12
CHOOSING FAMILY
By the end of that long day, I hadn’t found a job. Our money was gone, and we weren’t any richer, except for the raincoat and bananas and bag of beads that Teashop Aunty had given us.
Still, I felt thankful. Thankful we had at least that much. Most of all, thankful that you were following me without a fuss, with Kutti at your heels.
Smart, independent Kutti, who’d scampered off to eat scraps out of every open, overflowing garbage can we’d seen. We wouldn’t have to worry about feeding him.
Arul and Muthu returned as we were trying to tie our raincoat to a steel rod that was poking out of the wall of the bridge to make a roof. Arms outstretched, you ran toward the boys.
The raincoat flapped in the wind and started flying about the bridge.
You squealed with excitement as I zigzagged after the raincoat, dodging the holes in the bridge. Kutti yipped and joined the chase.
“Cloth bird,” Muthu yelled as he helped me catch it.
“Nice save.” Arul clapped. “But that’s not big enough for a roof.”
“What do you know?” I huffed. “We don’t need you telling us how to build a shelter.”
“Too bad, because I got a spare tarp for you. A nice, big one.”
“Now you tell me? After I almost twisted my ankle hopping all over the bridge?”
“You could thank me, you know,” he said.
“I could,” I agreed.
Arul grinned.
I grinned back.
“Well, maybe you’ll want to thank me after we have some dinner.”
We spread the raincoat on the ground and sat cross-legged in a circle around it. Arul set out their food—four crisp murukkus, wrapped in newspaper. My mouth watered, seeing the beige spirals made of spicy lentil flour.
I added the bananas that remained from the bunch that Teashop Aunty had given us.
Arul pressed his palms together and said a prayer I’d never heard before. It sounded like our father, O. R. T. Narayan, something something—all in English, not Tamil like Amma’s prayers.
Then we split the food up evenly.
Almost.
Arul insisted he wasn’t very hungry. He gave me his fruit to save for you for the next morning.
Ashamed that I was too selfish and hungry to be so noble, I downed my fair share.
After dinner, Arul helped us build our shelter. We tied one edge of the new tarp to the rods poking out of the wall of the bridge, right alongside their tarp. You and Muthu helped us stretch the other end of our tarp from the wall to the ground and weight down the bottom edge with stones to make a sloped roof. We hung our towel between the two sloped tarp roofs, like a wall. I spread out our sheet and bunched up the raincoat for you to have as a pillow.
“Sleep well in your new home,” Arul said.
We crawled into our tent. I took out the book Parvathi Teacher had given me and strained my eyes, trying to read in the semidarkness, but I could hardly make out the words. I put the book away and thought of how kind she had been to us.
“When we grow up, I want to be a teacher,” I told you. This dream had flitted through my mind before. Voicing it for the first time made my dream feel more solid. But it also made me worry if, by running away, I’d pushed it further out of my reach. “You think I can be a teacher someday? Subbu and Parvathi Teacher moved to cities so their lives could get better, right? Like us?”
“Story,” you demanded.
I sighed. I didn’t want Arul hearing my story and thinking it was silly, so I started whispering as I’d done the night before.
“Loud!” you commanded. “Palace! Peacock!”
“Okay, okay.” I raised my voice a little and saw Muthu’s shadow as he crept next to the towel dividing our tents.
When I was done, you demanded, “Again!”
I was about to protest when Muthu’s voice floated through the thin barrier between us. “Yes, Akka, please? One more time?”
His words made my throat squeeze up, and it was a few moments before I could speak again.
He’d called me akka, older sister. He’d made me family.