“Leave him alone.”
“Or what? You’ll boil my bones into soup? I’d love to see you try.”
Geeta’s brow arched. She was accustomed to children’s deferential terror, not their sass. Before leaving, she muttered the names of a few fruits in Sanskrit, which sounded ominous enough to elicit some gasps, though not from the bully.
Away from the school, the evening was unusually quiet. Not one of the four Amin children, who often escaped the hot confines of their shanty to play kabaddi or make deliveries for pocket change, was anywhere to be found. Geeta passed their home, a cube of tin. Three bricks and a large stone weighed the roof down. A rumor she’d heard last week returned to her: the Amins were building a four-bedroom house.
Geeta respected the widowed Mrs. Amin. She, like Geeta, was one of those women who was About the Work. Mrs. Amin’s husband had been a farmer; when the rains failed, he’d succumbed to loan sharks to buy seeds and fertilizer. But the rains failed again that year, and the next. One morning he poured pesticides in the chai his wife prepared, mistakenly believing the government would grant her a compensatory sum. She received only his debts. So Mrs. Amin, after removing her nose ring, used her microloan to start selling homemade sweets, and now she couldn’t cook or fry fast enough. She’d even pulled her eldest daughter out of school to help meet the demand.
Geeta would’ve preferred to be in Mrs. Amin’s microloan group, with other women who moved their hands rather than their mouths. Women unlike Saloni, who’d only joined the microloan because she couldn’t bear not being the nucleus of anything—even a labor circle. It was this same cocktail of anxiety and arrogance that’d prompted Saloni to turn on Geeta when Geeta’s family arranged her engagement with Ramesh’s.
Geeta would’ve bet five months of loan payments that Saloni had never actually wanted Ramesh. Wanting to be wanted was simply her nature. But Ramesh—not even particularly handsome what with his pocked skin and crowded teeth—hadn’t wanted her. He’d married Geeta and after he vanished, Saloni hadn’t offered a single word or food item of support, instead ensuring that the rumors kept churning. It’d’ve been so easy for Geeta to just slip some rat poison in his tea, na? What else could it be, just the two of them in that house. And I know for a fact she’s a perfect liar—she used to cheat from my exams, you know.
All that venom from a girl who’d practically been her sister for the first nineteen years of their lives. Two halves of a gram seed, they’d shared food and clothes and secrets, they’d cheated from each other’s papers and lied beautifully in unison about the same. As Geeta’s father had said dryly, Nakal ko bhi akal ki zarurat hai. Even to copy, you need some brains. Saloni had preferred Geeta’s small home and tired parents to her own small home and tired parents, but this did not parlay Geeta into the alpha. Beautiful Saloni （whose comeliness masked the true viciousness in her humor） was far more suited for the politics of childhood; it was her caprice alone that determined which girl they’d be ostracizing to tears that week, which boys were cute, which film hero was in and which song was out. Geeta was happy to follow, content in her safe, undemanding beta role. Until her wedding to Ramesh was announced. Then, quick as a shot, Saloni changed the rules, pointing the barrel of her weaponized popularity at her oldest friend’s stunned head.
Geeta sidestepped a sitting cow, whose jaw circled in a desultory rhythm. Its tail echoed similar circles, but did little to dissuade the flies communing on her rump. By the time Geeta reached the shops, it was too late. Gates of corrugated metal in various colors covered the entrances, sealed with padlocks near the ground. Fucking Farah, she thought as she turned back.
But voices paused her feet. Geeta closed her eyes to hear better. Two men were talking inside the last store of the strip, Karem’s shop. Geeta inched closer, instinct keeping her tread light. The entrance yawned wide. Despite a twilight breeze, an anxious heat prickled her underarms.
She held her breath as she listened to Karem. It took a moment, but she eventually recognized the second voice, low and burnt: Farah’s husband. Samir had the throat of a smoker.
“No more ’til you pay your tab,” Karem said. Even from outside, his impatience was audible. She pressed her back against the neighboring shop of sundries. “This isn’t your sister’s wedding where everyone can just drink for free. I have kids to feed, too.”
Geeta could not see either of them, but she imagined Karem, his thick hair, narrow forehead, the small hoop in his right ear. And Samir, his scalp fuzzy like a baby bird’s. “I gave you a hundred yesterday!”
“Bey yaar, but you owe five hundred.”
“I’ll get it to you soon. Just help me out tonight, na?”
“No.”
Samir cursed and a cracking sound made Geeta jump, her sandal tripping over the store’s padlock. A hand—Geeta guessed Samir’s—had slammed atop a table. Everything from her jaw to her anus clenched as she waited to see if she’d been heard.
“I’ll get you the money soon,” Samir said, calmer now.
“Yeah, right.”
“I mean it, I will. My wife has a friend who’s been helping her, she’ll help me, too.”
A thread of sweat wove a thin course down Geeta’s spine.
“Why would she do that?”
“Because if she doesn’t, I’ll make her regret it.”
“Whatever,” Karem said. “Just pay your tab and you can have the daru.”
“Make sure you have something decent ready for me. Your tharra could turn a horse cross-eyed.”
Geeta left then, her heart flapping as she tugged her earlobe. She walked in the littered alley behind the shops. It was not the most direct way home, but it provided cover. If Samir left Karem’s, he’d spot her immediately. That thought made her run, her empty bag bouncing against her like a numb limb. Geeta was not accustomed to running; with each step Samir’s threats slalomed in her head. Would he just beat and rob her, or kill her? Would he rape her? When shock gave way to anger somewhere around the Amin shanty, she changed her physical and mental path.
That drunk chutiya thought her hard work, her life of carefully preserved solitude, was an open treasure chest for his convenience. The Bandit Queen wouldn’t stand for it; she’d killed the various men who’d brutalized her, starting with her first husband. After she joined the gang, she returned to his village and beat him and his second wife, who’d harassed and humiliated Phoolan. Then she dragged him outside and either stabbed him or broke his hands and legs, Geeta had heard differing stories. Phoolan left his body with a note warning older men not to wed young girls. （That last bit might’ve been untrue, as Phoolan Mallah was illiterate and knew only how to sign her name, but it made for excellent lore, so no matter.） The point was: if the Bandit Queen caught wind of burgeoning betrayal, she wouldn’t wait to be wronged. A gram of prevention was worth a kilogram of revenge.
By the time Geeta reached Farah’s house, her throat was dry and she needed a cool bath. Still, she was certain she’d beaten Samir there and pounded on the door. While waiting, she cupped her knees with her hands and panted. Crickets chirred. Her pulse thrummed to the beat of, irritatingly enough: kabaddi, kabaddi, kabaddi.