An Unrestored Woman Read Free

it caused no pain. It was not the skin of a banana. Nor the leaves of the dusty banyan tree. It was not hunger, not anymore.
    *   *   *
    On Neela’s ninth day at the camp Babu came to fetch her. She was ushered into the tent by one of the camp administrators. “Your husband is here,” the woman announced.
    â€œThat’s impossible,” Neela said. “He’s dead.”
    The woman nodded toward the far end of the tent. And there he was, exactly as Neela remembered him: dry and depleted as if he’d been left out in the sun too long. She blinked and blinked and then she felt faint. It couldn’t be. All the blood drained from her body. She heard a distant bell. She realized it was coming from within the camp, announcing lunch. She thought of all those women dressed in white saris, bald, smiling, filing into the mess tent. She was not among them. Her mouth filled with the bitterness of the liquid in the dark brown bottle. “But I thought—”
    â€œI was never on that train,” he said. “A whole week in a cell without a window. Stripping a man just to see if he’s a Muslim. Lying, telling me my mother is dead. Those bastards, they’re no better than animals.”
    He reached for her absently, as if reaching for fruit on a high branch. For fruit he barely wanted to eat. It occurred to her in that moment that her husband had not died. He had not. And that her life had taken yet another turn: she was no longer a widow. Neela also knew that from then on she would remain a fruit her husband didn’t really want to reach, that he would watch ripen and fall with only a vague and stolid interest. She heard the laughter of the women in the camp. The sound came to her as if through a long and airy tunnel. She listened for Renu’s. What reached her instead was Babu’s voice saying, “Get your things. The bus leaves in ten minutes.”
    *   *   *
    This time the bus ride seemed much longer than four hours. Neela was crushed against the window on the women’s side of the bus. A fat mother with both children perched on her lap sat next to her. The older of the two children—a boy who Neela guessed was two or three—kicked and dug sharply into Neela’s thighs. When Neela asked the woman to watch her boy’s legs, she turned and glared at Neela and said, “Watch yours.” Neela strained her neck trying to spot Babu, but he was too far back, on the men’s side.
    Near Rangarh the woman and her children disembarked and an old woman with gray-blue hair sat next to Neela. She held a small bundle in her lap close against her chest. Even on the dusty and crowded bus Neela could smell the clean, scrubbed scent of the old woman’s skin, with only the slightest hint of sweat, almost pleasant, in the din of the bus. Neela turned and looked out into the endless landscape of dirty fields and sparse, drooping trees. She closed her eyes. When she opened them the sun was setting; she must’ve dozed off. She noticed the old woman with the gray-blue hair leaning toward the man in the seat across from theirs, in the opposite aisle. He too was old. Neela pretended to be adjusting the bag at her feet to hear what they were saying. “They were plump, for the season,” the man was saying.
    â€œWe should’ve bought more,” the woman said, “I could’ve sent pickle to the girls.”
    The old man leaned closer. Neela realized they were husband and wife. “Rajan’s coming by next week for the receipts. I’ll tell him to bring another bushel.”
    â€œI thought he got them last week.”
    The bus bounced over a pothole. The old woman hugged the bundle closer.
    â€œDid you take your medicine?”
    â€œNo, not yet,” the old woman replied.
    Neela turned toward the window. The landscape was the same though the wind had changed direction. She thought again of turning, looking