A People's History of Heaven

by Mathangi Subramanian

  “Are you saying she’s smart enough to go to college?” Padma’s father asks.

  “Of course. Her intelligence was never in question,” Janaki Ma’am says in her Janaki Ma’am way. Like it’s obvious. Like the world doesn’t work any other way.

  Padma’s father nods, asks a few more questions. As Janaki Ma’am leaves, Padma sees her rest her hand on Padma’s mother’s back.

  “Save some for your children, Gita,” Padma hears her whisper. “Birds aren’t the only hungry ones around here.”

  When the headmistress leaves, Padma’s father says, “This is why we came here. Away from the village. So our children would have everything we didn’t.” Probably to himself, since Gita Aunty is still singing to the crows.

  Even though she knows the words weren’t for her, Padma says, “We can’t afford it.”

  “We can if your mother goes back to work,” Padma’s father says. He puts the palm of his hand on Padma’s head. Rests it there a second longer than usual.

  Long enough for Padma to know that he’s proud.

  It’s a tricky thing, finding your mother a job. Especially if your mother is Gita Aunty. She can’t read or write or count, so you can’t put her somewhere safe, like a bank or a store. Can’t be around sharp objects or living things, so you can’t put her in a house. You have to find a place where she can mop and dust and talk to herself and stay away from everything that reminds her of anything.

  For two weeks, Padma paces the jagged Bangalore sidewalks in her school uniform and too-tight shoes, perspiration dripping down her back. Skirts pink-nosed rats retreating through the gaps between the flagstones. Wishes she could join them in their shady underground worlds.

  Instead, she keeps walking. Tries used paper shops, warehouses, wedding halls. The hospital, the lobby of the glass-walled flats. Tries and tries and tries. But no one needs a sweeper with eyes that stare at nothing, a throat that hums with loss.

  Even the ones who know the family won’t take her. Or, maybe, especially the ones who know the family won’t take her.

  When she runs out of options, Padma goes to the posh neighborhood. Tries the new Western bakeries that smell like yeast and chocolate, the new showrooms that smell like plastic hangers and floor cleaner. The NGOs that come to Heaven to hand out brochures about women’s empowerment and financial security, where the receptionists seem irritated by Padma’s quest for both.

  Still, she won’t give up. Not with college at her fingertips. Not when she can almost touch it. Crisscrosses the lanes lined with BMWs and neem trees, shoe stores and private schools.

  Until she finds the post office. A building that’s all primary colors and right angles. Square walls, square roof, square sign. A cubbied, alphabetized place with no space for chaos.

  Outside, a mustachioed man drinks chicory-heavy coffee from a wax cup. Smokes a slim, fragrant cigarette, the kind that comes in packets with English letters on them, that stains collars yellow and molars brown.

  “Excuse me, Uncle,” Padma asks. “Do you work here?”

  When he turns to Padma, she sees the letters embroidered on his shirt pocket. Manager. India Post. Embroidered in Kannada and English.

  “Pardon me, Manager Sir. I was just wondering. Do you have someone to tidy up? Things must get dirty with all, the, um—” What did they have at post offices anyway? Stamps? Letters? Nothing sharp or living, that’s for sure. “Paper,” Padma finishes uncertainly.

  “Law says you have to be fourteen to work,” he says. Takes a long drag.

  “It’s not for me,” she says. “It’s for my mother. We’re a good family.” She shuffles her feet to cover the stains on her socks, the dirt on her shoes, the scabs on her knees. “Honest. Hardworking. Clean.”

  The man sips his coffee. Exhales smoke into the salty air.

  “If we did have an opening,” he says, “when could she start?”

  “Tomorrow,” Padma says. “Today even. I could go get her now.”

  He inhales again. Holds the smoke in his mouth. Exhales.

  “Five thousand a month, and she comes in weekends. But only after I meet her.”

  “Six thousand and she gets Saturdays and Sundays off.”

  “Five thousand five hundred, and Sundays off.” Tosses his empty paper cup onto the road. Drops his cigarette butt too. Grinds out the red-orange ash with the toe of his polished leather shoe.

  “Fine,” Padma says.

  “Fine,” he repeats. “We’ll try her for a month. Come at four o’clock sharp so she can mop after the afternoon shift. Not a second later.”

  Padma says, “She’ll be here, sir. We both will.”

  When your mother is like Padma’s mother—or, at least, the city version of Padma’s mother—you can’t just tell her about a new job and expect her to figure it out. You have to take her there, watch her. Sort of like she’s the daughter and you’re the mother. Like childhood can be passed between generations, can be shaken loose from time.

  Every afternoon, Padma leaves her brothers at Deepa’s house. Then she goes to her house, collects her mother, and takes her to the post office. They arrive when the workers are leaving, filling their bags with their bus tickets and tiffin boxes, piling the day’s completed paperwork on plastic trays. The place smells like fresh stationery and stamp glue and bureaucracy. Like the absence of history.

  Well now, Padma thinks. This might work out just fine.

  Gita Aunty runs a wet cloth over precarious metal shelves, pushes a mop across the warped tiled floor. Padma follows her from room to room, watching. Does her maths at one desk, her Kannada at another. Monitors her mother’s murmuring. Making sure it stays just below the surface.

  The afternoons settle into a rhythm. Dust, dust, mop, mop. Exhale, inhale, hum, sing. A month passes. Two months. Manager Sir hands over the salary, in cash, as promised. The place smells a little less like neglect. A little more like Lysol.

  Padma starts to relax. To look around.

  That’s when she notices that this India Post building is not like other India Post buildings. But it might be a little bit like Heaven.

  In this particular India Post office, each desk is covered in letters written in a different alphabet. Envelopes split open, paper creased and soggy. Like they’ve been folded and unfolded and refolded multiple times. It makes the letters look bewildered, like no one knows what to do with them. Like they don’t know what to do with themselves.

  The desk where Padma does her maths is the Hindi desk. The one where she does her social studies looks like Hindi but isn’t. She can sound it out but doesn’t know what it means. Must be Marathi, she thinks, remembering the women in her village who used to pin their saris to their heads. Traces the soldier-straight letters tied together at the top.

  Next to that is either Tamil or Malayalam, or maybe both. The desk near the back door is almost Kannada, which means it must be Telugu, like the sign outside Joy’s church. The desk near the canteen is English—and although Padma can recite each letter, when they are lined up together, she is never completely sure what they mean.

  The last desk in Padma’s rotation is the one reserved for Kannada. Stacks of letters twice as high as any other desk, crouching in puddles of gray-yellow sunlight that drip through the building’s only window. Maybe that’s what makes it feel cozy, snug—or maybe it’s the Kannada letters that twine together like the fingers of friends.

  She takes the top letter off of the pile.

  It’s pockmarked with spots shaped like tears. Smells sodden and regretful, like lightning-soaked rain. It says,

  Dearest,

  You must be very busy in Bangalore building a life for us. Every day I feel lucky for what you are doing for me and our future children. I hope you are taking care of your health. Who is cooking for you? What are you eating?

  I know that you are probably tired of my questions. But I haven’t heard from you. Please come back. Let us get married so I can take care of you. I can even work beside you. You know I a
m strong.

  Or you can come here and work. We don’t need much to be happy. Remember? We only need each other. You told me that.

  I do not need an elaborate wedding. I am a very simple person. Even registered marriage is okay.

  Counting the days until I am your bride.

  All My Love,

  Kavya

  After school the next day, Padma hurries Gita Aunty to work early. Gets to the office just as Manager Sir lights his last cigarette of the day.

  While Gita Aunty fills the mopping bucket with water from the bathroom tap, Padma asks the manager, “Sir? What is this place?”

  “A post office,” he says. Strikes a match with a yellow flame.

  Last year, Padma would have lowered her eyes. Walked away. But nowadays, she sees herself like Janaki Ma’am sees her: Determined. Strong. A future journalist. Or a lawyer. Someone with a degree fancy enough to not back down.

  “What kind of post office?” she asks.

  “What?”

  “All the mail is open,” Padma says. “They don’t do that at normal India Posts.”

  “Ah, like that,” Manager Sir says. But he takes another drag before answering. Inhale, exhale. Pause. “This is a Returned Letter Office.”

  “Returned Letter Office,” Padma repeats. “What does that mean?”

  “The other India Posts send us the letters that aren’t delivered.”

  “Why aren’t they delivered?”

  “Many reasons,” Manager Sir says. He speaks deliberately. Like he’s enjoying answering Padma’s questions. “Maybe the addresses are wrong, or the people have moved. Maybe the handwriting is too sloppy to read, or it’s in a language the carriers don’t understand.”

  Padma feels her heart—well, it doesn’t break, exactly. But it splinters a little. Cracks.

  “But that’s terrible,” she says. “Do you help them?”

  “We try. We certainly try,” Manager Sir says. Padma’s not sure, but she thinks she hears a little bit of something in his voice. Pride, maybe. Like he actually cares.

  “How?”

  “We try to send them where they belong. See if we can understand the handwriting. Look at maps of old neighborhoods, check forwarding addresses. We open them and read them. Look for clues.” He stares out into the distance, his eyes full of other people’s words. Other people’s lives. Padma wonders if he has any room left for his own.

  “What if you can’t figure it out?” she asks.

  “We file them away in registers. Wait and see if someone claims them.”

  “Do people do that?” Padma asks. “Claim them?”

  “Sometimes. Sometimes we can read the return addresses, and we send them back. Sometimes they sit there for decades.”

  “But what about the people who are supposed to get those letters? The ones you can’t place?” Padma asks. Thinks of all the unanswered questions. The hopes. Regrets. Doubts. “What happens to them?”

  “What to do?” the manager says. Drops the end of his cigarette. Grinds the ash into the sidewalk with his toe. “You can’t help everyone.”

  Which is the wrong thing to say to a girl from Heaven.

  Padma tries to do her sums and English sentences. To color her maps of the common crops of Karnataka, balance her chemical equations.

  Really tries. But it’s no use.

  Those silent, still stacks of letters? They’ve burst into motion. Into sound. Wailing. Sobbing. Screaming. Stories tucked into those letters strain across miles of rivers and mountains and deserts, of days and weeks and years, of farms and cities and empty roads. Claw at Padma with frantic fingers.

  Take the love letter Padma wasn’t supposed to read. What if the girl who wrote it is waiting by a window, restless in her own puddle of gray-yellow sunlight? What if she is about to lose her only chance at—what? Love? Freedom? At something.

  The letter remains at the top of the pile. Handwriting looped and—she can see now—desperate. Beseeching.

  Padma takes her eyes off of Gita Aunty long enough to read the letter again. Not just the lines, but between them too. Declarations of love. Of intended marriage. Hope of more than just a lifetime of happiness. Hope of escape.

  The return address is clear. From a village smack in the middle of the state. Nowhere near the ocean, or the mountains, or anything glamorous or impressive. It’s not far from Padma’s native place, actually. Which only makes things worse.

  Padma knows the escape routes from a place like that. Especially for a girl.

  There aren’t many.

  Padma recognizes the address. House number two, Shastrinagar Colony, behind the old airport. Street three. It’s the address of a slum. Or, at least, it used to be a slum. Before the airport moved.

  Now, it’s a parking lot. For a shopping mall.

  Without a house to go to, this letter will be returned. Padma imagines it in the hands of a girl with arms as knotted and muscled as tamarind pods, skin brown and dry as thirsty cornstalks. Pictures the girl reading it in the dim light of a cowshed reeking of manure and fresh milk. Or worse, being unable to read it, asking her little brother for help. Pictures her doubling over from the pain of the worst kind of heartbreak.

  “Just because you can’t help everyone,” Padma says to herself, “doesn’t mean you can’t help anyone.”

  Padma tears a page from her school notebook. Finds a blunt pencil in the back of a squeaky drawer, a roll of stamps behind the cash counter. Digs a soft, graying eraser from the bottom of her bag.

  Writes:

  Dearest,

  You cannot imagine how it felt to hold your letter in my hands. It was almost as wonderful as holding you. It made me understand how important it is for us to be together.

  But, alas. My parents are arranging my marriage. There is nothing to be done. If only—

  But wait. In a true romance, wouldn’t the boy fight?

  This was not a happy ending. It was just another kind of tragedy.

  Perhaps it would be better from a family member?

  Padma tears out a new page. The ripping sound echoes off the empty walls.

  Dearest,

  You cannot imagine how it felt to see your letter delivered to our door. Almost as happy as it would’ve made me to see you marry my brother.

  “Unless he doesn’t have any siblings,” Padma mumbles. “Then the whole thing falls apart.”

  Dearest,

  You cannot imagine how it felt to see your letter. Almost as happy as it would’ve made me to see you marry my son. But sadly, he is no more. He got dengue last summer after all the rain. Before he died he told me to write to you.

  This family loves you. We accept you, even if you will never be our daughter-in-law.

  Be well and fall in love again and marry someone else. Our son would have been happy with that. Don’t waste your life.

  Also, after it rains, make sure you don’t get any mosquito bites. You never know.

  Sincerely Yours,

  Your loving

  almost parent

  “Perfect,” Padma says. Shakes her water bottle above it to make a few teardrops. “She thinks he loved her till the end.” Folds it carefully, truthfully. The way someone grieving maybe possibly would. “She thinks his family approved of her.” Writes the address, fixes the stamp, drops it in the next day’s mail. “No ruined reputation, not a fully broken heart. Now she can meet the man she’s supposed to marry.”

  Chucks the returned letter into the rubbish that her mother will soon bundle and destroy.

  Padma never saw her father much. Now she sees him even less. If she and her mother get home early and he leaves for his shift late, they might cross paths with each other on the road, or at the door. Those times, he’ll cup his hand around Padma’s cheek and smile.

  He leaves her envelopes of cash around the house. Padma knows how much is supposed to come in each week. If it’s not all there, he’s usually left a bag of vegetables, or fabric for new uniforms for her brothers. A reminder that
whatever he spends, he does it for the family.

  When they’re home together, on Sundays, she shows him the bank book from the account Padma opened in her mother’s name.

  “I was thinking,” Padma says, “maybe we should use Ma’s salary this month to pay the rent. Just this once—”

  “No,” Padma’s father says firmly. “That’s your money for college. We won’t touch it.”

  “Yes, Papa,” Padma says.

  “How much does college cost?” he asks her, knitting his brows.

  “I’ll get a scholarship,” Padma says. Which doesn’t answer the question. But close enough. “Janaki Ma’am says she’ll help me.”

  “Your brothers are keeping up in school?”

  “Neelamma Aunty checks their homework every night,” Padma says. “She’s very smart. I think she wishes she could’ve gone to college.”

  “She isn’t the only one. Your mother and I wish we had gone too,” Padma’s father says. Pinches her cheek. Like he hasn’t since she was a little girl. “Now you’ll go for all of us, darling. You’ll set a good example for your brothers. For this whole area.”

  Padma looks down and blushes.

  “Don’t make your children go through this,” Padma’s father says. “If I had gotten an education, I could’ve given you a better life. I could’ve—”

  “Don’t say that, Papa,” Padma says. “We have a good life. We have everything we need.”

  It’s not a lie, exactly. More like a story. The kind of story you tell the ones you love.

  Once Padma starts, she can’t stop. Every day she sits at the Telugu desk solving maths problems and memorizing poems. Moves to the Marathi desk, telling herself she’s there at the post office to make sure her mother stays happy, stable.

  But really, all Padma is doing is biding her time until she gets to the Kannada desk, where she can answer the letters of the lost.

  Maybe, Padma thinks, it isn’t only the future that can be shaped. Maybe you can also shape the past.

  Padma is at the Kannada desk, writing letters she thinks people want to receive.