I took Raj and the baby home at around 2:00 p.m. There was a lot to carry: Raj’s things, the baby’s things, and several vases of flowers. We did not have the car seat yet, so Raj carried the baby in her lap.
Raj warmed to the role of mother right away. She sang to the baby in Hindi and bathed him lovingly each morning in a small tub Billo had given her. Raj seemed happy in those days, content to finally have the baby with her and to take care of him. Part of me felt anxious because taking care of such a tiny person seemed like a huge responsibility. But Raj was a good mother, and she seemed to know what to do right from the start.
I took the first couple days off to stay with Raj and the baby. Once back at work, I couldn’t wait to go home to see how Raj and the baby were doing. Sometimes I would call Raj from my office to ask if there was anything she needed. I felt so proud to have a son that for a whole month I was walking on air.
Subhash’s arrival in our lives proved to be a great learning period. We were unaware of certain aspects of caring for a baby. For instance, at night we would feed him milk from the bottle then put him to sleep. However, ten minutes after putting him in his crib, he would start crying. Raj and I would go to his room, pat him on the back, and try to put him to sleep, but he would always wake up again with a cry. We fed him, so why was he crying? We did not know what to do. One day, Mr. and Mrs. Gilreath came to see Subhash at our apartment, and while Mrs. Gilreath held Subhash, she noticed that he was crunching his legs towards his stomach. Mrs. Gilreath, a nurse, mentioned that he had colic. “Does he cry in a low short scream?” she asked. We confirmed this. “Yes, he definitely has colic,” she said.
“What is colic?” I asked.
“It is something that happens when a baby has too much air going into his mouth from sucking on the bottle. The air has to come out, which causes him to cry. Don’t you know you are supposed to burp him?”
“No, what does burp mean?” we asked.
“Well, it is very common for a baby to burp, Kris. After you feed him, you hold him close to your shoulder and pat his back until he burps. This helps him get the excess air out.”
“Gee, we didn’t know,” I said.
Mr. Gilreath just laughed. “That’s very common. Call Subhash’s pediatrician, Kris. He may prescribe medicine.”
Subhash was quite chubby, but he loved to eat and was always smiling. Raj, strict with his feeding schedule, would always scold me whenever I tried to feed him too much. I was lenient, and whenever he cried, I would feed him. “No!” Raj would correct me. “This is not his feeding time.”
When he was around ten months old, Subhash weighed close to thirty pounds. Mr. Gilreath just died laughing when he saw how chubby Subhash was.
“Look at this double-breasted guy!” he said.
Indeed, Subhash looked as if he had breasts. Once, during a visit to the pediatrician, the doctor said, “Boy, your son is growing so well. Maybe you need to put him on a diet.”
We all laughed and joked about it, but Subhash just loved to drink his Similac milk and to eat the baby food whenever Raj or I fed him. He always wanted more and more.
A few years earlier, I’d learned that a person only needed a four-year degree relating to the sciences to become a medical technologist. Much of Raj’s coursework from her zoology degree matched the medical technology program requirements. She only needed to complete a one-year internship in a hospital lab, which offered a stipend of $200 a month. She agreed to try it, and in September 1972, she started her rotation in the pathology lab at St. Elizabeth Hospital after dropping Subhash off at the Toddler’s Inn daycare managed and staffed by the hospital.
Raj’s first assignment was to draw blood from patients, yet she did not feel comfortable sticking patients with the needle. It was especially difficult for her to draw blood from the little children in the Pediatrics Department. They would cry, and it reminded her too much of her own son. Within two weeks, one of her supervisors started giving her a hard time. Raj had requested to be assigned to a different department instead of Pediatrics because she was uncomfortable drawing blood from the little ones.
The supervisor said, “It is not your job to direct me what to do. In the lab, you are Raj. You are not Mrs. Bedi. You are not going to get any preferential treatment because of Mr. Bedi’s position.”
This statement hurt Raj. She did not expect special treatment. She was only trying to do her job, but she was new in the work environment and sticking children with needles bothered her. Raj said no more about it, but the supervisor continued giving her a hard time. Raj did not share her troubles with me then, but I noticed she was unhappy when I picked her up at the end of her shift.
“What’s the matter, Raj?” I asked one day. “What’s going on?”
We were in the convertible on the way back to the apartment, and for a moment Raj
