The latest Cadbury’s care package from England resulted in another impromptu girls’ night in Aubra’s room, though this time with power. Olivia accepted the open box from Melanie and selected a piece from the assortment. She passed the box to Tisha and bit into her chosen confection—English toffee.
“Mmmm. The British know how to do chocolate,” she declared, smooth cocoa on her tongue as her teeth crunched the rich, creamy toffee.
She wished Chris could join them. He seemed to drift into her thoughts quite a bit lately, and she found herself collecting things throughout the day to share with him during dinner. She liked telling him goodnight after dinner less and less. Particularly after what he’d shared with her this afternoon, she hated for him to be alone.
Aubra smiled at her, though it didn’t reach her eyes, which remained cold and calculating. “Where did you and Chris go this afternoon?’
Oh, boy. How did she even know? “He drove me to the market for candles, that’s all.” She wondered if Aubra would be so fiercely jealous if she knew Chris’s history with his mother. Well, she wouldn’t be the one to fill Aubra in on the subject. That wasn’t hers to share. Besides, Aubra had nothing to be jealous about.
But she did wonder if Chris was lonely, all by himself in the guys’ building. It wasn’t fair he couldn’t even step foot in their women’s housing, that he was stuck all by himself due to some archaic belief in the separation of genders. Unmarried men and women could fraternize without having sex. And honestly, where there’s a will, there’s a way. Meena’s predicament illustrated that. She wondered if she could find out where the young woman lived and make an excuse to visit her.
At least they had power tonight. Chris probably busied himself with tutoring—
“Hello? Olivia?” Delilah snapped fingers in her face. “You’re distracted tonight. What’s up?”
She shook her head. “Zoned out. Sorry.”
“We were talking about Diwali. It’s still a couple months away, but we should celebrate the holiday with the kids. It’s a big deal here.”
“Oh! That’s perfect. I plan to incorporate a holiday unit with my kids. American holidays will be easy, but I need to research Indian holidays. What did you call this one?”
“Diwali. Festival of the Lights,” Aubra said. “It’s one of their biggest holidays, although not as much in Kerala as the other states. My father used to travel to India on business quite a bit when I was growing up, so I’d heard about it already. I’m glad we’re close enough to Kochi that this town celebrates it.”
“Chris told us about it too. He said it was amazing,” Tisha said.
“Oh, sure. Cuz he would have been here for it last year.”
Aubra’s eyes narrowed. “How did you know that?”
She waved a hand and shrugged, like no big deal. “He mentioned it at the market today.”
“Anyway,” Tisha continued, “Chris says it’s a big deal that this town celebrates it. Fireworks, candles and lamps. Families gather to celebrate with food. Kids go door to door for candies and sweets. It falls at the end of October through the beginning of November this year.”
The date jarred her, reminding her of an impending anniversary. She wasn’t sure how she could possibly make it through the day. Maybe she should ask for it off, see if someone could substitute for her. She brought a hand to her forehead, noting anxiety building, a slow stirring she feared would build in intensity until she erupted like Vesuvius, belching destruction. She should definitely isolate herself that day.
“Okay, you,” Tisha said. “Something is clearly up. What is it?”
She saw genuine concern and briefly considered spilling her painful secret. After all, Chris had assured her that Tisha would be wonderful help. But instead, she substituted another, albeit lesser, concern. “Aditi wasn’t in class today. Did anyone else notice?”
The all glanced at each other, clearly aware of something she wasn’t.
“Mrs. Gupta didn’t tell you?”
Her heartrate kicked up a notch, fear and dread tangling in her stomach. “Tell me what? What happened to her? Was she in an accident or—”
“Nothing like that,” Delilah said. “She won’t be returning though.”
“She won’t be back . . . ever?”
Tisha shook her head. “She got her first period.”
Olivia shook her head. She wasn’t following or was missing something. “They don’t let the girls come during their periods? She can come back next week, right?”
The other women shook their heads.
“No,” Delilah said. “I know it’s a shock. But once girls get their periods, at least in rural areas like this, their parents pull them out of school.”
“Forever?” Olivia remained convinced this couldn’t be true.
Tisha blew out a long breath. “It happens to all the girls eventually. Or at least the vast majority of them. Their education ends when they get their period. Surely you’ve noticed that the oldest students are almost entirely boys.”
“It just didn’t register, I guess. Why? Why do they do this to their girls?”
“Different cultural beliefs. Fear of menstruation. Lack of basic sanitation. No good feminine hygiene products. Or at least not affordable options.”
“Speaking of sanitation, avoid going behind the building where they burn the trash,” Delilah said. “Pads don’t completely incinerate. I don’t know about you, but I don’t enjoy seeing my scorched, bloody remnants.”
All the girls made faces and shuddered.
“Also, those sometimes attract wild animals, as close as we are to the jungle. Especially wild dogs. So, yeah, try to steer clear of the burn piles.”
Wild animals. Tigers. She remembered reading something about tigers. “Do we need to watch for tigers here? Or wear masks on the backs of our heads?”
The others laughed.
“Don’t wear a mask,” Aubra said. “Just be aware and don’t go out alone at dusk or dawn.”
“I’ve never seen a tiger around here, if that helps you feel better,” Tisha said. “So don’t worry about that too much.”
“Snakes, though,” Melanie told her, “are everywhere. And they can get into the pipes. Always approach a toilet with caution and look inside before you sit on it.”
Olivia waited for more laughter, but none came. They were serious. Great. Now every time she sat on a toilet, she’d be worried about a snake slithering up through the pipes and biting her butt.
Snake slithering through pipes. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. She’d never get to put that book into Aditi’s hands.
She thought back over the past month, how a student had declared girls can’t be superheroes, how extraordinarily bright Aditi was, Aditi’s dream of one day being a doctor. All of that now ground to a halt because she got her period? “This can’t be right. I have a book for Aditi. How can she be completely finished with school? She’s never coming back?”
“We’ve seen it happen over and over,” Melanie said. “Don’t get too close to any of your students, but especially the girls. You’ll just be inviting more heartache.”
Now they told her. Now when it was too late. She couldn’t allow this to happen. “What happens now? Can she go to an all-girls school? Surely it’s not really the end of her education. She wants to be a doctor. She’s so smart. She could be one.”
Four pairs of eyes watched her with empathy. They understood. They’d been through it. And they had no happy endings to share.
“Look, some parts of the world are worse. Some places ban menstruating girls and women to isolation tents. At least here they stay home.”
“But it seems like such an extreme measure. We don’t drop out of school back home.”
“Not now we don’t. In the past some girls did. Now we have clean, running water. Pads and tampons—thin and discreet. Washing machines for our clothes. We can clean up if anything leaks. Here they use rags and strips of old torn up cloth like women used on farms back home, like my grandma tells me she had to use growing up. Sometimes they resort to leaves. Eventually they’ll probably catch up, but for now, this is how they handle things.”
Olivia shook her head. She simply could not wrap her brain around this. “That just can’t be right. I mean, come on. I’ve seen female Indian doctors in America. They must have gone to school here.”
“In one of the bigger cities with a more progressive family, sure. But here? No. In rural parts of the country, the girls are expected to marry, have babies, and take care of their husband’s house and children. Education is considered frivolous for them, since they won’t get jobs anyway. Once they start menstruation, they stay home with their mothers and start helping run the house. On-the-job training basically, to teach them the skills they’ll be expected to know in a few years. It wasn’t much different in the States not that long ago.”
Tisha rested a hand on her arm, sympathy in her eyes. “I know, but imagine how mortified Aditi, or any of the girls, would be to come to school with nothing but rags, leak all over their britches, and have no way to clean up. And what would they do with the bloodied rags in the middle of the day?”
Memories of heavy bleeding, so much blood, soaking her overnight pads, seeping through her pajamas, their sheets, billowing Rorschach blots spreading into meaningless but indelible stains, rushed back to her. She remembered Scott pinching his face in revulsion, as if she somehow had any control and could have stopped this from happening. Guilt and shame burned her neck and cheeks as she remembered ripping the sheets from the bed and scrubbing the bloody mess in the sink until her fingers glowed red and raw, sobbing at the injustice of it all.
The others nodded. “This is how they handle things. This is their way.”
Olivia didn’t accept that. She couldn’t.
Indignation filled her at the thought of the little girls in her class chided and ostracized. Because their bodies bled, according to nature’s design. She clenched her fists. “I’ll give Aditi all the pads I have—everything I brought with me. I can buy more at the market.” She gestured to the other young women. “What about you? We can distribute ours to all the girls as the need arises.”
Aubra cringed. Melanie and Delilah wrinkled their noses.
Tisha grimaced. “You haven’t seen the pads in the markets around here, girl.”
“And you don’t want to,” Aubra said.
“They’re expensive, thick, and won’t absorb a thing,” Delilah said.
Aubra made a face as if she smelled something horrible. “So you walk around waddling with this horrible nappy between your legs all day—”
“—and blood runs off the surface and down your leg. I understand why the women use rags instead. I swear the pads are coated in water repellent.”
“We had the misfortune of trying them,” Tisha said. “I brought some from home but not a year’s worth. When I ran out, I tried the local product and was shocked. Now we drive to Kochi and buy imported product—and pay many times what we’d pay at home.”
“Well,” Aubra said, “chocolates aren’t my only care packages from home. Mum sends me some.”
Olivia pressed on, sure the solution was somewhere in front of them. “Okay, so we get people to ship to us. Or . . . or overpay here. I just took on some tutoring. I’ll have a little income.”
Those forlorn eyes all stared back at her again. Delilah clucked her tongue, a silent Bless your heart evident in the sound.
“And what happens when we all leave and go home?” Tisha asked. “They’ll be right back in the same situation.”
Jarred, she slumped, caving in on herself. Like her marriage, like her own devastating loss, nothing could be done.
“I’m sorry. We did everything we could. It wasn’t enough.”
No happy endings waited for Aditi—or Olivia either, she realized. Why in the world had she entertained the notion they existed at all?