Secrets and Lies. Jaishree Misra
she said on her first day that she wasn’t related to Lamboo, remember?’ Nimmi queried.
‘Well, that’s clearly a lie, isn’t it? Why would Lamboo take her into her house if they weren’t related, huh? And didn’t Lamboo describe Lily as her relative to you, Sam?’ Zeba asked.
‘She did, actually, I’m sure I didn’t mishear that. Something about her being Lily’s nearest relative after the loss of her parents,’ Sam said, getting up and dusting sandwich crumbs off her navy pleated skirt. She scanned the playground, empty except for their own little group occupying the only shady area under the trees. Delhi in June was as hot as hell and she could see dust lifting off the basketball courts and hanging in the still air. Luckily these were the last two weeks of term before the summer holidays and she would soon be off to the hills with her family. Much as she loved Delhi, she hated the coming season of sandstorms. Already there were days when her throat and nasal passages felt clogged with dust, and she feared greatly for both her father and brother, both asthma sufferers. She cast a look at her watch.
‘C’mon, girls, we don’t want to be late for Gomes. There’s just five minutes left until the bell, and I need to fill my water flask from the cooler on the way to the lab.’
‘Oh it’s only our Gomesey,’ Zeba said lazily, stretching her lissom legs out from under her and tying her long brown tresses into a loose knot at the nape of her neck. ‘He never gets cross. I’ll take care of that.’
Everyone tittered uneasily but Sam’s forehead creased into a small anxious frown again. She had been waiting to have a serious conversation with Zeba about her relationship with their Chemistry teacher. ‘I’ve been meaning to say, Zebs…’ Sam adjusted her tone, trying to sound less sanctimonious. ‘You really must stop this absurd thing before it goes too far. I feel so terribly scared of what might happen, you know.’
But Zeba merely smiled cheekily up at her, amusement making her pretty brown eyes twinkle and dance. ‘Listen, Sami, this “thing,” as you describe it, has been going on for a couple of months now and nothing has happened, has it? Has it?’
‘What do you mean, “nothing”—you mean, like, you haven’t had full-blown sex, yeah?’ Natasha clarified.
Bubbles squealed at the sound of the word ‘sex’, clapping her hands over her ears and giggling uncontrollably. Zeba threw her a disparaging look as Sam tried gamely to continue her counsel. ‘Even if it’s not…sex,’ she cleared her throat, ‘you have been doing…all kinds of things you just shouldn’t with a teacher, Zeba.’
‘Only waist up, Sam, nothing waist down,’ Natasha said in a reassuring tone, adding, ‘and he only went past her bra just the other day.’
Bubbles squealed again but Zeba regally ignored her this time, nodding in appreciation of Natasha’s defence. ‘Anyway, it was Gomes who made the first move, not me,’ she said.
‘Yeah, like that makes a real difference,’ Anita said sardonically.
Natasha put in another mild entreaty on behalf of Zeba in her phlegmatic American drawl. ‘Hey, listen, we all know of Zeba’s irrepressible desire to flirt. Can’t we just let it be?’
‘And what can I do anyway if he keeps flirting with me?’ Zeba asked, emboldened by Natasha’s defence and trying now to sound wounded.
‘Well, if you’re such a victim you could try reporting him, couldn’t you?’ Anita enquired caustically.
Sam cut in hastily, ‘I don’t know about that. We’ll have to think things through before taking such a course of action. Reporting a teacher is a big deal. Gomes will go and lose his job and there’ll be an enquiry and heaven knows what else. Can’t you just try to put an end to it yourself, Zeba? Just tell him he’s too old for you or something.’
‘But right now it’s just so amusing, Sam,’ Zeba giggled. ‘Last week he was leaning over me, to use the pipette, y’know, and, when his hand slipped it landed on my thigh…’
‘If I were you, I’d have screamed my lungs out at that point,’ Anita said sharply.
Zeba looked pityingly at her as though assessing the unlikely prospect of anyone, Gomes or otherwise, making a pass at someone who wore glasses and pigtails.
‘You let him grab your thigh?! Really, Zeba, how can you be such an idiot!’ a horrified Sam exclaimed, ignoring the sound of the bell clanging in the distance, which announced the end of the break.
‘When you’re Zeba, being an idiot is the easy bit, Sam,’ Anita put in drily.
Sam could not bring herself to smile, despite Bubbles and Natasha going off into gales of giggles at that. ‘Just don’t encourage him, Zebs, please!’ she implored.
Zeba got up along with the others, now looking slightly more shame-faced than before. ‘It’s actually not so easy to put Gomes off, you know, Sam…’ she said as they dusted down their uniforms.
‘Why not?’ Anita demanded, picking up her satchel. ‘Give me one good reason.’
‘You see…well, okay, I’ll tell you because I eventually would have anyway. But, listen to this—Gomes says he might be able to get the Chemistry paper for me before the Board Exams. A friend of his is the person who’s going to be setting it. Just think of it…’ Zeba looked around at the group, half pleading and half excited.
There was a sudden silence as everyone stopped walking to look at her open-mouthed.
‘He what?!’ Anita screeched.
‘Oh Zeba, how could you…’ Sam breathed.
‘Listen, I was going to share the paper with you guys, so don’t look at me like that!’ Zeba said.
‘Oh God, Zeba, like that would make it all better. Oh, I just don’t know what to say,’ Sam wailed.
‘Listen, without it I’ll just flunk. And there’ll be no getting to the film institute without a school leaving cert. Then my parents will ground me and there’ll be no outings and no fun, and life just won’t be worth living,’ Zeba said, her voice rising dramatically.
‘We’ll talk about this later—okay? God, there’s the second bell! Now I won’t even have time to go to the loo,’ Sam wailed over her shoulder as she hurried away from the group of friends. Leaving them to wend their way across to the Chemistry lab, she ran towards the water-coolers, nodding absently as she passed a gaggle of seventh graders on their way out of choir practice. They had temporarily suspended their trilling to say hello to her but Sam’s thoughts were miles away as she hastened past them with a serious look on her face. Normally she made it a point to talk to her many fans among the juniors, but today she had not even noticed that she had left them gazing disappointed at her retreating back.
How horribly muddling all this was, Sam considered while filling her water flask. As head girl she really ought to do something about this ghastly mess, but what? Perhaps she ought to let Gomes know somehow that the girls all knew what was going on and that his dirty secret could not be contained any more. Anyone could stumble upon Gomes and Zeba in the lab, which was where—as far as Sam knew—most of their trysts took place.
She ran down the corridor and reached the lab just as her group of friends were walking through the door. By now Sam was perspiring profusely, both from the heat and out of fear. Fortunately the Chemistry lab was the coolest and darkest room in the school, shaded by ancient trees. Set back from the Edwardian building that housed all the classrooms, it had once been the outside kitchen of the old convent that had since acquired a brand-spanking-new stainless-steel canteen indoors. Converting a kitchen to a lab must have been easy, Sam had observed when she had first set foot in this building. The shelves of colourful spices had been replaced by bottled chemicals and the sink now bled the pink juice of potassium permanganate crystals rather than the blood from meat. The faintly unpleasant smell of hydrogen sulphide hung over everything now, though that apparently hadn’t been much