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“They don’t run away?”
“Shilpa is here of her own choice,” says Shahanna. “She has no debt to Mumtaz. She can leave any time she likes.”
I don’t understand.
“Her mother was in this business and now she is in the business. It is the family trade.”
“And Monica?”
“Monica is going home in a month or so.”
“But still, she could run away before paying off her debt,” I say.
“They say Monica has a child at home.” Shahanna says. “If she runs off Mumtaz will take the child.”
“What would Mumtaz want with a child?”
“She will maim it—cut off a hand, a foot—and sell it to a beggar woman,” she says. “Softhearted people will give an extra rupee or two if you have a sick baby.” And so I consider a world so ugly that a child would be maimed for life to fetch an extra rupee or two. And another world full of brides and marigolds, rain machines and white horses.
Other than the old vegetable peddler, the street boy who sells tea from a wire caddy is the only visitor who comes here during the day.
He has barely a whisker on his face, and he is skinny and dirty, but the girls tease him and flirt with him and tell them they will trade him kisses for tea. He flirts and jokes in return, but never goes to their beds.
I am watching his antics today when he turns to me. “Why do you never buy my tea?” he asks in my language.
I am too shy to answer. If I weren’t, I would tell him that I am saving all my money so that someday I can go home. But I am ashamed to have this boy from my country see me in this shameful place, and so I flee the room and say nothing.
My notebook is nearly full. There are the old equations that my mountain teacher gave me. There are the odd new words I learned on my journey with Uncle Husband. There are pages of calculations, showing my debt to Mumtaz and my earnings so far.
And now there are pages full of the Hindi and English words Harish has taught me. Beautiful words like:
candy,
bread,
cricket,
pen,
crayon,
dress,
bracelet,
radio,
chicken,
cow,
cartoon,
and
remote control.
Shahanna comes in and sees me writing in my notebook. “Don’t let Mumtaz or Shilpa see you with that,” she says. “If they find out you can read and write, they will think you are planning to escape.”
I nod.
“And then they will put you back in the locked-in room.”
Today on my way to the kitchen, I pass by the counting room and see Shilpa buying a bottle of liquor from the street boy. Her hands are trembling as she gives him the money. She swallows half the bottle in one long gulp, then tells the boy to be on his way. He looks at me with furtive eyes as he runs past, and when Shilpa sees me watching, she spits at me and tells me to mind my own business.
Later, I ask Shahanna why Shilpa would drink that hateful liquid.
“She likes it,” she says.
I don’t understand.
“Her mother gave it to her when she was young, so it would not hurt so much when she was with a customer. She says she used to hate it. But now she likes it too much.”
Whenever Harish sees me, he says, in the new language I am learning,
“How are you today?”
I reply, “
Fine, thank you. And you?”
I love the way these new words feel in my mouth. Even if they are not true.
Now Harish is teaching me American words from a new storybook. The book was a present from a white woman who runs a special singing-and-playmg school where Harish goes on Saturdays.
He says the American lady is kind. He says Anita is wrong about the Americans, that they do not shame the children of the brothels. He says this is a story Mumtaz has told her to keep her from running away.
I do not know which of them to believe.
But I do know, from this storybook, that this America is a strange place.
Everyone there is as rich as a king.
The birds there are big as men.
They eat a sweet treat made from snow.
And the children play the kicking game with the black-and-white ball, like the one on TV.
This is the David Beckham game, Harish says.
These are the American words I can say:
Big Bird,
Elmo,
ice cream,
soccer.
Today I learn a new Hindi sentence: “
Don’t
cross the cook or she will spit in your soup.”
Harish says this with a very serious face, and at first I don’t recognize the word
cook.
So he uses his hands to make a stirring gesture. I still don’t get the meaning.
And so he draws the shape of a fat-bottomed woman in his notebook. Then he jumps up, puffs out his stomach, and stomps around the room, his skinny little-boy legs pounding out a perfect imitation of her thundering walk.
“Cook!”
I cry out at last.
Harish throws back his head and laughs.
And I laugh, too.
It is strange to laugh after all these months, odd and unfamiliar. But somehow, not hard at all.
The man who came to my room today was not like the others. He was young and clean and gentle.
He did not simply stand and zip his trousers when he was finished, or fall heavily asleep on top of me the way some do. He didn’t fix his hair in the mirror and walk out without a word.
He held me.
Perhaps it was an accident. Or perhaps he forgot where he was, imagining for a moment he was with his sweetheart.
But I could feel myself, my true self give in to the simple pleasure of being held. His body warmed mine the way the Himalayan sun warms the soil. His skin was soft—like the velvet of Tali’s nose. And his contentment soaked through to me like an evening rain shower.
And so I held him, too.
Slowly, I put my arms around him and allowed them to stay.
Eventually, we pulled apart. I was the last to let go.
He stood and looked at me with something like shyness. “Thank you,” he said. Harish had taught me how to say thank you m his language, but it seemed a paltry word for my debt to this man.
In the days after the hugging man leaves, I consider myself in the mirror. My plain self, not the self wearing lipstick and eyeliner and a filmy dress.
Sometimes I see a girl who is growing into womanhood. Other days I see a girl growing old before her time.
It doesn’t matter, of course. Because no one will ever want me now.
It has been twelve days since the hugging man came.
I have decided to stop counting the days until he comes back.
Everyone here is afraid of Monica’s temper. When the cook put a sad song on the music machine, Monica yanked on her braid until she turned it off. When Anita asked if it was true that she had a child back home, Monica pinched her ear until she howled. And when Shahanna entered her room without permission, Monica threw a pair of shoes at her.
But Monica is also given to strange fits of kindness. Once, when the dirty-hands doctor pushed himself up against me in a back hall, Monica pried him off of me and told him he would have to pay like everyone else. And the other day, she gave Anita a bottle of nail polish, saying she wouldn’t need it when she goes home next month.
And so when I see her watching TV alone, I slip into the room and sit silently nearby, wondering which Monica she is today.
She regards me, then lights a cigarette. “You know how to write, don’t you?”
I do. At home, such a skill is something to boast about. But as Shahanna has told me, here, it is a dangerous thing to admit.
“’My little girl can write,” she says. “I am paying her school fees.” So it is true, the rumor of Monica’s child.
“I paid for her medicine,” Monica says, thrusting her pointy chin in the air. “And for an operation for my father. And for a pair of spectacles for my sister.”
I raise my chin, too.
“I am buying a new roof for my family,” I say.
Monica exhales. “They will thank us,” she says. “They will thank us and honor us when we go home.”
I dare not picture this, a date so far away that it is like a dream.
“My sister wrote and said my little girl hates porridge,” Monica says.
I try to picture this, a feisty little Monica.
“I bet she pinches your sister when she tries to make her eat it,” I say.
Monica looks surprised, then she laughs and pinches my ear, ever so slightly, and we go back to watching a TV world full of brides and white horses.
Today, Harish tells me, is the festival of brothers and sisters. He shows me the rag doll he is giving to Jeena. “I bought it with my own money” he says.
Then he hands me a pencil. It is shiny yellow and it smells of lead and rubber. And possibility.
“For you,” he says.
And then he runs off, his paper kite in his hand. And I am glad because something strange is happening. Something surprising and unstoppable.
A tear is running down my cheek. It quivers a moment on the tip of my nose, then splashes onto my skirt, leaving a small, dark circle.
I have been beaten here,
locked away,
violated a hundred times
and a hundred times more.
I have been starved
and cheated,
tricked
and disgraced.
How odd it is that I am undone by the simple kindness of a small boy with a yellow pencil.
SOMETHING FOR THE DAVID BECKHAM BOY
The next day, I am at the window waiting for Harish to return from school. I see him come down the lane, playing make-believe soccer with a tin can. I tap on the windowpane, and a few minutes later I hear him bounding up the steps.
He walks into our room and I offer him my gift: it is a ball of rags, my old homespun shawl, ripped into shreds and tied in a tight round bundle.
He is puzzled at this bundle of ragged cloth.
“A soccer ball,” I tell him.
He takes the ball of rags and balances it on his toe. He nods his approval. He nudges it around the room. Then gives it a good, solid kick toward the door frame. He spreads his arms wide, like a bird in flight, and calls back a quick thank you over his shoulder.
Then he is gone. I hear the front door close, and I run to the window to watch him turn into a barefoot David Beckham dodging shoppers and rickshaws as he heads down the lane.
I follow him with my eyes for as long as I can. A piece of me has left Happiness House.
It has been thirty days since the hugging man came. I have decided that he is not coming back.
She gave away all her makeup and fancy baubles. She even gave Shahanna the shoes she’d thrown at her. She came to my room to say good-bye, but I hid under the blanket, feigning sleep so she would not see the envy in my heart.
After she left, I found the movie magazine she’d left on my pillow.
That afternoon, the cook put a sad song on the music machine. And we who remain at Happiness House listened all the way through to the end, too unhappy for tears.
By the time Harish comes home today, the sun has set and it is already time for me to go to work. But he takes a minute to teach me two new words before going up to the roof to fly his kite.
The first word is
marbles.
He holds out his hand and shows me the colorful glass balls. He explains, I think, that he was late for our lesson because he was playing marbles with his friends at the American lady’s school.
The other word is
sorry.
He says he is very sad that we can’t have our lesson today. This, he said, is what sorry means.
I ruffle his hair and tell him not to be sad. Anyway, I say, today my head aches too badly to have a lesson.
I lie on my cot, drenched in sweat, struggling to wake up.
I slip into a dream, and Gita and are I playing the hopping’on-one-leg game in the dirt path between our huts. She bends, scoops a stone up from one of the squares we’ve drawn with a stick, then she skips away, her long, black braid swinging side to side, in time with her singsong chant. She turns back and beckons me to follow her. But somehow she has turned into Auntie Bimla singing the same song through black-stained teeth.
I open my eyes and see the place where I live now: a dank room with four beds, four dirty curtains hanging from the ceiling, and iron bars on the windows.
Now I am shaking with cold. I pull the thin sheet around my shoulders, but the trembling goes on. I burrow against the wall, hugging myself, and soon I am sweating again.
It has been like this since last night. Sleeping then waking, fever then chills. Each one in a battle for my body.
Now Harish, in his David Beckham shirt, is standing over me. He puts his hand on my brow. If I could speak, I would beg him to stay with me forever, his cool, cool hand on my forehead. But he disappears. And I am dreaming again. Of flying—on the wings of his kite—high above the snowy, swallow-tailed peak, while he is on the ground below, letting out more and more string, more and more, until he is just a tiny speck.
An angry voice brings me back down to earth. It is Mumtaz.
“Faker,” she says. “Get out of bed.”
I open my eyes and see her standing over me, with Harish next to her, shaking his head. He puts his hand on my brow again and tells Mumtaz something that makes her frown. She waves a hand at him, like she is swatting at a mosquito, and sends him away.
“Have you been washing yourself?” she says. “After the men. Do you wash yourself down there?”
I try to nod, but my head is heavy, achy, a distant thing I cannot control. All I can do is close my eyes.
Now I am in another bed. A kindly woman in white leans over me, swabbing my head with a cool rag. She tells me she will bring me some of the sweet American treat made from snow, then she disappears.
