“Guna, the paan,” Amma hissed, and I rummaged in a plastic bag for the battered shoe-polish tin in which we kept a stock of crumbled areca nut and a small stack of betel leaves.
“Wipe Munna’s nose,” she ordered, and I used Munna’s sleeve to wipe away the shining thread of mucus that trickled out of one nostril.
“Guna—” and that was all she had time to say before Appa ducked his head under the tent and collapsed among us, creating a confused tangle of arms and legs. Amma smoothly moved out of his way and began pressing balls of dough between her palms and pinching the edges until the dough became round and flat, and she laid them over the coals to bake. She stared at them intently, as if they might fly away. Appa leaned on his elbow. He was no longer stripped down but was wearing his torn T-shirt that said Calvin Kline and his faded pants rolled up to his knees. In January he had smashed his hammer into the large toe of his left foot, and it had healed crooked, like a bird’s beak.
“Supriya,” Appa said, drawing her name out. Shoopreeya.
Amma said nothing.
“So serious you look,” Appa said. His face seemed to contract and expand, and his daru-scented breath filled the tent. “Not happy to see me? Not even one smile for your husband? Your poor husband who has been working like a dog all day?”
Amma bit her lip so hard the bottom of her face twisted. She picked a baked roti off the coals with her bare fingers and laid it on a sheet of newspaper. Appa hiccupped.
I held out the shoe-polish tin. Appa took it, popped it open, and sprinkled some areca nut on a betel leaf. He folded the leaf into a neat square and began chewing it. Red juice came out of the side of his mouth. I watched it trickle down his chin.
“Guna,” he said then, his mouth red and wet. “How many puttus today, Guna?”
I was about to say eight when I caught sight of Amma’s face, looking engorged and pleading in the light from the coals. Without taking her eyes off the rotis, she slipped a hand into her blouse and touched her breast where the velvet pouch was.
I said, “Six.”
“Six,” Appa repeated. “That’s all?”
“Yes,” I said. “Sorry, Appa.” I waited for the sting of the slap.
But instead he reached out and slowly caressed the side of my face. He ran his hand from the top of my head down my cheek, over my chin, and to the soft spot on my neck, where my pulse had begun to race. His hand was like sandpaper, covered in scabs and blisters, some that had burst and scarred, some that were still ripe. I felt every bump and welt against my skin, every dip and hollow. It was as if he were leaving the living imprint of his hand on my face.
“No, no,” he said in a rich voice, his singing voice. “Don’t say sorry. I should be sorry. I should be the one saying sorry. It’s because of me you are here. All of you. It is all my fault.” His voice trembled on the edge of a cliff, and his eyes were so dark.
I felt a pricking behind my eyes. My face was humming. There was a heaviness to my limbs. I wondered if this was what he felt like when he was drunk.
“My fault,” Appa said. “I’m a bad father.”
Appa held out his hand, and I dropped my wages into it. All of it, even the eleven rupees I had just lied to him about. Appa’s palm closed around the money, and he dropped it into his pocket. I tightened my arms around Munna. I didn’t dare look at Amma.
I heard her body shift. She let out a breath she’d been holding.
“That is his school money,” she said.
Appa didn’t turn to look at her.
“That is his school money,” she said again. “We said this year he would go back. You have to keep some of that for tuition fees.”
He said, “You’re telling me what to do? In my own house you’re telling me?”
Black spots appeared on the rotis, each accompanied by a small hiss.
“You’re just one man,” Amma said, staring at the spots. “How much daru will you drink?” She paused. “I should have had a daughter.”
“What bloody daughter?” said Appa. “Why you want a daughter? You want for me to pay dowry? Some snot-nosed fellow comes and says, I want to marry her, and I have to go into my own pocket and lick his bum? No, thank you.”
“Daughters help their mothers. And you’d drink all of her dowry anyway,” muttered Amma.
I thought he was going to caress her too, the way his hand went out, but then I saw he was pinching her, clamping down on the fleshiest part of her waist, right above her hipbone, the strip of bare skin between the top of her petticoat and the bottom of her blouse. She flailed, her mouth open without screaming. One of her hands caught Munna on the side of the head, and she kicked a stray coal so close to my foot that I could feel it scorch my toe. I drew my foot back and waited for Munna to cry, but he didn’t.
When Appa let go, there were two semicircles of bright red on Amma’s hip, the skin slightly puckered. She was moaning softly but did not let the rotis burn. She picked them off and put them on the newspaper. She was breathing hard through her teeth.
“Supriya, you know what problem you have? You don’t smile enough,” Appa told her. “You should smile more. A woman who doesn’t smile is ugly.”
Then Amma’s gaze traveled beyond the coals, beyond Appa’s prone form, and I turned to see Siju standing at the entrance of the tent. He looked fresh. His hair was combed, of all things. He stood there, watching us, and suddenly I could see us through his eyes, the picture we presented, me with my toes curled in, Munna swaying with sleep in my arms, Appa reclining on his elbow, Amma hunched over the coals. I saw what he saw, and then I wished I hadn’t seen it.
“What you think you’re staring at?” Appa said. “Sit down.”
Siju picked his way to an empty spot between Appa and me. As soon as he sat down, the tent felt full, too full. We were too close together, fear and anger flying around like rockets.
“Where did you go today?” Amma asked Siju. To my surprise, he didn’t turn away like he usually did but looked at her with a distant sort of sympathy, as if she were a stranger he had made up his mind to be kind to.
“Hospet,” he said.
“Hospet,” Amma repeated gratefully. “Is it a nice place?”
With the same careful kindness he said, “Actually, I’ve never seen a dirtier place.”
“What the hell you were expecting?” Appa said, trying to provoke him. “All cities are dirty. You want to eat your food off the street, or what?”
Siju ignored him, and I could sense Appa stiffening.
“How many trips did you get?” Amma asked.
“Trips!” Appa snorted. “He drives that bloody lorry ten kilometers to the railway station. Ten kilometers! How do you call that a trip?”
Siju began to massage his feet. Amma put another roti on the coals. Appa glared at them both, their exclusion of him causing the pressure inside to build and build.
“So? How many?” Appa said. His head swiveled slowly in Siju’s direction. “How many trips? Your mother asked a question, can’t you hear? You’re deaf or something?”
“Three,” said Siju curtly.
“Don’t talk like I’m some peon who cleans your shit. Say it properly.”
“Three,” repeated Siju.
“You’re listening, Supriya?” drawled Appa with exaggerated awe. “You want something to smile about? Your son got three trips to the bloody railway station in a bloody lorry. Three trips! What you want a daughter for? With a son like this?”
His glassy gaze never left Siju’s face. Amma laid the last roti over the coals.
“Bloody lorry driver thinks he’s a bloody raja,” muttered Appa.
I pinched Munna under the arm, hoping to make him cry, hoping to create a distraction, but he wouldn’t. I pinched again harder, but he sat still, a soft, surprisingly heavy weight on my lap. One of the coals popped, and my heart jumped. I remembered the way the manager of the thermal station had come to our house after Appa’s accident. Spit flew from the manager’s mouth as he screamed,
landing lightly on Appa’s face, and I remembered how Appa didn’t wipe it off. I remembered the way Appa had said, “No, sir. Sorry, sir. No, sir. Sorry, sir,” like he didn’t understand the words. Like they were a poem he had memorized. That night he went and lay down on the road, and when Amma went to bring him back in, he said, “Supriya, leave me alone! I deserve this.” And I remembered the way she held his head, speaking to him softly until he dragged himself up and followed her back inside.
Now he waited to see what Siju would do.
For a second I thought he would hit Appa. Then he shrugged. “Being a bloody lorry driver is better than hammering bloody pieces of iron all day.” He looked at me as he said this, and I looked away.
Amma used her finger to smear the rotis with lime pickle, rolled them into tubes, and handed them to us. She held her arms out for Munna, slipping her blouse down her shoulder, baring her slack breast with its wine-colored nipple. Munna latched on, his black eyes shining in the semidarkness, unblinking, gazing at us. The roti was warm and tasted of smoke, and the pickle was tart, the lime stringy and tough. I thought only about the food, about how it was filling my mouth, sliding tight down my throat, unlocking something. It was always this way. The food loosened something in all of us, a tightly wound spring uncoiling. I felt myself starting to relax. Food could do this, and warmth, and the approach of sleep. There were these moments of calm, when no one spoke, and there were only the coals and the insistent flapping of the plastic tent and the mumble of other families and the sky hanging low.
Then Siju, leaning toward me, spoiled it all by saying, “I have something to say to you.”
I swallowed quickly. “I don’t want to hear anything,” I said. We kept our voices down because Appa seemed to have fallen asleep. He was snoring lightly.
“Listen just one second.”
“Oh-ho, Lorry Raja wants to say something,” I said.
“Don’t—”
I put my fingers in my ears and chanted, “Lorry Raja! Lorry Raja!” I knew it was silly, but I wanted to keep this fragile peace, to clutch it tightly in my fist like a precious stone.
“Guna, listen!” Siju said, louder than he had intended.
“What’s the racket?” said Appa, coming out of his doze.
“Nothing,” said Siju.
“Nothing,” I repeated.
Appa closed his eyes again. Amma was still breast-feeding Munna, her head bent in contemplation of his placid sucking.
“That monkey woman called Manju a soole,” I said quietly.
Siju picked at a scab on his knee.
“What are you two talking about?” Amma asked.
Before Siju could reply, I said, “Manju. His girlfriend.”
“The girl whose mother is sick?”
I nodded.
“Poor thing,” Amma said. “Maybe I should go see if I can do something.”
But then Munna fell asleep, still making halfhearted sucks at her nipple, and her eyes went soft. She brushed her hand against the tuft of hair sticking up from his red-stained forehead.
“Don’t bother,” Siju spat. “She knows how to get what she wants.”
“I’m going to see if she’s okay,” I said, standing up. To my surprise, Siju stood up too.
“I’ll come with you,” he said.
“No!” I shouted.
“Yes,” said Amma. “Both of you go.”
“Siju,” Appa said. He was still in that reclining position. His calves under the rolled-up pants were like polished cannonballs. I remembered the way I had seen him earlier that day, bare chested, bent at the waist, his long-handled hammer making smooth strokes, crashing against the ground. He was not a big man or a tall one, but he was a man who broke iron for ten hours every day.
Siju looked at him for a long moment, then nodded and reached into his pocket. He brought out a set of folded notes and pressed it into Appa’s outstretched palm. Appa tucked it into his pocket, where my own wages nestled. He hummed something tuneless and closed his eyes.
Amma was watching us both. “Here,” she said. “Take something for them.” She made me wrap two rotis in newspaper. “Come back before it rains.”
“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to,” I told Siju as we picked our way through the maze of tents. “I won’t tell.”
Instead of answering he was quiet, which made me nervous. A rat the size of my foot ran across our path and disappeared into the blackness to our right. The rats were a problem in the camp. They got into our food, chewed holes in our blankets, bit babies as they slept. Last year a baby had died from a rat bite. I thought of Munna asleep, of the whole camp silent, a ship of blue plastic afloat on these hairy black bodies that moved and rustled under it, restless and hungry as the ocean.
Manju wasn’t in her tent. From inside came the loud, ragged breathing of her mother. Siju raised his eyebrows at me and jerked his chin in the direction of the tent’s opening. I shook my head; I could just make out the shadowy figure wrapped in a blanket, smaller than a person should be. Then Manju’s mother coughed, a colorless wheezing cough, like wind passing through a narrow, lonely corridor. I took an unconscious step backward.
“She’s not there,” I whispered.
“Smart fellow,” Siju whispered back.
“So now what?”
“We go back to our tent.”
“You go back,” I said. “I’ll wait for her here. She must have gone to the toilet.”
Siju gave me a long, searching look. “Guna,” he said. “Just forget her.”
“No!” I almost shouted. I felt the start of tears, burning in the ridge of my nose. Before I could stop myself, I said, “She wants me to take her to China.”
“What?” His voice was flat.
“In my lorry,” I said. I knew I was babbling. I squeezed the rotis and felt the warmth seep through the newspaper. “She said if I could drive a lorry, I could take her to China. To see the Lympic Games. I asked Mr. Subbu, but he said no. He said if I work hard I’ll get what I want.”
Siju let out a long breath. “You asked Subbu?” he said. “That fat bastard? You asked him?”
“Yes,” I said.
“My god.” My brother shook his head. “Come with me,” he said.
Mr. Subbu’s Esteem was still parked outside his aluminum-walled shed. The shed was directly under a single lamppost, whose light cast it in a liquid, silver glow. The lamppost was connected to a generator, which growled like a sleeping dog. We crept up to the backhoe loader, which was just outside the shoreline of light.
Siju put his hand on my shoulder. “Not too close,” he said.
“Why are we here?” I asked. He put a finger on his lips.
We waited, partly hidden by the massive machine. I leaned against it, and the cold of its metal body was a shock. Siju was standing behind me, very close. There was a strange calmness to the whole scene, the glowing shed, the purring of the generator, the still air.
And then, with a movement so smooth and natural that I forgot to be surprised, Manju stepped from Mr. Subbu’s shed. She stood there for a moment, her uniform and thin legs perfectly outlined in the light of the lamp, her face lifted like one of the deer on the back panel of Siju’s lorry. Then she turned and looked straight at us. I jumped, but Siju’s hand was on my shoulder again.
“Be still,” he whispered.
But Manju had seen us. Her uniform seemed even bigger on her frame than it had earlier in the day. She was floating in it as she came over to us. Her feet were soundless in the dirt. As soon as she was level with the backhoe loader, Siju stepped out and pulled her behind it. She put her hands on her hips and looked at us for a long time without speaking. Behind her, the lamppost snapped off, plunging everything into darkness. Then the headlights of Mr. Subbu’s Esteem came on, and the car floated away, as if borne on an invisible river.
“So,” Manju said. As my eyes adjusted slowly, I noticed that her eyes were swollen. She had been crying. I thought of the shed, of Mr. Subb
u’s hands kneading each other, of the cold bottle of Pepsi, of the way he’d put his hand on the shoulder of the girl with the braids. I thought of the woman with one eye saying, That girl is not nice.
“How long have you been standing here?” Manju asked.
“Relax,” said Siju coolly. “Guna felt like taking a walk.”
“A walk,” Manju repeated. She looked at me quickly, accusingly, and I felt a spike of guilt. “And you just walked this way,” she said.
Siju shrugged. “That’s how it happened.”
I said, “We came to give you these rotis.” I pressed the newspaper-wrapped rotis into her hand. She looked at them as if I had done something meaningless.
“Let’s go back to the tent,” I told Siju. I wanted to get away from Manju’s raw, swollen face. Her tears had made clear channels in the red paste on her cheeks.
“Just one minute,” Siju said. He leaned in close to Manju so that his face was barely inches from hers. He smiled. It was not a nice smile.
“Guna told me you want to go to China,” he said.
Manju looked at me, puzzled. I closed my eyes. “What?” She said uncertainly.
“Still want to go?”
He had made a copy of the lorry key. In Hospet. He had waited in the lorry while a shopkeeper fashioned a new one, which was raw and shining and silver. It made me uncomfortable to look at it.
In the lorry yard, the smell of grease and diesel strong in my nose, I whispered, “Mr. Subbu will throw you out if he finds out. Appa will kill you.”