to her. Since Poornima’s father had raped her, she’d floundered in something like life, but not life itself. A veil had fallen when he’d held his hand over her mouth. A fadedness, too, had fallen, when he’d pried her legs open. A branch had snapped—a branch from which all things grew, from which every banana, every hope, every laugh sprouted—when she’d looked into his face, and, in a small way, seen her friend’s. After that, what did it matter where she lived, or ate, or breathed her lesser breaths? What difference would it ever make? So that now, when the thought came to her that she needed to leave, that she must leave, she realized, with surprise, that she was beginning to live again. That it did matter. That this again was life.
Her second thought: in order to leave, she had to get past Guru. She recalled, a few months ago, that one of the customers had wanted to use a wooden pestle, and when Savitha had run out of the room, horrified, the madam had yanked her back inside and said, “It would be a shame if someone snapped your father’s fingers off, wouldn’t it? Or if your sisters ended up where you are?” The madam hadn’t gathered those things on her own. Guru had. That much she knew. And yes, she’d been barely conscious for the past few months, but she’d been conscious enough to notice that this was no singular house or madam or undertaking. Not at all. It had its leader—Guru—and it had its lieutenants, like the madam, and it had its foot soldiers, like the man who’d offered her the tea, and the boy who’d injected her, and the girl who’d cleaned her, and the one who’d gone to Indravalli, asked around, and had made sure that no one would come looking for her, or at least that no one had the money or the power or the pull (all three, one and the same) to look for her.
Her third and final thought was this: she needed an advantage. There were only a few clear advantages in the world. She obviously had no money, her only skill was weaving, and she could barely read or write. That left only one thing: her body. My body, my body, she thought, looking down at the now used-up husk of the girl she’d once been, the chest still flat, the hands still big, the skin still dark. She moved then to the mirror—a small round mirror, framed by green plastic, hanging by a nail on a wall opposite the bed. She’d not once looked into it, not once, but now she took it down and studied her face. Her eyes, her lips, her nose. The curve of her cheeks, the sweep of her lashes. She moved the mirror closer, then farther. She tilted it; she straightened it. She looked. And there, just there. What was that? “Stop,” she said out loud, into the emptiness of the room. “Hold it there.” And so she held it there. And that was when she saw it. Had it always been there? That lamp glowing from within. How had it survived all these previous months? How had it held on? No matter, it was greater than her body, it was greater than all else. She laughed, for perhaps the first time since the night in the weaving hut, to see it there. To know it was hers.
Over the next few days, she watched the other girls in the brothel; she stared into their faces, their eyes, five who’d been there longer than Savitha, one who had arrived only the previous month. And none of them had it. Not one. Theirs had been extinguished. But hers, hers.
So now she had two advantages: she had her body, and she had her light.
She bided her time. On every full moon night, she looked up at the sky.
* * *
It took the better part of a year, but one winter evening, when Guru came to check the account books, she waited outside the madam’s door. He was saying something about having hired a new accountant, someone trustworthy, he thought, and then he laughed, and then the rest of the conversation was muffled. When he came out, Savitha stepped in front of him. Guru was taken aback, or so she guessed by the slight quiver she saw at the edge of his lips, though he said and did nothing more to indicate his surprise.
“Do I know you?”
So