It had been two weeks since the man had tried to buy me, and Ma was a bundle of nerves. She acted like it was the first time a man had spoken to me in that way. Admittedly, I’d never told her about the bad things men said to me or the many times they’d tried to touch me, even her own customers. I always assumed she knew. In the same way I knew what men did to her. I thought it was our secret language. We kept our eyes open but our mouths sealed shut. After that night, I began to wonder.
She paced our small room for days. No one could calm her. Deepa-Auntie was the only one who dared try and Ma bit her head off. Prita-Auntie, who’d known Ma the longest and was the closest thing she had to a friend, made herself scarce. Lali-didi, who’d recently been moved into our room, sat nervously on her own bed, watching us both because suddenly we were always together. Ma wouldn’t let me out of her sight. She even walked me to school and was waiting at the gate at the end of each day.
At first the novelty of her attention was gratifying. It was the first time I’d felt like I was more than a servant, perhaps even loved, but Ma’s restless anger quickly wore on me. I created excuses to steal time away from her. One day I deliberately spoke out of turn in class to get kept after school. That was a mistake though. When my teacher finally let me go, Ma was a hissing cobra, barely able to contain herself until we got home, where she beat me.
I was the one who suggested I was too old to sleep in our house. “The men look at me differently now,” I told her. “It will be safer if I sleep elsewhere.”
I didn’t say that men had looked at me this way as long as I could remember. Was there any other way for a man to look at a girl?
“But where will you sleep?” asked Ma.
It was a stupid question. How many people did we know who slept in the street every night? Did she think I could give her the coordinates of the patch of pavement I would claim as my own?
“I’ll go with Parvati,” I said. “She knows someone with a small room we can share.”
This was a lie and Ma knew it. If she’d believed me she would have asked for more details. To have a room was sufficiently extraordinary that it bore investigation. Perhaps there would be space for Aamaal and Shami as well. But Ma said nothing.
She crinkled her already deeply lined brow and gave me a hollow-eyed stare. It went through my head that she used to be pretty and I wondered if her horror that men were noticing me was in part because she struggled now to get their attention. What would happen if men no longer paid to be with her? How would she support us? I didn’t know how old Ma was. Like most people, myself included, her birth wasn’t registered and the date was long forgotten. She didn’t even have a fake birth certificate, like the one I got to register for school. She’d once said she was barely in her teens when she had me, so she had to be in her twenties still, but time moved faster in our community. Many women, their bodies wasted by disease and addiction, didn’t live to see thirty.
“I don’t want you begging,” Ma said. “I don’t send you to school to have you end up a beggar.”
I wanted to ask why she did send me to school. What was her plan for me? Did she have one? “I’ll only sleep with Parvati. That’s all.”
She sighed and sank down on the edge of Lali-didi’s bed. Lali-didi practically left behind her own skin in her haste to scuttle away.
“I don’t like Parvati. She’s a bad influence.”
I suppressed a smile. As if anyone could be a bad influence in our neighborhood. What did she think I might learn from Parvati that I didn’t already know?
“She doesn’t even go to school,” Ma continued.
“That’s not Parvati’s choice,” I said indignantly, though Parvati always pretended she was glad she didn’t have to go to school. “Her ma won’t pay for the uniform and books.”
“You’ll need to be back first thing to wash the dishes. You know what Pran will do if he wakes up and finds the dishes haven’t been cleared up.”
I nodded, though no one ever knew what Pran would do.
I stood outside our building that evening, discussing sleeping options with Parvati. Although it was late, I still had Shami strapped to my back. He had a cough that made it hard for him to sleep lying flat. Sticky yellow goo collected in his lungs so he woke up gasping for breath. It was another reason I didn’t mind sleeping outside. Keeping him quiet and breathing at the same time was becoming an impossible task. He would breathe easier if I could keep him upright.
“I told Hussein there would only be two of us,” said Parvati for at least the third time. “Why can’t you leave Shami with your ma? Aamaal can watch him.”
I looked across the street to where a fight was brewing between two men outside a bar. We needed to get moving. It wasn’t safe for us to be hanging around this time of night.
“We can sleep under the bridge,” I said.
Parvati often worked with the beggars who’d built a shanty community under the railway bridge near Grant Road Station. It wasn’t far from Kamathipura. We could make it there on foot in thirty minutes. I’d suggested it earlier but Parvati refused. I couldn’t figure out why. I thought the beggars were her friends.
Parvati put her hands on her hips and gave me a look, like I was being unreasonable. Maybe she wanted to show off her “boyfriend,” Hussein, who sold T-shirts outside Central Station. He claimed he owned the stall where he worked and we could sleep under the table when he shut down for the night. I had my doubts on both counts. He was too young to own a stall, and I didn’t want to risk being discovered by his boss and chased away in the middle of the night. If it had been closer I might have agreed to try it out, but it was more than an hour’s walk.
“Why would he let us sleep there for nothing?” The boy’s ulterior motive was the other thing worrying me. We couldn’t afford to pay him, not in cash anyway, and I didn’t want to contemplate what other form of payment he might expect.
Parvati shrugged. “He said he loves me. He gave me this T-shirt and he didn’t ask for anything.” She puffed out her chest in case I’d failed to notice she was wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with I’m a Princess in gold lettering. She was also wearing new blue jeans. It was the first time I’d seen her out of traditional clothes. The difference was startling, as if she were one of those girls who advertised toothpaste on television, with a life as perfect as her teeth.
“Did he give you the jeans too?”
“No, I bought them myself.” She looked way too smug.
I suspected she’d stolen them. I just hoped she’d been smart enough not to steal from a stall near the T-shirt shop. The vendor was bound to notice if she sashayed past wearing them. Parvati scared me sometimes. She was much too bold for a girl. It would get her into trouble one day.
Two men walked by and gave us a speculative look. Even after they were beyond us, they turned back for a last gawk. Parvati winked at me.
“Those clothes reveal too much,” I said, grateful Ma had already been inside with a customer when Parvati showed up.
“You’re just jealous.” Parvati arched her back and squeezed her arms on either side of her tiny boobs.
“You can’t make melons out of cherries,” I said grumpily.
Parvati sighed. “When I get rich I’m going to buy boobs the size of melons!”
“They’ll grow on their own, Paru,” I relented. “Your ma has the biggest boobs on the street.”
Parvati smiled happily. “That’s true, isn’t it? But I’m a teenager. They should be bigger by now.”
“You’re twelve. That’s not a teenager.”
“You don’t know how old I am.”
“Neither do you.”
“That’s the problem with being the oldest. Do you remember the exact date Aamaal and Shami were born?”
“Of course.”
“Never forget that. When Eka starts school he won’t have a fake date on his birth certificate like you and I did. My ma couldn’t tell you when he was born but I remember.”
“Your ma didn’t register his bi
rth so you’ll still have to fake the certificate.” I didn’t have to ask why she knew her ma would let Eka go to school when she’d pulled Parvati out after third standard. Even a goat knew education was more important for boys than for girls. I also didn’t suggest that Eka might not be the best candidate for school. Parvati’s ma had a serious drug problem. It didn’t seem to have affected Parvati but I wasn’t so sure about Eka. He wasn’t sick as often as Shami, but Shami was already talking, while Eka, though eight months older, was still babbling.
“It’s getting late, Paru. We need to decide where we’re going.”
“Fine,” she huffed, “let’s go to Grant Road. But leave Shami at home tomorrow night.”
I started walking. Parvati fell in step, taking my hand. We both knew that tomorrow night I’d show up again with Shami. We’d have the same argument, and Shami would come along. Parvati may not have loved Shami as much as I did but she did love him, the same way I loved Eka. They were family. And Parvati understood that in the nearly two years since Shami’s birth he’d become a vital part of me. I was so used to looking after him that sometimes at school I felt his absence as if the air had been emptied of oxygen and I couldn’t breathe. All I could think about was rushing home to make sure he was still okay.
As if he knew what I was thinking, Shami stirred and wrapped his fingers around a strand of my hair. I craned my face around and kissed his tiny fist.
“Do you want me to carry him for a bit?” asked Parvati.
“No, he’s not heavy.” The truth of that statement made my stomach twist.
“He’ll grow, Noor. He’s like my boobs. We’re late bloomers, right, Shami?” She briefly dropped my hand to reach up and ruffle his hair.
“Right, Shami,” agreed Shami.
We laughed.
Leaving our crowded street, we hit the bright lights of Bapty Road. Food stalls on carts gave way to proper restaurants, open at the front so their fluorescent lighting lit up the whole street. You could tell we were coming into a richer neighborhood because bright lights shone from upstairs windows as well, as if the whole street were one big carnival. In our neighborhood, electricity was scarce and not so frivolously wasted.
“Are you hungry?” asked Parvati. She always seemed to have money these days. That also worried me.
“Are you buying?”
“Sure, why not?”
I almost asked her where the money came from but she beamed at me so full of pride that the words shriveled on my tongue and I swallowed them down again. “I’m not hungry,” I lied, and immediately felt guilty. Even if I didn’t want to take her money, I couldn’t deny Shami. “Maybe just a samosa for Shami.”
“We’ll all have samosas,” she said magnanimously, like an NGO worker who could produce food as easily as spit.
We stopped at a café that had tables spilling onto the sidewalk. That was another thing you didn’t find in our neighborhood: space was too precious to waste it on the luxury of tables and chairs on sidewalks. People ate as they walked along or took their food home. We approached the counter. There was already a crowd of men waiting to be served but Parvati pushed her way to the front and shouted her order. The server tried to ignore her, looking over her head to the men who now engulfed her. She put her hands on the countertop, which was almost as high as her shoulders, and peered over the top, continuing to bellow. I chuckled at the foolish man who thought Parvati could be ignored. Giving her a foul look, he took her order, snatched the cash she held up and practically threw a bag of samosas at her.
Parvati returned, grinning all over her face. She handed me one samosa and broke off a small piece from another, holding it up to Shami. I felt rather than saw him turn his head away.
“Keep trying,” I said. “He’ll take it eventually.”
We started walking again and Parvati did her best to get Shami to eat, in between tucking into her own samosa. In the end he didn’t have more than a few bites but I still felt a measure of satisfaction. Every bit of food that went into him felt like a victory.
It was close to midnight by the time we reached the shanties under the bridge. I was ready to drop from exhaustion and wondered if we were really going to have to make this trek every night. Lots of girls didn’t. They just slept in doorways or on the sidewalk in our own neighborhood. Lots of them got attacked as well though. It was worth the walk to sleep surrounded by people we knew, even if they were Parvati’s friends more than mine.
Several people greeted her as we wove our way through the corrugated metal and tarpaulin structures looking for a few feet of empty pavement. Finally we came to a patch large enough for all three of us to stretch out. Parvati helped me ease Shami off my back. He’d fallen asleep after his small meal and we didn’t want to wake him. She held him while I spread the sari on the ground and then gently laid him on it. Without discussion, we settled ourselves on either side.
Kidnapping was another hazard of life on the street, though baby girls were more often stolen than boys. Boys could be sold to beggars, who used them as props to get bigger handouts, but girls could be sold to brothels. They were far more lucrative. Babies sometimes disappeared from the brothels themselves. No baby had ever been stolen from our home but I knew several aunties whose babies had gone missing. Everyone knew it was the brothel owners. They sold them to traffickers who resold them in distant cities far from the protection of their families. The brothel owners made money, and it was a powerful way to punish mothers who’d resisted allowing their children to follow them into the trade.
I was almost asleep when I was aroused by a thud, quickly followed by a shriek. I sat up to discover Parvati rubbing her shoulder and recoiling from the raised foot of a young man. The stubble on his face was as patchy as grass in the dry season. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen.
“Get up, thief,” he snarled.
Parvati scrambled to her feet, planting herself firmly between the boy and Shami. I jumped up too and reached down to pick up Shami, taking in our situation at the same time. There were half a dozen of them. The boy who kicked her was the oldest. The youngest looked to be about Adit’s age. I stepped closer to Parvati so our bodies were touching.
“Where’s my money,” demanded their leader. He seemed genuinely furious, but that didn’t impress me. From what I’d seen of life many people spent every moment of every day simmering with anger.
“I haven’t been working.” Parvati glared back at him defiantly.
Parvati never understood the value of pretending humility. I cast my eyes downward, trying to communicate my own respect.
He backhanded her across the face. Her head cracked sideways with the force of the blow. Blood spurted from her lip and hit my cheek. I caught her as she staggered into me, but she righted herself quickly and again met his gaze.
“Have you seen me begging?” she demanded. “I haven’t been working.”
I silently willed her to be quiet.
“We’ve all seen you throwing your money around. If you’re not begging for it, you must be stealing. Either way, you owe me my cut.”
What had Parvati done? Surely she wouldn’t steal from her fellow beggars. There was a hierarchy in every begging community, just as there was for sex workers. Beggars worked in teams under the supervision of middle-level lieutenants who reported to gang lords. Whatever beggars earned on the street had to be turned over to those they worked for. Parvati knew that. It suddenly occurred to me that maybe she had bought her jeans. Was that the meaning of her sly smile?
“What if I do have money? What’s it to you? I didn’t earn it begging. You have no claim to it.”
Why couldn’t she have just lied?
“I own you. That means I own everything you earn. What do I care how you earned it? It’s still mine. In fact, you should be grateful your money is all I take from you.”
“You would have to force a girl, wouldn’t you, Suresh? No girl would let you touch her voluntarily.”
We reached for her at the sam
e time, me to pull her back and him perhaps to kill her. We met halfway and he knocked Shami from my arms. I leaned over to pick up Shami, who was already struggling to his feet, stunned.
Parvati dove for the boy’s neck, wrapping her hands around it. Shami headed unsteadily toward them but I caught him and wrapped my arms around him. Several more boys joined the fray. Parvati was knocked to the ground. I left Shami to go to her. Kicks connected with my back and sides as I shielded her. Suddenly Shami was beside me, taking blows meant for me. Tears streamed down my face as I beseeched them all to stop.
When we were all three on the ground bleeding and inert, they stood back to savor their victory.
Suresh leaned down to Parvati, shoving his hands into every one of her pockets until he found her money.
“Don’t ever try to cheat me again,” he warned.
Parvati’s unflinching stare said it all. He laughed, but it was a reed-thin imitation.
We were silent after they left. I carefully examined every inch of Shami. He’d have some bruises in the morning but there was nothing broken and only minor cuts. It was still agony to see him hurt. He winced when I held him close and buried my face in his hair.
Parvati reached over and stroked Shami’s head. “Don’t worry, Noor. One day I will make Suresh pay for that beating.” Her beautiful new T-shirt was smeared with dirt, the I’m a Princess obscured.
If anyone else had made the threat, I would have put it down to bravado, but it was Parvati. I didn’t doubt her.
“Be careful, Paru. Suresh is protected. If you defy him, he’ll only do worse to you.”
Neither of us knew how right I was.
Grace
I didn’t know where VJ normally sat, but I noticed that he chose a table in the epicenter of the cafeteria, guaranteed to ensure we could be seen from every direction.
“Can you give us a moment?” He looked around at the girls who’d followed him in. “Grace and I need to have a private talk.”
A couple of the girls shot me hostile looks but they melted away at his request.
Fifteen Lanes Page 8