An Unrestored Woman Read Free Page A

for Babu, smiling, but she didn’t. She only screened her eyes, shielding them from the dust.
    *   *   *
    The hut was just as she’d left it. Babu’s pants still hung from the nail by the door. The reed mats were still folded neatly in the kitchen. The bag of rice stood untouched. Even the banyan tree looked as if not a wisp of wind had troubled it in the nine days Neela had been gone.
    For dinner that night she made rice and dal and subzi with the eggplant Babu had purchased at the market on their way home from the bus stop. After they’d eaten she made two cups of tea and took them out to the banyan tree. Babu was sitting cross-legged beneath it. Earlier she’d noticed his eyes glisten with tears when he’d discovered that the police hadn’t lied: his mother was dead. He’d stood at the door, stolen one quick glance at Neela then left the hut without a word. Now he was bent over something she could not see. When she handed him his tea she saw that it was her mangal sutra. She sat down beside him.
    Babu took a sip of his tea. “I’m glad I found you,” he said.
    Neela turned to look at him. He was? A sudden warmth flooded her. Her fingers gripped the cup tighter as her thoughts tumbled and tripped over each other. She’d been wrong. He cared for her after all. He’d been lonely too. He just hadn’t known how to show it but now he would. Now they’d show each other.
    â€œThat’s the only way Lalla would give the mangal sutra back,” he continued. “He said, ‘Why do you need it? She’s gone.’ You should’ve seen the look on his face when I told him I’d found you.” He finished his tea and held the empty cup out to Neela. “Hope that hair doesn’t take long to grow back,” he said. “Your head looks like a melon.”
    That night Babu took her, as Neela knew he would. Then he turned over and went to sleep. She lay awake for a long while afterward. The night was quiet, interrupted occasionally by the chirping of crickets, the wail of a dog. They’d moved their reed mat outdoors because of the heat. The branches of the banyan tree swayed in the hot wind and Neela lay in the dark, looking into them. How long had it stood there? Maybe hundreds of years. She thought of her mother and wondered whether she’d been cradled in her arms for even a moment before she’d died. She thought of her father. She even thought of the old lady on the bus with the gray-blue hair and the scent of her scrubbed skin. Then she thought of Renu. The plans they’d made, the cot they’d shared. She felt her eyes warm with tears. With hardly a thought, almost as if the decision had been waiting there all along, Neela rose soundlessly and walked back into the hut. She dug her fingers through the bag of rice and lifted the dark brown bottle out of the kernels.
    And so there was one thing that was different: the color of the bottle no longer reminded her of the color of chocolate. Now it was simply a bottle, the thing it had always been.
    She went back to the reed mat and lay down next to Babu. He was snoring lightly. She looked again into the branches. They fluttered and hummed with her every breath. The stars beyond spun like wheels. The branches reached down and just as she closed her eyes they gathered her up onto their shoulders and held her as she had always dreamed of being held. As she would never be held again.

 
    T HE M ERCHANT’S M ISTRESS
    The first time Renu traveled as a man was while on her way to Ahmedabad. It happened like this: she had changed trains in Phulera, and was forced to buy a second-class ticket to Ahmedabad, in the women’s compartment, because the third class was full. She seated herself in the corner of the berth, next to the window, and watched as the other passengers loaded their suitcases and bags bursting with food and thick winter blankets for the overnight