hut was a woman she didn’t recognize. But she seemed to know her.
“You,” she seethed. “It’s your fault.”
Poornima shrunk farther into her corner. The wall behind her hard and rough and unforgiving. She knew now: Savitha’s mother.
“Your fault. Your fault.”
“I—”
“If it wasn’t for you, if it wasn’t for your friendship, my Savitha would’ve never come here. She would’ve never stayed here. In this house of demons. In this house. Never. You’re a demon. Your house is demonic. And that sari.” The tears began; her voice failed. She slid to the ground. She clutched at the doorpost. She crawled toward Poornima like an animal. “That sari. That sari. That she was making for you. This would’ve never happened otherwise.” Now she had crept so close that Poornima felt her breath against her face. Hot, rancid, poisoned. “My child. My child, you understand? No. No, you don’t. You couldn’t, you demon.”
Someone came in. They saw her. They pulled her away. She screamed—wretchedly, without form, as if a stake were being driven into her heart. She kicked as she was dragged away. Dust flew into Poornima’s eyes. She blinked. In the quiet that followed, a pall descended over the hut. Over Savitha and Poornima. A great and unendurable silence. As if Savitha’s mother had opened a portal, and air had rushed in. It was then that the tears started. And once they started, Poornima saw, they had no end. They came in great and uncontrollable sobs. If her mother’s death had brought a storm, this could drown the earth and everyone with it.
No one paid her any attention. They went in and out of the weaving hut. All manner of people. Late in the evening, a child—a little boy—peeped through the doorway, and one of the village elders grabbed his arm and pulled him away. He admonished him. “What is there to see?” Poornima heard him say. “Spoiled fruit is spoiled fruit.”
The tears kept coming.
At one point Poornima choked with her weeping, and when she did, she realized she’d forgotten to breathe. Forgotten that there was such a thing as air. That there was anything other than pain.
She took Savitha’s limp hand and held it in hers—and youth and middle age and senescence passed before her like the cinema she had never seen, like the cinema Savitha had delighted in one day seeing.
“Savitha?”
Nothing.
“Savitha?”
Not the slightest movement. Not a twitch or a breath or a blink.
“Say something.”
Deep into that night, the village elders came to a decision: Poornima’s father was to marry Savitha. They all agreed: it was to be his punishment, and it was just.
No one bothered to tell Savitha the decision. Poornima only heard of it when Ramayya walked by the door of the hut and hissed, “She’ll get married before you. The trash picker. And without even having to give your father a dowry.”
Poornima stared at him. She turned from the doorway only when she felt movement; Savitha had blinked. For the duration of the second night, Savitha sat again, motionless. “Savitha,” Poornima tried one more time, shaking her, pleading once more for so much as a word, a gesture, before falling finally into a disturbed and plagued sleep. Mostly by dreams, nightmares, visions, and premonitions, but once by Savitha’s voice.
“Do you remember?” her voice said.
Poornima rolled her head in her sleep; she mumbled, “What?”
“About Majuli. About flute song. And that perfect fruit. Do you remember?”
“Yes.”
There was silence. Poornima shifted again in her sleep, felt for Savitha’s hunched body but found only air.
“I’ll be many things, Poori, but I won’t be your stepmother.”
“Okay.”
A shuffling.
“Poornima?”
“Yes?”
“I’m the one with wings.”
In the morning, Poornima woke to screams and clamoring and calls for a search party; she looked around the weaving hut and found it empty. Savitha was gone.
Poornima
1
Poornima’s wedding was postponed indefinitely. The groom’s side wouldn’t budge from their demand for twenty thousand more rupees. Especially now with rumors swirling as to the fouled runaway girl, her friendship with Poornima, and suggestions—by people whom Poornima had never even met, by people not even from Indravalli—that Poornima had helped her to run away. And what could be said about a girl like that? they said. What good would she be as a wife?
Not only that, but every day, more details dribbled in from Namburu confirming their hesitation. The father sent word that his son—in addition to the twenty thousand—would need a watch and a motorcycle. The older of the groom’s sisters, whose name was Aruna, wondered aloud, in the company of some of the other