No Ordinary Day (7 page)

I jumped off the bed and pushed my way through the women.

“You’re not going to get me!”

“She’s afraid,” I heard.

“Let her go,” someone else said. “She’s clearly trouble.”

“She’s a child!”

I broke through and ran out the door. I ran down the stairs, slamming into people who were on their way up.

“Valli, what’s wrong? What is it?”

Dr. Indra had me by the shoulders. I tried to squirm away, but her hands were strong.

“Talk to me.”

“This is a place for monsters! They’ll eat me! They’ll tear me apart!”

“This is a hospital for people who are recovering from illness. Nothing more.” Her voice was calm but stern.

“They’re all monsters up there!”

“Really, Valli? Do you really believe that?” the doctor asked. “You are a human being with a thinking brain. Do you really believe these people are monsters?”

There was too much going on. I was being spoken to in a way I didn’t recognize. I was afraid and at the same time I felt a little foolish.

Someone thought I could think. I didn’t know what that meant.

Yes, I did. And it frightened me more than the people with the missing fingers.

Dr. Indra let go of my shoulders. She was leaving it up to me.

After making such a fuss, I didn’t see how I could back down. Even though I wanted to.

So I looked straight ahead and walked quickly through the waiting room, out of the hospital and back into the street.

The Dead Man

“
IS HE DEAD?
”

Bharati’s wide eyes went from the man on the ticket seller’s counter to me.

“Yes,” I said. “Dead.”

She whimpered a little and took a half-step behind me.

In the weeks since I had run away from the hospital, all the niceness had drained out of me. I was like a kid I didn’t even know. I wanted to kick at street dogs, steal from blind beggars and rip things from walls.

And be mean to clingy little girls like Bharati.

I was back living at Sealdah Railway Station, where I had stayed off and on in the months I had been in Kolkata. Many children lived there. It had dark corners for sleeping, people to beg from and bits of food that got dropped to the floor by rushing travelers. The railway station was a good place to borrow. A lot of people moved through it, dropping things and leaving their bags open and their backs turned.

Bharati was little and new to the station. She wasn’t used to looking after herself.

When I first saw her, she was with her older brother, who brought her food he had worked for and told her to stay put so he would know where to find her.

But he had taken up with the boy-pack. Little sisters were not welcome there.

Her brother was about the same age as me.

I didn’t mind Bharati sticking with me sometimes. She was a polite little girl who believed everything I said. But I didn’t want her getting any ideas that she could stay with me forever.

“Who put him up there?” she asked, staring at the man. He was flat on his back on the ticket counter, covered head to toe with a blanket.

I had seen it all over and over. I had spent a lot of time at this train station.

“He put himself up there,” I said. “And he covered himself up like that, too.”

“Why did he do that?” Bharati asked.

“You’re full of questions,” I said.

“I want to know.”

“Because he knew he was going to die, so he climbed up there so his body wouldn’t get wet when the floor washers came.”

The floors got washed in the early hours of the day. Anybody who was not awake got soaked by the cold water. Morning in December in Kolkata was cold enough without that. I always made sure I woke up early.

“Why did he cover his face?”

“He didn’t want anyone to look at him after he was dead.”

“Why not?”

I was getting bored with the conversation and bored with Bharati.

“Because if you look at a dead man’s face, his ghost enters your body. Don’t you know anything?” I liked to make things up as I went along. Sometimes I didn’t know what was going to come out of my mouth until I said it. It kept me entertained.

I reached into my pocket and took out the little bottle of pink fingernail polish I had borrowed from some lady’s handbag while I was hitching a ride on a train, begging from passengers. I was aiming for her coin purse, but the train gave a lurch right at that moment and I had to grab what I could.

I headed over to the dead man.

I knew he wasn’t really dead.

It was Mr. Vishwas, and he slept up on the ticket counter every night. During the day he worked at his brother’s shirt stand in the market. He had been staying at his brother’s house, but his brother’s wife didn’t like him. I heard all about it. He shared his story with anyone who stood still for more than a moment.

I felt sorry for his brother’s wife. Mr. Vishwas was always in a bad mood. Always.

“What are you doing?” Bharati said. She grabbed my arm to hold me back.

I shook her off. I was tired of playing nanny. This would get rid of her.

I hopped up on the ticket counter at the foot end of Mr. Vishwas. The blanket covering his face and body didn’t quite reach his toes.

I gave the nail-polish bottle a good shake, unscrewed the brush and started to paint his toes.

It didn’t take long. It might have, if I had been careful to stay on the nails and not paint his toes as well, but I was more concerned with being fast.

Job done, I waited a moment so that the polish would dry, then rejoined Bharati.

“Now you have to break the spell,” I whispered to her.

“The spell?”

“You have to. You were the one to find him. It’s you his spirit will come after unless you break the spell. But if you want him to come and get you while you’re sleeping …”

“What do I have to do?”

“It’s very simple. Turn around three times, then face him, clap three times very loud and fast and shout, ‘Kaaa!’ Can you do that?”

She nodded.

This was going to be fun.

“Go ahead,” I said. “I’ll be right behind you.”

I helped her spin three times and turned her so she was facing Mr. Vishwas. Then I ran and hid behind a post.

She clapped three times and yelled, “Kaaa!” at the top of her lungs.

Mr. Vishwas jumped up so fast he fell off the counter.

Bharati screamed and ran into another part of the train station.

Mr. Vishwas picked himself up off the floor, too stunned to be able to chase after her. Then he noticed his bright pink toes.

I laughed and laughed.

But it was a laugh without any joy behind it. Laughing like that made me feel meaner.

Mr. Vishwas came storming after me. He was angry, but I was fast, and I jumped over the gates and ran to the tracks.

I knew he would not follow me. He was too old to jump gates.

I kept laughing as I ran, until I ran smack into Bharati’s brother. He was surrounded by the boy-pack. A dozen skinny boys stood near him trying to look tough, their arms folded over their thin chests and torn clothes. Bharati was clutching her brother around the waist and still crying.

“You made my sister cry,” he said.

“Your sister cries easily,” I told him. I wanted to hurt him. “So do you.”

“I do not.”

“I heard you the other night. ‘Where’s my mama! I want my mama!’ For a while, I thought your sister had a sister instead of a brother.” I looked around at the boy-pack. “Did you boys know you were hanging out with a crybaby?”

Grown men hate it when girls laugh at them. So do un-grown men. I could see Bharati’s brother getting angry. I could also see his friends glance at him and frown. They wouldn’t want a crybaby in their gang.

I bolted.

Sealdah Railway Station has lots of ways in and out. I knew the boys could run fast. I had to make the most of my head start.

I made it to the side exit. I jumped down the stairs two at a time and ran out into the parking lot.

The boys kept chasing me so I kept running. I zipped into the market under the highway flyover.

It was very dark in there. The sun was hours from rising. The few bare bulbs that were lit up created shadows that made it harder to see instead of easier.

People were sleeping all over the place. On their carts, by their stalls, on the walkways. I came very close to stepping on a lot of them.

The boy-pack kept coming. I could slip through the maze of narrow pathways and not bother anybody, but they were not so lucky. Plus, they were more interested in getting me than they were in not disturbing the sleepers.

Of course they knocked things over. Of course they stepped on people.

I heard the crashes and the shouts. I stopped running and looked back. There was enough light to let me see angry men hitting boys caught up among the poles and canvas of a banged-up fruit stall.

They couldn’t see me. I was tucked into a shadow.

But I could see them. I saw the anger on the men’s faces. I heard the cries of the boys. I stood and watched and listened.

Fruit spilled all over the ground. A melon rolled over to me and bumped into my ankles. I picked it up, held it close to my chest and walked away.

Kolkata was quiet. There were no traffic sounds to block the noise of the boys crying and screaming. It stayed in my ears for a long, long time.

I kept walking with that melon all along Bow Bazaar Street to Bidhan Sarani, to the area where all the colleges were. I went to Bookstore Alley, sat on the curb and smashed the melon open on the edge of the sidewalk.

The melon was unripe and bitter. I ate the whole thing anyway. The juice ran down my kurta, making it sticky.

What did it matter? What did anything matter?

I had been given a chance, and I threw it away.

I chomped and swallowed, chomped and swallowed until my stomach was aching and full of bitter melon.

Then I threw up in the gutter.

I didn’t feel any better.

Pizza

I MOVED TO ANOTHER CURB
away from where I threw up, and then I just sat.

Generally, I liked being in Book Alley. There were dozens of bookstalls and thousands of books. There were old books in Sanskrit, new books in English, and textbooks in Hindi, German and French. All kinds of people came to buy and browse. I could wander from little group to little group, being invisible and listening to their talk. I couldn’t understand most of it but I liked it anyway. It made me feel important just to be around it.

On this early morning, though, Book Alley just made me feel worse.

The clean white bandages Dr. Indra had wound around my feet were now gray and filthy. They hung off my ankles. I smoothed the tape with my hand, trying to make it sticky again, but that made no difference.

I wanted clean bandages again.

But I wanted more than that.

I wanted to be like Dr. Indra.

I wanted to know things and to speak about things so that people would listen to me. I wanted to have a purse with rupees in it — enough rupees that I could pay extra for things if I wanted to, just to be nice. I wanted to be able to wave over a taxi or a tuk-tuk and tell the driver to take me someplace and know that I could pay them when we got there. And I wanted to have so many dupattas that I could cut one in half and give it away without even thinking about it.

It was never going to happen. How could it? I was nothing. I wasn’t even a coal-picker anymore.

I tried again to smooth the tape down on the bandage so it would stick. Then I got fed up. I tore at the cloth. I ripped away the dressings. I bunched it all up into a ball and threw it as far as I could.

No sooner had the bandages hit the pavement than a young ragpicker walked by, picked them up and added them to his bag. His rag bag trailed behind him. It was almost longer than he was tall. It got snagged on something. The boy had to bend down to loosen it. Then he slowly continued on his way.

I almost went after him, just to be with someone for a little while.

He wouldn’t want me, I told myself. So I let him go.

I jumped off the curb, ran through Book Alley and out onto Bidhan Sarani Street.

Traffic was picking up. I grabbed the bumper of the first truck that came by slowly enough for me to catch it. I swung onto the bumper, crouched down behind a stack of hay bales and held on as the truck sped down the road.

Busybody motorists honked and told the driver I was riding on his truck. He stopped, got out and yelled at me to get off. I yelled back, jumped down, ran through the traffic to the other side of the street and grabbed hold of a passing bus. When that stopped, I hopped on the back of a tuk-tuk, then another truck.

I kept moving. I didn’t even look at where I was going.

I rode around for hours.

I rode until I was calm enough to realize how hungry I was.

When that happened, I was on the back of a truck loaded with sugar cane. The truck stopped and I hopped off.

Across the street was the New Bengal Shopping Mall. It was big and fancy with bright signs on the high walls and pots of flowers leading up to the entrance. If I could get in, I would be able to get something to eat. The garbage cans there were always full.

But to get in, I would have to get past the gate, and the gate was guarded.

I decided to test it. Not all guards loved their job, or were good at it. Some just sat and smoked. Some slept.

I moved in closer, wandering instead of walking so I wouldn’t draw the attention of the guards. I wandered by like I was invisible.

I sat down on the wide steps a short distance from the gate to see what kind of guards they were.

A small group of women wearing high-heeled shoes, nice saris and lots of jewelry approached the opening in the fence. They were talking and laughing.

The guards stopped them.

“Show us your bags.”

The women were all carrying large purses.

“We need to examine your bags.”

The women began to argue. “You’re not looking in our purses. Why would we let you do that?”

“I am sorry, madam. We must look inside.”

“Look inside for what? Do you think we are terrorists? Do you think we are carrying bombs?”

The women kept arguing and the guards kept insisting.

Finally, with a lot of foot-stomping and threatening to get the guards fired, the women allowed their purses to be searched. They huddled around the guards while their bags were opened.

I jumped into action.

I climbed the steps and slid in through the gate behind the backs of the women. No one noticed me.

The mall went on and on. It was very different from the markets, where everything was crowded together. The markets were alive. Merchants sold chickens that squawked and vegetables picked from the fields outside Kolkata and brought in on the early trains. Markets smelled like flowers and dung cakes, pakoras frying and cilantro being chopped. They were noisy and hot, and when it rained, they were a real mess.

The mall had wide corridors that got swept a lot. There was no garbage on the floor. The air was cool and clean. There were no live animals, just displays of jewelry, clothes and dishes behind glass. There were no smells other than the perfume worn by all the shopping ladies.

The meals were all served in one area. The garbage bins were out back, but I was hoping for food that hadn’t made it into the garbage yet.

I climbed some stairs and came out into a large room filled with light and tables and music. This room was surrounded by little cooking places. People went up to a stall and got pizza or sandwiches or Chinese food or vegetarian food. I heard ice chink into big plastic cups and I heard Coke and fizzy orange drinks land on top of the ice.

I sat at the back behind a plastic plant and kept my eyes open. There were guards here, too, and workers who would swoop down on the tables and take away the leftovers the second the customers got up to leave.

A family sat nearby having lunch.

“Finish your pizza,” the father said.

“I don’t want it,” the little boy whined. “I want a hotdog.”

“You said you wanted pizza.”

“Hotdog.”

“I don’t like the look of the hotdogs,” the mother said. “You like pizza. Eat your pizza.”

“No.”

“And drink your Coke. We don’t waste.”

They kept arguing. When they weren’t telling their child to eat, the parents argued about other things.

“We go to your brother’s house every week. Is it too much to ask that we skip one week?”

“All I do for you. Why can’t you do this for me?”

It hurt my head. I wanted to move, but I wanted their food more.

I tried my special magic to make things happen.

Leave the table, I told them silently. Leave the table and leave the food.

It wasn’t working. On and on they sat.

I tried to remember the last time I had eaten, not counting the unripe melon I threw up.

It was the day before yesterday, I decided. I had begged some rupees from the tourists on Sudder Street.

“You should be in school,” they had said. Then they argued about whether or not they should give me money.

“It only encourages them,” one tourist said. “We should give it to a charity.”

“We should go shopping,” another said. “When the economy is strong, everybody wins.”

They talked and I stood in front of them with my hand open, wanting to snatch the five-rupee note out of the tourist’s hand so I wouldn’t have to listen to them anymore. But tourists don’t like it when you take money from them. I watched another child do that once. They held onto him and called the police on their cellphone. He always begged in front of the Indian museum, but I never saw him again after that.

Leave the table, I tried again. Leave the food.

“I want ice cream!”

“Why can’t you make him behave? Every time we go out, he acts up. Finish your Coke.”

“Maybe if you were home more instead of always off with those friends of yours.”

“Let’s just go. You don’t want your pizza? Leave it.”

“Ice cream!”

“You’re not getting ice cream. I’m not buying you another thing.”

The child screeched and wailed, but the family got up. Customers’ eyes followed the wailing as they left the eating area.

I moved fast.

With one hand I folded the pizza and stuck it in my pocket with the nail polish. With my other hand I stuffed my mouth with curried potatoes, dal, tomato chutney and the little bit of cucumber salad the mother had left. I grabbed the pieces of paratha and downed the rest of the cold Coke in one gulp. Then I ran before the guards could grab me.

The Coke bubbles rose up in my stomach. Out came a huge burp. I thought it was funny. I didn’t care if the other diners did not.

I ate the paratha as I walked through the mall. Food in my stomach made all the difference. I could look and enjoy and pass the time in clean, cool air.

“Only four more shopping days to Christmas,” a young man called out. He stood outside a shoe store trying to encourage people to come in and buy.

I kept wandering and trying to distract myself from eating the pizza in my pocket. I was still hungry, but I would be more hungry later.

I stopped in front of a bookstore. There was a poster in the window of a human body cut in two. One half showed the bones. The other half showed the organs. It was like the picture Dr. Indra showed me in the hospital.

I put my finger against the glass, over the picture of the human heart. I put my other hand over my own heart.

I could feel it beating. I remembered what it sounded like through the stethoscope.

Out of the heart came red lines that traveled all over the body, including to the spot on my arm where Dr. Indra had taken out my beautiful blood.

So, blood came out of the heart. Was it made there? Where did it go?

I stared hard at the poster, trying to figure it out.

“Get away from there!”

The bookstore security guard tried to shoo me away.

“Get away!” he said. “This has nothing to do with you!”

“I look like that inside,” I told him. “So do you.”

“Do you have money? You have no money. This is not for you.”

“I have plenty of money,” I said, patting my pocket where the folded-up pizza was. “And I’d like to buy …” I reached into my memory for the right words. “I’d like to buy a biology book.”

I walked past the guard into the store.

I didn’t get far.

“Get out,” the manager said. “Take your filthy hands off the books and get out. There is nothing here for you.” To the guard he said, “If you let this happen again, you’re fired.”

The guard tried to grab me, but I left on my own.

I was mad. How did they know I didn’t have any money? Could they see into my pocket? Maybe I had as much money as those fancy ladies who didn’t want their purses searched.

And then I saw my reflection in one of the windows.

I had been looking at the inside of the windows, so I hadn’t noticed it before.

Now I saw it.

I was filthy. I had stayed away from the river because I was afraid I might run into Dr. Indra there. My kurta was torn and covered in grime. My hair was knotted and matted. I scratched my head a lot because ants crawled around in it at night and that made it all bunch up. Wind and living did the rest.

They were right, I thought. Books were not for me. I probably didn’t even look like everybody else inside. Under my skin, there was probably just more dirt.

I left the mall.

I walked out past the guards at the gate, who yelled, “How did you get in here? Get out!” I tried to sit on the steps, but they chased me away.

I sat on the curb across the street. They couldn’t stop me from doing that.

But it didn’t make me feel any better.