It was the day before Bhai Dooj when Amma took the woolen socks with holes around the big toe and stuffed them into a cotton brassiere on her daughter's chest. It had something to do with the fact that two hours ago, Amma's brothers, of whom there were three, had descended on the house in Jhapana, from towns named Basauli, Minapur, and Dharbanga, and had brought with them wives who wore saris of heavy sequin and dusty children who rode atop rattan suitcases filled with hairpins for the girl and starchy shirts for the boy.
They lived at that time on the second floor of the yellow building, which was the only construction in Jhapana to look unlike the others around it. After his wife's death, the landlord, Chaudhary, who wore a stump for a left leg, had gathered his sparse furnishings and the beloved, nearly rabid dog of his deceased spouse and relocated to the unit below. The upstairs rooms, which had once contained a marriage, had been subsequently stripped into two equivalent apartments for two equally high bidders, and the current tenants had arrived while Chikoo was still wrapped in hospital blankets, her infant footprints stamped promptly in red on the entryway walls.
On the morning of the festival, some time before the guests were due to arrive, Kailash straddled the parapet of the second-floor verandah with the 20-pack of silk marigolds from the storeroom. In matters of decoration and holiday affairs, Amma was practical and exacting. The waste of any substance, above all money, bored her endlessly. She was fascinated instead by, and considered a superior use of her intellect, the dusting of these stiff artificial flowers purchased some 20 years ago, spraying them year and again with a smartly devised water, making them look alive enough to suggest a purchase when there had in fact been none.
From the inside sofa, Chikoo watched her brother negotiate the distance between each string so they were far enough to give the impression of abundance, but not so far that people would mistake them as belonging to the next-door tenant. He relieved the threads between the callouses of his palms, and the girl, from her position, considered for a moment reaching between the balcony's pillars, grabbing the leg of his that dangled so fearlessly off the building, and giving it a good shake. Just enough to give him a fright, but not so much that he fell and ended up like the limping landlord, with some part of him later found in the mouth of his carnivorous beast. And just when she decided it was in fact a good idea, that any punishment would be worth the look on his sweaty, pockmarked face, the pressure cooker began to sing, and Amma, who was watching the television with one eye and the precarious limb of her son with the other, ruffled everyone's feathers to see to it.
It was in these hours, once the ornamentation of the house was complete and the food prepared, when it was best to make oneself scarce. In the absence of tasks or guests at the door yet, there was a vacuum in obligation and duty that drove Amma into a sort of agitation. Chikoo, who was particularly perceptive of her mother's aseismic shifts, had learned to use these hours to weave herself in and out of shops several kilometers from the house until someone took pity and offered a hard candy or last week's magazine with an unfinished sudoku. Festival time meant a shift in Jhapana's center of mass. Everything was as open as it always was, and yet, business was conducted in a sort of meaningless fashion. People emerged for emerging's sake. They came to talk and sit on stone slabs and ask each other those sorts of questions where the answer was already known or scarcely mattered. And so, on that day before Bhai Dooj, Chikoo managed a successful loot of two peppermint patties and only a light scolding for having trespassed the school grounds on a holiday, which was more than most could say.
And when she returned to her yellow house later that afternoon—pockets spilling and teeth smeared with acidity—she found it filled with men and women and a vacation noise that could only be created by Komal Mami, who at once smudged her orange lipstick up and down her niece's cheek and whisked her into the guest room where the sisters-in-law were splayed out like spokes on a tire.
"Chikoo, ey! How big you have become!" Komal Mami pulled the girl into the chasm between her sari legs, and traces of talc in the creases of her mouth fell like dying fireworks into the chiffon below.
"She's becoming a young woman. Look at this, Ganga!" Sheetal Mami ran her fingers along Chikoo's forearm. "Becoming a lady, yes?"
"Thank God, she didn't inherit that hairy body of her father," Komal Mami said loudly. "How you still do it when you see all that hair on him... It's a miracle." The women laughed and Amma tickled her lips.
"Shy or what?" Tara Mami pulled Chikoo for herself. "You are one of us only."
"So, girl, tell us about school." Sheetal Mami fanned under her arms with her free palm. They looked to the girl like river lizards drying on a baking rock. She had the thought that if they stayed there forever, they might fossilize into the yellow house with mouths open like this, only to be found in some archeological museum's hallway eons later.
"She goes to a girl's school, isn't that the case, Chikoori?" Komal Mami asked.
The girl nodded.
"No wonder there's nothing to tell. What is this, Ganga?"
"All the good schools are like that only," Amma's eyes made a circle.
"Obviously, they are!" Tara Mami said. "Girls who go to co-ed end up like that Rama." The woman all made an agreeing noise.
"Ey, did she ever give that glass Tupperware back?"
"Finally, after two months. That too, empty."
"Empty?!"
"Not even filling it with chocolates..."
"Some girls are like that only. Not knowing how to act."
"At the kitty, Sonia confirmed it, by the way."
"No!"
"Yes, of course. You know, she knows everything."
"Yes, yes, it's true," the women nodded. Sonia was a toucan woman. She had a long toucan nose that sniffed out dirt from the ground and left any place spotless and sterile once she had passed through it.
"It is true, after all," she sighed, "that Rama is not really married to that man she lives with." The women gasped.
Chikoo had only met the woman named Rama once. It was during Holi time in Basauli. Rama had run past her on the staircase, holding her skirt up. There was pink smeared across her bare chest, and she had smelled of burning wood. Tara Mami, who was her next-door neighbor and the family's host during the festival, had inspected it all from her balcony, which is where she felt women of maternal age should spend Holi, rather than drenching themselves in public, showing every shape where their bodies bent and dipped.
In the yellow house, the men erupted at something outside and clinked glasses of syrupy red drink. Inside the guest room, it was coming out that Rama had never been married at all. Not in the way that mattered, at least. No, she was doing a secret live-in: simply pretending she had been married in the village. It was a matter of love and stupidity, as was typical in these cases. Because where were her in-laws, then, if she was really married? Or her parents, for that matter? Never came to visit once they had settled? How could it be?
Each time one woman said dirty Rama's name, the others buzzed like black magnets in the embroidered sheets. Amma turned herself onto her belly as she laughed and pushed her neck back at the story of Rama and the Tupperware, the top of her sari momentarily giving way to the thing underneath it, and for a while, Chikoo watched as they moved up and down and up and down with her heavy breaths. Have you seen her V-neck blouses? Amma said. It made the women clap hands. She rolled her head into her chin as she whispered something horrible about that letter, and the girl knew her mother must be terribly intelligent because she had made the women feel that warm, spreading feeling one only got from gossip. Her mother was bad. Bad, just like her, having thoughts of shaking Kailash off the railing.
Ultimately, it was Sheetal Mami who introduced the issue of the blood. They all became quite interested then. Interested enough that they forgot about pink Rama. Amma said that it had not happened... not yet, but the signs were there and it would be any day now, since the girl's chest had already begun showing when she wore tight tops, and she had been eating enough for a small army.
"Best to give plenty of dal during this time," Sheetal Mami said.
"Oh. And papaya," Tara Mami instructed, and the women approved.
"You hear that Chikoori? Soon your Amma says!"
It was the following day, once the festival had ended, and the marigolds had been returned to the stables and the last of the Mamis had disappeared with promises of sending the children in one month for the winter holiday, that Amma pulled Chikoo back to the guest room and placed the sock bra. The bra by itself felt loose around her chest, and the air of the room rushed to fill the in between of her ribs and the lace design. She felt she could put her hand in it and leave it there like a sling, and it would feel quite warm and restful. When Amma watched the empty space from a foot away, she bit her lip, looking sad, and then, as if it had come to her in a confusing dream, she pulled the socks with the dirty holes from the bottom of her wardrobe and rolled them into the air gap.
It was the feeling of the wool ball like a soft stone within her, bouncing ridiculously on her shoulder, that was most exceptional. To call it uncomfortable would be inaccurate. It afforded a certain novelty to old movements, making them exciting to perform. Like applying nail polish.
Amma said to wear the sock bra at all times, to take it off only to sleep, and to bury it underneath the laundry pile every third day—or sooner if she had sweat terribly. Most importantly, she was never to let anybody see it. Amma made her jump up and down, and when displeased with the result, secured each sock with a safety pin. Tuesday of the following week, she decided, would be a good day for the bleeding. She said it languidly. Like a conductor announcing a stop. It would be auspicious on that day for the bleeding to occur. People would come in a few weeks anyway for the winter holiday. By then, it—the bleeding—would be over, which would mean they could do the rituals, and they wouldn't have to call people again... separately. No extra cooking, cleaning, and the marigolds would be out already. Although this time they would have to purchase real ones, because people would examine the house closer. It said something about the family, the way these sorts of functions were conducted.
Would it be a lot? To do all that again in just one week? It would. But it would also be important. It was already taking too long. Eventually, nature would take its course, and so it wouldn't be a lie completely. It was normal for these things to start and not rear their heads for a year. It would appear eventually, and so it would not be a lie. Not for long. Amma ironed the guests' blankets to a crisp. "The same people will use them again in one week," she said. "Detergent doesn't grow on trees."
Chikoo only asked if the bleeding would need a knife's cut to start and if it would hurt when it happened, but by then the last cloth had been pressed, and Amma was no longer in the mood to discuss it. She rolled her eyes and told the girl to put her hand on her mother's head and promise to never utter a word. Not about the sock bra and not about the bleeding that would not be a bleeding but neither a lie. Not unless she wished Amma to die a painful, brutal death, leaving her alone with her father and Kailash.
Chikoo imagined a world without Amma in it. She imagined a silence that came from the birds slitting their throats, and the frogs no longer responding to calls from the sky. She imagined a brown grime growing along the walls of the kitchen sink and the green water piling up and up in it, till it flowed like a polluted river through the center of the house, into all their bedrooms, then down the stairs into the landlord's home where the dog would bark at the fluid forcing its path through the raw earth. She took the oath surely. And when she was done with it, Amma left the room and Chikoo ran.
She ran down the steps of the house and blew an enormous kiss to the drooling animal beneath her. She ran down the street past the convenience store that sold toothpaste and dish soap and ice cream, and around the bus stop where the Dada with dementia waited all day for route number 53, which had stopped running years before Chikoo's birth. She ran into the street where the cars honked angrily, and then past the tea stand where the friends of her father were holding court and laughing from their bellies at the way Chikoo's knees hit each other as she moved, her hips too weak to hold them apart. She ran down the mud road where the wheat field was just in sight and turned left down the path before the corn one emerged. She squeezed herself into a hole in the fence around the sports yard that fit her body perfectly because she herself had cut it out not long ago. And then, when she had finally crawled onto the mildewed grass around the rust iron track and clutched a ream of it in her hands, she stopped.
The Mamta Sharma Secondary School for Girls was home to the only racetrack within 100 kilometers of Jhapana and had siphoned not one but two girls into the Indian National Athletic League. Chikoo had watched them on the international sports channel, where a distinguished looking white gentleman with a hay-colored mustache had tied bronze medals around their necks, and the very next day, the school had called a special assembly to honor the coach, Abdul Kareem, who was the only Muslim the town treated with such consideration. Chikoo herself had quite enjoyed running and especially running on the track around her Mamta school sports yard. She was limited only by her ability to do it well. The issue had always been in her knees. They simply loved to touch. She knew the moment Amma placed the sock bra, buoyant like a magic ball inside her shirt, that running in it would feel most incredible.
The next moment would be something she would remember years later as a grown woman. She would remember herself still bent on the grass, untangling her pants from the wires of the fence, when the white legs appeared before her for the first time. Before she would see Abdul Kareem or the person to whom the legs belonged, she would see its flesh. The jiggling it made. The parts that hung off and moved differently than the parts around it, like a machine where one thing had to pull and the other had to push to make something go forward. It would be hard to explain. The words hadn't been made then and would never be made.
The woman of the legs wore jersey shorts that grazed the northern pole of her knees, like basketball players on Kailash's favorite team who won matches early in the morning when it was evening in America. Her legs were adult legs: bare, hairless, beautiful, and white. They caught the sun as they sliced the air, and the woman's face looked at once in pain and infinite calm. Her black hair was held tight in the back of her skull, and her face was a kind of green-brown one associated with the rot of algae, but that now seemed so evidently a symbol of life in an unexpected place. Chikoo quickly wished that like the girls from school, this green woman too would come on television so she might sit close to the screen and watch her legs again and again.
The legs gave a final, powerful leap across the white, chalk line and then suddenly stopped, collapsing into the ground. In a moment that could only be a dream, Abdul Kareem, who was sitting on his toes in the mud pit where the girls normally threw shot-put, leapt several feet into the air, threw his whistle across the way, and ran toward the fallen lady, dropping into the lane beside her. Then, he laughed a maniacal laugh and grabbed her face with his two hands and did something terrible on it that Chikoo had never seen two people do.
It was the woman who noticed Chikoo first. Abdul Kareem's face was pushing into her neck, and she had, for an instant, looked beyond him, laughing and squirming, when she saw the invested voyeur, twisted at the spine like she too was part of the neck thing. She pushed the man away, and he turned around and muttered something under his breath. The woman mumbled something back.
Abdul Kareem rose from the ground, his hockey stick legs widened as he made himself big and wrapped his stopwatch round and round his fist before he screamed. "Ey Chikoo! How many times have I told you not to come to the school yard after hours, ey! Idiot girl. Should I tell Principal?"
"I only came to practice running."
"But you should not be here. Go home, girl."
The woman whispered something then, and Abdul Kareem shook his head.
"It's my school. Why should I go?"
"Talking back to a teacher? Foolish girl! Disappear at once."
The woman whispered again to Abdul Kareem, then smiled and slid past his body toward Chikoo. Her hair loosened from the rubber holding and frayed itself like a halo around each of her ears, and through the sweat in her shirt, Chikoo could make out the edges of her own cotton bra. Perhaps, she thought, if she could look at it a while longer, she might figure out what this bra was filled with. The woman had an odd way of running when she did it slowly like this. Her hands were tucked between her chest and her armpit, and Chikoo raised her own—which normally dangled at her waist while running—to match. They ran like that in the lanes beside each other, and the sock bra jumped happily up and happily down.
"So, you're the one named Chikoo?" the woman asked, when they were far enough away to forget the mud pit. Her leg flesh moved lazily now, but it was no less beautiful. No less at all.
"It means mud apple."
"No way. Mud apple is my favorite fruit."
Chikoo nodded. The blunt end of Amma's safety pin dug into her chest, threatening to open and pierce the first organ in its path, but she dared not stop. Behind them, Abdul Kareem towered at the spot from which he had risen, and his eyes followed them carefully.
"I'm Sheena, by the way. Abdul's wife."
"Abdul Kareem is married?"
"Well, newly, yes."
"Newly?"
"One week new."
"Is that why he put his mouth on your mouth? Because you're married?"
The woman laughed. "So, you saw that!"
The girl nodded.
"Well, yes. Abdul kissed me because we are married. But also, because we are in love."
"You have loved him for one week?"
"Can you imagine?" the woman laughed again.
"I like your shorts," the girl said.
"Ah, thank you. I like your pants. Though I think you might have made a hole in them."
Chikoo stopped her running and looked down at herself. A clean tear had travelled silently up the distance between her ankle and her shin. Amma would make a scene. They were running again. Past the benches where the chief guests sat during sports day and around the flagpole that had nothing on it but bird droppings and factory soot. Sheena breathed through her nose, and Chikoo breathed through her stomach.
"What standard are you?" she asked. She talked not like she was running but like she was sitting on the floor, with a bowl of snack in her lap.
"Eighth."
"And what do you like?"
"PT. English. Not science. Not math."
"Good choices," she said.
Chikoo had never imagined favorites as being choices, but now she believed that she had indeed chosen these subjects to love. Like clothes, shoes, and sweets from a sweet box.
Before she returned home, the PT master made her promise she would never tell anyone what had happened that day. She had arrived to find the track empty. She had run alone and then returned home alone. If she broke the secret, he would hear about it, and then it would be between her and whatever God she believed in. The new wife stood behind them, stretching her white legs beneath her. She seemed amused at her husband incarnate in this devilish form. And as Chikoo crawled back through the hole from which she had come, the woman called out behind her, "I'll be here again tomorrow!"
The following morning, it was Kailash who, despite normally pretending his sister was an invisible wind, had taken it upon himself to become a bother and ask very loudly where Chikoo was going early on a Sunday, and if she wanted people to say horrible things about their family and her upbringing. Inadvertently, the sound of his voice brought Amma scurrying from the kitchen to add to the enquiry. She muttered unintelligibly about a group project, and before the brother could scream liar and the mother could banish her from the outdoors forever, she ran her knock knees all the way to the track, where she could be again among white legs and lips that enjoyed licking each other because they were married and also in love.
The Earth had gone wet from the night's rain, but more devastating than the puddles splotched along her track was the sight of Sheena on it this day, skipping across her vision in long, Lycra trackpants. It was a cruel, universe-conspiring joke, Chikoo thought. If she were a different sort of girl, she might have complained, but instead she quietly willed herself to imagine the sides of those legs touching the seams of Lycra cloth and how happy they must be in there, smiling some big, running smile. Even if she couldn't see them, to imagine them this way—it was helpful.
They ran faster than they had the day before. Sheena explained it was important to change running speeds like this in order to improve. Chikoo's breath caught on the meter markers, and she reminded herself that eventually they would have to stop, and then the pain would matter no longer. Somewhere over there, Abdul Kareem continued to sulk.
"Why do you run in a schoolyard like this?" Chikoo panted after one round of the field.
"It's the only track in Jhapana."
"So, you run every day?"
"Somedays. Other days I lift weights. But on those days, we have to take the highway to go to Woman's Gym in Bindalapur. So, we can only go when you all don't have games period on Wednesday and Friday."
"Because Abdul Kareem must drive?"
"He is certainly better at it than I."
"So, when we have games period, what do you do?"
"I tend to the house. I exercise at home. I cook our meals."
Chikoo felt the heaviness of their lives intertwined in this way. The nature of the hours of her day changed the nature of the hours of Sheena's day, as if they had known each other for a lifetime. One could almost imagine them knotted in a cloud of running sand. Like a twister of dust and storm, rising above the porcelain bust of a fuming Abdul Kareem, ascending higher and higher into the sky with the speed of their mud legs, until they rose above the schoolyard and all of Jhapana, and all of Bihar, and all of India, it's little V shape made up of everyone they knew, looking up at them in wonder.
"So, you're a body builder then?"
"Well, not really. I'm a runner."
"Your job is to run?"
"Sometimes. If I win a competition, I get money. I run for Bihar. And just one time, I ran for India."
"You have been on television?"
The wife chuckled. "I've been on television."
"On Star Sports?"
"That, I don't know."
"Okay, but you are a sports star then?"
The woman laughed again. "I don't know about that, either. But I feel quite lucky to run."
"There are no sports stars in Jhapana."
"What about you?"
"Me?"
"Yes. You're here as much as I am."
"I'm no star shar."
"You run a lot."
Abdul Kareem intercepted them. "Girl, you've had your fun. Now, Sheena needs to practice. You go."
"But Abdul Sir, please! I was just learning all about Sheena Aunty's sports stardom."
The woman made an interesting mouth. "Fine. One more lap," he said. "But fast. And keep those stupid knees apart. They are a terrible influence on each other."
They departed again, and when they had reached a sufficient distance, Chikoo asked "Do you have children?"
"No way!" the woman said. Chikoo decided it was the most perfect answer she had ever heard. She should say those words for everything. Just like Sheena had said them. No way.
"You?
"Me?"
"Any children?"
"I'm fourteen!" Chikoo laughed.
Sheena shrugged.
"Why didn't you wear shorts today?"
"In the wash."
"Mm. Two of the girls from Mamta ran for India, too, you know?"
"Lalitha and Saraswati."
"You know them?!"
"I lived in Delhi before. Before marriage, I mean. It's where I met Abdul. Many years ago, it was. At the national training center. So yes, I've met the girls. They lived in my house during the tournament time."
"In Delhi? New Delhi?"
"Well, old Delhi really. My family house is near Chawri Bazaar."
"Your family? Do they pray at the Jama Masjid?"
"No."
"You're Muslim?"
"In a manner of speaking."
"And your house is in Purani Dilli, yes?"
"You're right."
"It's the biggest mosque in India, no? Why don't they pray there?"
"They don't really pray ever."
"They don't pray ever?"
"Ah, their relationship with God is... it's complicated."
"Even on Eid?"
"Eid is just another day."
"But it's a holy day."
"Nothing is holy if you don't believe in God."
"So, what do your parents believe in?"
"Nothing really. They believe in being good at what you do."
Chikoo thought about it. Certainly, it was good to believe that. She wondered if one could pray to being good at what you do. If they could make a God out of it—surely they could—and build a temple and a mosque, people would give donations like in schools. Bribe authorities so their oldest child may secure a spot.
"What about you? Do you pray ever?" she asked the girl.
"Sometimes."
"When?"
"When my Amma says."
Sheena smiled. It occurred to Chikoo that although the ground felt quite real beneath her feet, it was possible it was not. Either that, or they were in some sort of television show where she was a foot soldier to a warrior princess from the Japanese cartoon channel that Amma had cut from cable when Kailash performed poorly on his final exams. She felt Sheena's Delhi may well have been Paris, and Paris may well have been Neptune, which would be the next planet in the world to go extinct.
Chikoo decided if Sheena ever returned to her hometown, left Jhapana to go back to Delhi, and took Abdul Kareem with her, she would die. Or she would steal Amma's jewels from the cupboard and climb a green interstate bus and hide in the dusty corners that made up Chawri Bazaar until someone found her and sent her back home. If they did, she would wait one month to earn her parents' trust, then escape again. Even if it meant forever, she would keep going back.
"If I lived in Delhi, I would never come here," Chikoo said.
"Really?"
"Yes."
"What makes you say that?"
"Nothing in Jhapana. Whole world in Delhi."
"What if it was for someone you loved?"
"I don't know. No, I think," Chikoo said between breaths.
"What about if the man you loved spent his entire life trying to make young girls into sports stars? Even then?"
"I don't know. Maybe."
"In a way, that's lucky too, then."
"Lucky?"
"Lucky you never met someone who made you fall in love so much."
"Why lucky?"
"Because then it can still happen to you."
It was lucky that Abdul Kareem was the sort of man visibly disconcerted by the tears of a woman. It made him shift his bottom part on the ground and perform any task to end the act. It was with a fair amount of ease then that Chikoo managed to secure the right to sit in the shot-put area and watch the man time his wife on the red-black stopwatch as she threw her feet up and down the same hundred meters of the track that seemed to her a type of second home. She ran it with eyes closed. Like a baby suspended in the womb of its mother or the possession of a grandmother at the temple on a festival day. Chikoo thought of everything else in the world that moved as it should, and how all that perfect movement was distilled into the frightening leaps of Abdul Kareem's beautiful, weeklong bride.
At the end, Sheena sat on the grass at the center of the track where they sometimes played football, and she leaned her body over one leg and turned her face into an expression of happy pain. Chikoo lay beside her, acting the same motion and expression she made.
"Will you come here again tomorrow?"
"No. Tomorrow, you have games period."
"Oh."
"But I'll be back on Tuesday. Early though. Before your school."
"Like four o'clock?"
"Four thirty."
"I'll come."
"Ah. That's dangerous, Chikoo. You should ask your mother."
Chikoo thought of Amma. Her silk flowers, her spraying bottle, her hawk eyes, the overflowing kitchen sink, and the promise of a painful, brutal death. It was possible Amma too had white legs like Sheena's under her sari, and that one day she would show them to her. Surely, no one died of broken promises, only diseases that made you fever and shake and turned your skin yellow. She knew that now. And so, when Abdul Kareem was far, far away, Chikoo leaned over her own knee, turned toward Sheena, and whispered as loudly as she could. "There is a dirty sock in my bra."
It was dark with the darkness of morning. Different than the darkness of night, because it wasn't evil nor nefarious, but a darkness that knew it had to leave soon. Anxious, collecting its things, taking the final sip. Chikoo slipped into the street, and the dog, which slept behind closed doors, stirred its metal collar but made no other noise. The bus stop, the tea stand, the wheat field, the corn field, the hole in the fence, Sheena. In a blue jacket zipped to her chin and tight black pants showing only an outline of her muscles, though that was enough. They jogged alongside each other, and Abdul Kareem stayed silent. They made two circles of the track, and this time they asked no questions. They smiled politely like strangers until the time came for Chikoo to sit in the mud pit and for the husband to time the wife.
The sun inched upward, and when it peeped over the curve of the land beyond them, Chikoo pulled up the hemline of her skirt, first past the thickness at the back of her shin, and then up until the curve of her knee. She showed the sun her legs; she showed her legs the sun. She caught Abdul Kareem looking for a moment and then turning away just as swiftly. She dropped the skirt.
When they said goodbye, Sheena didn't say when she would return. Maybe it was Abdul Kareem who had asked her to stop. After a time, it must have become that Sheena could no longer smile at him as she had on the first day. Or perhaps, she had decided he was right. That the girl was not worth the trouble. Maybe when they were alone in their bed at night, in their house, where they could close the doors and lick each other, they had talked about her sock bra and how dirty it was; unimaginable and impolite to discuss it like that after her mother had forbidden it. Before she climbed through her hole, Chikoo asked Sheena if they would run again sometime. The woman put herself onto the scooter and smiled with her hands along the back of her husband's shoulder. Then, there was a cloud of mud in the air, and suddenly, it turned into the end of everything.
By the time Chikoo climbed back into her bed that morning, the sleepy dance of Amma's anklets had begun in the adjacent room. It all moved swiftly after that. In the next half hour, Amma arrived to the room as she always did, to wake her daughter for school. She said to pretend like she had woken up first and called for her, with a pain in her stomach and the sensation of fluid between her thighs. It was blood. There was blood coming between her legs from the place she urinated. She must believe it, Amma said, and say it with sureness.
"You feel scared, but I have told you, you should not. This happens to every girl."
"Even you?"
"Yes."
"But it's not happening to me."
"It is. It is happening to you."
Chikoo thought Amma was saying it, so it must be true. "It is."
"You are bleeding. You must stay in this room for now, and you must not leave the house. Not today. Not for the rest of the week. I will ring the school."
Chikoo thought of Sheena and her white legs and the sound of the blood flowing out of her. Had she been bleeding when they had met first? Had she been bleeding the whole time?
"When will it stop?"
But Amma had gone to notify her father. Their daughter was bleeding. It was a matter to talk about. In common spaces and loudly. It was a matter to string marigolds for, and to write the neighbors about, and to hold a school assembly over. She heard her mother tell it on the phone to Komal Mami, who demanded to speak to her niece, and when the shrill voice came to her ear, it sung Ripe enough to fall from the tree, Chikoori. Be careful, we don't want anyone to pluck you. She chuckled happily, and somewhere in Chikoo's shirt, a safety pin snapped open.
