“I don’t care. I’m not—”
“So the question is,” Guru said, interrupting her, “do you want to be worth what you are, or do you want to be worth more?”
There seemed no greater question in the world.
Savitha looked down at her hands, and as if prophetic in her gaze, when she asked, “Which limb?” he said, “Any limb. A hand, let’s say. Either one. You choose.”
* * *
The operation was scheduled to take place two days later, but was then moved up to the next day. Less time to change my mind, Savitha thought. Regardless, she lay in bed all the night before, cradling her left hand, letting it wander over the ridges of her body. How can they take a hand? How can a hand be taken? she wondered. The palm, the fingers, the crescent moons at their tips. The warmth of blood beneath the skin, already curtailed, lost. The ends of a body as beautiful as its beating center. She decided in that moment, resolutely, lying in bed, No, I won’t do this, I won’t let them. But then she gazed into the dark of the room, into the dark oblivion of her waiting sisters, their waiting dowries, and knew she would. Knew she had to. She would let them buy it—her hand; she had nothing left to sell.
3
It was called a general anesthetic, but it felt to Savitha as if a light had been turned off, as if night had crashed through her like an anvil. When she woke up, the stub of her left arm was bandaged. The doctor beamed with pride and said, “Cleanest one ever. It looks almost pretty.” When the bandage came off, Savitha sat in her room and stared at it. What did they do with my hand? she wondered. Where did they take it? If someone paid for a stub, then maybe someone else paid for a hand?
Regardless, in the end, she realized, it had come down to the body.
She held back tears. She could never again sit at the loom, or the charkha, but why would she need to? With fifty thousand rupees she could buy all the cloth in the world. Silks and chiffons and gold-bordered pottu saris. Saris she could’ve never before imagined, but now could buy as gifts for her sisters on their wedding days. With that thought, she searched in her pillow and took out Poornima’s half-made one. She held it to her chest; she buried her head in its folds. What reason was there to be sad? It was just a hand. Imagine Nanna’s surprise, she thought. Imagine his delight. All that money. And yet, and yet the scrap of a sari she held now, she knew—the knowledge grottoed in her heart, hidden in a cove, reached only by the darker waters, the quieter ones—was the truest offering. What did they matter, the ones to come? What did they matter to her? What mattered was that once, long ago, a line of indigo thread had met a line of red, and out had poured a thing of beauty. A thing of bravery.
She lifted her head and noticed a dampness. She was crying. And the cotton, as cotton will, had soaked up the tears.
* * *
Savitha waited for her ticket to Saudi to arrive. She tried to find a map, but she couldn’t. When she asked the madam where it was, she said, “In the desert.” So it was near Rajasthan. That wasn’t so far. Though it did occur to her that far might be the best place to be. She had been wrong to turn back, to come to Vijayawada, where she could still, in a certain wind, scent the waters of the Krishna. And that scent would then plunge her into a terrifying and quarried understanding of how little she’d managed, how corrupt her fate: she’d come all of twenty kilometers from Indravalli. What would’ve happened if I had gone to Pune? she wondered. She looked at the space at the end of her left arm and thought, Would I still have you? But now she was going even farther, and to go far, and then to return, with money, was, she decided, what the crow had told her that long-ago day: Let them eat you, let them, but be sure to eat them back.
Money. Money let you eat them back.
She was no longer considered one of the regular prostitutes, but one of the special ones. What did that mean? Savitha wasn’t quite sure. She