Sammie took them home. There was a message on the machine. ‘Keep the girl for two days in your house.’ Nagi Babu’s voice was coarser than usual. ‘If you try anything funny, I’ll break every bone in your body and then hand you over to police, understand? Don’t come to work. Police are there.’
‘Nice boss you have,’ Sammie said.
Pink Girl stood frozen just inside the door. Shantanu told her to come and sit. ‘No one is going to touch you, Pink Girl.’
She didn’t move.
‘Pink Girl, that’s her name?’
‘I don’t know what her name is.’
‘Why, you don’t speak Indian?’
‘There’s no such language as Indian, Sam. I told you that a long time ago, when you asked in what language I wrote, remember?’
Sam put his hands up in the air.
‘Anyway, she probably speaks only Telugu, which I don’t. Babu must have brought – probably bought – the poor thing and her sister – if she is actually her sister – from some godforsaken place in south India to this godforsaken place.’
‘Well, I gotta go, man. Call me.’ Sammie left.
Here he was, no money, no job probably, police after him maybe, Nagi Babu’s threats, the Mustang keys, Pink Girl. He couldn’t just hand her back like dead meat to Babu. Sammie would kill him for even entertaining such a thought.
His brain worked. Maybe Pink Girl knew some Hindi, didn’t people around Hyderabad know some? Maybe she was from around there. It was worth a try.
‘You understand Hindi?’
She stayed where she was. A few seconds passed. Then she made a gesture with her thumb and forefinger to say ‘A little’.
He pointed at himself. ‘Shantanu.’ He pointed at her. ‘Name?’ he said.
She shook her head. Didn’t want to tell him. Fine.
‘Okay, then. Listen to me. I am not going to hurt you. I want to help you. Do you understand?’
She stayed still. Then nodded very slightly.
‘Good. You can trust me. I’m not like Nagi Babu.’
She shrank back at the name.
‘No, no. Try to understand. I want to help. I will help you, okay?’
Pink Girl fell to the floor, crying. ‘No one can help. Better I dead, like other girl.’
‘Don’t cry, Pink Girl.’ Shantanu made as if to help her off the floor, decided against it. ‘Come, get up, sit here, on the couch.’ He got up, left the couch empty for her, sat at the desk. Saw his notebook, like something from another lifetime.
He seemed to be simultaneously serving many lifetimes in this country.
He got up again. They had better eat something. He wondered when she had eaten last. He hadn’t eaten all day. Showed her a packet of pasta. ‘Will you eat it?’
She said nothing. He put some on to boil. Pulled a half-full bottle of readymade pasta sauce from the fridge and set it on the kitchen counter. She just stared at him.
‘You sleep on the sofa,’ he said, pointing it out. ‘I’ll sleep on the bed in the other room. He gestured for her to get up, spread a sheet over the couch, put a pillow at one end and a blanket at the other. ‘It gets cold in here sometimes. The bathroom is in the back.’ Gosh, she had nothing with her. She needed clothes at the very least. His would be too big for her. Maybe he could ask Sammie if there were any old things that belonged to his sister.
Pink Girl continued to stare at him. But later, she didn’t refuse the small plate of pasta he gave her. Ate it inefficiently, holding the fork like a dagger. He gave her a spoon.
The phone rang, making her drop the spoon with a clatter. He looked at the time. It was ten o’ clock. He picked it up, didn’t say hello.
‘You fellow,’ he heard Nagi Babu say. ‘Where are you? Why not saying hello? Scared, eh?’ He didn’t wait for a reply. ‘I am telling you again, understand? I will break your knees if you act funny. Keep that girl in your house till I call you, understand?’ He hung up. The phone rang again. ‘Another thing. Where is Mustang?’
Shantanu told him.
‘You fellow, keep Mustang keys safe, okay? If you try anything with car, try to sell it–shell it, I kill you.’ The phone went dead.
She knew it was Nagi Babu from Shantanu’s face. Tears started up in her eyes.
Shantanu tried to smile at her. ‘Don’t worry, Pink Girl,’ he said. ‘I’ll think of something by morning. Promise. You are not going back.’
Brave words. What the hell was he going to do with her?
It came to him at three o’ clock. He put on the light in his room. He crept into the other room. Pink Girl was mumbling in her sleep, her arms and legs jerking, resisting something, someone. Her blanket had slipped off her. He drew it over her as gently as he could. She stopped moving. Then groaned and moved a little. Stayed asleep. The sleep of youth, even victimized, violated youth.
He pulled out a stack of old LA Times from under the kitchen counter, and took them back to his room. He went through seven issues, looking in the same place in the same section giving local news, remembering from memory the exact position of the news report. Nothing. He was pretty sure he had seen it within the last ten days. He got lucky in the eighth issue.
There it was, the picture of Manmeet Khatri, the Indian-American woman who had started a helpline for South Asian women. It was called Anahat, with a 1-800 number, no address. They had a 24-hour helpline. He shut the door very softly. Called, got the address. It struck him there had been no message from Babli. He called Babli on her mobile. It was switched off. He tried the line in his mother’s house. It rang on and on, forlorn, a phone in an empty house.
He woke up Sammie before dawn, asked if there were any of Keisha’s things still in his house. ‘I have a plan,’ he said.
‘What fool-ass plan you have, boy?’
‘I have no choice, Sammie. I can’t let her go back to that monster. If there was a god, Babu would be in jail for abetment of suicide, for statutory rape, assisting illegal immigration, sexual slavery, for a zillion other crimes. But his type get away, my type don’t. He’ll feed me to the cops anyway if I go back. We have no time, Sam. Babu said keep her two days but I know he’ll get here before then.’
DANISHA
NOTES ON KATE CHOPIN’S ‘DESIRÉE’S BABY’
V. interesting story.
Writer a Creole. Meant white back then, not black – upper-class city types (unlike Cajuns – country folk). Writer mostly wrote about them, esp. women’s lives. Husband was a white supremacist. If at all, she deals with black people mostly sympathetically.
Prof. says her colleague from Louisiana calls this the ‘white horror story’ – i.e., what if you were ‘passing’ for (pretending to be) white but were actually black and got found out?? Could happen when a kid was born.
Oppressive images: cowl (from nun’s habit), gloomy oak tree shadows, run-down house, sluggish bayou (boggy river).
Finally, Des kills herself and her child by walking into the bayou, I guess.
Funny that Armand rejects Des – he’s the one with the black blood, not her.
Amount of blackness precisely calculated, to eighths (Prof. says). Quadroon – one-quarter black, octoroon – one-eighth black, etc. Half-white, half-black = mulatto (mule-like?)