The Best Day of My Life Read Free

away.’
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜Your mother shamed her family,’ Elamma said. ‘You have no father.’
    She held her head a little higher when she said these words. Then came her big finish.
    â€˜You had better get used to carrying coal. That’s all you will ever be good for. You’ll never get a husband. And stay away from that school. Knowing how to read won’t make you better at carrying coal. Now, get to work.’
    She let me go and walked away.
    I stood alone. After a while I started to pick up bits of coal that had fallen off a cart or out of somebody’s basket. I put the coal into my bag. My bag got heavier.
    I thought about what Elamma had said.
    I had been told my parents were dead. I had never met them, so I didn’t think about them.
    Now I thought about them.
    I decided Elamma was lying. But I had to be sure.
    I headed over to the pit where I knew my aunt was working. I sat on the edge of the pit, dangled my feet and waited.
    The pit was so big our whole village could be dropped into it and there would still be room left over. Dust rose up from the coal diggers at the bottom and from the feet of the women climbing in and out of the pit. I could hear the sound of pickaxes hitting rock.
    The sun was shining but not much light got through the haze of coal dust and the smoke from the coal burning underneath the ground. I saw a few trees, but the leaves were grey, not green. If the sky was blue, it kept it a secret.
    Everything was grey.
    Except for the line of women coming up the trail from the pit. Their saris were points of bright colors. Not even the haze could blot them out.
    It took a lot of scrubbing to get the coal dust out of those saris. I knew. It was one of my jobs to fetch the water to wash my aunt’s sari clean.
    My own clothes were grey. All I had to wear was what I was wearing. The coal was in them forever. That was just the way it was.
    I watched the bright colors moving through the fog of dust. I imagined that the women were birds, strange birds, and that I was sitting on the moon.
    Could people really sit on the moon? If they could, it would look a lot like Jharia. I had seen the moon when it was round and big. It looked like dust and coal pits.
    I was thinking about this so hard that I almost missed my aunt. Then I saw her, loaded down with a large basket of coal on her head, almost at the top of the path that led from the pit.
    I ran over to her.
    â€˜Auntie, I need to talk to you.’
    â€˜Is your coal bag full? It’s not even half full.’
    â€˜I need to ask you a question.’
    She kept walking. She wanted to dump her load of coal. The bosses were standing by the truck, so I held back. I didn’t want them to ask what was in my sack. They might take my coal without paying for it.
    My aunt joined the line of ladies waiting by the truck. They dumped their baskets into the back of the truck. Workers on top of the truck shoveled the coal so it wouldn’t slide off.
    When her basket was empty, she came back to me.
    â€˜Talk quickly. The bosses are in a bad mood.’
    â€˜Elamma said that I’m not really her cousin.’
    â€˜What? I can’t hear you.’ She bent down so that her face was closer to mine. Her face was lined with coal dust and sweat. Coal dust was even in her teeth.
    â€˜She said you’re not my mother’s sister. She said my mother was just your neighbor, and that we are not family.’
    â€˜Child, look where you are standing!’
    I was standing on top of one of the cracks that had opened up in the ground. Smoke was climbing up my legs. Hot coals were underneath my feet.
    My aunt moved me away and kneeled down to look for burns. I could see a hot piece of coal smoldering red against the bottom of my foot.
    â€˜You’ve gone and hurt yourself,’ she said. ‘Now how are you going to work? How are we going to get you medicine?’
    I pulled my leg out of her