“But—”
Grandmother turned around. “I know you’re very eager, and I assure you—you produce the money, and I’ll produce the girl. But she’s not coming until next week.”
The priest stared down at me, and if I live to be a hundred years, I will never forget his look. If you have ever had the opportunity to visit a zoo, then perhaps you’ve also seen the lions being fed: that fierce, untamable flash of their eyes. Well, this is the look the priest had as we left. No man, either before or since, has ever dared to stare at me in that way, and all the way home I tried to make sense of it.
When the palanquin stopped in the courtyard before our house, Grandmother pushed her cheek next to mine so that when she spoke, I could feel her breath on my ear. “We didn’t go anywhere today. We’ll surprise your father with the good news next week.”
But Father came home that evening looking so worn that keeping my silence made me feel like a traitor. I don’t know how Grandmother convinced the milk nurse and Avani to keep quiet about our trip, but she had her ways. After all, their employment—and really, their lives—were in her hands. Only a very foolish woman would jeopardize her own well-being to tattle about a trip to a temple. For me, it was much harder. I couldn’t stop thinking about the skinny priest in his neem-leaf crown, circling me like a cat. What did he expect from me? And why had those women been giggling when they went by?
These questions kept me awake all that night into the morning.
There are only a few times in an Indian woman’s life when she’s allowed to break purdah, and funerals are one of them. That evening, our family and friends gathered on the banks of the river Sindh. A black scar in the sand marked the place where other funeral pyres had been built, and we watched as the men piled new wood on this spot. I’ve heard some women say that if they break purdah, they feel dread and shame. But even though I was attending my own mother’s funeral and my body was raw with grief, I also felt an overwhelming sense of freedom. I watched the geese make formations in the sky, their bodies silhouetted against the purple dusk, and I wondered: is this what it is like to be a man? I stood at the edge of the river while a soft wind pulled at my braid. Then I closed my eyes, trying to imagine having this kind of freedom every day.
But when the funeral pyre was complete, I felt as cold and insignificant as the grains of sand beneath my feet. I cried as the priest arranged Mother’s body, feet to the south, so her spirit would know to walk in the direction of the dead. As the fire began to burn, I thought: would Grandmother have taken me to the temple if Mother had been alive? Somehow I knew the answer was no.
Father put his arm around my shoulders. I knew he was looking down at me, but I was too distraught to look into his eyes and risk seeing my own misery mirrored there, so I kept my chin to the ground. The rising flames felt hot on my face, drying my tears even as they fell. Father held out his palm, but I had nothing to write. There were too many images passing through my mind: the man in the neem-leaf crown, the women in their saris, the temple with its soft piles of red kunkuma, a powder made from dried turmeric for devotees to smear across their foreheads as a sign of devotion. I tried forcing my thoughts back to Mother and two images came; one of her in the garden picking tulsi—called holy basil by some—for our altar, and one of the little tortoiseshell brushes she used to line her eyes with kohl in the mornings. Then the images of the temple came back to me, and I felt an overwhelming sense of dread.
When Father’s hand remained outstretched, I took it quickly and wrote, “Please don’t send me to work in the temple.”
“What temple?”
“Where Dadi-ji took me yesterday. I don’t want to work for soldiers. Please, Pita-ji. I want to stay with you.”
Father looked across the burning pyre at Grandmother, and when her eyes met mine, I knew she realized what I had done.
It didn’t matter that our neighbors had gathered in our courtyard or that half of Barwa Sagar was outside. There was never a bigger fight in our house. The walls seemed to shake with Father’s bellowing and Grandmother’s shrieking, both sounds incoherent with rage. I hid in my room, and Aunt came to sit with me.
“Did she really take you to the temple, Sita?” she asked.
“Yes. The priest said he’d pay thirteen thousand rupees. Do you know what that means?”