The Hope of Shridula (21 page)

As the girls climbed into the bullock cart, as they settled themselves—Glory Anna on a plank behind Rajeev and Shridula on another propped against the back of the cart— Rajeev said not one word. He urged the animals forward until the sun was full overhead. Hour after hour, as they bounced along in silence, Shridula tried to imagine her grandmother Latha and grandfather Virat walking that same road in the days before they belonged to the landlord.

The bullocks lumbered past weathered houses of wood, sheltered by leafy
neem
trees—not great houses like the landlord's, but small, friendly places. Past fields where Sudras worked, their
mundus
hiked high, their legs bare and muddy. The bullocks pulled the cart across a bumpy bridge, to the other side of the river where the outcastes lived. Past mud huts on barren ground surrounded by nothing but dusty brush.

Past Untouchable land.

Past the land of Shridula's people.

When the bullock cart finally reached the English Mission Medical Clinic, Rajeev jumped down and headed directly for the main door. "Doctor!" he called. "Dr. Cooper!"

"You have returned yet another time?" Dr. Cooper sighed impatiently when he saw Rajeev. "Whatever do you want?"

"These young women." Rajeev gestured to the bullock cart where Glory Anna and Shridula still sat. In his best English he said, "They are being eager for visiting with the aged English lady. I am to be thinking you and I be having the proper time to be taking further action on matters in both our interest."

"I cannot imagine any matters that could possibly be in both our interests." Dr. Cooper made no attempt to disguise his disdain for the Indian.

"That is to be depending," said Rajeev. "Is your desire to be staying in India, or is it to be leaving in safety?"

"My, my, my!" Miss Abigail Davidson exclaimed in the Malayam language. Her hands flew to her wrinkled cheeks. "You are that sweet child's daughter? Oh my, oh my!"

She grabbed Shridula in an embrace and rocked her back and forth. "Blessing, that was his name. And you say it is your name as well? Two Blessings in one family! Oh my, oh my, oh my!"

Miss Abigail kept Krishna and little Lelee running back and forth to the main house, carrying cups and teapot, and fetching biscuits and bananas.

"Sit, sit!" Miss Abigail said to the girls. "Tell me all about your father, my child. Tell me about you—both of you!"

Because she knew her place, Shridula kept her head down, her hands folded, and her mouth closed. Glory Anna did the talking.

"Let me show you something," Miss Abigail interrupted. She opened her cupboard and dug through the containers on the top shelf. From the bottom of the stack, she pulled out a dusty box.

"Here, look at this." Carefully, almost reverently, Miss Abigail unfolded a thick layer of faded paper. Inside was light blue fabric. First, she unfolded a long skirt, then she pulled out a matching old fashioned top with long sleeves puffed out at the top, and trimmed with intricate lace insets. "My favorite dress," Miss Abigail said. "I was not always an old lady, you know!" She laughed out loud. "I only wore this dress on the most special of occasions. Which, as you can see, did not come my way often enough."

Tenderly, Miss Abigail ran her fingers over the lacy sleeves.

"The last time I wore it was when I took your father back to the workers' settlement," she told Shridula. "Such a sad day that was. Oh, I did not want to let him go! I wanted him for my own, you see. But that would not have been right, would it? He wanted to be with his real parents."

"He told me about you," Shridula said.

"Did he now? How nice of him to remember."

"It is a lovely dress," Glory Anna said.

"Tell me," Miss Abigail said to Shridula, "did your father keep my Bible?"

Glory Anna stared at Shridula. "Your father had a Bible?"

Shridula shifted uncomfortably, taking care to avoid Glory Anna's eyes. "Yes, Miss Abigail," she answered. "He learned to read it, too. He hid in the latrine pit where no one could see him."

Miss Abigail threw back her head and laughed out loud.

"Tell me, child, is your father a follower of Jesus?"

"I do not think so," Shridula said. "He thinks Indians have too many gods already."

"I was determined to make a convert of him," Miss Abigail said. "Oh, how much I did not understand back then! How much we all did not understand."

23

January 1947

D
o not put extra rice in our pot for that scavenger woman and her son to eat," Ashish told his wife as they prepared to head back to their hut.

Zia wiped the mud from her face.

"But, Husband, her rice bag is empty. They have nothing to eat but wild roots!"

"Look to your own rice bag," Ashish said. "If you do not stop giving away what little we have left, we too will be digging up roots. Then we will not have strength enough to do our work."

"Jyoti's bones stick out like branches on a tree," Zia pleaded. "And her Falak can hardly carry a full water jug out to the fields."

"I am sorry for them, Wife," Ashish said. "But we have nothing to spare. When Shridula brings us extra from the landlord's house, you can give some of that to Jyoti. But what rice we have left in our bag will be for you and me, and no one else."

Ashish had spoken his piece, and Zia should accept it. But she could not help herself. "Can you not go to the landlord once more? Can you not plead with him one more time to give us more food?"

Ashish wiped his filthy hand across his equally filthy face. "I have pleaded and pleaded and pleaded. The last time I went, he would not even talk to me. He sent his servant to throw rocks to drive me away."

"It is not right," Zia said.

"Much is not right. Go to the hut and cook rice for us, Wife. For you and me and no one else."

Ashish had just settled himself under the sheltering limbs of the
neem
tree, his small bowl of rice and chopped chili peppers clutched in his hands, when Dinkar called out to him, "You stand watch in the field tonight."

"Why must it be me?" Ashish asked. "Why not a younger man?"

"Because the landlord sent word that he wants you for the watchman. He said maybe that would take your mind off begging him for rice."

Ashish grunted but said nothing.

The night was moonless and dark. For a long time Ashish lay on his back on the raised wooden platform in the middle of the rice paddy and watched the stars. He tried to remember his father—gentle face, furrowed and leathery, teeth that stuck out too far. Strong hands, calloused and rough.

He could see his father in his mind, but he couldn't quite picture his mother. Why was that? Perhaps because of her face. From one side, it was pretty, even after the rest of her had grown old and stooped and gray. But scars streaked the other side, circling around her blind eye. Quite like the boy Krishna at the English Mission Medical Clinic, whose aunt had thrown boiling water in his face. Except that the boy's entire face was scarred, not just the one part. What happened to his mother? Ashish had asked, of course, but she always insisted she couldn't remember. It seemed an extraordinarily strange thing to forget.

Ashish jerked awake. He sat up straight on the wooden platform and looked around. Danger lurked in the night. Thieves, perhaps? No, not until the grain was mature. Wild animals, most likely. The settlement still talked about the killer tiger that had once picked off workers. Ashish was very young then, but he remembered the horror of it.

Ashish climbed down from the platform and walked across the paddy field. He moved toward the path, in the direction of the next field.

Nothing. Ashish was ready to turn back when something caught his eye. Just a movement—or maybe nothing at all. He squinted and stared hard. Certainly not a thief, for it was on the other side of the path, outside the field. A small animal, perhaps?

For a long time, Ashish stared into the darkness.

Nothing.

He rubbed his eyes and moved farther down the path.

Nothing.

He shrugged, ready to turn back to the raised platform, but then he saw it again. A flash of something. No doubt about it this time.

Ashish ducked down. Yes, yes, someone moving toward the storehouse.

Staying close to the ground, Ashish crept forward—slowly, slowly, slowly—all the way to the storehouse. Then he hunkered down to wait. Soon a shadow slipped toward him. Ashish waited until it was close, then he leapt out.

The shadow didn't put up even the pretense of a fight. Ashish struggled through tangles of ragged silk to grip a pair of bony wrists. He forced the intruder to her feet and peered close.

"Jyoti!" he gasped.

But the scavenger woman wasn't looking at him. Her eyes were fixed somewhere in the darkness beyond. "Run!" she cried.

A frantic scramble erupted behind the storehouse, followed by quick running steps. Then silence.

Ashish sighed. "What is the matter with you? If I turn you over to the landlord, you know what he will do to you—and to your son."

Jyoti's face hardened.

"Why would you risk both your lives on such a foolish attempt at thievery?" Ashish demanded.

Jyoti's eyes flashed with defiance. "What choice do I have? My son and I are starving!"

Ashish loosened his grip on the woman's wrists. "If you steal the landlord's grain, we will all be beaten. Go home. I will not speak of tonight."

Jyoti fell to her knees and grabbed hold of Ashish's feet. "We still have no rice," she cried. "What am I to do?"

"I am sorry," Ashish said. "But I can do nothing."

"Give me one handful. Please, just one handful."

"I cannot," Ashish said. "Go home."

The next morning, Ashish, who usually led the assembly of workers to the fields, held back at the settlement.

"What are you waiting for?" Zia asked him.

"Nothing," Ashish insisted. "Today I will be at the end of the line for a change."

Zia shot him her look that said
You do not fool me one bit!

Ashish didn't care. After a night of guilty sleeplessness, he decided he could find one handful of rice for a starving woman and her son.

But Jyoti didn't come out of her hut, and neither did her son.

When Ashish could delay no longer, he reluctantly followed the line of workers out to the field.

After a long day, Ashish shaded his eyes and, looking toward the setting sun, gazed across at what the workers had accomplished. A satisfied smile spread over his face. "This paddy is clean," he said to Dinkar.

"If we open the trenchers this evening, by tomorrow the field will be well flooded," Dinkar said.

"The rice should already be planted and growing," Ashish lamented. "Still, it is not too late to produce a good harvest."

"If the gods smile on us."

The smile faded from Ashish's lips. He said nothing.

Up ahead, something moved in a pile of dry stubble. Ashish stopped to watch. He was ready to prod at it with a stick when a familiar sleek brown head poked out.

"My friend, the mongoose!" Ashish exclaimed.

The mongoose fixed its beady eyes on Ashish and stared back.

"He does seem to recognize you," Dinkar said with a laugh.

Ashish grinned. "I will take six or eight of the young men with me and get those trenchers open," he said as he started back across the field. "Once the last of the workers has finished—"

A scream ripped through the air.

"No, no!" Jyoti shrieked. She waved her hands frantically about, then grasped her head. "Zia! No, no!"

Ashish bent over his wife who lay on the ground. Tenderly he pulled her muddy
sari
down from her arm. Two bright red spots below her shoulder showed where the cobra's fangs had pierced her. Already her arm had begun to swell.

"I did not even see . . . did not see the . . . see the . . ." Zia mumbled.

"We will send for the herbal man," Ashish told her. He tried to swallow back the terror that welled up in him.

"I knelt down . . . to pick up the water jug. Falak left it and . . . I never saw the snake."

"I will get the landlord to take you to the English medical clinic. The pale English lady will fix you." Ashish shivered uncontrollably, even as he dripped with sweat. He wanted to pick Zia up and run with her to the landlord's house, but his muscles wouldn't work. They felt as though they had melted into a pile of mud.

"I deceived you, Husband," Zia whispered.

"Shhhh! Shhhh!" Ashish hushed her.

"I have been helping Jyoti . . . I helped her steal . . . to steal the rice."

"It does not matter!"

"I could not let her starve! And her boy . . . he would die, too. I could not . . . could not . . ."

"You are a good woman, Zia."

Zia clutched at Ashish. "A long cobra . . . Huge head . . . But to me, invisible." She gasped for breath. "Why could I not see it?"

As Ashish and Dinkar carried Zia from the field, Falak ran to the landlord's house. He gasped out what had happened, and begged, "Ashish said, please, would Master Landlord take his wife to the English clinic in his fast cart. Please, Master Landlord can add double the cost to his debt."

But Saji Stephen refused to come out and hear the boy. Instead, he sent a servant out with his answer: "Ashish is not the master and I am not his slave. I will not obey him."

"Go to your father!" Sheeba Esther told Shridula. "I will send for a healer."