Page 12 of The Secret Keeper of Jaipur

“Quite right.” She offers me the fountain pen.

I’ve never held a pen before. It’s smooth. And slick. I clutch it in my fingers, trying to hold it the way she does. I push hard. There’s a dark blot on the paper now, like a drop of blood. I look at Lakshmi, the way Rekha looks at me when she’s done something wrong. Lakshmi puts her hand on mine and lifts my fingers ever so gently. “Not so hard,” she says.

I ease up on the pressure. I draw a line, and the ink flows more smoothly. I draw another line, then another.

“Toothache plant?” she asks.

I nod.

“Shabash!You’re going to get along just fine, Nimmi!”

I’m not used to compliments. My face is warm, whether from embarrassment or gratitude, I can’t tell. She is being so kind. It’s not what I expected. I feel my eyes get moist.

She looks away and removes the rolled-up papers from her coat. “Let’s get this taken care of, shall we? But first, I want to check the fungus on that leaf.”

Lakshmi stands and walks in the direction of the wild senna, leaving me time to wipe my eyes.

ONE MONTH BEFORE

THE COLLAPSE

5

LAKSHMI

Shimla

I snip a drying leaf off the burdock plant with my clippers and inspect it. Tiny holes perforate the center. I turn it over. There might be insect eggs, or larvae, but I can’t see them; at forty-two, my eyes aren’t as sharp as they used to be. I’ll have to look at it, tomorrow, under the microscope. I put it in my basket and survey the Lady Bradley Healing Garden, a garden I started over a decade ago—the reason I came to Shimla in the first place. Would I have come if Jay hadn’t offered me this lifeline, persuaded me to take it? After all, scandal had put a full stop to my life as a henna artist in Jaipur. And even though the accusations of thieving their jewelry weren’t true, my clients, the wealthy ladies of Jaipur, weren’t about to forgive—or forget—easily. In the end, I had to leave Jaipur in order to start over.

Nimmi is hoeing another row in the garden. In the few weeks she’s been working with me, she has taught me so much about the plants that her tribe gathers in the Himalayan meadows between here and Kashmir. From the gaping monkshood, a three-foot shrub with blue flowers that we’re planting today, we’ll harvest the roots, pulverize them and mix them with geranium oil to make a sweet-smelling ointment for boils, abscesses and other skin irritations. In my time working with the hill people, I’ve learned that they don’t trust medicines that smell like chemicals; they will only use remedies that smell of the earth, of the trees and flowers they know. That’s one of the reasons our little clinic has become so popular with the locals. Wealthier patients, or foreign ones, prefer the Lady Bradley Hospital’s more antiseptic environment, which tribal people like Nimmi don’t like or trust.

I watch her now, making furrows only as wide as we absolutely need to lay the seeds of the monkshood. She works quickly and efficiently, wasting no energy on movements that don’t help her get where she’s going.

She must sense me watching her. Without breaking stride or looking my way, she says, “We’re a little late getting this in the ground, but it might still take.” She looks at the sky, then at me. “If the weather holds. Don’t be surprised if this plant doesn’t sprout for a year, though. It’s touchy.”

I nod. At times, I feel as if she and I have come to an understanding—a friendship of sorts. But sometimes, her tone is gruff, as if she resents being here at the clinic. She is earning enough to care for Rekha and Chullu—a salary that Jay and I pay out of our own pockets, although she doesn’t need to know that. What she is teaching us is valuable enough, but until we can show the hospital board the results of her work, we won’t be able to cover her wages from the hospital budget. The paperwork I had her sign the first day (after I showed her how to form her initials in Hindi) was a contract between Nimmi and Jay and me. We didn’t need it at all. I just didn’t want her thinking I’m offering charity—she would hate that—so I told her it was a contract with the Lady Bradley Hospital.

She’s probably still trying to work out how she feels. Whether she can fit me into a slot between resentment and gratitude. I understand. It was the same with me in Jaipur: ladies of privilege to whom I automatically saidyes, Ji, andof course, Ji, no matter how unreasonable their requests because they were paying me, giving me the money I needed to build my house. I swallowed my pride until the day I finally saidno, never againto Parvati Singh. I close my eyes. That’s all in the past now.What’s the use of crying when the birds ate the whole farm?

Nimmi is missing Malik. I miss him, too. His easy way with people, making them feel comfortable—safe—around him. But he is miles away in the Rajasthani heat.

I shake my head and make some notes on my clipboard about how much fertilizer we need to purchase.

“Have you forgotten?” At the sound of Jay’s voice, I turn around.

He’s walking toward me from the back door of the hospital. His curly hair, which used to be merely threaded with gray, is now more silver than black. He’s wearing his white doctor’s coat, a stethoscope peeking out of one pocket. There’s something about the way he looks at me that always makes me smile.

“Clinic starts in five. Tea first?” he asks when he reaches me. He removes a leaf from my hair where it must have caught on my bun.

I look at Nimmi. “Nimmi? Tea?”

She straightens and gives Jay one of her rare smiles. When she glances at me, her smile disappears, and she shakes her head. “I want to finish this.”

Jay takes the gloves I’m removing from my hands and walks with me into the shed where we store tools and supplies. I’m putting the gardening sheers on their peg when I feel his fingers trail the back of my neck, starting at my hairline, down to the scalloped edge of my blouse. I close my eyes, feel that delicious tingle. His familiar scent of lime and sandalwood is so comforting. I turn to face him, raise my lips to his. “I thought you wanted to get to the clinic.”

He laughs lightly, tapping my nose with his finger. “Ah, yes. So I did.”

The Community Clinic was not doing well the first time I stepped through its doors twelve years ago. That was right around the time my sister, Radha, gave birth at the adjoining Lady Bradley Hospital. While we waited for Radha to recover, Jay—Dr. Kumar, as he was known to me then—suggested that I use what I knew about herbs and their healing properties to treat the local hill people. Without my henna business to support me, Radha and young Malik, I needed the work he was offering. True to his word, Jay secured the funds to start the Lady Bradley Healing Garden. He found a house for Radha, Malik and me on the periphery of the hospital grounds. It wasn’t lush, but we weren’t used to lush; the house I’d built in Jaipur was but a single room. I could afford to buy the small cottage Jay found; I had money from the sale of my Jaipur home.

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