Luck
NEELA PUT HER hands over her ears to block the blare of the Indian movie playing in the living room. Her parents-in-law were both losing their hearing and had to turn up the sound. She considered going upstairs and switching her old fan on high so its whir would drown the noise; gusts of wind in her hair always soothed her. But then she looked over at Penny, who wasn’t allowed upstairs, and sat by her dog instead. She reached out and massaged Penny’s belly.
Penny, rolled over on the couch with her paws straight up in the air, briefly lifted her head. Her tongue hung out the side of her mouth and her blackish gums showed above sharp, discolored teeth. Under Neela’s caresses, Penny fell back asleep.
Occasionally, the dog whimpered and yelped, and Neela imagined her dreaming of geese, gnawing sticks, and digging for fish bones at the beach. “Wish I had your dreams,” Neela said, lifting up strands of Penny’s fur. The dog snored sporadically, and sometimes so loudly that her eyes opened, baring whites glinting with surprise.
This was Neela’s favorite position—snoozing with Penny on the couch in slants of afternoon light.
Neela had bought the couch a month ago, just after she got Penny to celebrate the four-month anniversary of her arrival in America. She was only twenty when she left India to be with her new husband and in-laws in a country she didn’t know much about. She tried to be what she thought they wanted— an impeccable housewife and daughter-in-law. Then later, she brought home Penny.
She had expected to be lonely in America, and her days to follow a familiar pattern. What she hadn’t expected was how quickly she’d want more.
When she first saw her husband nearly a year ago, he sat in her parents’ drawing room with his shoulders hunched and his fingertips pressed together. She covered her head with her sari and kept her eyes down—not being demure, as they may have supposed, but stubborn.
“I don’t want to meet him,” she had cried to her mother that morning, pounding her foot on the ground. “I don’t want to live in his home. I don’t want to get married yet and leave India.”
“But he’s a solid match—good family, steady job. We’ve known his parents for ages.” Her mother wiped Neela’s brow with the edge of her sari. “His father—you know, your father’s boss?—has been good to us, and he has a wonderful son. Your stars match. You’re young—the time is good.” She paused and pointed at the maps decorating Neela’s walls and at the jeweled globe on her shelf. “All you talk about is wanting to travel. You’ll thrive on the challenge.”
She looked sideways at Neela, her dimples showing. “Besides, darling, maybe you’ll like him. He’s not bad on the eyes.”
Liking him couldn’t be possible—not if he wanted to take her to America. So she made up her mind she wouldn’t.
By chance in the drawing room, she caught her future husband watching her. She stared, mesmerized, at his slow smile— teeth white, eyes shining. He had a small cleft in his chin where she wanted to place her finger. She looked away, startled at the saliva gathering in her mouth, and at how her body tingled.
They left for America together soon after the wedding. When the plane took off, she kept her hand pressed to the window and watched her home fall away from her. She slept during most of the flight, and spoke to him only when she had to. He called her ‘Neelu.’ At night in America, he tried to hold her hand, but she wouldn’t let him. He didn’t press her. Instead, he left magazines open to pages he thought she’d like—vistas of exotic beaches. Fashion ads. Snapshots of kittens and babies. She thumbed through the magazines then shut them.
Her husband straightened up the bathroom for her when he finished—wiping off the counter, lining up the towels, closing the lid of the toilet seat. He always complimented her tea. Some mornings, after he left for work, she found a lily in a vase on the windowsill where she’d be sure to see it; its fragrance filled the room.
When he mentioned the possibility of children, she refused. She missed India; he made her leave it. She couldn’t let him touch her. She couldn’t love anything coming from him.
She served his parents their meals, shopped for them, and kept clean their linens. They tried talking to her. They asked after her family. Had she’d received any letters lately? They asked if she’d like to watch a movie. And, did she want to learn to make more intricate meals or desserts? If so, they could teach her. Neela remained polite, but rarely spoke.
ONCE, NEELA'S HUSBAND took a roundabout route home from a temple. Neela sat next to her husband; her in-laws napped in the back. Her husband hummed along with Hindi film music cassette playing from the tape deck. When he asked Neela if she knew the words, she shook her head and looked out the window at cornfields. She wished he had got a job somewhere prettier than rural Pennsylvania.
Then, she saw the sign: Puppies For Sale. He laughed, thinking she was kidding. “You’re not serious,” he said. “My parents would never have it.” Neela asked only once, but she didn’t stop thinking about it.
She returned to the spot alone as soon as she got the chance, glad her husband had taught her to drive and bought her the small used car that she rarely drove.
“Can I help you?” asked a woman with a doughy smell and rough, powdery hands. “I’m Martha.”
“You have some puppies needing homes, no? I saw a sign outside the barn.” Neela examined the modified barn-house.
“That’s right. I got too many animals as it is—cats and horses and a pig, and even three dogs. Then my Sugarcake came home pregnant one day from Buster, dog next door, and now I got seven puppies on my hands and no room for them. Thought I’d make a sign and see what the wind blew in.”
Martha wiped the sugar from her hands onto her apron and stared at the thin fabric that wound around Neela, from her tightly pressed legs to her drooping, slender shoulders.
“You ain’t from this town, are you, honey?” Martha asked, leaning forward to catch Neela’s reply.
“No, I’m sorry. From a neighboring town.”
“How long you been in Pennsylvania?”
“Months now. I came from India four months ago.”
“Ever wish you could go back?”
Neela paused at the question that no one had ever asked her. “I did once. But now maybe it’s time to stay.”
“Time for a change, right? Something new to hold onto? Now, wait. Why don’t I make you a nice cup of tea while we chat.”
Martha reached for the copper kettle in the windowsill and swished about the kitchen. She sliced an extra large piece of lemon cake dusted with sugar and put it on a plate. The lines around Neela’s mouth softened, and she pressed her palms against circles dark like bruises under her eyes.
“You ever had a pet?” Martha asked, hunting for a clean fork.
“Not a pet exactly.” Neela listened to the kettle hissing.
She had once found a mouse in a gutter outside her parents’ home, a few weeks before her wedding. Its white fur was matted with mud and one of its legs was twisted. It looked ready to die.
Neela had never touched a mouse. But the way its body was angled resembled how she felt inside. She carefully wrapped the mouse in a handkerchief and put it in her purse. She left the zipper slightly open. When she peeked in, the mouse gazed back, unblinking, its whiskers lightly twitching.
She hid it from her parents and fed it milk from her father’s eyedropper. Later, she broke off, for the mouse, a corner of paneer, figuring a mouse would like cheese. She took a scrap of cloth and attached its leg to a broken toothpick. The mouse never bit her. It curled in her palm and slept in a handkerchief folded into a nest in her purse.
Then, one day, as her wedding approached, the mouse disappeared. Neela hoped it watched her from a hole in her wall. She hoped it would crawl into her suitcase and be transported with her. But in America, though she shook out each article of clothing, she never found her mouse.
Neela followed Martha into the living room. The edge of the couch sagged under her weight as she perched, waiting for tea she did not want—American tea made with nothing but hot water. She thought of her own milky chai that she sweetened with two and half spoons of sugar and spiced with homemade masala. How would this lady who lived in a converted barn like her tea? Like her home? It was hard to imagine this woman and all of her animals in her home with her in-laws.
Something about Martha, though, with her hair wrapped in a bun like her own mother back in India, and with an apron covering her full, maternal chest, made Neela want to relax on the couch, eating food for once not cooked by her—eating until all her loneliness had been dislodged and swallowed away along with pieces of homemade lemon cake. Neela stood up.
“Miss, do you mind if I see the puppies?”
“Sure, sweetie, they’re over behind that fence there. Take your pick.”
Neela leaned over the fence, smiling at the puppy exuberance. Never had she received such a greeting. Normally only her mother-in-law’s comments about the cooking and her father-in-law’s knotted eyebrows met her in the mornings.
Her husband worked all day at the foundry plant, and didn’t come home until mealtime late in the evening. After dinner, he joined his parents in watching the Indian films Neela disliked. The women in those movies flirted easily with their men and didn’t want much besides male attention. They looked ridiculous to Neela as they danced amidst fake glacier fields and hid behind icebergs, clad in high heels and gauzy saris. These movies didn’t depict the home she had left behind, and they made Neela lonely.
Neela leaned further over the fence. Each time one pup made it to the top of the squirming pile, it got knocked over and replaced by another. Claws scratched eyes, elbows poked into ears. Paws slipped on the cold floor. The scent of urine sharpened the air.
The puppies kept moving, trying to jump onto her chest. But one puppy sat still with only its eyes betraying its alertness. It was smaller than the rest and seemed to want no part of the banter. It had been licking a bloody nip mark, but stopped when it saw Neela. Neela stretched and scooped it up with one hand.
“I can feel this one’s ribs sticking out. It barely has skin over its ribs!” She traced the pattern of bones, fine as ivory carvings, with her finger.
“I figured you would pick the smallest of the litter,” Martha said. “That one’s the runt, that’s why. She has to wait her turn for food and only eats the end scraps. I try to feed her extra, but I get busy, you know how it is.”
Neela brought the pup to her face, her hands cradling its rump. The puppy stared back, undaunted. “I know how it is,” she whispered. The puppy licked at the salt on Neela’s cheeks.
“She is a girl, no? I will call her Penny,” Neela said to the woman who waited for her with tea and cake.
“On account of her color? It comes from that mix of golden retriever and Irish setter.”
“No. Because she turned up like a lucky penny for me. Because she is all the wealth I will ever need.” Neela rubbed Penny back and forth against her face as the puppy bent around Neela’s fingers in approval.
When Neela returned home that afternoon, she found her in-laws and husband asleep on the couches in the living room. Penny sniffed the air, smelling the too-sweet scent of old age mixed with eucalyptus oil. Her in-laws’ hardened heels stuck out from the silk shawls covering their legs. When Neela’s husband grunted in his sleep, Penny growled. Neela shushed her, but then looked at her husband, sleeping on his belly, his face buried in a pillow. She growled at him too, and then laughed.
Neela had an hour before making afternoon tea and biscuits. She tucked Penny into the crook of her arm and rushed upstairs. She unwrapped her old cotton sari and pulled out a red silk embroidered with gold. Before dressing, she washed her face with Indian sandalwood soap. She waved the soap under Penny’s nose, and then placed Penny in the sink and lathered it through her fur. Neela massaged coconut oil into her hip length hair and worked through the knots with a fine-toothed comb.
She dribbled a bit of oil on Penny’s head too. Penny walked back and forth through the waterfall of Neela’s hair. Rather than tying it up in her usual braid, Neela pinned her hair back from her face with a gold clip and let it hang. She put a clip on Penny’s collar. After powdering her face, Neela smiled into the mirror at the glowing woman holding a golden dog in her arms.
“I look like a queen, and you my royal pooch,” she said, Penny’s ears tickling her mouth. “Why, Penny, what special treat shall we order tonight? Perhaps some sweet halwa would please you?”
Penny let out a yip.
“Then it shall be done. I’ll summon the royal servants and have them deliver halwa immediately. Perhaps then we can go for a regal coach ride on the chariot awaiting us. Such is a maharani’s life.”
Neela laughed, grabbed one of Penny’s paws, and bent over as if to kiss it. “And the life of a maharani’s treasured dog, of course.”
When her in-laws and husband awoke, Neela was waiting with her back rigid against a chair in the middle the room. Penny sat in her lap like a queen’s pampered pet. Neela’s husband jumped up just as her father-in-law made a sucking sound and clicked his tongue against his dentures.
“Chee! What in God’s name is that filthy thing doing on you?” her mother-in-law said. Penny emitted a low, rumbling sound as Neela stroked her.
“Quite disgusting,” said her father-in-law, looking with furrowed brows at Penny. “Take it away.”
Neela held Penny closer. “No,” she said. “I will not.”
“Is something the matter with you, Neelu? Has something happened? What is going on?” Her husband started to move towards her.
Penny growled louder. Her husband paused. Neela’s in-laws stood up and slowly crawled their hands over the couch as they moved away from her and headed to their bedrooms, their complaining voices high-pitched and cracking.
“No, I am fine,” Neela said, smoothing her hair with a steady hand. She looked straight into her husband’s eyes, no longer like the new bride. “Oh, and who I have here is Penny.”
He rubbed his stubbly cheek. “Penny? What are you talking?” he said, dropping his hand. “Neelu, you know that dogs are unclean. Have you not seen them in the streets in India? Dirty things.” Penny’s sandalwood-scented fur bristled. “Could you please put the dog back? And also make me my tea?”
“I think I will go for a walk, actually,” Neela said, glancing out of the window. Sun-lit dust motes spun in the air between them. “It is such a nice day and Penny might need some exercise. I would like to start toilet training.”
“Toilet training? Neela, have you not heard me?” Her husband said, looking concerned. “How can we have a dog? We know nothing about them. What has gone wrong with you?”
“So I am assuming you do not want to walk with me? I will just go out myself then with Penny.”
Neela went to the closet to put on her chappals, leaving her husband in the living room. Neela’s hands were damp as they fondled Penny’s back.
“Oh, and by the way, I have not cooked any dinner tonight. Perhaps you can all manage on your own, no? I may just stroll down to the restaurant on the corner and have a cheese sandwich. Don’t worry about cooking for me!” she called to him from outside the door.
After spending a couple hours chasing leaves in a nearby field, Neela tripping in her red sari and Penny wobbling on too-thin legs, Neela sat on a park bench, juggling Penny on her knee.
“Are you hungry, darling?” she said, turning Penny around to face her. “I’ll make something tasty. How about yogurt pachadi? You and I will eat like royalty tonight.”
Neela checked that no one was around, and then undid her sari palu that covered her tightly buttoned blouse. She draped part of the sheer fabric over one arm and began to spin, letting it flap in the breeze. The sky, trees, and grass turned red through the gauze of her sari.
“Look, Penny, I’m a butterfly,” she said, extending her arm and swirling the fabric around her. Penny jumped up, butting her head against the cloth.
“No one, except you, can catch me!”
Neela let strands of hair blow into her eyes as she raced with her dog from one end of the field to the other, her body’s curves showing beneath her unraveling sari.
Neela's husband was pacing up and down in the living room when she returned. He called her over.
“Okay, if you want this dog then we must discuss some things.” Her husband paused. Neela noticed how his hair was sticking up, and how that made him more handsome.
“Now, please,” he said, “I promised Amma and Appa. You know they don’t like dogs, but I told them you obviously do. Though I wish you had first run it by me. Anyway, no dog on the furniture. No dog in the living room or upstairs, no. . .”
Penny’s ears flattened at so many no’s.
Neela said, her voice soft, “Thank you for letting me keep her.”
The next morning she went out and bought Penny a couch, requesting that it be delivered by late afternoon.
ONE DAY, WHEN nobody was home but Neela and Penny, Neela squatted on the stairs and spread her hands out. Penny waited near the bottom step, ears perked. Her eyebrows and nose twitched; Penny knew she wasn’t allowed upstairs.
“Come here, darling. Come, now,” Neela said. “It is okay; we are alone. Is it not my house too? Can I not tell you to come?”
When Penny hesitated, Neela reached down and pulled on her collar, gently tugging her up the stairs. Penny stepped lightly on the carpet in the bedroom, as if on sand that was too hot. She pressed her ears back and trembled. Neela guessed Penny would not like it upstairs where the rooms were large and bare, where there were no stuffed toys for her to chew, and no cozy corners. She guessed that in these rooms where the air smelled dank, Penny would be afraid to expose her underside.
Neela knew her scent was faint in her bedroom where there were few traces of her—no maps on the walls or books scattered about, no blankets, no throw pillows or Indian cotton prints, no food crumbs for her to share. Penny sniffed at Neela’s cold pillow on the bed, tucking her tail between her legs.
Neela spread herself out on the carpet in the middle of the room. She hitched up her sari to her knees, exposing her sun-deprived legs. Raising her arms above her head, Neela flapped them up and down. Penny slunk over to Neela’s head and peered into her face, her ears brushing silk onto Neela. Penny’s tail shivered out. She pushed her wet nose against Neela’s neck.
The couch on which Neela liked to nap with Penny stood in one spot downstairs where direct sunlight fell. A couple of times when her husband moved it, Neela, late at night, moved it back. Eventually the couch stayed and Neela stopped straining herself in the dark.
Neela knew Penny enjoyed sleeping on its saggy cushions layered with Indian-print cotton spreads. She had pressed the couch against the window so Penny could watch groundhogs, squirrels, and rabbits scuttling outside in the back yard.
The couch was Penny’s, as Neela told the dog; it was the one piece of furniture on which Penny rested. Neela liked the way Penny only allowed certain people to sit on it. When her in-laws glared at Penny and tried to take over her sunny window haven, Penny sulked in a corner with her rump facing outward and her tail plastered flat between her legs.
Neela couldn’t understand why her in-laws wanted to occupy that couch when they could go anywhere in the house, even places where Penny was forbidden to go—the living room, the den, the dining room, the entire upstairs. Neela slammed cabinet doors and dropped pots loudly in the sink whenever Penny’s rump faced outward, mumbling under her breath. She released smells for Penny—the balmy caresses of samosa, pakora, roti, or whatever food Neela cooked that day. She saved morsels from the dinner table in order to coax Penny to come back out and position herself in defiance at Neela’s feet.
Whenever Neela cooked, she spoke in a monologue to Penny. She gave Penny a taste of each dish, and if she got approval with a series of licks and tail wags, Neela closed the lid and stopped cooking. Sometimes, when no one was looking, she slipped her sari palu off her shoulders and said, “Look, I’m a butterfly!”
Once, Neela caught her husband watching her from behind the pages of his newspaper. Soon after, in the middle of dinner, he stopped to examine the food as if he had never before seen it.
“This food you made today is quite good, Neelu,” he said. “Just the right mix of spices. Isn’t it so, Appa?”
Neela winked at Penny. Her father-in-law let out a low rumble as he usually did before pointing out some flaw in her cooking, but he remained silent as Neela’s husband chewed thoughtfully and studied the food on his plate.
When Penny ran into the coat closet and emerged, tripping over her paws, with Neela’s shawl draped over her head, her husband said, “How funny. A smart dog after all.” He slipped Penny a bit of buttery naan.
The next morning, when Neela awoke before dawn as usual, she found her husband already out of bed. She went downstairs, hearing a noise in the living room.
They didn’t see her at first. Neela’s husband reclined on the couch. Penny’s head rested on his belly. He was stroking two fingers from the top of Penny’s head to her snout. Penny turned when Neela moved, his finger-lines marking her.
“Why is Penny in the living room?”
“I’ve been meaning to talk to Amma and Appa about that. There isn’t really any reason why she shouldn’t be, is there?” He lifted one of the dog’s ears and peered inside. “Can you get me a wet cloth? We need to wipe this one out. We don’t want it smelling.”
After cleaning the ear, and getting wet thanks from Penny, he said to Neela, “I’m not doing anything today. Do you want to wash Penny out back? The hose is all set up.”
Neela borrowed a t-shirt and pair of his pajama bottoms for the occasion, rolling up the pants at the waist and tying them with a cord from her petticoat. The material bulged under the shirt and her husband laughed. “You know what you look like, don’t you? Six months at least.” Neela blushed, but didn’t say anything.
The water from the hose was cold. Neela hunched over Penny while her husband squatted by the dog’s paws. She soaped Penny’s head and back; he did her belly, tail, and legs. Their slick arms brushed when they both worked on Penny’s sides.
When Penny shook, sending soap spray flying, Neela squealed and her husband stumbled, falling onto his side. She held out her wet hands to help him up and he smiled, caressing them. Water dripped from Neela’s hair; her shirt, now almost transparent, clung to her skin. She felt her husband staring.
Neela started to towel Penny, but her husband got a hair dryer. “I hope this won’t bother her,” he said. “Let’s get it done quick.” He motioned Neela into the breezeway separating the kitchen from the garage.
The drier blew hot air on Penny. Penny balked at first, but then relaxed under Neela’s touch. Neela, preoccupied with the drier, jumped when she saw something move at the window. Her parents-in-law were observing from the kitchen; when she turned, they nodded and waved.
“Now that is a clean dog!” her father-in-law said when Penny emerged fluffed and sneezing. “Not like those hooligan street mutts. Might she need a treat?” He tossed a biscuit into Penny’s bowl.
After lunch, her father-in-law chopped carrots for dessert and her mother-in-law taught her to make gajar halwa so sweet it left Neela salivating.
That afternoon, once Neela had cleaned up, finished her chores, fed Penny, and brushed her to an imperial shine, Neela and her husband dozed together on Penny’s sunlit couch, the dog warming their toes.
They had never slept so close.
SHUBHA VENUGOPAL holds an MFA in fiction and a PhD in English. She teaches literature and writing at the California State University Northridge. She has been a finalist in fiction competitions run by Glimmer Train and The Atlantic Monthly, and appears in an author interview published by Asia Pacific Arts Magazine. Her story, “Bhakthi in the Water” that is anthologized in A Stranger Among Us: Stories of Cross Cultural Collision and Connection has been singled out in reviews by Library Journal, Booklist, and Feminist Review. She is a finalist in the Robert Olen Butler Short Story Prize 2009 contest, and her work will appear in the prize-winning anthology. She is also the winner of the Ellen Meloy Literature for Social Change award, and is the recipient of the 2010 Teaching Fellows Grant offered by CSUN’s College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Her stories have appeared in many literary magazines including Post Road Magazine and Storyglossia, and have been adapted for performance by the New Short Fiction Series in Los Angeles. Visit her at www.shubhavenugopal.com
NEELA PUT HER hands over her ears to block the blare of the Indian movie playing in the living room. Her parents-in-law were both losing their hearing and had to turn up the sound. She considered going upstairs and switching her old fan on high so its whir would drown the noise; gusts of wind in her hair always soothed her. But then she looked over at Penny, who wasn’t allowed upstairs, and sat by her dog instead. She reached out and massaged Penny’s belly.
Penny, rolled over on the couch with her paws straight up in the air, briefly lifted her head. Her tongue hung out the side of her mouth and her blackish gums showed above sharp, discolored teeth. Under Neela’s caresses, Penny fell back asleep.
Occasionally, the dog whimpered and yelped, and Neela imagined her dreaming of geese, gnawing sticks, and digging for fish bones at the beach. “Wish I had your dreams,” Neela said, lifting up strands of Penny’s fur. The dog snored sporadically, and sometimes so loudly that her eyes opened, baring whites glinting with surprise.
This was Neela’s favorite position—snoozing with Penny on the couch in slants of afternoon light.
Neela had bought the couch a month ago, just after she got Penny to celebrate the four-month anniversary of her arrival in America. She was only twenty when she left India to be with her new husband and in-laws in a country she didn’t know much about. She tried to be what she thought they wanted— an impeccable housewife and daughter-in-law. Then later, she brought home Penny.
She had expected to be lonely in America, and her days to follow a familiar pattern. What she hadn’t expected was how quickly she’d want more.
When she first saw her husband nearly a year ago, he sat in her parents’ drawing room with his shoulders hunched and his fingertips pressed together. She covered her head with her sari and kept her eyes down—not being demure, as they may have supposed, but stubborn.
“I don’t want to meet him,” she had cried to her mother that morning, pounding her foot on the ground. “I don’t want to live in his home. I don’t want to get married yet and leave India.”
“But he’s a solid match—good family, steady job. We’ve known his parents for ages.” Her mother wiped Neela’s brow with the edge of her sari. “His father—you know, your father’s boss?—has been good to us, and he has a wonderful son. Your stars match. You’re young—the time is good.” She paused and pointed at the maps decorating Neela’s walls and at the jeweled globe on her shelf. “All you talk about is wanting to travel. You’ll thrive on the challenge.”
She looked sideways at Neela, her dimples showing. “Besides, darling, maybe you’ll like him. He’s not bad on the eyes.”
Liking him couldn’t be possible—not if he wanted to take her to America. So she made up her mind she wouldn’t.
By chance in the drawing room, she caught her future husband watching her. She stared, mesmerized, at his slow smile— teeth white, eyes shining. He had a small cleft in his chin where she wanted to place her finger. She looked away, startled at the saliva gathering in her mouth, and at how her body tingled.
They left for America together soon after the wedding. When the plane took off, she kept her hand pressed to the window and watched her home fall away from her. She slept during most of the flight, and spoke to him only when she had to. He called her ‘Neelu.’ At night in America, he tried to hold her hand, but she wouldn’t let him. He didn’t press her. Instead, he left magazines open to pages he thought she’d like—vistas of exotic beaches. Fashion ads. Snapshots of kittens and babies. She thumbed through the magazines then shut them.
Her husband straightened up the bathroom for her when he finished—wiping off the counter, lining up the towels, closing the lid of the toilet seat. He always complimented her tea. Some mornings, after he left for work, she found a lily in a vase on the windowsill where she’d be sure to see it; its fragrance filled the room.
When he mentioned the possibility of children, she refused. She missed India; he made her leave it. She couldn’t let him touch her. She couldn’t love anything coming from him.
She served his parents their meals, shopped for them, and kept clean their linens. They tried talking to her. They asked after her family. Had she’d received any letters lately? They asked if she’d like to watch a movie. And, did she want to learn to make more intricate meals or desserts? If so, they could teach her. Neela remained polite, but rarely spoke.
ONCE, NEELA'S HUSBAND took a roundabout route home from a temple. Neela sat next to her husband; her in-laws napped in the back. Her husband hummed along with Hindi film music cassette playing from the tape deck. When he asked Neela if she knew the words, she shook her head and looked out the window at cornfields. She wished he had got a job somewhere prettier than rural Pennsylvania.
Then, she saw the sign: Puppies For Sale. He laughed, thinking she was kidding. “You’re not serious,” he said. “My parents would never have it.” Neela asked only once, but she didn’t stop thinking about it.
She returned to the spot alone as soon as she got the chance, glad her husband had taught her to drive and bought her the small used car that she rarely drove.
“Can I help you?” asked a woman with a doughy smell and rough, powdery hands. “I’m Martha.”
“You have some puppies needing homes, no? I saw a sign outside the barn.” Neela examined the modified barn-house.
“That’s right. I got too many animals as it is—cats and horses and a pig, and even three dogs. Then my Sugarcake came home pregnant one day from Buster, dog next door, and now I got seven puppies on my hands and no room for them. Thought I’d make a sign and see what the wind blew in.”
Martha wiped the sugar from her hands onto her apron and stared at the thin fabric that wound around Neela, from her tightly pressed legs to her drooping, slender shoulders.
“You ain’t from this town, are you, honey?” Martha asked, leaning forward to catch Neela’s reply.
“No, I’m sorry. From a neighboring town.”
“How long you been in Pennsylvania?”
“Months now. I came from India four months ago.”
“Ever wish you could go back?”
Neela paused at the question that no one had ever asked her. “I did once. But now maybe it’s time to stay.”
“Time for a change, right? Something new to hold onto? Now, wait. Why don’t I make you a nice cup of tea while we chat.”
Martha reached for the copper kettle in the windowsill and swished about the kitchen. She sliced an extra large piece of lemon cake dusted with sugar and put it on a plate. The lines around Neela’s mouth softened, and she pressed her palms against circles dark like bruises under her eyes.
“You ever had a pet?” Martha asked, hunting for a clean fork.
“Not a pet exactly.” Neela listened to the kettle hissing.
She had once found a mouse in a gutter outside her parents’ home, a few weeks before her wedding. Its white fur was matted with mud and one of its legs was twisted. It looked ready to die.
Neela had never touched a mouse. But the way its body was angled resembled how she felt inside. She carefully wrapped the mouse in a handkerchief and put it in her purse. She left the zipper slightly open. When she peeked in, the mouse gazed back, unblinking, its whiskers lightly twitching.
She hid it from her parents and fed it milk from her father’s eyedropper. Later, she broke off, for the mouse, a corner of paneer, figuring a mouse would like cheese. She took a scrap of cloth and attached its leg to a broken toothpick. The mouse never bit her. It curled in her palm and slept in a handkerchief folded into a nest in her purse.
Then, one day, as her wedding approached, the mouse disappeared. Neela hoped it watched her from a hole in her wall. She hoped it would crawl into her suitcase and be transported with her. But in America, though she shook out each article of clothing, she never found her mouse.
Neela followed Martha into the living room. The edge of the couch sagged under her weight as she perched, waiting for tea she did not want—American tea made with nothing but hot water. She thought of her own milky chai that she sweetened with two and half spoons of sugar and spiced with homemade masala. How would this lady who lived in a converted barn like her tea? Like her home? It was hard to imagine this woman and all of her animals in her home with her in-laws.
Something about Martha, though, with her hair wrapped in a bun like her own mother back in India, and with an apron covering her full, maternal chest, made Neela want to relax on the couch, eating food for once not cooked by her—eating until all her loneliness had been dislodged and swallowed away along with pieces of homemade lemon cake. Neela stood up.
“Miss, do you mind if I see the puppies?”
“Sure, sweetie, they’re over behind that fence there. Take your pick.”
Neela leaned over the fence, smiling at the puppy exuberance. Never had she received such a greeting. Normally only her mother-in-law’s comments about the cooking and her father-in-law’s knotted eyebrows met her in the mornings.
Her husband worked all day at the foundry plant, and didn’t come home until mealtime late in the evening. After dinner, he joined his parents in watching the Indian films Neela disliked. The women in those movies flirted easily with their men and didn’t want much besides male attention. They looked ridiculous to Neela as they danced amidst fake glacier fields and hid behind icebergs, clad in high heels and gauzy saris. These movies didn’t depict the home she had left behind, and they made Neela lonely.
Neela leaned further over the fence. Each time one pup made it to the top of the squirming pile, it got knocked over and replaced by another. Claws scratched eyes, elbows poked into ears. Paws slipped on the cold floor. The scent of urine sharpened the air.
The puppies kept moving, trying to jump onto her chest. But one puppy sat still with only its eyes betraying its alertness. It was smaller than the rest and seemed to want no part of the banter. It had been licking a bloody nip mark, but stopped when it saw Neela. Neela stretched and scooped it up with one hand.
“I can feel this one’s ribs sticking out. It barely has skin over its ribs!” She traced the pattern of bones, fine as ivory carvings, with her finger.
“I figured you would pick the smallest of the litter,” Martha said. “That one’s the runt, that’s why. She has to wait her turn for food and only eats the end scraps. I try to feed her extra, but I get busy, you know how it is.”
Neela brought the pup to her face, her hands cradling its rump. The puppy stared back, undaunted. “I know how it is,” she whispered. The puppy licked at the salt on Neela’s cheeks.
“She is a girl, no? I will call her Penny,” Neela said to the woman who waited for her with tea and cake.
“On account of her color? It comes from that mix of golden retriever and Irish setter.”
“No. Because she turned up like a lucky penny for me. Because she is all the wealth I will ever need.” Neela rubbed Penny back and forth against her face as the puppy bent around Neela’s fingers in approval.
When Neela returned home that afternoon, she found her in-laws and husband asleep on the couches in the living room. Penny sniffed the air, smelling the too-sweet scent of old age mixed with eucalyptus oil. Her in-laws’ hardened heels stuck out from the silk shawls covering their legs. When Neela’s husband grunted in his sleep, Penny growled. Neela shushed her, but then looked at her husband, sleeping on his belly, his face buried in a pillow. She growled at him too, and then laughed.
Neela had an hour before making afternoon tea and biscuits. She tucked Penny into the crook of her arm and rushed upstairs. She unwrapped her old cotton sari and pulled out a red silk embroidered with gold. Before dressing, she washed her face with Indian sandalwood soap. She waved the soap under Penny’s nose, and then placed Penny in the sink and lathered it through her fur. Neela massaged coconut oil into her hip length hair and worked through the knots with a fine-toothed comb.
She dribbled a bit of oil on Penny’s head too. Penny walked back and forth through the waterfall of Neela’s hair. Rather than tying it up in her usual braid, Neela pinned her hair back from her face with a gold clip and let it hang. She put a clip on Penny’s collar. After powdering her face, Neela smiled into the mirror at the glowing woman holding a golden dog in her arms.
“I look like a queen, and you my royal pooch,” she said, Penny’s ears tickling her mouth. “Why, Penny, what special treat shall we order tonight? Perhaps some sweet halwa would please you?”
Penny let out a yip.
“Then it shall be done. I’ll summon the royal servants and have them deliver halwa immediately. Perhaps then we can go for a regal coach ride on the chariot awaiting us. Such is a maharani’s life.”
Neela laughed, grabbed one of Penny’s paws, and bent over as if to kiss it. “And the life of a maharani’s treasured dog, of course.”
When her in-laws and husband awoke, Neela was waiting with her back rigid against a chair in the middle the room. Penny sat in her lap like a queen’s pampered pet. Neela’s husband jumped up just as her father-in-law made a sucking sound and clicked his tongue against his dentures.
“Chee! What in God’s name is that filthy thing doing on you?” her mother-in-law said. Penny emitted a low, rumbling sound as Neela stroked her.
“Quite disgusting,” said her father-in-law, looking with furrowed brows at Penny. “Take it away.”
Neela held Penny closer. “No,” she said. “I will not.”
“Is something the matter with you, Neelu? Has something happened? What is going on?” Her husband started to move towards her.
Penny growled louder. Her husband paused. Neela’s in-laws stood up and slowly crawled their hands over the couch as they moved away from her and headed to their bedrooms, their complaining voices high-pitched and cracking.
“No, I am fine,” Neela said, smoothing her hair with a steady hand. She looked straight into her husband’s eyes, no longer like the new bride. “Oh, and who I have here is Penny.”
He rubbed his stubbly cheek. “Penny? What are you talking?” he said, dropping his hand. “Neelu, you know that dogs are unclean. Have you not seen them in the streets in India? Dirty things.” Penny’s sandalwood-scented fur bristled. “Could you please put the dog back? And also make me my tea?”
“I think I will go for a walk, actually,” Neela said, glancing out of the window. Sun-lit dust motes spun in the air between them. “It is such a nice day and Penny might need some exercise. I would like to start toilet training.”
“Toilet training? Neela, have you not heard me?” Her husband said, looking concerned. “How can we have a dog? We know nothing about them. What has gone wrong with you?”
“So I am assuming you do not want to walk with me? I will just go out myself then with Penny.”
Neela went to the closet to put on her chappals, leaving her husband in the living room. Neela’s hands were damp as they fondled Penny’s back.
“Oh, and by the way, I have not cooked any dinner tonight. Perhaps you can all manage on your own, no? I may just stroll down to the restaurant on the corner and have a cheese sandwich. Don’t worry about cooking for me!” she called to him from outside the door.
After spending a couple hours chasing leaves in a nearby field, Neela tripping in her red sari and Penny wobbling on too-thin legs, Neela sat on a park bench, juggling Penny on her knee.
“Are you hungry, darling?” she said, turning Penny around to face her. “I’ll make something tasty. How about yogurt pachadi? You and I will eat like royalty tonight.”
Neela checked that no one was around, and then undid her sari palu that covered her tightly buttoned blouse. She draped part of the sheer fabric over one arm and began to spin, letting it flap in the breeze. The sky, trees, and grass turned red through the gauze of her sari.
“Look, Penny, I’m a butterfly,” she said, extending her arm and swirling the fabric around her. Penny jumped up, butting her head against the cloth.
“No one, except you, can catch me!”
Neela let strands of hair blow into her eyes as she raced with her dog from one end of the field to the other, her body’s curves showing beneath her unraveling sari.
Neela's husband was pacing up and down in the living room when she returned. He called her over.
“Okay, if you want this dog then we must discuss some things.” Her husband paused. Neela noticed how his hair was sticking up, and how that made him more handsome.
“Now, please,” he said, “I promised Amma and Appa. You know they don’t like dogs, but I told them you obviously do. Though I wish you had first run it by me. Anyway, no dog on the furniture. No dog in the living room or upstairs, no. . .”
Penny’s ears flattened at so many no’s.
Neela said, her voice soft, “Thank you for letting me keep her.”
The next morning she went out and bought Penny a couch, requesting that it be delivered by late afternoon.
ONE DAY, WHEN nobody was home but Neela and Penny, Neela squatted on the stairs and spread her hands out. Penny waited near the bottom step, ears perked. Her eyebrows and nose twitched; Penny knew she wasn’t allowed upstairs.
“Come here, darling. Come, now,” Neela said. “It is okay; we are alone. Is it not my house too? Can I not tell you to come?”
When Penny hesitated, Neela reached down and pulled on her collar, gently tugging her up the stairs. Penny stepped lightly on the carpet in the bedroom, as if on sand that was too hot. She pressed her ears back and trembled. Neela guessed Penny would not like it upstairs where the rooms were large and bare, where there were no stuffed toys for her to chew, and no cozy corners. She guessed that in these rooms where the air smelled dank, Penny would be afraid to expose her underside.
Neela knew her scent was faint in her bedroom where there were few traces of her—no maps on the walls or books scattered about, no blankets, no throw pillows or Indian cotton prints, no food crumbs for her to share. Penny sniffed at Neela’s cold pillow on the bed, tucking her tail between her legs.
Neela spread herself out on the carpet in the middle of the room. She hitched up her sari to her knees, exposing her sun-deprived legs. Raising her arms above her head, Neela flapped them up and down. Penny slunk over to Neela’s head and peered into her face, her ears brushing silk onto Neela. Penny’s tail shivered out. She pushed her wet nose against Neela’s neck.
The couch on which Neela liked to nap with Penny stood in one spot downstairs where direct sunlight fell. A couple of times when her husband moved it, Neela, late at night, moved it back. Eventually the couch stayed and Neela stopped straining herself in the dark.
Neela knew Penny enjoyed sleeping on its saggy cushions layered with Indian-print cotton spreads. She had pressed the couch against the window so Penny could watch groundhogs, squirrels, and rabbits scuttling outside in the back yard.
The couch was Penny’s, as Neela told the dog; it was the one piece of furniture on which Penny rested. Neela liked the way Penny only allowed certain people to sit on it. When her in-laws glared at Penny and tried to take over her sunny window haven, Penny sulked in a corner with her rump facing outward and her tail plastered flat between her legs.
Neela couldn’t understand why her in-laws wanted to occupy that couch when they could go anywhere in the house, even places where Penny was forbidden to go—the living room, the den, the dining room, the entire upstairs. Neela slammed cabinet doors and dropped pots loudly in the sink whenever Penny’s rump faced outward, mumbling under her breath. She released smells for Penny—the balmy caresses of samosa, pakora, roti, or whatever food Neela cooked that day. She saved morsels from the dinner table in order to coax Penny to come back out and position herself in defiance at Neela’s feet.
Whenever Neela cooked, she spoke in a monologue to Penny. She gave Penny a taste of each dish, and if she got approval with a series of licks and tail wags, Neela closed the lid and stopped cooking. Sometimes, when no one was looking, she slipped her sari palu off her shoulders and said, “Look, I’m a butterfly!”
Once, Neela caught her husband watching her from behind the pages of his newspaper. Soon after, in the middle of dinner, he stopped to examine the food as if he had never before seen it.
“This food you made today is quite good, Neelu,” he said. “Just the right mix of spices. Isn’t it so, Appa?”
Neela winked at Penny. Her father-in-law let out a low rumble as he usually did before pointing out some flaw in her cooking, but he remained silent as Neela’s husband chewed thoughtfully and studied the food on his plate.
When Penny ran into the coat closet and emerged, tripping over her paws, with Neela’s shawl draped over her head, her husband said, “How funny. A smart dog after all.” He slipped Penny a bit of buttery naan.
The next morning, when Neela awoke before dawn as usual, she found her husband already out of bed. She went downstairs, hearing a noise in the living room.
They didn’t see her at first. Neela’s husband reclined on the couch. Penny’s head rested on his belly. He was stroking two fingers from the top of Penny’s head to her snout. Penny turned when Neela moved, his finger-lines marking her.
“Why is Penny in the living room?”
“I’ve been meaning to talk to Amma and Appa about that. There isn’t really any reason why she shouldn’t be, is there?” He lifted one of the dog’s ears and peered inside. “Can you get me a wet cloth? We need to wipe this one out. We don’t want it smelling.”
After cleaning the ear, and getting wet thanks from Penny, he said to Neela, “I’m not doing anything today. Do you want to wash Penny out back? The hose is all set up.”
Neela borrowed a t-shirt and pair of his pajama bottoms for the occasion, rolling up the pants at the waist and tying them with a cord from her petticoat. The material bulged under the shirt and her husband laughed. “You know what you look like, don’t you? Six months at least.” Neela blushed, but didn’t say anything.
The water from the hose was cold. Neela hunched over Penny while her husband squatted by the dog’s paws. She soaped Penny’s head and back; he did her belly, tail, and legs. Their slick arms brushed when they both worked on Penny’s sides.
When Penny shook, sending soap spray flying, Neela squealed and her husband stumbled, falling onto his side. She held out her wet hands to help him up and he smiled, caressing them. Water dripped from Neela’s hair; her shirt, now almost transparent, clung to her skin. She felt her husband staring.
Neela started to towel Penny, but her husband got a hair dryer. “I hope this won’t bother her,” he said. “Let’s get it done quick.” He motioned Neela into the breezeway separating the kitchen from the garage.
The drier blew hot air on Penny. Penny balked at first, but then relaxed under Neela’s touch. Neela, preoccupied with the drier, jumped when she saw something move at the window. Her parents-in-law were observing from the kitchen; when she turned, they nodded and waved.
“Now that is a clean dog!” her father-in-law said when Penny emerged fluffed and sneezing. “Not like those hooligan street mutts. Might she need a treat?” He tossed a biscuit into Penny’s bowl.
After lunch, her father-in-law chopped carrots for dessert and her mother-in-law taught her to make gajar halwa so sweet it left Neela salivating.
That afternoon, once Neela had cleaned up, finished her chores, fed Penny, and brushed her to an imperial shine, Neela and her husband dozed together on Penny’s sunlit couch, the dog warming their toes.
They had never slept so close.
SHUBHA VENUGOPAL holds an MFA in fiction and a PhD in English. She teaches literature and writing at the California State University Northridge. She has been a finalist in fiction competitions run by Glimmer Train and The Atlantic Monthly, and appears in an author interview published by Asia Pacific Arts Magazine. Her story, “Bhakthi in the Water” that is anthologized in A Stranger Among Us: Stories of Cross Cultural Collision and Connection has been singled out in reviews by Library Journal, Booklist, and Feminist Review. She is a finalist in the Robert Olen Butler Short Story Prize 2009 contest, and her work will appear in the prize-winning anthology. She is also the winner of the Ellen Meloy Literature for Social Change award, and is the recipient of the 2010 Teaching Fellows Grant offered by CSUN’s College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Her stories have appeared in many literary magazines including Post Road Magazine and Storyglossia, and have been adapted for performance by the New Short Fiction Series in Los Angeles. Visit her at www.shubhavenugopal.com
