“Joy, what are you doing?” Rukshana yells.
“Playing Metro,” Joy says.
There is Joy in Heaven and Joy in—well, everywhere else. There is Joy with us and Joy without us.
“Are you sure?” Rukshana asks. “We’re close enough to walk home from here. We don’t have to get back on.”
“Walk? What nonsense. It’s at least three stops,” Joy says. Not like she means it. But like she’s trying to. “Come on, hurry up. Or we won’t get seats.”
“But what if the boy is following us?” Padma says. “He’s had enough time to get off and come back and find us. It might not be safe.”
“Walk, then,” Joy says. “I’ll go by myself. Your choice.”
“What do we do?” Banu asks.
The train rumbles up to the platform. Brakes screech, tires squeak. The air smells like rubber. Like decisions.
Just as Joy elbows her way through the doors, Padma yells, “Joy, we’re coming!”
Because when it comes to choices, one thing is clear. We girls will always choose each other.
A few days ago, Selvi Aunty stepped through the door of Janaki Ma’am’s flat, inhaling its smells of laundry soap, incense, and morning rain. Breathed in this proof that with enough education, a woman can have property—an entire life even—that is wholly her own.
Even though Janaki Ma’am has a dining room table and chairs, she settled down on the floor. Handed Selvi Aunty a tumbler of coffee and patted the ground next to her. When she shifted her weight, her crinoline sari sizzled and hummed.
“I don’t take too much sugar,” Janaki Ma’am said. “I hope that’s all right.”
Selvi Aunty sipped the coffee, tried not to slurp. Tried to equal the elegance of Janaki Ma’am’s house. Of Janaki Ma’am herself.
“I like it a little bit bitter,” Selvi Aunty said. “You can taste the coffee’s flavor then.”
“Exactly,” Janaki Ma’am said, nodding approvingly. It made Selvi feel sophisticated, perhaps for the first time in her life.
“I’m Joy’s mother,” Selvi Aunty said. “She’s in tenth standard?”
“Of course I know who you are,” Janaki Ma’am said. Because Janaki Ma’am knows everything. Can recite all of our birthdays and histories and family trees. Our mothers’ birthdays too, if they were in school with her.
Selvi Aunty didn’t go to school in Bangalore with Janaki Ma’am. Didn’t go to school anywhere else either. Which is exactly why she was here.
“Joy wants to go to college,” Selvi Aunty said. Respecting this place where women and girls make decisions for themselves.
“Of course she’s going to college,” Janaki Ma’am said. “All of the girls in her class are.”
There it was again. That idea that Joy is just like the rest of us. An idea thin as a butterfly’s wing shedding its scales. Disintegrating.
“But my daughter,” Selvi Aunty said carefully. “She’s different.”
“She’s first in her class right now,” Janaki Ma’am said. That’s another thing she can recite. Our marks sheets. Every subject, every score, all the way back to lower kindergarten.
“So you think she’ll do well on her exams?”
“Definitely. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s ranked in the state.”
“Her name, though. On the exam. It won’t be—her real name.”
Selvi Aunty meant Joy’s chosen name. Not the name on her birth certificate, on her school-leaving certificate. Both of which she will have to present to a registrar.
“Names are easy enough to change,” Janaki Ma’am said, standing up and shuffling over to her antique writing desk. “Especially on marks sheets.”
She retrieved a notebook from somewhere in the pile of papers on her desk. Pushed her spectacles down her nose, looked over the top of them. Tucked her chin and mumbled to herself.
“Yes, yes,” she said, “let me just find this chap’s number.”
“You know someone who can help, ma’am?”
“The benefit of being a headmistress,” Janaki Ma’am said, “is that my former students do me favors. I am told that it is difficult to say no to me.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Selvi Aunty said. Cleared her throat. Plunged on, for her daughter. “Even with her name changed, though …”
“I’ll go with the two of you for admissions counseling,” Janaki Ma’am said. “We’ll fill out the forms together. Nobody is going to turn Joy down because of who she is. I’ll make sure of it. Like I said, I have connections.”
“You’ll use your connections for Joy’s—situation?”
“Joy’s situation,” Janaki Ma’am said, “is exactly what my connections are for.”
We hurtle through the compartment’s open doors. The train glides forward. We run backward. We run to Joy.
When we reach her, Joy takes Deepa’s hand, and says, “You really gave him a good one.”
Deepa squeezes back. Pretends she doesn’t notice that Joy is shaking.
“Bet she gave him a black eye,” Padma says.
“Where are we going?” Banu asks. Trying to remember the rules. “Koshy’s? Or that fancy hotel?”
“Home,” Joy says. “We’re going home.”
“Then who are we pretending to be?” Banu asks.
Joy stares out the window into Bangalore’s concrete eyes. Thinks about yesterday evening, when Selvi Aunty came home clutching a manila file.
“What’s this?” Joy asked, taking it from her mother.
“Look and tell me,” Selvi Aunty said.
“You don’t know what it is?”
“I think I do,” Selvi Aunty said. “But you know my English isn’t very good. Just check for me.”
Joy pulled a document out of the file. Traced her finger along the raised contours of a seal pressed onto its edge.
“Well?” Selvi Aunty asked.
“It’s a birth certificate,” Joy said. Swallowing. “It’s my birth certificate.”
“That I know,” Selvi Aunty said. Impatiently. “What does it say?”
“It says,” Joy told her, “that my name is Joy.”
Selvi Aunty smiled then. Kissed her daughter on the forehead and said, “Don’t look so surprised. It’s your name, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Joy said. Staring at the paper like it was about to disappear. Like she was in a dream, and at any second, she might wake up.
“Put it away carefully,” Selvi Aunty said. “I’ll take it and get all the other documents you need to register for college. Janaki Ma’am gave me a list.”
“College?” Joy asked. “We have the money for college?”
“Janaki Ma’am promised to help us,” Selvi Aunty said. Which in Heaven, is the highest guarantee.
Joy loves Janaki Ma’am’s promises. We all do. But for the first time, Joy wonders if this is a promise that Janaki Ma’am can keep.
As though it’s reading her thoughts, the train passes a women’s college. Joy looks down at the crowd of girls with dupattas across their shoulders, hair pinned into half ponytails, full braids. She pictures going to class every day with these girls. Without us. Without Janaki Ma’am.
So I graduate, she thinks, then what? How will I interview for jobs? Rent an apartment? Find a husband?
Is this better than what I was offered at the bus stop? Maybe, she thinks, I should go back there. Fall into the life that’s expected of me. Maybe the predictable life is predictable simply because it is the life that hurts the least.
But then. There was that feeling of the raised seal on her fingertips. The way her mother said daughter, the word circling and settling like a winged creature somewhere in her chest, her stomach, her throat. Somewhere deep and hollow and hopeful.
The dragon boy had tried to knock that out of her. But she wouldn’t let him.
“We’re not pretending to be anything,” Joy announces. Turns to Banu and tilts her head like a Bollywood star. Like a banker. Like royalty. “We’re just being us.”
; “But then it’s not playing Metro,” Banu says. “Is it?”
“Of course it is,” Deepa says.
We don’t play Metro much anymore. But when we do, Joy makes the rules.
PART THREE
The Modern Era
13
Returned
sunlight seeps through the cracks in the roofs of Heaven’s remaining homes, pushing our eyelids open, dewing our limbs with sweat. We girls drag ourselves awake and clean our teeth with neem sticks, untangle our hair with tortoiseshell combs. Store the bedclothes, fetch the water. Watch the boys act like Holi has already started, even though it’s still two days away.
Vihaan and Yousef crouch outside Rukshana’s house, filling bowls of colored powder with dirty water scooped out of an abandoned rain barrel. Padma’s brothers circle them, their voices shrill and staccato.
“Let’s go to the airport slum and get Raghav! He’s always teasing me.”
“No, no, let’s go to the footbridge. Then we can drop balloons on people’s heads.”
“I’m going to drop a balloon on your head.”
“No, no! You won’t catch me!”
“Yousef, stop wasting water,” Rukshana yells. Her arms ache from dragging five full vessels from the tap, which, after two weeks of dryness, suddenly began to gush. Fatima Aunty called it a parting gift from the useless. Rukshana called it a miracle.
“Chill, yaar,” Yousef says. “This isn’t drinkable. Besides, it’s Holi!”
“Since when do you celebrate Holi? You’re not even Hindu.”
“This is a secular nation,” Vihaan says, apparently forgetting his khaki shorts, his Sunday prayer meetings. Mixes red and blue powder in a cooking pot that Rukshana is sure his mother will scrub out later. When he adds water, it swirls into a deep purple.
“What are you lot doing up so early?” Joy asks, coming outside with a towel wrapped around her wet hair.
“It’s Holi,” Yousef repeats. Holds open the lips of a cheap rubber balloon. Vihaan carefully tips the colored water into it, tossing violet shadows onto the pavement.
“They’re destroying our home, and you’re playing colors,” Rukshana says.
“They’re going to destroy Heaven no matter what we do,” Vihaan says. Carefully ties the balloon closed and sets it on the ground. “Might as well enjoy ourselves.”
Rukshana throws her hands up and says, “The worst part is you’re not even going to get in trouble. You’ll disappear for the whole day and come back wet and dirty and who knows what else. They’ll still speak to you sweetly and call you their precious children.”
“We are their precious children,” Vihaan says.
“What about us?” Joy asks.
“You’re precious too,” Yousef says, darting his eyes at her. “You just have more rules.”
There aren’t so many men in Heaven. Not so many husbands, fathers. Not so many possible-husbands or fathers-to-be. A few wander around drunk in the middle of the day, ask our mothers for lunch, a handful of rupees. (Usually our mothers say no, and then yes.) A few ricochet between jobs, spending their money on “items” our mothers string between curse words. Toddy. Bidis. Ganja. Other women.
Padma’s father is not like the other fathers. He’s what our mothers call “a good man.” Voice doughy as rotis ready for the pan. Eyes creased at the corners. Hair hennaed to hide the grays. When he sees us girls, he gives us candy from the shirt pocket of his blue uniform with the security company logo. Our mothers object, say we are too old for chocolates. But Padma’s father says we’re still children.
We like the sound of that.
One day, at the end of eighth standard, Janaki Ma’am glides into the final minutes of our final class, serious as the Saraswati idol she keeps on her desk.
“You there, Padma,” she says. “Come.”
It’s April, a month before pre-monsoon rains scrub summer away. Sky unblocked, sun’s brightness turned up high. It’s like living in the screens of our mothers’ plastic Nokia phones.
Exams are over, and we’re supposed to be doing worksheets our teachers Xeroxed from donated puzzle books. Except Janaki Ma’am has us in pre-tenth-standard boot camp.
“Just like the private school students do,” she says smugly.
“I’m pretty sure the private school students are at hill stations right now,” Rukshana says.
“Or in Europe,” Joy says. “And the United States.”
(They don’t say it loud enough for Janaki Ma’am to hear, though. Even those two aren’t that brave.)
Janaki Ma’am has only asked Padma to stay. But we stay too.
“Does your mother work?” Ma’am asks, pulling her brown handloom sari around her stomach. Sunlight glances off the diamond in her nose, her burnt umber skin, her neem-tree-bark eyes. Makes her flash like a lighthouse.
“She stays home,” Padma says. Looks at her feet. The tops of her too-tight shoes ripple with her wiggling her toes.
“I see,” Ma’am says. “You have a father?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What does he do?”
“He’s a night watchman at an office.”
“Are your parents home now?”
When Padma doesn’t answer, Joy says, “Yes, ma’am. Uncle leaves for his shift at four.”
“Fine then,” Janaki Ma’am says. “Let’s go.” As they’re leaving, Janaki Ma’am turns to us and says, “Just the two of us, okay, girls?”
When Janaki Ma’am and Padma get farther ahead, Rukshana turns to Joy and snaps, “What’s wrong with you?”
None of us would ever dare to speak to Joy that way. But it doesn’t seem to make her mad. She just shrugs and asks, “What?”
“Obviously Padma’s done something wrong,” Rukshana says. “You just sent Janaki Ma’am to her house before Padma can even make a plan. Before she can even prepare for whatever is going to happen.”
“You think Janaki Ma’am would’ve stayed here if I hadn’t answered her?” Joy snorts. “Ma’am was going to Padma’s house no matter what any of us said or didn’t say.”
She’s not wrong. But still.
“No, but if Padma had a second to think, she could’ve—” Rukshana says.
“Could’ve what?” Joy asks.
“Could’ve—I don’t know. Something. Now what is she going to do? How’s she going to handle whatever trouble’s coming?”
“What trouble?” Banu asks. When we stare at her knife sharp, she shrugs and adds, “I’m just saying. Out of all of us, she’s the best behaved.”
“Banu’s right,” Joy says. “Padma’s not in trouble.”
“How do you know?” Rukshana asks.
“Because Janaki Ma’am came to my house last week,” Joy says. “She came to see my mother about letting me go to college. She said she was visiting lots of families.”
“You mean lots of families with girls,” Banu says. “Girls whose parents might not let them study up to twelfth standard.”
“Padma’s parents might pull her out?” Rukshana asks. Partly to change the subject. Partly because she doesn’t know. “I always thought her father was good.”
“Maybe they don’t have the money,” Banu says.
“Or maybe they do and want to save it for her brothers,” Joy grumbles.
“They wouldn’t do that,” Rukshana says firmly. “Didn’t I tell you? Her father’s good.”
“But he’s a father,” Joy says. We know what she means.
We wrap ourselves in silence, but Bangalore keeps chattering and jangling and grinding: auto-rickshaws honk, cows moan, street vendors holler.
“Tamatar! Thakali! Tomato!”
“Good price. Best price.”
We’re nearly home before Banu says, “I hope she visits my house.”
“Me too,” Rukshana says.
Janaki Ma’am leaves her store-bought sandals outside of Padma’s door, ducks her head to fit through the entryway. Padma comes in behind her, tries to see her home through Janaki Ma’a
m’s eyes. Broken fairy lights glowing with stolen power, pots dented and sticky with cooking oil, pressure cooker steaming like a cast-iron dragon. A Tamil Nadu government fan gifted from a cousin in Hosur half-heartedly turns the dense air. A chubby politician’s face smiles out from the humming plastic center where the blades meet.
Padma’s mother is almost like another piece of furniture, her skin glowing blue in the flame from the kerosene stove, fingers picking stones from the dal for tonight’s meal.
Padma’s father is getting ready for work. Smells like shoe polish and soap. Makes respectful small talk as he settles our headmistress cross-legged on the floor, asks Padma to boil milk for the guest.
“Padma is talented,” Janaki Ma’am says. Padma hands her the chai, and when Janaki Ma’am takes a sip, the steam fogs up her spectacles. “She has a good character. Strong. Determined. One of the most promising students in her class.”
Padma’s father nods, smiling. “She has a way with numbers, you know. Manages all the money here at home.”
“She’s also quite good in social studies and Kannada,” Janaki Ma’am says. Puts the hot steel tumbler on the floor, removes her glasses. Wipes them with the end of her sari, then points them at Padma’s father. “All languages, really. Picks them up fast. She would make a great journalist. Or perhaps even a lawyer. God knows Heaven could use someone like her in the courts.”
Padma looks down so her parents do not see her smile.
“We are working extra hours to prepare students for their tenth-grade boards,” Janaki Ma’am continues, putting her spectacles back on. “Padma will need time to study. So I hope you’ll excuse her from some of her chores and allow her to stay after school for lessons. Free, of course. I conduct them myself. At that time we can counsel her to find a pre-university course.”
Gita Aunty turns the stove off. Clacks open the pressure cooker, picks it up, crosses the room, ducks out the door. Sings quietly as she puts cooked rice on the roof for the crows with fingers so calloused that they no longer feel any heat.
A People's History of Heaven Page 17