Fifteen Lanes

by S. J. Laidlaw

  I was happy to go back outside as I could hear Binti-Ma’am just around the corner in a loud argument with a customer. It sounded like the young boy who had gone with Ma.

  I left Aamaal with Lali-didi, as she’d only slow me down, and ran as fast as I could to the house where Sunita-Auntie worked. Though she did the same work as Ma, she was no longer a live-in but had a room of her own in a building nearby. She rented her bed only when she had a customer, and split her profits with her madam. She supplemented her income with her other skill, delivering babies. It was a dwindling business. Even in our community, women preferred to have their babies in a hospital.

  I wove through the crowded streets, finally reaching Sunita’s Auntie’s brothel. Her madam snorted in disgust when I asked for her.

  “If you find her, tell her not to bother coming here again. I’ve plenty of whores who can make better use of my beds.”

  “Please, Auntie,” I said politely. “My ma’s in a desperate way.”

  “Try the Elephant Café,” she said, naming a gambling den that was as notorious for murders as for the large amounts of cash that changed hands each night.

  I had strict instructions from Ma to stay away, but I was desperate so I continued on.

  Half a block farther, I entered a long, narrow corridor not unlike the one at our house and followed the voices up a narrow staircase to the second floor. I didn’t get farther than the top of the stairs when I was stopped by a large, muscular man.

  “What’s your business here, girl?” he said roughly.

  “Please help me, Uncle. My ma is having a baby and needs the services of Sunita.” I didn’t give her last name. If he was from our community he wouldn’t need it.

  He examined my face, for what trickery I could only imagine. I looked at my feet to show him I understood his power and did not wish to offend.

  “She’s in there,” he said finally, stepping back and gesturing to an open doorway farther down the hall. “But I’d think twice about having her deliver your ma’s baby.”

  “Thank you, Uncle.” I slipped past him and ran to the open door.

  I heard Sunita-Auntie before I saw her. She was standing at one of the many round tables, arguing with another woman. They were fighting over a man who had a large pile of cash in front of him. The problem was as clear to me as any in my school Math book. In the next few moments they would come to blows if I didn’t intervene. I rushed forward and grabbed Sunita-Auntie’s arm. She was so absorbed in her dispute that she barely acknowledged me. I pulled at her with a desperation that finally got her attention. She was quick to follow when I explained the situation. Perhaps even she realized that the other woman, many years her junior, would inevitably win the wealthy customer, and give her a sound thrashing as well.

  As soon as we got outside I could smell the liquor on her. Still, I was grateful that she followed me, however unsteadily. We tried to creep past Binti-Ma’am, who was now outside our door arguing with the same young man. He was demanding his money back, as I’d earlier suspected. It was impossible to hide from her.

  “Tell your ma she owes me for this one,” said Binti-Ma’am.

  “You should be ashamed making Ashmita work in her condition, you greedy donkey!” snarled Sunita-Auntie.

  Binti-Ma’am’s chest puffed up as she prepared to explode. I shoved Sunita-Auntie through the open doorway. Sunita-Auntie’s blood was still up from before. She was itching to let loose on someone. It wouldn’t take much to ignite her longstanding feud with Binti-Ma’am. Many years ago they’d been friends, working alongside each other in the same house, but while Sunita-Auntie’s unwillingness to train new girls had kept her forever at the bottom of the trade, Binti-Ma’am’s innate viciousness had fueled her rise to the top.

  Several aunties and their children waited anxiously in the hallway and directed us to where Ma was giving birth. We were too late to help. Shami was already squalling on Ma’s chest when we arrived. It may have been fortunate he hadn’t awaited Sunita-Auntie’s arrival. In her current state, she may have cut more than his cord, though the scene we came upon was no less horrific.

  Binti-Ma’am had sent Ma to the lockup to have her baby. The room itself made my heart race. Everyone who lived in our house had heard the screams from that room when new girls were broken in. Lali-didi had emerged from a prolonged confinement only three weeks ago and still bore the marks of her suffering.

  It was more a wooden box than an actual room, standing four feet off the floor and accessed by a rickety stool. It was barely large enough for the single soiled mattress it contained, and the roof was so low it wasn’t possible to stand upright, even for me, and I was small for my ten years. A bucket overflowing with filthy rags and watery blood stood underneath the open door. Prita-Auntie, who shared our small four-bed room, stood sentry outside, giving orders to the other aunties to bring fresh water and clean clothes. A bucket arrived just as we did. Whatever rivalries might have existed between the aunties on a daily basis, they were family and would always help each other in a crisis.

  “She’s going to be fine,” said Prita-Auntie. Her eyes told a different story.

  I steeled myself to climb into the box. Sunita-Auntie made no move to follow. I didn’t blame her. I glanced nervously at the bolt and huge padlock on the door. Binti-Ma’am would have no reason to lock us in, but I’d seen Pran’s cruelty extend beyond reason, many times.

  The room was stifling. Deepa-Auntie sat on the far side of the mattress, mopping Ma’s face with a rag that looked little cleaner than the ones outside. Aamaal crouched beside her, rigid with fear. I tried to smile reassuringly at her. I’m sure it came out more like a grimace. Old Shushila, who’d long ago retired from the trade but stayed on at our house to help, was between Ma’s legs trying her best to wash her. Light flickered from a single kerosene lantern that hung barely two feet above Shushila’s hunched body. It cast ghastly shadows, making the scene look like a massacre and old Shushila a demon crone. I thought they must have cut the baby out and was surprised to see that Ma’s exposed belly, covered in a film of sweat, was unmarked.

  Ma looked relieved to see me. “Greet your brother, Shami.”

  I reached across her and took him in my arms.

  “You need to get a box for him to sleep in. There should be some discarded fruit cartons at the garbage dump. Get the cleanest one you can find.” Her voice was weak.

  “I’ll take care of it, Ma. Don’t worry.”

  I was surprised by his lightness. He was much smaller than Aamaal had been. Even at birth she’d had round cheeks and a robust glow. Our brother was frail and wizened like an old man. His eyes fixed on me and his wails, which had reverberated off the walls since my arrival, subsided into a quiet snuffling. It was foolish to think anything of it. Babies couldn’t see properly when they were this young. I kissed his forehead and held him close.

  Ma fell asleep almost immediately. I took her hand. It felt as cold as death. I quickly dropped it. Shushila, who was continuing to gently bathe her, met my eyes and nodded toward the door. There was nothing more I could do. Aamaal lay down and rested her head in Deepa-Auntie’s lap, closing her eyes as Deepa-Auntie stroked her hair. She would soon be asleep as well.

  The quietness in the room, rank with the smell of blood, was oppressive. I scooted backwards toward the door and swung my legs out, carefully stepping down onto the footstool and then the floor. I knew Ma’s bed would be empty for at least the next few hours. I wasn’t ready yet to introduce Shami to our life. I wanted some time alone to get to know him, and privacy was scarce. The curtain around Ma’s bed afforded our only hope. One of the aunties made a move to take him from me but I refused to give him up and the aunties seemed to understand. They returned their attention to guarding Ma and passing clean rags in to Shushila.

  I was halfway up the ladder to our room, awkwardly holding Shami in one arm, when Sunita-Auntie stopped me with a hand on my thigh. I started and almost fell backwards. I didn’t realize she’d fo
llowed me.

  “Your ma’s sick,” said Sunita-Auntie.

  “Just tired,” I said.

  “No,” said Sunita-Auntie, with the certainty of one who had seen much sickness. “She has the virus, and so does the babe. You’d be doing everyone a favor by smothering him now.” She turned away, placing a hand on the wall to steady herself before trudging off down the hall.

  I waited until she’d rounded the corner and then looked into the milky, opaque eyes of my brother. “She’s an old fool and a drunkard,” I told him.

  Shami didn’t blink.

  Grace

  One thing I liked about the principal’s office was that all his chairs were lined up in a straight row facing him, like he was about to deliver a speech and you were just there to listen. Most of the time I expect that’s the way things went. He didn’t count on my mom. I don’t think she’d stopped talking in the fifteen minutes since she’d sat down. I felt sorry for him. Every so often he’d start to say something like If I could interject here, but she would barrel on. Sooner or later he’d realize she wasn’t going to let him interject here, there or anywhere. I was grateful to be facing him and not her.

  I was already in his office when my parents arrived, farthest seat from the door, closest to the open window. Are you having the same thought I was? In fact, I’d been sitting in that same chair for over an hour. I gathered that Mr. Smiley—that’s his name; you can’t make that stuff up—had called my parents even before I showed up. He was surprisingly calm about the whole thing. Maybe I wasn’t his first student to “disseminate pornographic images to the student body.” Yes, that is what he said. Technically, he didn’t accuse me of disseminating to everyone, only those with a cellphone. Although apparently there were several images posted around the school, in addition to the one on my locker, so presumably the 1.2 percent of kids at Mumbai International without a cellphone were still exposed to my corrupting influence.

  As luck would have it, disseminating pornographic images is an expellable offence. Personally, I think accusing a fifteen-year-old of being the likely culprit of her nude photo going viral should be an expellable offence, but that’s just my opinion. Mr. Smiley did let me tell my side of the story, and he took copious notes. Then he had me write everything down and sign it.

  I felt both panicked and vindicated when he asked his secretary to make an appointment for him to talk to Todd and Madison. I wasn’t sure whether to bring up Madison’s name. I didn’t accuse her but I did say we’d had a disagreement about Todd the same day he started texting me. I genuinely wanted Mr. Smiley to draw his own conclusions. I didn’t know what to think.

  Dad was sitting in the seat closest to me. He didn’t look at me, which was a relief and hurt at the same time. Only when we were well into the second thirty minutes of the interview did he reach over and take my hand. At that point, I was white-knuckling the hard plastic armrest. Mom had just started talking about getting a lawyer and suing the school.

  Dad cleared his throat and Mom stopped talking. This wasn’t a strategy they’d worked out ahead of time, unless you count the past twenty-two years as “ahead of time.” Mom looked at Dad expectantly. I didn’t need to see her expression to know it was a mixture of Don’t interrupt me and What took you so long?

  “I think it’s obvious Grace has been the victim of a cruel if not criminal attack,” said Dad. I couldn’t help but notice Mr. Smiley was suddenly way more alert and not trying to interrupt. “She used bad judgment, but her error was a private one, which we’ll address with her when we get home.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. McClaren,” said Smiley, who looked sorry and more than a little nervous. My dad runs a company with over two thousand employees; he can have that effect on people. “But even if Grace only sent the photo to the boy, she still sent a pornographic image to an underage student.”

  “Really,” said Dad. “And have you identified that student?”

  Mr. Smiley shifted uncomfortably. “Not as yet, no.”

  “Have you traced the cellphone number?”

  “It doesn’t match any we have on record, or the numbers of either of the two students Grace named as possible perpetrators.”

  “So, as far as we know, Grace could have been in communication with anyone, an adult even?”

  “That’s highly unlikely,” Mr. Smiley objected. “The picture was sent to almost every student in the school.”

  “And how did that happen?”

  “The image went viral. Students were passing it on. But your daughter was the first to send the image, obviously.”

  “We don’t dispute that, but you can’t produce a single student who received the image from my daughter, and she doesn’t know who was play-acting as the teenage boy.

  We’re in complete agreement that Grace needs consequences for her actions, but the humiliation of having her image disseminated is already a severe consequence. We’ll take her home for the rest of the day. It will give her time to reflect on her actions and we’ll talk to her. However, Grace cannot afford to miss school. She’ll be back in class tomorrow.”

  My father stood up. Mr. Smiley, no longer living up to his name, stood as well. Mom and I followed suit.

  “My colleagues and I will need to discuss appropriate sanctions,” said Mr. Smiley.

  “We will not accept any consequence that jeopardizes her education,” said Dad firmly.

  “At the very least she’ll have to do community service to atone for what she’s done,” said Mr. Smiley, equally firm.

  “Grace already does community service as a requirement of her International Baccalaureate diploma,” said Dad. I could tell he didn’t like letting the school decide my punishment, but he was wrong on the community service front. I wasn’t involved in anything. In fact, I’d invested considerable energy into dodging the community service requirement.

  “According to our records, Grace is not yet involved in any activity that will contribute to her required hours.”

  I stared at my feet.

  “Thank you for letting us know,” said Dad, without missing a beat. “Of course, we support any effort to help Grace find a suitable activity.”

  Dad held out his hand and Smiley shook it.

  “I trust you’ll keep us informed if you get any information on who’s responsible for this attack on my daughter.” Dad sounded every bit like the captain of industry that he was.

  We walked out of the office. Dad only dropped my hand when it was necessary to pass through doors. He took it again when we were out of the building. I couldn’t remember him ever holding my hand before. It felt nice, though weird. Mom stalked ahead of us to the parking lot.

  “I’m sorry,” I said quietly, daring to glance at Dad’s face for the first time.

  He gave me a wry smile. “Everyone makes mistakes, Gracie, but this sure was a doozy.”

  I couldn’t help but grin. Only my dad would use a dorky word like doozy. Who says that anymore?

  “I guess you were missing your brother,” he said, as if he was trying to work it out for himself.

  “And Tina,” I said.

  “But still.”

  “I know it was stupid but I never expected anything like this would happen.”

  We reached the car. Our driver, Vitu, opened the door for me. Mom was already in the front seat. She never sat there. Obviously, she didn’t want to sit with me.

  It was a silent ride home. She didn’t speak in the elevator either, but I could feel the pressure rising with each passing floor. I tried to plan what I was going to say when we were finally alone. I felt mortified, apologetic, betrayed, frightened; I couldn’t formulate a single sentence that would capture the depths of my regret. As it turned out, I didn’t need to. The second we were inside the apartment Mom burst into tears and Dad wrapped his arms around her. No one acknowledged Bosco, who rushed to greet us and was jumping around, yipping with delight.

  “Why don’t you go to your room,” said Dad. “We’ll talk later.”

/>   “No,” said Mom, pulling away from him. “We’ll talk now. Grace, how could you do this?”

  The abrupt shift from tears to anger left me speechless.

  “You’re a smart girl. How could you be so unbelievably stupid? Do you realize your image is out there in the public domain forever? Universities, future employers … someday your own children could see this. How are you going to explain to your own fifteen-year-old that you sent a topless photo of yourself to who knows how many people?”

  “I didn’t do it, Mom.” I felt like I was going to throw up. As bad as I thought it was, it was so much worse. I hadn’t even begun to think of all the ways this could come back to haunt me.

  “Of course you did it, Grace!”

  “She means she didn’t send the picture to anyone but the one boy,” said Dad. “Or whoever it was,” he added under his breath.

  “Exactly,” Mom pounced. “She sent a photo to someone without even knowing who it was. What were you thinking, Grace?”

  “This isn’t getting us anywhere, Jen. What we need to do now is help Grace figure out how she can move on.”

  “She can’t move on!” Mom roared. “This will never go away.”

  Dad frowned worriedly. Maybe he hadn’t thought through the implications either.

  “Go to your room, Gracie. Your mom and I need to talk.”

  I didn’t need to be told twice. I scurried to my room, Bosco hot on my heels. Once inside, I shut my door, dropped my bag on the floor and threw myself on the bed, though I immediately had to get up again to lift Bosco up beside me.

  I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling, clutching Bosco to my heaving chest. I’d wanted to be alone since I first saw the picture, so I could finally let the tears fall. Now that I was, I found myself dry-eyed. It was like I was wrapped in gauze; everything I’d done seemed like the actions of someone else. Maybe this was what people meant when they talked about being in shock. Certainly what I’d done was shocking, and the fallout was cataclysmic. But it didn’t feel as though I was part of it. I could almost believe that I’d go to school tomorrow and be the same invisible nonentity I’d always been.