THENEWYORKER,AUGUST17, 2020 51
T
he Bakers held a party in their
flat, and Mrs. Baker told Geeta
that she was to bring the chil-
dren in to say good night to the guests.
So just before eight-thirty she made the
girls undress and pulled their purple
nightgowns down over their heads. Sally,
nine years old, stretched her chubby
fingers skyward. Emma, seven, was less
coöperative, but together they managed
it. The girls smiled sleepily at Geeta
through veils of blond hair. Holding
each by the hand, she walked them up
the corridor toward the smell of rum
and cigarettes.
The guests were scattered across
the living room, most of them reclin-
ing on the Bakers’ couches with the
spent aspect of runners at the end of
a race. Geeta paused with the girls at
the entrance.
From an armchair by the window,
Mrs. Baker surfaced. Tall and thin, she
wore her yellow hair in a plumb-line
ponytail down her black turtleneck
sweater.
“There they are,” she said. “Come
here, my bumblebees.”
Two small hands left Geeta’s, and
then the girls were in their mother’s
arms. She heard Mr. Baker’s voice from
over by the bar, “Geeta has saved our
lives, ladies and gentlemen. Take my
advice. Don’t try to go it alone in this
country. Get an au pair.” Now she could
see him, one elbow on the bar’s bur-
nished surface. He raised his glass in
her direction. “Just don’t steal ours, be-
cause you’ll have to fight us to the
bloody death.”
Laughter dribbled its way across the
room. Mrs. Baker was crouching be-
tween her daughters, arms around their
shoulders. She was drunk, but Geeta
knew that those gray-green eyes could
snap to attention at any moment. She
was not afraid of Mrs. Baker, because
she knew that Mrs. Baker liked her.
She was not afraid of Mr. Baker, ei-
ther, because in matters of child rear-
ing, as in most others, he deferred to
his wife.
“All right, little misses, say good night
to this debauched lot,” Mrs. Baker said.
Emma giggled and said, “G’night.” Sally
stared at the lounging figures, some-
thing imperious in her expression. But
when she spoke it was a plaintive whis-
per. “Good night.”
“And good night to you, Geeta,”
Mrs. Baker said. “We’ll try to be quiet,
but if we disturb you—”
“I will call the police. Good night,
Mrs. Baker,” Geeta said.
There was more laughter. The girls’
mother gave them one last squeeze and
then stood, looking wistful. As the chil-
dren were walking toward her, Geeta
glanced around. Most of the Bakers’
guests were British expatriates like them,
but there were a few Indians, one of
whom was sitting in a chair at her elbow,
away from the rest. There wasn’t sup-
posed to be a chair in that corner. He
must have dragged it over. He had his
forearms on his knees and was watch-
ing her. She glanced away immediately
but retained the impression of a puffy
face, tired eyes behind glasses.
Then she felt the children tugging
at her hands, and she marched them
back to their bedroom, where she locked
the windows, turned down their beds,
pushed their dolls to the side, switched
on the frog-shaped night-light, and
stroked their foreheads before leaving
them to sleep.
Her own bedroom was small but well
appointed. The Bakers had told her that
they were aware of how domestic help
was treated in India, and that they would
sooner drown themselves than treat an-
other human being that way. So Geeta
had sheets and pillows from England
and a cupboard that was much too large
for her few clothes. She had her own
bathroom, and a cell phone, whose bill,
for the past eighteen months, the Ba-
kers had paid.O
n weekdays, her mornings were
hers. The children went to an in-
ternational school, and as long as she
was at the gate by one-fifteen the Ba-
kers didn’t care what she did. Besides
Geeta, they employed a maidservant,
a cook, and two drivers. The cook was
old and beyond the nip of jealousy, and
Geeta barely saw the drivers, but it
was possible that the maidservant re-
sented her for her relative freedom. To
ward off any ill feeling, every so often
Geeta brought home a trinket for the
girl, who was a chatty, dimpled crea-
ture from Jharkhand. Geeta was from
Odisha and had nothing in common
with her, except the fact that people
in Bangalore knew almost nothingabout where either of them came from.
At various times, Geeta had bought
the girl an alarm clock, a pair of leaf-
shaped earrings, and a fake-silver pen-
dant engraved with the words “You Are
My Dear Friend.” She worried that she
might have overdone it a bit with the
pendant, but the girl loved it and loved
Geeta for it.A
few days after the party, Geeta was
walking in the Shivajinagar mar-
ket. She needed nothing but enjoyed
the hustle and the abundance of the
place, the carts of folded handkerchiefs
with crimped edges, the stacks of un-
branded jeans, the enormous steel cook-
ing pots meant for weddings. She’d
paused at a stationery stall and was ex-
amining a fake-gold-nib pen when she
heard her name.
Looking up, she saw a vaguely fa-
miliar man approaching her with a smile.
She did not smile back but waited for
him to clarify in her memory.
The Bakers’, the smoke, the chair by
the corner.
“You walk fast,” he said. He wore a
polyester checkered shirt over his trou-
sers, and on his feet were rubber chap-
pals. He didn’t, in this outfit, look like
someone the Bakers would know.
“You don’t remember me,” he said,
sounding disappointed.
“You were in Mr. and Mrs. Baker’s
house on”—she paused to count
back—“Saturday.”
“That’s right,” he said. His face was
less puffy than she remembered, but his
eyes were just as tired. His name, he told
her, was Srikanth. “How long have you
been working for those people?” he asked.
“What did they call you—an au pair?”
Sensing the delicate contempt be-
hind the question, she answered, “For
some time.”
“And before that?”
“I was working somewhere else.”
Srikanth eyed her with amusement.
“Are all au pairs as talkative as you?”
By now she was thoroughly wary,
which, paradoxically, made her appear
serene. When he told her that he was
looking for a new frying pan, she nod-
ded. When he asked if she wanted to
help him choose one, she looked him
full in the face and lied, “Sorry, they will
be angry with me if I don’t go home.”
But, just before she was out of earshot,