The Bridge Home

by Padma Venkatraman

  “Chee!” You wrinkled your nose.

  Not far away was the largest garbage heap I’d ever seen. Mounds and mounds of junk and waste stretched out like a mountain range. The fragrance of wilted jasmine flowers mingled with the smell of goat droppings and every other bad smell imaginable.

  “Welcome to the Himalayas of rubbish!” Muthu said with a dramatic flourish.

  14

  CLIMBING THE HIMALAYAS

  You marched a few feet away from us, and away from the dump, and stood with your hands on your hips. Kutti stayed by your side.

  “Sorry, Rukku,” I said. “We have to stay.”

  “No, Viji,” you said in a reasonable tone. “Go.”

  “We don’t have a choice. Believe me, I don’t love it here.”

  You pinched your nostrils shut.

  “It’s not the nicest place, but—it’s—it’s so we can stay together, Rukku.”

  You cocked your head.

  “If I don’t work here and earn money, we’ll have to run right back to Appa. Understand?”

  “Appa hit Viji,” you said slowly. “Appa hit Amma.”

  My throat felt tight. You hadn’t said anything about how he’d hit you.

  “Viji and Rukku. Together.” You came over and patted my cheek. “Rukku will make necklaces,” you announced.

  I hugged you tight.

  “Where’s Rukku going to sit?” Muthu said.

  My eyes darted from one mound to another, wondering what to do, but you solved the problem yourself.

  You found a plastic bucket to sit on under the shade of a thorny acacia tree, about as far from the rubbish range as you could go while staying within sight. You weren’t as sheltered from the sun as I’d have liked, but there was nothing we could do about that.

  You opened your bag and pulled out a long piece of string and knotted the end with a bead, so the rest wouldn’t fall off. You worked quietly, your fingers sifting through the beads, searching for another that matched.

  I had to start working, too.

  “What do I do?” I hitched up my skirt as high as I could.

  “Search.” Muthu prodded a broken bottle at the base of a mound. “For treasure. Like this. Glass or metal scraps are best. The waste mart man will even buy cardboard and cloth if they’re not too tattered.”

  Hesitantly, I prodded the mound closest to me. Nestling between a rusty can and a broken bottle was the carcass of a rat.

  Nausea rippled through me, but I couldn’t give up before I started. I tried to pick up the bottle with my stick, but it slid deeper into the rubbish.

  “The waste mart man pays nicely for glass and metal, so we can’t let it go.” Arul grabbed the bottle with his bare hands and dropped it into my sack. “But this”—he jabbed at an empty juice carton and sent it tumbling farther down into the rubbish—“is worthless.”

  “Thanks. Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry, you’ll be an expert in no time.”

  I didn’t say, I don’t want to become an expert ragpicker. I want to be a teacher. With an effort, I swallowed my words and the bile that had risen in my throat and stepped farther into the mound.

  The rubbish heap seemed to come alive as I walked through it, sucking at my slippers like a hungry beast. My feet sank into the slimy mess, and I lost sight of my toes. Flies swarmed around my ankles.

  “Shuffle along, slowly, like you’re wading through a river,” Arul advised.

  He made it sound easy, but it wasn’t. I squelched along as best I could, making slow progress. I speared a damp rag and shook it into my sack. But when I spotted a bottle, half filled with sour milk, I had to reach for it with my bare hands.

  I wanted to run away screaming. The only thing that kept me going was how peaceful you looked when I glanced back at you, sitting cross-legged, making another bead necklace, with Kutti, alert and attentive, next to you.

  * * *

  • • •

  Arul must have realized what a slog it was for me, because every now and then, he called out, “Nice work.”

  We worked for so long with the sun beating down on our skin that my head started to hammer with pain, and it was a mercy when Arul finally said, “Enough. Let’s stop.”

  My spirits sank even deeper when I compared their loot with mine. “I’m useless. I haven’t got half as much as either of you.”

  “Don’t worry.” Arul peered into my sack. “Lots of good stuff in there. We have more, but it’s not worth as much. You’ll see.”

  Other than you, no one had ever shown me such loyalty.

  Even half empty, my sack was heavier than anything I’d carried before. But with you humming softly as you put away your beads and our two new friends beaming at me like my sack was filled with precious gems, I shouldered my burden without complaint, my back straight, my steps light.

  15

  EARNING OUR WAY

  On the way to the waste mart, we stopped by a park where there was a small pond. I cupped my hands, gulped down some water, and then refilled our plastic bottle. Amma would never have let us drink water that wasn’t boiled—but we didn’t have a choice.

  I stretched my aching arms and rinsed off my slippers. They were unrecognizably dirty, and so was my skirt, even though I’d hiked it up when I worked.

  You and Kutti watched as the boys carefully separated our rubbish into piles: cardboard, metal, plastic, glass.

  “Rukku wants to help,” you told them.

  “No,” I said. “You could cut your hand on a rusty tin.”

  “Rukku wants to help!” you insisted. “Rukku wants to help!”

  “If you don’t mind,” Arul said, “why don’t we let her help?”

  “You’re joking,” I said, though he sounded serious.

  “Don’t you ever let her do what she wants?” he said.

  You stalked over to Arul.

  “Viji, you’ve got to stop bossing her—”

  “How dare you call me bossy!”

  Arul softened his tone but not his words. “You’re acting like you own Rukku. Muthu calls me boss, but I don’t boss him around all the time.”

  His words pierced me like needles.

  “Viji, I’m sorry. I see you’re trying to protect your sister, but I bet she can do more than you think.”

  “Okay,” I finally said. “Let Rukku help. But if she slices her hand in half—”

  “You get to slice my hand in half?” Arul grinned.

  “I get to slice your hands into little tiny pieces.”

  “Agreed.”

  So Arul showed you how to separate and sort the trash. As I watched you stacking pieces of cardboard and humming joyfully, the realization stabbed me that even I expected too little of you.

  When you were done, your eyes shone. “Good work,” you said to yourself.

  He clapped you on the back. “That’s right. You’re the best helper.”

  “Best.” You glanced at me, fierce with pride.

  Even though I liked seeing you feel happy and valued, my stomach gave a tiny lurch as you and Arul smiled at each other. Until now, it had been just the two of us.

  I jabbed the earth with my stick, ashamed at the twinge of jealousy. Arul deserved your affection, too. After all, he’d seen something in you that I hadn’t bothered to notice. What else had I, who’d known and loved you so long, missed, that he’d discovered after knowing you less than a week?

  * * *

  • • •

  “That’s too much,” I said, when Arul handed me half of what we’d earned that day. “I only collected about a quarter of what you two did.”

  “If I was too ill to collect anything tomorrow, what would you do?” Arul said.

  “I’d share everything we had,” I said.

  “So, whatever money we earn belongs to all of us, e
qually, right?” Arul said. “That’s how it’s been with me and Muthu, and that’s how we like it.”

  “Right, boss,” Muthu said. “You want to stick with us, you play by our rules.”

  I felt too trembly to say thanks. A good kind of trembly. Not weak and fearful, like when we were home.

  The rupee notes we’d earned were crumpled and dirty. One of them was torn off at the corner. Another had a brown smudge running across Mahatma Gandhi’s face. But they looked beautiful to me.

  Disgusting though the work had been, we finally had money all our own. Our money. I rubbed the notes between my fingers, as though they were fine silk. If we’d been rich, I’d have held on to them forever, just so I’d remember the feeling of freedom they’d given me.

  * * *

  • • •

  We haggled with a handcart vendor for two big bunches of bananas, one ready to eat, the other still green, so it would ripen in a day or two. Then we stopped by a shack where brightly colored sweets were packed tight in glass jars, and you chose your favorite color—green.

  “What would you two like for dinner?” Arul asked. “Your first earnings, so you get to choose.”

  “Rukku’s probably happy with just fruit and sweets,” I said, “but I’d like some biryani.”

  As we approached a street vendor whose spicy food was making my mouth water, a passerby in a faded sari wrinkled her nose and pulled her sari across her face.

  With a shock, I realized that by climbing the Himalayas, we’d probably sunk lower in everyone’s eyes than we’d been before.

  “As much biryani as we can have,” I said, handing over our cash to the vendor. My hand trembled. Did we look too scruffy to be served?

  Luckily, the vendor was kind and even tossed a dry roti to Kutti. But as I gratefully took the warm package of food from him, he did ask us to get going. “Please don’t hang around here. You’ll drive away customers!”

  You and the boys hurried back to the park with Kutti, but my feet dragged. Could we ever recover enough to clean ourselves up and go to school? Or was that dream as impossible as pretending the trash dump was a treasure trove?

  “What are you waiting for, Akka? The food’s going cold!” Muthu said as he settled down on a bench to eat. “Arul’s done praying.”

  I slowly rolled the spicy yellow mixture of rice and vegetables and meat into little balls with my fingers and licked the sauce off my hands. You happily sucked on your sweet. Kutti scarfed up a bit of food that fell through Muthu’s fingers.

  Dusk was falling by the time we returned to our bridge, and I was glad. The darkness hid the dirt stains on my clothes from view.

  16

  THE BLUE HILLS

  The next morning, you took off down the far side of the bridge as we prepared for work.

  “No, Rukku,” I said. “We have to go to the Himalayas, and they’re this way.”

  You crossed your arms over your chest and stood where you were.

  “Actually, we don’t have to do anything,” Arul said. “The best part of this life is we can go wherever we want. We can go that way today, Rukku.”

  You beamed at him.

  “In fact, it’s best not to climb the Himalayas every day,” Arul said. “Even though they’re huge, we need to wait until people add some new old stuff.”

  “Plus, explorers can’t go to the same place all the time,” Muthu added. “It would get boring.”

  We walked beyond the wide, tree-lined avenues of the rich neighborhoods near the temple and the house where the gardener threw the orange at us, past smaller houses and shops where loudspeakers blared hit songs, and reached the poorest section of the city I’d yet seen. Shanties built out of every imaginable scrap of waste—roofs of coconut thatch or gunnysacks, walls cobbled together from metal signs, wooden crates, or even cardboard taped over with plastic sheets—lined the narrow streets.

  “Look!” Arul cried. “The beach!”

  Sure enough, in the distance beyond the shanties, past a long mound of rubbish, we could glimpse the sparkling blue ocean.

  “We call this dump the Nilgiris,” Muthu said. “The blue hills.”

  “Nicer than the Himalayas,” I said. The reflection of the ocean and the sky gave the rubbish a bluish-gray tint, and the cool sea breeze made me like it better than the Himalayas, although I was sure the trash here was just as nasty.

  “Pretty.” You stared at the waves before settling down on a wooden crate and starting your beadwork. Kutti lay at your feet and shut his eyes.

  A group of boys were already at work on the mound. Muthu and Arul ignored them and picked spots and got busy, but as soon as I reached for a bottle, one of the boys approached me.

  “What do you think you’re doing here?” He looked about as young as Muthu, but his clothes were even more ragged.

  “What does it look like I’m doing?” I said. “Enjoying the view?”

  “You have to give me a third of whatever you collect here,” he said.

  “Who made you the tax collector?” I said.

  He spat right at me.

  “Stop that!” Muthu popped up between us. “Leave my sister alone!”

  “Who are you to tell me what to do?” The boy scowled at Muthu and waved his stick in my face.

  “Stop it, Sridar!” An older boy, with fuzz on his upper lip, came up behind the one who threatened me. “I won’t let you stay with us if you start fights.”

  Sullen faced, the boy named Sridar stepped away as Arul joined us.

  “How are you, Kumar?” Arul said to the fuzzy-lipped boy.

  “Look, this is our place,” Kumar replied. “It’s okay for you to come here, but you can’t bring along every new kid in the city.”

  “Enough here for us all to share,” Arul said.

  “Yes, just look at this wealth spreading from sea to shore!” Muthu waved his stick. “Gray gold, I call it.”

  “We never acted like we owned the Himalayas,” Arul said. “And I showed you where it was.”

  Kumar scowled but didn’t argue anymore, and we all went back to work. After what felt like hours, my legs were coated with yellow and brown slime and my back was slick with sweat. A sense of hopelessness spread in my heart like the stains spreading on my skirt. Stains that would never wash out.

  When I looked over at you, you were asleep. Your head was slumped onto Kutti. I was worried you hadn’t had enough to drink.

  “We need to take a break,” I said.

  “Kumar’s gang is still working,” Muthu said.

  “Life isn’t a competition.” Arul followed my gaze. “We have enough. Let’s go.”

  I was so glad to leave that I didn’t bother trying to retrieve my slippers, one of which had been sucked away, the other torn off as I squelched out of the rubbish to where you sat.

  After all, the boys walked barefoot, and it didn’t bother them.

  17

  HOW YOU BECAME A BUSINESSWOMAN

  “I’ll go to the waste man and meet you back at the bridge,” Arul said. “You two should go and see the nice part of the beach with Muthu.”

  “Don’t you want me to come and keep an eye on the scales to make sure the waste man doesn’t cheat us?” Muthu said.

  “I’ll be fine,” Arul insisted. “The girls are new to the city, and they deserve to see something nice after all the hard work.”

  So Muthu led us to what he called the “rich” section of the beach, where we could see sand dunes instead of trash hills, and my lungs filled with the welcome scents of salt and spray.

  We strolled along the walkway between the road and the beach, past pushcarts piled high with corn and peanuts and hawkers selling multicolored plastic balls and cricket bats, flimsy kites, toys, dolls, pinwheels.

  “Balloon?” you said hopefully. “Green balloon?”

  “Not enough m
oney,” I said.

  “Money?” You furrowed your brows thoughtfully. “Money?”

  “You take a balloon from someone, you have to give them money,” Muthu tried to explain, as I’d tried so many times before. “When we take bananas, we give the vendor our money. People sell their things for money.”

  “Sell necklaces?” you said. “Money?”

  “Yes!” I was thrilled you’d understood. “That’s how money works!”

  “Sell necklaces.” You sounded very pleased with yourself. “Get money. Get balloon.”

  “What a good idea!” Muthu patted you on the back. “We could sell your necklaces.”

  “Would anyone buy them?” I asked.

  Muthu gestured at a vendor who was dozing in the shade of a pushcart piled high with the ugliest plastic dolls I’d ever seen. “If he’s trying to sell those, why can’t we try to sell her jewelry?”

  So the two of you picked a spot on the walkway and arranged the six necklaces that you’d finished in a neat line.

  “Necklaces for sale,” Muthu sang out. “Pretty bead necklaces.”

  Groups of pedestrians bustled past without casting a glance in our direction. I was thinking we should give up when two girls walked by. They carried bags filled with books and looked old enough and well-dressed enough to be in college.

  “How much?” one of the girls pointed to a necklace with red beads in which you’d tied your special loops and knots.

  “Two hundred rupees,” Muthu said.

  I nearly fainted.

  “One,” the girl said.

  “Two.” Muthu held firm.

  “Three,” you said.

  “Did you just raise the price instead of lowering it?” She smiled at you. “Three?”