Taaj and Malik never returned with the cane from the cane field that afternoon, so Maria and I decided to marry our dolls under the shahtoot trees while we waited for the others to return and the sun to recede.
Most of our afternoon activities were innocent childhood explorations that the adults frowned upon, so we waited until obligatory naps during the hottest time of the day silenced the house. Then we danced among the trees like movie heroines or ate mouthwatering sour, unripe mangoes or loquats from the surrounding orchards, secure that Saffiya and Bhaggan would never know.
Sometimes Taaj and Maalik joined us, but other times, Maria and I placed a charpoy in the shade of the shahtoot tree to catch the intermittent warm breezes as we played with our dolls. We made make-believe homes and make-believe schoolrooms. Worlds parallel to our reality. Worlds the way we wanted them.
That afternoon, Maria and I prepared for our dolls’ wedding by mixing henna in a bowl and making dotted designs on our hands to cool ourselves off. We hummed wedding songs and sat the two limp dolls on the charpoy next to us.
Before Bhaggan returned, we decided to play the part of the wedding that the village women joked about—the part that no one ever saw, after the wedding guests had all left and the bride and the groom were alone. Bhaggan would have words to say if she ever found out. She would probably even beat us with slippers. But I didn’t care.
Maria spoke up, surprising me with her knowledge: “Amman makes moaning sounds at night when she lies next to my father.”
“How would you know? You sleep with me.” As always, I questioned her credibility.
“Remember the time Amman Bhaggan was unwell and you spent the whole night tending to her? Amman Bhaggan told me to sleep at home with Stella that night.”
How could I have forgotten? I had been afraid that Bhaggan would not live through the night and that I would be left alone.
“Stella told me to keep my head under the blanket because it was so cold. But it wasn’t really cold. And then I farted.” She looked at me and laughed.
I continued, straightening the bride doll’s clothes, covering her face with her tinseled scarlet dopatta. The groom doll’s face was covered with four grimy strings of gold thread. I folded the cloth dolls, seating them close together, and then propped them up with rolled fabric.
“Well, do you want to know what happened?”
I didn’t want to appear too eager, so I remained silent at Maria’s question.
“Only if you want to.” Maria knew she had caught my attention, so she continued.
“Amman and Abba were sleeping on the charpoy in the other corner of the room. I could hear Amman making strange noises. Abba was on top of her, like this.”
Most villagers had two-room homes, one for sleeping and the other for visitors. Jannat and Isaac had a one-room mud house, with three charpoys on each wall.
Other villagers piled the tin storage boxes in their second room and covered them with crochet and embroidered clothes. None of Stella’s embroidered clothes ever found their way to her parents’ home, so the boxes filled with clothes donated by Saffiya, which included some old sweaters and a threadbare gray coat, hid under the charpoys in embarrassment. And on one wall, a chipped blue-and-white vase and a framed picture of a woman with a tiny baby sat on a shelf.
Taking the groom doll from his perch, Maria placed him on top of the bride doll, toppling them both. With her other hand, she covered her mouth, stifling a giggle. I frowned for her benefit, and for any grown-ups who might have seen us. I didn’t know if she was telling the truth, but I sensed this was not just her imagination.
Taaj had once thrown a rock at two stray village dogs, and they had yelped away. When I’d asked him why he had done that, he’d laughed and said they were doing what men and women did in bed. I hadn’t believed him, and he’d wanted to tell me more, but Amman Bhaggan had called me away.
I didn’t want to believe Maria knew more about this than I did.
Dried brown henna crumbled from Maria’s hands onto her doll’s blood-red bridal outfit made of scraps of shiny materials from Bibi Saffiya’s sewing basket. I couldn’t stop staring at the dolls.
“Nothing will happen if you keep looking!” Maria was enjoying her supremacy, so I decided to build up my confidence and respond as if I knew what we were talking about. I knew babies came after a wedding, and I knew if it was a boy, the celebrations would be greater than those for a girl. I knew when a man got too close to a woman, a baby appeared sometime after.
“If the dolls have a baby, it’s mine,” I said.
“You’ll have to wait for the baby.” Maria took pleasure in knowing more than I did about such matters.
“Not me,” I declared. Nothing I was saying made much sense, but I wasn’t going to let Maria have the upper hand. Whatever I did, I would keep my ignorance hidden. I knew women were responsible for bearing children. Wasn’t that what Zakia complained about to Saffiya and Bhaggan?
The dolls lay in a pile of crumpled roses and marigolds that we had plucked to decorate their marriage bed. Between the crushed rose petals and the marigolds were sprinkles of henna. I pulled the yellow petals from a marigold and chewed on the bud. Maria did the same with the rose. We looked at each other, not sure what to do next.
I wasn’t having fun anymore and needed to pee, but was too lazy to go to the fields, so I ordered Maria to look away.
I pulled down my shalwar and relieved myself on the parched ground near the tree.
Maria wrinkled her nose. “Oof, Tara.”
“What did you expect? That’s how it smells.”
“What?”
“When a baby is made.” I was tired of Maria’s knowing all the answers. And for now, I added, “It’s how your mother smells.” Bhaggan had mentioned that Jannat smelled of urine, even though I wasn’t sure why.
“That’s because she’s unwell,” Maria said.
“No, it’s because she keeps having babies.”
“Not my mother. Your mother …” She stopped short. Maria was a better person than I. She knew when she was being hurtful and apologized immediately. “That’s not what I meant.”
I pretended to be offended by the reference to my nonexistent mother. Everyone knew I didn’t have one. Maria had heard it from Bhaggan many times, and also from Saffiya. Bibi Saffiya told the story of how she had found me. Her version was not the same as Bhaggan’s. In her version, Saffiya seemed more saintly.
“It must have been divine intervention,” Saffiya was fond of saying. “I had just finished my afternoon prayers and was saying the salaam at the end, when I looked to the right and then the left, and saw the bundle of clothes on the seat opposite. It had been left by the young woman who got off the train immediately after I began my prayers. She was covered from head to toe in a burka. She looked like a town girl. Her burka, you know, it was decorated in the fashion of town folk. Overdone, if you ask me. Not like us village folk, who keep our wealth hidden.”
My mother had been a woman of consequence. Otherwise, why would she have been on a train and wearing an embellished burka? Not a village woman, not like the rest.
“I thought she had gotten off the train to get something to eat, but when the train started to move, I realized the woman wasn’t planning to return. I looked out the window, but she was nowhere to be seen. Then the bundle moved. No one else in the train. Just me and Bhaggan. It was as if I were getting a sign from above.”
Was I a sign from God? Was that why I was special?
“But the train had already started moving, and when Bhaggan picked up the cloth, she saw this little rascal. I named her Tara, Star. Did you know I named Jannat’s daughter Stella? Their names have the same meaning. You know how names can make the future? How else would they both be able to anticipate a bright future?”
Was this true? I thought. If Stella and I had the same name, would our destinies also be the same?
“Tara didn’t cry. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her cry. She was like that the day we found her,” Saffiya ended.
“Never cried,” Amman Bhaggan chimed in. “Someone would have sat on her, and she wouldn’t have made a sound.”
I took pride in having never cried in front of anyone. Even when my mother had left me on the train. My scowl and laughter were renowned, but I had never cried in front of anyone, and no one would ever make me.
Maria had belittled the mother I had never known, but I would never cry.
“Of course you had a mother before they found you.” Maria was now embarrassed and spoke nonsense.
But I would not forgive her easily. My response, about her beginnings, would reflect my pain. I looked directly at her and spoke calmly, adjusting Bhaggan’s version of Maria’s birth to reveal how I felt about her now.
“I was there when you came out of your mother. She screamed and I watched as I sat in the window. And they stuffed her dopatta in her mouth. And then Hamida’s mother told her to shut up or she would wake the whole village. But everyone was already waiting in the courtyard. Waiting to see if she would have a boy or another girl. It was just before the early-morning prayer, and they thought they were waiting for a boy, but then you came and they started beating their breasts like Shia on the tenth of Muharram. You were small and dark and ugly. And they hoped you would die. But Amman Bhaggan came in and hid you away under her bed. And she kept you hidden for a whole year, until you were too big to die!”
Maria looked back at me, tears streaming down her grubby cheeks.
“You’re lying,” she cried. “You always tell lies. Amman told me not to play with you. She said you’re the devil. You do magic and cast the evil eye on everyone.”
“Get lost! I never asked for your doll. You wanted to marry her to mine.” I kicked the copulating dolls onto the dampened patch I had just created. I covered my head with my dopatta and ran past Maria.