The Bandit Queens (44)
“Isn’t it? Come on, Saloni. The minute I married him, you cut me out of your life completely.”
“I cut you out?” Saloni scoffed. “You made all the choices, not me. A stupid boy came along and you believed him over me.” Saloni shook her head and halted the swing by planting her foot. The sides jerked before stilling, the chains jangling. “I knew he was trouble from the beginning, I just knew it.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
Saloni’s laugh was mocking. “I did! You just were too stupid to listen. God, you should’ve heard yourself going on about him and that moronic papad story. One moment does not make a person, Geeta. He was kind to you for one lousy moment, it didn’t make him kind, did it? Maybe I was awful to Runi for one moment, but it doesn’t make me awful.”
“You’ve been awful to me for plenty of moments.”
“You deserved it. You’re a traitor.” Above them, the light expired. Saloni set the solar lantern between them.
“I’m the traitor?” Geeta sputtered. “When he…changed…when he started hitting me, where were you? My parents were dead; my father left all those debts. I was humiliated and terrified and I had nowhere to go. I was so alone because you wouldn’t talk to me. You wouldn’t even look at me. It was inexcusable.”
Saloni sat up straighter. Shoulders back, chin out. Geeta would have recognized the battle pose even if she hadn’t known Saloni their entire lives. “Excuse? Who says I need an excuse? I—”
“You should’ve reached out, Saloni. You had a family, a husband, friends. I had no one. I was all alone. I’ve been all alone.”
“How would anyone know you didn’t want it that way? Acting like you’re better than everyone all the time!”
“Oi! I think you’re getting us mixed up.”
“Like that’s possible,” she said with a haughty sniff.
“Right. Because you’re twice my size.”
Saloni looked like she might rip the skin right off her. Instead, she pointed an imperious finger into the night. “Get the hell out of my house.”
“I’m not in your crummy house. You didn’t even have enough manners to let me in.”
A phlegmy gurgle of disgust left Saloni’s throat. “You always were so pedantic. Get out!”
“Oh, I’m going.” Geeta hadn’t removed her shoes, so she quickly cleared the four steps to the dirt. Bandit barked, alarmed by their raised voices.
“You brought that filthy mutt to my home?” Saloni screeched.
“Oh, please. My dog’s cleaner than your kids.”
Saloni planted her hands on her wide hips. She threw Geeta a saccharine smile. “A perfect pair, a couple of bitches.”
“Idiot. It’s a boy dog.”
“Why are you still here even?”
“Too bad it’s not Karva Chauth every day; you might lose some weight!”
“Oi, gadhedi! You try having two kids and staying thin.” Saloni closed her eyes and put a hand over her chest. “Not that the joys of motherhood aren’t—”
“Rewarding. Everyone fuckin’ knows.”
“Not you.”
Geeta’s eyes narrowed into slits. Their rage had turned the air sulfuric. “Oh, I hate you.”
“I hate you right back double. And I really, really hope Farah finishes you off tonight.”
“Me, too! I’d rather be dead than have to look at your fat face again.”
“Same!”
Geeta growled. “Bandit!” she pointed. “Attack!”
Saloni gasped but had no reason to fear. Bandit was otherwise occupied gnawing on his private bits.
Geeta fumed all the way home. First Karem, then Saloni. Fantastic. Another successful interaction on her part. What temporary insanity had let her think she could count on Saloni of all people? Fear had made her weak and she’d desperately galloped to Saloni like an abandoned dog trying to find home.
Poor Bandit was ill prepared for the tempest incarnate stomping around her house as she cursed Saloni with verboten invectives even she’d never dared utter before: pig fucker, onion butthole, a fried ball of pubes, vile offspring of viler semen, a lizard dick, a lizard’s pube, a lizard’s ass sweat. Only when she ran out of lizard parts did she collapse onto her mattress, spent.
Bandit, ever the quick learner, refused to emerge from under her bed.
“Fine,” she huffed. “What do I care? You’re as useless as she is.”
FOURTEEN
The following afternoon, Saloni sent her son to fetch Geeta. Though they’d never met, Geeta had seen him playing around the village and had recognized his eyes. They were hazel rather than Saloni’s green, but held the same shape, with thick lashes that could easily be mistaken for kohl. They were wasted on a child, much like Bandit’s glamorous tail was wasted on a street dog. Geeta stared at the kid; it was odd, Saloni’s progeny walking this world, a stranger to Geeta. In an alternate universe, this boy would have grown up calling her Geetamasi. In that same alternate universe, she’d’ve had a hand in rearing him. But in this universe, they were no one to each other.
She’d wasted much of the late morning angling her chin before the armoire mirror, vying for maximum daylight to hunt and pluck the wiry chin hairs that had suddenly cropped up in the last year or so. Her tweezing hand was vicious as she fume-monologued all the criticisms she should’ve spat at Saloni: that Saloni could’ve used her social cachet for good, like defending Geeta and Runi, but she used her powers for evil instead; that she was selfish and ruthless; that she was no friend to women. Geeta had been revising this to “no ally” while uprooting a dark hair with a victorious flick when the knock came.