Free We Are Not in Pakistan by Shauna Singh Baldwin

vacant cubicle. The roar of her vacuum fills empty hallways, sucking up dirt. She straps on golden yellow kneepads to kneel and polish the expanse of wood floors in corporate meeting rooms.The white fluorescence hums, “Good money, good money.”
    That’s what André said when he gave her the card. “It’s good money.” Said it kindly, having printed off three late-fee notices in a row to slip beneath her door. Naina looked at the card, heart falling, realizing she was being given an option the family would find even less to their liking; the family is not of that caste of people who clean for others.
    But André was being kind, and he did not know the family or its deep disgust for people who clean. And so Naina looked past the family and called the number on the card.
    â€œIt’s just temporary,” she told the baby. “Till you are ready to come into the world.”
    Emptying trash, she wonders at what point in the past four or five years had the cleaning become permanent? Become an important job that deserves a dedicated army instead of a crew or two? She can aspire higher with her college degree — anyone in the family would. But she’s used to this now, it gives her mind space as her hands move, and no one demands she wear a dress or pants or hide her long black hair under a khaki cap.
    It’s important work that must be done each night to offset the white-collar crimes of the day.
    Stanford wore a white collar, even in those days, when they were just students. And a suit. To class. They met at a Mmuffin stand and her love reached out by itself, extended beyond the family to enfold him, when he admitted to feeling as foreign in Toronto as she did. It took months for her to understand that he felt foreign because of “all these people from other countries coming to Canada, taking over all we’ve built.” It was Stanford who rented the apartment above the boulangerie, winking at André as he rolled out his bearskin rug, set his poufy chair before his stereo. Rented it because he said it made him feel like a thief every time he had to park a block away from her home so Daddyji wouldn’t find out she was dating a gora.
    Daddyji found out, of course. Found out when her belly began growing. Her mother told Daddyji, “This is Canada, these things happen.”
    â€œBut not to my daughter,” raged Daddyji. “Have you taught her no better?”
    Then Naina saw her mother’s face close, close to Naina like the door her father slammed in her face.
    After graduation, Stanford took his stereo, his poufy chair and his bearskin rug and moved to Seattle, gambling on a free-trade future without encumbrances. “Mistakes happen,” he said. “You take responsibility, you move on. I’ll send you money when the child comes.”
    He never did, for the child has never been delivered.
    He probably thinks Naina got rid of it. Stanford, proud wearer of the yuppie label every day of the eighties, reads the
Wall Street Journal,
not the
National Enquirer
or the
Journal of Medical Research.
    Who sent you, baby? Where shall I deliver you?
    Naina spends her mornings with her swollen feet up on the radiator, watching snow sail down on Edgewood Street, imagining tropical breezes. “You’re so smart, baby. No reason to come out into this weather.” She pats her stomach as a ring quakes the cordless phone.
    â€œThat woman I told you about?” Dr. Johnson sounds surprised. “She called again. She still thinks she can help you. She’s so insistent, Naina, I think you should see her. I’ll tell her she must come here. It can’t do any harm. It may address the psychological effect this is having on you.”
    â€œI’m fine, I don’t need to see anyone.”
    â€œNaina, listen to me! We’ve tried everything else for your case.”
    â€œI’m not a case.”
    â€œWell, you will be a case if this