Girls Burn Brighter

by Shobha Rao

  * * *

  The wedding was set for the following month. Poornima spent most of that month inside the hut. It was considered gauche for a girl to be seen out and about in the village after her betrothal, and there was also the matter of the evil gaze of the other villagers, putting a hex on Poornima, envious of her good fortune in marrying a college-educated boy. “Besides,” her aunt said, staying with them for the month to help with the preparations, “we don’t need you getting any darker.” It didn’t matter either way to Poornima: light and dark, inside and outside, hope and hopelessness slowly started to lose meaning for her.

  Sometimes, while sitting listlessly at her charkha, or combing her sister’s hair, she would look up through the open door of the hut and wonder, What is that shining thing out there? What is it, so painful, so bright? People, too, lost their place in her mind; they were no longer moored to anything Poornima recognized or controlled or even understood as herself. Once, early in the month, her younger brother ran inside with a cut on his arm. He held it up to her, crying, waiting to be bandaged, but Poornima only looked down at him and smiled kindly, distractedly. She handed him a fifty-paisa coin and nudged him back out the door, drops of blood trailing him, and said, “Go. A banana. Quick. Savitha’s on her way.” Later in the month, her aunt asked her to put rice on the stove for dinner, and Poornima looked up from the corner where she was seated, stared at her aunt, and with her eyes as empty as an open field, she asked, “Who are you?” Twice, maybe three times, Poornima felt a flash, a stab of something she couldn’t name. Something akin to a shard of bitter cold, or blinding heat. What was it? What was it?

  She thought that it might be illness, that she had caught something. Malaria, maybe. But then it settled. It settled in her chest, on the left side, just above her heart. At first it was only a sprinkling, like a few grains of rice that might’ve spilled onto a stone floor. And all she had to do was bend to pick them up, one by one. But then the sprinkling of rice grew into a weight. A density. It became a mound of rice. She tried to press her palm against her chest, in an attempt to soothe it away. But it wouldn’t slacken, it wouldn’t loosen; it simply sat there, tight as a fist. She thought of the weight of her mother’s hand, resting against her hair, and now, in her chest this time, was yet another weight. But this one ravaged, conjuring no memory, no longing, no lost childhood or honeyed voice or a hand raised to feed her, conjuring nothing, nothing at all except the two words: she’s gone.

  2

  More aunts and uncles and cousins started arriving the week before the wedding. The hut was bustling. A tent was erected, blue and red and green and gold. Mango leaves had been bought and garlanded together, strung across the doorway to the hut and all along its edges. Various items for the ceremony—turmeric, kumkum, coconuts, rice and dals, packets of camphor and incense and oils—came in every few minutes. It all had to be stored, put away. And then there was the cooking. All those relatives, there must’ve been more than thirty by Poornima’s last count. They all had to be fed, bright green banana leaves spread before them as plates, the dirty ones collected and thrown to the pigs. Her aunts and cousins helped, but every few minutes someone would turn to Poornima—usually one of her young cousins—and say, Where do you keep the salt? or, Imagine, you’ll be the wife of a fancy man, or, What is it, why are looking at me like that? To which, to all of which, Poornima would place her hand above her heart, and wonder at the hardness, and the ache.

  The days passed.

  When the morning of the wedding came, it came like an invader. The sun rose in a clamor of paint strokes—pink and purple and orange and green—then rested angrily against the horizon, waiting for land, women, villages on fire. Early in the day, all her female relatives gathered around Poornima, along with her future sisters-in-law and a few neighbor women, for the bridal ceremony. They oiled her hair and then they rubbed turmeric over her body. Each one, in turn, then blessed her with rice soaked in turmeric and kumkum and sandalwood. With the older women, Poornima rose and bent to touch their feet. Aruna, the sister who’d compared Poornima to a monkey, stood a little apart, watching, as if she were bored by it all. When her turn came to bless Poornima and sprinkle her bowed head with turmeric-soaked rice, it felt to Poornima that the grains landed on her head with a kind of jab, like hail, but they also served to wake her up, and, as if she were coming out of a long and complex dream—so convincing it was, so utterly irrefutable, that the waking world, the one in which she was surrounded by twenty women, all smiling, all with yellow teeth, seemed to her the fraudulent one—she blinked and bowed her head lower, saw the throw of rice, and thought, Rice. Is there anything else in the world besides rice?

  The muhurthum—the exact time the marriage ceremony would start, based on the bride’s and groom’s horoscopes—was set for that evening at 8:16 P.M. It was a little after seven P.M. and Poornima was seated on the veranda with the priest—without the groom—conducting the Gauri Puja. It wasn’t until after this that she would be led to the mandapam, the wedding dais, and seated next to Kishore in order to go through more pujas, and then have him tie the wedding necklace, the mangalsutra, around her neck. Poornima sat listening to the priest, following his instructions, but everything still felt to her like a mirage, a distant and unreachable place. She listened to the drone of the priest’s voice; she stared into her lap—her head bent, just as a bride’s should be—her hands folded in prayer.

  She was wearing a red-and-green sari, made of heavy silk. She wore a few jewels, mostly fake or borrowed, the row of bangles on each wrist glittering in the camphor flame. The henna crawled up her arms and her feet like moss, smothering and airless.

  Everything—everything from the bridal ceremony to the dressing in the shadows of the hut, helped by her aunts, the pujas, the young priest yawning as he incanted them, and the constant rush of color and noise and people—all of these were things Poornima could in no way feel, only see, as if she were peering through a window.

  Through this window, the priest looked at Poornima, who was squirming a little, incense smoke choking her, and said, “Pay attention.” Then he said, “Get up.” It was time to go to the mandapam, where her groom was waiting.

  Her father waited beside her, to lead her to the dais. Poornima looked at him, his face set hard against her, or maybe against her dowry-raising in-laws, or maybe his own frailty—although she saw none of it; she saw only madness, her own—and he said, “Let’s go,” and she said, “Where?”

  The sun was beginning to set by now, the western sky blazed green and orange and red. The line of the eastern horizon was once again white with heat. Where am I being led to? Poornima wondered. Wherever it was, she didn’t mind. Not really. She noticed the sunset, with wonder, and thought, It is such a lovely evening, and such a lovely sari I am wearing. It delighted her. That window she was peering through: so much loveliness behind it. And yet, somewhere deeper, she thought, No, I don’t want this sari. I don’t want this day. I don’t want this father. What do I want—what do I want? She was not able to answer, and so all of it remained, and she walked on, pretending to be delighted.

  Her head was down, of course. She didn’t look up, but she knew she was nearing the tent when the heat, the air around her, grew heavier. Her father didn’t seem to notice; he seemed entirely focused on the dais, leading her to it. But the air was stifling, no longer lovely, and Poornima felt a rising panic. She tried to stop him, she tried to buck him off, but he kept his grip on her elbow and steered her toward the dais.

  “I want to stop,” she said to her father.

  Her father tightened his hold on Poornima’s elbow. He said, “Don’t be stupid.”

  Don’t be stupid, Poornima thought, and the words seemed decent enough. And so that’s what Poornima chanted to herself, Don’t be stupid. Don’t be stupid. Don’t be stupid. Don’t be stupid. Don’t be stupid. Don’t be stupid. Don’t be stupid. Don’t be stupid. And she kept chanting this, over and over and over again, until she arrived at
the mandapam, climbed the two steps, and was seated next to her groom.

  Don’t be stupid, she told herself.

  Her father placed Poornima’s hand in the groom’s. She didn’t look. Why look? Who was this strange man? He barely held it, anyway. More pujas. The priest handed her two bananas and an apple. Two bananas and an apple. Poornima looked at them. They seemed so familiar. So enticing. As if she’d waited her whole life to be handed this exact number and variety of fruit.

  Why?

  She wanted to ask the man sitting next to her. He might know. She was about to turn and do exactly that when the priest, impatiently, as if he’d already told her many times, said, “Ammai, can’t you hear? I said, give him the fruit.” And so Poornima decided she would ask later, after handing him the fruit. His hand came closer, closer and closer, and this time, Poornima raised her eyes. Just enough. She gasped. His right hand: it wasn’t whole. He was missing two fingers. His middle and most of his index. The nub of his index finger looked like dry shredded meat, still pink, and the end of where his middle finger should have been was closed up, turned inward, like the mouth of a toothless old man. She shrank away.

  So this, she thought with disgust, this is what they meant by idiosyncrasy. She recalled that she’d once known someone else with these hands, with hands just as grotesque (someone’s father, but whose?). And then she thought, But who is this man? And why am I to hand him these two bananas and an apple? They’re mine. These fruits. I don’t want to place them in that hand, she thought; I don’t want to place them in a hand so harmed.

  * * *

  It was not the fruit. Or perhaps it was the fruit. Either way, by the time Kishore had tied the mangalsutra around her neck and they’d walked the seven steps around the fire—her five fingers held in his three (and a half)—she understood. And that window? She understood now that there was no window. There never had been. Or, if there had been, it had broken, a rock had crashed through it: and here she was, staring at the rock, the shards, the air rushing in. She understood, in that moment, that she was married.

  3

  Her husband’s home, in Namburu, was not at all a hut. It was a real house, made with concrete and with two floors. It had four rooms on the first floor and one large room on the top floor, with the remainder of the flat roof serving as a terrace. Here, laundry was hung, and on the hottest summer nights, everyone brought their mats up and slept under the stars. But not anymore. Here was where Kishore and Poornima would live, and here was where Poornima was escorted for their first night together. Poornima’s young cousin accompanied her, serving as a chaperone, and her new mother-in-law and sisters-in-law greeted them at the door with a glowing aarthi. Poornima looked down at her toes.

  They played a game, she and her new husband, while all the relations cheered them on. It was a game that had been played since ancient times: the same game, in the same way. Water was poured into a brass vessel, narrow at the top. A ring was dropped in. Plop. Into the water. They were to reach their right hands, only their right, into the vessel, and whoever came up holding the ring was the winner. The narrow opening was the key—their hands were meant to touch. The fingers meant to interlock. The foreplay—between these two strangers—meant to lead to sex. The first sex. Poornima reached her hand in and felt an immediate disgust. Instead of five, she felt three fingers. The thumb and pinkie hardly fingers, so that left only one. And this one rubbing against hers, the nub of the other—the index, the one that was minced—like moist, undercooked meat. And then nothing. The middle finger just an absence. An omission. She smiled shyly, trying to hide her revulsion. This is your new husband, she told herself. This is your new life. And then she looked up. Her new husband was looking right back at her. At her? Maybe through her. But he had a peculiar look in his eyes. Poornima recognized the look; what was it? She went through all the recollections of her youth, and her girlhood, the whole of her life, really, and it seemed to her that it was not at all peculiar, or unfamiliar. It was, in fact, the most familiar look of all. It was the look of a man: undressing her, teasing off her clothes, her innocence, ripping it with his teeth, biting at the tender heart of it, and then laughing and cruel, savoring the completeness of his incursion, its terror and its desire, and here she was, already half spent, half spoiled, half naked.

  And here she was: already half swallowed.

  And it was then that the tears started—before she could stop them, while her fingers still searched for the ring, but not really, because she already knew he would win; or rather, that she would lose—but they didn’t matter, because hardly anyone noticed, and if they did, they mistook them for tears of joy.

  * * *

  That evening, after the afternoon filled with games and gentle teasing of the bride and groom ended, Poornima was bathed and dressed in a white sari and her hair adorned with blooming jasmine. She was handed a glass of warm milk for her new husband, scented with saffron, and she climbed the steps to the rooftop room. Slowly. So slowly that her young cousin, who accompanied her up the stairs, along with a few of Kishore’s female relations, looked at Poornima and thought she might cry again. This young cousin, named Malli, knew nothing of what had happened back in Indravalli—only that there was a strange hush over the ceremony, one that she guessed was associated with the crazy-looking woman curled up in the weaving hut all those weeks ago, nestled under Poornima’s arms, the one she’d only gotten a glimpse of, though a boy cousin, who’d gotten a better look, had told her she was a rakshasi come to devour new babies. “But why new babies?” she’d asked him. “Because, stupid, they’re the tenderest.” That seemed to make sense. “So we’re too tough?” He’d looked at her and sighed impatiently. “I am. I don’t know about you. Let me see.” He’d squeezed her arm, and said, “Probably you’re all right.” Still, Malli was happy to join Poornima on her journey to Namburu. It was the custom—a young female relative joining the bride to her new home, a way to ease the journey to the strange, unfamiliar place—and Malli had jumped at the chance. But now that she was here, climbing the stairs beside Poornima, a cousin she barely knew but who struck her as being in an awful, pounding sort of pain, Malli wondered whether it wouldn’t have been better to take her chances with the rakshasi.

  Outside the door to the room, Malli and the other relations left her, giggling as they hurried away.

  Poornima watched them go.

  She looked at the doorway. There was a garland of young green mango leaves strung across the top of the doorframe. The door itself had a fresh coat of green paint and was blessed with dots of red kumkum and turmeric. She stood against it and listened. Not for sounds of her new husband, who, she knew, waited beyond, but for something else, something she could not name. Maybe a voice leading her away, maybe to the edge of the roof, maybe to its very edge. But there was nothing. The glass of milk in her hands grew cool. She looked down and saw the layer of skin on its surface. It had appeared out of nowhere: thin and creased and floating. Cunning. How did milk do that, how did it know to do that? she wondered. To protect itself? How, she thought, could it be so strong?

  She set the glass down next to the door and walked to the center of the terrace. The concrete burned her bare feet, but she hardly noticed. She saw something shining toward the middle of the roof, but when she reached it, she saw that it was only a piece of wrapper, for a toffee. What had she thought it was? A coin? A jewel? Poornima didn’t know, but she was so disappointed that she sat down, right next to the wrapper, and stared at it. “You could’ve been a diamond,” she said to it. Then she said, “You could’ve been anything.” The wrapper stared back. It was nearly dark by now. It had cooled some, but the afternoons were still hot, in the high thirties, and the concrete that Poornima sat on held the heat. She didn’t mind. What she minded was that when she was small, three or four years old, one of her earliest memories, she’d gone with her mother to the market to buy vegetables. While they were walking back home, her mother had stopped in a dry goods shop to buy a gram of cl
oves. Poornima looked at all the tins on the counter of the shop, filled with chocolate candies and biscuits and toffees, and asked her mother to buy her one. Her mother hardly looked at her. She said, “No. We don’t have the money.”

  Poornima waited, watching the tins.

  Another customer—a fat lady with her fat son—came into the store. The boy—even to Poornima’s young gaze—struck her as spoiled. He was older than her but seemed slower, as if he’d been fed all his life on butter and praise. He didn’t even ask for a candy. He simply pointed at the toffee he wanted and yanked on his fat mother’s pallu. The owner obliged him by opening the tin, and then, laughing obsequiously, he said, “Take as many as you want, Mr. Ramana-garu.” The boy grabbed a handful and walked away. The owner was busy helping the mother, and so he, too, walked away. Poornima’s mother was bent over the jars of spices, examining a handful of cloves. Poornima turned back to the tin.

  Its lid was still open.

  She didn’t eat it until she got home. She’d clutched the toffee in her little fist all along the walk home and then she’d waited until she was alone—while her mother was making dinner and her brothers were playing—and then she’d slowly unwrapped it, the red toffee in the middle of her palm nearly as big as her palm, and sparkling like a gem, a smooth and sugary gem. She licked it, once, twice, until she could no longer stand it. Then she popped it into her mouth. She’d had toffee before, but never a whole one; her mother had always broken them into pieces so she could share them with her brothers. The worst part of it was the shattering, Poornima thought: to take a perfectly luscious round gem and to break it into shards. It was indecent. She resented her mother even more than her brothers. But this, this one was whole. She sucked on it and sucked on it until the sweetness flooded her mouth, tickled her throat. It was down to nothing, barely a sliver, when she heard her mother calling for her. She swallowed it down, and when she went to the back of the hut, where her mother was cooking, she started to cough from the woodsmoke.