Wild Boar in the Cane Field

by Anniqua Rana

  “Christ is not a man. He is God. He loves all and is loved by all,” Stella told us, and then she crossed herself quickly in a prayer for the beloved. Maria’s hand brushed mine questioningly, but the words stayed captive inside us.

  Stella pulled a small bottle of rosewater from her pocket and sprinkled it on the glass box, a tradition she had learned when she had attended holy recitals at Bibi Saffiya’s house. Maybe our religions were not that different, as Zakia had always taught us. I mumbled a memorized prayer.

  The aroma of rosewater and strong chameli attar was the scent of purity, perfection, paradise. “Just like Sultan,” Stella said, facing the statue.

  I wasn’t sure whether it was the smell or the statue that she was referring to, but I thought I understood. She had a special bond with Sultan, which I had never felt. The stale coconut oil and sweat engulfed my thoughts, and I looked at Maria. She returned my gaze but chose not to engage longer.

  I followed her line of sight to the statue in the glass box, which stared lovingly at the three of us. We stood in a warp of silence as a fly whizzed past us, mesmerizing us with its frenzied flight. As if intentionally, the fly found its way into the glass box through a small opening of broken glass. The statue, unfazed by the intrusion, continued to stare lovingly at Stella.

  I knew that Stella would never forget Sultan. I knew, as she stared at the statue of Christ in the glass box, that she was really thinking about Sultan, replacing in her mind’s eye Christ’s long, flowing brown hair with the darkened, oiled hair of the only man she had loved.

  Stella told us she had started to learn how to read fluently. She had also begun a journey of deep devotion.

  She hugged her sister, Maria, and then turned to me and held my hand in both of hers. I looked at my feet, my mind clear of thought. She hugged me, too, and, without asking for assistance, limped away from us.

  Earrings with Pomegranate Seeds

  It had been nearly three years since Sultan’s death, and the boys and I had also stopped going to Zakia’s house for lessons. No one called me in to reprimand me about this decision.

  I was relieved not to see Zakia on a daily basis. Only at village events, like Eid, or a death, or sometimes a wedding, would I encounter her, but I took pleasure in not acknowledging her presence.

  “Don’t, my daughter,” Bhaggan reprimanded me, after I’d left the kitchen one day as Zakia had entered to visit her. “She’s not a happy woman, but it’s not her fault.” Bhaggan had softened since her son’s death.

  “Why do you even talk to her?” Bhaggan had betrayed me with this simple act. “What did she want from you, anyway?” I added.

  “What have I left to give? She wants me to put in a good word to Hamida’s parents on behalf of her nephew. He’s a schoolteacher, but he’s not very smart. Hamida’s parents want to know why his first wife left him. How can anyone know what happens between two adults behind closed doors?”

  “The one who was at Hamida’s cousin’s wedding, sitting outside near the buffalo? He didn’t have the sense to sit with the other men under the marriage tent,” I said, now curious whether Hamida’s parents would agree.

  “Maybe, but I don’t think they’ll give their daughter to him. Zakia wants the maulvi to convince them, but he’s not getting involved,” Bhaggan responded.

  The maulvi must have known something about the schoolteacher that the others didn’t. I knew he would never agree to something his heart was against. I sought out his blessings when we met by bowing my head close enough for him to pat it in acknowledgment with a prayer.

  “You’re growing tall, my daughter. Are you taking care of Amman Bhaggan?” he would say.

  “I wasn’t always going to stay small” was my usual cheeky response.

  Over the past three years, I had taken care of Bhaggan like any good daughter. But I was no longer the little girl who had made chameli garlands to pin in her hair before going to study the Holy Book with Zakia.

  I was taller, but my body had also grown in other ways. My breasts moved when I walked, so Bibi Saffiya gave me an old bra, which I tightened. I wore it every day and sometimes even at night.

  The first time I wore it, I could tell that everyone was looking directly at my breasts, so I wrapped my dopatta tightly around me to avoid the embarrassing stares that stole all my confidence. But once I gained confidence in the control of those straps, I enjoyed the attention.

  Every morning, before Taaj and Maalik left their charpoys in front of our room, I took a quick bath with the blue plastic bucket that I filled at the water pump. Sometimes I wore the same clothes I had slept in, but I always braided my thick, oily hair with a black cotton paranda, lengthening the braid and making it swing seductively around my buttocks as I returned to my room.

  I never looked back at them, lost in a half sleep, but I could sense their desire as I sauntered toward the outdoor kitchen where I prepared parathas and tea for their breakfast. After breakfast, I took on more work in the kitchen. I learned how to cook the meals for the day. And in the afternoons, I took care of Saffiya’s personal grooming, braiding her hair and massaging her body when it grew tired of the tedium of sitting on a charpoy, talking to the villagers in an effort to address their personal and financial disputes.

  Bhaggan had given up all of these lighter duties before Sultan had died. For me, these were opportunities to daydream in the comparative silence and cleanliness of Saffiya’s room.

  Regularly, I trimmed Saffiya’s nails with a blunt clipper and rubbed her heels with a terra cotta pumice stone in the afternoons, but in the evenings I would perch myself on the bed and massage her back and legs and watch soap operas on TV. Saffiya would drift in and out of sleep, and I would lose myself in the intricate lives of characters that seemed so real.

  Now that three years had passed since Sultan’s death, Bhaggan had started to participate in some of the Eid celebrations. She still didn’t bathe or wear new clothes for the event, but she took her seat in the center of the kitchen to oversee all the meals.

  Saffiya had bought three goats to slaughter to celebrate the Eid of sacrifice, the black one for her father, the white one for herself, and the speckled for her husband. Bhaggan oversaw the slaughter, and I distributed the plates of meat among the villagers.

  The crop the previous year had allowed Saffiya to purchase a deep freezer, so we made packets of the rest of the prime pieces and stored them away for as many months as the freezer would allow. The whole ordeal took two days.

  By the third day after Eid, exhausted from organizing the meat with Bhaggan, Saffiya sat on her charpoy on the veranda with her feet dangling over the edge. I sat at her feet, rubbing olive oil into them to soften them. As I pulled her left foot toward me, I looked up at her. “Bibi, I’ve heard there’s a new cream that makes your skin white and softens it till it glows. The TV ad goes, ‘Black skin becomes fair, and fair skin will shine like the moon.’” I mimicked the singsong jingle.

  “You watch too much TV,” Saffiya responded lazily, placing her right foot in front of me so it got the same treatment as the left.

  Then, after a pause, she added sharply, “Get lost, idiot—the lemons from our tree lighten my skin, and the olive oil from our olive trees makes it soft. You haven’t wasted your Eid money on the cream, have you?”

  For Eid, I’d received five rupees from Saffiya and two from Bhaggan, who, even though she no longer participated in the celebrations, gave all of us two rupees as a celebratory gift.

  I was saving my money. I wanted to buy earrings. Maybe ones of real gold, like the ones I had seen on the heroine in the movie on TV. The heroines in the soap operas were always more servile and never seemed to have enough to dress well, until the day they were married, and then they were covered in shiny clothes and layers of jewelry.

  I preferred the heroines of the movies. Like they did, I would wear earrings, dress nicely, and go to the movie theater.

  Taaj had told me about the movie theater one of the times h
e had returned from his escapades. Maalik thought it was a waste of money, but it sounded so glamorous—a gigantic building with a huge screen and people bigger than real life.

  “It was as if I was sitting next to them on the hillside while they sang songs and danced in the rain,” Taaj said, laughing. “I would take you. We would see the new movie Love and Honor,” he told me, though he seemed to say it in jest. I sat peeling the garlic pods, and when I looked up, Maalik was waiting for my response to his brother.

  “You’d have to dress nicely, though,” Taaj added. “Wear nice clothes and earrings and glass bangles, and we’d sit in the box. Only men sit in the seats down below. Women sit with their men in the boxes so that other men don’t bother them.”

  “Who said you’re my man?” I pretended to be upset by his insinuation, but it enveloped me in a warmth that I had not anticipated.

  “We can slip out in the afternoon when everyone is sleeping and return before the evening prayer,” Taaj responded. All the while, his younger brother’s censorious gaze preventing me from agreeing.

  I felt the warmth return as I sat rubbing the olive oil into Bibi Saffiya’s feet and hoped I had not given my thoughts away.

  “When you’re finished with my feet, make me a nice cup of tea,” Saffiya’s voice intruded.

  To ensure that I was not a wastrel, I responded to her previous comment, “No, Bibi. I never waste my money. And anyway, I got only two rupees from Amman Bhaggan. What can I buy with that?”

  Saffiya’s nostrils, swollen with dust allergies, restricted her ability to smell the penetrating rose scent of the cream Taaj had already gifted me. Even if she could have smelled it, she was too preoccupied.

  She wiped the mucus from her nose with her dopatta, cleared her throat, turned her face away from me, and spat. Then, looking directly at me, she announced, “Zakia is coming next week to propose for her nephew the schoolteacher, and I’m going to say yes because you have no reason to disagree. She said you were eyeing him at the wedding in the village.”

  A marriage proposal should have made me happy. I had always wanted a family of my own. But the nephew was not young, and Hamida’s parents must have already turned Zakia down when she had asked for Hamida’s hand. If Hamida’s parents had done that, why did Bibi Saffiya think I would marry him?

  “What?” Saffiya’s mood was exposed through her bulging eyes.

  I stared at the green sputum on the floor and continued rubbing her foot, the oil dripping on my favorite yellow kameez, creating a stain that would remain until it would be torn into dusting rags.

  My thighs were now weak and trembling from squatting for an hour at Saffiya’s feet. She sprawled above me on the charpoy and adjusted the circular embroidered cushion behind her back. The cushion reminded me of Stella. Saffiya talked down to me.

  “I’ll talk to Bhaggan. She’ll remind you of what is good for you. That’s enough, now. After tea, get my dirty clothes from the bathroom and wash them carefully, but hang them in the shade. You ruined my blue outfit. The sunlight bleached the color out of it. I’ll have to dye it again.”

  I stood up with unstable legs, surprised that I was not as angry as I should have been. I felt calm. I knew what I would do.

  On Eid day, Saffiya had placed her traditional earrings, jhumkas, with rubies like pomegranate seeds and tiny white pearls, in a white cotton packet under the Holy Book covered in red satin. She’d looked around and then closed the cupboard door. From the bathroom, I had seen her hiding the earrings. I’d busied myself before Saffiya noticed that I had seen where she had hidden them.

  My legs still shaking, but now for other reasons, I entered Saffiya’s bedroom and straightened the bedcover, even though no one had sat on the charpoy since I had changed the bed-sheets that morning; then, as I walked toward the bathroom to collect the sheets and Saffiya’s dirty clothes, I snapped open the padlock on the almirah that I had left unfastened, despite Saffiya’s having ordered me to secure it that same morning after I had made the bed. Sliding my hand into the cupboard, I pulled out the small cloth packet with Saffiya’s earrings from the top shelf under the red satin–covered Holy Book.

  Securing the padlock without making a sound, I walked into the bathroom and stuffed the earring packet into my bra. Sweeping up the soiled bedsheets and Saffiya’s clothes from the damp bathroom floor, I walked briskly to the water pump to wash them.

  There were times when I respected Saffiya like a mother— not my own, who had deserted me on a train, but like mothers in movies and on TV. I felt a twinge of affection for Saffiya when she gave me one of her old outfits to adjust to my size, or an extra piece of leftover dessert that she shouldn’t have eaten anyway because of her rising blood sugar.

  But arranging my marriage with Zakia’s nephew? I thought she knew me better than that. Instead of a mere schoolteacher with no land to his name, she would have chosen someone with more standing, not a reject. A mother on TV or in the movies would never do that!

  Betrayal

  I sat at the hand pump in the late afternoon and washed Saffiya’s clothes. I spread her green shalwar kameez on the charpoy in the shadow of the shahtoot tree. It lay there as if it were her flattened, dead body. Any feeling of loyalty or love I’d had for her had dissipated that day. Anger pushed against my insides, emanating through my entire body. My pounding heart deafened me.

  How dare Zakia say I was interested in her demented nephew? And had she been spying on me? Marrying Zakia’s nephew was out of the question. If Hamida’s parents had decided that he was not good enough for her, I, the adopted daughter of Saffiya, had a lot more to offer than the lowly daughter of a farmhand.

  As I raised my arms to spread the rest of the garments on the clothesline, the gold earrings hidden inside my bra scratched my breast and gave me pleasure. I wouldn’t let anyone—anyone—get away with treating me this way, even if it was my own benefactor. This would not be the only way Saffiya would have to pay. I would show her that I might not have parents to back me, but I knew how to take care of myself. Even now, if I opened my eyes wide enough, I could stop my tears from flowing. I would save them for the night. I would not make a spectacle of myself.

  I returned after washing the clothes, but Saffiya continued with her tirade. The prayer break had not pacified her. Her abuse was at its zenith.

  “So, a schoolteacher is not good enough for you? A princess without a palace. You have a good reason for turning down a perfectly good proposal?”

  My anger contested hers with silence, making me reckless. I wanted to shout back at Saffiya. I wanted to tell her that I was far from a princess, as was evident by how I lived, and that I knew the proposal of Zakia’s nephew wasn’t what I desired. I clenched my hands and felt a throbbing deep in my head. I knew she was still talking, but I’d stopped. I stared at her, narrowing my eyes to contain the tears of anger that hung like dewdrops on the chameli leaves, evaporating in the morning sun. I had stopped breathing and began to feel light-headed, but contained myself to avoid a deep breath that Saffiya might interpret as the weakness of a sigh.

  Soon I let her insults slide over my freshly oiled, chameli-scented braid, neatly tucked into the black paranda I had bought with Saffiya’s money that she hadn’t given me. A week earlier, I had found three five-rupee notes under her pillow as I’d made her bed. I had swiped them cleanly from the pillow as she’d sat facing the window. Any guilt I might have felt now washed away in this tirade of my not accepting the proposal of the weasellike schoolteaching nephew of my archrival, Zakia.

  Zakia needed to know her place, which was not to decide my destiny. I had stood up to Zakia for Hamida when we took lessons from her. Granted, we didn’t continue meeting much after that, but I had heard that Hamida had not improved her reading or her cooking abilities since then.

  And Saffiya—she might have taken me in as a baby, but that didn’t mean she owned me.

  As if to answer my thoughts, she yelled, “I’ve spent all my life caring for others. Y
-y-you bastard, you’ve never been grateful! Remember, I saved you. I gave you a roof over your head and a bed to sleep on. Others would die for a sheltered life like yours.”

  Unable to stand still while her abuse continued, I took the corner of my dopatta and started to wipe the dressing-table mirror. In the reflection, I could see her folding the prayer rug and placing the rosary next to it in preparation for the evening prayer.

  I then picked up the silver kohl bottle and rubbed it hard, as if the intricately designed kohl stick would magically silence my tormentor, but she continued. “You’re an uncaring idiot. Mark my words, I will keep the dowry I’ve been collecting: the bedsheets, the pillowcases that Stella embroidered before she left, everything—I will keep it.”

  I placed the kohl bottle noiselessly on the glass shelf on the dressing table. Then I began to pull Saffiya’s graying hairs from the pink plastic hairbrush. I made a small ball of the hair and placed it in the trash can next to the dressing table. I did not look up.

  “Did you hear what I said, Tara bibi?” Sarcasm dripped from her mouth like baby drool.

  My shoulders stiffened, and I sat anchored to the ground, like the cow that stiffens when she realizes she’s the one chosen for the Eid slaughter. The celebrated one. The one that will end her life to benefit others. The gift that is cubed and stacked, with blood seeping through the muslin that keeps off the flies.

  I knew my silence infuriated her, and the inside of me smiled.

  I looked into the mirror again as I mechanically screwed the lid back onto the brown, rusting olive oil can. Then I stood up, straightened my kameez with one hand, and walked calmly toward the closet to return the olive oil to its place on the second shelf, behind the talcum powder with the picture of a half-dressed woman with an alluring gaze. I picked up the powder and tightened the perforated top, and a cloud of dust rose toward me and then sprinkled onto the cement floor, creating a slippery patch that I wiped with the back of my slipper, spreading it further.