing for the warmth of Calcutta. “Please, Jojo,” she pleaded. “Let me write him again.”
“Why?” Joseph grumbled, shifting in his chair. Their romance had cooled considerably, and he regarded her now as a nuisance. He had merely enjoyed the chase, nothing more, but hadn’t the heart to abandon her. His eyes drifted to her belly. “And what do we tell him about… that?”
She frowned. “You said you were happy.”
“I was! I m-mean, I am! But we must be realistic, Anjuli. If we show up in India, his career will be ruined. Think of the scandal.”
“Scandal?” she repeated, as if she did not understand the word. “You think of that now?”
“Someone has to.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” She looked hurt. “You said you loved me.”
“Anjuli,” he sighed, rubbing his eyes as if the sound of her name pained him. “Love is merely a construct. It means nothing.”
Her eyes flashed. “Are you saying you lied?”
Joseph glanced up sharply. “Lied? About what? We both got what we wanted.”
“I cannot believe this!” she cried. “You made love to me!”
“And you allowed it,” he shot back, rising from his chair. He had ceased to be the romantic hero and resented her presence, blaming her for their situation. “If you hadn’t acted like a bitch in heat, we wouldn’t be in this predicament.” He gesticulated wildly. “No food! No money! Nothing to call our own! Why did you let me, Anjuli? Why didn’t you—”
Anjuli turned on him, their relationship deteriorating to where they detested each other. “Me…?” she cried angrily. “You were the one who promised me rose petals and wine! Where are they now?”
“Don’t speak to me like that,” he warned. “You know I don’t like it.”
“I shall speak to you any way I see fit,” she flung, oblivious to the faint tic of his jaw. “You give me this baby and expect me to sit like a little lamb while you get drunk every night!” She stamped her tiny foot. “I want to go home!”
“With what?” he shouted, hurling the newspaper onto the floor. “I can’t get a job, Anjuli! My father has made it impossible. He’s destroyed any credibility I had. What will we do when we’re down to our last shilling? You can’t feed a baby on love.”
“You said you were happy!” she sobbed. “Did you lie?”
He didn’t want to hear it, turning to don his hat and coat. She tried to stop him. “No! You’re not leaving me to go drink at that place!”
“I beg your pardon?” he said quietly. “Say that again.”
“I said—”
I flinched at the sound of Joseph’s hand striking her cheek. Blood filled her mouth and trickled down her chin. Her fingers shook as she reached to touch a split lip. “You hit me,” she said in hurt disbelief. “I carry your child and you hit… me.”
Joseph blinked, as if he could not believe he had struck her. But it was too late. He growled at her to clean herself up and told her he would be back when he tired of the pub. “And don’t wait up!” he snapped, slamming the door behind him.
Anjuli sank to the floor and wept.
I hated Joseph at that moment. I hated him for seducing Anjuli and abandoning her when he tired of his toy. Though he apologized for his actions, things were never the same between them and she miscarried soon after.
Joseph lingered an hour after she lost the baby and returned to the pub.
* * *
The hot winds of summer blew as incessantly as the dreams in which I suffered. Anjuli also suffered. She suffered through another pregnancy and subsequent miscarriage, all while trying to navigate a turbulent relationship with her lover and brother-in-law. Two years after abandoning her husband to ride off into the sunset with Joseph, she was a former shell of herself.
Her appetite lagged.
Her hair dulled.
And she missed her husband. For all his faults, Michael had cared and never once raised hands against her. Not so with Joseph. He was an abusive drunkard who spent what little money they had on cheap ale and prostitutes. They moved out of the cottage and into a dingy flat near Trinity College in Dublin. He had somehow managed to obtain a job as a professor’s assistant in the engineering department while expecting Anjuli to act the devoted wife.
He was demanding, cruel, and frequently violent.
Many a bruise Anjuli kept hidden beneath her starched aprons.
They no longer slept in the same bed and Joseph would go to her and demand she perform her wifely duties. “But we aren’t married!” she’d sob as he took what he wanted. Afterward, she would stare up at the ceiling, hating herself for leaving a man who truly loved her.
Things got so bad she began writing letters to Michael, hoping against hope he had forgiven her. When he didn’t answer, she stopped eating until Joseph tied her to a chair and force fed her bowls of cold porridge. He discovered one such letter and thrashed her for it. In desperation, she gave the letters to the baker where she purchased loaves of bread, who said he would mail them for her.
“Please don’t tell anyone,” she’d plea, hiding her face with a scarf. “My husband does not care for his brother.”
“I understand,” the man would say, tucking the letter into his pocket.
He was worried about the girl.
He and everyone who knew her husband used her pretty face as a punchbag.
“Why don’t you leave him?” the owner of the local laundry would say when Anjuli brought Joseph’s shirts to be washed and pressed. “He ain’t worth it.”
“What can I do?”
The truth of the matter was that Anjuli’s father was ashamed of what his daughter had done and disowned her. Her mother, ten years dead, would have done the same. With no money and nowhere to go, she was trapped. Michael still had not answered her letters, and she grew despondent over the loss of her marriage.
Soon, she discovered she was pregnant again and wrote Michael for the money to rid herself of the child. She no longer loved Joseph, probably never had, and did not wish to carry his child to term. Michael did the decent thing and sent her a check. But it was not for the procedure.
He still loved his wife.
And he wanted her back.
