own. I own you,” he began. “I own the food you eat. I own your sweat, your stink. I own your weakness. But most of all, I own your hunger.” He was standing above her, looking down. “Do you understand? I own your hunger. Now,” he said, unbuckling his belt, “turn over. I don’t like faces. Especially not yours.”
* * *
She began working for him the following day. Her desk was next to his, but smaller, so he could watch over her. But he was rarely there. She was usually alone, and she left the door open, looking up at every girl who passed by it.
None of them was Savitha. At least, none at this location. Poornima wasn’t allowed to talk to them—Guru watched her keenly when he was there, and when he wasn’t, the cook, named Raju, watched her—but every time one of the girls came downstairs, Poornima nodded or smiled. They mostly ignored her. Some of the younger ones, or newer ones, would look back at her sadly, or bravely, and then they would go back upstairs. There were thirteen girls. But were they girls? Poornima wondered. Of course they were. None of them was probably older than sixteen. But there was something missing in them; some essence of girlhood had left them. What was it? Poornima thought about it every day during her first few weeks at the brothel. Innocence, certainly. That was obvious. And they were damaged. That, too, was obvious. But there was something else. Something finer.
And then she had it. It came to her while she was watching one of the girls trudge through the house midafternoon, just after she’d woken up, on her way to the latrines. She was rubbing her eyes, and her face was swollen with sleep, or maybe fatigue. Her gaze was even, and indifferent, as she stood at the back door, looking out. And it was when Poornima saw this gaze, this indifference, that she understood: the girl had lost her sense of light. It was all the same to her, to all the girls, really: light and dark, morning and night. But it wasn’t an outside light they’d lost a sense of, Poornima realized. It was an interior one. And so that was the aspect of girlhood they’d lost: a sense of their own light.
Poornima thought of light, and then she thought of Savitha. There were six books she had to track and balance and audit against the money that was coming in. They’d even given her one of those little adding machines Kishore had used. The machine made everything much, much quicker. Even so, she worked diligently, all the while trying to figure out a way to go to the other brothels, to see the other girls. By now, she knew Rishi had been lying, back at the train station when he’d said he knew Savitha, but Guru ran nearly all the brothels in Vijayawada, and Poornima decided she couldn’t make her way north until she knew for sure. And so she stayed, and she waited.
By her ninth month working at the brothel, Poornima had only managed to visit two of the other locations, asking to go along with Guru when he collected. “I’m not one of the girls,” she said. “I want to drive around a little.” He agreed reluctantly, though she sensed that he’d come to trust her. She never stole money, she never asked for money, and she never made a mistake in the books. He came to confide in her at times and even began giving her a small salary. She realized it was because of her scar that he trusted her, in the small way that he did. It was odd, but it was true. She was no longer wearing bandages, but the burn had healed and left scar tissue that was shiny and wide and blisteringly pink. It made her look damaged, harmless, and, most important, pathetic.
One day, Guru came in complaining of the cost of buying food and clothing and sundries for the nearly hundred women and girls in the brothels. “Thousands of rupees I spend per month. Thousands. All they do is eat.”
Poornima didn’t say anything. She knew for a fact that he made over one hundred thousand rupees a month off the girls. In some months, he made two lakhs.
“For instance, just the other day, a girl tells me it’s her birthday, and could I buy her a sweet. Her birthday! I said, You’ll get a sweet when