56 THENEWYORKER,AUGUST17, 2020
be asked to explicate. So Geeta listened
and tried to make sense of it, of this
strong, mad child.
B
y April, Rani seemed calmer, and
her proclamations had cooled, no
longer burning with the terrible heat
of prophecy. She seemed more prone
to conversation, one day even asking
Geeta to comb her hair, which Geeta
did as gently as she knew how. Mid-
way through, Rani leaned back into
her chest and made a small, uncon-
scious grunt of pleasure. The sound
brought tears to Geeta’s eyes, and in
that moment she allowed herself the
hope that maybe the worst of it was
over. In front of Srikanth, however,
Rani was mute, and he, in turn, passed
over them both with the distracted be-
nevolence of a politician taking a pause
from state matters.
Only once more did she attempt to
talk to him about the girl. She sug-
gested that Rani might be lonely with-
out the company of other children and
wondered if they might visit his sister
in Chennai. He said, “I know children
better than you. There’s nothing wrong
with her. Let her learn how to enter-
tain herself. If you spoil her now, she
will never be satisfied later.” His tone
was so darkly bitter that she imagined
he was speaking from experience, and
she thought about the daughter he
never saw or mentioned.
“These types of girls,” he went on,
“they try to get everything from you. If
you give them one thing, they will ask
for five the next time. Let her learn to
be happy with whatever she has.”
She didn’t ask what he meant by
“these types of girls.” Tribal girls, girls
from the north, rural girls, girls with
shady pasts, low-caste girls, girls with-
out money, Adivasi girls, girls clawing
their way up, nonvegetarian girls, girls
without morals, hardened girls, or-
phaned girls, ungrateful girls, or sim-
ply girls—it might have been any one
of these.
T
he Bakers’ maidservant came to
visit at a time when Geeta knew
Srikanth wouldn’t be at home. Rani
was introduced, the maidservant given
a cup of tea and shown around the
house. They wandered from room to
room, and the maidservant was extrav-
agant with her praise. At one point,
the maidservant turned and Geeta saw
that she was wearing the pendant she’d
given her, with the engraving that read
“You Are My Dear Friend.” She com-
mented on it, saying how nice the maid-
servant looked.
“I never take it off,” the maidservant
declared, fishing it out from the neck-
line of her kurta and holding it dra-
matically up to her lips.
Geeta saw Rani’s gaze fix briefly
on the pendant and then drift away.
When the maidservant had gone,
Geeta took the teacups into the kitchen
and started to wash them. She heard
Rani come in but she did not turn.
Then a dazzling pain shot through
her back, and she whirled around,
knocking Rani to the floor. The knife
skittered away, still dotted with pieces
of the onion Geeta had been chop-
ping earlier. The cut was low down
and alarmingly near her spine, but she
could tell at once that it was not deep.
She touched it and felt warm blood.
From the ground, Rani looked up at
her, and there was nothing in her face
to suggest that anything momentous
had taken place.
“Why did you do that?” Geeta asked,
voice trembling.
“You gave that bitch your jewelry.”
“That wasn’t jewelry!” Geeta cried.
“It was just a cheap necklace I bought
in the market. It’s not even real. It’s
worth nothing.”
She took two quick steps and picked
up the knife. Before she could think
twice, she’d washed it and put it back
in the drawer.
“Stand up,” she told Rani. “We’re
going to the doctor.”
Her wound was dressed, but thank-
fully no stitches were needed. She did
not tell Srikanth what had happened.
She kept an eye on his shirt buttons,
she cooked his meals with care, but she
no longer thought of them as married.
Instead, she focussed her energy on
Rani. They had settled on Sophia Girls’
School, run by Catholic nuns of a de-
vout strain, of whom Srikanth approved
because they were rumored to be strict,
and whom Geeta liked because they
reminded her of her own schooling.
Rani would begin in June. She had
taken an oral aptitude test and had
proved, notwithstanding the orphan-
age director’s bigotry, to be extremely
intelligent.
The first day of school would be the
fifth of June, a date that acquired for
Geeta a kind of shimmer. All she had
to do was make it to the fifth, she
thought. If she could take Rani safely
to the shoals of that bright morning,
then it would be the end of the trial
“In my day, we froze to death, but we were happy.”
• •
