A dull glow spread across the horizon as I walked toward Maria’s house in the village. Darkness and the night wails of hyenas followed close behind. I was waking up into a nightmare of my own creation. I realized why Bhaggan had thought my monthly bleeding had started. The pain I had felt with Taaj had injured me, and she had seen the bloodstain on my kameez. I should have changed my clothes before returning to the kitchen. The mud stains on my back from lying in the field would not have alerted her as much as the blood evoking my impurity for the week.
I had left the clean laundry outside Saffiya’s room in a pile, and before I could be called to iron it or do any other petty chore for her, I decided to find Maria. I wouldn’t tell her everything I had done, but I needed her to help calm me down so I could think clearly, to get myself out of the mess of marrying an imbecile.
Maria rarely came to Saffiya’s house anymore, now that Stella had left. She spent more time with her parents. I never knew how she could stand to spend countless hours with her complaining mother, but she kept their one-room home spotless and cooked all the meals.
I needed Maria now.
I had defied my elders and knew there would be a price to pay. As I walked, the soreness inside me became more pronounced. How could I have lost control of my own body in that way? How could I have let what had happened transpire? Had I asked for it? And if I was seeking out Maria now, whom would Taaj tell about what we had done? I tried to piece it all together.
I couldn’t recall past the frog under my foot and the deepening sky above me and Taaj’s head and then the pain. The sharp pain. How had the pleasant beginning ended in such agony? I wondered if I had started something that would grow to overshadow my whole life. Why had I not given it more thought?
Maybe it was Taaj’s fault and not mine. Could I blame him? I had wanted him to do something, and I hadn’t even known what it was or where it would take me. But he should have known. He would have known. Taaj had never cared much for anyone other than himself.
I began to pick up my pace as I became more alert. In the silence of the night, I heard the distant drone of buses on the main road and thought of Taaj. He had said nothing to me before we parted. I, too, had been silent.
He must have bolted in the opposite direction to the house. He would have scampered past the cane fields, outrunning the wild boar, and scrambled over the canal bridge, scaring the snakes slithering beneath it. He would have reached the main road by the time I had returned to the kitchen. There, he would have jumped onto the first bus heading toward the coolness of the mountains, away from the heat of the flatlands.
As with all the previous times he had disappeared, he would be gone for a while, only to be missed by his mother, wondering and worrying about where his next meal would come from and where he would rest for the night. He would no doubt return. Maybe in a week, maybe in a month, or maybe, this time, in a few years.
But I knew I should stop thinking about him, because even if he were thinking of me, he was gone. He had left me. We might have shared that brief intimacy, but he wasn’t going to admit to his share of guilt. He would say I had enticed him. Bhaggan had always told me that women led men astray. Men had weak minds and strong bodies. Women had weak bodies but strong minds. Had I proven her right?
I had to think about myself. About what I had done. What we had done. There would be consequences. But who knew what?
My confusion was bubbling over and steaming up my thoughts. I would explode like the pressure cooker Bhaggan had hidden behind the flour drum, for fear of another explosion. It had taken me a whole day to clean the pieces of meat spattered on the wall, and even months later, I had found desiccated bone fragments behind the lentil boxes in the far corner of the kitchen.
Taaj was gone, and I would have to clean up.
By the time I reached Maria’s house, darkness had enveloped me. As if sensing my arrival, the bare lightbulb hanging outside the front door lit up, and as I opened the door without even knocking, the aroma of freshly baked bread greeted me.
In the courtyard, Maria was seating herself in front of the stove, having just turned on the light switch.
She looked up as I entered, and I held back my tears. She would not see me cry.
She pushed back the stool, stood up quickly, and began walking toward me, now that I had lost the energy to move any farther.
She hugged me, and my hands fell limply to my sides. She took my right hand and pulled me toward the charpoy in the courtyard and sat me down. Still holding my hand, she sat next to me.
I needed her to be the Maria who couldn’t stop talking, but she wasn’t, and maybe I respected this new Maria more. She stroked my hand and looked at me.
“I’m waiting for my meal!” Jannat called from inside the room.
“Okay, Mother. Give me a few minutes. It’s nearly ready.” She didn’t tell her mother about my arrival.
I whispered to Maria, “You know the night we went to the canal to hear the babies cry?” She said nothing, and I couldn’t continue.
Her mother coughed. Maria got up and prepared a plate of spicy potatoes and roti and took it in to her. She then made another plate and brought it to the charpoy where I sat. She made a morsel and placed it in my mouth, and I began to chew. Then she put one in her own mouth, and we shared the meal until she wiped the plate clean.
“I know how much you hate washing dishes. Now I’ve made it easy for you,” Maria said. Then she smiled. “Don’t worry. I wasn’t going to ask you to wash it.” I couldn’t answer, as it took all my effort to hold back my tears.
“Who’s there? Who are you talking to at this time of the evening?” Jannat shouted from within.
“No one, Amman. It’s just Tara. She came from Bibi Saffiya’s house to ask after you.”
“She’s never cared for me before. Did she bring my wages?”
“Not today,” Maria responded.
I couldn’t trust myself to speak. Not yet.
Maria returned to her mother to take her empty plate. Her mother’s voice emanated from within. “Your father will need a plate.”
“No, Amman. Not tonight. He went to the shrine tonight. He will eat there and sleep there, too. He has gone for blessings.”
“What blessings has he got that haven’t reached us?” Jannat responded, and Maria busied herself with washing the dishes.
I got up from the charpoy to help her.
“What would Bibi Saffiya say if she knew we ate from the same plate?” She laughed.
“I’ve done much worse than that today,” I responded.
She looked at me questioningly. “You?”
So I told her. I told her how my marriage was being arranged and how I had chosen to respond. She kept washing the dishes and wiping them and putting them away, but she heard me.
“Now what?”
“Zakia will no longer want me to marry her nephew.” At least there was some good news to come from all of this.
“How will she know what happened?”
I sat silent. I hadn’t thought that far. A heaviness began to descend on me again. I had taken a step, a leap. I had crossed a chasm, only to be surrounded by quicksand. I was sinking.
“Who will you tell? Amman Bhaggan? Bibi Saffiya? They will tell you to stay silent. And then your nikah will be done to Zakia’s nephew sooner than anyone had expected.”
When had Maria become smarter than I?
I stood up and then sat down again.
“I need tea.” Jannat’s voice sounded sleepier now.
“What does your mother do inside all day?” I asked Maria in a whisper, choosing not to answer her question.
“She comes out during the day, but in the evening she stays on her charpoy. And she dreams. She says her babies come to her at night, looking for her. One day she said Stella had also come, and that scared me. But I reminded her that we had received a letter from her just a week earlier and that she was all right.”
She moved the embers in the stove and kindled a new fire to make some tea. I stared into the sparks, looking for a way to escape. My mind was searching for ways that I had seen or heard about. What had other village women done? What had I seen in the movies and soaps on TV?
“Will Amman Bhaggan wonder where you are?” Maria asked.
“Probably.” Outwardly, I was calm, but the smoke of the dung fire had seeped inside me, blurring my thoughts. I didn’t want to admit to Maria that I had not anticipated my quandary.
“But Maalik usually returns from the fields at this time and sits with her. He doesn’t say much. She makes him his dinner while he smokes. I usually go in to massage Saffiya and watch my favorite soaps on TV.” I looked around at the simple surroundings. “How can you spend your evening here without a radio or a TV?” I asked.
“Stella has sent me some picture books that I try to read, but I’m usually so exhausted that I go to sleep just after sunset.”
“Are you telling me to leave now?” I responded, knowing what I would do.
The fire was now burning brightly, and the smoke and ashes in the air had cleared.
“Never.” She was the devoted Maria I knew.
Though I had to return, my burden was lighter now. The feeling of dread that had weighted me down as I’d come to my friend had lifted significantly.
Moonlight illuminated my path. Two stray dogs settled into a pile of sand on the roadside, barely noticing me. As I neared the house, I could see the maulvi walk toward the mosque to call for the late-evening prayer.