Fifteen Lanes (14 page)

I’d have to make up a story about why I thought it likely Shami would even eat fruit. That didn’t worry me. Most of what I said to Ma was lies or half-truths, as was most of what she said to me. Sometimes, if Ma lied hard enough, I could make myself believe her. I don’t think Ma ever believed my lies, though. I think when you get bigger your imagination gets smaller, or maybe Ma just didn’t have the energy for pretending.

Shami finished the dish and began noisily sucking juice
off his fingers. I handed the dish back to Fat-auntie. Shami smiled at her. She fought a losing battle to hold back her own smile, which flooded her face like a monsoon rain.

“He’s a beautiful child,” she said.

“Yes,” I agreed without embarrassment, because it was true, yet counted for so little. A boy needed only to be strong, and Shami wasn’t that.

“Shami strong,” said Shami, reading my thoughts as he so often did.

“Of course you are,” said the woman, exchanging a look with me.

“Shami strong,” Shami repeated firmly.

“Do you know what time it is, Auntie?”

She nodded to a clock on the wall.

It was later than I’d hoped. Ma rarely got up before one, but when she did, she’d expect to find Shami at home, either asleep under the bed or playing with Deepa-Auntie. No matter where Shami and I spent the night, I always took him home before leaving for school. I’d told Deepa-Auntie where we were going. I gave her instructions to tell Ma I’d taken Shami for a walk because his cough had made him restless. Ma would see through the deception in an instant. I would never willingly miss school. If we weren’t back by one she’d try her best to beat the truth out of me. She wouldn’t succeed. It had worked when I was a child but I was more stubborn now.

Parvati had agreed to walk Aamaal to school, which was kind of her, considering we’d both had another restless night. She had a new boyfriend who pumped gas at a station not far from our street. He’d told us we could sleep behind the station building, but halfway through the night his supervisor, alerted
by Shami’s coughing, had discovered us and chased us off. It was getting harder and harder to find a safe place. If Shami were not so sick I’d have asked Ma for money to rent space in a room. Lots of families did that, several families together in a room not ten feet square. The rooms were cramped and unventilated but it was better than sleeping on the street. Instead I hoarded every rupee I could squeeze out of her for trips to the doctor and herb-filled poultices for his chest. Ma didn’t even seem to care about him anymore. She never suggested he stay with her at night. Aamaal was the only one she noticed.

“Shami pee pee,” said Shami, interrupting my thoughts.

“All right.” I’d seen a washroom near the entrance downstairs. I stood up and took his hand. Just then a nurse poked her head out of the office door and called our number.

“It will have to wait, baby. Can you hold it in?”

Shami furrowed his brow. I took that for an affirmative and led him through the crowd to the doctor’s office. We entered a tiny waiting room with two vinyl-cushioned chairs and one metal-and-plastic one. The nurse sat in the metal chair and reached for a clipboard. She directed us to sit as well. I pulled Shami onto my lap but he wiggled off and climbed onto his own chair. It was covered in bright red fabric that looked like leather but wasn’t. Shami pressed his finger into the cushion and giggled in wonderment when it regained its shape.

“Why are you here?” asked the nurse.

As if on cue, Shami started to cough violently. The nurse looked alarmed, though she must have dealt with this kind of sickness many times.

“How old is he?” she asked.

“Two and four months.”

She looked surprised. “He looks younger. I thought under a year. And what is the patient’s name?”

“Shami,” said Shami.

I added our family name and answered her other questions with the lies I’d rehearsed.

She had him stand on a scale and weighed him. His weight had dropped since our last visit to a doctor two weeks ago. I bowed my head in shame, though the nurse couldn’t have known. Finally she told us to wait and disappeared through an inner door, where I knew from experience the doctor would be finishing up with another patient.

Ten minutes later the nurse reappeared and ushered us into the examining room. The doctor was a woman. She looked around the same age as Ma but years younger at the same time. Her glossy black hair hung loose around her shoulders. Her back was straight, her eyes clear. The first time I’d encountered a woman doctor, I was surprised to discover women could be doctors, but now I knew they were as common as men, at least at the free clinics.

Familiar with the routine, I lifted Shami onto her examination table and took the wooden chair next to it. She sat on a rolling chair that allowed her to roam the empty space between her desk on the far wall and us. She slid up next to me and grinned. It made me nervous to have her so close.

“So, who have we here?” she asked, reading the chart.

“This is Shami. He has a cough with blood. My name is Noor. I’m his sister.” While she’d asked her question in Hindi, I’d answered her in English, for the same reason I’d put on my school uniform that day. She might know my caste from my family name, if not my too-dark skin, but I would do everything I
could to give her the impression I was from a respectable family.

“Where are your parents, Noor?”

“My father is dead. My mother is sick. She wanted to come today but she was too weak.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. When did your father die?”

I didn’t hesitate. I’d told this lie many times. “Three years ago. He had a heart attack.”

“I see. And what’s wrong with your mother?”

“She has a fever. It’s probably just a virus.” I blanched, realizing what I’d just said. In our neighborhood a virus meant only one thing. “Like the flu,” I added, “or a bacterial infection.”

“A bacterial infection?” She had a mischievous gleam in her eye. It made me feel even more jittery. “Or a virus. Well, that covers it, doesn’t it? How old are you, Noor?”

“Fifteen,” I lied again. I’m not even sure why I told that lie. Fifteen was no better than my real age, twelve and a half. Either way, I was still a minor with no right to make any decisions for myself, much less my brother.

“And you go to school. What standard?”

“Nine.” This was only a minor lie. I was in eight, which was correct for my real age. I couldn’t say that though because nine was already a year behind for my fake age.

The doctor gave me an appraising look. “Your English is very good. You must study hard.”

I didn’t know how to answer this as my lie suggested the opposite.

“I’m trying to catch up,” I finally said. “I got sick last year and had to repeat.”

“Hmmm, a lot of sickness in your family. What were you sick with?”

I stalled again. She asked more questions than most free clinic doctors. Usually they were too busy. No wonder she had such a crowd waiting outside. I considered pointing that out.

“Pneumonia.” Shami had had pneumonia several times, so I was familiar with the symptoms. If she wanted to continue the interrogation, I was well prepared.

She just gave me a long look before standing up and moving over to Shami.

Taking the stethoscope from around her neck, she began the all-too familiar routine of checking him out. Even Shami knew what to do, taking deep breaths, which brought on another fit of coughing, leaning forward and back, opening his mouth, tilting his head. He followed every instruction almost before she asked.

She turned to me. “How long did you say he’s been coughing up blood?”

“It started yesterday.”

She pinned me with penetrating eyes. I felt myself sweat. I reassured myself that my anxiety didn’t show on my face. I was a master at hiding my feelings. Her loud exhale told me she knew I was lying. My gaze didn’t waver.

“He’s significantly underweight,” she said.

“He’s a picky eater.” I felt guilty, remembering the fruit.

“Is that true, Shami?” she asked in Hindi. Her voice was light but I saw through her act. “Don’t you like to eat?”

“Shami eat manga an’ napple,” said Shami.

“Oh, I love manga an’ napple!” the doctor exclaimed.

“Shami like ’nana,” said Shami.

“Me too!” said the doctor. “You and I must go out for lunch sometime, Shami. I can see we have the same culinary tastes. You relax now. I’m going to talk to Noor.”

“Where do you live?” She sat down again and picked up the chart and her pen.

“I told the nurse.”

“It says here you live in Bandra.” She named the upper-middle-class neighborhood I’d laid claim to. It was nowhere near Kamathipura, but familiar to everyone in the city for the number of Bollywood stars who lived there. It was also close to this clinic. I didn’t want to raise the slightest suspicion that I’d traveled halfway across town because I’d already been to every free clinic near my own neighborhood.

Her pencil stayed poised above the chart. “You live in Bandra?” Her distrust was badly concealed. The rich were so often poor liars. It made me wonder how they were so successful.

Though I was lying, I felt angry to be disbelieved. I didn’t answer. She glanced up. Her lips twitched as she tried to maintain a serious expression. Suddenly I was reminded of Parvati.

“Reclamation,” I amended my story. It was a mixed neighborhood on the edge of Bandra, mostly squatters’ shacks. I could have lived there. Despite my worn, too-tight uniform and scuffed shoes, I was still a school-going girl.

She put down the pen. What did she think she knew? Was my mother’s profession printed on my forehead? It wasn’t her business anyway. Her job was to give me the medicine. No wonder her line of patients moved so slowly. Did she think we had all day to pour out our life stories so she could spice up her boring life with our desperation?

“And you’re fifteen, you said?”

I stared at my feet. I could feel her watching me with the intensity of a raven, as if my words were morsels of food and
she was just waiting for me to drop one. I hoped I looked humble, like a beggar. I didn’t want her to see the tiger inside me.

There was a long pause as she waited for me to say something.

“What do you say we try this again, Noor,” she said gently.

I didn’t know if it was her tone, or the stress of too many doctors, too many close calls with Shami’s life. A tear slid down my nose and dropped on my knee, and then another. I wiped them away as quickly as they fell but they wouldn’t stop coming. It was not worth it, all this trouble for a few days’ worth of medicine. I was so tired of it all. Shami’s sickness consumed us both. I could have no life while I watched his slip away.

I heard her chair roll toward me and suddenly her arms were around me, hugging me tight. The shock of it made me freeze; my belly seized, trapping my breath inside.

“Let’s see if we can’t help Shami together,” she said. Her face was close to my hair. I’d oiled it only yesterday but still I feared lice would leap from my head to hers. She rubbed my back and gradually my breath returned.

“I don’t know how to help him,” I said truthfully.

She slid back and lifted my chin so she could see my face. “An accurate medical history is a good place to start. How long has he been sick?”

I swiped my hand across my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to regain control. A million lies flooded my brain. I could have told any one of them.

“From the day he was born.”

We talked for a long time after that. I told her everything, or most things, anyway. I didn’t tell her about Parvati, or my dream of becoming a doctor myself, or being a Devadasi. But I
told her what Ma did. She asked many questions about Shami’s birth. I said only that it was a home birth but I did my best to remember every illness he’d had since then and gave a faithful account. I told her we didn’t have any place to cook proper meals. I was grateful when she accepted that and didn’t ask for details. I told her Shami slept on the floor and let her figure out the significance of that. I’m not sure she could have imagined it, even if I’d explained. I didn’t tell her we slept on the street, wherever I could find a place. I think she knew. Her raven eyes glistened with unshed tears. She seemed shocked by what I told her, as if she didn’t live in Mumbai and drive by people living under bridges every day and see others digging through garbage to survive. She was like the people who took guided tours through our neighborhood, capturing our images with their cameras while failing to actually see us. We were no more real than a Bollywood film. Still, I was amazed by how stupid smart people could be.

Finally, she asked if she could test Shami’s blood. I knew what she wanted to test it for. I told her what I’d told all the previous doctors: I had no money for the test, and it wouldn’t matter anyway because we couldn’t afford the drugs. She said there were ways to cover the cost if Shami was registered with an NGO. I’d heard about these NGOs that took children like Shami away from their families. They shoved all the sick children in big homes together, separated from everyone who loved them. How was that a better life for my brother? I agreed to talk it over with my mother. It was yet another lie.

I was on the point of leaving when a male doctor poked his head in the door. It startled me, not just because of the intrusion. I had the unsettling feeling that I knew him. I kept my
back to him and crossed my arms over my chest so he couldn’t see the school crest on my shirt. Was it possible I’d taken Shami to him in the past?

“Are you just about done here, Karuna? Our meeting has started.”

“I’ll be along shortly. You’re on the board of Mercy House, aren’t you? Do you know if there’s any space for a new admission?”

I felt the doctor’s eyes on my back but didn’t turn.

“How old is he?” There was a pause. The question was directed at me.

“Almost two and a half,” said the lady doctor.

“I’ll look into it.”

They were discussing putting Shami away as if it were as routine as prescribing a pill. The male doctor left, but a yawning gorge had opened inside me. The lady doctor and I were not on the same side.