Fifteen Lanes - S.J. Laidlaw Page 0,49

beside her. I grabbed the fist that was doing the slashing and wrenched the broken glass from her hand. There was so much blood it was hard to tell how many gashes she’d already made.

She gaped at me wordlessly as if she shared my horror at her handiwork.

“No, Paru,” I sobbed. I took off my dupatta and wrapped it tightly around her crocodile arm.

Grace

We entered the open doorway of a narrow, nondescript, two-story wooden building. The single thing that set it apart was a small hand-painted sign above the door that read “Sisters Helping Sisters.” I was glad to leave behind the heat and chaos of the street outside, until I discovered the temperature inside was easily several degrees hotter, and the cacophony of voices was ear splitting. Even more overwhelming was being immediately swallowed up by a pack of street urchins.

Altogether, there were perhaps thirty children. From their clothes, I thought they were all girls, though it was hard to tell. Several had shaved heads. Most of them were dressed in salwar kameez, though a few wore bright frilly frocks and still others were in school uniform. Their clothes looked worn but relatively clean. They ranged in age from three or four years old to perhaps ten or eleven. They were desperately thin in the arms and legs; many had protruding bellies. I knew enough to understand this was a sign of malnutrition and not good health. It took me several minutes to realize that, amid the cacophony, several were shouting in English: How are you? and What is your name? I glanced at VJ, who was removing his shoes while carrying on multiple conversations at the same time. I recognized a bit of the Hindi, but he must have been speaking other languages as well because sometimes I couldn’t pick up a single word. Mr. Donleavy, who’d preceded us inside, was nowhere to be seen.

VJ carried his shoes to a large pile of sandals, mostly little ones, on one side of the entrance, so I took off my own sandals and did the same. We walked farther into the room, dimly lit by a single fluorescent bulb, and paused to allow our eyes time to adjust. There wasn’t a single window or any source of ventilation but the open doorway.

The children led, or more accurately dragged, us over to a metal ladder that went straight up to an open hatch in the ceiling. Since it was the only place Mr. Donleavy could have gone, we started climbing. I went first, eager to get away from the noise. I hoped the children wouldn’t follow. I already felt overwhelmed.

I saw Mr. Donleavy as soon as I emerged through the hatch. He was sitting on a chair, talking to three women, all Indian, in a tiny office partitioned off from the rest of the room by a half-wall. One of the women was sitting in the only other chair. The other two were awkwardly hunched over behind her. The ceiling was too low for them to stand upright.

“Grace, there you are,” said Mr. Donleavy.

I stepped through the hatch and kept moving to allow VJ to follow. I was dismayed to see he wasn’t alone; the children were right behind him. The upstairs room quickly became even more crowded than the downstairs had been.

Since the only other option was crouching, VJ and I plopped down on the cement floor in the room outside the office. Though the floor was stained, it was spotlessly swept. The children seemed to have some sense of what was happening. After much shoving to establish who would have the privilege of sitting next to us, they all sat down as well. I had one on either side, and they pressed up against me, even though there was room for them to have a bit of space. One grabbed my hand and held on to it. The other reached up and stroked my ponytail. My hair has always been a mousy brown, definitely not worthy of the admiration she was according it.

The upstairs room was at least ten degrees hotter than it had been downstairs, and again there was no ventilation. The sweat poured off me. VJ, on the other hand, was as fresh and dry as when we’d arrived, and happily chatting with the children.

“I wouldn’t have pegged you for a kid-lover,” I said, trying not to sound as jealous as I was feeling.

“Come on, Gracie, in a world full of conspiracies, malice and deceit, how can