A People's History of Heaven

by Mathangi Subramanian

  “Don’t call her a rat. Here, new girl,” Joy says, patting the chair next to hers. “Come sit with me.”

  “Are you …” the girl asks Joy.

  “I’m a builder,” Joy interrupts her. “Just like you. Now tell me your name.”

  “Padma,” says the girl.

  Who, from that day on, was one of us.

  5

  Frangipani

  when we first meet padma, she’s at that age. That useful age. That age when going to school is not as necessary as working for a living. According to her parents.

  Not according to the state. But then, the state isn’t interested in people like us.

  While Padma dreams of sliding her feet beneath slanted wooden benches, her parents dream of piling her head high with tins full of rocks. Sure, she would only earn 150 rupees a day when a boy would get 200. But even an extra 150 could be enough to send her younger brother to school. A proper school, where teachers speak English. Where graduates get jobs answering phones, typing up letters. The kind of jobs that leave your back straight, your lungs clean.

  “Education is the reason we moved to the city in the first place,” her father tells her mother. “We never had it. Our child deserves it.”

  By child, of course, he means his son.

  Padma’s from way up north of nowhere. (Not that we’re from somewhere, exactly. But it’s a lot more of a somewhere than Padma’s place.) We know it before she tells us. Can see it from the way her heart thumps like a trapped rabbit’s back leg, the way her body curls and tenses like she’s still got the jungle wrapped around her bones.

  Padma’s parents got married a year before she was born. The other families in their village whispered about how Padma’s mother, Gita Aunty, could’ve done much better. Gita Aunty was poor but beautiful, with hair as straight as a freshly pressed sari and eyes the brown-green color of crumbling leaves. When Gita Aunty found out who her parents had chosen for her, though, she wasn’t disappointed: Padma’s father wasn’t rich or influential, but he was kind, never striking her, always asking her opinion before making a decision. He owned a tiny patch of land and, after a few years, rented a tiny bit more. Back then, the soil was rich and fertile, fed by the healthy waters of the river that formed the borders of what little they owned. The land bore enough to keep Gita Aunty and her husband comfortably fed and clothed. When Padma came along, they had enough for her too.

  What they didn’t have were connections. Or schooling. So when the head of a prominent family gave them a contract to sign, saying that the whole village was going in on a moneymaking scheme, they couldn’t read it, but they also couldn’t say no.

  Which is why they didn’t understand why the city men in their growling yellow trucks arrived at their few meters of shoreline and demanded help filling the backs of the trucks with river sand. Couldn’t predict that the river would die, and so would the soil. Couldn’t know that they and all the other families who signed the agreement would lose their livelihoods, becoming so desperate for cash that, one by one, they’d leave for the city, looking for jobs that would pay them enough money to save their land. Green, vibrant, faithful land that, after generations of giving, had turned as rocky and lifeless as hate.

  Gita Aunty agreed to go with her husband to Bangalore mostly because she had heard that there were decent schools. Decent, free schools. Maybe her children could learn to read. At worst, they wouldn’t make the same mistakes she and her husband had made. At best, they would know enough to undo whatever she and her husband had done—a thing that, even now, she wasn’t sure she could explain.

  One afternoon, Padma and her mother straggle home from the construction site, leaving Padma’s father to work an extra shift of overtime. Padma asks, yet again, if she can go to school.

  Normally, Gita Aunty would say no. After all, she and her husband have agreed that Padma, who is the oldest, and also a girl, should be a wage earner, not a student. But today, she is tired. So tired. Of everything, but especially of that word. No. Tired of hearing it said to her. Tired of saying it to her daughter. Her daughter, who is so much more sensible than she has ever been.

  Putting the girl in school, she knows, means more growling stomachs, blistered feet, throbbing shoulders. Less money for rice, lentils, salt. For quilts to spread over the endless parade of concrete floors that has become the rhythm of their lives.

  Then again, they are poor. They have always been poor. Which means that they are used to pain. With so many ways to suffer, she thinks, might as well choose the way that hurts the body more than the heart.

  “All right, fine. We’ll ask your father. But we’ll need some divine intervention to make this work,” she says. She points to a tree in front of a three-story house wrapped in terraces. “See that tree? The one with flowers shaped like stars? Bring me as many as you can. We’ll do puja with them. The blossoms will give our prayers power.”

  As soon as she speaks, Padma’s mother wonders if she’s made a mistake. But it’s too late—her daughter has already set off for the tree.

  Padma knows about uncertainty, about the way time can tip the universe in and out of your hands as easily as river water over rocks. Knows that there is nothing more uncertain than a mother’s promise to a girl who is almost a woman.

  The tree’s roots begin below the pavement and sprawl beneath the boundary wall of one of the neighborhood’s poshest houses, a redbrick bungalow with a shiny blue Toyota parked in front. The tree’s branches extend over the railing of the balcony of the house’s upper floor, showering blossoms onto the wicker outdoor furniture, the ledge of the double-paned window, the crevices of the details carved into the traditional wooden door.

  “Foreigners call it frangipani,” the aunty of the house says when she and her husband welcome their friends inside. “We call it the flower of the gods. Auspicious. Lucky.”

  “Modern house, traditional values,” her husband says then. Always on cue, perfectly in sync.

  Today, in the second-story sitting room, Aunty laughs to herself, thinking of her husband’s odd humor. Runs her fingertips along the mantel where she keeps figurines from Odisha, Kerala, Bengal. Checks if the maid left any dust. Glances out the window, expecting to see the usual leafy, flowery tableau, reassuring and pristine.

  Instead, she sees Padma.

  Although she is surrounded by pavement and walls and locked-up doors, when Padma climbs Aunty’s tree, she feels her body dissolve into the textures of home. Bark coarser than piled-up flagstones. Branches stronger than concrete. Leaves softer than piles of stolen sand. It makes Padma happy enough to hum to herself as she places flower after flower into the shopping bag she pilfered from the guava vendor. The plastic crinkles and sighs as though it is singing along to Padma’s song, a song she used to sing with her mother and the other women when they worked together in the golden-blue paddy fields, harvesting rice.

  A girl making noise? Obviously that isn’t going to end well.

  Sure enough, Aunty throws open the doors and barks, “Stop that racket. And stop your stealing. This tree is private property.”

  The air stiffens with the moneyed musk of brand-name perfume, purchased duty free in Dubai. Padma startles, her gaze flying into the house, which looks as posh as Aunty smells. Turquoise walls, red-brown floor. A black plastic rack stacked with shoes beside the doors. High heels and sneakers. Floaters and flats. More pairs than she can count.

  Padma has never owned one pair of shoes. Never considered the possibility of owning more. Has never spritzed glass-bottled fragrances with unpronounceable names on the insides of her wrists, the hollow of her neck. But now, looking at this rack, smelling this perfume, perched on this tree, she thinks that maybe, someday, she can.

  “Don’t look into other people’s homes,” Aunty commands. Her Kannada is fresh and sticky, like a new coat of paint.

  She can, that is, if she goes to school. If she learns whatever Aunty learned. Another alphabet. Another tongue. A language spoken by women like
Aunty, who live in houses with sky-colored walls, earth-colored floors.

  “Didn’t you hear me? Get down from there,” Aunty yells. “Who knows what disease you’ll give my tree with your dirty, dirty feet.”

  Aunty has been married for thirty-nine years. She and her husband own three cars, two houses—this one and one in the mountains—and a stretch of undeveloped farmland just outside the city limits. They have two children: one daughter, one son.

  Before her marriage, Aunty was accepted into a medical school, one of the best in the country. She wanted to go, but her now-husband, then-fiancé, told her she couldn’t.

  “It wouldn’t do to have a working wife,” he said. “What would the neighbors say?”

  She understood, of course. Her husband had allowed her to attend college, after all. Best not to push it.

  Years later, her daughter announced she was doing a PhD program abroad, even though she was already ten years older than Aunty had been when she got engaged.

  “What about your marriage?” Aunty said.

  “I’ll find a husband after,” their daughter said. “Or I won’t.”

  While her daughter was away, Aunty began making inquiries about eligible boys in their community. All of the conversations ended in polite regrets. When one of the suitors—a fair-skinned engineer who had a job offer from Infosys—told her, “It would be difficult to manage someone more educated than I am,” she knew she had to intervene.

  “Stop this and come home,” Aunty told her daughter over the phone. “This PhD is ruining your prospects.”

  “You mean my professional prospects,” her daughter asked, “or my personal ones?”

  “You’re almost thirty,” Aunty said. “Plus you have dusky features. With two strikes against you, why would you add one more?”

  “So you think my dark skin, advanced age, and doctorate all make me inferior?”

  “I’m your mother. I know what’s best for you. You quit this degree, or you quit this family. It’s your choice.”

  That was five years ago. They haven’t spoken since.

  “What’s going on, Aunty?”

  While Aunty stares Padma down, a group of children clusters on the pavement beneath the tree. One clutches a wooden cricket bat. One adjusts his spectacles. One pulls the earbuds out of her ears. One rolls back and forth on pink shoes with wheels at the heels.

  “She’s taking my flowers,” Aunty says. Glowers at Padma’s tangled hair, obsidian eyes.

  The youngest of the children—branded glasses, digital watch, plastic Crocs—asks, “Why?”

  “Don’t ask me,” Aunty says. “Ask this one. Little thief.”

  The child, who still takes everything literally, yells up in Kannada, “Hey, you! Why are you taking Aunty’s flowers?”

  “So I can go to school,” Padma whispers.

  “You don’t go to school?” asks Earbuds.

  “Lucky,” says Cricket Bat, who still does not understand.

  “Don’t be stupid,” snaps Wheel Shoes, who does.

  “But what are the flowers for?” Spectacles asks.

  “Puja,” Padma says. Although they are all speaking in Kannada, she feels like she is talking in a foreign tongue.

  Except maybe she isn’t. Because down below, the children nod.

  “My mom says those are the best puja flowers.”

  “It’s true. If you use those, you get whatever you ask for.”

  “Why can’t she have them, Aunty?”

  “Because the flowers are mine,” Aunty says. Still imperious. But maybe a little less sure.

  “You have extra, though,” Cricket Bat says.

  “That’s not the point,” Aunty says, gesturing at Padma furiously. “What this girl is doing is wrong. She needs to learn. She can’t take things from people without asking.”

  “But you let my mom take flowers,” Wheel Shoes says. “She took some just this morning, and we never asked you.”

  “That’s different.” Aunty balls her fists.

  “Why?” Earbuds asks.

  “It just is,” Aunty says. How can she explain to these children, whom she would never begrudge a blossom or two, that in the game of life there are two teams: rich and poor? That she and these children are on one team, and Padma is on the other?

  “Just let her take some.”

  “It’s for school. Grown-ups love school, right Aunty?”

  “That’s enough,” Aunty says.

  The children think so too.

  “Hey, you,” Cricket Bat yells.

  It takes a minute before Padma realizes they are talking to her again.

  “Yes, you. How many do you need?”

  “What?”

  “Hugalu,” Wheel Shoes yells. “Flowers. How many flowers do you need?”

  Inside her chest, Padma’s wanting flickers and flames, her wishing catches and burns.

  “All of them,” Padma says. Louder this time.

  “What?”

  “All of them,” she says again. Her words taste like sparks. Like smoke.

  “The whole tree?”

  “The whole tree. And then some.”

  “Okay,” Earbuds says, shaking her head. “Boy, you must really want to go to school.”

  Padma watches these children who are her age but nothing like her. Who seem both older and younger than her, wiser and more naive. Who seem to come from another galaxy, another world. A constellation of privilege.

  These children who wear T-shirts printed with American superheroes. Sing along to songs by pop stars born in countries the color of ice. Songs that glitter like diamonds. Like gold.

  These children who, today, hook plastic bags over their wrists. Hitch themselves onto branches. Fit designer shoes into nooks and crannies. And harvest.

  Today, Padma learns more than she will ever learn at our school. (Because she does, eventually, end up at our school.) She learns to ask. To want. To hope. Learns the feeling of responding to a hunger that lives not in her belly but somewhere else in her body.

  But of all of the things Padma learns today, the one she will always find the strangest is this: that city children know how to climb trees.

  There are five frangipani trees on the block. After an hour, not a single tree holds a single blossom.

  “Take them,” Earbuds says, handing Padma sixteen bags full of flowers.

  “I still don’t see why you want to go to school,” Cricket Bat mumbles.

  “Forget him,” Spectacles says. He reaches up and helps Padma swing down from the tree. Padma’s bare feet slap the pavement, braid swings like a pendulum. The plastic bags full of flowers crunch as she lands.

  Before she lets go of Spectacles’ hand, she asks, “Why did you do this for me?”

  Spectacles looks at Earbuds. Earbuds looks at Wheel Shoes. Wheel Shoes looks at Cricket Bat. Cricket Bat shrugs and says, “I don’t know. Just because.”

  Because in the game of life, there are two teams: adults and children.

  Sometimes, the children win.

  6

  Finding Joy

  an orange bulldozer looms over the ruins of Banu’s house, mechanical arm still stretched. Like a tiger interrupted mid-pounce. A driver leans against the door of the steering compartment, chattering into a flip phone stuck to his ear. When he speaks, he worries a bulging black wart on his chin.

  “What to do? These women lay down in front of me. Right here on the dirty, dirty ground. Can’t continue without killing one of them. What’s that?” He spits a wad of chewed-up betel out of his mouth. It crashes to the ground like a bullet. “Correct, correct, but these bosses won’t see it that way. Me, I say a body here, a body there. Teaches these people a lesson. That’s why I’m the one up for a promotion, na? I think like a manager.”

  In his blue plastic sandals and pleated khaki pants, he looks like our fathers. Like our brothers and cousins and neighbors. Like he’s from a place that’s just as fragile as ours. Where the threats are just as powerful.

&
nbsp; Tears trace soggy paths through the dust layering Banu’s cheeks. Her eyes and mouth stay perfectly still, like they’re not even a part of the rest of her body.

  “We have to distract her,” Padma says. “Look at her. She’s falling apart.”

  Banu kicks at the wooden beams that used to hold up the walls of the house her grandfather built. Walls that, for almost thirty years, never once had reason to fall.

  Deepa says, “Are you hungry, Banu? Do you want to come over and eat?”

  “Or you could draw in your notebooks,” Rukshana says. “We could sit really still and pose for you if you want.”

  Banu tries to smile. Curves her mouth into a shape hollow and empty as a steel pot.

  “That’s even worse than the crying,” Padma whispers.

  “Enough. Come, everyone. Let’s go,” Joy says briskly. Strides off the way people do when they know that they’ll be followed.

  Joy takes us to her church, which is really just the old community hall with a new roof. Inside, spiders with striped and bulbous bodies weave webs between the heads of crooked nails. In the center of the room is a table covered in flaming candles. Bumpy wax rivers drip down their sides, honeying the air with a fiery sweetness.

  “What are those for?” Padma asks.

  “Wishes,” Joy says. Digs under the table until she finds a damp cardboard box full of unlit candles. Hands them out to us, one by one. In our hands they are as solid as thunder, as pure as rain. “Light one and ask for something. Make sure you say a prayer too.”

  “That’s who we pray to?” Banu asks, gesturing to a crucifix at the front of the room. A long-bearded Jesus sags off of the cross, pewter eyes turned skyward.

  “Pray to whoever you want,” Joy says. “That one doesn’t mind.”

  Joy lights Rukshana’s candle with the flame of one that is already burning. Rukshana takes it and prays: “Allah, I like being a woman. I do. But do I really need these breasts? Maybe make them a little flatter? Just a bit? Oh, and if you could do something about this demolition. Please.”