It rained that night, and Maria hugged me closer when thunder struck. She kept waking me up but managed to stay asleep herself.
Maria and I both slept on the same charpoy in Amman Bhaggan’s room. I must have fallen asleep when it stopped raining, but when I woke, I could smell the watered soil and the chameli buds mixing with the stale odor of morning farts in the tight room that the three of us shared.
“Where are you going?” Maria called to me from our charpoy, as soon as she realized I was no longer lying next to her.
“What’s it to you?”
“Can I come?”
She didn’t wait for my response and rolled off the charpoy to follow me. I could hear her bare feet squishing in the muddy puddle I’d just avoided.
Aside from the two flat pillows and bedsheets trailing on the ground, the two charpoys on the veranda in front of our room were deserted. Amman Bhaggan’s three sons, Sultan, Taaj, and Maalik, slept there. They must have gone to the mosque for the early-morning prayers.
It was cool out. No flies, at least not yet. The sun still hid under the cloudy horizon but would soon emerge to crumple the coolness into a steamy swamp of sweat.
As always, I walked to the hand pump that spouted a cooling stream of metallic-tasting water. I splashed my face and rubbed the drool off my cheek. As I ran my wet hands over my hair to straighten it, I could detect the stench of garlic still under my fingernails.
Maria copied me, but I left her behind as soon as I was finished.
“Bring me a needle from under Amman Bhaggan’s bed,” I ordered, without looking back at her. Bibi Saffiya softened when I made a chameli garland and brought it to her before breakfast. Sometimes she pinned it into her graying and thinning hair. Other times she wrapped it around her thickened wrist and covered the two twisted gold bangles, remnants from her marriage.
Even though I had never witnessed garlands presented as a demonstration of love, I envied the movie actresses flitting across the black-and-white TV screen, dancing for their beloveds with garlands wrapped around their pulled-up hair or, even more tantalizing, dangling around their braids. I imagined myself dressed in a virginal white silk outfit, or in brash bridal red, my eyes lengthened with a swish of kohl. The contrasting white garland in my long black hair would sway as I danced through the shahtoot trees.
I convinced myself. The garland would be for me. Forget Bibi Saffiya. And whom would I entice with the enchanting perfume of the morning buds? Taaj had looked at me the day before when I was brushing my hair. When I looked into the mirror, he was staring at me. I wanted to tell his mother but decided not to.
But that would be too easy. I would cast my spell on Sultan. He would be entranced by the chameli aroma and my snakelike braid.
Now I was more excited than I had been earlier. But I would have to make the garland before they all returned from the mosque.
“If she wakes up?” Maria was always too concerned about getting into trouble.
I didn’t know whether she was referring to Bhaggan or Saffiya, but I didn’t care to answer. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her run back to the room. Chameli fragrance filled my nostrils, which were still struggling to recover from the garlic stench. I began wrenching off the buds from the bush farthest from the entrance of the house, frantic to work on the garland.
When this house was first built, Saffiya’s father, the herbalist, planted bushes and trees for his hakim practice. Isaac’s father planted them, and now Isaac cared for them. That was what Bhaggan told us.
Some plants were used for prevention, others for cures. Bibi Saffiya would tell me the benefits of the plants that her father planted when I massaged her in the early afternoons, before she took her nap. Marigolds, which grew uncontrollably in the garden, cured the intestines and diarrhea, which Maria always got when she ate too many of the tangerines from the garden. When Isaac had problems with his liver, Bibi Saffiya told him to drink marigold tea. I made it for him for a whole month. I gave the same tea to Bhaggan when she had worms. Her breath smelled vile that whole winter.
Bibi Saffiya herself took two cloves of garlic, morning and evening, to cure her gas problems, which she’d had since I could remember, even though I would have liked to forget.
The flower of Maryam helped with childbirth and monthly bleeding, but it didn’t grow in this climate, even though Bibi Saffiya’s father had attempted to plant it so many years ago.
Every Thursday, Bibi Saffiya would summon Isaac, who walked silently behind her while she ordered him to trim here and add manure there, as if he needed her directions. But he listened dutifully, eyes down, as if following a trail of ants. He knew what he needed to do. Amman Bhaggan said he took better care of the plants than he did of his own children.
I never saw Stella or Maria talk to him while he worked. I was the one who took him his meals, which he ate under the neem tree near the kitchen.
Now that I had reached the neem tree, I looked up toward the house and saw Maria jumping over puddles, as if she sensed my urgency. She held a red ball of yarn in her right hand, and in the left, she held up a darning needle.
“This is the only one I could find,” she shouted jubilantly.
Chameli stalks are delicate, barely upholding their fragile white petals. Maria knew this, but she chose to bring the thickest needle in the basket. The stalks would be shredded by the needle that was to bring them together to make my garland.
“Do I want to murder someone?”
Maria rationalized her choice to me.
“It was dark in the room, and I was scared of looking under the bed in Amman Bhaggan’s basket. This one was poking out of the big red ball of thread that she uses to sew the comforters, and I thought if you’re making a garland with chameli, the red color will be best. You wouldn’t want any other color. The red will look so beautiful with the white flowers… . Actually, maybe white thread would be better. Should I go back and get the white instead? I can—”
“Hand it over.” Anything to keep the tranquility of the morning.
I took the needle and thread from her and squatted on a rock near the chameli bush. Maria wasn’t as careful, and her kameez trailed in a puddle near the rock she had found, but she didn’t seem to care, ever. We sat in silent meditation while I made the garland.
I had filled my veil with enough buds to make a garland for my braid. I shifted on my haunches and began threading the flowers. Maria, with no concern for the surroundings, sat following my every movement with her eyes.
I chose not to tell her that my plan had changed. She wouldn’t understand. She was too young. And what if my plan didn’t work? But I couldn’t think that way. I would never get what I wanted if I didn’t at least try. But if I didn’t tell her of my new plan, she would never know that I had failed. I could pretend that the garland was for Bibi Saffiya, instead of for me.
The thick needle tore through the buds, and some fell onto the damp ground and shattered. Maria picked them up and stuffed one in each nostril. I stifled a smile, but she knew she had amused me.
I couldn’t let her distract me from my goal, so I looked down at my task and hurriedly threaded the thick needle through the chameli buds.
The chameli bushes were at the entrance to Bibi Saffiya’s house. The latch on the wooden door left a gap large enough for the cat to climb through. The gap defied any promise of privacy to the two-step entrance, encouraging secrets to leak in and out of the home.
I looked up briefly past Maria’s short, scruffy hair, and the summer-dawn view from the entrance displayed the village’s ten mud huts huddled closely to the left. To the right, expansive fields stretched to the horizon. Maria and I sat at the entrance of Bibi Saffiya’s mud-covered opulence of many rooms that could have accommodated all the village families.
The wooden windows and doors hung loosely in disrepair, like their decaying, formidable owner. Each room seemed isolated yet connected to the next with multiple doors and windows. Halfhearted printed cambric curtains partially obscured the view to each adjoining room, authorizing eavesdropping.
The austere sequence of these rooms demonstrated for me the authority in Saffiya’s own life, as well as her ability to control the lives of others. At unequal distances on the whitewashed walls of each room, a few unsmiling family portraits were testimony to her lineage and power.
In her bedroom, her parents’ marriage photograph hung at a slight angle. I dusted it each morning, leaving it at that angle as I gazed at the young groom, Bibi Saffiya’s father, who stared back at me, one hand pulling back strands of marigolds from his brow. His wife, Saffiya’s mother, sat next to him, leaving enough space between them for a third person, who must have forgotten to join them. Her head was bowed low, a dopatta layered with a chador covering it, pulling it down, restricting her from making eye contact with the photographer.
Whatever I could see of Saffiya’s mother was weak, unlike Saffiya. That’s probably why she died when Saffiya had just started to walk. Amman Bhaggan, only a few years older than Saffiya, was brought in to care for her. She must have hated that, but I admired her for doing what was expected. I know I would never sacrifice myself for anyone.
The rooms adjacent to Saffiya’s were storerooms bordered with large tin boxes stuffed with bedding for family members when they came from faraway villages. The sitting area, where distant relatives and farmhands gathered, was bordered with lines of century-old chairs and brocaded sofas. On one wall hung a blurry photograph of Saffiya’s father’s brother, who had died of the plague before he was old enough to get married. The mournful youth looked tragically away from the camera, as if foreseeing his early demise.
On the opposite wall hung a few ancient photographs of long-dead men sitting in a row in the front courtyard, or standing in a line near a newly purchased tractor. On the third wall were pages of an old calendar with religious calligraphy that couldn’t be thrown away.
The other two rooms had charpoys around the circumference, separated by small wooden tables covered with starched white tablecloths embroidered in white by Stella. The remaining months of that calendar from ten years earlier bestowed color upon the rooms.
In the center of the rooms that made up the house was a mud courtyard with herbs in the corner closest to the outdoor kitchen, which was at the entrance. Maria and I sat cemented to the entrance of this house, engrossed in weaving the chamelis into a garland. When I straightened the garland to check the length, I noticed the mist rising from the stream that bordered the house. Just beyond that, a thicker layer of fumes emanated from the alfalfa fields, and in the far distance, the ghostly yellow cane fields blurred into the hazy morning sky.
The one-room mosque stood aloof, at a distance from the village, dismayed that the villagers, prioritizing work in the fields during the coolest time of day, didn’t frequent it enough for prayers.
Once my garland was nearly complete, I adjusted my feet to reduce the pain of squatting for half an hour in an attempt to save my favorite, parrot-green kameez from the mud.
Maria sat cross-legged, gathering the fallen petals with her tiny hands, unable to hide her excitement. I could never understand why she was always happy or excited. Her pleasure was always exponentially greater than the event. She clapped with joy when she found a potato shaped like a mouse, or when her hands turned blue with the bluing agent for the white bed-sheets. I thought she might be a bit soft in the head, but Amman Bhaggan said she was just a happy soul.
Unlike me, Maria was indifferent to stains from the moistened floor on her powder-pink outfit, which turned an exhausted gray because she hadn’t changed for the past week.
Memories of her dead brothers shadowed her happiness, but a happy thought brightened even these sad recollections.
“These petals will look so beautiful on my baby brother’s grave. Remember how he tried to eat them once, and you stuck your finger in his mouth to pull them out, and then he started crying because he knew you were mad, but you weren’t, really, were you, Tara? And then Bibi Saffiya shouted from her bedroom to stop making such a racket, and then you said bad words, and she was going to put a burning coal on our tongues, but she didn’t know we had broken all the buds… .”
She paused, looked up at me in panic. “Hai, I’m dead! We’ll be beaten with shoes.”
She was right. Bibi Saffiya’s fury was unpredictable and unchecked. If she didn’t notice, she usually didn’t care, but if she chose to walk around the gardens later that day and noticed the fallen petals, she would let her wrath be clear immediately.
I wasn’t going to let that deter me.
“Your mouth has the motions again. Will you stop talking for once? Of course we won’t be beaten. Bibi Saffiya loves me like her daughter. She would let me sleep in her room, but she doesn’t want you all to be jealous of me. When she shouts at me, it’s out of love. How many times have I told you? We’ll say buds blew off in the storm last night.”
I convinced myself so I could concentrate on the garland.
Bibi Saffiya was my spoken mother, or mistress, depending on her mood and the time of day. She cared for me, her servant-child. She gave me everything I needed. I was like her—a woman who would make her own way in the world. I wouldn’t need a mother, just like she didn’t.
The other house servants envied our relationship and asked me to intervene when they needed a week off for a family wedding, or some money to buy clothes or to pay the village doctor to give them energy injections. At times I was unable to convince her, and at others I chose not to.
Bibi Saffiya was old, but not as old as Bhaggan. Unlike Bhaggan, she prayed five times a day and sometimes woke up for the later-than-midnight prayer before the morning prayer time, especially when the gases inside her troubled her.
Before each prayer, I would bring her hot water to complete the ablutions. Amman Bhaggan said she needed to purify herself because she couldn’t stop farting. She cleansed herself every time she sat on the prayer mat.
The gases controlled her life. When I massaged Bibi Saffiya in the midafternoon, without warning, even the chameli petals on her pillow would start to wilt. I would hold my breath until I felt dizzy, and she would wake up and slap me to force me to continue massaging her.
The garland was nearly complete. I held it up to check the length. Maybe a few more buds would complete it. The last two buds tore as I attempted to finish my task.
“Oof! The fat witch hides all the best needles!” I mumbled to myself.
I looked up as I made the last comment. I knew my young friend well.
“Hai Allah! You used a bad word. Amman Bhaggan will hit you with the fire tongs.” Maria stopped gathering the petals to caution me.
“How will she know?” I gave her a threatening look.
“I swear by Eesah, the beloved of Allah, my lips are sealed.”
“You know what’ll happen if you do? You’ll go to hell, and then the dogs there will tear your skin until you scream, but no one will hear you.”
I had shocked her into silence. I added, “And cover your head. Don’t you hear the call to prayer?”
When she faulted me, I distracted her. It was that easy. All I had to do was remind her of hellfire. She forgot she wasn’t of the same faith as the rest of us, or maybe she wanted to pretend she was. Then she would be allowed to eat from the same plate as I.
Amman Bhaggan used the chipped blue plates for her own family and me, and the white cracked ones for Maria and her family. When no one was looking, Maria and I licked halvah from each other’s plates and nothing happened.
I added the last chameli bud to the garland as the maulvi recited the last verse of the call to morning prayer: “Prayer is better than sleep!”
Without a loudspeaker, the maulvi’s deep, rhythmic voice never ventured far from the one-room brick mosque. But in the morning silence, it meandered over the fields to the front steps of Saffiya’s house, where Maria and I sat, tying the knot on my garland.
The morning prayer was the shortest of the five daily prayers, so, as we gathered the fallen buds to destroy all evidence of having broken the flowers, we saw a lone figure leaving the mosque. It was Amman Bhaggan’s eldest son, Sultan.
“There’s Sultan bhai. All by himself. Sultan bhai is so brave, walking all alone. Amman Bhaggan says you should never walk through the cane fields alone. Wild boar attack you and drag you into the fields—and you know, Tara, Stella says Sultan bhai works so hard. He gave her one of his old notebooks to press her flowers. Stella thinks he’ll come first in his exams.”
“Your sister can’t even walk straight.” Stella’s body dipped when she walked, so she avoided walking. It was a burden for me, because I had to serve her dinner and tea every day.
Maria looked at me accusingly. She stayed silent.
I didn’t try to hide my hatred for her sister. I stabbed the needle into the red cotton spool and continued, “What does your Stella know about notebooks? She spends all day embroidering tablecloths and pillow covers. She’s never been to school, and she shouldn’t take anything from Sultan bhai. Saffiya Bibi pays for all his books, and she’ll give her two stiff ones if she hears that he’s giving them away.”
How could Sultan like Stella more than he liked me? I knew more than she did. Everyone said so. No one even noticed her sitting in the corner all day long. I could attract his attention and get him to like me before he would even notice Stella again. Granted my body hadn’t developed to what I knew it would become, but my hair was long and thick. I could walk with my head held at an angle that made my braid sway across my buttocks and attract his attention. I would show Maria how easy it was to attract Sultan.