Girls Burn Brighter Read online

  She thought of its smell when she watched it being slaughtered. The knife—clearly not sharp enough—had to be run back and forth across its neck as if it were a loaf of tough bread. In order to hold it down, they forced the goat onto its side, and one man sat on the hind part of its body, while two others each held a pair of legs. Another man held a bucket under its neck. But there was no need to have done all that. The goat, struggling at first, and then seeing the knife, or perhaps sensing the knife, let its body go limp. Losing hope, Poornima thought, or maybe losing nerve. The first slice of the knife left it bucking in pain, one quick surge that ran the length of its body and then came to rest. The knife drove deeper, but the goat still blinked, looking now into a grayness, Poornima guessed, a falling darkness, the globes now losing their light. Its tail wagged one last time, the muscles no longer beholden to their master, and the man who was sawing its neck put his thumb into the mouth of the young goat. Poornima wondered whether he meant to do it, to give the goat one last comfort, one last suckling, or whether it was simply accidental. The goat was dead a moment after. First its body, then its blinking. But something of it seemed to Poornima to go on for a moment longer, an energy, a feeling of life; and then that, too, went away.

  The smell—the urine and wilderness and hay scent of the goat—was drowned out by the scent of copper and other metals Poornima couldn’t exactly name: the smell of her hands after she’d lifted the bucket at the well, the smell of the freshly scrubbed pots, the smell of river water and silt. It was also hot, the scent, and flies gathered around the goat in great armies. They drank and drank, as armies do, and then they settled on the flesh.

  * * *

  That night, Poornima lay awake for a long while. She thought she would be kept awake by images of the goat, the globes of its eyes, but she wasn’t. She was instead thinking of her mother. They had, when she was nine or ten, set out to visit Poornima’s maternal grandparents’ village. Kaza was a two-hour bus ride away, and she and her mother had started early, hoping to be back by nightfall. Her mother had woken her while it was still dark and washed Poornima’s hair, then scrubbed her with a cleansing powder that left her skin red and tender. Then she’d had Poornima put on her best langa, red bangles, and silver anklets, which had been part of her mother’s dowry; on the way to the bus stop, her mother had splurged on two pink roses, one for each of their braids. The bus ride had started a little after seven A.M. It was packed with people. They sat in the front, in the women’s section, with the back reserved for men. Poornima stepped over chickens, over bundles of produce and kindling that cluttered the aisle; babies wailed and fussed. She sat next to her mother and looked out the window. She’d rarely been on a bus, and the speed with which the fields spun past her window delighted her. She looked out and tried to count all the dogs and the pigs and the goats they passed. But there were so many she lost count, and started over with huts, and when even those became too many, she laughed and thought, Mountains, I’ll count mountains.

  But then, with a loud clank and a screech, the bus came to a halt. Everyone looked at everyone else. A few of the men in the back yelled out. The bus driver, seated calmly, upright, with a neat mustache and a freshly pressed khaki uniform, turned the engine. It ground but didn’t catch. The voices in the back rose. “Aré, aré, maybe the RTC will send a car.” “Sure they will,” someone yelled back, “its name is Gowri and she runs on grass.” The driver told them to shut up.

  The bus driver got out—along with most of the men—and looked under the hood. Poornima heard the sound of a wrench or a metal pick clanging against the engine, maybe, and then it went still. The bus dropped. Actually sagged, as if it were suddenly too exhausted to go on. The women, too, exited the bus. The babies quiet now, alert.

  The day was cool, late in October, and the morning chill still hung in the air.

  Poornima got down with her mother. She’d brought a shawl with her and this she wrapped around Poornima. Most of the mothers had already settled on the side of the road, their children running or playing in the dirt. The men huddled around the open hood.

  Poornima looked up and down the road. There was a bullock cart in the far distance, almost a haze, coming toward them. Women in colorful saris tucked between their legs dotted the fields, bent over the flooded rice paddies. There was a small temple, white against the emerald stalks of rice. She thought of that temple, and of the black carved deity inside, and the simple offering of a flower—maybe a pink rose, the kind that was in her hair—left at its feet. She settled, then, beside her mother. The men were now smoking their beedies, spitting, laughing, and the women minded the children. Another bus was due to go past in an hour or two, and they would all pile into that one, space allowing. Some would probably have to climb on top of the bus, or hang by the bar on the door. But for now, everyone seemed perfectly content to sit there by the side of the road. The sun like a small yellow bird, fluttering awake.

  Poornima turned to her mother. She had never been alone with her; her father or brothers or sister had always been nearby, or just outside the hut. She was sent on errands for her mother, but never with her mother, and when they’d traveled to her grandparents’ house in the past, one or more of her siblings had always been with them. In a kind of revelation—in the morning light, sitting on the red dirt by the side of the road—she saw that her mother was beautiful. Even with all the other young mothers crowded around, and the blossoming adolescent girls, youthful and lovely, giggling among themselves, her mother was still the most beautiful. Her eyes were deep black pools, with tiny silver fish gleaming in them when she laughed. Her hair curled at the nape of her neck in ringlets, and her lips were the pink of the rose. Even the dark circles under her eyes had a certain prettiness, as if they were gray crescents, moonlit, pulling in the light.

  “Are you hungry?” her mother asked, opening the bundle of last night’s rice and spiced yogurt and the dollop of mango pickle she’d brought from home.

  “Yes,” Poornima said.

  And her mother, unthinkingly, her gaze not even on Poornima, but on the distant horizon, watching for the second bus, perhaps, or maybe the approaching bullock cart, took handfuls of rice, rolled them into balls in her palm, and—as she had when Poornima had been a small child—fed them to her. Poornima chewed. The rice, having been cradled in her mother’s hand, tasted better than anything she’d ever eaten; she couldn’t imagine a greater food. Her mother, though, still paid her no attention. Her thoughts were elsewhere. On her husband, maybe, or the children she’d left behind, or the chores she’d left undone. But for now, for these few moments, Poornima thought her mother’s body was enough. It was more than she could ever ask for. To be fed by her hand, to sit next to her, so close she could feel the warmth of her skin in the chill of an October morning, and to know that life, its crowds, would soon separate them. But not now. For now, just until the next bus, her body belonged to Poornima. And when her mother finally noticed the tears brimming in her daughter’s eyes, she stopped, looked at her quizzically, and then she smiled. “The bus will be here. Any minute now. There’s no need to cry, is there? We won’t be out here for much longer.”

  Poornima nodded, the rice having caught in her throat.

  7

  Savitha shook her awake early the next morning, while it was still dark. “Will you make tea?”

  Poornima rolled off their mat. She folded the blankets, placed them on top of her pillow, and stacked them in the corner of the hut. Her father and brothers and sister were asleep.

  “So early,” she said, yawning, gathering her hair into a knot. “Why are you up so early?”

  “That sari isn’t going to make itself. Besides, your father said I could make extra if I finished six by your wedding day.”

  “Six? That’s one sari every three days.”

  “Seven. I still have to make yours.”

  Poornima shook her head. She cut a branch off the neem tree and chewed on it. By the time Savitha was settled at her loom,
Poornima brought in the tea. Savitha took a sip. She took another. “No sugar?”

  “My father’s saving everything for the wedding.”

  “Has he even seen you yet?”

  Poornima shrugged. “I told you. He has exams.”

  “Exams, Poori? How can he dream of you if he hasn’t seen you?”

  Poornima blushed. And then she was confused. Her mother’s one-year death ceremony had kept her occupied, for a time, but now she was back to wondering. It was not uncommon to marry someone without first seeing them, or hearing their voice, but it struck her as strange that Kishore, her groom, showed no interest in meeting her. His parents had already come twice to handle the dowry negotiations, the Indravalli cousin had stopped by last week for evening tea, and her father and Ramayya were going to Guntur in a few days to shop for the wedding, and yet he had never arrived, not even on his way home to Namburu from college. Not once. He actually had to pass through Indravalli to get there! She shook her head. It would be nice, she thought, to see him, but she couldn’t insist. Insist to whom? Besides, it was a good match, as everyone said. A college-educated match; Poornima couldn’t hope for more. And that idiosyncrasy that Ramayya had alluded to: no one had mentioned it again. It was probably nothing.

  Poornima looked around her. Savitha had finished her tea; the empty cup rested on the dirt floor of the hut. She was working away at her loom. Sunlight flooded in, through the open eastern end of the hut, and Poornima wondered what he was doing this very instant, her groom. Was he watching the sun rise? Was he thinking of her?

  She also wondered, at times, whether her father would miss her when she married and moved to Namburu, or wherever her new husband would find a job. Because it occurred to her, despite what Savitha said, that she could possibly move farther away than Namburu. Maybe to Guntur. Maybe as far away as Vizag. Regardless, she would no longer be here. Would her brothers and sister miss her? Her sister was now old enough to cook and clean; she was twelve, and she could perhaps, after a time, begin working on the charkha. At least for two or three years, until she, too, got married. Family—the thing that she and her father and her siblings were bound by—suddenly seemed strange to her. What had collected them like seashells on a beach? And placed them together, on a windowsill?

  She thought, in the weeks leading to her wedding, that she would ask her father. Not whether he would miss her—that she obviously couldn’t ask—but whether he would miss her mango pickle, say, or the stuffed eggplant she made, his favorite. But then, Poornima thought, she didn’t have to; she already knew the answer. It had come to her when she’d overheard him and Ramayya talking, and her father had told him a story Poornima had never heard before.

  The story was about when she was little, just over a year old, and she and her parents had gone to the temple in Vijayawada. It had been raining all morning. It had been the day of her mundan, the offering of a baby’s hair to the gods, and afterward, they’d found a covered spot, a fisherman’s palm-frond shelter, on the shores of the Krishna. Poornima’s mother had laid out the food for their lunch. By this time, the rain had slowed, he told Ramayya, but it was still gray, the mist still hovering over the river, which was only a few yards away. According to her father, while they had been busy laying out the lunch, Poornima had squirmed away. “Straight into the water,” her father said. “Probably she followed a boat or some other kid into the water. She did that a lot. Followed whatever caught her eye.” Within seconds, he continued, she was up to her neck. “Her mother panicked. I jumped up and ran as fast as I could. It was only a few steps, but it seemed to take ages. Ages. I held her in my sight, I willed her to stay right there. If I even said, if I even whispered, ‘Don’t move!’ I was afraid she would move. Fall. Be taken by the river. So I didn’t say anything. I just looked at her and willed her to be still.” And she was, he told Ramayya, she was as still as a statue. Her newly shorn head gleaming under a break in the clouds.

  When I got near the waterline though, he said, I stopped. I know I should’ve plucked her up and given her a slap, but I couldn’t. You see, he said, she looked like she was nothing. Just a piece of debris. In that mist, in that gray, in that vast, slippery rush of water, she looked like nothing. Maybe the head of a fish tossed back in the water. Or a piece of driftwood, not even very big. I looked at her, he said, I looked and I looked, and I could hear her mother shouting, running toward me, but I couldn’t move. I was standing there, and I was thinking. I was thinking: She’s just a girl. Let her go. By then, her mother had come up from behind me, and she’d snatched her out. Poornima was crying, he said, her mother was crying, too. Maybe they both knew what I had thought. Maybe it was written on my face, he told Ramayya. And then her father had let out a little laugh. “That’s the thing with girls, isn’t it?” he’d said. “Whenever they stand on the edge of something, you can’t help it, you can’t. You think, Push. That’s all it would take. Just one little push.”

  * * *

  A week before the wedding, Ramayya brought an urgent message from Namburu. “What is it? What is it?” Poornima’s father asked him, sitting on the edge of the hemp bed, holding a cup of weak, unsweetened tea, his eyebrows raised.

  “It’s the dowry,” Ramayya said, shaking his head. “They want twenty thousand more.” Ramayya’s tea was sweetened, but he still looked up at Poornima as if she were the reason for this sudden demand.

  “Twenty thousand! But why?”

  “They must’ve heard. Something. Maybe from the Repalle people. Who knows what they’ve heard. But they know it’s too late. You’ve committed, and you’ll have to pay up.”

  Her father gave Poornima a look of such loathing that she backed into the hut. She thought of the mother from Namburu, and how her kind words had turned so quickly to dust; she thought of the resignation in the father’s eyes, the sister’s laugh. But where was he? she wondered. Where was the groom? And what had he to say about this sudden, inexplicable demand?

  The next morning, Savitha announced with a smile, “I’m starting it this afternoon.”

  “Don’t bother,” Poornima said gloomily. Then she told her about the increased dowry demand, and how her father had said that even if he sold both of his looms, he’d still barely have enough.

  “What will he do?”

  Poornima shrugged and looked out at the blazing light of late morning.

  The heat—after a slight cooling—had risen again like a wounded beast. Dripping, thrusting, moving across the plains of Andhra Pradesh with a hatred so intense it had killed more than three hundred people the previous week. Anytime after midmorning was far too hot to work; by afternoon, everyone slept from exhaustion, waking with sweat pooled around their bodies. Even so, and even with the heat, just as she’d said she would, Savitha began making the sari that afternoon. After lunch, while everyone else spread out their mats, she strung the loom with the indigo thread, with red thread along the border. “Sit with me,” she said to Poornima. “Bring your mat in here.” Poornima sat against one of the wooden poles until her eyes nearly closed, and then she dragged her mat inside.

  They talked; Poornima stayed awake as long as she could, until her eyelids, in the searing heat of midday, closed like lead. Mostly, she listened to Savitha talk. She told Poornima that her father was sick. Sicker than he had been. She said most of the extra money she’d made over the past few weeks had gone toward his medicines. “But we may still have enough by next year,” she said. Her face soft and ochered against the surrounding bright white of the sun, her braid pulled into a knot at the back of her head. Concentrated now, focused on the working of the loom.

  Poornima heard it clattering, repetitive, and yet so like a lullaby. The swooshing of the shuttle felt like water washing over her, and Poornima closed her eyes. Savitha was telling her something. Something about one of her sisters, and how she’d scorched a pot of milk. And then she heard her saying that they were building a cinema hall in Indravalli. Maybe we can go to a cinema when you come to visit, she wa
s saying. Floor seats, of course. But imagine, Poori, a cinema!

  Poornima felt herself sink, sink like a stone. She knew she was asleep, but she could still hear Savitha’s voice. It seemed to go on and on. Like the murmuring of wind, the fall of rain. And she heard her say, Don’t forget a thing. Not one thing. If you forget, it’s like you’ve joined the stone at the bottom of the sea. The one we’re all tied to. So remember everything. Press it. Press it between the folds of your heart like a flower. And when you want to look, really want to look, Poori, hold it up against the light.

  * * *

  That night, Savitha let Poornima sleep. She sat at the loom alone. She adjusted her lantern so that the light fell on the sari, half done nearly. The indigo thread was simply the night, weaving itself into the sky, the stars. Her hands and her feet merely the day, watching it fall.

  Her mind wandered. The clacking of the loom led her away. Back to her childhood. Back to what she had pressed into the folds of her own heart. What she now held up against the light.

  And it was this: She was three, maybe four. Her father was doing odd jobs at the time, and on some days he would take her along, whenever her mother was busy cleaning or collecting. On this day, he was working for a rich family whose daughter was getting married. Her father’s job was to make the tiny sugar molds shaped like birds. Savitha had no idea what the birds, hardly bigger than her hand, would be used for (decoration, her father told her, but how could they, she wondered, when they looked so tasty), so she sat quietly and watched the pot, and then the molds, hoping some of the sugar would dribble out. Her father had only been given a dozen molds, so the pot was left to simmer while they waited for each batch to harden. Once they set, he carefully lifted out each of the white sugar birds, their wings outstretched, and placed them in the sun to dry. She wondered whether she could lick one, just once, without anyone noticing, but when she looked over, her father was watching her. By now, he’d made nearly a hundred or so. She sat hunched by the birds for some minutes when she heard her father gasp; his eyes grew wide when she turned to him. He pointed. “Look. Look at that one. Its little wing is broken.”