by Shobha Rao
Her breathing became ragged; she got up and drank a glass of water. She went to the window. It was raining; streaks of water maundered down the glass. She remembered then, looking into the dark, the rain, something that had happened long ago, a few months after she and Savitha had met.
It had been the monsoon season. She and Savitha had gone to the market. It had been a Sunday, and most of the shops were closed, but the tobacco shop was open. Poornima’s father had rolled the last of his leaves the previous evening, and so, before lying down for his nap, he’d told her to go to the market and fetch him two rupees’ worth of tobacco. Savitha had arrived just as Poornima had been getting ready to leave, though both of them, of course, had been barefoot—Savitha because she had no shoes, and Poornima because her flimsy sandals (passed down from her mother) would’ve been useless if it started to rain, getting caught, or ripped, in the muddy sludge. Still, they had taken their time walking through the market—the sky overhead had been overcast, but there was no rain. Not yet.
Poornima remembered that they had stopped and peered into the window of the bangle shop, with its row after row of colorful glass bangles, a color to match every shade of sari. “Can you imagine,” Poornima had said, breathless, “having ones to go with every sari?” Savitha had only laughed, and had led her past the paan shop and the dry goods store and the grain mill, all of them closed.
They’d entered the produce market, and the vendors had eyed them sleepily. They squatted on the ground, bits of dirty plastic tarp held at the ready, for the coming rain, to cover their heads and their capsicums and their squashes and their cilantro. They’d been able to tell that Poornima and Savitha had no money to spend—vendors always could. At one turning—as they’d followed behind a bullock cart hauling unsold produce back to the farm—a tiny round eggplant had fallen out of the cart. Savitha had squealed with delight and run and picked it up. “Look, Poori! What luck.”
Yes, Poornima had thought, what luck.
They’d been nearly home when the rain had started. Poornima had thought they should run for it, but Savitha had pointed to a nearby sandalwood tree. She’d said, “No, let’s wait under there.” And so they’d huddled together under the tree’s branches and watched the downpour. It had been a squall, and Poornima had known it would soon pass, but she’d hoped—in the way she’d once hoped that a handful of fruits and cashews would save her mother from cancer, from death—that the rain would last the rest of the days of her life. Why? She couldn’t say. It hadn’t made sense. But it was true: Even as they’d both shivered with cold. Even as their hair and their clothes had dripped with rain. Even as her father had waited, and she’d known he’d be furious when he saw the damp tobacco.
There had been a gust of wind then, and the leaves of the sandalwood tree had shuddered, and cold, fat raindrops had splashed down their necks and backs. Tickled their scalps. They’d laughed and laughed and laughed.
The rain had poured harder. Come down in relentless sheets. Savitha had put out her arm and drawn Poornima deeper under the tree. To protect her from the rain. At the time, Poornima had shivered and felt it to be true: she did feel protected, she felt safe.
But now, standing at the window of an empty apartment, in Seattle, holding an empty glass, Poornima laughed, half mocking, her lips trembling, her eyes growing hot, and she thought, How foolish. How foolish we were, how foolish you were, she bristled, to think you could protect me from rain. Against such a thing as rain. As if rain were a knife, as if it were a battle. And you, my shield. How foolish you were, how stupid you are, Poornima thought, nearly weeping with rage. With anger at Savitha’s ignorance, her infuriating innocence. To find herself in this place, passed like a beedie between the hands of men. Don’t you see, we were never safe. Not against rain, not against anything. And you, she railed, all you thought to do was huddle under that indifferent tree. As if, against rain, against my father, against what remained, all we had to do was stand closer. Stand together. As if, against rain, against fate, against war, two bodies—the bodies of two girls—were greater than one.
“You fool,” she cried into the dark, and bolted out of the apartment into the night.
5
It took her more than five hours to find the building Mohan had showed her. She was soaked. She’d left her apartment a little before a muddled sunrise, and now it was nearly eleven o’clock. It had stopped raining, but she and her clothes were still damp, cold; she settled on the stoop of the building and waited. Of course, she knew Mohan would come to check on her, but her only strategy was to blink her eyes and proclaim innocence. “Oh,” she planned to say coyly, “I didn’t know I had to be here. It’s my first time shepherding, after all.”
In the first hour, only two people came out of the building, neither of them Indian. After the first person came out, she slipped in through the swinging door and considered knocking on every apartment, but when she snuck up to the top of the first flight of stairs, she peeked around the corner and saw an old Indian man sitting in a drab room, his chair tilted toward the half-open door. He was seemingly absorbed in the television show, but Poornima knew better—he was policing the stairwell. She abandoned her plan and went outside again. In the second hour, a man parked a small lorry in front of the building and came to the door holding a box in his hands. He pushed one of the buttons and said, “Package,” into the wall, and the door began to buzz. He went inside.
Poornima tried the same. She avoided the button that read 1B, as that was what the door of the Indian man’s apartment had read, but she pressed the buttons to the other apartments. Most of them didn’t answer or weren’t home. One did answer, and Poornima, in her accented English, said, “Are you Indian, please?” The other end was silent for a moment, and then a woman’s voice said, “What is this about? I just got a package.”
Poornima sat back down on the stoop.
She waited until five o’clock in the evening and then started on the hour’s walk home, made even longer because she got lost twice. She showered when she got back to the apartment and made rice, and when she heard the knock on the door, she knew it was Mohan, come to check on her. He hardly stayed five minutes; he scanned the room, and then her face, and then he left.
The next day, she was smarter: she took a packet of rice for lunch and got to the building at seven in the morning. She did this for three days, and finally, on the fourth, she realized she must be there during the wrong times, and so on the fourth day, she got there midafternoon and stayed late into the night. This time, she knew for certain that she would miss Mohan, and that simply pleading ignorance might not be enough; she decided she’d buy something on her way home, something she’d desperately needed, to show for her absence. She hoped it would be enough.
A car slowed in front of the building. Poornima crept into the shadows, away from the streetlights and the ones spilling from windows, and waited. She couldn’t see the driver, but someone got out of the car, and as they approached the building, Poornima saw that it was Madhavi. She walked slowly up the drive, bent somehow from the last time she’d seen her. Poornima waited until the car pulled away, and when she revealed herself, feigning concern and delight, she saw that Madhavi’s expression was grayer, more tired under the sallow bulb hanging over the entranceway, or maybe from the long day of cleaning. When she noticed Poornima, Madhavi’s eyes widened. “Akka! What are you doing here?”
Big sister. She’d never called her big sister before. “How are you? Are they treating you well? Are you getting enough to eat?”
Madhavi shrugged. “Why are you here?”
“Come,” Poornima said, hoping there was a back way, “let’s talk inside. Have some tea.”
Her face darkened. Her voice grew panicked. “No. No, you can’t. No one is allowed inside. They warned us.”
Poornima made her eyes go kind. She nearly smiled. “It’s me, after all. Mohan showed me where you lived, just so I could visit you.”
“He did?”
“
Didn’t he tell you? Anyway, how are you getting along? Do you live with other girls? Are they nice to you?”
She shrugged again. “They’re all right.”
“Are they Telugu? What are their names?”
Madhavi looked around and behind her. “I’m not supposed to tell.”
“You act like I’m a stranger,” Poornima said gaily. A car drove past, and they watched its red taillights disappear down the street. Poornima’s vision burned with that red; she felt Madhavi shivering beside her. “Is one of them named Savitha?” she asked.
“No.”
Poornima searched her face. “Are you sure?”
“I’m cold, Akka. I’m so cold. I want to go inside.”
Poornima gripped her arm. “I’m no stranger; you know that, right? I may be the only one who’s not a stranger.”
Madhavi nodded and ducked into the building.
* * *
When she got home, after stopping at the corner store, Mohan was waiting for her. He was making coffee. “Where were you?”
“Coffee? This late?”
“Where were you?”
“How long have you been here?” she asked.
“Where? At this hour?”
“I needed these,” she said, holding out a packet of sanitary pads.
“It doesn’t take an hour to go two blocks.”
“I stopped to rest at the children’s park. Cramps.” She grinned sheepishly, tilting her face just enough.
“No more going out,” he said, pouring the coffee into a strange metal cup with a lid. “I’ll pick up what you need from now on.” He asked for the keys—both for the front entrance and the door to the apartment—and pocketed them. He then pointed to the pot on the stove. “There’s some left. If you want.”
There was enough for nearly a full cup of coffee, but Poornima saw, after he’d gone, that he’d also left his coat. When she lifted it, a small book fell out. She went through the other pockets and found only change, a few receipts. She looked again at the book. It was odd—unlike any she’d ever seen. After her wide, flat accounting books, this one was minuscule, hardly bigger than her hand. When she opened it, she found that none of the lines went to the edge of the page; they all stopped short, and each was spaced differently. How strange, she thought. Was it the Gita? No: this one had an author, and an English title. It was tattered, clearly read through many times, but one page in particular was especially frayed, dog-eared and worn.
Poornima turned to this one and began to read.
* * *
The next morning, after a long night’s sleep—even after drinking the coffee—Poornima considered her options. She hadn’t learned much during her time in Seattle, but she’d learned this: Savitha was not living in the same apartment as Madhavi. Madhavi had been scared, undeniably, but she hadn’t been lying. So where was Savitha? She pondered that question; she’d pondered it for years. Mohan, too, she’d learned something about: she’d convinced him to show her where Madhavi lived, certainly, but she knew, just as she knew Savitha was here, here, that she could never—no matter how many lies she told, no matter how pathetic she looked—convince him to show her where any of the other girls lived.
And there was one other thing she’d learned about Mohan: she’d learned that he liked poetry.
She studied the dog-eared poem—called “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”—a few times and decided that she hated it. Or at least, she hated what she understood of it. The first few lines didn’t even seem to be in English, though the letters were the same. And though she had no idea who Michelangelo or Lazarus or Hamlet were, the person writing the poem—presumably the man with the unpronounceable name in the title—seemed weak to her. Utterly feeble. Why was he writing the poem? Why bother? Why not just come right out and ask his question, whatever it was? Then no one would have to drown at the end. Regardless, she read it with great interest, wondering what Mohan saw in it.
When he came to check on her that evening, she held it out to him, along with his coat. “You left them here last night,” she said.
He took them, seeming bewildered, and stuffed the book back into one of the pockets of the coat. Poornima waited for him to reach the door, and then she said, “It’s about regret, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“That ‘Love Song’ poem. The one you like so much.”
He half turned; Poornima saw his grip on the doorknob loosen. “You read it?”
“Why not? I like poetry.”
“You do?”
“I’m starting to.”
He turned to face her; he took a step deeper into the apartment. “Somewhat. But it’s also about courage,” he said, after some hesitation. “It’s about the struggle to find courage.”
“And if we don’t? What happens? We drown?”
He smiled. “In a way.”
“You don’t think this, this Puffrock is weak?”
In that moment, Mohan’s eyes flashed with a sadness so intense, so violent that Poornima felt it—the sadness, the violence—flare against the back of her own eyes. Then it receded just as quickly as it had come. “I think he’s just like you and me,” he finally said.
Poornima looked at him. No, she thought, you’re wrong. You’re wrong. He’s nothing like me.
6
Madhavi might still be able to help her.
That was what Poornima considered that night, after Mohan left. She couldn’t be certain, but Madhavi, isolated as she was, as all the girls must be, might still have been taken to a different location initially—as a kind of holding cell, until space opened up in her current flat—or maybe the girls sometimes rode together, and she’d seen one or another being dropped off at various other apartment houses, or maybe the girls talked, or one of them mentioned a street, a neighborhood, anything.
It was her only chance.
She waited all the next day. Since she no longer had keys, she surveyed her own building and found an unlocked back way, by the trash bins, and she had to leave the door to her apartment open. She estimated that Mohan nearly always arrived between four and eight P.M. What did he do during the day? How many shepherds did he monitor? How many girls did they own? Did he know Savitha? She had answers to none of these questions; she knew only that she had to wait until after eight, after his departure, before setting out for Madhavi’s.
He was late that evening. He arrived near nine o’clock, offering no explanation for his delay, and yet, in some way, he seemed more conscious of her, softer in the way he studied the room, her face, the disarray of the sleeping bag, her few things spread across the floor. It was as if their conversation about the poem had awakened in him the possibility of Poornima, the possibility of her existing as anything other than a purveyor of girls.
“Need anything?” he asked.
“Vegetables.”
“I’ll bring some when I come tomorrow.”
“Stay for dinner.”
His gaze darkened, perhaps with revulsion at the request, perhaps in surprise, though Poornima understood suddenly, very distinctly, as though after a clarifying rain, that here was a man who was very alone, who knew very little beyond that aloneness. He left soon afterward without a word.
* * *
It was after midnight when Madhavi was dropped off at her flat. Poornima waited again in the bushes, at the border of the apartment house in which Madhavi lived and the one next to it, to the north. This time, the girl seemed unfazed by Poornima’s abrupt appearance as she passed through the thin light of the entranceway. Poornima looked at her and saw that there was no point in asking how she was doing; it was obvious that she had hardened. That in the space of a week, she had reached a slow and stoic resignation. A week. How little time it takes to sever the spirit, Poornima thought, if the spirit is disposed to severing. Above them, clouds obscured the moon, the stars; a nearby streetlight flickered.
Madhavi sighed. “Are you here about that girl again?”
“You met her? Do you know
something?”
“Please, Akka, stop coming around. If anybody sees us—”
“Look, just tell me if you know where the other girls live. Any of them.”
“I don’t.”
“They’ve never dropped someone off at another apartment house? You’ve never ridden with another girl? Talked to another girl? They’ve never taken you to another location?”
Madhavi shrugged and looked away.
“You have, haven’t you? Who? Where does she live? What did she say?”
“Not another girl. Just…” Here Madhavi trailed off, and Poornima nearly burst; she clenched her fists to keep from shaking it out of her.
“Just what?” she asked gently, steadying her voice.
“Well, he took me to a room once. Different from the ones we clean.”
“Where was this room? Were there other girls in it? Other people?”
“No.”
“Who took you?”
“Suresh.”
Who was that? Poornima wondered. The brother? They stood silent for a time, Madhavi avoiding her eyes. “Where was it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“Was it close to here?”
“No.”
“Close to the airport?”
“No.”
Poornima searched her mind for other landmarks, other sights that Madhavi might know. “Was it near that tower? That thin one? Was it near water? Or was it in the middle of the tall buildings? How about the college? Did you notice a college?”
