Khushi’s pinky had crept toward the gun, but she froze when BB’s spine straightened with umbrage. His face twisted with what Geeta recognized as fomented temper. She wished Ramesh would shut up. “Who the fuck do you think you are, talking to me like that?” he demanded of Ramesh. “I’m twice the man you are.”
“I know that,” Ramesh said. “I’m not trying to disrespect you. I’m trying to help you.”
Khushi’s steady hand was six inches from the gun.
“Help me?” BB said, his voice cold. His body had grown very still. After all his fumbling and indecision, this purposeful transition spilled dread down Geeta’s neck. Questioned masculinity, she’d learned, was a dangerous gauntlet. And the resulting destruction was usually borne by her kind, not theirs. “You’re nothing but a useless drunk.”
“See? You’ve been getting angry with me all night, instead of with the bitches manipulating you. They’re just like your mistress and wife. You let them fuck with your head and instead of doing what a man would do, you hide in the toilet.”
Four inches.
BB’s eyes glittered as he narrowed them at Ramesh. Menace hardened his features. Geeta heard his rapid breathing, an animal poised for attack. She willed Khushi to hurry. “No one fucks with Bada-Bhai.”
“They have.” Ramesh jerked his chin toward the women. “Remind them you’re a man.”
Two inches. Geeta was sweating so profusely she didn’t think she’d ever need to urinate again. Her thighs were slick under her petticoat and she could smell her own underarms. BB’s chest heaved with a fury that threatened to erupt.
“Cut them and—”
“Oi!” BB leapt to his feet, snatching the gun from Khushi’s fingertips. The women wilted. Farah moaned aloud. “Traitorous bitches,” he seethed. When he crashed the butt of his gun against Khushi’s temple, she splayed across the bed so quickly, Geeta thought she’d simply fainted. Then the blood dripped through the springs, the soft plops the only sound in the room.
THIRTY
“Is she dead?” BB’s breathing was labored as he stood over Khushi’s still body. Her cheek was pressed against the cot; blood continued to pool.
Farah was crying again, her sniffles wet. Saloni had paled, her eyes trained on Khushi’s blood.
“You better pray not,” Geeta told him, feigning bravado. The muscles in her thighs trembled, she hoped it was not obvious. Self-loathing joined her fear. This was her mess alone, but she’d dragged three others down with her, including Khushi, whose life she’d na?vely prattled on about improving. Instead, she might’ve left Khushi’s boys orphaned. Saloni had been right: there are consequences to your ideas that don’t land on your head.
“Meaning?”
As her pulse hammered, Geeta aimed for nonchalance. “It’s inauspicious to kill a woman during Diwali because she’ll return as—”
“A churel,” Bada-Bhai finished with a shudder. Geeta imagined a lightbulb dinging above his head. He surveyed Khushi in horror.
“That’s only for women who die pregnant,” Ramesh said. He’d bled through another cloth and tossed it aside with a curse.
“It’s for any woman who dies of unnatural means. And that,” Geeta said, looking at the revolver, “is definitely not natural.”
Bada-Bhai waved his gun between the three of them. “Any of you pregnant?”
“She can’t be,” Ramesh said, pointing to Geeta. “Though Ram knows I’ve tried.”
“How would you know?”
“Because, we haven’t—oi!” His face twisted into outrage. Despite his leg, he lunged toward her and struck her hard with the back of his hand. Her head flung to the right. It had been years since Geeta had been slapped and, while the pain was certainly not negligible, what she’d forgotten was how deeply humiliating it was. Her eyes watered, she tasted her blood. As soon as her head corrected, Ramesh drove his fist into her stomach. She saw white. Her chair scrapped backward against the floor. Air fled her; she gasped for oxygen and failed. Her organs cramped and she felt dizzy.
Saloni gasped. “You asshole,” she whispered.
“None of that—” Geeta started and then broke off with a wheeze. Though her side ached terribly, she could breathe again. “None of that changes the fact that you might’ve just killed a low-caste woman during Diwali.” She jerked her chin toward Khushi’s body. “She could already be a churel.”
“Low-caste?” BB echoed, his neck swiveling. “Who said anything about low-caste? What’s her name?”
“Khushi Balmiki.”
Ramesh cursed.
BB gaped. “She’s a Harijan? She doesn’t look it!”
“Dalit, yes,” Farah said.
BB looked at his hands, much as he had when he’d inadvertently fired the gun at Ramesh. He turned to Saloni, enraged. “But she came inside! She’s right there, polluting everything!”
“You didn’t really give her a choice.”
“I touched her!”
“And the ladoos,” Saloni added. “You ate all of her ladoos.”
Bada-Bhai slapped Saloni with a movement so economical, it took a long moment for Geeta to register what had occurred. Then Saloni’s cheek bloomed red with his print, her lips parted in shock. She, Geeta figured, hadn’t been struck since she was a child.
Bada-Bhai grabbed a fistful of Geeta’s loosened bun and yanked hard. Geeta’s face jerked up. “You didn’t tell me about her on purpose, didn’t you? To fool me again.”
“I—I didn’t,” she lied. “I swear. I was scared; I—I wasn’t thinking straight. Please.”
He released her with a growl. Dismay pooled in her belly. This man had an appetite for violence she foolishly hadn’t taken into account. His temper was now titanic, mutating his face until she had trouble recognizing his formerly soft jowls. “Each one of you miserable bitches has made my life impossible tonight. With your constant yammering and your tricks and your goddamn lies. And he’s right, I’ve let you, but no more. You think this is a fucking joke?” When Geeta was silent, he slapped her, shouting, “Answer me!”
Though it stung little compared to Ramesh’s hand, it was far stronger than the patronizing slap to the back of her head that BB had meted out earlier, and fear roiled through her. She was afraid of dying, certainly, but it was a distant fear. Her more urgent fear was of pain. She’d gone a long while without being subjected to this sort of physical suffering and its return shook her. She wanted to be impervious, to be enraged, but instead only felt cowed and scared.
All those years with Ramesh flooded her, pulling her under, snatching her air. She remembered her marriage too clearly. That trip to Ahmedabad where Ramesh hadn’t let her use the toilet all day. That night she’d woken to find his hands around her throat. How when they went places together, he made her walk behind him and look at the ground. When he’d locked her out in the middle of a monsoon and she’d slept on the wet concrete outside their door. How there was always just enough affection to keep her hoping for more, how it’d been easier to obey than fight, how angry she’d been with herself; if she could just behave, he wouldn’t need anger. Ramesh had waited until everyone who ever loved her was gone before dismantling her. When he was done, he showed her how he saw her: small, worthless, stupid, unloved, unlovable.