In another city? What if the trail was dead? What if this was the end, and she’d lost her scent forever?
Her breathing became ragged; she got up and drank a glass of water. She went to the window. It was raining; streaks of water maundered down the glass. She remembered then, looking into the dark, the rain, something that had happened long ago, a few months after she and Savitha had met.
It had been the monsoon season. She and Savitha had gone to the market. It had been a Sunday, and most of the shops were closed, but the tobacco shop was open. Poornima’s father had rolled the last of his leaves the previous evening, and so, before lying down for his nap, he’d told her to go to the market and fetch him two rupees’ worth of tobacco. Savitha had arrived just as Poornima had been getting ready to leave, though both of them, of course, had been barefoot—Savitha because she had no shoes, and Poornima because her flimsy sandals (passed down from her mother) would’ve been useless if it started to rain, getting caught, or ripped, in the muddy sludge. Still, they had taken their time walking through the market—the sky overhead had been overcast, but there was no rain. Not yet.
Poornima remembered that they had stopped and peered into the window of the bangle shop, with its row after row of colorful glass bangles, a color to match every shade of sari. “Can you imagine,” Poornima had said, breathless, “having ones to go with every sari?” Savitha had only laughed, and had led her past the paan shop and the dry goods store and the grain mill, all of them closed.
They’d entered the produce market, and the vendors had eyed them sleepily. They squatted on the ground, bits of dirty plastic tarp held at the ready, for the coming rain, to cover their heads and their capsicums and their squashes and their cilantro. They’d been able to tell that Poornima and Savitha had no money to spend—vendors always could. At one turning—as they’d followed behind a bullock cart hauling unsold produce back to the farm—a tiny round eggplant had fallen out of the cart. Savitha had squealed with delight and run and picked it up. “Look, Poori! What luck.”
Yes, Poornima had thought, what luck.
They’d been nearly home when the rain had started. Poornima had thought they should run for it, but Savitha had pointed to a nearby sandalwood tree. She’d said, “No, let’s wait under there.” And so they’d huddled together under the tree’s branches and watched the downpour. It had been a squall, and Poornima had known it would soon pass, but she’d hoped—in the way she’d once hoped that a handful of fruits and cashews would save her mother from cancer, from death—that the rain would last the rest of the days of her life. Why? She couldn’t say. It hadn’t made sense. But it was true: Even as they’d both shivered with cold. Even as their hair and their clothes had dripped with rain. Even as her father had waited, and she’d known he’d be furious when he saw the damp tobacco.
There had been a gust of wind then, and the leaves of the sandalwood tree had shuddered, and cold, fat raindrops had splashed down their necks and backs. Tickled their scalps. They’d laughed and laughed and laughed.
The rain had poured harder. Come down in relentless sheets. Savitha had put out her arm and drawn Poornima deeper under the tree. To protect her from the rain. At the time, Poornima had shivered and felt it to be true: she did feel protected, she felt safe.
But now, standing at the window of an empty apartment, in Seattle, holding an empty glass, Poornima laughed, half mocking, her lips trembling, her eyes growing hot, and she thought, How foolish. How foolish we were, how foolish you were, she bristled, to think you could protect me from rain. Against such a thing as rain. As if rain were a knife, as if it were a battle. And you, my shield. How foolish you were, how stupid you are, Poornima thought, nearly weeping with rage. With anger at Savitha’s ignorance, her infuriating innocence. To find herself in this place, passed like a beedie between the hands of men. Don’t you see, we were never safe. Not against rain, not against anything. And you, she railed, all you thought to do was huddle under that indifferent tree. As if, against