*
We lie down to sleep and the next thing I know, it’s time to wake up and Ma and Papa are arguing about who should go to work. Last night Ma was worried about Papa, and now she sounds like she wants to push him into a djinn’s mouth. They do this each time something awful happens, though they know they can’t watch us every day. They are fooling themselves, but not me. I sit on my mat with the cold clawing my throat. I’m pakka Papa is going to get his way again, but Ma wins the argument to everyone’s surprise, even Ma’s, it sounds like.
“Don’t you dare complain if I lose my job,” Papa says as he click-clicks his fingers at me, telling me to get up. “I don’t even know how we’re going to eat this month. Looks like we’ll have to use your emergency money.” Papa walks to the kitchen shelf and grabs the Parachute tub. My stomach twists into a ball. Ma snatches the tub from Papa and puts it back on the shelf.
“This isn’t the time for jokes,” Ma says.
“Who says I was joking?” Papa says.
“It’s just for today and tomorrow,” Ma says. “Shanti said she can watch the children on Sunday, and Monday they’ll be back at school.”
Runu-Didi and Ma go to fetch water. Papa says he’ll take me to the toilet complex.
“Buffalo-Baba?” I ask when we are outside.
“It’s all cleared out,” Papa says.
“Fatima-ben took it?” I ask.
“A butcher from Bhoot Bazaar.”
“Afsal-Chacha?”
“Who’s that? Have you been talking to strangers in the bazaar again? Didn’t I tell you not to do that? Bhoot Bazaar isn’t a playground for children.”
“I don’t play,” I say.
We pass a dog that looks like Samosa. I hope Samosa is all right. I hope he stays away from djinns and people with swords.
We are cursed, just like Faiz said, poor Faiz who is now a hawker-boy. Ma says Faiz’s ammi is disappearing inside her abaya. She’s worried about what her eldest son is eating in prison: rice cooked with cockroaches, tea stirred with fallen-off lizard tails, water seasoned with rat droppings.
“Will we go hungry this month?” I ask Papa.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“But you’ll go to work tomorrow?”
Papa shrugs. Ma or Papa will have to open the Parachute tub soon if they keep taking chuttis like this.
I’m so close to the finish line. All I need is twenty rupees.
“Papa—”
“Look, Jai, we’ll be fine. You aren’t going to starve.”
* * *
When we are having our rusk-breakfast, Pari’s ma brings Pari to our house for safekeeping. Ma must have told Pari’s ma to do that over the phone. She didn’t even think to tell me first.
Pari doesn’t want rusk because she has had breakfast already, probably Maggi noodles, which she’ll eat five times a day if she can.
“You aren’t studying or what?” she asks.
“Listen to her, Jai,” Papa says.
Papa walks with Ma and Pari’s ma to the end of the lane. He comes back and chats with our neighbors. Then he asks Runu-Didi what she’s making for lunch though we only ever have rice and dal. He switches on the TV, sits on the bed and shakes his legs. He keeps changing channels. He hums a tune. He combs his hair, using a steel tin on a shelf for a mirror. He sings. Usually by the time he gets home he’s so tired, he just lies on the bed and watches TV. If he decides to sing, it’s never more than one song. Now he can’t stop singing.
“Papa, we’re studying,” I say.
“Of course,” he says. He turns down the volume of the TV as if that’s the problem.
Pari and I sit on the doorstep. I interrupt her studying to tell her we can’t be detectives anymore. “What all can we track? We don’t even know the Muslim children’s names.”
“Kabir and Khadifa,” Pari says. “They’re nine and eleven. They don’t go to our school, but to some free school near our basti. Their mother is about to have another baby.”
“You’re making this up,” I say.
“I heard it in the ladies’ queue.”
A frown pulls down the corners of her mouth and draws lines between her eyebrows. “What’s he doing here?” she asks.
It’s Quarter with his gang-members and a few men from the Hindu Samaj. They talk to the people in our alley. When they reach my house, Pari and I stand up.
Quarter smells a bit like daru, but he looks fresher and cleaner. I squint at him to understand why and I realize