Fifteen Lanes (9 page)

Stupid
.

I could hear her voice saying it, the shock, the disappointment … the contempt.

STUPID
.

The word went round and round in my head. It grew in volume. It reverberated off the walls.

I picked up a pen from the desk and took it to my bed, an idea already forming. I had to get rid of the word, but only after I’d taken control of it.

I dropped down, sitting cross-legged. Bosco immediately tried to crawl into my lap, but I pushed him away and hitched up my skirt, carefully choosing a spot on my inner thigh. I wrote the word,
STUPID
, pressing down until it hurt. Bosco whimpered. The imprint of black ink left angry welts. My leg ached.

It wasn’t enough.

Tomorrow the ink would be washed away. A week from now, maybe sooner, the welts would disappear. The indictment of my stupidity would still exist. Outside of me, its power would only grow stronger. I needed to own it.

Taking the pen, I pressed down as hard as I could and went back and forth over the first letter. The pain was intense, yet strangely liberating. I felt only satisfaction when the first bubble of blood broke through my skin. As I set to work on the second letter, the intensity of my anxiety slowly drained away. Each letter brought with it more peace. By the end I felt calm. The pain of disappointing my mother was no longer an unbearable burden. It still hurt, but it had lost its power to consume me.

My scars, spanning the inside of my thigh, were my insurance that I’d never again be carelessly intimate with a stranger. My mother would never again have reason to call me stupid. I might not be able to take back what I’d done but I could contain it. All I needed to do, if my resolve ever weakened, was look at my scars. I was in control now, with my own private message to myself.

Devadasi is explained …

I was good at making up games. It was necessary in a life where there were always younger children who needed to be entertained, so they didn’t get under the customers’ feet. In school this earned me a reputation as lighthearted and creative. As my schoolmates and I milled around the schoolyard during breaks they would often turn to me. “What shall we play, Noor? Let’s have some fun.”

Toppling Towers was a game I invented one evening when Aamaal was being particularly difficult. She’d had an ear infection for days and Ma refused to buy medicine. A waste of money, said Ma, who had more faith in charms and homemade remedies. She was using both to treat Aamaal’s infection. Like the many others she’d used before, they didn’t work.

I finished flushing the ooze from Aamaal’s ear for the third time that afternoon and slathered on Ma’s concoction. I checked to make sure she still wore the amulet Ma had tied round her
neck that morning. It was Ma’s most precious possession, with a potency she swore could cure any ailment. Years ago Ma had made the dusty two-day journey to Saundatti, in northern Karnataka, to have it blessed at the Yallamma Gudi temple. The goddess Yallamma was revered by many women in our community, and Ma was no exception.

Aamaal complained that the amulet was too heavy. She’d removed it twice that day already—further proof of how sick she felt. Normally she loved Ma’s charms, and though she was only five years old, she’d long coveted this one. Night was falling, but despite her discomfort I needed to take her outside and tire her before I could let her crawl under Ma’s bed. I’d begged Ma to give Aamaal sleeping drugs but they also cost money, and since the birth of Shami we were always short.

Shami, now six months old, was constantly sick. Twice we thought we’d lost him to pneumonia but both times he pulled through. That night he’d sprouted sores all over his body. They’d appeared as simple scabies only a day before, but no sickness was ever simple with Shami. Disease courted him like a jealous lover, never far from his body and always fierce in its attentions. Ma covered him in charms to ward off the evil eye: a black string around his waist, black plastic bangles on each wrist and even black henna spots to mar his beautiful face.

Despite her efforts, Shami had suffered restlessly all day, so while other babies throughout Kamathipura were sleeping peacefully under beds, I wrapped Shami in a sari and hitched it over my shoulder. The warmth of our bodies pressed together should have irritated his rash further but, unlike my sister, he kept any misery he felt to himself, and even seemed comforted by our closeness. I took him outside, Aamaal grudgingly in tow.

“I don’t want to go out,” whined Aamaal.

I hardly heard her. My attention was drawn to the foot of our street where a noisy throng of men was spilling out of a bus, the night’s customers arriving. I reached for Aamaal’s hand. She resolutely stuck both behind her back.

“Stay close to me, Aamaal.” I wanted to put some distance between us and the approaching mob. We couldn’t go far. One of the aunties had asked me to watch her children that night and they were still loitering inside.

Someone hooted from within the ranks of men as they made their approach. I swallowed down my anxiety and stepped in front of Aamaal, blocking her from their view. The ones who came to Kamathipura regularly knew that the young girls roaming the streets were not part of the night’s offerings, but every day there were men newly arrived from the villages. They didn’t understand that the underage girls they desired were never allowed on the streets, where they might be rescued by the NGOs, private charities scattered throughout Kamathipura that attempted to prevent young girls from being forced into sex work. The determination of the NGO workers who patrolled our fifteen lanes looking for vulnerable girls was equaled only by the pimps.

Fortunately, just as I was thinking we would have to venture back inside in search of the other children, they tumbled out of the doorway, engaged in a spirited but good-natured fight. Adit, the older of the two, was dangling a paratha just out of reach of his brother, who had clambered onto his back. Bibek was clinging to Adit’s neck with one hand, while trying to reach round and snatch the bread with the other.

“He’s trying to kill me!” Nine-year-old Adit appealed for my
help but couldn’t hide his smirk. I took the paratha out of his hand and handed it to little Bibek.

“That was mine!” Adit objected.

“Not anymore.”

I shrank back as several men reached our doorway and squeezed past us to go in. At the last minute one leaned toward me and squeezed my breast. I drew in a sharp breath.

Adit rounded on him. “Hey, don’t touch what you haven’t paid for!”

The man paused and stared at him, as if he couldn’t figure out whether to be offended or amused. Suddenly he cuffed Adit on the side of the head, knocking him off balance.

Bibek launched himself at the man but I caught him in midair.

“Stop,” I said. Grabbing a boy in each hand, I pushed them behind me as well.

“You need to teach those little bastards some respect,” the man said. He raised his fist again, but one of his companions threw an arm around him and made a crude joke about the far greater entertainment awaiting them inside. They pushed past us, laughing.

Aamaal looked at me wide-eyed after they’d disappeared. She didn’t say a word when I ordered her across the street.

“You should have let me fight him,” said Adit, catching up.

“He would have killed you.”

“Not before I got in a few good licks.” Adit took out a tattered, hand-rolled cigarette to complete the picture of his bravado. His hands shook as he lit up.

The road was crowded, as it always was at this time of night. Snack carts and paan-sellers had rolled in, crowding into every inch of space on the sidewalk and lane that wasn’t
already inhabited by something more permanent. I yanked Aamaal back just in time as a bullock cart, laden with jerry cans of kerosene, rattled toward her.

“Pay attention, Aamaal,” I said, though there were many things in our life I wished she were less aware of.

We crossed the road at an angle to give wide berth to Imran-Uncle, the old fruit-wallah. He used to let us pick from his spoiled fruit at the end of the day in return for the occasional favor from Ma, but after he began parking immediately across from our doorway Ma told us to avoid him. He still called to her whenever she came outside to talk to a customer. Ma acted like she didn’t hear.

I wished she would let him be our father. I’d heard he had a small room a few streets away and lived there all alone. I couldn’t imagine the luxury of a room just for our family and away from Ma’s work. I knew the time was fast approaching when I’d be considered too old to sleep under her bed. Many children my age were already living on the streets. Each night they fought for patches of pavement. Parvati had been doing it for years.

Imran-Uncle’s rheumy eyes followed us as we reached the curb on his side of the street. We paused so Aamaal could pet Lucky, her favorite goat. I caught Imran-Uncle’s gaze and smiled. I was disobeying Ma’s wishes, if not her direct orders, but I liked Imran-Uncle. He said he gave us only fruit he was going to throw away, but more than once lush strawberries and unblemished bananas had found their way into his offerings. I liked his appearance as well. His wizened skin and long white hair made him look more animal than man, not so different from Lucky, now nuzzling Aamaal’s pockets looking for
sweets. I imagined Imran-Uncle would be an undemanding father, content with Ma’s attentions and not chasing after Aamaal and me as well. He might even let Ma stop working and look after all of us on his fruit earnings. It was a future almost too bright to contemplate.

Aamaal and Bibek were arguing over the half-paratha Bibek still had left.

“Lucky is hungry,” Aamaal insisted. She gave Bibek an imploring look.

“Lucky is already too fat,” I said seriously. Lucky was a huge beast. A full-grown man couldn’t wrap his arms around the goat’s middle, and he stood a good foot taller than Aamaal. Aamaal continued to plead with Bibek, who finally and very reluctantly gave in. No one could say no to Aamaal.

She carefully ripped the bread into bite-size pieces, despite the fact that we’d both seen Lucky eat entire shoes in one gulp. While she fed him, two more goats meandered over and tried to nose Lucky aside. Aamaal gave each of them a piece but reserved the bulk of it for Lucky. I looked on with mixed feelings. I was happy to see her distracted, but it wasn’t wise to get attached to a goat. Lucky had been around as long as I could remember, but every Eid I feared would be his last. He could feed many families at the feast.

“I’m not sure it’s such a good idea to fatten him up,” I said quietly to Adit.

He took a last drag on his cigarette and flicked it to the side of the road. “Don’t worry. The milk-wallah treats that goat better than his wife.”

With the feeding finished, Aamaal’s attention quickly returned to her sore ear. She cupped it with her hand.

“I want to go home, Noor-didi,” she begged, her eyes filling with tears.

“I have a new game,” I said. In that moment it wasn’t true but I would think of one in the seconds it took to get them all a safe distance from the house. I nudged them to start walking again.

“What?” asked Adit eagerly.

Aamaal only sighed as she swiped her hand over her eyes.

“I can’t explain it here. I have to show you.”

“Come on, Aamaal,” said Adit. “It will make you feel better.”

Aamaal let me take her hand and we walked down the road to the nearest rubbish heap. I examined it hopefully. It often contained the equipment for some of my more inspired games. Discarded syringes, for example, were a versatile favorite. I briefly considered the piles of sheep and cattle dung. We’d created quite a blaze one night, setting those alight. Aamaal had loved it, but we’d got into trouble when flying sparks singed a passerby.

“We need to collect mango pits,” I said, an idea forming, “the more the better.”

As always, Adit and Bibek threw themselves into the task. “Be careful of needles and broken glass,” I reminded them.

Aamaal stood by watching and I put my arm around her. It was unlike her not to join in. We waited for several minutes while the boys collected a large pile of pits. Some were still slimy and many covered in filth. I separated out the worst of them and divided the rest into two mounds, then explained the rules.

“Aamaal, Shami and I are one team and you two are on the other. We need to stand ten paces apart and stack our pits into
towers, as high as we can get them. Each team keeps three pits back to use as missiles. When I say go, you throw your three and try to knock down our tower, and we do the same. As soon as we’ve thrown all the missiles we quickly rebuild. The first to rebuild their tower wins.”

The most challenging part of the game turned out to be getting ten paces apart without having multiple obstacles between us. We lined up along the side of the road but the concept of roadside was fluid in Kamathipura, where sidewalks and roads alike brimmed with food stalls, livestock, vehicles and throngs of people. Lucky and his goat friends showed up and became particularly problematic as they were convinced we were throwing the pits for them and kept trying to eat them. Eventually, I got the idea to incorporate them into the game, and outrunning a goat to retrieve a pit earned extra points. Aamaal was reluctant to play at first, but by the time the goats had become a third team she was well into it and cheered gleefully every time the goats bested the boys. Shami fussed a couple of times when the game got too boisterous. I took periodic breaks, swaying my hips to rock him back to sleep.