BEAUTIFUL

AT THE ORPHANAGE, ISMAT liked to tell us lies about our origins. I knew mine by heart.

With pride in her voice that made me grind my teeth, she would say, “Your mother brought you here when you were just eight days old.”

“She did not even have a name for me,” I would counter. “She said you were a gift she couldn’t keep.”

“She knew she could dump me here like a bag of old shoes; she knew someone would pick it up.”

“She was so shy—wouldn’t show her face. Slept outside on the pavement for a week, refusing to go, her mouth covered.”

When I was six, I began to wet my bed in the night. One such time a nurse, eyes swollen with broken sleep, pushed me into the bathroom and without preamble stripped off my soiled clothes and poured cold water over me from a bucket.

Drying me off, she muttered, “Haraam zaadi.” Bastard. I thought it was an interesting word; I had heard it in a movie. When I became a little older and understood all of its implications, I still didn’t mind it. And by the time I was no longer a child, I agreed with it on some level. Who knew what my parents were? Tainted or wholesome, together or apart. Alive or dead. They could be anyone, anywhere. It did not matter to me.

Ismat tried hard to keep our lives steady and uneventful, but sometimes the whims of donors took us in unexpected directions. Around the time I was eight, someone sent the orphanage cans of yellow paint and right away Ismat hired a man to redo our TV room walls, to make them more cheerful. But what had seemed like an overabundance to us turned out to be just enough for a portion of the walls. So we watched our programs surrounded by walls in alternating states. All this I considered normal, how everyone lived.

I must have loved Ismat when I was a child, but later she became nothing more than the woman who ran the orphanage, a shape in the background.

When I was fourteen or fifteen the girls I knew graduated from watching variety shows on TV at five in the afternoon to watching drama serials at eight every night. They wished they had the nice homes and the beautiful mothers and the shopping excursions. It seemed to me they had entered a new phase where they enjoyed being sad. Even the way they sat was an attitude of meek defeat, on the floor with their chins on their knees, arms wrapped around their legs. The nurses sighed right along with them, reveling in their morose moments. One of the girls would say, “Who will marry us?” and—with saccharine tenderness—the nurses would say, “You will have a family of your own one day.” But they didn’t really care; I could tell. And the sad girls never noticed the smirks on their faces, which is why I felt they deserved the insincerity. That, and because I thought they were beautiful. To me, they seemed to have all grown into one graceful body.

The girls who didn’t find homes tried their luck with marriages Ismat arranged for them; those who couldn’t get married had by then stayed at the orphanage for so long they eventually exchanged their beds in the girls’ rooms for beds in the nurses’ rooms. The men Ismat found for the girls to marry did not look like ones we saw on TV but they had respectable professions: shopkeepers, salesmen, tailors. Something in the way these men sat and half-smiled showed that they knew the ways of the world. The girls never said no to these proposals, and I could understand why. There was something exciting about the whole arrangement. Men loomed over us, took up more space than us. They seemed hard to please, but we imagined that we could belong to them forever.

The first time I saw Babar the rat catcher was when he was getting out of the driver’s side of a small van with a cartoon of worried rats painted on the side. He was well-dressed: black pants with sharp creases and a short-sleeved blue shirt. He carried a large bag that looked very heavy. It was probably full of rat poison. The proximity of a man to so much danger thrilled me.

I found him in the corridor just inside the door; a nurse said in a bored voice, “How long will this take?” The rat catcher answered, “Could be an hour, ma’am.” They both saw me then; the man gave me a smile. His hair and his eyes were black-brown; he looked even better up close.

Bending his head a little deferentially, he said to the nurse, “Perhaps this young lady could show me around. Would save you trouble.”

She chewed the inside of her cheek for a moment, then said, “Yes, why not,” and left us alone.

We went all around the orphanage together. Sometimes he went down on his hands and knees, checking corners, his torch in his mouth, making ticks and notes on his clipboard. His voice floated up from the floor: “There is evidence of rats.” He tucked away little black trays filled with something thick and gray. “Trapping glue,” he said. The moment I felt time stand still was when we were in the storeroom with the carton full of faded green curtains. With gloved hands, Babar gently turned over a fold of green, revealing tiny, black ovals dotting the material. We stared at the evidence, him in satisfaction and me in thrall of his capability. If he had told me to go ahead and touch the dots to see how they crumbled I would have. He took out boxes with red skulls and crossbones on the lids. “Dangerous, powerful bait inside,” he said. “The rats eat this once, then go back to their nests and die.” He put down the last box. “I’ve never been inside an orphanage before, you know. Always thought it would be a little like a hospital.” He gave a short laugh. “Certainly didn’t expect it to have someone as pretty as you.” He stood looking at me for one second, three seconds.

I held my breath and wondered what was going to happen next.

“Well.” He clicked his pen shut. “I’ll be back for another check, same time.” He held out his clipboard, looking slightly embarrassed. “Here. Take this. I would have liked to give you something special for all your help, but this is all I have at the moment.”

I put the clipboard under my pillow that night and fell asleep thinking warm thoughts about his knowledge, his restraint.

I had long been consumed with the need to link myself to a man and his love. The first one I had tried to get to like me was Ismat’s driver; I brought him cups of tea, pretending to be shy, and he took them with a smile, his small mustache like a centipede. Very soon he invited me to sit next to him on the bench under the tree, his radio playing somewhere by his feet. Every time I sat there he put his hand on my knee and my body tingled and I thought, This is what love must feel like. But one day he wasn’t there. I found out that Ismat had fired him; I did not speak to her for a month.

Then there was the sweeper who came by every week or so. He squatted over the floor and swept away soil, leaves, water. When I told him his hard work must exhaust him, he said he was pleased someone appreciated it. Moving a broom over and over again was hard work, but it did give him strong muscles, he said. He let me feel them and stroked my hair and said I was a clever girl. Again, I felt that joyful surge of love. We had met just two times when he stopped coming over. My misery brought on a fever; Ismat sat by my bed, laying strips of cold, damp cloth on my forehead. She murmured things I didn’t understand. For a short while, at the height of my fever—104, I was told later—I accepted the roles Ismat played in my life. Mother, payer, keeper. She spent nights on a mattress on the floor next to me.

As I got better, the sight of her began to remind me of the sweeper and what I didn’t have anymore. Her presence became unbearable; one afternoon I took the medicine bottle from her hand and broke it on the floor.

With Babar, it was different. I wasn’t going to let him leave me surprised with sadness. I watched every day from eleven until noon for his van, and when he came by, I greeted him and let my pleasure show on my face even though Ismat was right there or maybe because she was right there. I said, “I will help with the rat check. The nurses are not good at this.” Ismat hesitated a moment, then said thank you, and later, as I trailed Babar, holding his bag, I imagined her sitting at her old, scratched desk, shoulders and breasts sagging in defeat because she hadn’t been able to keep everyone away from me.

Standing by a tray with a dead rat in it, Babar gave me a present, a hairbrush with a glittery handle. As I moved my fingers over the smooth plastic to show him my admiration of it, he closed his hand around my wrist and held it up. “Look at you. So weak. They don’t feed you well here. And your clothes, they don’t even fit you.”

Babar let go of my hand.

“What does your name mean?” I felt audacious, older, unlike myself.

He smiled. “Lion. Big and strong and protecting. And yours? What does Khajista mean?”

“I don’t know.”

“Khajista. Your name is dry as a biscuit.”

“Ismat chose it for me.”

“How old are you?”

“I’m nineteen.”

“Khajista.” He tilted his head to one side and narrowed his eyes. Then, rapidly, “Khajista, bring me tea. Khajista, find me my socks. Khajista, let’s have a picnic by the sea, have ice cream, watch a movie.”

Breathlessly, I said, “OK.”

I didn’t tell anyone about him; I was not friends with the girls there. There was very little that they and I understood about one another. They liked to braid each other’s hair and pick names for their future children. I had once furtively tried to practice on my own hair so I could show them my skills; though I tugged angrily at the snarls with my fingers, eyes smarting from the pull on my scalp, I did not look like them. I liked to sneak into the kitchen to steal milk powder and eat it in fistfuls until I doubled over from stomach pain. The girls practiced cooking. I plucked hair from my arms with my fingers. Sometimes the nurses caught me in one of these acts. Then they clicked their tongues and said it was because I had never seen my mother or my father that I behaved so strangely. They believed that was the reason for any kind of trouble a girl here could be having—poor digestion or teeth that stick out or a painful period.

I stopped doing those things after I met Babar. It was as if someone had given my brain a strong painkiller. I found things to give to him, a notebook, a pen. I planned things to say to him so he would think I was bright and interesting. I looked through my meager collection of clothes for something to wear for his next visit and found nothing that matched or was not worn out. I stole a shirt I liked from another girl’s drawer, but it would not go down past my chest. At night I pictured his eyebrows; they were like wings. I tried to sleep a lot because sleep made the time go by faster. I had dreams. In one, I was holding his bag of poison; in another, I was letting Ismat comb my hair, the teeth getting caught in my frizzy tangles before breaking through. Sometimes I practiced how I would introduce Babar to the nurses and the girls, imagined surprise and jealousy spreading like lightning over their faces.

Ismat had only ever been able to get me one suitor, a man in his fifties. A shopkeeper with a sixteen-year-old son who stayed most of the time with his ex-wife—so he wouldn’t be any trouble. Ismat said, “This might be your only chance, Khajista.” The day the man and his mother came over, I sat in the drawing room with knots in my stomach, keeping my eyes lowered, just as I had been told. I glanced at the man; he was a mountain. The mother said a few brief sentences to Ismat and nothing to me at all. Five minutes later, they left. A few days later, a nurse told me that the woman had called Ismat and said no; I seemed too large and dull to make her son a good wife.

I locked myself into a bathroom and examined my body. My legs and waist were thick, my face was square. There was extra flesh on my stomach which I held with my hands and tried to squeeze flat. I had the kind of form that could make people angry, that was harder to forgive. I wondered if I had always looked like this; I had never seen any photographs of myself from when I was younger—there weren’t any. After my self-examination, I returned to the TV room and pulled more hair.

Babar had told me he would visit again in exactly ten days. I got dressed up for him this time. I covered my face with light-colored pressed powder I’d found in a nurse’s bag. I even tried to put on a red-brown lipstick. In one of the rooms, I gave him his presents and he said they were just what he needed and put them inside his bag.

He started checking the traps, but they were empty. He was disappointed and pretended to be upset with me. “You have distracted me from being a good rat catcher,” he growled, then laughed. But I had something to show him and I could hardly wait. Finally, in the last room we came to it: two rats stuck in a tray of glue. “Look,” I said, pointing at my present to him. “I found them two days ago.” The rats were facing the same way, their claws and eyes completely still, fur lying close to their bodies. I watched Babar.

“I’ve never seen two in a trap before,” he said, his voice low and full of reverence. He squatted on the floor and used the end of a pen to part their fur. “Boy and a girl.”

I had not known that. “They were together till the end.”

Babar laughed. “They could be brother and sister, you know.” In one quick motion he dropped the tray into the bag and stood up. “Did you know rat bite sickness can make holes in the heart? The brain, too.”

I waited nervously for him to tell me when we could see each other again. He peeled off his gloves.

“I need your help with something. Will you do it, Khajista? Will you help me?”

I nodded hard. He beckoned me to come with him. Quickly we walked toward the main door and stopped outside Ismat’s office. The door was ajar; there was nobody inside. Babar went over to her desk, his shoes making no sound over the worn carpet. He took a bent paperclip out of his pocket and stuck one end of it into a drawer. In another second he slid it open. I did not understand what he was doing, but I was afraid if I questioned him, he would tell me to go. When he whispered to me, I jumped. “There’s money in there,” he said. “Take it out.” Set on top of papers was a fat pile of currency, stapled in the corner, fresh from a bank. Here was fear again; if I let myself think about Ismat—her voice, her old slippers, the bottle of nail polish she kept thinning with water to make it last longer even though the pink was now too pale—I would lose this moment forever.

Babar said, “You won’t get caught. Get the money. It’s probably for you anyway.”

If this was a test of love, I wanted to do well. I closed my hands around the money, took it out, and pushed the drawer shut.

“Good, brave girl,” Babar whispered, his face flushed. He held open his bag in front of me and I dropped the money into it.

Quickly now, he walked outside to his van and I followed him, suddenly feeling dull and lifeless. This was it; he was going away for good now. I was of no use to him anymore, and I had never been of use to anyone here either. He unlocked the door and tossed the bag in, so casually.

“Well. You are quite the champion.”

“Yes,” I said, my voice wobbling.

He took out his keys and stood turning them over in his hands. Finally he looked up, his face red. “I am a good person, Khajista. How would you like to come away with me?”

“With you?” The dullness began to recede; again, my heart beat faster.

“You can do much better than staying here.” He sounded surer with each word. Then he grabbed my hands. “She hasn’t even given you her last name, yet she calls you her daughter.” He was mistaken; Ismat had never called me her daughter.

“This money can be ours, Khajista,” he said. “And even more rightfully yours. You deserve it. Will you come with me?”

I told him yes.

That same evening I ran away from the orphanage, hiding in Babar’s van. All I had with me were the old shoes on my feet and the clothes I wore. As we drove away, him laughing and slapping his thigh at pulling off this stunt, I thought, This is just like a scene from a movie. For a while, I wished I’d been able to bring with me some things I’d had my eyes on at the orphanage, a beaded bag, a chiffon dupatta. But then Babar stopped next to a man selling ice cream and bought me two scoops, and I forgot about old things.

I don’t remember all the girls at the orphanage, but some I still recall very well, especially the ones who were nearer my age. I remember Ismat of course, but I have been careful in choosing which moments and exchanges to retain. The voice of hers that I carry in my head is from when I was sick. And once, when I was very young, I smiled back at her; I must have.

She would be happy to know I am doing well, I’m sure of that. With her money, Babar and I were able to start a good life. Now in the daytime, he sees to his rat-catching business, buying new traps and advanced poisons, reciting to me excitedly the list of chemicals and their percentages of success. In the evening, he plays with our children, who wear new clothes several times a year. We have a nice little flat across from a school. Lately I have been going to my balcony when the school day ends. Licking the dust covering the ledge off my fingers, I scan the faces of the little girls as they stand on the pavement before getting into cars and vans. An absurd hope bubbles up in me; maybe if I follow one of those girls all the way to her home, I’ll discover that she is the daughter of a girl I had known. And maybe she, older and friendly now, would invite me in, and we would talk about Ismat and how we used to be and how beautiful we all are now in our completeness.