She pours the kernels into the skillet, sits back on her heels, and we watch as they burst into flower. I offer to share the little bowl of popcorn with her, but Ama has another surprise in store.
She unwinds the fabric at her waist and pulls out one of my stepfather’s precious cigarettes, and I see, in that moment, the mischievous girl she was at my age.
We sit together, each savoring our secret treats and dreaming of the days after the monsoon.
“The first thing well do,” I say, “is patch the roof.”
“No, child,” she says, solemnly blowing smoke in the air. “First, well offer thanks to the goddess. Then well mend the roof.”
She inhales. “Perhaps this year we can beg some new thatch from the landlord,” she says. “Maybe this year you can tie it down while I pat it fast with mud.”
Somehow, as she smokes her stolen cigarette and I eat my popcorn, she makes the job of thatching the roof sound like a joy.
“With the money from this year’s crop,” she says, “we may have enough to make you a new dress. Perhaps from that red-and-gold fabric you’ve been eyeing at Bajai Sita’s store.”
I lower my eyes, embarrassed and glad all at once.
“Maybe,” I say, “there will be enough to go to Bajai Sita and buy sugar for sweet cakes.”
“Maybe,” she says, “we can buy extra seed this year and plant the empty field behind the hut.”
“Maybe,” I say, “we can borrow Gita’s uncle’s water buffalo. I can drive the plow and you can spread the seed.”
We sit there in the flickering light of a shallow saucer of oil, already rich with harvest money.
As we linger over the last of our luxuries—Ama inhales her cigarette down to a stub, I wipe a stubborn last kernel from the bowl with my fingertip—we don’t say what we both know.
That the first thing we must do is pay the landlord.
And Gita’s uncle, who sold us last season’s seed.
And the headman’s wife, who would not trade cooking oil
for work.
And my teacher, who gave me her own pencil when she saw
I had none.
And the owner of the tea shop, who, my stepfather says,
cheats at cards.
Instead, we linger over a luxury that costs nothing: Imagining what may be.
It doesn’t rain constantly during the monsoon.
There is usually a shower in the morning that leaves behind stripes of color in the sky.
And another in the afternoon that leaves the rice plants plump and drowsy.
But all night, there is a long, soaking rain that leaves the footpaths sloppy and hearts refreshed.
Eight days and nights and nothing but rain.
Curtains of rain that blind me, even on the short, familiar
path to the privy.
The rain is so fierce, so relentless, so merciless, it finds every crack in our roof.
Ama and I pack the walls with scraps of cloth, but each day they melt a little more.
When there is a rare moment of sun, the women gather on the slope, shake their heads, and say this is the worst monsoon in years.
After several more days, when there is no sun at all, the village headmen gather in the tea shop and ask the holy man to say a special prayer to make it stop.
I wait at home, as the damp firewood sizzles and smokes, trying to keep the baby from catching a chill. He wrestles with the blanket, bored and cranky from days on end inside.
While I try to remember the days when the heat was so fierce, so relentless, so merciless, that we prayed for this rain.
When the night rain soaks the ground past the soaking point, when the earthen walls around the paddy melt away when the rice plants are sucked out of the earth one by one and washed down the slope, there should be a sound, a noise announcing that something is terribly wrong.
Instead there is a ghostly hush that tells us we have lost everything.
I tell Ama not to weep, that surely there are a few stalks of rice left in our field. I run outside and splash through what remains of our paddy. With frantic hands I claw at the mud.
Finally, when I stand, my hands aching with emptiness, I see Gita’s family in the plot below ours. Gita’s father did not spend his afternoons in the tea shop; he spent his days building paddy walls that could stand up to the monsoon. Now he faces the swallow-tailed peak, his hands in a prayer of gratitude. His rice plants bow to the sun, his little boy splashes in the mud.
My stomach churns with something bitter. I do not know if it is hunger. Or envy.
My stepfather has been gone a week and a day. He said he was going to visit his brother two villages away to ask for a loan. But I wonder, when I see the owner of the tea shop looking at Ama with squinty coin eyes, if my stepfather has run away.
Ama has been gone since daybreak. She said she was going to the village to sell our hen and her chicks. But I wonder, when I picture Bajai Sita and her little lizard face, if Ama will get more than a pocketful of rice.
Ama and I can do without food, but the baby is beginning to grow listless. Now, as he whimpers in his basket, I wish for the noisy cries that I used to wish away.
I watch for Ama on the path below, and wonder what will be lost next.
Later, when I see her climbing the hill to our hut, I know.
It is the joyful noise of her earrings. And the proud set of her head.
Although the path to our hut has washed away, a parade of
people comes to the door.
First is the landlord.
He asks for my stepfather, but Ama says it is she who will
pay the rent this time. She unwinds her waistcloth, removes
a handful of rupee notes from her money pouch, and sends
him on his way.
Then comes Gita’s uncle. He looks at our paddy, our hut,
then at the baby and says he will take half of what we owe.
The headman’s wife is next. She says full payment is due, as
well as 50 rupees extra for interest.
I do not go to school, so I do not have to face my pretty,
moonfaced teacher empty-handed.
We eat rice and lentils with the money Ama got for her earrings. The baby eats curds and fruit and grows fat and feisty again. One night, Ama makes sweet cakes with Bajai Sita’s sugar. My stomach complains a bit, unaccustomed to such richness, but I don’t let on to Ama, who watches me but does not eat.
We are, in the evenings as we sit by lamplight, happy.
I wonder, though, how long it will be before the owner of the tea shop knocks on our door.
Or how many nights until my stepfather comes home with another debt to repay.
Or, if he never returns, how long until the money in Ama’s waistcloth runs out.
A strange man is climbing toward our hut. He is wearing a city coat and a triangle hat, high on one side and low on the other, like the one the landlord wears on rent day.
The women at the spring have talked of government men who hand out money to people who sign papers.
I will read the words for Ama and show her where to sign. Then we won’t have to worry about anything.
Suddenly, though, I am afraid. I have never spoken to a city man. So I run inside and peek at him through the window.
Ama is bent over in the field. She straightens up, sees the man, and walks toward him. Then she kneels and touches her brow to his feet.
I see then that this stranger is my stepfather in a big’ shoulders city coat and a hat that sits on his head like a lopsided mountain peak.
Ama stands and goes to the fire to bring him some lentils. She puts a finger to her lip as she goes past me.
“Even a man who gambles away what little we have on a fancy hat and a new coat,” she says, “is better than no man at all.”
On the first day of the festival, we honor the crows. We put out offerings of rice because crows are the messengers for the lord of death.
On the second day we honor the dogs. We dot their foreheads with red powder and place marigold garlands around their necks because dogs are the guides to the land of the dead.
And on the third day, we clean our homes top to bottom. We put out dozens of tiny oil lamps at dusk to welcome the goddess Lakshmi, my namesake, who will circle the earth and bestow wealth and blessings on the humble and the pure.
Our family has no grain to spare for the crow and nothing for the stray dog, save a kick from my stepfather’s sandal.
Still, Ama says we must prepare for Lakshmi’s arrival. Ama sweeps every corner of our hut and sets the blankets out to air. Then she twists tiny bits of rag into wicks and places them in shallow clay saucers, each with a drop of oil.
When my chores are done, I sit out in the sun in front of our hut and string a necklace of marigolds. We have no dog, so I make the garland for Tali. But when I go to place the wreath over her head, she shrinks away. I scratch the place between her ears just the way she likes. Then, as her head droops with contentment, I slip the garland around her neck.
She sniffs and sneezes and shakes her head from side to side. Then she bends low, her ear to the ground, and tries to wriggle out of it. Finally, she gets to her feet, and with one grand, impatient toss of her head, she throws the garland in the dirt. And eats it.
Ama comes by and smiles. “That goat,” she says. “Perhaps she is not so silly after all.”
A thousand stars have fallen to earth.
That, at least, is how it looks to me as I sit outside our hut and look down the mountainside at all the houses below, each windowsill and doorway adorned with tiny lanterns, lighting the way for the goddess Lakshmi.
“This is an auspicious night,” says Ama. Her brisk and steady hand flies through my hair as she twines the strands into braids. “The goddess Lakshmi will see our lights and bring us good fortune.”
My stepfather comes out of the hut, wearing his kingly hat and his big-shoulders coat. He pats his chest, and I see Ama’s money pouch around his neck.
“This,” he says, “is an auspicious night. This is the night when the goddess favors gamblers.”
And because it is my favorite night of the year, the festival of my namesake, I let myself believe him.
Ama and I walk down to the village, my little brother riding on her back. As we draw near the bonfire, Ama presses a coin into my palm. “Run off and buy yourself a sweet cake,”
she says, “like the other children.”
I tell her I’m not a child anymore. I tell her not to waste her money. But she insists.
“Tonight,” she says, “you are a child.”
As I stand before the bonfire, licking the last of the sweet’ cake crumbs from my fingers, a city woman comes and stands next to me. She is wearing a dress of yellow cloud fabric, a hundred silver bangles on her wrists and ankles. She smells of amber and night flowers.
“Where I live,” she says, “the girls have sweet cakes every day.”
This delicate stranger, it seems, is speaking to me. I steal a sideways look at her.
She smiles, drawing her shawl to her lips with the dignity of a queen.
I, too, draw my shawl to my face, see that I have the callused hands of a farm girl, and stuff them in the pockets of my homespun skirt.
“City girls have pretty dresses,” she says from behind her yellow cloud. “And fancy baubles. They eat oranges, dates, and mangoes every day. It is the easy life.”
“You?” I say, my voice as tiny as a bug’s. “You’re a maid?”
The city woman laughs, still hiding her mouth with the hem of her shawl, but she does not answer.
“Would you like to come to the city with me?” she says. “I will be your auntie.”
I nod yes-no-yes-no and run back to Ama, afraid to tell her about this new auntie who smells of amber and jasmine and possibility.
We are awakened in the middle of the night by a thunderous roaring outside our hut. Ama and I come down to see my stepfather seated on a machine with two wheels and a pair of metal antlers.
“It is a motorcycle,” he says. “I won it from a city boy home for the festival.”
The metal beast coughs, and great blasts of smoke come
from its tail.
“I told you this was an auspicious night,'1 my stepfather says.
I do not see how this thing is of any use to us. But Ama hugs me and whispers in my ear that we will trade the beast at Bajai Sita’s. In an instant I see it all. We will buy back Ama’s earrings. We will have enough money for a drum of cooking oil, a barrel of flour, a new dress for me and one for Ama, a jacket for the baby, a tin roof.
Perhaps, I think grudgingly, even enough for a new vest for my stepfather.
In the morning, my stepfather is up early, tending lovingly to his beast.
He rubs it down with a rag and talks to it like a baby.
“We are going to the tea shop,” he tells it, “so that everyone can envy my good fortune.”
The beast, however, balks at his suggestion. It belches and breaks wind, but it will not roar the way it did last night. My stepfather kicks the thing, curses at it, then finally it snarls in reply. My stepfather rides away, slipping and sliding in the mud.
It is nearly dark when my stepfather comes back from the tea
shop.
The beast is nowhere to be seen, and my stepfather is on
foot, without his city coat or even his hat.
Ama runs to the door, sees, then turns her face to the corner so as not to shame him when he comes in and climbs the ladder to the sleeping loft.
Ama has to be coaxed from bed the next morning with a cup of hot tea. She says she is not ill, but she has the look of a great sickness about her.
I put the baby in a basket on my back and go about my chores, all the while keeping my eyes on Ama. Her steps are slow and heavy, and she stops often in her work to shake her head and sigh.