by Shobha Rao
“Who were you talking to?”
Layla glared at her.
“Who?”
She said nothing. Bandra saw that her hands were behind her back, against the wall. She took two steps, crossed the room, and wrenched her hands out so she could see them. What was that? A scrap. A tiny piece of roti.
“I was hungry,” she said.
“You get plenty at dinner.” Bandra took the morsel of roti, hardly bigger than her fingertip, and left the room.
She enlisted Gulshan. “Find out who she’s talking to,” she said. “Early in the morning, and in this heat. Maybe only to herself, but find out.”
It took her hardly a day. That evening she told Bandra, “A mouse.”
“A mouse?”
“It lives with her. In her bed. In the straw.”
Bandra was baffled. She said, “What could she possibly have to say to a mouse?”
“She says it’s her only friend.”
Bandra shook her head. It was disgusting, and besides, she should be sleeping, not staying up all night talking to a mouse. And what was that she was feeling? Envy? Over a mouse? It was ridiculous. She brushed the thought aside. It took her a few days but one evening she found the neighborhood cat, lured it into Layla’s room when she went to bathe, and closed the door. She asked Layla for help in the kitchen when she returned. She kept her busy: cleaning the main hut, sweeping the courtyard, mending clothes. Then she suggested all the girls sleep in the sitting room. They stared at each other in disbelief. Bandra made it known that she preferred sleeping alone, and she always padlocked both doors leading from her quarters—the door opening onto the street and the one to the courtyard—keeping the keys to the padlocks tied to the pull string of her kurta bottom. But this evening she said, “It’s cooler in here,” and invited them to stay. She set out bowls of water at the open windows and courtyard door to cool the room further. When they woke in the morning the girls plodded back to their rooms, evenly, in a straight line. Bandra waited inside. She heard laughter, something Siddiqah had said, and then there was quiet. A cat darted past her. And then came the scream: the one she knew would come.
* * *
Bandra took a strange, disproportionate pleasure in imagining the mouse’s shredded body. Its slippery entrails, shining like the insides of fruit. Tiny tufts of white hair, strewn around the room like miniature clumps of mountain grass. She expected anger, rage, weeping, or perhaps even a greater stoicism from Layla, but instead, later in the morning, before the customers began to arrive, she emerged from her room and stood at the door.
“Bandra-ma,” she said.
Bandra looked up, astonished. “What is it?”
“I need a pail and a rag, Bandra-ma.”
“Oh? What happened?”
“Nothing. I just want to clean the floor and the walls.”
“Why?”
“A cat got in last night. And you know how cats are.”
What was she playing at, Bandra wondered. And why was she being so sweet? She had never once, in the two years she’d been here, called her Bandra-ma. And now? She was suspicious, but she lent her the pail and rags and kept a close watch on her for the next few days. Nothing happened. She only grew sweeter. Day by day, week by week, until, one day, Bandra stopped watching her.
* * *
The months passed. Layla no longer confided in Gulshan. That, of course, was to be expected. Bandra realized that their friendship had been a source of information, and that she’d lost a link that had been instrumental, but it had been worth it, she decided. Layla was tame. Still, other things, peculiar things, began to happen. Nothing alarming but just things that gave Bandra pause. The wooden hook, for example, the one in Layla’s room meant to hold the men’s caftans, broke off.
“It broke off?” Bandra asked. “How?”
“I don’t know, Bandra-ma,” Layla said. “It just did.”
“Then where is it?” Bandra said, looking at the jagged stump that remained stuck in the wall.
“The man took it.”
“He took it? Why?”
Layla shrugged. “How should I know,” she said.
Bandra looked around the room: the cot, the cushion, the rug hanging on the wall. All of these were in place. So she shook her head, puzzled, and had the hook replaced.
Soon after, winter arrived. They shivered and built fires in the courtyard. They sat huddled in thick shawls. The girls, in their windowless rooms, waited for spring. What they couldn’t see were the foothills white with snow then brown with moisture then green with new spring grass. When the air turned warm, after long months, and swept into the courtyard, they were delighted. Bandra believed in none of the romance of spring, but the scented air loosened her limbs, made her more generous than she was in other seasons. So that when Abdul Kareem came to her and requested more straw, she smiled and said, “What for?”
“The girl’s bed,” he said, “it’s lumpy.”
“Lumpy? But it was refilled just last year.”
“My knees hurt.”
“Then lie on your back, old man.” Bandra laughed. “Let her do the work.”
Nevertheless, she ordered a bale of straw and had all the cots stuffed to capacity. But when autumn came, Abdul Kareem brought it up again. He said, “I thought you were going to have them stuffed?”
She looked at Abdul Kareem for a long moment, longer than she’d intended, and said, “I did.”
The following winter, Gulshan got sick. She was pregnant by one of the men. Bandra was used to this, it had happened twice before. She gave her herbs, the same ones she’d given the other girls, but Gulshan reacted badly. At first, she retched and retched, just as the others had. She was nauseated. She stayed in bed, screaming in pain. Bandra couldn’t understand it: for the others, it had been over in three or four days, but with Gulshan, it only got worse. Two weeks passed. She was faint with hunger, delirious with pain. Then she began to bleed. There seemed no end to the blood. “Call the doctor,” Siddiqah cried. The other girls turned away. Layla stood silently. Bandra refused. “She’ll be fine,” she said. Layla looked at her and walked out of the room.
They took turns watching her. One night, while Bandra was at her bedside, Gulshan sat straight up on her cot and smiled. Her eyes were mad. She looked around the room with an ineffable pleasure, as though it were a room from a childhood she did not have, then she picked up the sheet—soaked in blood—that was between her legs and held it tight against her bosom. “Roses.” She sighed.
You fool, Bandra thought, as if you’ve ever held a rose.
The next morning she was dead.
* * *
When Layla was fifteen, Abdul Kareem came to see Bandra again. He was fifty-two but he sat on the cushion as shy and squirming as a little boy. Bandra served him tea. He still said nothing.
“What is it, Abdul Kareem?”
“I want to marry her,” he said.
Bandra knew exactly whom he meant. “It will cost you,” she said.
“I have money.”
“You can’t marry a randi,” she protested mildly. “You’ll never be able to raise your head again.”
“Then I’ll keep her.”
They decided on a price. It was twenty times what Bandra had paid for her. She could buy ten new girls with that money. Bandra could hardly believe her luck; she counted and recounted the money and laughed. The other arrangements too were conducted as if it were a wedding. Abdul Kareem sent more money for Layla’s trousseau, and he requested that Bandra apply uptan on the night before she was to leave the brothel. It’s all a rich man’s whim, Bandra thought. As for the trousseau, she kept half the money and with the other half, she bought cheap silks and thin cotton underclothes. She placed them all in a trunk in her sitting room, lest the other girls take them during the night.
The day before Layla was scheduled to leave, the compound was bustling. As instructed, Bandra applied the uptan. All the girls bathed and dressed in their best clothes; none of th
em worked. They played games in the courtyard, and teased each other like schoolgirls. Abdul Kareem sent sweets, which made them squeal, and they ate them all afternoon with relish. That evening they had a meal of mutton, and capsicum curry, and paratha lathered with ghee. Siddiqah lay on the cushion in the sitting room, groaning with stomach pain from all the sweets and rich food. Bandra told her to go to bed. One by one all the girls left, except Layla. She walked over to the trunk full of clothes and touched its edges.
“This is all for me?” she asked.
“That’s right,” Bandra said, dozing.
She opened the squeaking lid of the trunk and looked inside. She turned and said, “Bandra-ma?”
“Yes?”
“May I sleep here tonight?”
“Why do you want to do that?”
“It’s my last night.”
Bandra agreed, yawning. She was asleep almost as soon as Layla blew out the candle. But just before she did, Bandra saw that the lid of the trunk was still open. She thought she should ask her to close it, but she didn’t.
* * *
It was nearly morning when Bandra felt a gentle waft of wind against her feet. It was so soft; it tickled. She rubbed her feet together in her sleep and smiled, slightly, as if she were dreaming. Then there was another breeze (she thought she’d closed the window) but this time, it blew the other way, though it was just as lovely, like feathers. She was playing in this wind; she heard it rustle the leaves of the trees. They danced gaily, just for her. But then the branches swung low and scraped against her ankles. Cut into them. The branches of what trees? That’s what she asked herself in her dream, what trees?
Then her eyes shot open.
The moment they did, someone stuffed a rag into her mouth. Bandra gagged. A shadow passed over her. She bucked forward. Her arms flailed. It was too dark to see the intruder; the window was closed. Her eyes blurred. Focus, she told herself. She tried to get up but her ankles were bound. It was as if her feet had fused in the night. She tilted her head to look down and see what held them but by then someone came from behind, yanked up her arms, and tied them roughly, trussing at the wrists so that her fingers tingled. Bandra thrashed. She flopped onto her stomach. Who was it? She blew against the rag in her mouth, blew hard, but it stayed in place. The intruder turned her over again with a kick to her stomach. She groaned in pain. And then, only then, did she see who it was. And only because she wanted her to.
It was Layla.
She looked down at Bandra. Her face in the half-light was motionless. Eerie in its beauty. She left the room. Bandra crawled and kicked toward the door. Slithered like a snake. She’d hardly moved a yard or two when Layla came back. She had the curved knife in her hand, the one shaped like a scimitar, and Bandra thought she might slit her throat. But instead, Layla bent down, shoved a knee into her chest, and thrust Bandra’s head to the side. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the wooden base of the knife coming toward her. In the next instant, it rammed into her face. Rush of pain. A blurred hand reached out. Then the knife came down again.
Teeth flew out.
As Bandra lay groaning, Layla snipped the keys from her kurta bottom, opened the door leading to the street, and let in the morning light. And as if in a dream, the dream that Bandra had just left, Layla turned toward her, and she said, “My name is Zubaida.”
* * *
Bandra was found, not much later. The swelling and pain in her face took weeks to subside. Her tongue, when she was finally able to move it, groped for teeth and found only three. And what had been used to bind her hands and feet, Bandra was told, were the cheap silks she had bought for Zubaida’s trousseau. She almost laughed. Then she saw herself as if from above, bound: her legs, her hands, her mouth. She saw the cart, the fog, the mist. And then she did laugh.
It was another two weeks or so before Fawzi, the man who did odd jobs in the neighborhood, came by and said he had mud left over from another job and would she like the hole plugged up.
“What hole?” Bandra asked.
“The one in your wall.”
She followed him to the outside of the compound and saw that there was indeed a hole. It was stuffed with straw. She couldn’t imagine why there was a hole, or where it had come from. She estimated it was in Zubaida’s old room. When she went around, to the other side, there was no hole. How could that be? She looked at every inch of the outside wall until her eyes finally traveled to the decorative rug. She was shaking—with anger, with fear—as she reached for it. She ripped it off the wall and there it was: a hole. Except Fawzi had been wrong. This was not just any hole. It was not ill formed, or sloppy, or small. It was not desperate, and it was not careless. It was planned. It was a window.
She punched through the straw. Her arms were frenzied, she was crying and somehow laughing all at once. The hook, she thought, the wooden hook. I’m a fool! By the time she punched through all of it, the straw was in her hair and in her clothes and it filled her nose. And once it all came down, in poured light.
* * *
Over the course of the next two decades, Bandra’s business suffered. A new brothel was opened. It catered mainly to the British officers in the nearby cantonments. Alcohol was served. Bandra disapproved. She was forced to reduce her rates, but even the day laborers saved up and went to the new brothel, or they picked up a woman on the street, which was even cheaper.
* * *
In her old age Bandra wandered the streets of Peshawar. She wandered from the outdoor markets to the mosque then to Ghanta Ghar and then back again. She had no money, and only rarely made a pittance helping to deliver babies, especially girl babies that needed to be disposed of. She was eighty now. Or was she ninety? Little boys laughed at her, and threw rotten fruit when she passed them on the streets. They taunted her. But she paid them no mind. Her thoughts were elsewhere. They were in another time, and in another place. And of all the girls, she thought most often of Zubaida. Where had she gone? Did she too wander the streets? What else could a girl of fifteen, alone, impure, unable to return home, have done?
In her wanderings she sometimes stopped at various stalls and begged for food. Vegetables they were throwing out because they were spoiled, or day-old roti they might be able to spare. Once she happened upon a man who had a monkey. The monkey was doing tricks. The trainer was seated in front of it, telling the monkey what to do: somersaults, jumping rope, running and climbing. People laughed when the monkey bared its teeth and stuck out its tongue. The whole time, the monkey was blindfolded. Bandra waited until the show was over. Until all the spectators had left. “Why is it blindfolded?” she asked.
The trainer sat back, studied her, and she could see the disgust in his eyes. An old woman, a beggar. Her clothes dirty, smelling, her body bent and wrinkled, a mouth with hardly any teeth. He looked away. “Why? Are you its mother?”
Bandra said nothing.
The man collected the few copper coins people had thrown into his topee. He counted them slowly then put them into an inside pocket. He began packing up the few props that had been used.
“Why?” she asked again.
The man turned toward her. She thought of the snake, the one Zubaida had challenged. She thought of her as a little girl, collecting kindling, hurrying home to an evening fire. The man held the topee toward her. “Throw in a coin or get out,” he bellowed.
Bandra remained, watching him.
When he had finished packing up, the monkey climbed onto his shoulder. The blindfold was still in place. The trainer rose to go, he looked at Bandra and shook his head. She thought he might yell at her again, as they so often did, but he only raised his voice. “It’s a trick,” he said. “If you can get them to keep the blindfold on and think it’s dark, even when it’s not, you make them afraid. And if you make them afraid,” he said, “you make them yours.”
THE LOST RIBBON
If I were to tell Leela what I’d done, I know what she’d say. She’d say, No mother would do that. No mother could do t
hat. But then I look down at my arm, at the scar left by the cigarette burn, and think, What do you know? Because what I know, what I won’t tell her, but what I will tell you now, is that I was long dead before I ever killed you.
Yet it’s all true: I took you, your moist eyelashes wide with curiosity, the tiny yellow ribbon in your fine hair bowed and alert, watchful, as if it were standing guard, and I wrapped my hands around your neck. You blinked. Then you smiled your toothless smile. It was a hot, bright morning in September. The sun shoved through the cracks in the door, past the edges of the curtains. Everyone said it was a long and strange summer. The days too warm, the clouds too thin. The monsoons were so late that year that well into September the entire Punjab and the Northwest Frontier broiled, simmered indecently, the dust a mad dervish, crawling into even your earlobes in the long breathless nights.
I’d bathed you that morning using more water than usual. I sprinkled your tender skin with a thick coating of talcum powder to protect you from the heat. I dressed you in a freshly laundered bright pink frock. I’d spread it carefully under a thick bundle of clothes the night before to press it, to make sure the pleats were crisp. I’d picked the yellow ribbon because it was the closest color to white. But none of it mattered. Thousands upon thousands were dying that summer. Entire villages were being laid waste in the crossings between India and Pakistan. What did it matter if the ribbon was yellow or white? I tightened my grip, I willed myself to close my eyes, to keep pressing. I felt the gentle curve of your windpipe, your brave and rumpled pulse, and I told myself, If you don’t kill her, he will.
The only question I ask myself now, after all these years, is why I closed my eyes. Why? I missed the last tiny breaths of the only life I’ve ever loved. There are so many answers, or maybe there are none. But I was afraid; I was afraid you’d recognize the act. Know what I was doing. And in some small corner of your silvery, still-beating six-week-old heart, you’d scoff at me. You’d say, What makes you think I couldn’t have withstood the world? And I would’ve laughed and said, It’s not the world we have to withstand, my Noora, it is ourselves.