by Penny Jaye
But when Renu escaped the imaginary brothel and crept up to the door of Meena’s lawyer office, her sparkled skirt rumpled and the lower buttons of her blouse popped, Meena could barely get the words out. All she saw was Putali. Putali, standing small before Uncle’s appraising eyes. Putali, pulled along by Mohan. Putali, curled under a mound of sparkling fabric. And then there was Uncle again. Claiming he had nothing to do with Putali being in Mumbai, that there was another girl, an older girl they should arrest because she was the one who had left her friend to die...
‘She is the victim!’ Meena shouted suddenly. Renu stepped back in surprise and then giggled. ‘You’re good at this.’
‘She was lured by lies and false pretences,’ Meena continued. ‘She is the victim of torture, abuse, cruelty and rape. And this man!’ Meena pointed her finger across the room at Uncle, the cigarette balancing in his thin lips. ‘This man benefited from her pain. This man!’
Leela’s mouth was open.
‘This man, broke not just the laws of the nation, but the law of being human! He’s deserving of this punishment, and it will be served to him!’
Meena stepped back. She watched Kani and Rupa grab Leela by the elbows. They dragged her to an imaginary police cell and locked her up. Leela cursed in as many different languages as she could, then burst out laughing, big gawffing laughs that made Maa frown, but didn’t hide the sudden wetness in her eyes. The coat on Meena’s shoulders suddenly felt like lead. She shook it off. Purna crept forward to stand beside her. Maa started clapping. She spouted compliments like they were marigolds at a wedding. Sharmila clapped too, then Leela and Rupa joined in. Beside Meena, Purna put her hands together, her damp eyes on Meena, her palms together, raised to her forehead in a sign of respect.
They ate snacks together in the dorm kitchen. Leela and Renu joked about the role play, Manju ate in silence with Purna, but Meena barely tasted the curried beans. She bit the end off the chilli and pushed another strip of puri into her mouth. Uncle would never face the courts. There wasn’t enough evidence. They’d twist it round onto her; blame her for the flow of events. They would say she wanted to come, say she was greedy, say she cared more about money than she did for her friend. And could she prove otherwise? Even her memories accused her. And now Putali was lost ...
Meena no longer felt hungry. She pushed her plate back.
‘You’ve got to wash it,’ Kani remarked.
Meena swore. She dumped the plate in the sink, scrubbed it quickly, then left the room. Regardless of what Didi said, Meena was sure if she went back to Kamathipura, during the day when hardly anyone worked, she’d be able to find the hotel Mohan had taken them to. And if she could find it, she could learn its name, and ask questions to find out if Putali was still there. Maybe?
She wrapped Sarita’s scarf around her shoulders and headed for the front gate. Didi, who was talking to the guard, caught her by the shoulder.
‘You can’t go out, Meena.’ Didi’s voice was almost apologetic, but still very firm in the reminder of the curfew.
‘I’m just going to the bazaar.’ Meena shook Didi’s hand away. ‘The food here’s horrible.’
‘You can’t go alone, you know that.’
Meena felt the anger grow within her. ‘I thought it was the traffickers who deserved prison!’ She spat the words. ‘I thought we were supposed to be free, allowed out, to go for walks and shopping and ...’
‘That was before you helped Nahita leave. You’re on curfew now.’
The guard stepped into his hut but kept listening.
Meena fumed. ‘She wanted to go. I told Maa, I told Sharmila, I told you: SHE WANTED TO LEAVE!’
‘Helping her leave in secret like that’—Didi crossed her arms—‘you put her life at risk.’
‘But she wasn’t being trafficked.’
‘How do you know? It happens all the time. Girls from brothels are repeatedly trafficked, they search out hope and find hell.’
‘But it’s not always like that. It can’t always be like that! I didn’t do anything wrong, now let me go.’ Meena glared at Didi.
‘No, Meena.’ The older woman placed a firm grip on Meena’s arm.
‘You can’t stop me!’ Meena almost screamed, pulling away but not escaping Didi’s grip.
‘Go back to the dorm. Find your knitting, do your laundry. If you are hungry, I have some fruit in my office.’
Meena glared at the open gate. Even if she sprinted, Didi would catch her. Didi’s grip tightened, as if she read Meena’s thoughts.
‘Get your hands off me!’ Meena twisted free. Didi stood solid, unmoving, between Meena and the gate. Meena sucked in the suddenly suffocating air. She could see Renu and Rupa now squatting by the water tap. They were watching her, whispering, their hands still over their laundry. The line was almost full; kurta-suruwals, jeans, shirts all flapped carelessly. The sun watched and stared and waited.
‘Aaaaauuughhhh!!!’ Meena cried. She ran under the clothesline. She yanked wet fabric and flung it to the ground.
‘I hate you!’ she yelled to Didi, who stood with arms crossed again near the gate.
‘I hate you!’ she yelled to Maa, to Sharmila, to the girls now quiet by the tap.
‘I hate you!’ That one was for Madam. ‘I hate you.’ For Rajit and her uncle and Mohan. ‘And you.’ Sarita. ‘You.’ Nahita, Ramesh, Leela, the man in the tie from Stop Trafficking Nepal.
‘And you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!’ she yelled at herself.
Meena raced her anger up the steps to the dorm room. Purna turned from where she had been staring at the window.
‘Chha,’ she said to Meena. ‘Tapaai-ko chha.’ You have.
‘Mero ke chha?’ Meena shouted at the stupid girl. She, who couldn’t even count to six, telling her she had something. ‘What do I have?’
Purna quaked at the yelling. Her legs wobbled as if she didn’t want to lie down for fear of what would happen.
‘I’m not going to hurt you, you idiot! Why would I hurt you?’ Meena glared at her. Purna crashed onto Nahita’s empty bed, missing the edge and falling to the floor. She yelped as her shoulder hit the ground, then tucked herself up into a ball, half under the bed. Like Durga’s baby, back at the brothel, shoved out of the way when the clients came, dazed and shivering, but never daring to cry.
Meena opened her mouth to curse the world, but there was no sound left. She flung around and onto her own bed. She hated the world, she hated herself ...
But, you have.
Meena threw her pillow and leaned against the hardness of the wall. Her breath was ragged, like an old man trying too hard. The image set her retching.
You have. Have what?
She’d never had a safe place to live. She’d never had enough food. She’d never had clothes that kept her warm in winter or dry in the monsoon. But she’d had a friend once, a friend that laughed at her stupid jokes and shared old mandarins and let her come stay the night when things got too messy with Meena’s father. She’d had a home and a friend and freedom.
The aching gulps of sadness rose from her chest.
Putali. Small Putali, who liked chicken meat and chillies. Who preferred Coke to Fanta. Who wished she could be a movie star, but knew she never would. She had known, Putali had always known, the trip wasn’t going to work out well. And now?
Didi strode into the room. Meena tensed, but Didi didn’t speak. She surveyed the scene, then knelt by Purna, coaxing her curled form from under the bed. Didi wordlessly scooped the fully-grown Nepali onto her lap and cradled her until the tight ball of fear relaxed. Then she lay Purna on her bed and pulled up the sheets.
‘Rules are hard. I know,’ Didi said when she finally approached Meena’s bedside and Purna’s breathing had slowed. ‘But it’s our rules that make us a place of freedom.’
Meena didn’t speak. The only sound in the room was what
came from Purna, and the laughter of the girls outside.
Meena wakes to a soft moaning sound. Her whole body aches. The area between her legs stings. It aches. She opens her eyes, the room skews, her left eye is bruised shut. Her vision spins as she draws herself upright, memories of what has happened slamming into her.
‘Putali?’
At the sound of her voice, the moaning pauses briefly, only to resume immediately after. Meena forces herself upright. Her bare legs stiff from the cold concrete. Her pink, ripped, sparkled top hangs open from her shoulders. She is practically naked. A kurta-suruwal has been tossed beside her. The fluorescent light above pains her eyes. What time is it? How long has she been unaware? Who had carried her—or dragged her—back to this place, the room she’d shared with Putali? The moaning continues.
Meena drags herself to the side of the bed. Her little friend lies curled under a pile of sparkling pink fabric, her arms hugging her chest, her heavily made up eyes squeezed shut. Meena pulls herself up and takes it all in. There are no bruises on Putali’s face, so she has not been beaten, but her mouth hangs open at a strange angle and a thin line of wetness hangs from it.
‘Putali.’ Meena reaches out to touch Putali’s shoulder. The little girl flinches, her eyes snapping open in dazed terror and then closing again in pain. Meena feels her chest pound. She’s never seen Putali like this. Ever. Dread clambers over her. Her head spins, her body cringes in pain. She lies weakly beside her little friend and reaches for the blanket. To cover them both and still her trembling.
It is only after she wakes the second time that she notices the pool of blood seeping out from under Putali’s skirt.
Twenty-nine
Three days later, Meena was still on curfew. She sat hunched by the turned dirt of Didi’s tiny kitchen garden. The warm breeze that drifted about the compound blew lightly on her bare shins. She tugged her trouser legs down, brushing the dirt from her ankles. All morning she had worked like Didi had told her, digging up the stiff, stubborn soil. The dirt was dull, lifeless. Even Meena knew it needed more than turning over, but Didi was a city woman and Meena wasn’t going to say anything.
She looked up to see the gate dragged open. Tarak from Stop Trafficking Nepal rode in on his motorbike. What was he doing here? Would Maa tell him about Nahita? Meena pulled the hoe closer and leaned on its handle. Tarak climbed off his bike and pulled his helmet off like he was in the Honda Heroes advertisement. Sharmila skipped down the office steps and blushed bright crimson at the sight of him. Tarak lifted his hands to greet her in the polite traditional manner. Meena spat the dust from her mouth and stood up. She mightn’t know how to read books, but she knew enough to read Sharmila’s face and to know she wanted more than politeness from Tarak-Sir. What were they talking about? Her? She watched them walk into Maa’s office.
Meena carried the hoe around to the front of the dorm. She saw Purna, squatting by the water tap and holding out a worn pair of trousers under the unopened tap. She’d never actually seen Purna do laundry before, and here she was moving the dry trousers as if she was rinsing the soap out.
‘Are you trying to wash them?’ Meena asked. Purna looked up, half afraid. She drew the trousers into her chest.
‘I’m not going to hurt you. I won’t shout,’ Meena said. She turned the tap on and watched Purna jump back with surprise as the water splashed onto the concrete. Purna made a narrow, squashed noise, it sounded something like disused laughter.
‘Turn the water off when you’re done.’
Purna nodded. She beat the trousers fiercely under the running water, blurring the soft sounds of Tarak, Maa and Sharmila’s conversation.
Meena picked up the hoe again and went to return it to the garden shed. Thin lines of smoke were weaving their way up from a pile of burning rubbish behind the chicken hut. Meena strode towards it. She heard a sound of shuffling behind her. It was Purna, following slowly, wet trousers in her hand, the tap still running in the distance.
‘Go turn the water off.’ Meena pointed.
Purna ran clumsily back to the tap and Meena took the opportunity to duck unseen behind the chicken hut. Leela and Kani were smoking and tending the fire from a distance. Leela squatted with her trouser legs pulled up above the knees, showing off her skinny legs. They were crossed with scars from her ankles to her knees. The kind of scars made from knives or broken glass. Meena fingered the scarf at her neck. She had seen scars like that on Sarita.
‘What’d you bring her for?’ Leela muttered as Purna scurried around the side of the shed after Meena. Purna shrunk under Leela’s glare.
‘I didn’t mean to,’ Meena answered, then quickly changed the subject as Purna squatted to stare absently into the fire beside her. ‘The guy from Stop Trafficking Nepal turned up.’
Kani giggled. ‘Oh yeah, doesn’t Sharmila have her eyes on him?’
‘As if he’d take her,’ Leela spat, but Meena saw a flicker of thoughtfulness before the sarcasm.
They were silent for a while, each bar Purna, occupied with their own thoughts. Meena watched the grass around the fire curl and die.
‘Would you ever go back?’ She let the question go before she was ready.
‘Go back? Where?’ Kani asked.
‘To the hotel, to the brothel?’
The girls just stared at her.
‘I’d rather hang myself,’ Kani finally muttered. ‘The only people who go back are Madams.’
Leela pulled her trouser legs down and leaned in to poke the fire. ‘There was a day when I had twenty-six clients,’ she said. ‘I remember ’cause I’d counted twenty-six lipstick dots on the wall.’
Meena didn’t want to listen but she couldn’t move.
‘I told my madam twenty-six was too many. And Madam explained, as she was watching me get beaten, that she had been sold when she was nine, that she had been raped, that she had been starved, that men had poked pieces of glass inside her until she agreed to work and that, if she had been treated in that way, then she could do it to me. She said it was my fault I was in the brothel, that I asked for it, that it was what I deserved because I was nobody.’
Kani drew deep on her cigarette before handing it to Leela. Purna whimpered and disappeared.
‘The next day she only sent five customers. But they were monsters each time.’ She glared at Meena. ‘I will never go back. Even if I have to live here until I’m as old and boring as Maa. Never!’
Meena ducked her head. She could see the grass beside the rubbish heap, it had curled over and was dying. She took a breath of the foul air. ‘But what if you had a friend? What if she was still inside?’
‘We’ve all got friends inside,’ Kani said softly. ‘Was she in your brothel? Maybe she’ll get out the same way you did.’
Meena shook her head. ‘I haven’t seen her since ... for three years.’
Leela snorted. ‘Was she little? She’s probably dead, or crazy, like Purna.’ She dropped the cigarette to the ground. The red end glowed and the heat of it curled the leaves of grass until it went out and the leaves were left scarred. A breeze shifted the smoke into their faces. Meena coughed and stood up. She felt sick, dizzy, out of breath. ‘I can’t breathe.’
‘You don’t have to stay, you’re not on rubbish duty,’ Kani grumbled.
Meena covered her mouth and ran out of the smoke. She followed Purna back to the dorm. Leela’s story sat sick in her mind. Was Putali’s madam like that? Her photo was still in Maa’s desk. How would they find her if Meena didn’t say anything? If Meena didn’t go back? Maybe Maa would agree to help. Or Tarak—he wanted to rescue Nepali girls, didn’t he? Meena settled herself on the dorm steps with her knitting and waited for Tarak to leave. She’d go and talk to Maa about it this afternoon.
***
Eventually Tarak and Sharmila stepped from the office doors. They lingered by his motorbike, chatting for what seemed to
Meena far too long to be ‘professional’, Tarak laughing at something Sharmila had said, and then Sharmila lowering her eyes and blushing shyly as Tarak replied. Finally he drove away, turning on his way out the gate for a final wave before he disappeared from view. Sharmila spun round dreamily, snapping her professional face into place at the sight of Meena.
‘Quick, hurry inside.’ She beckoned Meena over. ‘Maa’s got good news for you.’
Meena felt her stomach curdle with hope. Had Didi told Maa about Meena’s friend in Kamathipura? Had Tarak been invited to make a plan? The smoke from the rubbish stuck at the back of her throat, but she managed to cross the paving to Maa’s office.
The narrow-faced woman looked up from a pile of papers and smiled like a grandmother about to hand out expensive gifts.
‘I was c... coming to talk to you ...’ Meena started, but Maa had already begun talking.
‘Meena, I have some good news. Please sit.’
Meena remained standing, but fumbled for the arm of the chair.
‘You know the painting we have upstairs? Well, it looks like you’ll be seeing the real view sooner than we both thought. Our colleague Tarak has arranged for you to travel with their next Stop Trafficking Nepal repatriation group. They have seven girls at their transit home, who will be moved to their main centre in Kathmandu, and a generous donor has made it possible for two of our Nepali girls to join them,’ Maa announced triumphantly.
‘Who’s going?’ Meena felt her legs go weak. She sank into the chair.
‘Well, you and Purna of course,’ Maa said.
Meena’s eyes darted around the office for distraction. Something to focus on, to still her mind, like Sarita had taught her. But the cobwebs near the airconditioner had been swept away. There was no evidence they had ever built their homes. No evidence at all ... But perhaps there was still time. Meena forced her voice to be calm. ‘When?’ she asked.
‘Tomorrow! The Stop Trafficking Nepal mini bus will come in the morning to collect you, so you can both catch the noon train to Gorakhpur Junction.’