She did so reluctantly, shy, unaware, even after six months of marriage, and even with Kishore on top of her practically every night, of her adolescent body, and of the crude brutality it could inspire. “Massage my feet,” he said. She moved to the end of the bed. Her fingers, though they’d already been rough in Indravalli from the charkha and the housework, were now calloused and cracking from the constant work, her hands the only part of her that seemed to absorb the daily disgraces, the accusations, the domesticity of everyday cruelty. When she lifted her eyes, she saw that Kishore’s were closed, and though her bare chest was cold, she didn’t dare to cover it again. She thought he might’ve fallen asleep, but when she slowed the massage a bit, he called out, “Keep going. Who told you to stop?” She heard him snore lightly, or maybe he grunted, and then, after a moment, he said, “Come here.” He took her while she was on her back first, and then he turned her over onto her stomach and took her again. When he finally came, he collapsed on top of her and lay there for so long that Poornima watched as three different mosquitoes bit her and flew away, drugged, heavy and bloated with her blood.
She waited a moment, once he rolled off, and then she took a deep breath. She said, “I can’t help it. I can’t help it if my father doesn’t have the money.”
Silence. She slapped away another mosquito, the room now thick with them, attracted by the heat of their bodies.
“Yes, you can,” he said.
Poornima stopped. She stared at him in the dark. “I can?”
His voice grew cold. The room, too, grew suddenly cold. All the mosquitoes wandered off. “Tell him there’s worse to come,” he said, “unless he pays up.”
“Worse? Worse how?”
But Kishore didn’t say anything, and after a moment, he was snoring. Fast asleep. Poornima lay awake, the returning mosquitoes now a welcome distraction, the loss of blood an offering.
* * *
It wasn’t that conversation. Or maybe it was. Regardless, Poornima, a few weeks after that night, began to sneak upstairs between her chores, or race to finish them, or find any excuse to leave the main part of the house and climb to the second floor, close the door to their room, and sit on the edge of the bed. She never lay down; lying down reminded her of Kishore, and she didn’t want to be reminded of him. She didn’t want to be reminded of Savitha, either, so she didn’t close her eyes.
Instead, she studied the room. The walls were painted a pale green. There were watermarks on two of the walls, but none on the third and fourth. Two windows on either side of the door looked out onto the terrace, and these had bars and shutters across them, to keep out thieves. There was a lot to steal, Poornima thought: the wooden armoire was handsome; nothing in their hut in Indravalli was as handsome as the armoire. Inside it were mostly Kishore’s work clothes, along with her wedding sari, some papers and jewelry and cash that Kishore kept in a locked metal box, and a doll that was wrapped in crinkly plastic, which a distant relative had brought back from America. There was also, in the armoire, a bronze statuette Kishore had gotten for being the best student at his college each of his four years there, and this he kept especially protected, in a designated place nestled between some clothes. Tucked in between everything were mothballs. Against the other wall were the television and the desk. The television still didn’t work—Poornima wondered whether it ever had—but the room felt rich for having it there, a piece of muslin cloth covering it to keep out the dust.
Next to the television was the desk, and on the desk were Kishore’s papers. These papers were different than the papers in the armoire, he’d told her. These papers were just his work papers, he’d said, while the ones in the armoire were government papers and bankbooks. Poornima looked at them, and seeing that they were in disarray, she got up from the bed and went to the desk to straighten them. As she did, she saw that they were filled with columns—six of them, with many, many rows underneath filled with lots of numbers and scribbles that she couldn’t possibly understand, so she laid them back down on the desk. But