Forty-Two

The two police officers, the sergeant and his deputy, are arguing again. Malu keeps splitting straw. Manang is splitting straw, too. They squat beside each other in the holding cells, saying nothing. Last night he gave her both of the scratchy blankets that the officer slipped between the bars. She thinks of Umi at home, wondering about what her daughter has done. “I’m sorry, Amah,” she whispers.

“Stop,” Manang commands.

“I’m so sorry. Manang, I—”

“Shhh. Say nothing.”

She should have stayed inside that cabin and let the flames swallow her up. In the place after this life, the bad place, she and Amah could be together. Instead she scuttled away like a rat.

Manang’s fingers are splitting a husk. “Cry if you like,” he says. “Say nothing.”

Crescents of dirt are under his fingernails. She thinks of all the hot summer days his hands worked the black earth as he built and tended their gardens, turning tiles, hauling stones, mixing the air into the soil by pitchfork and mounding it to plant shrubs and herbs. Honest, useful work. “You shouldn’t be here,” she says. “You did nothing wrong.”

“I did nothing.” There is anger twitching, just under his skin.

He knows. He knows. He knows. The heartbeat of this new life.

“And I tell you,” Manang goes on, “don’t speak like that again. Big ears in police stations. All of the time they listen. Even—” he glances at the bickering officers, “even when their big mouths are going.”

“But, Manang, I don’t care. Big ears, big mouths, I don’t care anymore.”

She flinches when she sees the disappointment on his face. Some kinds of shame will never fade, will they? Being close to a good man like Manang is only making her shame grow.

“Hear me, Malu. Say nothing. To nobody.”

She looks at the Sikhs, trading angry words and angry silences. They seem to have other problems on their hands.