Didi dropped us in front of an old, low building, handing us over to two girls only a little older than us. She turned and strode away without a word—not that we would miss her; she seemed to go out of her way to avoid connecting with us, sitting in silence the whole train ride and even when we arrived. I was exhausted and confused. Who were these girls? I was still wary of the plan Amla was so sure of. Nothing yet proved this would grant us the freedom we were chasing, but for the sake of being together, for Amla’s sureness, we were there.
Sajana and Janaki, the two girls who met us, ushered us into a bedroom. It was painted a dull gray, and there was a large mattress on the floor. Amla and I fell asleep within minutes, too exhausted to ask any questions.
For the next three days, Janaki brought us rice and daal to eat, and we didn’t leave the room. We assumed this was something like a waiting home, if that even existed—where families waited for the girls like us that would cook, clean, and tend to their household chores. Janaki never said much of anything, just laying out the tray and leaving the room again. Once, she brought us some roti and sabzi that we devoured. They reminded me of home, which made me sad for a moment, but I pushed the feelings away. In some moments, fear of the unknown gripped me, but I tried to make sense of the new place we waited in.
•••
On the fourth day, Sajana and Janaki bought us matching shiny red dresses. They were Western style, and incredibly beautiful.
After we had changed, Janaki took out a small black bag filled with makeup. “Bahut achchha,” she said. Amla and I exchanged glances; her Hindi sounded different.
Sajana told us that Janaki was from Gujarat and had to learn Hindi when she had arrived. It made me wonder how long Janaki had been at the waiting house. Was this her job?
I felt comforted by the presence of the two girls. They fussed over our hair and makeup, talking casually about other girls they knew and laughing. According to Janaki and Sajana, they were the girls in charge, and their job was to help the new girls feel settled.
It made sense, and I wondered if they worked for Rajiv uncle or Didi . . . except every time Amla or I asked them questions about the new family we would work for, they did not answer.
Janaki started putting rouge on our cheeks, red lipstick on our lips.
“Are we going to a party?” Amla asked.
The two girls looked at each other and smiled. “Yes, a special party, but it’s happening right here, in your room,” Sajana said. The way she said that made me wary, but before I could ask for more details, Jayna, the cook, brought in some Thums Up bottles.
“For us?” Amla asked.
Jayna nodded. She gave the girls a strange look and then left the room again. It felt surreal that just a month ago, we had been in our village in the mud-and-bamboo walls of our sweet home. I thought of Nani in that moment, and tears filled my eyes, but I blinked them away.
Janaki took one of the bottles and handed the other one to the two of us to share. I looked at Amla, whose eyes lit up. She loved Thums Up more than anyone, and we rarely had it back home. Janaki clinked our bottle with her bottleneck.
“Cheers,” she said.
We didn’t know what this word meant, but we drank our refreshing soda, and I remember thinking, The newness of this place and the unknown of where we are going may not be as scary as I thought if we have friends. The soda tasted different as I drank it, but I couldn’t pinpoint what it was.
I’m not sure how long after that things started to get blurry. My body grew heavy. My legs were like hot jalebi, and I heard Sajana saying something, but her voice was long and drawn out. I was on the bed, and I thought Amla was too, next to me. My head was spinning, and everything started to feel like a song. The sounds of car horns, Amla’s murmur, doors slamming. I kept opening and closing my eyes, and the noises around me felt more and more distant.
Eventually after what seemed like hours, Janaki spoke to us. She was smiling with a toothless grin. I remembered her with teeth; where did they go? Somehow I could understand her perfectly now.
“Madame wants you to meet her friends. They will come here, and you will let them do whatever they want to you. It will feel funny, but just remember it will be quick. Make sure to be happy for them,” she said.
Be happy, be happy, be happy. Was I repeating this out loud or in my mind? I couldn’t tell, but it made me laugh uncontrollably. Happy? What was that word? What did it mean to a girl who had lost both her parents, and who was in this strange place and feeling these funny things?
The colors of the room I had thought were dull before were bright. Was this being happy? Seeing the brightness amidst gray?
I don’t know how much time passed before two men entered. They came towards us slowly and quickly at the same time. They climbed onto the bed.
I heard my sister making a sound. I turned to look at her. Was she crying or laughing? One of the men was lying next to her, or on her; I couldn’t figure out which.
The other man touched my shoulders and pushed his body down over my hips, trying to pull down my underwear. He had a long beard. It was rough and I told him so, but could he hear me?
I thought I was screaming, but I realized it wasn’t me; it was Amla, a bloodcurdling piercing scream that froze me.
I spit on his face for her. I’m sure of it. I cleared my throat and hocked up everything I could and just blew it into his hairy face.
Then the man on top of me slapped me, but I couldn’t feel the slap because the pain in my private area was so unbearable. It was as if my brain could only send one signal, one message that would help me comprehend what was happening.
After it was over, Madame came into the room. I was still groggy, and my thighs and pelvis ached. I was bent over on the bed when she spoke. “You are all set now. Welcome to your new work. This is what you will be doing. The next time you spit on a customer, I’ll beat you. And don’t try to escape. We will have you killed.”
She walked out and called for Janaki to clean up.
Amla was curled up on a ball, her back to me. I didn’t have the energy to fight with her about her stupid idea to come here. I didn’t have the energy to console her either. I sat there with so many questions running through my mind, rising above the numb horror of something incomprehensible.
How had we not seen this coming? How we had failed to see that this would be our fate? Did Guhan uncle know? Rajiv uncle? I couldn’t imagine the girls and Sweta auntie knowing.
Janaki came to clean up, and we didn’t speak to her, just moved aside so she could take the bloody sheets off the bed. I hugged my knees as she told us that the men were Muslim brothers who had wanted virgins. “They are from the cartel, you know, very powerful, so you are lucky. They paid premium price for you both, and that can bring you closer to repaying your debt.”
Our debt. The transaction with Rajiv. I started to understand that we were now owned. Stolen and owned by Madame.
The wheels in my mind started turning. I asked Janaki for a notebook to write poetry. Janaki looked at me and whispered, “Don’t tell anyone you can read or write. They will not like it.”
“No, no, Janaki, my poems are pictures. I draw each line out.” I looked at my sister, who was paying attention now, urging her to play along.
“Yes,” Amla agreed. “She can show you.”
We searched Janaki for a reaction, but she seemed to believe us. “Oh, I want to see. Let me find something for you.”
I was relieved. When Janaki left, I turned to my sister and clasped her hand.
“Amla, we need to work fast. We need to spy and figure out how much debt we are in and how much the Muslim men paid to do . . . that to us.”
She lowered her face when I said it. I could tell she felt as disgusted as I did thinking about it.
Janaki returned with a small address book. It was empty.
“This is the best I could find. The cook said it would add fifty rupees to your tab.”
“Janaki, what would that make our tab in total?”
“Well, let’s see. I heard Madame say you were a deal at one hundred thousand rupees, being so fair-skinned and all, and then you can’t forget the cartel paid a thousand for you both, which is almost ten times regular. But then there are your dresses, makeup, and food, of course. And now the book, so what are you at? I do not know maths.”
Amla’s face sank. She looked at me, and I knew we were thinking the same thing. It would take forever to get out.
But I was the responsible one. I needed to get us out of this mess.
•••
It took three days for the pain down there to fade for both of us. Amla gradually returned to her amiable self. The other girls in the brothel would sit with her, laughing and telling her stories.
A week later, I was writing poetry in the address book Janaki got us. I hid it under the mattress of our bed.
Dark places
Down there
Freedom
Feels
Far
We were to stay in our room upstairs until Madame told us to come out. Janaki said Madame would wait until after our training so we would be ready to go downstairs and meet customers. She also warned me to stay in line. “If you spit again, you both will be burned with cigarettes in places you never knew you could get burned,” Janaki whispered.
I shuddered when she said it. When I told Amla, she of course didn’t want to hear it. Instead she asked me a thousand questions I couldn’t answer. What was downstairs? More brothers for us? More of the drink that made us laugh and feel heavy but could not take away the pain?
I closed my eyes to try to think of happy memories—to lose myself in the time Nani took us to the temple, listening to the chanting as bells rang against the stillness of intention. On our walk home, Nani told us about the Ganga River. How she had gone as a young girl, how surreal it was to feel a vibration when the gentle ripples of water touched her skin. “It’s more than words. This chant is a power inside of you,” she had said. So I found myself chanting them in my mind sometimes—Om gan ganapataye namah—and trying to create shields of protection around us until Madame’s bell snapped me back into reality.
Luckily Janaki and Sajana knew Hindi, or we would be lost. The cook in the brothel and the women we heard on the streets spoke a dialect I could not understand.
“It is Bengali,” Janaki told us.
Amla became friends with Janaki and Sajana, but I didn’t know who to trust anymore.
The night before we were to start working, Amla told our story to the girls. Sajana held her hand when she spoke about Mummy and reached for my knee when I looked down. Sajana was dark like the night sky, and so beautiful. She had sharp features and big eyes, bright like the sun of her name. She told us her story too. She called her parents Appa and Amma. She said when she was only six years old, her grandfather started coming into her room at night. At first he said he wanted to tell her a story. And so he would start telling her and they would laugh. Then he would get into her bed. His cracked and rough feet would meet hers under the covers. Then she felt the big dry hands. One down there and one over her mouth.
“In the morning he would tell me to be quiet and he would give me chocolates. Even though I loved chocolates, I never ate the ones he gave me. He said no one would believe me since he was the head of the house. My appa loved him and even Amma did too. He was funny and made everyone laugh, but I did not laugh at his jokes as the years went on. Everyone found out when I was ten years old. I got very sick with a fever, and Amma said she would stay in my room with me. I thought God had finally answered my prayers. I slept the whole week straight. They thought it was the fever that was breaking, but even after it was far gone, I kept sleeping.
“Amma took me to the doctor. Amma told her they wanted to know why I was sleeping so much, and the doctor took my temperature and checked my lungs. When she pressed at my tummy and at my waist, I jumped up. I was scared she would check me down there because it hurt too much. She looked at me, and Amma was surprised also. Amma told me to be still, as the doctor was checking and they all wanted me to get better. She joked that when I was better, she could go back to her room to sleep. I started crying that I didn’t want Amma to go back to her room. The doctor told Amma she needed to check me there to be sure there was no infection. I’ll never forget the doctor’s face.”
Sajana was quiet, and I took her hand. Her voice was soft and delicate, like a bird’s song.
“Afterwards the doctor asked, ‘Why don’t you want your amma to go back to her room, beti?’”
As Sajana spoke, I remembered the doctor who told us of Mummy’s death. Doctors are like angels, I thought. They save our lives when they can, and when they can’t, they lay us to rest.
“I told the doctor, looking only at her, as if Amma wasn’t standing there. I told her, ‘Because Appa’s father comes to my room when she’s not there.’ Amma started saying no, no, but I told the doctor that he touched me down there and it hurt all the time.
“I heard Amma saying something about mistakes, but she was frantic and breathing fast. The doctor called a nurse to help Amma calm down. When Amma started breathing normally, she was stroking my hair. I should have seen what a coward she was.”
Sajana paused, and I wasn’t sure she would finish her story. But I had learned to wait when someone was sharing his or her heart. So I just listened and she continued.
“The doctor gave me medicine to take for the infection down there. And when we got home, nothing was the same. Appa was not speaking to anyone, and when I eavesdropped on their conversation, he told Amma it was not true. Maybe it was a teacher; maybe I was doing it to myself.”
Sajana said the last part through her teeth. The heat in my heart was rising for her.
“Amma tried to protect me and slept in my room every night when we got back. But then after the medicine was done, when the doctor checked me again and things were better, she asked Amma if she wanted to report anything.
“Amma shook her head no, and Appa told her to come back to bed when she tucked me in that night. I looked into her eyes, but she looked down and went back to Appa that night. Before he could come to my room, I took a few things from my cupboard and ran away. I didn’t know where I was going, but I kept running. When I got tired I found a tree in the park and slept there. A man found me sleeping and brought me here.”
It made sense to me, and her story woke me to the truth I was scared to face and was living too. When a girl lost her mother’s protection, that’s when men preyed on them. Oh, Amla, where have you brought us?