An Unrestored Woman Read Free Page B

journey. Renu had nothing to put away. She wore everything she owned in the world, including both her sweater and her shawl. Her remaining money, eight anna in all, was tucked into her pocket, and she had no need of toiletries: her hair was hardly an inch long, and whenever she passed a pump, she rinsed out her mouth and washed her hands and feet.
    Across from her settled two young women. They looked about Renu’s age, but they were clearly educated. One was reading a book and the other was looking over her friend’s shoulder and then out of the window and then at Renu. Renu looked away. Beside her sat two little girls, one about five and the other eight or nine. Their father, a middle-aged man with thinning hair and a fat, boyish face, adjusted and readjusted their luggage. He looked sadly at the little girls, as if from sheer longing he could turn them into boys, and said, “Don’t put your hands out of the window, do you hear? And listen to your mother.”
    They both nodded.
    At this, the mother entered the berth. She was a wide woman, her breasts pendulous, even while obscured beneath her knit shawl, and her hair hennaed and pulled tight into a braid, a few strands aglow like copper in the fading light, framing her round face. Her eyes passed over her family and paused only when they reached the two young women. She seemed to approve. Then they stopped at Renu.
    â€œYou,” she said. “What are you doing here? Do you see that, ji, there’s a man in our berth.”
    It took a moment for Renu to realize she was talking about her. That she had mistaken her for a man. She opened her mouth to speak, but the woman continued, “Nakaam, creep, get out, or I’ll call the police.” She turned to her husband, who was staring at his wife. The young women were staring at Renu. “Ji,” she told her husband. “Go call the conductor.” She plopped down next to Renu, crossed her arms, and rested them on her round stomach.
    The husband left the berth. Renu could no longer see the woman’s daughters; her body blocked them completely. Only her face, now so close she could see the thin eyelashes, the plucked chin, the voluminous chest heaving with effort. She might’ve been beautiful once, Renu thought, before she had her daughters, before the husband’s disappointments had colored her own, before life had been cruel, nearly meticulous, in its onslaughts, but now she was simply a fat, well-fed woman. It would never occur to her—once she’d decided on the matter—that Renu could be anything but a man.
    Renu was intrigued. It made her feel somehow lighter. Then it gave her an idea.
    She walked through to the men’s compartment and settled into a slim space, in a seat facing the lavatory. All the men around her were smoking and playing cards and eating roasted peanuts and paid her no attention. She watched them for a while, careful not to bring attention to herself, and then fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
    Renu was nineteen when she left the refugee camp and traveled to Ahmedabad. It was the winter of 1949. She’d been there two years, just long enough to understand that she, along with the eight hundred other widows stationed at the camp, had absolutely no future ahead of them. Certainly, the government of India had been a passable guardian: they’d been fed, most days, and if they chose, the residents could enroll in vocational training programs to teach them various skills, such as how to be a seamstress. A darajin. Even the sound of the word was a dead end. Some of the younger and more beautiful widows, Renu noticed, had been pitied by a guard or a camp administrator and were married to them. Could pity combined with lust make a marriage? Renu didn’t know, but what she did know was that she had no desire—none whatsoever, not even in the face of a bleak and empty future—to be a darajin.
    The other thing Renu refused to do was