The Bandit Queens (61)
Never before in her life, however, had she experienced what Darshan was now attempting. Forget two, he had six arms, like some horny sketch of a deity. And they were everywhere, hunting for whatever flesh she left unprotected. Darshan’s initial advances were so clumsy and utterly lacking in charm that it took a long, foolish moment for Geeta to realize this was an attack. She was being attacked. His fingers dug into the space above her navel, where she’d tucked her sari’s pleats. He tried to undo them, his uneven nails scratching her skin.
Oh, she thought, the rasp of his zipper guiding her from anger to fear. This was how the Bandit Queen had felt. No, not the Bandit Queen. Not a divinity or legend. This is how Phoolan had felt when each and every one of her rapists had pushed himself past her nos.
Geeta opened her mouth to scream, but Darshan’s fingers pressed against her windpipe and she choked. Her fists shoved into his gut, but he only oomphed and persisted.
“I told you, you don’t want to do that. You want to be a good girl.” He didn’t let up, his face calm as he increased pressure. It was just uncomfortable at first, but pain soon followed. She struggled, trying to dislodge his grip, but he adjusted easily. And because his face didn’t so much as distort or reveal that he even regarded this—her—as an inconvenience, and because his practiced hands knew that it was less effort on his part to push on her throat rather than cover her mouth, Geeta realized he’d done all this before, and would again. Because fallen women like her, mixed with dirt, were asking for it, as did each Dalit girl who awoke at dawn, discomfort leading her to the field hem, checking left and right as she undid her drawstring, bared herself, squatted, made herself vulnerable.
He was going to kill her, Geeta thought as darkness bled, like a light dimming. She’d stupidly, weakly spared his life and this was to be her thanks.
EIGHTEEN
The night Ramesh broke her fingers, they’d shared a nice evening. He’d poured himself plenty of tharra, but not enough to curdle from sanguine to mean. She’d already filed it under one of their “good nights.” Dinner was, in Ramesh’s words, a huge improvement, especially considering her limited skills. He even sang along to the radio while she cleaned, clapping and rocking in an overly exaggerated dance. She giggled as she dried her hands. Part of the sound was genuine enjoyment, the other part was for his sake, contrived to show him she enjoyed him. Because she loved the moments—and strove to encourage them—when he was silly for her benefit, like her pleasure was a priority to him. Wasn’t that love? When a man was willing to be a fool for you?
His Hindi was clumsy, but who cared? He sang the wrong word. Geeta often wished she could remember which word, which error. As though context mattered.
She’d corrected him with a laugh.
“What, you think you’re smarter than me?” he snapped.
“What? No, I—”
“You finished twelfth standard, so what? It’s not like you did anything with it. You don’t work, you don’t do anything. Can’t even give me children.”
She’d thought they shared an understanding. That they’d tacitly agreed: since it just wasn’t happening, and they couldn’t afford to investigate whether it was one or both of them, that they’d turn their circumstance into a mutual choice, devoid of recriminations. Even in his deepest inebriation, when he slurred that she’d gained weight or was greying or didn’t care about him, on this point he didn’t slip and neither did she. But tonight, détente shattered, she blitzed, her diction barbed:
“Who’s to say the kharabi isn’t yours—”
And then her ring and pinky fingers were broken.
Yes, other things happened in the interim. Surely, there was the moment she’d realized what she’d said (flaw, failing, defect), the moment he grabbed her, the moment her nerves communicated pain, the moment she’d realized safety was a false assumption, the moment she twisted one way and he another. But none of that survived the sieve of memory. She remembered being cold. Her hand was so very cold, a chill pervaded the remainder of her body.
“God, Geeta, see what you made me do? See how you go too far?”
The pain delayed, then bloomed. It eventually ceased—returning cyclically with the monsoons—but her fingers never healed properly. How could they when there were chores? “It’s a painful lesson, for us both,” he repeated while observing her struggle with the cooking and cleaning, “but we’ve learned.”
He was correct.
Because wounds from one battle prepare you for another.
In Darshan’s bedroom, his hand against her throat, Geeta’s arm flailed behind her and encountered a thin bit of salvation. More specifically, a thin bit of the cold brass statue, perhaps Krishna’s flute. She told herself to stretch, but obedience required oxygen, which Darshan was currently stealing. That left pinky finger, broken by Ramesh years ago, could reach farther than its counterpart. She strained. The statue toppled on the ledge sideways, toward her. She snatched it and struck Krishna’s headpiece against Darshan’s temple.
Darshan released her immediately, staggering. She wheezed, drank in the air too fast and coughed. He cradled his head. “You mother-cunting bitch!” He lunged toward her, fist ready, and Geeta greeted him, the statue now in her dominant hand, with another blow. She swung it as she would a cricket bat. Radha was the culprit this time, her brass elbow clipping Darshan’s chin. He didn’t curse, but he wheeled, dizzy and disoriented, toward the bed, which was decorated with four bolster pillows and a matching spread.