The Past and the Present

Love was rather inconvenient. Each day, it was getting harder to come into the house. To step in just like before and act as if things were the same. She had no reason to complain though, looking at it logically. Her work was light, the money remained the same. No one would ever reprimand if she ever got late or didn’t complete something. Perhaps they wouldn’t even notice whether she came in or not.

But she did, out of habit, out of love. Everyday she stepped in at 8.30 am, even though they had said she could come in late. Then a little bit of tidying, cooking and ironing. It tore her guts when she ironed- the television on like before, but the clothes not as many, not as small. She used the same washing basket, and as she ironed she missed the little dresses she used to iron. The Ralph Lauren skirts, the overtly pink and frilly dresses she had bought for Arzu . All of them had been tied into black bin bags and given away.

A few months had passed since this house had become what it was today. When the little feet that ran all over the house, the voice which sang songs and talked non- stop - when all of that went away, the house shrank. It should have seemed larger considering so many objects were not there anymore -the large doll house in a corner of the living room, the ride- ons, the huge toy boxes had all been given away to the charity shop down the road- yet the room had wilted almost. Even the bright modern paintings, the Parisian artefacts didn’t look uber cool and chic as they used to. The first time Chloe had walked into this house for her interview, she had been struck by the vibrancy, the bold orange walls, the open plan house with no doors, just wide glass windows and a solid wood floor. This is where she would love to work, she had thought and when she set her eyes on Arzu it was love at first sight. Wide eyes, curly black hair, about a year and half and just beginning to walk. Her friends warned her, after all it was an Indian family, the culture would be different, their food habits, their attitude to raising a child. Someone had said Indians would be hard taskmasters, would she able to cope?

But nothing had worried her- this was the family for her. So when she received an offer for a nanny from them, she was thrilled. And within a week she had started at the Raos’ house.
Perfection never lasted. When things were too good to be true, something would come along and ruin it. It was after a blissful six months that Arzu had started to sink. Literally. She would fall down and complain of tiredness. The bruises took long to heal. Unexplained fevers. A constant decline of her wonderful appetite. The fat cheeks disappeared as if overnight. When the diagnosis was delivered, Chloe had gone home and wept. There was also a faint feeling of fear, for did this mean that Rayna would give up her job and want to look after Arzu. She didn’t really want to look for a new job, that was always stressful. And more importantly, she realised a part of her wanted to be with the family as they went through this battle. The little family would go through intense pain, and she Chloe didn’t want to desert them. Luckily Rayna had no intention of quitting the job she loved, and Chloe became even more pivotal in Arzu’s care.

Overnight the hospital came home. The little drawer set in Arzu’s bedroom was cleared out and transformed to a medicine cabinet. Nurses visited, and instead of going to toddler groups, they often ended up in the day wards for infusions and injections. Strong drugs to kill the cancerous cells. Children often made it when they developed Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL). They were told, statistics said 1 in 5 children below the age of 5 would survive. ALL was the most common kind of childhood cancers, they were not alone. However, it seemed Arzu had a rare form where a specific gene had been modified making the prognosis worse. Chloe didn’t really understand what that meant, inspite of Rayna explaining it to her several times. All she believed was that she would recover, they just had to look after her now.

Rayna tried to work from home a couple of days in the week, when there was hospital visits or nurse visits. Her husband- even though Chloe knew his name, somehow she referred to him always as Rayna’s husband- continued as before steadfast in his routine. It was Chloe and Rayna who took Arzu for the appointments, Chloe who distracted Arzu when they tried to draw blood from her.

Rayna was busy talking to parents all over the world with similar cases, she recounted stories of success or deaths, and the virtual world took over her real one. Sometimes Chloe wished she would just sit down next to Arzu , hold her close, inspite of the tubes and cannulas which took over her limbs. Just feel her and embrace her. But Rayna was as if on a mission, the more she read and understood the disease, the more she felt she was fighting it. As for her husband, he seemed more harassed by the day, spending long days in office, helpless at the outcome.

He had given up before it all happened. Rayna meanwhile seemed to believe it could never happen. So on that day when little Arzu struggled to breathe, the day before she was to go back to hospital for another round of chemotherapy, it was Chloe that watched her choke, turn blue and listless. There wasn’t much time really, she called Rayna and her husband and then drove Arzu to the hospital. Should she have called an ambulance? She wondered later, no one questioned her about it though. She had reached the hospital in less than ten minutes; they had an emergency entry after all.

There was a lot she remembered, a lot she wanted to forget. The sound of her voice, her footsteps, her little head nestling on her arms. After Arzu, she didn’t think she could ever go back to nannying. Rayna had asked her to stay on, to do some cleaning, housekeeping. She got another couple of jobs cleaning and asked Rayna to reduce her hours. She did that only as she felt bad taking their money for such light housework, Rayna seemed content to pay her for all day as before.

Love was never convenient. She could have moved on, done more for herself. But she had a feeling they would crumble without her.
Which was why as well she never really said anything about it. When she saw that Rayna’s husband was travelling on work more often and on longer trips, and Rayna most certainly didn’t even come home sometimes when he was out. Chloe noticed once the bed hadn’t been slept in, she noticed a pair of shoes go missing and then appear a day or two late. Mostly, Rayna managed to cover her tracks well. Till the other day, when Chloe found a t-shirt which most certainly wasn’t her husband’s. A very smart DKNY t- shirt, black, long sleeved, fitting. Very fashionable, very now. A faint trace of perfume lingered on it- what perfume was that! A very pleasant fragrance, something she recognised- Dior she thought.She knew every item of clothing the family possessed and knew this-shirt didn’t belong here. It was under the duvet in the messed up bed…Rayna and the man had left for work in a hurry obviously. When Chloe found this foreign object in the house she knew so well, it was almost like finding a snake coiled in the bed.

She could for example have warned her husband, asked Rayna about it. Did she not care- it was only a few months after Arzu, did she not think of her spirit, her memory, and with that wasn’t there any loyalty to her husband, Arzu’s father? Chloe felt sorry for her husband, tired, quite still in shock, his shoulders drooping by the day that he couldn’t save his little girl. Didn’t Rayna feel sorry for him? But then she thought of Rayna. To not actually be there when her baby breathed her last, to walk in from work to a small group of neighbours all waiting for the mother to return, to come home to a dead child, how hard that must have been! But she had held herself well- not a tear escaped from her. The old lady next door had commented later, she’s almost English, isn’t she, what a stoic young lady! It was only the next day when Chloe had come to work, that she had found Rayna slumped over the dead body of Arzu, waiting for the funeral, and when she called out ‘Rayna, are you ok?’, she had got up and holding on to Chloe had burst out crying. Loud convulsive sobs, cries which would never stop. Chloe remembered feeling the thin ribs under Rayna’s expensive silk top, she had hugged her close and Rayna wept into her shoulder-‘This was the shoulder she loved, this was how she snuggled into you! Chloe..Chloe..what do I do? How can I get on anymore?’ Chloe had no answer for her, as she too was thinking the same. What did they have to live for now? Of course they could have more children, but Arzu was an IVF baby as well. It’s not that they could conceive just tomorrow.

After the funeral, they had left for India for a few weeks, to heal, to spend time with family. And now, Rayna seemed the same as before but Chloe knew she was working to forget her heart, trying to feel alive again, maybe this man helped her in a way her husband couldn’t. People grieved in different ways. Rayna had a right to life. She had a right to heal. How she wanted to go about it was none of Chloe’s business.
So she had put the t-shirt through the wash, ironed it the same day and discreetly put it at the back of Rayna’s cupboard. Her husband was to be back today so she hadn’t left it under the bed. Hopefully Rayna would find it; if she didn’t, would she ask her? Chloe wouldn’t bring it up ever, she loved them all, whether it was right or wrong, she would just stay quiet.
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