5 to 1

by Holly Bodger

  “Your mother is my only

  surviving child.”

  I would normally retreat.

  Accept her lies.

  But this time,

  I don’t.

  I become Blake’s tiger as I roar back.

  “Cousin. Second cousin.

  Same thing.

  I know that’s Mota Masi’s grandson.

  And I know he didn’t get there

  by coincidence.

  You can

  force me

  to do these Tests.

  You can even

  force me

  to marry the winner.

  But I will never pick the one you want.

  Never.”

  Nani laughs

  as if my decree is one of the

  knock-knock jokes

  Asha and I used to tell everyone

  who’d listen.

  Papa always laughed at them,

  even if

  they weren’t funny. Or if

  he’d heard them ten times before.

  Mummy laughed, too.

  (If Nani wasn’t listening.)

  If she was, Mummy said nothing.

  She simply melted in the corner

  while Nani crossed her arms

  and gave us the same

  I’m-not-impressed

  glare

  that she’s giving me right now.

  She fingers the two blank charms

  on her bracelet and

  stops on the one with

  Mummy’s name.

  “I said Never once

  but then my husband died

  and my daughter was starving—”

  She shakes her head.

  “The only thing Never will get you

  is a stain on your face.

  You want to pick a tanned boy?

  End up like your didi?

  “Tell her, Surina,”

  she says, motioning to the front of the carriage.

  “Tell her what it’s like

  to be married to a market boy.

  One who’s missing half his teeth.

  Who can barely hold a fork.

  Whose family

  begs you

  to take food off your table.

  Put it on theirs.”

  I wait for Surina to argue—

  to say what she has been saying

  since the end of her Tests. Since

  the day she stopped being

  Nani’s favorite. Nani’s star.

  I wait for Surina to say

  that she never loved

  the boy from our floor.

  That her husband is her true love.

  That she

  loves being married.

  loves having her own wing

  in the penthouse.

  That her market boy is now her prince.

  That she’s happy she picked him;

  happy he’s hers.

  But she doesn’t.

  She simply stares at

  her charmless bracelet,

  presenting an argument equally

  as bare.

  “See?” Nani continues.

  “I told her to choose wisely.

  Now she’s the one

  without a baby girl

  in her arms.”

  Surina drops her hand,

  the mask peeling

  from her face

  like steamed wallpaper.

  “Tell her,” Nani demands.

  “Tell her how you made

  that boy from our floor—

  the one with the four sisters—

  lose in the final Test.

  It was your choice and

  you picked chess,

  a game of war,

  when I told you to choose cards,

  a game of luxury.

  “Tell her how you’d promised him

  an easy win. How he protested

  a little too hard

  when he didn’t get it.

  How he was sent to the wall and

  jumped off Agnimar Cliff

  instead.”

  Surina says nothing,

  but a tear dissolves on her powdered cheek,

  and that—

  that tells me everything.

  12

  When the first test is done, we’re shipped off to a squat gray building that has only a few tiny windows along the top. It used to be a medical clinic but is now the place where they keep the forty boys before and after the tests. This is another one of those things that are supposed to make the tests more fair, because if we eat the same and sleep the same and dress the same, then we must be the same, right? Wrong. Appa says You can’t make a zebra by painting stripes on a horse. He’s right. I may look like the other boys to her, but I’m still a farm boy from the coast. I still know how it smells to sleep near the sea, and I still know how it feels to have moist soil stuck under my fingernails. The guards can do what they want to dress me like a clone, but I’ll still be me. And I’ll still have Appa’s plan.

  We eat overcooked khichdi at long plastic tables in what probably used to be a waiting room. There’s one of those old posters on the wall reminding people to wash their hands so they don’t spread germs. Amma once worked as a nurse in a place like this. Before the wall. Before men were banned from working as doctors. Before one of these men—Amma’s boss—was told to leave Koyanagar for doing the job his country had paid him to do. Obedience is fickle that way. It’s a virtue to its master but a vice to its slaves.

  As soon as the guards excuse us, I return to my room. It’s basically a cement cell with metal cots stuck to each side. Last night, I had it to myself. Tonight, I’m sharing with the young boy, which is good, because I’d probably punch that boy in blue if I had to spend one more minute listening to him boast about how fresh coriander is supposed to taste and how he cannot possibly sleep without a silk-covered pillow. I don’t care that he wants to win the girl and live the life, and I don’t care that he obviously knows her and thinks he has it in the bag. That doesn’t give him the right to look down on the rest of us because we don’t drink sparkling water from crystal goblets. These tests were invented so the rich don’t have an advantage. They’re supposed to provide an equal playing field for all. They don’t, but he could at least pretend like he feels bad about where we come from and, especially, where we’re going. He doesn’t know if any of the boys in our group have sisters. For all he knows, we’ll all be assigned to the wall and that crippled boy will probably die the day he arrives. There’s no way he can survive the two months of training. Although it’s supposed to make men out of boys, I’ve heard it produces more corpses than people. Some say there’s actually a corpse quota. There’s only room for a certain number of men, and if it goes over that, the weakest ones simultaneously decide to jump off Agnimar Cliff. Apparently, their dates of death end up in the Koyanagar registry using the red ink that’s rumored to be used for “unnatural causes.” Ha! And the State tells us the registry has to be kept secret for “reasons of national security.” Sounds to me like the only people they’re trying to protect are themselves.

  I sit on my cot and take Amma’s picture out of my bag. On the night before they closed the gates to Koyanagar, she knelt by my bedroll and told me she had something very important to do. She gave me this picture and said I should keep it in case something ever happened to her. At the time, I thought she meant in the future—the far distant future. I had no idea she’d never return. Obviously, she knew. Appa said she’d wanted us to move to her hometown before the gates closed but he refused to take me away from the only home I’d ever known. I think it’s more likely that he was the one who didn’t want to leave. He’s like an old banyan tree: tough and rooted to the soil.

  I bet part of his reluctance was due to the same illusion many people had when Koyanagar was formed: they believed the State’s promises. They accepted the new regime and all of its laws because they believed things had to be better than in the old co
untry. They’d already lived in hell. How could this new country possibly be worse?

  I also think that in addition to being stubborn and optimistic, Appa didn’t believe Amma would actually go without us. Although I was only five when she left, I still remember him rushing to the door every time he heard a noise. He thought she was coming back, and he continued to act like this for days and days. Eventually, he stopped going to the door. Her colorful clothes disappeared from our hut, and the wedding photo of her and Appa moved from the wall to the floor to the bin. Amma became a memory, fading into the distance like a shadow in the setting sun.

  It took me years to finally ask Appa why he didn’t try to talk her out of leaving. He told me it wasn’t an option. He said you can never tie down a person’s soul. If he wants to leave, he will, whether he takes his body with him or not. Perhaps that means that my soul will stay here, in Koyanagar, even when I leave. Perhaps this soil is a part of me, like it is with Appa.

  I place Amma’s picture under my pillow. I’ve slept with it every night for twelve years. The picture is thin and crinkled, the same way I imagine she would be. Will be? No. I can’t allow that to fog my thoughts. I may find her, but I may not. She can’t be the reason I go. I must focus on all the horrible things about Koyanagar, like when, four years ago, that boy Vikram was sent to his death because he refused to tell the State where his girlfriend was hiding. Or like the boy we saw last year in an alley behind the market. He was lying against a pile of old crates with lidless eyes and a swollen tongue. Appa figured he’d been dead since the night before. That meant hundreds and hundreds of people had walked by and thought, He’s not my problem. Not Appa, though. He insisted we take the boy to the sea and give him a proper funeral pyre. I understood why Appa wanted to help free the boy’s soul for rebirth, but if it had been up to me, I would have taken his body to the State Council and I would have said to them, “Is this what you meant when you said that you’ve fixed all the problems of the old country? Because this boy doesn’t look fixed to me.”

  I unclench the pillow in my hand. Next to Amma’s picture, I put the single rock I won today—the one the girl gave me because she had no choice. Like me, she has to make it appear like she’s following the rules, even if it’s obvious to everyone—including her friend in blue—that she has already made her decision. I hope she’s sitting in her air-conditioned flat, seething because I refused to thank her for that forced look of pity she shot my way. She wants me to bow down and kiss her beaded shoes and beg her to choose me, but I’m not going to give her the satisfaction. I don’t need to be her choice, and I don’t need her.

  I flatten the hard pillow and flip over on my back. I close my eyes and press my palms over them. I try to pretend I’m at home. I try to smell the ginger tea Appa makes every night before bed. I try to hear the tide whooshing against the rocks, but I can’t. All I can hear is the lightbulb buzzing from the cement ceiling above me. Last night, I searched for some way to turn it off. When I couldn’t find a switch, I stood with one foot on each cot and managed to unscrew it from the socket. I can’t do that now. Not with the young boy already under his covers.

  I roll over toward the wall and pull the wool blanket up to my forehead. It itches at my neck, so I pull it back down. I cover my eyes with my arm instead. Then I count. Rows of eggplants and soybeans. Pots full of mustard and garlic and chilies. Lines of trees teeming with lemons and limes and mangoes and bright red cherries.

  I’m almost asleep when I hear the young boy say, “Thanks. F-for your h-help today, I mean. A-about the cheese. I know wh-what you said about the rule book and…and I don’t know wh-why you’d help me, but th-thanks anyway.”

  “It was nothing,” I tell him. This is partly a lie. I was supposed to keep my mouth shut for this round. No one would ever wonder why a stupid market boy couldn’t answer a bunch of trivia questions. But then the boy in blue started to rattle off all the answers with that satisfied sneer on his face and…well, so much for being patient. Sorry, Appa. I’ll be better tomorrow. That boy knows I’m watching him now. Hopefully, that’ll be enough to make him think twice about bringing his rich-boy attitude to the physical tests.

  I return to my counting, and the young boy speaks again.

  “Sh-she’s pretty, d-don’t you think?”

  He means the girl, and he’s right, I suppose. Like with the president, she wasn’t what I expected. She was still like the girl from the Love Your Daughters posters—adorned in fancy jewels and paint—but her hair was in a plain braid down her back and she didn’t prance like she was queen of the place. It was like she was doing what Appa calls wearing someone else’s trousers. She just didn’t seem comfortable. Perhaps it was me who made her feel that way? She would normally be sheltered from someone of my caste and gender. Someone she believes is probably a thief or savage. Plus, she seemed perfectly confident when she got to the boy in blue. But then, he’s more of her people. Rich. Beautiful. Spoiled.

  I mumble a “Mmmm-hmmm,” and the young boy continues, his voice full of energy. “Are you f-from one of the f-farms on the coast? I’ve never b-been, but they say you c-c-can see clear across the sea on a clear day. Is that tr-true?”

  I picture the cerulean sea that I’ve woken to every day of my life, and part of me wants to tear off a piece of my memories and share it with him like warm roti. Then he would know what it’s like to see the white-capped waves breaking on the rocks, and he’d know what it’s like to truly believe that another land exists, because you’d seen it with your own eyes. But no. This is not the market, and he’s not asking me to spare some bruised fruit. He wants a friend. Someone to tell him he won’t lose, and the wall won’t be so bad if he does, and if it is, we’ll face it together. I can’t do that, and not because it would be another lie. Appa says, The man with cement shoes cannot run. I can’t afford to care about someone else. Leaving Appa—the only family I have, the only home I’ve ever known—was hard enough. If it weren’t for Amma, I don’t know if I could go through with it. Even if it meant a lifetime married to a spoiled girl or, worse, working in the army. I’d never tell Appa this, though. This plan is his greatest dream, and I’d sooner stab my own heart than break his.

  I mumble another “Mmmm” and then pull my pillow over my head.

  13

  Day two.

  Two more Tests.

  Eight more hours in an

  airless

  trophy case.

  When Papa was young

  and they called him the Mighty Bala,

  he came to this round arena

  to play cricket:

  a game that lasted for days.

  Now thousands of people

  pack in

  for a different game.

  One that goes for eight hours

  but lasts a lifetime.

  Today’s Tests

  are kept secret until we arrive.

  That keeps things fair.

  Fairish.

  The moment I enter my box,

  I scan the nearby field.

  A two-toned ball on

  a mass of green with

  two netted goals

  inside a painted rectangle.

  Football.

  I know it well.

  Know how to avoid it.

  Try to avoid it.

  Our teachers at the academy

  usually insist we play.

  They say we need

  moderate exercise to stay healthy.

  Translation?

  We need moderate exercise

  to get pregnant.

  to serve our only purpose

  in Koyanagar.

  We’re allowed jobs…

  eventually.

  Jobs the boys aren’t trusted to do.

  Medicine.

  Law.

  Politics.

  Teaching other girls?

  They’d never give me

  a position like that.

  They’d be worried I’d be like Papa:


  Full of opinions.

  Not like Mummy:

  Full of fear of speaking them.

  A loud horn sounds and

  all eyes turn to the director

  in the center of the field.

  She explains the rules of this Test:

  1. The forty boys have been randomly

  divided into four teams of ten.

  2. Two teams play the first game.

  3. The two others play the second.

  4. Former pros guard the nets.

  5. A single point will be awarded for each goal.

  6. Any boy who refuses to play

  will be immediately disqualified from the Tests.

  The crowd cheers as the first

  two teams take the field.

  I scan the rainbow of kurtas.

  Find my second and third boys

  on the first team.

  They wait for the referee

  to blow the whistle.

  Their

  fear

  hidden behind their masks.

  Their

  inexperience

  marked in the way

  they face the wrong direction.

  Ten minutes go by,

  and my third boy gets a point

  from someone else’s mistake.

  Part of the audience cheers.

  The other part boos.

  And yet, mistake or no mistake,

  a point is better than nothing

  and nothing—

  that’s all

  my second boy has.

  He doesn’t even try.

  He just hovers by the goal,

  a defender

  in a game

  where only offense matters.

  I find this odd when I consider

  the wager

  of this war.

  Then I zoom in

  and the microscope shows that

  stakes

  are not his problem.

  His right leg—

  barely more than skin and bones—

  arcs outward

  as if his knee were a door

  ripped off its hinge.

  He has no chance

  in this round.

  in these Tests.

  in this life.