“It’s a commitment.”
“Like an obligation?”
“No, not in a bad way. I just mean it’s a choice you renew every day.”
Geeta thought about the orcas on her radio program. And Lakha, stuck in Bada-Bhai’s awful house for her illegitimate son’s sake. “I don’t know. I don’t think you choose to love your kids. I think you just sort of…do? Like, you’re compelled to. It’s biology or nature or whatever.”
“Yeah, sure, parental love is primitive, but the love that commits to the sacrifices, that puts their happiness and needs over mine, that does it daily on repeat—that’s a choice.” He squinted in the way Geeta now knew he did while thinking. Words came faster to him when he closed his eyes. “It’s a choice I make. It’s important, for me at least, to recognize that, because when you don’t, resentment creeps in.”
“Are you lonely?” A dumb question that highlighted her own state.
But, eyes still closed, he only said, “At times, very.”
“It’s harder for you than others, isn’t it? It’s all on you. There’s no help.”
“Oh, they take care of each other. My eldest is like a second parent. He even reminds me to eat.”
“That’s nice.”
“Not really,” Karem said. “It’s not a childhood.”
Geeta again felt inadequate; she was no good at comforting people, that was a muscle she’d long allowed to atrophy. Once, with Saloni, she had been. Because you love me. You see me in a way no one else does. And because you’re a duffer.
If Karem was to be believed, she and Saloni had chosen each other, chosen to love each other—until they hadn’t. （It was odd, how her thoughts these days returned to Saloni like a homing pigeon.）
Had Geeta chosen to love Ramesh? She supposed she had. What if he’d stayed? Would she have continued to choose to love him? Would she have forgiven him his fists and slurs, and renewed her commitment to sacrificing slivers of herself for his needs: food, sex, venting, validation?
It was not a road worth traveling. She and Karem disembarked the truck, the sherbet sunset turning to ash, and said their goodbyes.
Karem gestured to the dog. “Think of a good name for him.”
“A name?” She looked down at her arms. So accustomed was she to his weight and warmth, she’d forgotten she was holding him. “I’m not really an animal lover.”
“That’s okay. They do most of the loving anyway.”
She hadn’t yet decided what she’d say to Farah, how she’d explain her failure; she assumed she had some time. But when Geeta walked to her house, there was Farah sitting on the step, folded into herself: chin stacked on arms stacked on knees. When she saw Geeta, she stood, unfurling like a slow cloud. Stubborn light lingered through the dusk. And as Geeta registered Farah’s fresh bruising, the swollen lip and cut cheekbone, it occurred to her that her dereliction, her bunking class for a day, had consequences well beyond herself.
EIGHT
“Where have you been?”
Geeta set the dog near her bed and turned to Farah. The bare overhead bulb was unkind to them both. Farah was wrecked and Geeta was disheveled, her hair frizzy, her face oily. Both she and the dog would have greatly benefited from a bath. Farah held yet another gourd. Geeta accepted it.
“What the hell happened to your face?”
“Where have you been? Is that hay in your hair?”
“Did Samir do this?” It was a foolish question, but she needed time.
“Where have you been all day? And why do you have a mutt?”
“I was in Kohra.”
Farah’s shoulders relaxed. “Oh, right. Of course. Sorry. So then, you got the stuff!”
“Partly.”
“Meaning?”
“I have the daru in the kitchen, take it. But I couldn’t manage the rat poison.”
“Geetaben! That’s, like, the most important part!”
At Farah’s ire, the dog lifted his head to growl his disapproval, lips bared as his caret ears canted back. He sniffed the air above him, dark nose wiggling. Farah startled at the sound. Geeta watched her body tense; she seemed as uncomfortable around dogs as Saloni had been as a child. He rose to his fours, which Geeta would have taken as a sign of improvement, except he then ran his snout straight into one of the cot legs and crumpled, sniffing the floor. His soiled tail curled around himself in a weak fence.
Farah’s frown was skeptical. “What’s wrong with it?”
“He’s blind.”
“Oh. So how come you didn’t get the poison?”
“That Karem fool wouldn’t leave me alone and I couldn’t very well buy it in front of him.”
“Karembhai? Why were you with him?”
“He had a ride to town.”
“Couldn’t you have ditched him for, like, two minutes to buy it?”
Geeta’s spine prickled. She was defensive because she felt guilty, parading around town with Karem like a carefree teenager while Samir was making Farah’s backbone and ribs one. He’d come for her and her money next, she reminded herself. “Don’t you think I would’ve if I could’ve? What, you think I liked hanging out with him all day, following me around like a dog? No, it was…annoying.”
“Okay, okay.”
“I mean it,” Geeta pressed, her mouth running even though she knew it was more credible to leave well enough alone. Even girls in the fifth standard knew protesting more only exacerbated matters. “Very annoying.”
“Geetaben,” Farah said, rolling her eyes. “You don’t have to prove anything to me, okay? I may be illiterate, but I’m not a moron. I know no chakkar is going on between you and”—Here Farah started laughing, and Geeta found that she was insulted, incredibly so, as she had been in the appliance shop—“Karembhai.”
“And just why the hell not?”
“The man’s no saint. I mean, he’s plenty handsome, very much a pigeon fancier.”
“A what?”
“You know,” Farah said with a sly turn of her hand. “With the lay-deez. Great head of hair—Samir goes on about it all the time, he’s so jealous it’s pathetic, and I’m like: ‘What did you expect? Your father was bald as a marble, na?’ Not that I actually say that, can you imagine?—sorry, ahem, right. Anyway, Karembhai goes to town to get his…needs handled. But you’re—you’re not like that, Geetaben, you’re about business, not mixing in the dirt. Aboveboard, you know? Sidhi-sadhi.” At Geeta’s clear displeasure, Farah sighed. “I’m complimenting you.”
“It’s fine,” Geeta said abruptly, more to herself than Farah. The flash of hurt she’d experienced upon hearing of Karem’s exploits was only because, above all else, she hated feeling like a fool. She decided not to care whether the rumor mill found her to be a viable prospect for Karem, because really, it made no difference. Cradling an ego, she told herself, was as useless as throwing water into the sea. “We can’t wait any longer. We need to improvise the poison.”
“How?”