Deepa wasn’t perfect. But she wasn’t scared either.
Maybe that’s why we protected her. Kept our hands on her shoulders when we marched in a line. Dragged her to the back of the classroom, far enough away that she couldn’t be expected to point directly at anything on the posters at the front. We did a fine job too. So fine a job that it wasn’t until just before the Dasara break, when Preschool Miss told us to get our slippers, that the adults suspected anything was wrong.
The problem was that we broke ranks that day. Rukshana’s older sister, Rania, who hadn’t eloped yet, dragged Rukshana into the corridor to yell at her about forgetting her water bottle in the schoolyard—which was really just an excuse for Rania to flirt with the dreamy Christian boy in the class-seven room next door. Banu’s ajji hurt her back, so Banu skipped class to go on the morning kolam round, carrying the colored powders on her tiny, uncombed head. As for Padma, she still lived in the village, and Joy—well, she wasn’t Joy yet.
All of this left Deepa alone on her hands and knees in the slipper pile. Nose pressed up against all those broken clasps and wet rubber soles. Squinting and sniffing and trying to decide which pair was hers.
“Chee!” Preschool Miss said. Yanked Deepa by the elbow, snapped her skinny body like an elastic band. “Naughty girl. Why are you putting your face in those filthy, filthy things?”
Rukshana left her sister standing in the hallway. Stuck her hands on her hips, and said, “Don’t yell at her, miss. It’s not her fault she can’t see.”
“Can’t see? What nonsense,” Preschool Miss said.
“It’s true,” Rukshana said. She turned to the doorway to get her sister’s help, but Rania had already left, running across the compound after the Christian boy, who, thrillingly, stole the forgotten water bottle right out of her hand.
“Nonsense,” Preschool Miss said. Pulled her hand back, deciding which of the girls to thwack first. “Just watch me beat the sight back into her, dirty thing.”
Before Preschool Miss could deliver on her threat, our headmistress, Janaki Ma’am, appeared in the doorway. Silk sari shining, wire spectacles glimmering. Hair knotted severely at the nape of her neck. She settled Preschool Miss’s hand by her side, and said, “Now, now, Yamini, you know corporal punishment isn’t legal.”
Then Janaki Ma’am knelt down so she was face to face with Rukshana and said sternly, “Tell me, child. What do you mean she can’t see?”
“She can’t see means she can’t see, miss,” Rukshana said.
“Ma’am,” Preschool Miss said. “That’s the headmistress. Call her ma’am.”
“She can’t see, ma’am,” Rukshana said. “That’s why she never knows where to sit. And why she doesn’t know the dances to go with the rhymes. And why one of us always takes her a plate of food and then brings her plate to wash.”
“Oh please,” Preschool Miss said, “if Deepa couldn’t see, don’t you think we would’ve noticed by now?”
“But she can’t see,” Rukshana said. “And you didn’t notice.”
Like she’s already run out of patience for adults and their seeing and not-seeing and saying and not-saying. Like Deepa’s kind of blindness is the only kind of blindness that makes any sense at all.
After she visits Deepa, Sushila Miss goes home to tend to her family. To chop onions, fry mustard seeds, melt butter. To tuck clothing into drawers, sweep dust out of corners. An evening just like our evenings, except with a fancier stove.
In all those duties, she forgets her duty to the out-of-school children, especially to the girl who is blind in more ways than one. That is, until the next dance practice, which is also the last dance practice before the competition.
The rest of us are jittery and sulky.
“Why bother when we’re going to lose anyway,” Rukshana grumbles.
“What we should practice is how we’ll look when they announce the winners,” Joy says, “and they don’t announce us.”
“That we don’t need to practice,” Rukshana says. “We’re used to it.”
Except we’re not used to it. You’d think we would be by now, since everyone in Heaven is always losing, all the time.
Sushila Miss claps her hands on our shoulders, pushes us into line. Presses the buttons on the brand-new battery-powered CD player donated by the local legislator.
“I didn’t ask for a CD player,” Janaki Ma’am had shouted when the thing showed up in her office, wrapped in cellophane the color of false promises. “I asked for new toilets.”
“It’s not so bad,” Sushila Miss had said, trying to hide her excitement. “It might even be useful. For, say, Annual Day.”
Last year, Miss played the music for our dance on the Nokia phone her husband got her from the black market behind the water tank. The song sounded like blue plastic. On the new player, this year’s song sounds like electricity and money. Like moving up in the world.
Miss barks out our choreography like a military general. Shake those hips. Shimmy those chests. Seduce, seduce, seduce. All the things we are not supposed to do except when on school grounds, in our uniforms, once a year. Things that, at any other time, in any other place, in any other clothing, would get us kicked out of our houses for good.
When she sees us, Sushila Miss allows herself to hope. This year, maybe we have a chance. See Rukshana, right in front, her fair cheeks dimpling when she forces herself to smile. See Joy, in the second row, holding her head up like a queen. See those perfect lines.
But, what’s this? What’s happening there? Back in the third row. Yesterday, there was no third row.
Today, there is Deepa. And Deepa is a disaster.
Or, at least, Miss thinks so. Deepa’s not doing any of the same moves as the rest of us. The blank, bright pupils of her unseeing eyes make her look like a ghost.
But the rest of us are impressed. Truthfully. How does someone who has never seen a Madhuri Dixit dance number know how to stretch her arms just so? How does someone who has never seen Kajol pout through a Tamil film know how to pucker her lips so perfectly? And how does someone who has never seen, well, anyone know how to keep her back so straight, her neck so long?
“She’s better than all of us,” says Rukshana. “Better than Joy.”
“Well,” Joy says, “almost as good maybe.”
“She’s not deaf,” says Padma, who knows all the ways women can be broken.
Sushila Miss makes us do the dance ten times. Fifteen. Adjusts an arm here, a hip there. Pretends not to see the girl who can’t see.
“Tomorrow, be here,” Miss says. “Nine a.m. in the morning. Sharp. If anyone is late, she doesn’t dance.”
“We’ll be here, miss,” says Deepa.
“Oh, darling,” Sushila Miss says with her why-didn’t-I-elope sigh. “It’s one thing to practice. It’s another to perform.” She puts a hand on Deepa’s skinny shoulder and says, “Tomorrow you just come watch—um—attend. Okay?”
Deepa pats Miss’s hand. Padma takes Deepa by the shoulder. Holds onto her the whole way home.
Deepa wanted to stay in school. Maybe not our school, but a school—any school, really. It’s Neelamma Aunty who pulled her out.
After Rukshana made her see things properly, Janaki Ma’am visited Deepa’s house. It was a gray November morning, an hour or two after sunrise. Janaki Ma’am wore scratchy socks with her sandals, a chunky red cardigan with her sari. The air smelled like wood fires and wind.
“Come in, ma’am,” Neelamma Aunty said. Janaki Ma’am stepped inside the house, taking in the neatly stacked pots, the newly hung shelves, the straw floor mat with the fraying edges. In the corner, Deepa’s father sat silently, careful not to involve himself. Deepa was there too, wearing a dress made out of fabric left over from the cotton sari blouses Neelamma Aunty stitched on her Singer sewing machine. Sleeves two different shades of maroon, skirt a chaos of pink and green and stamped-on gold. Neckline copied from the photo of the blue-eyed baby in the window of the Kodak shop in the main mark
et. Technically, the dress was new. Not a hand-me-down. Which is more than can be said for most of the clothes on most of us girls in Heaven.
“So, you’re Deepa’s mother,” Janaki Ma’am said approvingly. “I’ve seen you around.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Neelamma Aunty said.
Unlike our mothers, whenever Preschool Miss called a meeting, Neelamma Aunty dropped what she was doing and went. Memorized what she heard, repeated it over and over again as she walked home, then did exactly as she had been told. Made Deepa sweets stuffed with palm sugar and dosas fried with spinach, sang songs in as many languages as she could, kept Deepa’s injection card in a plastic bag locked in an almirah. Retrieved the checkered paper every month on the exact date when her daughter’s next vaccination was due.
Neelamma Aunty thought no one had noticed. She didn’t yet know that Janaki Ma’am notices everything.
“Did you go to school?” Janaki Ma’am asked her.
“Yes, ma’am,” Neelamma Aunty said, then, blushing, added, “Not very long. But some.”
“I wasn’t headmistress, was I?” Janaki Ma’am asked. Took the metal tumbler of coffee Neelamma Aunty handed her and held it gratefully between her chilly fingers.
“No, ma’am, you joined after I left,” Neelamma Aunty said. A mere month after, actually. Neelamma Aunty often thought that if she had just held out another few days, Janaki Ma’am would’ve helped her find a way to at least study up to tenth.
But no use wondering about that now.
“That’s a shame,” Janaki Ma’am said. Like she was thinking the same thing. “Well, I must say, your daughter is quite bright. One of our brightest.”
Neelamma Aunty nodded shyly. “You take good care of them, ma’am,” she said.
“I’m not taking care of her yet. She’s still at the anganwadi, at least for a few more months. Then she’ll be old enough to be admitted into kindergarten.”
“Yes,” Neelamma Aunty said eagerly. “We have her birth certificate. Her vaccinations are up to date. We’re ready to enroll her.”
“The thing is,” Janaki Ma’am said—she cleared her throat, not sure how much of what she was about to say was new, and how much Neelamma already suspected—“your daughter can’t see properly. In fact, she can’t see much at all.”
Neelamma Aunty nodded again. Glanced at Deepa’s father. A look passed between them, its meaning transmitted through the secret language of spouses.
“There are schools that can help her,” Janaki Ma’am said. “Schools with teachers trained to work with the blind. At a place like that, Deepa would shine.”
“That sounds like a private school. We don’t have the money for fees,” Neelamma Aunty said. Gathered Deepa up in her lap.
“We have some money,” Deepa’s father said. Even though he knew he probably shouldn’t. Children, after all, are women’s business.
“It doesn’t matter how much money you have. You see, there is a scheme,” Janaki Ma’am said. “It pays for hostels, and—”
“Hostels?” Neelamma Aunty asked. “What do you mean ‘hostels’?”
“The schools are residential,” Janaki Ma’am explained. “I was in a similar situation growing up, actually. I know it sounds risky but—”
“Unless it’s in this neighborhood, we’re not interested.”
“I know it feels like too much. But I really believe you should consider—”
“There’s nothing to consider,” Neelamma Aunty said. Her words clanged like a slamming door. “I’m not sending my child away. That’s final.”
“If you’ll just hear me out,” Janaki Ma’am said. “Your daughter has such potential—”
“That’s right. My daughter,” Neelamma Aunty said. Squeezed Deepa so tightly she gasped. “I’m her mother. I know what’s best for her.”
“She needs an education,” Janaki Ma’am said.
“She needs her mother,” Neelamma Aunty said. Neelamma Aunty with her eighth-standard pass, her vocational certificates. Neelamma Aunty, who pretended she had a bank account instead of a wad of cash locked up in her almirah. “She needs me.”
“She’ll still have you,” Deepa’s father said gently.
“You’re not a woman,” Neelamma Aunty said, turning on him. “You don’t know.”
When Janaki Ma’am left, Deepa slid off Neelamma Aunty’s lap and onto the floor. Pulled the fabric of her dress over her nose and inhaled deeply. It smelled like starch and thrift and perspiration and caution. And, around the neckline, a little bit like fear.
On the morning of Annual Day, we go to Deepa’s house and dress her in a government school uniform. Plait her hair with state-issued ribbons. Tuck her feet into a pair of Rukshana’s old shoes. There’s a hole in the bottom of the left sole, but Deepa says the toes don’t pinch, so it should be fine.
“What are you lot up to?” Neelamma Aunty calls through the doorway. We can hear her sewing machine buzzing. She’s set it up on a wooden table on a grassy patch just outside the door. She says it’s because she likes the air, but Deepa thinks it’s so she can watch us while she’s working. So she can keep up her role as the head of our mothers’ not-so-secret police.
“Don’t worry, Aunty,” Padma yells out the doorway. “We’re only taking Deepa to school.” The rest of us giggle.
“School?” Neelamma Aunty asks. “What for?”
“Annual Day, Aunty,” Rukshana yells.
“Free lunch, Ma,” Deepa yells. “Basen ka ladoo.”
“Stop moving,” Joy says, batting Deepa’s shoulder. “Now look. I have to redo your plait.”
“Annual Day? All these functions you girls have,” Neelamma Aunty says. The machine’s whir stops as she readjusts the needle. “Don’t they teach you anything at school anymore?”
“They’ve taught us how to dance,” Joy says. She comes outside and pops her hip so Neelamma Aunty can see. “If we don’t pass our tenth, we can be in films.”
Neelamma Aunty laughs. We love it when she laughs. She doesn’t snicker guiltily behind her hand, like the rest of our mothers do. Neelamma Aunty’s laugh is throaty and generous and kind. Just like Deepa’s.
“Is Janaki Ma’am still running things over there?” Neelamma Aunty says.
“Yes, Aunty,” Padma says.
“Tell her I said hello,” Neelamma Aunty says.
“We will, Aunty,” Joy says.
“Don’t forget,” Neelamma Aunty says. We all tumble out the door, and she adds, “And bring my daughter back safely.”
“Of course, Aunty,” Rukshana says. Puts her hand on Deepa’s shoulder, the way Deepa likes it. The way we’ve been doing it since we were four years old. “You can trust us.”
“I know,” Neelamma Aunty says. But only after we’re far enough away that we can’t hear her.
Before Deepa was born, Neelamma Aunty lost babies. All of our mothers lost babies. But Deepa’s mother lost more than the rest of them.
They died early, these babies. Slipped away in fat clots of red-brown blood, cramps she might’ve missed if she didn’t realize what was happening if it hadn’t happened so many times before. Droplets of endings too small to merit the enormous, scraping grief they left behind.
“It happens,” our mothers told her. Sometimes, they said it when they were full with child themselves. Rubbed their bulging bodies and said, “And just see now. Just see.”
“Those others? Not even children. Call them accidents.”
“Your child has not come to you yet. Be patient.”
“Pukka. And then, once it comes? You’ll wish you were childless and carefree.”
The last baby—the one before Deepa—almost made it. Formed fingers and nostrils and feet that kicked when Neelamma Aunty ate palm-sugar-laced sweets. When the pains started, Rukshana’s mother, Fatima Aunty, ran to the new slum on the other side of the airport to get the midwife. Banu’s ajji boiled water. Joy’s mother, Selvi Aunty, chased Neelamma Aunty’s husband out of the house.
A few hours
later, the midwife, whose blue-black skin smelled like soap and toddy, placed the baby in Neelamma Aunty’s arms. It was a boy. Eyelids wrinkled and transparent as jasmine petals. Purple lips pinched together like carnations.
“Isn’t he supposed to cry?” Neelamma Aunty asked. Felt his fingers clutch her hair, his feet knead her thigh, his chest struggle and wheeze. Didn’t know he was burning through life quick as a piece of camphor.
When her son stopped breathing, when his heart stopped beating, Neelamma Aunty started shaking. Selvi Aunty took the baby from her arms. Fatima Aunty went to tell the father. Banu’s ajji held Neelamma Aunty for hours and hours and hours, all through the night and the next morning too. Held her until the she sat up and asked for a bucket of water to clean the blood off the floor.
For weeks after, Neelamma Aunty did not flinch. Instead, she grew stiff and watchful, bracing herself against the memory. Forced herself to ignore the sandy-haired children on the main road selling pens and flowers to passengers in auto-rickshaws and cars, the beggar women carrying emaciated babies whose mascara-lined eyes fluttered with drug-induced sleep.
In Bangalore, there’s always someone worse off than you. Even if you do live in a place like Heaven. We may not have much, but we do have roofs and floors and walls. And childhoods.
A few months later, when Neelamma Aunty started showing again, Banu’s ajji took her aside and said, “Darling, this time will be different. This time, you go to a hospital.”
“Those places are dirty,” Neelamma Aunty said. “I hear they put rags in your mouth to keep you from screaming.”
“Not one of those rubbish public places,” Banu’s ajji said. “There’s another place now on the main road. A private place.”
“And who is paying for this private place?”
“The government. There’s a scheme.”
“What kind of scheme?”
“The kind that keeps your baby alive,” Banu’s ajji said, clutching both of Neelamma Aunty’s hands.
Neelamma Aunty stared at Banu’s ajji’s fingers twined around her own. And nodded.
A People's History of Heaven Page 2