Rebel Queen Read Free Page B

as our maid, Avani, poured mustard oil into each of our brass lamps. Then she lit them in the small stone niches along the wall. It may sound strange that a family as modest as ours should have had a maid, but this wasn’t uncommon back then, and still isn’t today. Unless a person belongs tothe very lowest caste, they will likely employ someone to help with cooking and cleaning. The wealthier the family, the more maids they will have. In our case, we could only afford one.
    Like most girls, our maid Avani had been married as soon as she turned ten, still young enough to be molded by her mother-in-law. Her husband, who was fifteen years older, was a kind man who allowed her to remain with her family until she came of an age to bear children. But three years later, when she went to live in her father-in-law’s house, her husband suddenly took ill and died. Now in India, despite British rule, there is still a terrible practice called sati. I suppose I could explain to you where this came from, and how our goddess Sati built her own funeral pyre and then walked into the flames for her husband, Lord Shiva, only to be reincarnated as his second wife, Parvati, but it wouldn’t help to explain this practice, since it has less to do with the goddess Sati and more to do with unwanted women. And so, every day, in every city in India, a woman can be found ascending the steps of her husband’s funeral pyre. Refusing to commit sati by burning in your husband’s flames brings dishonor to your family. But even worse than this, it brings great disrespect to your father-in-law’s house.
    That Avani’s father-in-law—and her own father—were both against sati was highly unusual, especially at that time. Of course, it was understood that she could never marry again, and that all of the joys belonging to wives would never be hers, but at least she was alive.
    Which is not to say that she had escaped a cruel fate entirely.
    Many years later, I learned from Father that of all the families in Barwa Sagar, none were willing to employ Avani except ours. It was the only act of charity I’d ever heard of Grandmother performing—perhaps because she, too, had been saved from the flames when she was widowed. And for an unwanted womanwhose family refuses to take her back into their home, where is there to go? Where can she work if no house will employ her?
    At the time, I was unaware of these things. I simply knew that I liked watching Avani work—the way her dark braid swayed from side to side when she was lighting the lamps, and how her skin took on a deep amber glow in the flickering lights. She was feminine in a way I imagined I’d never be, with an older person’s knowledge that seemed unattainable to me as a child.
    “Do you think it will be much longer?” I asked.
    She lowered the jar of mustard oil she was carrying. Her face took on a thoughtful expression. “I don’t know. I’ve never had any children of my own.”
    I should have nodded silently and gone back to my room, but I was nine, and I could be incredibly thoughtless. “Why not? Dadi-ji told me that every woman wants children.”
    Her lips turned down. “Because my husband had the misfortune of dying six years ago.”
    I knew she wore the white sari of a widow, the same as Grandmother, but it had honestly never occurred to me that in order to have children, a woman needed a husband.
    Avani must have recognized my embarrassment, because she crossed the hall and took my hand in hers. “Don’t worry.” In the golden light of the lamps, she looked to me like Lakshmi—the goddess of beauty. “It will all be over soon.”
    But Mother’s cries went on for two days. By the second night, Aunt was called home by her husband; he felt she’d been with us for long enough.
    “Sita,” she said to me from the doorstep before she left, her voice low, like the rain clouds behind her. “You must take good care of your mother. Do whatever the midwife says. Without