A Burning(28)

    Then, one morning, she was not waking up.

“Ragini!” we were calling, “Ragini, wake up!”

I was splashing water on her face. I was pinching her toes. Somebody was putting an old shoe in front of her nose, in case the smell of leather was helping.

But Arjuni Ma was seeing, and I was seeing also, that Ragini was gone very far from us. Her eyes were still, her lips were cracking, her skin was bloodless. Ragini was dead.

From what was she dead? Nobody was knowing, because all of us, and even Arjuni Ma, were afraid of going to real doctors. But I was knowing, oh I was knowing for sure, one hundred percent, it was the dentist. Maybe his blade was having rust on it, or maybe his hands were not clean. Maybe, without anesthetic, the pain was storing and storing in Ragini’s body until she was not being able to take it. Like that, Ragini’s life was ending.

So I was sure I was never wanting the operation. I was wanting to stay a half-half my whole life.



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THAT IS THE PAIN I am recalling in my acting class today, and that is the pain I am carrying with me when I am going home and seeing a woman squatting outside my door. Her head is down, and her hair is silver. Hearing my footsteps, she is standing up, and immediately I am seeing the resemblance: It is Jivan’s mother.

Inside, she is sitting on my mattress, because there is nowhere else to sit. With her legs folded, her glistening eyes, her small hands, she is looking like a child. Then she is asking me a question that no mother should be having to ask.

“Mother,” I am saying to her afterward, “I am knowing what it is like to lose a loved one. And poor Jivan is also lost, at this moment. But the good thing is that she will be coming back.”

Jivan’s mother is holding her tea glass in her hand and looking at me, waiting for my lecture to get to the point. So I am saying it clearly.

“I will testify,” I am saying. “Don’t worry one bit. I will go to the court, I will tell them the truth, that Jivan is one kindhearted child teaching the poors, like myself! She was just a soul doing good for the uglies, like myself! I was having in mind that I would be saying all this when the police were coming, but they were not coming only. And I was not having the courage, mother, to walk into a police station myself.”

Now Jivan’s mother is crying, and a tear is falling down my own cheek. I am closing my eyes, and Ragini is beside me. This time, Ragini is the one holding my hand through the pain. I am opening my eyes and seeing that it is in fact Jivan’s mother who is holding my hand, her tears falling on my palms.

    “Jivan was telling me once that you are good at blessing babies and brides,” she is saying. “Today, you have given this mother the biggest blessing.”

True to god I am crying even more.





JIVAN


AMERICANDI UNWRAPS A PACKAGE of costume jewelry. I listen to the tinkle on her wrist of two glass bangles. When speaking with me, she gestures excessively to watch the fall and slide of the new bangles. Their movement delights her.

I soothe myself with daydreams of Lovely in the courtroom. Imagine when she comes to my trial and says, in that bold voice of hers, that the package all these fools keep talking about was a package full of old books. My dry lips smile to think of it. Even if they don’t believe me, how can anybody refuse to believe Lovely?



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WHEN PURNENDU COMES, I tell him nothing about Lovely. I don’t want to jinx it. But I am happy, so I tell him about an Eid festival, when the lane before our apartment building lit up green with bulbs strung in the trees. I wore a new dress and matching bangles borrowed from my mother, and looked out the window with nowhere, really, to go. A wealthy man, a landlord who was making lots of money from this government resettlement program, had ordered a whole goat slaughtered, and it was cooked into biryani. The scent rose up to our window. Late at night, due to the goodness of his heart, we ate. We ate with the whole neighborhood, off Styrofoam plates which we tried to wash and keep.

    After dinner, I eyed the vendors who had arrived, anticipating a festive marketplace, with trays of sweets and toys. A few boys bought the cheapest toy—tops—and spun them on the road. Other boys boldly asked for samples of cotton candy and then ran away, until the vendor stopped giving out any.



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THAT WAS OUR LAST month in that town. When a house became available in the big city, my mother moved us, hauling sacks on the train, where a few people shoved us and grumbled about our belongings. Ba stood beside us, holding himself up by his grip on the seat backs, insisting he could.



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HOW BIG WAS THE big city! I had never seen a place like this, a tide of people rushing and receding at the railway station, announcements and bell tones over the speakers, and in the middle of it all a man selling newspapers. Somebody stepped on my foot, or his suitcase did.

“Standing in the middle of the road,” a voice grumbled, and I jumped to the side.

    Men were pushing wheeled carts bearing cold bins of fish, trailing a scent of ice. Other men were hauling sacks of cauliflower on their backs.

“Chai gorom!” cried a vendor. “Hot chai!” He carried a tower of washed glasses and a kettle of tea. I wanted tea, and a bakery biscuit. My stomach gurgled.