I miss Amma so much and know she must be missing me too.
But I’m sure she’s being brave, like I need to be. Or at least I need to do something to stop the sea of tears that’s threatening to rush down my cheeks.
So I start to sing. At first my voice trembles like the leaves over my head, but then the song strengthens it. I pretend my voice can carry all the way to where Amma can hear it.
From somewhere in the branches above me, I hear Rani say sleepily, “You have a nice singing voice, Kabir.”
Her words are a gift, bringing a tiny smile to my face. Then she sends another gift: A ragged old sheet comes floating down. “You can put that over your head if it makes you feel better.”
Hidden under the sheet, I do feel better. Safe enough to sink into a strange dream where I’m bobbing up and down in a stormy ocean that carries me far away from Amma.
34
A String of Pearls
The sun pokes at my eyes and wakes me up. It’s strange to have no one sleeping anywhere near me—no Amma, no Grandma Knife or Aunty Cloud. I even almost miss Mouse Girl.
I wonder what they’ll do today without me—if Malli will be scared to walk past the punishment block on her own and what Bedi Ma’am will teach. Right now, Amma’ll be lining up to use the bathroom.
Here, at least, I don’t need to wait for someone to unlock a door to let me pee.
I find a nearby tree to hide behind, and I go! The whole world is my toilet now, I want to sing. This is what freedom feels like.
In the sunshine, the rustling leaves don’t sound scary at all. Birds and squirrels and monkeys chatter merrily in the abandoned garden. Then Rani’s voice floats down and joins the chorus. Much nicer sounds to start the day with than the jail noises—sliding bolts, squeaking keys, rattling locks.
Rani stops singing. “Up at last, sleepyhead?”
“Please, won’t you sing some more?”
“I wasn’t singing, really, just chanting my family’s names.”
“Your family name is long enough for a song?” Mine’s so short. One syllable. Khan.
“Not just one name. I was reciting the names of my ancestors, going back ten generations.”
“Ten generations? Oh wow!” And I don’t even know my own grandparents’ first names.
“We don’t have much else to carry,” she says. “Other people have money and things, but these are the pearls Roma women carry, these strings of names.”
“Will you sing it again? You have a nice voice, nicer even than the birds,” I say as a crow starts cawing.
“I sound better than a crow?” She throws back her head and laughs. “I have some advice for you, Prince of Compliments: You better think a little harder before you open your mouth, or else you’ll be Prince of Insults and might get in trouble.”
Rani sings the names again, and I hear longing in her voice. She must miss her mother as much as I miss mine. In jail, Amma taught me never to pester anyone about their past, but a question slips out of me before I can stop it. “Why’re you alone, Rani?”
“Alone? Don’t be silly. I’m with Jay, can’t you see?”
She snatches up his cage so forcefully the parrot wakes up, screeching, “Ai! Ai! Ai!”
“Just me,” she says to Jay. “Hush now, so I can get breakfast.”
Still up in the branches, she fits a stone from her waist pouch into a thick Y-shaped stick with a leather belt. She aims at a crow and pulls the belt back. It twangs. The stone flies, and the crow thuds to the ground.
“You killed it! Why?”
“Breakfast,” she says.
Rani plucks the bird and orders me to collect branches for her fire. I’m happy to because then I don’t have to look at the dead crow. And I’m even happier when she doesn’t force me to eat it.
“Luckily for you, there are fruit trees in this garden,” she says. She pelts stones at a tree with small, dark leaves, and bunches of a long brown fruit fall to the ground. “Try a tamarind.” She shows me how to peel off the hard skin and suck on the sweet-sour flesh inside.
The tamarinds aren’t very filling, but I don’t complain. After all, I’m used to having a half-empty stomach from mornings in jail.
From another tree, she picks a fat guava, which tastes sweet and delicious. As I lick the sticky pink juice off my fingers, she laughs. “Wish you could see yourself now, Prince of Dribblers. Let’s go visit your mirror so you can wash your face.”
35
Fortune-Telling
We leave Rani’s tree behind and visit the public bathroom. Rani doesn’t have tooth powder, but she shows me how to brush my teeth with a fresh twig from a neem tree. It tastes so bitter, I want to vomit again, but at least there’s enough water for me to rinse out the bad taste.
“Now I need to go to work,” Rani says. “You want to come?”
“Yes, please.” I don’t want to return to the noisy part of the city, but I need to get used to it if I’m going to search for my grandparents.
Soon, we’re plunging through rivers of traffic. Rani holds one of my hands and guides me through the blaring vehicles. I narrow my eyes, focusing only on her and Jay, who’s riding on her shoulder as unruffled by the commotion as she is, and we finally make it to the other side.
“Here!” she says, settling down in a patch of shade cast by a wall at the corner of two busy roads.
This spot feels so open and unprotected. What if Snake Man or Fake Uncle finds me? I hug my knees to my chest and try burying my head behind them. I wish I had wings so I could hide my head like Jay does when he’s sleeping.
“Kabir?” Rani says. “It’s a huge city and we’re nowhere near where I found you yesterday.” She fingers her waist pouch, which bulges with stones. “And my slingshot is right here. Trust me. I won’t let anyone catch you.”
Her confidence reassures me a little.
Rani sets cards out on the sidewalk. I pick one up. It has Tamil words written on it.
“You play games with people?” I ask. I hope she doesn’t gamble, the way I’ve seen some women do with cards in jail. “My teacher said gambling was a very bad thing to do.”
“Don’t worry. I just help people who are scared or worried. Watch.” She starts chanting, “May I tell your fortune? Step up, and me and my wise parrot will tell you what the future holds!”
“Step up, step up, step up,” Jay chimes in every now and then.
“Can you really tell the future?”
“Other people think we have magic powers, which is what’s important,” Rani says.
“Do you have any magic powers?” Maybe Rani can make jail guards sleep and help set my mom free, like in the Krishna story.
“Aiyo.” She rolls her eyes. “If I had magic powers, why would I hunt crows for breakfast?”
She starts chanting again as passersby jostle along the crowded sidewalk. Most of them barely glance at us, but eventually, an old man shuffles up, adjusts his dusty white turban, and leans on his cane. “You can tell me something for ten rupees?”
“Yes! Of course, Master-ji!” Rani gives him a dazzling smile.
“How do you know I’m a teacher?” The old man looks impressed.
“The spirits give me clues.” Rani’s voice gets deeper. “I know, Master-ji, that you are a great teacher . . . you teach language . . . Hindi.”
“Very good. All correct.” Master-ji sounds as pleased as Bedi Ma’am when I did well on a test. “What else can you tell me?”
“For twenty, I can tell you twice as much, and for fifty—”
“If I still had fifties to give away, I wouldn’t be standing on a street corner, asking you to tell my future.”
“Okay, Master-ji. Ten. Come and help me see the future, Jay!” Rani holds out her hand, and Jay hops onto it from her shoulder and then onto the ground near the cards she has laid out. “What
do the spirits say for Master-ji?”
Jay pecks at one of the cards. Rani picks it up and reads it. Her whole body shudders. Her eyes roll. “I see . . . I see . . . sunshine, like gold, shimmering! Money will come your way, yes, Master-ji, it will indeed, but—wait—beware! The card says beware a man . . .”
“A young mustached man?” the old grandfather suggests.
“A thin, gleaming mustache and scheming, greedy eyes,” Rani declares.
“You must be seeing my son,” the man says. “He’s always asking me for money. I wish he’d get a job and stop pestering me. Will he get a job, can you tell?”
“He will get a job sooner if you stop giving him your money. Be firm, Master-ji.”
“Quite right,” the old man says. “I’ll speak to him sternly. Anything else I can do?”
“Place a pinch of sacred ash from the temple on your turban every morning, and as you do so, remind yourself that you must be firm with him.”
“Ash? In my turban?” The man twirls his cane between his fingers. “Never heard of such a thing. Still, I suppose that is easy enough to do . . .”
“There is a harder thing,” Rani mumbles.
“Tell me,” the man says eagerly.
“Kindness today, this very hour—give generously to those who are not your family, and your generosity will reap a reward more magnificent than you can dream!”
“Okay, okay,” the man says. “Here’s fifteen, and if that lazy son of mine gets a job soon, I’ll come back and give you and your pretty bird more.”
“Pretty bird, pretty bird!” Jay trills as the man hobbles away.
36
Stories and Songs
How did you know that man teaches Hindi?” I ask.
“A lucky guess? No, really, I’ve seen him before—carrying textbooks and papers. Plus he always visits the temple after school, and once I heard a boy in a school uniform complaining that ‘Master-ji’ gave him a bad mark on his Hindi test. Then he practically ran into Master-ji and almost dropped dead. Clearly, he was worried his teacher had heard him. As for the old man’s Tamil, he speaks with an accent, so he must have moved here from somewhere else.”
“What about the rest? About his future?” I ask eagerly. “The card didn’t say a word about ash in turbans. How did you know it would bring Master-ji luck?”
“You can read? You said you were born behind bars.”
“They had a school in jail. I had a nice teacher called Bedi Ma’am.”
“My mother always wanted me to go to school,” Rani says wistfully. Then she grins. “Maybe I should try jail school, since they won’t want me anywhere else.”
This must be another joke, but I don’t find it funny. “So you lied? Lying is wrong!”
Rani shrugs. “The way I look at it, there’s nothing wrong with making things. Or selling things you make. Right? I made up a story and sold it. You think storytellers are liars?”
“No, storytelling is fine. My mother told stories. But that wasn’t a story,” I insist. “You were pretending to know what’s going to happen to Master-ji.”
“I wasn’t pretending, I was guessing, and I am pretty good at it because I observe people. I pay attention to the way they wiggle their mouths and eyes and arms and feet and how they walk and stand.”
I suppose that’s not so different from Amma, who could see from people’s faces right into their hearts. Most of the time, at least.
“I try to guess their dreams and give them hope, Kabir. What’s wrong with hopes and dreams?”
“But they expect what you tell them will actually happen!”
“If they’re expecting things, then it’s their fault. They’re grown-ups—they should know that expecting life to give them something isn’t smart.”
I wish Amma were around to tell me what is and isn’t smart. Everything out here is so confusing. Smells stab my nose—fumes from the road, rotting food from a garbage bin, and others I don’t recognize. My ears hurt from the endless noise of traffic. I sit miserably beside Rani for a while, and then I start singing a song softly, to comfort myself.
To my surprise, two women slow down to listen to me, and when I’m done, they drop money on the ground beside me.
“Now, isn’t this a wonderful way to earn money!” Rani dusts off the coins. “Your pockets will be jingling by the end of the day! See that tree at the end of the street with the fiery orange blossoms? That’s called a gulmohur tree. Go and sit under it and sing, and come back when you’re tired.”
I hesitate because I’m afraid to leave Rani’s side.
“Don’t worry,” she says, reading my mind. “I’ll keep an eye on you.”
I can’t stop worrying, but I walk to the tree anyway. Sitting under the gulmohur tree, I start singing my favorite songs.
I marvel at the women walking past who all wear such beautifully colored saris and make me feel as if I’m sitting in a rainbow. Every once in a while, someone tosses coins in my direction. By the time the sun is at the center of the sky, I have a shiny hill of coins.
I pick up the coins one by one, turning them around, holding them up and watching how the sun glints off them. I listen to the way they clink and jostle together as I fill my pocket with them.
“Money! Money! Money!” I start singing. “Thank you, God up in the sky.”
37
Money
My happiness over my pile of money is cut short.
Someone taps my shoulder from behind. I whip around.
“Hand over the money, kid.” It’s a teenager with arms as thick as tree trunks. “Now!”
I try to raise my voice and cry, “Help!” but all that comes out is a froglike croak. Where’s my voice when I need it most? Where’s Rani? I can’t see her anywhere.
The bully holds open a plastic bag and orders, “Drop your money in this. Quick.”
My whole body shakes. Just as I reach into my pocket, something whizzes past my head and strikes the bully’s shoulder, making him yelp.
Then a voice starts shrieking, “Go’way, punk. Go’way!”
The teenager’s eyes bulge at the sound of Jay, who’s screeching curses from somewhere above us. The kid takes a quick, frantic look around and then races away.
Rani shinnies down the tree and lands beside me.
“I never saw you climb up there!” My voice is shaky, but at least it’s working again. “You hit him?”
“Me? No, no. An invisible angel chased him away.” She laughs, but I can’t.
“Thanks for saving me. Again. I should’ve known better.”
“Don’t worry. It was the first time you earned money. No wonder you were too excited to think what you were doing.”
“I was inviting someone to steal from me, singing about my money.” I bite my lip.
“Ai!” Rani catches hold of my shoulders and gives me a little shake. “Never blame yourself for someone else’s cruelty. My mother always said there’s enough people waiting to accuse us falsely without us doing it to ourselves. Isn’t that right, Jay?”
“Right,” Jay chirps. “Right. Right. Rrriiight!”
“Anyway, we all have a lot to learn.” Rani shrugs. “Everyone makes mistakes.”
“You don’t. You’re like a hero in a movie. Always saving everyone.”
“Not really.” She stares at a bus lurching across the road. “I couldn’t save my family.”
Rani opens her mouth and closes it without saying anything. It looks like she can’t decide whether to tell me more. Jay nips her ear as if he’s encouraging her, and she finally speaks. “A few years ago, my family and I were camped near a village. The rains never came that year, and there was a drought. The villagers blamed us. Said we brought bad luck. Told us we had to go.”
She takes a breath and then plunges into the rest of her story. “It got worse. When we didn’t leave
, the villagers tried to kill us all, and the police wouldn’t help.” Her voice falters, and she pauses, then continues in almost a whisper, “My father died. Only my mother and I escaped by hiding in a cave. We ran away and went to live with my uncle’s family. The problem was that he wanted to marry me off when I turned fourteen. So I ran away before that could happen. With my mother’s blessing—and help.”
We start walking along. I open my mouth but shut it again, just like Rani did before telling me her story. Except now I keep mine shut tight.
Rani and I are both on our own. Far away from mothers we love. My life hasn’t been easy. But hers sounds even worse.
38
Tasting a Piece of Sky
Hungry?” Rani asks, changing the subject. “What do you like best to eat?”
“Laddus.” My empty stomach twists so hard it hurts. My heart hurts worse, imagining Rani’s pain—but I sense she doesn’t want to talk about her past anymore.
“Expensive taste,” Rani says. “But we definitely need to get some food.”
My feet, blistered from all the walking, hurt as much as my hungry stomach. At least I’m wearing chappals on my feet. Rani isn’t, but the soles of her bare feet look tougher than my slippers—rougher even than Amma’s feet.
The traffic is slower in this hottest part of the afternoon, but horns still blast, and buses still belch smoke. Heat curls in the air above the shiny tar road.
We come to a stop at last in front of a pushcart with a stove on it.
Rani points to the man snoozing next to it. “This grandpa isn’t the best cook,” Rani says, “but he’s nice and doesn’t chase away low-caste kids. Choose what you want from the menu.”
Born Behind Bars Page 6
