The Hope Factory A Novel - By Lavanya Sankaran Page 0,74

storm down. And when that happened, she herself would swoop out and pick up her baby, still sitting peacefully with his hands in the sand, not one foot away from the contractor.

The bricks were not the usual red-brown ones made out of kiln-baked mud; these were of gray concrete, with a rough, grainy texture that could sear the flesh off your knuckles if you were careless. They were hollow, which rendered them, oddly enough, all the stronger. They were much bigger than the traditional mud bricks—and much heavier as well. Old Gowriamma had gotten careless one day and dropped one on the edge of her toenail—within a day, it had blackened and died. Their weight was sufficient that they had to be passed one at a time, hand to steady hand, instead of being loaded onto trays and balanced up the steps on the heads of the women. The maisthri too was careful with them; he had worked with them for years, his movements in his job as precise and restrained as his mouth was not.

So did the hollow concrete brick tumble out of the second floor by accident, the mason’s hands getting careless as his temper rose, or did he engineer its fall on purpose? In all fairness, his cry of warning indicated the former, a shout that caught everyone’s attention and echoed through the spectators in gasps and cries. The block tumbled heavily downward, striking a protruding steel rod on its descent, and getting gently deflected on a path that arced, with horrifying accuracy, toward the contractor and the little two-year-old playing in the sand at his feet.

The contractor saw the brick descend and hit the steel rod; he shied in fright and glanced at the child. There was just time for him to pick up or push the child out of the way—if he was the type to move quickly and in a well-coordinated manner. Perhaps he was not that type, or perhaps, with the child so dirty, he could not bring himself to touch him with his hands. Some would later remember him making a weak, ineffective motion, as though to push the toddler out of harm’s way with his foot.

And then the brick landed safely upon the sand.

The maisthri, shocked out of his own temper, came hurrying down. The contractor, shocked in turn, could only stare blindly at him, searching within himself for words to deal with the situation. The silence was broken by neither of them. “You dog,” she said. “You street-filth-eating dog.”

Kamala had dropped the brick that was in her hands, careless of where it landed. She ran to her startled child and settled him tightly astride her hip. And thus bolstered and fortified, she turned to the speechless men confronting each other and seemingly unaware of her diminutive presence until she opened her mouth.

“You could have killed him,” she said. You rascal. You careless dog. He could have died. What did he do to you, my poor child, that you should want to kill him?

And then, with all the force of her well-developed muscles, she slapped the maisthri across his face. Next to him, the contractor flinched, as though he had received the slap on his own face.

Sister! she heard someone say. Don’t do this. Come away. Your child is safe.

She saw the stunned look on the maisthri’s face succeeded by growing outrage. “You whore,” he said, stepping toward her. “Who do you think you are? I’ll teach you a lesson.”

He was prevented from doing so by the contractor, who restrained him with a warning hand on his shoulder. “It was an accident,” the contractor said, as though more for his own comfort than for hers. “It was an accident.”

But Kamala would not be comforted. Two and a half years of dammed anger broke through, sweeping everything—judgment, economics, her future—before it. Her child was, after all, not harmed. But her anger seemed to have nothing to do with that. “You rascal,” she said. “Scoundrel. Despoiler of your sisters and mother.”

Sister, sister, the voices around her said. The contractor said, “Come, come. You cannot behave like this. What is this.”

She swung her hand again toward the maisthri; he stepped back and avoided it. So she collected her breath in her lungs and spat into his face. Hands tried to grab her and restrain her.

Do not touch me! she said.

And it was undoubtedly the force of her temper, radiating powerfully from every inch of her, that kept everyone at bay, silent and watchful, as