Anita’s hand found mine and we held on tight.
Then angry voices came from upstairs. I could hear furniture being overturned, wood splintering, a man yelling, a woman crying.
There was a stampede of footsteps, then running. And then the men were heading away from where we were hiding. Next came a heavy thud, a crash, then quiet.
After that, all we could hear was muttering and the shuffling of feet. Eventually the front door slammed shut.
When it was finally still, the cook came and opened the cup’ board. I climbed out, but Anita refused to budge. When finally she crawled out, I could see that Anita had wet herself.
What I saw next was this: rice and lentils, flour and spices, enough food for a week, strewn about the floor, a pair of rats nibbling on the spoils as the cook fought with them for what remained. In the next room, the TV was dashed to the floor, its magic window now a hundred shards of glass.
I ran upstairs, saw our room in chaos, our beds overturned, Anita’s movie star posters ripped from the wall.
The worst is what I did not see: Shahanna.
AFTERMATH
When all the other girls come out of their hiding places, and the ones who ran down the lane come back, we all huddle in the TV room. The cook runs off to the sari shop to find Mumtaz.
“I bet it was the Americans,” whispers Anita.
Shilpa spits. “It was the probably the police. Sometimes, they take a girl when Mumtaz falls behind in her payment.”
I swallow and say nothing.
Mumtaz storms into the TV room, her fat mango face slick with sweat.
“Get to work, you lazy whores,” she says.
When no one moves, she shoves Shilpa and she falls to the floor, nearly landing in a pile of broken glass.
“Clean up this mess,” Mumtaz cries. “So we can be back in business tonight.”
She doesn’t say anything about Shahanna.
And when I dare to ask, the only answer comes from her leather strap.
GOSSIP
The next day at the morning meal, Anita says it was the Americans who took Shahanna away. The peanut vendor said he saw the whole thing. He told the cook and she told Anita.
“They probably stripped her naked and left her in the gutter,” she says.
Shilpa says it was the police. A police officer who is one of her regular customers told her it was because Mumtaz didn’t pay up this month.
“They probably beat her and left her for dead,” she said.
I cannot stand to hear them talk about my poor, good friend, and so I rise and leave the table. The last thing I hear is one of them saying that well never know the truth.
I go up to my room, lie on my bed, and pull the thin blanket over my head, because I know at least one truth: if these terrible things have happened to Shahanna, it is all my fault.
IMMOBILE
Now that Shahanna is gone, Mumtaz says we must service her customers as well as our own.
I tell her I am ill, but the truth is that all I do is lie in bed and read Harish’s beautiful American storybook over and over again.
And so Mumtaz sends the men up to me. They come, a parade of them, and I simply lie here unmoving.
TODAY
As I lie in bed this afternoon, I see a rat crawl out of the privy hole. He claws his way up the bedsheet, then scrabbles toward the crust of bread Anita must have left on my pillow.
We look each other in the eye for a moment. Then he runs away, my breakfast between his teeth.
ALL I HAVE LEFT
Anita says Mumtaz is going to sell me to another brothel. Her crooked face is wet with tears. She says that if I don’t get up and join the other girls, I will be gone by nightfall.
“Please,” she begs.
All I want to do is lie in my bed and repeat the beautiful American words from Harish’s book, to say them over and over until one blends into the other, a chant that keeps all other thoughts away.
I can feel Anita shaking my shoulders and I can see her mouth moving in frantic pleas. But her voice is far away.
All at once, there is a smack.
I hear it more than I feel it. Then, vaguely, I am aware of a smarting sensation on my cheek. And I understand that Anita has hit me.
I sit up, as if waking from a long sleep, and see this poor girl with the lopsided face. She is all I have left in the world.
I rise, shaky, as Anita helps me to my feet. She puts her arm around my waist and guides me toward the mirror. Then she gets out her makeup brushes and lip colors and paints my face with such tenderness that I think my heart will break.
A HIDING PLACE
The next day as I am walking down the hall, I hear a voice coming from the closet. “Psst, Lakshmi,” says someone. “In here.”
I stop, open the door, and see Anita inside the shallow cupboard, her body flattened against the wall.
“Next time there is a raid,” she says, “I’m going to hide in here.”
“But, Anita,” I say, “anyone can open this door.”
She holds up a metal lock with numbers on its face.
“I stole it,” she says, her crooked face half smiling, “from the grain bin.”
I don’t understand. Until she points to a hasp on the inside of the door.
“We can lock ourselves in,” she says. “Then no one will be able to open this door.”
ANOTHER AMERICAN
This one comes to the door looking somewhat lost. He is not as tall as the first one, and his eyes and hair are as dark as a normal man’s, but my heart thuds when he points to me and he follows me up the steps.
I wait for him to shake my hand, but he just looks around the room. I wait for him to ask if I want to go to the clean place, but he fumbles through his pants pockets and mutters something in a language I cannot understand.
I know what to do. I lift the corner of the mat on the floor and feel around for the white card the other American gave me. I hold it out to him.
He looks puzzled. He sits down on the bed. He seizes my braid and pulls me down on top of him as the white card flutters to the floor.
It is then that I see the red veins in his eyes and smell the liquor on his breath.
He is not a good American. He is just another drunk.
CALCULATIONS
It has been more than two weeks since Shahanna left.
A new girl is sleeping in her bed, but I take no notice of her.
All I care about is my book of figures.
I pore over the book that shows all my careful penciled entries:
the money I’ve earned
and the money I’ve paid Mumtaz,
for makeup,
for nail paint,
for the rotten rice that is my daily dinner,
for my bed,
for the visits from the dirty-hands doctor.
Today I will show her my calculations, the figures I’ve checked and rechecked and checked again, the numbers that say I will have paid down my debt—by this time next year.
JUST A CUP OF TEA
The street boy is at my door again today. Again he holds out a cup of tea. And again I shake my head no.
I go back to my book of figures and wait for him to leave. But he crosses the room, places the tea on the little table next to my bed and, without saying a word, disappears.
A RECALCULATION
It is against the rules to speak to Mumtaz. It is Shilpa who does the talking for her. But I am standing outside the room where Mumtaz counts her money. Waiting.
I tap on her door frame.
“Shilpa? You miserable girl, get in here,” she says.
I push aside the curtain and enter her darkened room.
She looks up, astonished. I say nothing. I simply hand her my ledger book.
She studies it, glancing up at me, then down at my calculations.
“You are a clever girl,” she says.
I bite my lip.
“But you are forgetting a few things.”
“The medicine I gave you,” she says, licking the tip of her pencil.
“Your clothes …
The shoes on your feet …
The electricity bill.”
She waves her hand toward the ceiling, where the fan chugs dully.
“Who do you think pays for the comforts I provide?” she says.
“The fans? The music? The TV you girls love so much?
Do you think all that is free?”
I bite the insides of my mouth.
“And then there’s interest,” she says.
“You don’t think I gave this money to your family for nothing in return, do you?”
I dig my nails into my palms.
“Of course not!” she cries. “I charge half again as much for interest.”
I blink back the tears welling in my eyes.
“You are a clever girl, but not so clever, are you?” she says.
I simply stare at her.
“Let me do the calculations for you,” she says.
She pretends to be adding and subtracting.
“Yes,” she says. “It’s as I thought. You have at least five more years here with me.”
ANY MAN, EVERY MAN
Here at Happiness House,
there are dirty men,
old men,
rough men,
fat men,
drunken men,
sick men.
I will be with them all.
Any man, every man.
I will become Monica.
I will do whatever it takes to get out of here.
WHATEVER IT TAKES
I have a regular customer now.
He makes me do a nasty thing, but he gives me 10 rupees extra.
I had a drunken customer yesterday. When he fell asleep afterward, I went through his wallet and helped myself to 20 rupees more.
A deformed man came to the door yesterday. I told him I would be with him, for 50 rupees extra.
A WARNING
It is only midmorning, well before the customers usually arrive, but a wealthy man with fine clothes and a shiny gold watch has come to the door. It is too early for others to be awake, so I go to him and ask if he would like to be with me.
He looks me over.
I tell him I will make him happy.
He is considering this when Shilpa comes in and pushes me aside. Her eyes are wide and unblinking, the way they get when she has been drinking. She greets the man by name and wraps her arms around his thick waist. Then the two of them go to her room.
Later, when they are finished, she comes to my room. “Stay away from him, you understand?”
I understand that this wealthy man is one of her regulars. But I will not agree to what she asks. I will do what I have to do to get out of here. I shrug.
“Stay away from the ones that are mine, you hear me?” she says.
I used to fear Shilpa, but I look her in the eye. “No,” I say. “Not if it means a few extra rupees toward what I owe Mumtaz.”
She spits. “You stupid hill girl,” she says. “You actually believe what she’s told you?”
I do. I have to believe.
MONSTER
A new girl arrived today. I know because I heard her sobs through the door of the locked-in room as I passed by on my way to the kitchen.
Mumtaz is a monster, I tell myself. Only a monster could do what she does to innocent girls.
But I wonder. If the crying of a young girl is the same to me as the bleating of the horns in the street below, what have I become?
PASSING THE TIME
Some days, the time between when I awake and the time when the customers arrive is so long and dull and tedious, that I can only lie in bed and watch the spinning of the palm frond machine.
These are the days when I understand Shilpa and the way she loves her liquor.
And so when the street boy comes today, I do not pretend I cannot see him. I look at his caddy and point to the bottle he has brought for Shilpa.
He shakes his head. “This is bad stuff,” he says in my language. “Once you start it, you cannot stop.”
“What do you care?” I say.
He looks down, fiddles with his wire caddy for a bit, then looks back at me, his dark brown eyes as wide and unblinking as Tali’s. Then he takes a cup of tea from the caddy and holds it out to me. ‘Take this instead,” he says.
I shake my head.
He turns to go, then stops. “I can bring you other things,” he says. “I can bring you sweet cakes.”
I sigh and try to remember the time when a sweet cake was enough to make me happy. I turn my face to the wall. He leaves without making a sound, but I can tell from the aroma that fills the room that once again he has left me a cup of tea.
SUSPICION
Shilpa passes by my room with her gold-watch customer, and I try to remember what it was she said the other day when she warned me to stay away from him.
When I told her I would do whatever I could to pay my debt to Mumtaz, she said that I was stupid. Her words come back to me: “You actually believe what she tells you?”
I wonder. What can she mean?
Shilpa is Mumtaz’s spy. She is the one who guards the door to her counting room. She is the one who seems to know Mumtaz’s secrets.
I have seen Mumtaz’s record book; I know how she cheated me. But I wonder. Does Shilpa know something I don’t?
A COCA-COLA
The street boy is at my door again today. He is holding a bottle of Coca-Cola.
“For you,” he says.
I am curious about this drink. The people who drink it on TV are happy when its tiny fireworks go off in their mouths.
“I have no money,” I say to him.
“It’s okay,” he says.
I regard him with some suspicion. “Why are you giving this to me?”
He shrugs.
'And why do you give me tea without asking for anything in return?”
He kicks one bare foot against the other. “We are both alone in this city,” he says. “Isn’t that reason enough?”
He doesn’t wait for my answer. He removes the cap, and the bottle hisses at us like an angry snake. I shy away from it until it has finished its hissing. Then I take the bottle from him and bring it to my mouth. Little bubbles—so tiny they cannot be seen—sneak out from the bottle and tickle my nose. I think I will sneeze, but nothing happens. I take a sip. It is true! A dozen tiny fireworks go off on my tongue. I cannot help but smile.
The street boy is smiling, too.
Then Shilpa calls out to him from down the hall. “Get in here, you lazy boy,” she cries.
He turns to go. “I can bring you other things, you know, whatever you like,” he says. “I know everyone in this town.”
I have no need for other things, I want to tell him. This small gift is more than enough.
PAYING A DEBT
Today the street boy shows up late. He scurries past my door, his eyes downcast. I call out to him and he peeks around the door frame. His brow is cut, his cheek swollen with a big purple bruise.
“What happened?” I say.
“The boss,” he says, touching his face gingerly.
I ask him why his boss would do such a thing. “If I don’t collect for all the drinks,” he says. “Sometimes he takes it out on me.”
We are both quiet for a moment. I open my mouth to tell him I am sorry at the same time he opens his to say it’s okay, and then we are quiet again.
He turns to leave, and I see that his clothes are worn thin, that they are nothing but rags. “Come back tomorrow,” I say.
He looks puzzled.
But I do not tell him that I have decided to borrow from Mumtaz, just this once, so that tomorrow he doesn’t have to face his boss empty-handed.
REVELATION
Shilpa is alone in the counting room when I get there. I tell her I want to borrow 4
0 rupees.
She spits. “You are even stupider than I thought.”
I do not care what this drunken woman thinks of me. I just want enough to pay the street boy what I owe. “What do you care?” I say. “It is my money. My family won’t miss a few rupees.”
She laughs. “You think the money goes home to your family?” she says.
I tell myself she is talking nonsense, the nonsense that comes when she is drunk.
“Bimla may have given your family a little sum when you left home,” she says. “But the rest—the money from the customers—goes to Mumtaz. Your family will never see one rupee more.”
I put my hands to my ears, but still I can hear what she is saying.
“You will never pay off what you owe,” she says. “Mumtaz will work you until you are too sick to make money for her. And then she will throw you out on the street.” I shut my eyes and shake my head from side to side. She is wrong. Because if she is right, everything I’ve done here, everything that’s been done to me, was for nothing.
A KIND OF SICKNESS
It has been three days since I learned the truth from Shilpa. I ran from her, straight to my room, where I was sick to my stomach all day and night. For two days more I lay in bed, too wretched to move. But last night I rose from my bed, put on my makeup, and went back to work.
And today when the street boy comes, I will be ready. Today I will ask him if it is really true that he knows everyone in this town. And today I will show him the small white American card with the flying bird on it.
STUPIDITY
The street boy is standing in the kitchen, and all the girls are gathered around him. He says today is his last day.
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