walked away. Poornima’s mother was bent over the jars of spices, examining a handful of cloves. Poornima turned back to the tin.
Its lid was still open.
She didn’t eat it until she got home. She’d clutched the toffee in her little fist all along the walk home and then she’d waited until she was alone—while her mother was making dinner and her brothers were playing—and then she’d slowly unwrapped it, the red toffee in the middle of her palm nearly as big as her palm, and sparkling like a gem, a smooth and sugary gem. She licked it, once, twice, until she could no longer stand it. Then she popped it into her mouth. She’d had toffee before, but never a whole one; her mother had always broken them into pieces so she could share them with her brothers. The worst part of it was the shattering, Poornima thought: to take a perfectly luscious round gem and to break it into shards. It was indecent. She resented her mother even more than her brothers. But this, this one was whole. She sucked on it and sucked on it until the sweetness flooded her mouth, tickled her throat. It was down to nothing, barely a sliver, when she heard her mother calling for her. She swallowed it down, and when she went to the back of the hut, where her mother was cooking, she started to cough from the woodsmoke.
“What is that?” her mother said.
Poornima looked at her.
“Come here,” her mother said.
Poornima took a small step toward her mother. She grabbed her daughter’s cheeks and squeezed. Poornima puckered her mouth like a fish. “Open up,” her mother said. “Don’t think I don’t see you.”
Poornima finally opened up, a little, and then when her mother squeezed harder, her entire mouth gaped open, red and shining and slippery like the inside of a pomegranate.
“Did you steal it?” her mother asked.
Poornima said nothing, and then she nodded.
Her mother sighed. She said, “Stealing is wrong. You know that, don’t you, Poornima. You should never, ever do it.” Poornima looked at her mother and nodded again. “You’ve already eaten it, so we’ll have to go tomorrow and give him money. I won’t tell your father, you understand, but it wasn’t yours. Remember that, Poornima: never take what isn’t yours. Can you remember that?”
Poornima remembered, but she no longer agreed. Sitting in the middle of the terrace, on the evening of her wedding night, she looked at the wrapper and she thought about her mother. She thought about the red toffee; she could taste it still on her tongue, feel the sweetness, still, traveling down her throat. But she didn’t agree. Amma, she said to the wrapper, if only I had taken what wasn’t mine. If only I had taken a moment to insist, insist on meeting him before the wedding, I could’ve counted his fingers like they counted mine. If only I’d refused. Refused it all: to let you die, to let the goat die, to let that blue clock stop chiming. If only I’d said, You are flute song. She picked up the wrapper. She said, Don’t you see, Amma, if only I had taken the things I wasn’t meant to take. If only I’d had the courage.
She dropped the wrapper and watched it blow away.
She walked to the door, behind which her new husband was waiting, probably asleep by this time, and picked up the glass of now cold milk. She saw on its surface specks of dust that had blown in, sailing on the wrinkled layer of milk. She looked at them, the specks, and decided to let them convince her: hold fast, they said, stay on the surface, and these waters, these creamy, sumptuous white waters, let them carry you. Where would they take her? She had no idea, but behind that door was a man who was not her father. And to whom she now belonged. That seemed an improvement; that alone was a better place.
* * *
Inside the room was a bed, a wooden armoire with a long mirror fringed with a design of berries dangling from curling vines, a desk, and a television. A television! No one in Indravalli had a television. Kishore saw her staring at it, and said, “Don’t get excited. It doesn’t work.” Her eyes left the television and returned to the glass of milk in her hand. He took it and placed it on a small round table beside the bed. The thin yellow sheet on