by Farhana Zia
Chapter 9
Amma spooned our dinner onto rimmed platters. We ate by lantern light, drawing rice and watery lentils into balls just big enough to make our cheeks bulge, and crunching onion and green chili for extra flavor. Inside the hut, the dying embers of the fire cast eerie shadows on the walls.
The sun descended behind the mango tree and twilight deepened. People emerged from darkened huts. One by one, cots creaked and mats filled. Everywhere voices hushed and movement slowed like a fan winding down.
Bapu carried his charpai outdoors and Amma pushed the Big Box into a darkened corner of our hut. With a snap of my wrist, I rolled out my sleeping mat near Bapu’s cot and stretched out on it. The earth was hot under my back, even though Bapu had sprinkled water from a goatskin bag to try to cool it off. Just when the sky darkened, the little mutt Kalu joined us. A few feet away, Lali lay beside Vimla Mausi and the little ones. I opened my mouth to tell Lali about Rukmani and the laddu, but then I closed it quickly. Telling her could wait. She’d be too worked up to sleep if I told her now.
Farther away, Paki, Raju, and Pentamma Mausi lay still. The cobbler unwound his turban for the night and Ramu’s beedi cigarette glowed like a firefly in the dark.
Everyone was out under the stars except Rukmani. Judging by the hazy light flickering in the cobbler’s hut, she was finishing up her last chores, dousing the flames and sweeping the ash in her hearth.
I listened to the sounds of the night for a while. I turned over. “Oi, Lali,” I whispered as loudly as I dared. “Are you awake?”
“Mmm … not quite.” Lali’s sleep-rimmed voice drifted over the prone figures between us.
“Rukmani’s not on her sleeping mat yet.”
“One never knows about that one.”
“She stole leepshteek and a bit of chakalet from her memsaab, don’t you know?”
“Leepshteek? Chakalet?”
“And the nosy thing wanted to know all my secrets!”
“What secrets?”
“Never mind!” I said and quickly changed the subject.
We counted stars until we came to the end of our numbers and then we searched for pictures in the sky. We found many good ones, but the best one was of Kalu.
“There’s his paw and that’s the tail. Do you see? Lali?”
“Yes, I see,” Lali’s words slurred sleepily. “Basanta, what is leepshteek and what is chakalet?”
“Oh! A leepshteek rises out of a little tube and makes a girl’s lips pink and a chakalet …” I tried to explain about the chakalet the best I could. “Do you understand, Lali? Lali?”
But I got no reply. Lali was fast asleep.
Beside me, Amma wiggled into a better position and Durga lay sprawled and still. Bapu’s breathing deepened. From farther away, the old cobbler’s snores punctured the still night.
Bhaun! Bhaun! Bhaun! Sometime in the night Kalu barked and barked and woke me up.
Amma’s mat was empty and so was Bapu’s cot. Something was amiss. Though it was dark, I could glimpse a crowd milling around our hut, humming like a hive of wasps.
I jumped up from my mat and elbowed my way through the people, listening to broken bits of conversations: “Daiyya! Someone tried to steal into the hut!” “Anything stolen?” “Aiyyo!”
My heart skipped a beat as I pushed past concerned neighbors. “Amma?” I called.
My mother sat on her haunches, rummaging in the Big Box. The dim light of the lantern revealed lines on her forehead as deep as the ruts under the wheel of a bullock cart. All the best things she owned were stored in there—and along with them, unbeknownst to her, was the ring. I peered over her shoulder, my mouth as dry as dust.
“It’s all here,” she announced. Red sari, white muslin shirt, four bangles, two anklets, and the small pile of rupees saved for my trousseau.
I let out a breath. If those things hadn’t been taken, it meant the ring was probably safe too.
My parents checked our hut for other things and found that they too were untouched. The bicycle stood in the corner and the umbrella hung safely from its nail. The tiffin box was also in its place.
Amma counted the stainless platters and the little katori bowls and all the brass pots. She checked the rice and flour levels in the earthen pot and she peered into the ghee tin. She even gauged the size of the kindling pile. The picture of the blue-black god still sat in its niche and the combs and bottle of hair oil were in their usual places.
“I’ll look in the Big Box again,” I volunteered, but my mother pushed me away.
“Na. No need of that.” She ducked out the doorway, shoving me out ahead of her. Bapu nodded his head in answer to the silent, inquiring looks at the doorway: Yes, everything was fine. No, nothing was taken, thank the gods!
I heard a chuckle or two. After that, everyone shuffled back to bed.
I sank down beside Amma. “What time is it?” I asked.
“I heard the clock in the tower chime twice not so long ago,” she said.
Amma’s worst fears had almost come to pass. “How will a curtain keep a thief away?” she had always worried. Because there were no doors and locks for huts made from mud and straw, she had been extra secretive about our Big Box. “No outsider need poke a nose in it,” she warned us with a finger to her lips.
But someone had tried to poke a nose in it, in the middle of the night, and if not for good old Kalu, the ring would surely have been stolen.
“Who do you think it was?” I asked.
“It’s difficult to say.” Bapu sank back onto his cot. “He was hidden under a shawl.”
My head was abuzz. Who could the thief be? I ran down a list of possible suspects in my head. Paki and Raju had slept through the entire incident. Lali had slept deeply as well. The Milk Boy was too timid to sneak into someone’s hut. And besides, his father was rich and there was no need for him to steal. Dear Ramu was too nice to do something so horrible. The peanut man was wily but he was not agile enough. Bala … well, he lived too far away to come to our busti in the middle of the night.
That left only one person unaccounted for: Rukmani! Yes, Rukmani was the number one suspect. Had she not wiggled and squirmed, prying for information about my ring? Had she not been missing from her sleeping mat? And wasn’t she the only one not at the hut clucking her tongue and asking questions?
My mind was in such frenzy that I couldn’t go back to sleep. My palms were sweaty, my mouth dry. Had the thief taken the ring? It had to be there. It just had to! Why, I barely got to wear it! I hardly got to feel it on my finger. I hadn’t had a chance to show it to Lali and watch her eyes grow to the size of thali plates.
I tossed and turned on my mat like a leaf on a windy night. New feelings and doubts tumbled about in my head. If I had put Little Bibi’s ring back on her dressing table, as Amma would have expected me to, I’d be sleeping soundly under a starry sky instead of being sick with worry. If only I had not bragged to Rukmani. If, if …
I couldn’t stand it anymore. I tried to get up without disturbing my mother but she stirred. “What are you doing?” she mumbled.
“I’ll be back in a flash, Amma.”
“Answer me! Where are you going in the middle of the night?”
“I’m only going to Kalu to pet him and tell him he’s a good dog for scaring away the thief.”
“Silly child.” Amma rolled over. “Tell him I said thank you!”
I tiptoed past Kalu, who was breathing heavily. I groped my way into our hut and knelt by the Big Box, I slowly opened the lid, lifted the corner of the cloth, and eased up the little piece of wood. I probed the space underneath with my finger.
Nothing! The hollow was empty! The ring was gone!
Chapter 10
I had lost the ring to a thief before my tongue could taste those sweet words—my ring. It was gone before my finger could savor its feeling.
I turned the Big Box on its side and searched in every nook by the weak lantern light.
Rukmani had to h
ave taken the ring. Who else but her? She was a practiced thief and she’d itched to know about my secret!
I’d confront her at the first opportunity. “Oi, you chicken thief!” I’d scream in her face. “Give back my ring right now!”
The next morning as I started toward the water pump, I rehearsed the words in my head. “Hark!” I would say. “A chicken thief is now turned a ring thief!”
But then Little Bibi’s voice rang sharply in my head. Thief! Ring thief!
And her eyes! I saw them too, plain as day. Just then Amma’s voice flew out from the hut. “Juldi, juldi! We don’t have all day!”
I picked up my pace. But when I reached the water pump, Rukmani was not there.
All day at the Big House, I felt as dreary as a snuffed-out candle in a darkened corner. I wandered from one room to the next flicking the broom at the floor, but my heart wasn’t in it. The dull ache inside me just wouldn’t go away. It just grew worse when I smoothed the sheets on Little Bibi’s bed, and when I arranged her ribbons in a neat row on her table.
At last Amma clucked her tongue in irritation and sent me to sit in the shade of the guava tree. There, time came to a complete standstill. My mind kept running over last night’s events again and again.
Rukmani! I was so angry I wanted to scream in her face here and now. But I was angrier at myself for landing squarely in this big mess. Stupid, stupid Basanta! I reproached myself, again and again.
It was the longest day of my life.
I went looking for Rukmani as soon as we got home, but her hut was as empty as a beggar’s purse. I checked under the nearby mango tree, expecting to find her glossing her long hair with coconut oil. She was not there either.
To help pass the time while I waited for her return, I gathered some of the baby mangoes that were scattered about like plump beads. I thought I might eat some of the sour fruit or even play a game of jacks with them.
Rukmani’s painted pots were stacked in a pile near her doorway. As wicked as she was, Rukmani was a great painter. When I ran a finger over the beautiful designs, the pile wobbled like the drunken cobbler at sundown. It would serve Rukmani right if her pots crashed to the ground and broke to smithereens.
But I moved away. It wouldn’t do to mess with them. If I broke her precious clay pots, no amount of screaming about the ring would get me anywhere.
The clock in the station tower struck seven. If Rukmani didn’t return within the next hour, I’d be back to square one and I’d get an earful from my mother as well for dillydallying. Gathering my courage, I lifted the curtain in the doorway to see if I might quickly poke around for the ring before Rukmani arrived.
“Oi!” Paki charged up like a bull stung on his behind by a bee! “Why are you snooping near Rukmani’s hut?”
“I’m not snooping!” I cried.
“You were poking your nose in at the door like Ramu’s goat! I saw you with these two eyes!”
“I … I came to—”
“You came to do mischief, I bet!”
“I came to admire the pots,” I said as calmly as I could. “Why are you here?”
“To guard her house, of course. And it’s a good thing I arrived when I did!” Paki shoved past me and began to circle the hut, making a great show of examining everything from thatched roof to floor.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I demanded.
“I’m making sure everything is in shipshape order!”
“And why wouldn’t it be, you crazy owl?”
“With suspicious creatures like you lurking about, who can tell what might happen?”
“Go away!”
“No way. I’m staying because something smells fishy!”
“Fishy?”
“Stinky fishy!” He circled the hut again and this time I ran behind him.
“Why do you care?” I yelled. “Rukmani doesn’t give a hoot about you! Scat!”
“She needs me to guard her hut!”
“You only want her to bat eyes at you! She has no time for you. You’re less than a fly on cow dung to her.”
“Shut up!”
“It’s the Milk Boy she’s after. She’s saved a laddu for him!”
“The Milk Boy?” Paki spun around. “What happened to Ramu?”
“Hoosh!” I threw a mango at him, and it bounced off his shoulder.
“Oi!” Paki hollered. “I’ll get you for that, she-donkey! Tell me about the Milk Boy!”
I flung another mango and hit him squarely this time.
Paki dashed to the mango tree and came back running. His aim was true. Phok, phok, phok! He hit me on the shoulder, leg, head.
“Owl!” I dug into my stash and pelted him back. “Take that, and that!”
“She-donkey!”
Back and forth the mangos flew—whiz! zoom! wham! bam!—like frenzied parrots batting heads in a snug cage. A mango missed my head by a finger and bounced off the hut. Then another flew past my left shoulder and I heard a loud crack.
The pots teetered … tottered … and … dhum! They toppled over!
“Donkey!” I shouted. “Look what you’ve done!”
Paki’s mouth was a big O. “It was your mango!”
“Na! Mine flew in the opposite direction!”
“It went straight for the pots!”
“Impossible!”
“Destroyer of pots!” screamed Paki.
“You’re in for it!” I roared. “Rukmani’s going to be madder than a striking cobra!”
“I’ll tell her the whole story from A to Z! Your snooping started it all!”
“Pot breaker!” I yelled.
Paki looked around nervously. “We could tell her it was Ramu’s goat,” he said.
“It was no goat. It was a donkey,” I insisted. “A donkey and a liar!”
We stared at the pile of broken pieces for a moment, then swept them into a heap with our feet and ran away.
Far into the night Rukmani ranted. I covered my ears till at last I heard the cobbler shush his daughter. “Chup!” he snapped. “Be silent! You will paint more pretty pots.”
It’s true, I thought. Rukmani will make a new stack of pretty pots with her nimble fingers. If I had but kept mine behind my back in the Big House, I surely would not be chewing my fingernails down to the bone right now worrying and wondering what had happened to my ring.
Chapter 11
Another workday would soon begin. Bapu had pedaled off to the Public Gardens, Amma was washing at the water pump, and Durga was crawling about the hut like a confused cockroach.
“Come!” I commanded, but my little sister ignored me as she weaved in and out of the legs of Bapu’s cot, colliding with the Big Box again and again and making circles on all fours like Kalu running after his tail. I snapped my fingers but it was no use. My little sister scooted further under the cot. “Disobedient girl,” I muttered. “I’m going for Tikki and you better be out before I’m done!”
A gurgling sound made me turn around. Durga’s arms and legs waved about in the air. Her happy coo had become a rasping croak.
“Quit that,” I growled.
But my sister’s arms continued to flail and the croaks seemed more desperate. Her eyes were wide as saucers; she sounded like Dev just before Vimla Mausi thumped his back to expel a tamarind seed.
Oo Maa! My sister was choking on a tamarind seed!
I snatched her from under the cot, turned her upside down, and whacked her on the back. She coughed a big rattling cough, heaved up a frothy blob, and began to cry.
I stroked her little back. Poor thing, how scared she was, with snot running out of her nose and tears pouring down her cheeks. But her breathing was more even now and her stomach had stopped heaving.
“There, there!” I soothed. “You’ve got to quit chasing tamarind seeds and peanuts! When will you learn?”
I scrunched my nose at the nasty mess at my feet, but then something caught my eye. I looked closer. Arrey daiyya! It was not a tamarind seed! It was not a pe
anut either. It was Little Bibi’s ring! Durga had found the ring! But how?
I set my sister on the floor and pulled out the Big Box. On my knees I lifted the chip in the corner and eased a finger into the little compartment. I knew had examined it well that night. God promise, I had. But here the ring was and Durga had nearly choked on it!
I swept my finger from end to end of the space. Arrey daiyya! My fingertip felt the earthen floor of my hut. What was this? A hole? Daiyya re daiyya! Amma’s frantic rummaging had caused the ring to fall through a hole in the secret compartment on the night the thief came!
“What are you doing in the Big Box?” My mother’s question made me jump. I had not heard her return. “And is that not Little Bibi’s ring?”
I blurted out Durga’s story, hoping it might distract my mother. But after some cooing and clucking over my sister, she turned to me.
“Tell me about the ring!” she demanded.
I told her everything. Amma listened without interrupting. She let me have a little cry when I got to the part about the birthday garland that Little Bibi had discarded so cruelly.
When I was done, she said, “Now hear me, Basanta.” And then she gave me the lecture.
Amma said she understood that I was upset because some people had so many nice things and some didn’t. She also understood that it seemed unfair when some people worked hard to clean up other people’s messes without being rewarded with fancy parties and birthday presents. But right was right and wrong was wrong, she said.
I lowered my eyes in shame even though her voice was neither loud nor angry. “Please, Amma,” I begged. “Little Bibi’s getting a brand new ring for her finger.”
But there was finality in Amma’s voice. “It’s not yours to keep, Basanta,” she said. “You must return it at once,”
“But what shall I say?” I asked.
“The truth. Tell her it was a mistake. Tell her it will not happen again. Beg for forgiveness!”
“You could say you found it today while you were dusting. Could you? Would you?”