But maybe she and her children deserve more than fine. Maybe we all do.
When she returns to the priest, Selvi Aunty takes Anand with her. Asks, “What about daughters?”
“Sorry?” the priest smiles.
“How do Christians feel about daughters?” She pulls Anand closer. He buries his face in the folds of her sari, inhales her sandalwood-soap and floor-polish smell.
“All children are the children of God, sister,” the priest says. “Daughters, sons. We love them equally, as any good soul would.”
Selvi Aunty nods. Presses the top of Anand’s head. Traces the center parting between his plaits.
Becoming a Christian won’t change the way her neighbors treat her. Selvi Aunty knows that much. Knows that thousands of years of caste oppression cannot be erased by something as simple as a change in faith.
But maybe becoming a Christian isn’t about the way her neighbors see her. Maybe it’s about the way she sees herself.
At home, she tells her three oldest sons, “Tomorrow we are getting reborn. Wear something clean and pressed. And comb your hair.”
She doesn’t have to tell Anand. He already knows.
The next morning, Anand stops by the Home for Destitute Women and Girls. The building is on the main road behind another slum—the one where our mothers say all the useless, no-good thugs live.
He runs up the concrete steps to the first floor, where the nuns have their offices and the destitute girls sleep. Passes through the empty hallways reeking of bleach and overcooked rice and mildewed laundry. Streaks across the stripes of sunlight that filter through windows cracked with age.
Anand doesn’t know where the destitute girls have gone, but it doesn’t matter. He knows where he is going, and that is enough. Before they can tell him that boys are not allowed, he bursts into the nuns’ offices, lined with donated steel almirahs and portraits of the Virgin Mary and Jesus. Announces that his family is migrating again—this time, to a new faith.
The nuns embrace him. Declare that God is good. Praise Jesus.
“A dress is needed,” Anand says. “For my sister.”
“Lovely,” the nuns say. “How old is this sister of yours? How broad, how tall?”
“Just hold the dress up to me,” he says. “We’re the same size.”
The nuns know just the thing. They pull out the donation bins, push aside the salwar kameez with the broken drawstrings, the cotton saris faded from drying in the sun. Brush past the collared shirts with torn pockets, the T-shirts with English words that nobody in Heaven can read. They hold up a dress the color of snow. Lace and tulle and gatherings. Tight and narrow at the waist. The perfect fit for someone with palm-frond hips. With legs as long as coconut trees.
Anand says, “Thank you. This will do nicely.”
Then he says, “Praise Jesus. Praise Mary. Praise the church.”
“Such a nice boy,” the nuns say as they watch him leave. “His sister is a lucky girl, isn’t she?”
Except Anand doesn’t have a sister.
Sometimes a dress is more than a dress. Sometimes a dress is a parachute, a promise of a hurtling fall, an uncertain journey. A soft landing.
On the road behind the children’s home, Anand pulls off his T-shirt and shorts. Inhales the tulle overskirt, the lacey sleeves. It smells like starch and talcum powder and mold.
Anand feels eyes on his back and looks up to find Banu dangling her feet over the compound wall.
“You’re going to get in trouble,” Anand says.
Banu shrugs. “You’re the one running around in your underwear,” she says.
Anand ignores her. Pulls the fabric over his head, pushes his arms through the sleeves. Reaches around himself to find the cool metal zipper, the line of silver hooks.
Banu jumps off the wall and says, “Hold your tummy in, like this.” When he obeys, she pulls up the zipper. Smooths out the skirt, fastens the hooks. Ties the sash, adjusting the bow so the long strings are even, the loops the same size.
“Are you going to that function today? The one where they’re making people into Christians?” Banu asks.
“None of your business,” Anand says.
A stray dog with patchy fur and a stick-straight tail charges the end of the compound wall, barking hysterically at a palm squirrel. The squirrel scales the wall, leaps onto a tree branch, springs to safety. Once it reaches a high branch, it begins to squeal. Its body inflates and deflates like a balloon, its mouth rounds into a scandalized o. The dog gets bored and trots away, tail wagging.
Anand has been told in science class that when squirrels scream, it is a warning. But to him, it sounds like victory. Like the whoop of a creature who has, against all odds, survived.
Banu pushes herself back on top of the wall and asks, “You don’t actually believe in all that Jesus Christ stuff, do you?”
“I don’t know,” Anand says. “Does it matter?”
Banu shrugs. “I don’t think so.”
“I have to go,” Anand says.
“Okay,” Banu says. Before she swings off the wall, and back to wherever she was hiding, she adds, “They dunk your head in the water. I’ve seen it. Whatever you do, don’t swallow. It’s holy and everything, but my ajji says it’ll give you the runs.”
Then she leaps off the wall and is gone.
A few hours later, Anand’s mother and brothers line up in the community hall. Fingernails clean, shoes polished, hair oiled. Ready to be reborn. But mostly ready to not be. To not be scheduled caste. To not be reincarnated a hundred times. To not be a version of themselves that they cannot control.
Anand is missing.
“Where is that brother of yours?” Selvi Aunty asks. Her other sons shrug.
Anand’s family watches a girl in a white dress kneel before her new God. Her skirt puffs around her like a comet, a cloud. They watch the priest push her face into a drum full of water that may or may not be clean. Watch her raise her head and gasp, stand on her toes to whisper in the priest’s ear. Watch the priest smile his purse-full-of-paisa smile.
“Rise and be reborn, child,” the priest says. “Now your name is Joy.”
When Joy turns to her family, they gasp.
Selvi Aunty calculates. This morning, she was scheduled caste. This morning, she had four sons.
This afternoon, if she says the word, she will have salvation, comfort. Hymns, holidays. Scholarships. Someday, she may have more than this: Money. Respect. Freedom. A new God who honors her deepest secret, who is willing to grant her most scandalous wish. A God who does not punish women for wanting daughters instead of sons.
If she says the word, she will have Joy.
So she says the word.
“Come, Joy,” she says. “Come and stand with your family.”
And the word is good.
7
Free
“come on banu,” Deepa whispers, after our candles are lit, our wishes are made. She clutches Banu’s elbow, picks her way across the cratered ground. Feels for her usual footholds, only to find that they’ve been covered with rubble and dust and stone. “Let’s find your ajji and get you to my house.”
“She’s right,” Padma says. “You need rest.”
Banu shrugs. Stares straight ahead, her pupils shattered by the ragged reflection of the wreckage.
Padma and Joy and Rukshana exchange a look. If Deepa could see, they would’ve shot their eyes at her too.
“Banu?” Joy asks. “What are you going to do?”
“What are you going to do?” Banu asks. Meaning all of us, not just Joy. Although wherever Joy goes, we go, so it amounts to the same thing.
“We’re going back to the protest,” Joy says.
Rukshana groans, but Joy elbows her in the stomach. It turns into a hiccup.
“I’ll go too,” Banu says.
We probably shouldn’t let her come with us, but we do. After all, we understand.
They say mothering makes you strong. Turns out daughtering doe
s too.
Back in the path of the machines, our mothers aren’t happy to see us. Mumble about who’s going to make dinner, about how we girls will do anything to avoid our homework, our chores. But they don’t ask us to leave.
At least if we’re in front of them they can watch us. Make sure we don’t use the demolition as an opportunity to sneak around with a boy. Which, in their eyes, is a bigger disaster than these bulldozers.
Rukshana’s mother, Fatima Aunty, paces back and forth, yelling into her phone. In her blue and green hijab, she looks like a planet bobbing in a shattered sky.
“What do you mean you have other work?” Fatima Aunty yells. “Our lives are at stake. How many times have I come out for your useless causes? Come out for us and do something worthwhile for once.”
“She’s got all these so-called friends who she’s always helping,” Rukshana says. “Feeding them, giving them clothes, going to their protests. And now when she needs help? These people are nowhere to be found.”
“I don’t have charge left on my phone,” Fatima Aunty calls out. Runs a finger under the chin of her headscarf, like she does when she’s anxious.
“Here, take mine,” Neelamma Aunty says. Unravels a plastic phone from the waistband of her sari. “My husband says he topped it off yesterday.”
“And you believe him?” Banu’s ajji asks. Slaps her bony knees beneath the cloth of her white widow’s sari, growls out a laugh that creaks into a racking cough.
“Oh, shut up,” Neelamma Aunty says playfully, rubbing the old woman’s back. “My husband’s a good one. You know that.”
“Who are you calling now, Fatima?” Selvi Aunty asks. She’s a widow too but doesn’t dress like it. Lines her eyes with kohl, her wrists with bangles. Wraps herself in saris the colors of hibiscus blossoms.
“The local leader,” Fatima Aunty says. Flips through a spiral bound notepad filled with cramped Urdu letters. “My union gave me the number. It’s just here.”
“Chee! Don’t waste your money on that call,” Neelamma Aunty says.
“She’s right. Politicians in Bangalore are fully crooked. Won’t do a thing,” Selvi Aunty says.
“Besides, you think the local leader is going to take a call from an unknown number?” Banu’s ajji says. Points at our mothers, finger smudged with rangoli powder. “Let’s go to the office. Show up in person. Only then will they take us seriously.”
“What rubbish are you saying, Aunty? The second we’re gone from here they’ll finish what they started,” Neelamma Aunty says. “If we leave, we won’t have any homes to come back to, I’m telling you.”
“You all go,” Joy shouts. “We can stay.”
“No,” all our mothers say. It’s the one thing they agree on.
“We have to ask, and we have to do it now,” Fatima Aunty says. She glances over at the drivers, now huddled together on the ground, backs against a bulldozer’s warm rubber wheels. “Those people are conspiring. They’ll find some way around this quickly.”
The drivers, though, don’t seem to be thinking about us. Really, they don’t seem to be thinking about anything except themselves.
“I thought getting my daughter educated would reduce the dowry,” one is saying. His skin is a patchwork of red and white, a discoloration that we’re sure cost him his choice of bride, back when he was looking. “But every family that expresses interest acts like they’re doing me a favor for taking her off my hands.”
“This is why I’m glad I have just the one son,” the other driver says. He’s the one we heard on the phone earlier, talking to a headmaster about private school. “Getting him educated is hard enough to pay for. Bribe for admissions, and then tuition. And then all the fees they ask for field trips, books, supplies.”
“We paid all that for my daughters. I’m telling you, it’s nothing compared to the dowry,” the first driver says. Leans his head back against the bulldozer’s hubcap and sighs. “You’re too, too lucky, only having a boy. Here I am cursed with not one but two girls.”
“Idiots,” Deepa mutters.
“Ma, calm down,” Rukshana says to her mother, “they’re not conspiring. They’re waiting, just like we are.”
“Hush, Rukshana,” Fatima Aunty says. “How many of these protests have I taken you to? You think I don’t know how this works?”
“Fine, fine, Fatima,” Neelamma Aunty says. “You’re the activist, no? Tell us what to do and we’ll do it.”
Fatima Aunty doesn’t answer. She’s already back on the phone.
Fatima Aunty is in a union. Sometimes she takes us to protests in Freedom Park. We like to watch the protestors in red saris wind their way down the park’s sandy lanes, overstuffed luggage on their head.
“Those women? They’ve come from all over the state—Gulbarga, Dharwad, Bagalkote,” Fatima Aunty tells us. “Sometimes they travel for three days, even though the strike will last just one. At night, they sleep over there, on that lawn.”
“By the side of the road?” Rukshana asks, wrinkling her nose. “Ew. Why?”
“Because they are part of something bigger than themselves,” Rukshana’s mother says. “Because they believe in something bigger than themselves. They believe in the struggle.”
“But Fatima Aunty,” Padma says. “You’ve been doing this struggle since before we were born. Don’t you get tired?”
“If we stay together, victory will be ours,” Fatima Aunty says. Which, with Rukshana’s mother, is the closest thing we’ll get to an answer.
Our mothers whisper about everything Fatima Aunty used to have. A father—until he started a new family with a new wife, house, village, and land. Left Fatima Aunty and her mother and a pack of sisters alone to fend for themselves. They panicked, until they realized they had been doing most of the work already. Plus, the money was easier to manage without a man to gamble it away.
Fatima Aunty had an older daughter, Rania. Still has her, technically. The problem is that she eloped with a Buddhist boy, a Dalit convert who found a job as a driver for an NGO. Not the kind of NGO that sets up offices in falling-down flats either; the kind that gets enough money from foreigners to put ads on the radio asking for more money from foreigners. Rania calls sometimes using free Airtel-to-Airtel minutes. But since Fatima Aunty hasn’t forgiven her, when they speak, they don’t say much of anything at all.
Fatima Aunty had a son who died from a fever that the government hospital doctors said would go away overnight. They were wrong. No one remembers his name. Fatima Aunty refuses to say it out loud.
Fatima Aunty had a husband who wasn’t any better or worse than any other husband—except he left her, so maybe he was a little bit worse.
Fatima Aunty says her union has taught her to focus on the present, to value what she has: Her tenth-class pass. Her job, her faith. Her daughter, Rukshana, who hasn’t left her. Yet.
When she talks about it, she wobbles her head in that yes-no way and says, “What I have? It’s enough.”
That’s a word we never hear our mothers say. Especially about themselves.
Rukshana remembers her father’s burnt cotton smell, the sharp prick of the whiskers on his sunken cheeks. Remembers how he screamed at Fatima Aunty the day Rukshana’s older brother died. Called Rukshana’s mother useless, careless, heartless. Accused her of killing her only accomplishment, their son. His son.
Our mothers say it would have been better if he had scuttled off in the night like all the other worthless husbands did. Silently. Carelessly.
“When it comes to men leaving,” they say, “it’s best not to know why.”
When Rukshana’s father left, Fatima Aunty discovered fissures and craters and cliff-edges inside of her that were never there before. Piled her daughters onto the last bus to her mother’s house in the village. Away from Bangalore’s splitting pavement, melting tar. To a place where the landscape was even, stable. Whole.
Back then, Rukshana was as frantic as a just-hatched dragonfly, shimmering and eager to test h
er brand-new wings. The second they set foot in the village, she joined a pack of boy cousins and ran wild. Climbed trees, swam streams. Built castles out of pebbles and mud, slingshots out of rubber bands and twigs. The soles of her feet grew dense and calloused, her arms muscled and tan. After she got lice, and an aunt shaved her head, no one could tell what Rukshana was—girl, boy, or something in between. Sometimes, thinking she was a boy, they gave her extra portions of eggs and chicken and dal. Sometimes, thinking she was a girl, the aunts scolded their sons for coming home muddy and bloody and bruised but forgot they had to scold her too.
Rukshana’s city memories began to fragment and fade. She forgot the vicious burn of pavement on her bare feet, the defeated rattle of blue wooden vegetable carts crossing ripped up sidewalks, the salty odor of exhaust spewing from the tail pipes of local buses. Forgot that she was a girl governed by a set of rules, a being doomed to honor, silence, submission. Forgot who she was supposed to be. Became, instead, who she really was.
It was perfect.
During the day, at least.
It was different at night. Long after the river breeze loosened summer’s chokehold on the starlit air, Rukshana lay awake, listening to the sounds of her mother’s grief. Not the stifled gasps that ended alcoholic fights; not the howling wails that followed the burial of a child; not the desperate weeping that trailed a father’s retreating footsteps. This was an almost silent sobbing, a shaking originating along deep and secret fault lines, a quaking primal in its need.
A sound that Rukshana vowed she would never, ever make.
One ferocious village morning, when the boy cousins were being punished, Rukshana—who had escaped again, forgotten—sat cross-legged under a tree, sucking on a tamarind pod and watching her mother and her grandmother snap laundry onto a clothesline.
“Enough now,” Rukshana’s grandmother said. “You’ve been here long enough. Go back to Bangalore. Put these girls in school.”
A People's History of Heaven Page 8
