Born Behind Bars

by Padma Venkatraman

  Also by Padma Venkatraman

  The Bridge Home

  A Time to Dance

  Island’s End

  Climbing the Stairs

  Nancy Paulsen Books

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  Copyright © 2021 by Padma Venkatraman

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Venkatraman, Padma, author.

  Title: Born behind bars / Padma Venkatraman.

  Description: New York: Nancy Paulsen Books, [2021] | Summary: In Chennai, India, after spending his whole life in jail with his mother, who is serving time for a crime she did not commit, nine-year-old Kabir is suddenly released and has to figure out how to survive on his own in the outside world.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2021017761 | ISBN 9780593112472 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593112489 (ebook)

  Subjects: CYAC: Prisoners’ families—Fiction. | Homeless persons—Fiction. | Street children—Fiction. | India—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.V5578 Bo 2021 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021017761

  ISBN 9780593112472 (hardcover)

  ISBN 9780593407646 (international edition)

  ISBN 9780593112489 (ebook)

  Cover art © 2021 by Jennifer Bricking

  Cover design by Kelley Brady

  Design by Eileen Savage, adapted for ebook by Michelle Quintero

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  pid_prh_5.8.0_c0_r0

  To my chithi, Visalam Naranan,

  for always believing

  in the strength of my words,

  and to my daughter

  for literally lending me a helping hand

  when my body was weak

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Padma Venkatraman

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1: Beyond a Patch of Sky

  2: Not Family

  3: Rivers

  4: A Piece of Candy

  5: Flies

  6: Houses

  7: Songs

  8: Visitors

  9: Morning Sounds

  10: The Scent of Jasmine

  11: Unhappy Birthday

  12: Promise

  13: Three People

  14: My Father’s Mosque

  15: Uncles and Orphanages

  16: Home

  17: Last Words

  18: Behind Me

  19: In the Outside

  20: House

  21: Locks

  22: Unquiet

  23: Snake Man

  24: Hot Coffee

  25: Parrot Girl

  26: Lost

  27: Cast Out

  28: Caste

  29: Making Plans

  30: Sweet and Salty Water

  31: My Self

  32: The Tree Home

  33: Outside the Box

  34: A String of Pearls

  35: Fortune-Telling

  36: Stories and Songs

  37: Money

  38: Tasting a Piece of Sky

  39: Buying a Plane

  40: Caged

  41: Like the Moon

  42: Falling Stars

  43: Calling the Police

  44: Saint Kabir’s Song

  45: Bengaluru

  46: At the Mosque

  47: Spying

  48: Happy Family

  49: Taking Charge

  50: Hanging On to Hope

  51: Surrounded

  52: Caught by the Police

  53: The Way Ahead

  54: Time

  55: Trust

  56: Finding My Father

  57: Home

  58: Turning On a Light

  59: A Little More Than We Need

  60: Free

  61: Cousins

  62: Not Perfect

  63: At the Bazaar

  64: Locks and Keys

  65: Truth and True Friends

  66: A School with a Tent

  67: Up and Down

  68: Routines

  69: The Shape of the Sky

  70: Back Behind Bars

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  1

  Beyond a Patch of Sky

  Beyond the bars, framed by the high, square window, slides a small patch of sky.

  For months, it’s been as gray as the faded paint flaking off the walls, but today it’s blue and gold. Bright as a happy song.

  My thoughts, always eager to escape, shoot out and try to picture the whole sky—even the whole huge world.

  But my imagination has many missing pieces, like the jigsaw puzzle in the schoolroom. All I’ve learned here in nine years from my mother and my teachers is not enough to fill the gaps.

  Still, it doesn’t stop me from imagining we’re free, Amma and me, together, exploring the wide-open world that lives beyond the bars.

  2

  Not Family

  Up! Up!” our guard yells at us. I call her Mrs. Snake because she hisses at us every morning. “Lazy donkeys!” She’s the meanest of the guards but also the most elegant, with her neatly combed hair pinned into a tight knot.

  Looking at her crisp khaki uniform and shiny boots always makes me feel extra scruffy. I wiggle my bare toes. At least I have slippers. Amma and the other women go barefoot.

  My mother’s hands reach to cover my ears as the other guards join in, calling us worse names than donkeys. Doesn’t Amma know I can hear them anyway? Doesn’t she remember I’ve turned nine today?

  I’m no baby, but I don’t shove her hands away. I like her fingertips tickling my ears, even though Amma’s skin is as rough as the concrete floor. Only one thing in this room is soft: Amma’s voice, saying, “Looks like the rainy season is over and the sun-god wants to wish you a happy birthday, Kabir.”

  “Today’s your birthday? Best wishes, Kabir.” Aunty Cloud gives me a quick smile and returns her gaze to the floor. Aunty Cloud likes looking at the floor as much as I like watching the sky.

  “You think Bedi Ma’am will bring me a treat?” I ask.

  “Of course,” Amma says. “Your teacher is fond of you.”

  “Almost twice as old as he should be to still be living here,” Grandma Knife cuts in. “Too old.”

  Too old for what? Everyone in this cell is way older than me, and she’s by far the oldest. I give Amma a questioning look, but she avoids my eyes.

  Grandma Knife stretches her long arms and rolls up her stra
w mat. “Can’t believe you’re, what, nine? You still look as small as a six-year-old.”

  I slip my hand into Amma’s, where it feels safe tucked inside her palm.

  Grandma Knife is not family. Grandma Knife isn’t her real name, either, just what I call her in my head, because it fits with her sharp tongue. Amma forces me to call all the women living in our room aunty or sister or grandma, though we were just packed in together by the guards.

  Only Amma and I are family. At least, Amma and I are the only family I’ve seen with my eyes—the others I’ve only imagined from stories she’s told me on nights when she wasn’t too tired.

  Everyone in our cell is awake now except Mouse Girl, the newcomer. She manages to sleep through the morning racket—until Grandma Knife’s big toe prods her, making her yelp.

  Only last night, a guard shoved Mouse Girl into our room. She stood by the door, twitching with fear, until Amma waved her over to us.

  “You can squeeze in here.” Amma yanked our mat closer to the wall to make space where there wasn’t any.

  “She didn’t say thank you,” I whispered.

  “Her eyes did,” Amma said, but I only saw them fill with tears. “She’s just a teenager,” Amma said. “So young.”

  I’m a lot younger, but I always remember to say thank you.

  Mouse Girl is quiet, but she appears to be quite sneaky too. She tries pushing past Aunty Cloud to be the first out the door for the bathroom.

  “Respect your elders!” Grandma Knife’s bony fingers clamp around Mouse Girl’s wrists like handcuffs. Mouse Girl stumbles back and steps on Aunty Cloud’s feet.

  Aunty Cloud doesn’t say a thing, just floats by, ghostlike.

  As I shuffle forward, Grandma Knife cracks her knuckles. I try to keep from peeking at her fingers, but I can’t help sneaking a look. Grandma Knife’s hands are strong enough to snap a rat’s neck. I’ve seen her do it.

  Amma says we should be thankful for Grandma Knife’s incredible fingers, and I know Grandma Knife helps keep us safe, but I can’t help fearing she’ll someday pounce on me.

  3

  Rivers

  Don’t push!” Mrs. Snake hisses as we join the line to use the bathroom.

  Mouse Girl tugs on my raggedy T-shirt to hold me back as she elbows her way ahead. My T-shirt rips even more. I glare at her, but she doesn’t apologize, and now I’m sure I picked a bad nickname for her. She’s a pushy one, not a frightened mouse.

  “Never mind,” Amma says. “She probably needs to go really bad.”

  “We all have to go really bad,” I mutter.

  The stench of the toilets is as strong as a slap in the face, but I try concentrating on the one good thing about the toilet: It’s the only place I can actually be completely alone.

  After I’m done, I stand at the cracked sink and use my fingers to rub tooth powder on my teeth. Then I join the crowd waiting to fill their plastic bottles and buckets with water to drink and wash with for the day.

  As the water trickles out of the rusty tap, I imagine I’m standing near a wide river, like in a poem my teacher read to us about rivers singing.

  Rivers can’t sing! They don’t have mouths! Malli had objected. Malli is sort of my friend, although she’s only five. Her thoughts don’t float out of jail as often as mine.

  “Hurry up, you—!” someone barks.

  I shrug. I can’t make the pale orange stream of water trickle into my bucket any faster. I tune out the grumbling crowd of women behind me and think about how good it would feel to sink both feet, both ankles, both knees, even my entire body all the way up to my shoulders, in a river of cool, clear water.

  4

  A Piece of Candy

  Power cut!” Grandma Knife curses as the tiny ventilation fan in our cell stops puttering.

  It never cools the room much, but when there’s no electricity and it can’t even move a tiny bit of air, I feel like a grain of rice boiling in my own sweat.

  “I’m going to faint,” Mouse Girl says as a stream of sweat trickles down the tip of her pointy nose. “If I don’t die of hunger first.”

  My stomach grumbles loudly, but I say nothing. Complaining won’t make our morning meal appear any faster.

  Aunty Cloud presses a handful of candies into my palm. Aunty Cloud’s children visit her on Saturdays and bring her sweets—and she always brings some back to share with us.

  “Thank you, Aunty.”

  I offer the candy to Grandma Knife, who displays her uneven teeth. “You know I can’t, boy. They’ll just make my teeth rot faster.”

  Amma never takes any candy either.

  I know I should offer to share with Mouse Girl because it’s the right thing to do. Amma keeps telling me to be good. But I’m angry with Mouse Girl for tearing my shirt and being so whiny.

  Once, I asked Amma why she was always lecturing me about being good, and she told me it was because she didn’t want me to end up in jail. That made me laugh. “We’re already in jail,” I reminded her.

  “I can’t help that you were born in jail, Kabir,” she told me. “But once you grow up, you can make sure not to do any bad things that might get you sent back here.”

  “But, Amma, what’s the point of being good if the police might lock you up anyway? Especially if you’re poor, like us?” I’d asked.

  “If you’re good, God will be happy,” Amma said. “God hears and sees everything that happens.”

  “So God is like a spy? He’ll tell the guards if you’re not good?”

  “No!” Amma said. “God is the greatest being of all!”

  “Never mind about God, boy!” Grandma Knife told me. “Be good for your own sake. If you’re good and make friends with good people, you’ll have a better chance of a good life once you get out of here.”

  “And if you live a good life,” Amma said, “Muslims, like your father, believe you’ll go to heaven.” Heaven, she had explained, was up above the clouds, a place where people of pretty much every religion agree God lives.

  “Or else you’ll end up in hell,” Grandma Knife added, “which is supposedly hotter than anywhere on Earth.”

  It’s hard to imagine a place that’s hotter than our jail cell in summer when the fan cuts off and the smell of sweat and sewage clogs my nostrils worse than usual.

  I decide I’d better be good because I don’t want to end up in hell. And because I don’t want to risk getting sent back here after we leave. And, most of all, because I know it’ll make Amma happy.

  I’m hungry enough to stuff all the candy into my mouth at once, but I open my hand to Mouse Girl. “Want some?”

  She grabs almost everything.

  Greedy piggy, I want to say but don’t. Instead, I pop the remaining candy into my mouth.

  Amma beams me a smile sweeter than the candy melting on my tongue. I’m glad I was good, because her smile will stay inside me long after the candy is gone.

  5

  Flies

  Mouse Girl elbows her way ahead of us again as we line up for the first of our two daily meals.

  “Don’t grumble, Kabir,” Amma says. “Poor thing isn’t used to being in jail yet.” I don’t know why my mother continues to make excuses for her—she’d never let me get away with such bad behavior.

  “Guess what we have today? Stale rice and water that’s pretending to be spicy rasam,” Grandma Knife says. “What a surprise!”

  “Actually, there is a surprise today,” I say. “Look. My rice is topped with a dead fly.”

  “Aiyo! Take my plate,” Amma says.

  But Grandma Knife interrupts, “No, no, I’ll swap. I’ve been missing meat.”

  Grandma Knife grabs my plate and shoves hers into my hands. “On second thought, probably too late to change my vegetarian habit.” Her long fingers scoop out the fly and flick it away. “Though it might have been a tasty
change.”

  “Thank you, Grandma,” I say. She might be a bit scary sometimes, but she’s always looking out for us and making us laugh too.

  Amma knows I like her to tell us stories while we eat to take our minds off the horrible food. I don’t fully understand a lot of what she describes because I’ve never left here, and I’ve only seen other places in books or on TV: bazaars where vendors sit behind hills of spices; temples filled with the most beautiful smells. My mood lifts just imagining it all.

  “How about Lord Krishna’s story today?” I ask. I love hearing about the blue-skinned Hindu god who was born behind bars, like me.

  Amma tells how, on the night of Lord Krishna’s birth, the guards fell asleep, and the prison doors magically swung open. Quickly, his mother, whose demon brother had imprisoned her and her husband, ripped a piece of her sari and swaddled the baby in it.

  His father spirited Krishna away, not stopping until he arrived at a river swollen in flood. As he wondered what to do, the water parted to let him walk through. He left the baby on the doorstep of a home on the other bank and returned to his waiting wife, and the prison doors clanged shut, locking them in once more.

  The demon never found the baby, though he searched for years and years. As Krishna grew into a man, so did his strength and his wisdom, and one day he fought the demon and returned to rescue his parents.

  I’d like to do that too. Amma always says being born in jail doesn’t mean I can’t do great things. Someday I will break out of this place, and then I will set my mother free.

  It’ll be tricky to figure out how, though, because our doors are always locked, our window always barred, our guards always awake.

  6

  Houses

  Being good isn’t as important as being rich,” Mouse Girl sniffs when we are back in our cell. “If you get rich, you can get away with anything you want. And you can get anything you want too.”

  “Look where trying to get rich got you!” Grandma Knife says.