We semicircle the chairs in the basement of the Hyde Park Baptist Church, sit carelessly close to one another. Mondays are AA meetings here, and Tuesdays, gamblers. Wednesdays are the Girl Scouts. Thursdays, Sex Addicts Anonymous. Fridays are for us.
It’s a small, bare room, partitioned from a bigger, bare room. A few square windows high up on the wall and two cheap plastic folding tables along one side. We place our purses there, along with a twelve-pack of Parle-G biscuits and a Thermos of hot chai. We take turns making the chai so it tastes different each week. We share the room with a church cat, and church rats, and the perpetual stink of cat litter and rat droppings. On the west wall, there’s a small painting of Jesus on the Cross, bloodied and dripping. His disciples anguished. One of the windows looks like stained glass, but just the kind you stick on.
The room only holds fifteen or so people at a time, as though the church is hoping no more than fifteen or so people are alcoholics or gamblers or Girl Scouts in the neighborhood. It’s nice of the Baptists to let us use this space––though of course, we know they’re trying to convert us. We’re okay with that. It feels good to be wooed.
Our founder stands at the front of the semicircle. She is a pretty woman in her early thirties who looks like she reapplies her sunscreen every two hours on the dot, and still she has problems. She is seven months pregnant, the first of our group to be pregnant. She’s got these big sunglasses pushing back her baby hairs and a Louis Vuitton purse her husband bought for her last birthday. We can’t figure out if it’s real or a knockoff; we want desperately to know. She is Christian already, actually, but a Catholic from Coimbatore, which might not count to the Baptists. Those of us who aren’t Catholic are Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Jain. A couple of us are Parsees, even. Some of us were born here. Some of us moved here for school. Some of us for marriage. Catholics, Baptists, whatever else––we don’t understand the difference.
Her name is Monica. Her mother-in-law hid her birth control and poked holes in all the condoms in the house. When she got pregnant, her husband said, “God’s will!” She knew it was really her mother-in-law’s will, but to her husband, they were one and the same.
Monica puts her hands on her hips. Her nails are rounded and baby pink this week. She says, “Who wants to get us started today?”
Namrata volunteers. Namrata is from LA originally. Well, Long Beach. Orange County, if we prod. Just a bit further south. Tustin, it’s called. She and her husband had a big fat Indian wedding in Paso Robles, then moved to Austin eight months ago when he started working for a hedge fund on the East Side. Her father-in-law was dead from lymphoma of the groin, but her mother-in-law, unfortunately, moved with them.
Namrata’s mother-in-law has taken to hiding her husband’s laundry when it comes out of the wash. “Do you know how humiliating it is,” Namrata says, “that I have to ask my husband’s mother where his underwear is? As if he’s a child!”
“He is a child,” we tell her.
“She’s enabling him,” Namrata says.
We nod or hum or snap our fingers. “It’s a power thing,” we say, “like when Shruti’s mother-in-law reorganized her kitchen so she wouldn’t know where anything was.”
“Exactly,” Shruti says. “I had to ask her where everything was in my house.”
“She’s stitched his initials into his boxers,” Namrata says.
We wince. Yikes.
Our mothers-in-law find different ways to make our days harder. Ameera’s mother-in-law packs her son a tiffin every day and tells him he has a deficient wife. Nisha’s mother-in-law tells all her relatives that Nisha can’t get pregnant even though it’s her son who’s sterile. Maitreyi’s mother-in-law buys all the same clothes Maitreyi wears––and looks better in them, though we don’t tell Maitreyi that, of course. Tina’s mother-in-law oversalts the food when Tina cooks. Kiran’s mother-in-law faints, but only twice a year, on Kiran’s birthday and on her wedding anniversary.
We try to be sympathetic. They have lived difficult lives with difficult husbands who loved their mothers more than their wives. They are lonely, probably. So they give their sons too much love. More love than we are capable of matching. So then our husbands love their mothers more than us, of course they do. How could they not? And then we love them even less.
“It’s the circle of life,” Monica says, rubbing her palm firmly across her stomach.
We snap our fingers again.
“It’s incestuous,” Lubna says. “My mother-in-law can hear when we have sex. She chose the room right next to ours in the house––because the Vastu was good, or so she says. But every time we fight, she makes poha for breakfast the next morning. Every time we have sex, aloo parathe. And I’m a good wife. I do my duty. I have sex with my husband two, sometimes threetimes a week!”
Some of us applaud. Some of us think of sex less like a duty and more like a pleasure of married life. Some of us never have sex with our husbands and wonder if they are celibate too. Some of us have sex with men who are not our husbands. Some of us have a secret WhatsApp group for petty gossip and sage sex advice.
Lubna continues: “Then she says things about how he doesn’t seem happier on those mornings than the other ones. But what am I to do about that? He seems happy enough to me.”
“There’s nothing you can do,” we chorus.
“Sometimes I want to tell her to just slip into our bed and mount him herself,” she says. “Would that make her happy? Would she finally be satisfied?”
We’ve all had that thought. The bounds of motherly care. Oedipus and all that. If we led our mothers-in-law into our bedrooms with the lights off, would they succumb? How much do they love their sons?
It’s so weird, we all agree. So creepy. We look at Jesus on the Cross and say, “The Virgin Mary released her son, didn’t he?” We empty the chai. We nibble on the biscuits until they are gone. Many of us don’t eat enough and are hungry often. Our mothers-in-law tell us when we are too fat or too skinny, which is always.
When we are finished, we link hands and do our weekly affirmations. We say out loud: “We will do better. We will break the cycle. We will love our sons appropriate amounts. We will let them go when it is time.” Badhaee ho! Badhaee ho! The Desi D-I-L Support Group will meet same time next week.
As we walk out together, glancing at the Bible study flyers and Sunday worship invitations with mild interest, Monica asks if we want to feel her baby kick. Her mother-in-law is praying for a boy, she says. We glance at each other and say nothing.
We touch Monica’s tummy until she is shrouded in hands. We coo. We observe the roundness of her distended belly underneath her tight blouse, we think of the creature growing inside. We think of our husbands’ mothers and hope, for Monica’s sake, that her mother-in-law’s prayers are granted. Secretly, we feel sorry either way. Secretly, we are afraid. Will we be like them one day?
And some of us will. The ones who have sons.
***
Rumpus original artwork by Nina Semczuk
