a bone seller rattling his wares, next to
a woman with a basket heaped with dates, next to
a pig nosing through a pile of trash, next to
a boy ladling oil out of a tin, next to
a man selling broken pieces of motorcycles, next to
a girl threading marigolds on a string, next to
a man with crates of pigeons for sale, next to
a woman serving tea, next to
a boy shining shoes, next to
a water buffalo napping in the shade, next to
a man selling cucumbers, next to
a man chanting a prayer, next to
a man scooping hot popcorn into a paper cone. And I wonder,
In this swarming, hurry-up city,
what will happen
next
to me.
ON THE BUS
The cart we’re riding on now is called a bus. I don’t know this for certain, but I am fairly sure that that is its name because Auntie said, “Don’t pester me with a thousand questions when we get on the bus.”
Here is what I know so far:
The carts with chicken and sheep in the back are called trucks.
The ones with people inside are cars.
Afire inside makes them go.
People here live in solid-wall huts that are stacked on top of each other.
City people are not angry at each other; they don’t greet one another because they don’t know each other.
The bus has soft benches and it holds a village full of people. It smells of onions and curry and cigarette smoke, and a baby who has soiled his cloth, and other things I cannot name.
The man next to me empties his nose out the window, pinching one side shut and blowing on the other, and for a moment I am afraid that I will lose my meal again.
Auntie is asleep, her head drooping heavily on my shoulder. I don’t move.
I look out the window. A man with a table strapped to his back is walking down the middle of the road. The bus bleats, and the man scuttles out of the way like a lizard darting into its hole. A cow is sleeping in the middle of the road. The bus goes around her.
Another bus with another village full of people comes straight toward us, then slips off to our side and passes by in a rush of wind.
At first I nearly cry out. But then I look around at stone faces of the city people and understand that that is not done here.
I study the scene in front of the bus the way I studied my letters in school. Gradually I begin to make out a kind of order in all the disorderliness, a pattern to it all. It is like a river, where the currents of buses and trucks and people and animals flow into and around each other. If you look hard enough, chaos turns into order the way letters turn into words.
This city is not so hard. You just have to study it. Auntie is right. Ill do well here.
SEEING A GIRL WITH A LONG BLACK BRAID
There are a thousand girls in the city. But so far, none of them is Gita.
LOST
I do not understand.
The bus has left the city.
And we are traveling on a hard black road.
Everyone on the bus is asleep.
No matter which way I turn,
I cannot see the swallow-tailed peak.
MORE QUESTIONS
When the sun comes up, the people on the bus begin to stir. A man with a rooster in a metal basket throws a cloth over it, but the old bird cannot be fooled; he announces the new day insistently.
When Auntie wakes up, I ask her why we are no longer in the city.
She tells me not to worry.
“That was just a small city,” she says. “We are going to a much bigger city, a grand city, a city by the water.”
I take some comfort in her words. This explains why the roofs in the first city were not covered in gold. But I am also worried. If there are two cities, which one is Gita in?
NEW CLOTHES
We have driven through a half-dozen cities and have arrived at a strange, solid-wall hut with many rooms. The family here seems to have many amas, a few men, but no children.
Auntie takes me into one of the rooms. There is nothing in it but a stained straw mat. “Take off those filthy hill clothes,” she says.
It is immodest to undress in the presence of another, and so I wait for Auntie to leave. But she clucks her tongue like an angry hen and tells me I will have to get over my backward country ways. Then she holds out a pink dress of cloud fabric and a pair of shoes.
“For me?” I say.
She clucks again and says we haven’t got all day.
I walk to the corner, turn my back to her, wriggle out of my own clothes, then lift the soft pink petticoat over my head. The new dress seems to be one long piece of cloth, with no beginning and no end, material so light and fine, I feel more naked than dressed inside it.
Auntie turns me to face her. I cover myself with my hands, but Auntie pries them away, saying I am a hopeless rube. She wraps the fabric once around my waist, then once more, twists and tucks it in at my hip. I cannot imagine how I will walk freely in such a long, flowing gown, or how I will be able to haul the firewood and scrub the floors in such a fine and flimsy dress.
Auntie points to the shoes. “These go on your feet,” she says.
I want her to know that I know about shoes, that I had a pair of sandals when my father was alive. But my feet, bare and tough and dirty from three days of travel, would make my words seem like lies. So I put the shoes on as if I do so every day.
Instantly, my feet howl. These shoes are nothing but tight little boxes. I clench my toes, like a bat grasping a branch, as I stuff my old homespun clothes into my bundle and try to keep up with Auntie as she hurries from the room.
NUMBERS
Auntie is speaking to a man in a tongue I do not understand. Some of the words are familiar, but most of them rush by like the huts-and-shops-and-huts-and-shops, making my head hurt from the speed of this city talk.
It seems as though they are talking about me now. The man, who has a nose like a turnip, points to me and asks Auntie a question. The answer, as best I can tell, is the number twelve.
He trains his eyes on me and my pink dress, and I imagine that he can see right through it. I wrap my arms around myself.
“How old are your?” he says in my language.
I tell him I am thirteen.
He wheels around and slaps Auntie across the face, and she turns from a woman of queenly bearing to a frightened child.
The turnip-nose man lets out a stream of angry words I cannot follow, but I understand that I have done wrong. I fall to my knees and beg the man to forgive me.
But he and Auntie are laughing. They are speaking in a strange language, but it seems that they are trading numbers.
Auntie names a price as high as a mountain. The man spits. Auntie names another figure.
The turnip-nose man answers with a smaller amount.
Auntie goes high.
The man goes low.
Eventually they agree and the man gives Auntie a roll of rupee notes.
I do not know what they have agreed to.
But I do know this:
he gives her nearly enough money to buy a water buffalo.
UNCLE HUSBAND
Auntie has gone, leaving me in the room with the turnip-nose man. I have never been alone with a man who is not in my family. I pull my shawl over my head and hide inside the pink cloud fabric. But the man comes close, so close I can smell the sour stink of his hair oil.
He smiles, reaches in his pocket and offers me a sweet. I do not want to cross this slapping man, so I take it.
“When will Auntie return?” I ask.
“Bimla?” the man says.
I do not know her proper name. I only know her as Auntie. I shrug yes-no-I-don’t-know.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “You will see your Auntie Bimla again after we cross the border.”
I don’t know this word, border
, but I have learned from Auntie that city people don’t like to be asked a lot of questions.
“From now on,” he says, “I will be your uncle. But you must call me husband. Do you understand?”
I don’t. Not at all. But I nod.
“The border is a very dangerous place,” he says. “There are bad men there, men with guns, men who might harm you, or try to take you away from me and Auntie.”
It is all so confusing. I am afraid of this man. But I also feel grateful that he will protect me from the bad border men with guns.
“Don’t be frightened,” he says kindly. “It is a pretend game. You like games, don’t you?”
I nod.
Gita and I used to play pretend games. When we played make-believe, I sometimes had a husband. But it was Krishna, the young goatherd with sleepy cat eyes, not an old, turnip-nose man who doles out sweets and slaps with the same hand.
CROSSING THE BORDER
The cart we are traveling in now is called a rickshaw. It is pulled by a chicken-legged man in a rag skirt. Uncle Husband and I sit on a seat in the back, while all around us are carts of every kind, spewing smoke and churning dust.
Our rickshaw sits in a long line of trucks and cars going nowhere while people on foot pass by. One of those people is Auntie. I place my palms together to greet her, then I remember the city lesson I have learned, and let my hands fall back in my lap as I watch her thread her way through the crowd.
Uncle Husband leans close and slips a sweet into my palm. “You like sweets, don’t you?” he says.
During the hungry months I have eaten porridge thickened with dirt, rotten potatoes, boiled weeds. I nod. I like sweets. I like them more than I can say.
I nod and then remember to whisper thank you.
Up ahead, I see one of the bad border men. He is dressed all in tan and he has a gun at his hip. He stops each cart and asks questions.
Uncle Husband puts an arm around my shoulder. “Don’t be afraid,” he says. “I will take care of you.”
The border man steps up to our cart. He and Uncle Husband speak in quick city talk, examining an important-looking piece of paper that Uncle Husband has taken from his vest.
The border man points to the paper and asks me, “Is this your husband?”
I curl my toes inside my new shoes and say yes.
The man places a hand on his hip, and I wait for him to shoot me for this lie. But he simply walks on to the next cart.
Soon we are moving, the feet of the rickshaw puller padding noiselessly on the dirt path. I ask Uncle Husband when we will cross the border. He says we already have.
A REWARD
Uncle says I have done well, and he gives me a handful of sweets. I eat one and stow the others in my bundle.
He yells at the chicken-legged man, cursing at him and telling him to go faster.
Next time Uncle is in a good mood, I will ask him where I can find a mail runner to take the rest of the sweets back home to Ama.
TRAIN
Now we are riding on a train. It makes thunder when it moves, but somehow it rocks the people inside to sleep.
Uncle takes a flat pouch from his vest, puffs his cheeks out,
and blows into it.
The thing fills slowly with his breath, and soon it takes the shape of a giant lentil bean.
Then he puts it behind his head and closes his eyes.
When he wakes up I will ask him when we will see Auntie again.
In the meantime, I am writing in my notebook about the strange things I have seen so far: all the houses here have glass suns like the one in Gita’s hut. And the men carry devices that trill like birds and cause them to shout Hello! Hello! And everywhere I look, there are pictures of beautiful, full-hipped women and handsome men with glossy hair. I am not sure, but I think they must be movie stars.
Since we crossed the border, everything is different, even the language on the signs.
“We are in India now,” Uncle Husband has told me. “Don’t speak to anyone here. If they hear you talk, they will know you’re from the mountains and they will try to take advantage of you.” But while he’s sleeping, I write a few of these India words in my notebook. Maybe, if my wealthy mistress is pleased with my work, she will teach me what they mean.
When I have run out of words to copy, I look out the window at this strange place called India. Inside the train, the people around me are snoring. I don’t understand how they can close their eyes when there is so much to see.
ONE HUNDRED ROTIS
The train has stopped at a giant metal hut. Through the window, I can see a man with a grill stacked with a hundred rotis.
People run from the train and line up at his cart. His mountain of bread begins to disappear.
My stomach churns, looking at so much food vanishing so fast.
Uncle Husband tells me to stay in my seat. Then he joins the line of people at the cart. Soon he comes back to the train with a steaming roti, fragrant with home and Ama.
I go weak with wanting.
“For you,” he says.
I go weak with gratitude.
Uncle Husband isn’t young and handsome like Krishna, and I can never tell when he might grow angry and slap me. But I am grateful, in this strange new world of moving thunder and invisible borders, that he is my Uncle Husband.
CITY WAYS
The train slows to a halt. Uncle Husband tells me to stand up, that we are making a stop. I don’t understand. Still, I am glad of the chance to get out of this traveling oven and move my legs.
We leave the train, and I see that the men are going to one side, women to another. Uncle Husband puts a hand to my cheek. His touch is soft. His words are hard.
“Come right back. Don’t try anything. Or your family will not see a single rupee.”
I swallow, nod, and join the river of women flowing into a field beside the train.
Then, all around me, the women lift their skirts, squat like crows, and relieve themselves on the open ground. I feel shame for them, doing in front of others what is rightly done in private. And I am almost ill, as the odor of so much waste swirls around me. But my own need for relief is so strong, I have no choice but to do as they do.
I copy their crow pose, but somehow I wet a corner of my
long flowing dress.
Now my shame is for myself.
DISGRACED
As I walk back to the train, I pass a cluster of men yelling and shaking their fists in the air. At the center of the group, a girl my age crouches in the dirt. Her scalp has been freshly shaved—pale and fragile as a bird’s egg—and hanks of her long dark hair lie in coils at her feet.
One of the men in the crowd throws his cigarette butt at her feet. Another one spits in her direction. Then another—a fat old man with a boil on his neck—picks up a handful of gravel and flings it at her. She winces, then begins to cry.
I see Uncle Husband standing at the edge of the circle, puffing on a cigarette, taking in the scene with untroubled eyes. I run over to his side.
“What is happening?” I ask. “What did she do to deserve this kind of punishment?”
He grinds his cigarette out with his boot and sighs. “That’s what she gets,” he says, “for trying to run away from her husband.”
He points to the old man with the boil on his neck.
The old husband’s cheeks are flushed with pride now as he grabs the girl by the arm and leads her away. She is squirming and crying, dragging her feet in the dirt.
Stupid girl,” says Uncle Husband.
I don’t understand.
“One look at that head of hers and anyone can tell she’s a disgraced woman,” he says.
“Even if she does run off again, no one will help her.”
A CITY OF THE DEAD
The sun is not yet up when Uncle Husband tells me that we’ve reached our destination. As the train glides to a stop, I hold my bundle close and look out the window for the golden roofs.
What I see f
irst is one hut,
swaybacked as an old water buffalo.
Then another,
and another,
until there is nothing but hut after hut
after hut
after hut.
There are roofs made of metal scraps,
held down with the soft black wheels from cars.
There are roofs of heavy paper,
piled with bricks and boots and pots and pans.
And roofs made of sheets
tied in place with plastic vines.
But no roofs of gold.
No date or mango or orange trees.
And no movie stars.
Only rows of sleeping bodies. Side by side by side are men, women, and children in rags, asleep on the ground.
I try to count them,
get to two hundred
and give up
when I see two hundred more beyond them.
Uncle Husband says to stay close as we get off the train. Outside, the air is warm and heavy, thick with the smoke of a hundred cooking fires. The sky is so choked with dust that the light from the electric suns on poles disappears in the haze. All around us, people shuffle along, heads down, eyes empty, as the dust churns at their feet.
I am afraid of this city where the lying-down people look like the dead. And the standing-up ones, like the walking dead.
WALKING IN THE CITY
It is hard to walk in my new shoes, harder still to push through streets jammed with scrawny rickshaw men hauling plump passengers, naked children pawing through rubbish heaps, stray dogs nosing through gutters filled with human waste.
At one street corner, two boys are begging for coins. One has a leg that ends in a stump where his knee should be. He cups his hand and brings it to his mouth as if he is eating invisible food.
The other has a music-making machine. He wears one glove and does a dance that makes it look as if he’s walking even though he’s not going anywhere.