by Shobha Rao
“What is that?” her mother said.
Poornima looked at her.
“Come here,” her mother said.
Poornima took a small step toward her mother. She grabbed her daughter’s cheeks and squeezed. Poornima puckered her mouth like a fish. “Open up,” her mother said. “Don’t think I don’t see you.”
Poornima finally opened up, a little, and then when her mother squeezed harder, her entire mouth gaped open, red and shining and slippery like the inside of a pomegranate.
“Did you steal it?” her mother asked.
Poornima said nothing, and then she nodded.
Her mother sighed. She said, “Stealing is wrong. You know that, don’t you, Poornima. You should never, ever do it.” Poornima looked at her mother and nodded again. “You’ve already eaten it, so we’ll have to go tomorrow and give him money. I won’t tell your father, you understand, but it wasn’t yours. Remember that, Poornima: never take what isn’t yours. Can you remember that?”
Poornima remembered, but she no longer agreed. Sitting in the middle of the terrace, on the evening of her wedding night, she looked at the wrapper and she thought about her mother. She thought about the red toffee; she could taste it still on her tongue, feel the sweetness, still, traveling down her throat. But she didn’t agree. Amma, she said to the wrapper, if only I had taken what wasn’t mine. If only I had taken a moment to insist, insist on meeting him before the wedding, I could’ve counted his fingers like they counted mine. If only I’d refused. Refused it all: to let you die, to let the goat die, to let that blue clock stop chiming. If only I’d said, You are flute song. She picked up the wrapper. She said, Don’t you see, Amma, if only I had taken the things I wasn’t meant to take. If only I’d had the courage.
She dropped the wrapper and watched it blow away.
She walked to the door, behind which her new husband was waiting, probably asleep by this time, and picked up the glass of now cold milk. She saw on its surface specks of dust that had blown in, sailing on the wrinkled layer of milk. She looked at them, the specks, and decided to let them convince her: hold fast, they said, stay on the surface, and these waters, these creamy, sumptuous white waters, let them carry you. Where would they take her? She had no idea, but behind that door was a man who was not her father. And to whom she now belonged. That seemed an improvement; that alone was a better place.
* * *
Inside the room was a bed, a wooden armoire with a long mirror fringed with a design of berries dangling from curling vines, a desk, and a television. A television! No one in Indravalli had a television. Kishore saw her staring at it, and said, “Don’t get excited. It doesn’t work.” Her eyes left the television and returned to the glass of milk in her hand. He took it and placed it on a small round table beside the bed. The thin yellow sheet on the bed was covered with rose petals arranged in the shape of a heart, and Poornima wondered who’d done that: shaped them into a heart. It was a gesture so enchanting, so unexpected, that she wanted to sit on the edge of the bed—gingerly, so as not to disturb the petals—and look at it. Just look at it. But Kishore seemed not at all interested in the heart, because without prelude, he pulled her onto the bed, tugged at the folds of her sari, and burrowed his head, his wet lips, into the dip of her blouse, his fingers stabbing at her breasts like the ends of a potato. In the ensuing confusion, Poornima missed whatever it was that lanced into her. She let out a whimper, too scared to scream, but by now, Kishore was grunting away on top of her. She couldn’t decide—as she watched his face, its grimace, its shudderings—what hurt more: the thing coming in or the thing going out. But then it ended. Just like that. After one final push, Kishore looked down at her and smiled. A true smile. And she thought, Yes, after all, yes, you are the one I belong to now. Then he rolled off her, and in the dark, just as Poornima felt for the first time the velvet of the rose petals against her back, cool and forgiving like rain, he said sleepily, “I like two cups of coffee. One first thing, when I wake up, and one with tiffin. Do you understand?”
She nodded into the dark. And tried her very hardest to understand.
4
At the end of their first month of marriage, on a Sunday, Kishore took Poornima and his sister Aruna, seventeen and younger than Kishore by six years, to Vijayawada. His other sister, Divya, who Poornima saw for the first time at the wedding, was ten years younger than him, and studious. She was quiet, the opposite of Aruna, and didn’t want to come along to Vijayawada because she had exams. So Poornima and Kishore and Aruna set out after breakfast. Poornima wore her best sari, an orange one with a pink border that she’d gotten as a wedding gift. They ate masala dosas at a restaurant near the bus station. Aruna and Kishore didn’t enjoy their dosas—Aruna said the curry was flavorless and that the waiter was insolent; Kishore added that the restaurants near the company where he worked, on Annie Besant Road, were far better—but Poornima had nothing to compare hers to; she’d never been to a restaurant before. Afterward, Kishore took them to the cinema.
This was also a first for Poornima.
Her eyes warmed with tears as she and Aruna waited for Kishore to buy the tickets, wishing she were here with Savitha, as they’d once planned, but Poornima gasped and forgot all about her when she entered through the balcony doors. She’d never seen a room so big. It was like entering an enormous cave, but one that was chiseled and glamorously lit. She stood in awe—looking at the red plush seats, some of them ripped but still luxurious, and the droplets of golden light along the walls where the lamps were hung, and the crowds of people, rushing to find seats. Kishore and Aruna must’ve been to this theater before because they pushed past Poornima to a row of seats in the middle of the balcony.
Then the curtain parted, the screen filled with light, and Poornima was astonished again. The people were huge! They seemed to be bearing down on her, ready to lunge. Her eyes grew wide, a little afraid, but when she looked anxiously at Kishore and Aruna, they were already engrossed in the film—a sad tale of two lovers separated by the disapproval of their parents, especially the girl’s parents, because the boy was penniless, and he had no job (as far as Poornima could tell), but he was strikingly handsome, and he had a handsome motorcycle, even though he was poor. The girl’s parents, in an effort to keep them apart, went so far as to lock her up in a remote mountain home. It was sad, but there were song and dance sequences of the lovers in Kashmir, and Shimla, and Rishikesh, dancing and frolicking in the snow. The actress was wearing only a shimmering, diaphanous blue sari against the white of the snow, and Poornima leaned over and asked Kishore, “Isn’t she cold? Isn’t snow supposed to be cold?” He ignored her, or maybe he didn’t hear.
At the end of the movie, the hero won over the girl’s parents by rescuing their family business from a greedy relative who was plotting to overtake it and throw them out of their mansion. If the hero hadn’t exposed him, and if he hadn’t held the bad relative at gunpoint, the girl’s family would have lost everything—money, jewels, cars—and would’ve been left homeless. The girl’s parents, in that instant, recognized the boy’s cleverness and quick-wittedness, and the movie ended with the girl’s parents placing their daughter’s hand in his.
Poornima was so touched by the radiant faces of the hero and heroine, by all they’d had to overcome, that she began to cry. Kishore and Aruna looked over at her and laughed. “It wasn’t even that good,” Aruna said. Poornima didn’t agree; and on the way home, as the bus wound through the darkening paddies of rice and the fading fields of cotton and peanuts that lined the road from Vijayawada to Namburu, and as the outlines of the distant hills bled into the night sky, she realized she wasn’t crying because of the film, she was crying because she hadn’t forgotten. Not for an instant. Savitha had been there, seated next to her, in some way. In some way more essential than even Kishore and Aruna had been there. She could picture it: Savitha would’ve grasped her hand when the hero pulled out the gun, and she would’ve liked him, the hero, because he was poor like
they were, and because he loved the heroine with such sweetness, such guileless longing. Imagine, Poori, she would’ve said, shaking her head, imagine how cold that poor girl must’ve been, in that thin sari. All that snow, she would’ve said, it looked just like yogurt rice, don’t you think?
In the days and weeks after going to the cinema, Poornima thought more and more about it. Not the film itself. Not exactly. What she thought about were the faces of the other people in the theater, especially Kishore’s and Aruna’s. She’d never seen such a thing: lights flashing, changing colors, illuminating the rapt faces of people in an audience. She’d not even seen the lights of a television shining and shifting, let alone the lights of a movie screen. It seemed to her, as the months wore on, that the quality of that light, distant yet penetrating, menacing yet harmless, was how the events of her own life felt.
For instance, one evening, while she was cooking dinner for the family, her mother-in-law walked into the kitchen (which was actually a separate room, much to Poornima’s astonishment) and demanded to know where her garnet earrings were, the ones in the shape of a flower; she wanted to wear them to the temple, she said. Poornima, who hadn’t even known her mother-in-law owned a pair of garnet earrings, said she didn’t know, and went back to making the eggplant-and-potato curry on the stove. Her mother-in-law, watching closely as Poornima added salt to the curry, sighed loudly and muttered, “The poor. You never know around them.” Poornima put down the spoon, watched her mother-in-law leave the kitchen, and wondered, You never know what?
But then the lights of the cinema moved closer, became more menacing.
This time, it was while the family was having tea and pakora on a Sunday afternoon. Poornima had just sat down to drink her tea when Aruna eyed her closely, turned to her mother, and said, “Somebody discolored my silk shalwar. Amma, do you know who it could’ve been?” It had been a delicate pink, but was now apparently splotched with blue and purple. They both turned to Poornima. Their gaze took on a kind of hatred, sudden and smoky. “You soaked it with something blue, didn’t you? Was it that blue towel? I bet you soaked it with that towel. Amma, can you believe it? You’re jealous, aren’t you? It’s impossible to have nice things around some people. I know you soaked it with that towel. How can you be so stupid?”
Poornima opened her mouth to protest, but she honestly couldn’t remember. She did the entire family’s laundry, so maybe she had soaked it with the blue towel. But not on purpose, and certainly not because she was jealous. She looked at Kishore, but he was busy chewing an onion pakora. She turned to her father-in-law, who rarely said anything in front of his wife, and had a habit of slinking off whenever a discussion became heated or turned to him. Today he simply sat with his hands folded, staring into them as if into a deep well. Only Divya was an ally—a serious girl who Poornima had grown to like, but who had no voice, being the youngest, and was often shouted down.
But before Poornima could even turn to Divya, her mother-in-law was at her side, yanking her head back by her braid. “Ask forgiveness,” she growled. “Ask.” Poornima was so surprised she couldn’t get any words out, not even a scream. Her mother-in-law finally let go, and Poornima did ask forgiveness, but then, that night, as she was falling asleep, she thought, It was absurd of me. It was cowardly of me. I should’ve never asked for forgiveness when I’m not even sure I had anything to do with it. I don’t remember ever even seeing that silk shalwar. What did it mean to ask forgiveness, she wondered, not knowing the crime, or who committed it. It meant nothing, she realized. Nothing at all. And so she decided in that moment—decided, yes, decided, astonished that she could even do such a thing as decide—that she would never again ask forgiveness for a thing she didn’t do, for crimes she could in no way recall committing. And so she fell asleep smiling, and drifted into a dream.
After six months of marriage, the days took an even darker turn. Poornima’s father had been able to give them the first five thousand rupees at the wedding. He’d taken a loan from the weaving collective, at an exorbitant interest rate, but had been able to keep both of his looms, and even hired a boy—young, hardly able to reach the treadles—to work the second loom. But he still hadn’t managed to buy Kishore a scooter, nor had he any way to pay the remaining five thousand. Poornima would’ve known nothing about this, since she hardly had any contact with her father, had it not been for the fact that her in-laws began to mention it more and more. Mention? That wasn’t quite the right word. Hound was a better word. They began to hound her about it.
At first, Poornima didn’t even know they were talking about the five thousand. They were circumspect, and they would say things like, Some people. Some people are just too lazy to pay their debts, or, You can’t trust anyone, especially not the poor, the ones with daughters. Why should their bad luck cost us money? or, Liars—if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a liar. But after a few weeks, the grumbling became more pointed. While Poornima was eating dinner one night, after all the others had finished—first Kishore and her father-in-law, and then her mother-in-law and Aruna and Divya had to be served—her mother-in-law walked into the kitchen, where Poornima was sitting on the floor and eating, and said, “Did you get enough to eat, my dear?”
Poornima looked up at her in astonishment. My dear?
“It’s just as well,” she continued. “Eat your fill. You can live off of us. But who are we going to live off of?”
Poornima tried to talk to Kishore about it. She brought it up one night, after they’d climbed to their upstairs room. The nights were cooler now. It was January, and they’d had to switch out the thin sheets for the woolen blanket. The sky was a deep and distant blue; winter stars pierced it with cold indifference. Poornima stood on the terrace for a moment, looking out at the other houses in Namburu, most of them only thatched-roof huts like the one she’d grown up in. Golden lantern light spilled onto the dirt passageways between the huts, and there was the smell of woodsmoke, cooking fires setting rice to boil, round wheat pulkas browning directly over the flames. Poornima looked in the direction of Indravalli and knew this same cold night air must hang over Indravalli, too, this exact night air, probably, and yet she felt no kinship with it. No affection. It was as if the winter had turned the season of her heart, too, and left it filled only with smoke and distant, frozen stars.
Kishore asked her to come to the bed when she entered. He was lying on top of the covers. “Take off your blouse,” he said. Poornima took off her blouse and wrapped her pallu around her shoulders, though the shadowed curves of her breasts, her thin arms, could still be guessed through the fabric of her sari. “No,” he said, “take that off, too.” She did so reluctantly, shy, unaware, even after six months of marriage, and even with Kishore on top of her practically every night, of her adolescent body, and of the crude brutality it could inspire. “Massage my feet,” he said. She moved to the end of the bed. Her fingers, though they’d already been rough in Indravalli from the charkha and the housework, were now calloused and cracking from the constant work, her hands the only part of her that seemed to absorb the daily disgraces, the accusations, the domesticity of everyday cruelty. When she lifted her eyes, she saw that Kishore’s were closed, and though her bare chest was cold, she didn’t dare to cover it again. She thought he might’ve fallen asleep, but when she slowed the massage a bit, he called out, “Keep going. Who told you to stop?” She heard him snore lightly, or maybe he grunted, and then, after a moment, he said, “Come here.” He took her while she was on her back first, and then he turned her over onto her stomach and took her again. When he finally came, he collapsed on top of her and lay there for so long that Poornima watched as three different mosquitoes bit her and flew away, drugged, heavy and bloated with her blood.
She waited a moment, once he rolled off, and then she took a deep breath. She said, “I can’t help it. I can’t help it if my father doesn’t have the money.”
Silence. She slapped away another mosquito, the room now thick with them, a
ttracted by the heat of their bodies.
“Yes, you can,” he said.
Poornima stopped. She stared at him in the dark. “I can?”
His voice grew cold. The room, too, grew suddenly cold. All the mosquitoes wandered off. “Tell him there’s worse to come,” he said, “unless he pays up.”
“Worse? Worse how?”
But Kishore didn’t say anything, and after a moment, he was snoring. Fast asleep. Poornima lay awake, the returning mosquitoes now a welcome distraction, the loss of blood an offering.
* * *
It wasn’t that conversation. Or maybe it was. Regardless, Poornima, a few weeks after that night, began to sneak upstairs between her chores, or race to finish them, or find any excuse to leave the main part of the house and climb to the second floor, close the door to their room, and sit on the edge of the bed. She never lay down; lying down reminded her of Kishore, and she didn’t want to be reminded of him. She didn’t want to be reminded of Savitha, either, so she didn’t close her eyes.
Instead, she studied the room. The walls were painted a pale green. There were watermarks on two of the walls, but none on the third and fourth. Two windows on either side of the door looked out onto the terrace, and these had bars and shutters across them, to keep out thieves. There was a lot to steal, Poornima thought: the wooden armoire was handsome; nothing in their hut in Indravalli was as handsome as the armoire. Inside it were mostly Kishore’s work clothes, along with her wedding sari, some papers and jewelry and cash that Kishore kept in a locked metal box, and a doll that was wrapped in crinkly plastic, which a distant relative had brought back from America. There was also, in the armoire, a bronze statuette Kishore had gotten for being the best student at his college each of his four years there, and this he kept especially protected, in a designated place nestled between some clothes. Tucked in between everything were mothballs. Against the other wall were the television and the desk. The television still didn’t work—Poornima wondered whether it ever had—but the room felt rich for having it there, a piece of muslin cloth covering it to keep out the dust.