FIFTEEN
How, Geeta wondered on the walk home, did these things keep piling up? Also, in other disturbing news, was everyone a better Bandit Queen than she was? Why was she the only chump saddled with qualms and compunctions over this new village pastime? Her sandals punished the dirt, anger propelling her at a speed too fast for comfort.
While none of the women appeared to be concerned by the optics of two dead husbands in as many weeks in one village, Geeta guessed the police would feel differently. The women, Geeta decided, were myopic little bitches. Not to mention shameless criminals. It would’ve been no use trying to reason with them, trying to explain how this was an entirely different situation than the Samir fiasco. If Geeta hadn’t acted, who knew what he’d have done to her? While Darshan had behaved unforgivably toward Preity, he was not an imminent threat to Geeta or anyone. But here she was, coerced into yet another half-cocked murder plot.
“Just don’t do it the same way,” Priya had advised in Saloni’s kitchen. “And you’ll be fine.” Geeta thanked her for the insight.
They had insisted she stay and get her hands decorated. When she’d protested, Saloni forcibly sat her on the swing. “I’m paying them anyhow, why not? It’s not like you’re a widow.”
The henna artists asked for her husband’s initials so they could hide them into their design. While Geeta stammered, Saloni’s answer was smooth: “G.P.K.” Geeta’s maiden initials.
Which was how she was now walking home with useless painted hands, trying to avoid smearing the paste. She’d forgotten how wet mehndi immobilized you. How the moment you could no longer use your hands, your nose itched or you required the toilet.
Geeta had left as soon as the artists finished. They’d pestered her to wait until it dried so they could dab her palms with lemon-soaked cotton balls. “The darker the henna, the stronger the love.”
Gross.
For Indians, superstitions were so embedded within blessings and religion, it was difficult to divorce silliness from tradition. Ramesh had been full of expectations—and therefore disappointments—for their wedding day. It didn’t rain, there was no knife to stab into the earth, candles sputtered and, at some point, milk had boiled over. With the fit he’d pitched, you’d’ve thought someone had set fire to his hair.
Geeta had never fasted for Ramesh; the Karva Chauth festival only gained popularity after he’d left. It was primarily a North Indian custom, but she knew bits and pieces of the rituals from films. A silly hullabaloo, she scoffed, to wish long lives upon the men who shortened theirs.
It wasn’t, Geeta mused while walking, so much that women loved their husbands and couldn’t live without them. It was that the outside world made life without them utter shit; you needed a man in the house in order to be left in peace. They didn’t really do much, but their simple pulse was a form of protection. Like pimps. Maybe those female bonobos were onto something. Smaller in solo stature, mightier in numbers, they could—
“—because you have to. Otherwise, the churel will get you.”
“But I don’t want to.”
So preoccupied was Geeta with her internal rant that she nearly missed the two children arguing. She squinted. Dusk disguised their small frames, but their voices carried.
“What does that matter? Go find me some bangles. The moon is almost out.”
“Bey yaar!” the boy moaned. “But we’re not Hindu! Or married.”
The girl set down a steel plate bearing one ladoo and a rapidly decaying marigold. She stamped her foot, frustrated with the boy, who was sitting on a cairn of broken bricks. His elbows were stacked on his knees and his forehead burrowed in his arms, so Geeta couldn’t see him, but she recognized the girl as Farah’s daughter.
“We will be. We’re the only Muslims around so you know our parents will make a rishtaa.”
“But you’re, like, a hundred years elder to me.”
“A hundred? Pay attention in maths class more. Go get the bangles.”
“Where am I gonna get bangles?”
“Your father’s store.”
“No!”
She pushed him then. His head was still down and he didn’t see it coming. Unable to brace himself, he went tumbling from the bricks to the dirt.
“Oi!” Geeta called. “Stop that.” She was prepared to be gentle with the girl, this now fatherless girl, courtesy of Geeta. But then the little fucker said:
“Mind your own business.” Without turning back to the fallen boy, she added, “See? I told you the churel would get you.”
“You must not have any pictures of elders in your home,” Geeta snapped, her palm itching. But slapping the girl would ruin the henna, which Geeta was now partial to. “To be so rude. Hutt!”
“Or what? You’ll make me childless? Go ahead—I never want kids anyway.”
“How ’bout I give you ten, then?”
Her arrogance faltered, but she sniffed. “Whatever.”
“I— My condolences about your father.”
The girl’s face puckered and then broke. Geeta couldn’t be sure if she was crying. She abandoned her plate, sprinting down the alley, the twin ends of her scarf flying behind her like streamers.
“Er—you okay?” Geeta turned to the boy. “Raees!”
“Hi, Geeta-aunty.” He sounded as weary as his father.
“What’s all this about? Come on, I’ll walk you home.”
“We were playing house. She wanted to do the moon thing.”
“But you didn’t?”
“No. But I have to.”
“Why?”
“Because,” Raees said miserably. “She’s my girlfriend. And boyfriends have to do what girlfriends tell them. That’s the rule.”
“She doesn’t seem very nice to you.”
“Girlfriends don’t have to be nice.”
“Another rule?”
“Yes.”
“I think,” she said carefully, “that you may be too nice.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
She mulled that one over, thinking about the invites she’d ignored because it’d been easier to hide than potentially risk censure. Perhaps the men and children would have still spread tales, but if she’d used the loan group as a way to connect instead of sequester herself, maybe the stories would have dimmed. All this time assuming she was a pariah when perhaps she was a hermit. She heard Saloni’s words, spoken with such confidence: Anyone who gossips or gives her trouble will have to answer to us.
“No,” Geeta decided. “I don’t think it is. But you also can’t be a doormat. So you must exercise kindness and judgment. Not everyone will deserve your kindness. When they show you they’re not worthy, believe them.”
“But she’s right. We’re, like, the only Muslim kids here.”
“Well, who says you have to marry a Muslim girl?” Caution was warranted here. While she doubted Karem was a stickler for communalism, this was not her child to be indoctrinating.
“I don’t?” He looked at her with a sudden, wild awe that left Geeta a bit jealous. To have simple words from a trusted adult crack open the darkness like a walnut…she’d likely never feel that again. That was childhood, she supposed.