6. Rani
6
Rani
The morning had dragged and it was still just 11 a.m. Ali had allowed himself to get distracted for half an hour with his drawings before he started to cry again. Dan wouldn’t be home before 6 p.m., sometimes later if he had work to catch up on. He was working his way up to management; he had been doing so since Rani had met him. He worked in a mid-sized IT firm with several other South Asian men, but the managerial level seemed to only be made up of white guys. Rather than blame the system, Dan blamed himself for the lack of progression, perceiving that he had some personality failures that stopped him from breaking through the glass ceiling – though in his case perhaps it was the roti ceiling.
‘It’s not your fault,’ Rani had said once. ‘Maybe it’s them not allowing you to get to the top.’
‘I won’t buy into this victim mentality,’ Dan had replied. ‘So many of us blame everything but ourselves for where we are in life.’
Rani had shrugged and left it at that because it wasn’t worth arguing over, and in any case maybe he was right. She didn’t particularly care. Sure, perhaps if he became a manager he would make more money, which would mean that rather than the small apartment they lived in they would have a bigger place, but aside from that it wouldn’t change how she lived day to day. She would still have to do all the things she did, except maybe she wouldn’t have to be so strict with her spending. Perhaps rather than pluck her eyebrows at home she would pay a professional to thread them. Maybe she would even get her nails painted at a salon. And rather than get a box dye she would go to a hairdresser to colour over the greys that she was horrified to discover were growing in number on her head.
As for Dan, she didn’t particularly want or need him to be home, except that his arrival home signalled the end of the day, and she could put Ali down and go to sleep herself and start the whole thing all over again the next day.
The only way she could go through the motions was by creating a distance between her inner and her outer self. She could smile and coo and speak and even laugh at the silly things her son would do, but inside she was cocooned in a thick fog that separated her true desires and the life that she was living.
She picked up her son and moved to her bedroom to see if they could find some old clothes to play dress-up with. This was how she kept her brain entertained, by finding activities for her toddler to do during the day.
They were going through a box she kept in the back of the cupboard, looking for scarves she stored there, when she found it. The thing that Priya had given her when she was leaving for India to marry Dan. The next time she was back in Sydney she would be a married woman, living with her husband, her life in the shared apartment a distant memory.
‘Even married women have needs,’ Priya had said, handing her a rectangular box covered in bright pink wrapping. ‘Go on, open it.’
‘You don’t want me to wait till I’m married?’ Rani had asked.
‘This is not a wedding present,’ Priya replied, as Rani ripped off the wrapping and blushed as pink as the paper in her hands when she saw what was inside.
Now she was pulling that same thing out of the box. It was wrapped in newspaper but Rani remembered what was inside. She had never opened the box, had hidden it deep, putting it away as a source of shame. She could have thrown it in the bin but she couldn’t do that to a gift someone had given her. Especially Priya.
‘Present,’ Ali said as Rani removed the newspaper wrapping.
‘Ride the wave’, the subtle silver writing declared, under the image of a bright pink vibrator. ‘Go deep.’
‘You can’t rely on a man to meet all your needs,’ Priya had told Rani after she had got past the shock of the gift. ‘Sometimes you need to help yourself.’
The words rang inside Rani’s ears. Weren’t her needs being met? She had no reason to complain, after all. But then she ran her fingers over the lettering on the box, telling her to ‘go deep’. If she went deep, however, what would she find? And would it be something she even wanted to unlock?
Ali had busied himself by ripping up the newspaper. Any moment now, she could tell, he would be bored again and whingeing till she found something else to distract him. Rani wondered if he could be persuaded to have a nap, though his shiny wakeful eyes suggested otherwise.
‘Ali, you want iPad?’ Rani asked. She didn’t need to say the words twice. He jumped up with joy.
She settled him in front of the TV, putting on his favourite channel, which Ali ignored, his focus instead on the fish on the iPad in his lap.
‘I’ll be in the bedroom,’ Rani told him, but he didn’t look up.
Inside the bedroom, she closed the door, picked up the box and pulled out the bright pink silicone vibrator. It had two arms, ‘for internal and external stimulation’, the small user leaflet declared. She expected the battery to have long died. But to her surprise when she pressed the button, both the small and big arms vibrated in unison. She pressed the button again and the vibrations changed: the smaller arm pulsed while the bigger arm buzzed. She pressed it again and this time the bigger arm pulsed and the smaller one buzzed. As it turned out, there were lots of different options.
There was, of course, no way of denying it. Her curiosity was piqued and she wanted to try this funny-looking device. Rani lay on top of the covers and pulled down her tracksuit pants. At first the sensation made her squeal. She immediately pulled the vibrator away. She pressed the button a few more times until she found a setting that wasn’t so intense before gently bringing the vibrator to the outside of her vulva, letting her body get used to the sensations. She could feel herself becoming warm as the vibrations travelled through her body. While it had felt strange initially, she soon got used to it. It felt good. She pressed the smaller arm of the vibrator on the top of her clitoris, while keeping the longer arm at the opening of her vagina. She wasn’t ready to put it in yet, but she could feel herself getting wet.
She closed her eyes and Tariq’s face immediately came to her. He was smiling but his eyes were telling her something else; they were full of desire. He moved towards her and brought his arms around her body. She liked how hard his arms felt against her softness. He kissed her in a way that was both tender and a little rough. If she could tell him, she would have said she wouldn’t mind if he wanted to get rougher. He pulled her body down on the bed and pressed his full weight on top of her. She realised she liked the hardness of his other parts too.
At this point Rani allowed the vibrator to enter her a little. As she did she pictured Tariq, his brown naked body against her bare skin. She so wanted him inside of her. She pushed the vibrator in deeper and a moan escaped her lips.
And then suddenly she heard an angry voice, ‘Rani!’ and then the slamming of the bedroom door.
Her eyes flung open. In front of her was her husband, Dan, red in the face and horrified.
She pulled out the vibrator and threw it away, as if the device had possessed her. It continued to buzz, the larger arm convulsing on the floor.
‘Turn that thing off!’ Dan said. ‘Get your clothes on. I’ll be outside with Ali.’
If she could, she would bury herself in a hole and never come out again. Rani went into autopilot, covering herself in the thick fog inside her brain and putting her body into motion. She pulled up her pants and turned off the vibrator, cleaning it with a tissue and placing it back in the box. She placed the box back inside the larger cardboard container she had not long ago been casually looking through for scarves and pushed the whole thing into the back of the built-in cupboard. She ran a sweeping hand over the sheets to smooth them out, then headed to the bathroom. Here she washed her hands and briefly looked at her face in the mirror. She tucked some strands of hair behind her ear and took a deep breath. There was nothing else she could do but face the music.
In the living room, Dan sat with his arms protectively around Ali. When he saw Rani he brought his fingers to his lips and motioned for her to go outside. He plugged a pair of headphones into the iPad and placed them on Ali’s head before leaving the room to go talk to his wife.
‘Is this what you do when I’m at work?’ He started exactly as she expected he would. ‘You know, in India they have a word for women like you. I think they have this word in this country too but I won’t repeat it now.’
But his face said the word – whore. She was a common whore.
Inside her head she heard Priya’s voice say, Whores sleep with people, not vibrators .
‘Is this whole thing funny to you?’
Rani covered her mouth to hide the smile she hadn’t realised had spread across her lips.
‘I came home thinking we could have a nice lunch together. I know how Ali has been giving you a hard time recently. And then I see you like that. I honestly ... I don’t know what to say.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Rani said. There was no explanation for her behaviour because she herself couldn’t understand why she did what she did.
‘Do you know how this makes me feel as your husband?’
‘I’ve never done anything like that before. I don’t know why ...’
‘Bas, chup,’ he said, putting a finger to his lips. ‘I don’t think I can ever get that image of you out of my head, sprawled on our sheets with that thing inside of you.’
He wasn’t turned on just a little? Priya’s voice piped up again inside her brain. Rani shook her head.
‘Maybe you should go out for a walk. Just go. I need to figure out how I’m going to get through the rest of the day.’
‘But I want to talk,’ Rani said.
‘Talk? About what? That you leave Ali by himself on the sofa while you go do these things ... Wait, is there someone else? Has someone made you do this?’
Rani shook her head. ‘No, of course not. This was the first time. I don’t know why I did it. I’m sorry, please let’s put this behind us. I will never touch that thing again. I feel so bad, Dan.’
Dan looked at her coldly. His mouth twitched as if there were things he wanted to say but didn’t. He took a deep breath.
‘Just go out for a while, Rani. I need some space to think,’ he said, turning away from her and going back into the living room towards Ali.
Rani walked as if floating in a dream. She put on her shoes, grabbed her handbag and keys and walked out the front door without saying goodbye. Her feet took on a mind of their own and she let them lead her, first onto a bus and then a train, and then they walked down a familiar road, coming to a stop in front of a door.
The smell of the pub where she used to work was at once nostalgic while also making her a little sick. It was the afternoon lull. A big-screen TV showed an old football match, while a few punters either stared at the screen or into their glasses. Behind the bar were a couple of bartenders she had never met and she almost wanted to introduce herself and tell them that she worked there once. But they were too involved in their own conversation and anyway, what did she expect them to say in response? She ordered a Diet Coke and took it to a table in a quiet corner, where she sat and stared into space. The commentary of the football match turned into white noise in her ears. Only then did she let her shoulders sink, as silent tears began to flow down her face.