Fifteen Lanes - S.J. Laidlaw Page 0,6

called out the second name and that child took the seat immediately behind the first. By the time she came to Noor Benkatti, I knew exactly where to sit. Before I took my seat I counted rows and desks so I wouldn’t forget where it was the next day. I already knew how to count from running errands for the aunties. I was second row from the window, third seat from the front. I felt very proud and grown-up as I walked straight to the desk behind Gajra Bawanvadi. I smiled at her just before I sat down and she smiled back. I still didn’t know alphabet but I’d learned something even more important. School was not so different from home. I just had to keep quiet, watch carefully and do what everyone else did.

The rest of the morning passed swiftly. I didn’t understand much of what Teacher said but Gajra sat with me at lunch and gave me a samosa because her mother had packed not only dahl and a thick, flaky paratha but two samosas as well. I told her I forgot my lunch. I wish I’d told her I always ate so much at breakfast that I never had room for lunch. That would have saved me from having to think up a new lie the next day and the day after that.

But I really wanted that samosa. It had meat in it. I never got meat at home. That morning, like every other, I’d had only a handful of rice for breakfast. My stomach, usually resigned to the meager scraps it received, roiled when confronted with dahl, a paratha and meat samosas as well. If I hadn’t filled it with Gajra’s samosa I’m quite certain it would have made itself heard in the afternoon lesson.

After the first few days, Gajra didn’t bother to ask if I wanted to share her lunch, she just divided it in half as if we were sisters. She even started bringing an extra paratha so I could share her dahl. It was the most wonderful food I’d ever tasted, but my stomach wasn’t used to such vast quantities. For almost two weeks I had constant diarrhea. One day Ma followed me into the latrine and watched as I squatted over the hole and did my business.

“What’s that?” she demanded, pointing at the foul-smelling pile I’d just expelled.

“It’s my shit, Ma,” I said. Sweat beaded my forehead. I hoped she wouldn’t notice in the tiny, dimly lit confines.

“I know that, stupid girl. Don’t try to trick me. What’s that in your shit? Have you been stealing food?”

The smell of the room was making me dizzy. I scooped a cup of water out of the bucket and cleaned my bottom, then I scooped a second, planning to wash down the evidence. Ma seized the cup. She held it aloft, not even minding that she was wasting the water that splashed down, soaking the blouse of her sari. She smashed it three, four, five times on my back and shoulders. I bent over, shielding my head. As long as she didn’t hit my face none of my new school friends would ever know.

Finally she grew tired. She had a new baby weighing heavily in her belly. She cradled it and panted. “If Pran finds out you’ve been stealing food you’ll get far worse. Do you understand?”

I nodded, keeping my eyes down.

“Answer me, Noor. Do you understand?”

“I understand, Ma.” I didn’t look up, or let the tears fall, until I heard the door close behind her.

The next day she got up before I left for school. I’d rarely seen Ma awake before noon. She couldn’t have had more than an hour of sleep since her last customer left. She handed me a small packet of biscuits as I went out the door.

“For your lunch,” she said.

I ate them on the way to school and was already hungry again before the lunchtime bell, but I told Gajra the lie I should have told her in the first place. “I ate so much this morning, four dosas and dahl makhani and eggs. I almost fell asleep in our lesson I was so stuffed.” I puffed out my flat stomach and rested my hand on it. “I couldn’t eat another bite.”

Grace

Dinner that night was an awkward affair. My parents were trying their best to engage me in conversation but fifteen years of being the quiet one was a habit that was hard to break. Don’t get me wrong,