The Henna Artist(89)

His small eyes studied me, lingering on my chest, until I felt the need to cross my arms over my breasts.

He snorted and swallowed phlegm. “You henna women, don’t you?”

I nodded.

“You can henna my wife in exchange for what you owe.”

When I arrived at his house, the vendor said his wife was waiting in the bedroom. As I walked toward it, he grabbed my arm.

I stiffened.

“I want you to henna her breasts.”

I stared at him. Not since my time in Agra with the courtesans had I been asked to henna anything other than hands or feet, with the exception of Kanta’s stomach, which had been my idea.

I could hardly refuse him. I had no other way to repay what I owed. I stepped inside the bedroom, closing the door behind me. The vendor’s wife, a thin woman as dark as a coconut husk, waited for me on the floor, her hair covered with her pallu. Since we were alone, I suggested she might be more comfortable uncovering her head; she smiled shyly and refused, hiding even more of her face with her sari.

She surprised me by saying, “You’re thinner.” She had seen me in better days, when I had shopped at her husband’s store with Malik.

I had stopped giving reasons for my diminishing weight. When someone asked, or noticed, I simply shrugged. Almost daily, Malik brought treats the palace chef had prepared, but I only took a few bites before my appetite left me.

I asked her to remove her blouse. She had breastfed three children, and her chest sagged. I used the henna design to hide as many of her stretch marks as I could. I had finished decorating one breast only when I heard the bedroom door creak. I lifted the reed and turned to see the oil vendor standing in the doorway, working a toothpick between his lower teeth.

I raised an eyebrow to ask what he wanted.

“Continue,” he said, stepping inside the room. He closed the door. His wife retreated farther behind her sari.

“My work with the ladies is private. You can see it soon enough after I leave.”

“You’re the one with the debts, remember?”

I dropped my gaze and turned back to his wife.

“Could you paint a face? On her breasts?”

I ignored him, dipping the reed in the henna. “I’m painting a spiral of new buds, an infinite blessing of good fortune on your house.”

“Other images might do the same.” His voice softened in a way that chilled me. I could imagine the leer on his face.

“Such as?”

“Your face.”

The impudence! He knew how desperate I was, or he wouldn’t have dared. The insult wasn’t just aimed at me, but at the mother of his children. That he might disgrace or shame her was of no concern to him; she was his property. I felt disgust, as I’d felt at the home of the kulfi-walla earlier this week, when he asked me to henna his hair. Of course I had refused. The drawing skill I was so proud of wasn’t worth anything to people like him.

“Well?”

I wanted to throw something at him to shut him up, but the reed was too light, my henna pot too precious. I met his eyes. “No. The agreement was to paint her breasts.”

He chewed his toothpick. After a moment, he said, “Very well.”

But he didn’t leave. He settled on the floor, behind me. I moved my body so I didn’t have to look at him, even from the corner of my eye. I continued patterning leaves that spiraled outward and upward from her nipple, to make her breasts appear lifted.

After a few minutes, I heard him rustling. I knew by a slight shift of her head that his wife had heard, as well. A wave of nausea swept over me as I realized his hands were fumbling with his dhoti. I felt her shame, and something else. Her resentment. At me, not him.

I dropped the reed on the floor and jumped up. Hurriedly, I began loading my supplies into my carryall.

He gripped my arm. His hand was warm from pleasuring himself; I wrenched it loose. “Don’t touch me!”

I reached for the henna pot.

“You haven’t finished!”

I grit my teeth. “I would sooner clean latrines than step into this house again.”

He tore the henna pot out of my hands and threw it at the wall. “You’re cheating me?” The paste splattered the floor and walls. His wife jerked the sari off her face and, for a moment, all three of us stared at the wreckage.

Saasuji’s bowl, my precious henna pot, was nothing now but shards. I could buy another for a few rupees in the Pink Bazaar, but this bowl had made me feel close to her even as I moved a thousand miles away.

Furious, I elbowed the vendor’s ribs and pushed him up against the door with all my weight. His shoulder hit the doorframe, and he fell to the floor. I’d knocked the wind out of him. Before he could catch his breath, I grabbed as many of the clay shards as I could, dumped them in my carryall and ran out of the house.

I burst into a run, crossed the road and turned into the first alley. A rat scampered down one side, in the murky, fetid water. I braced myself against the crumbling wall, bent over and vomited. Milky tea swirled in the tobacco-colored cesspool.

A memory of an alley similar to this one came to me. Me, at sixteen. Back in my village. Running from an angry, violent Hari. Spewing my guts out.

Here I was at thirty, still looking for an escape. But where was there to go?

“Ji? Are you all right?”

I whirled around.