It happened long after Uncle had been killed, though I don’t know how long. Time held no meaning for me—it was marked only by my visits to Mr. Barbary for inspection. Uncle kept no calendars, and neither did Sister. I did not even know my age. We moved along the outskirts of villages like ghosts, until we were driven even from the fringes. Then we moved to the next.
“Why must we keep moving?” I asked her as we walked. “Why won’t they let us stay?”
It was envy, Sister said. The people we lived among were not gifted like us. They were as ordinary as blades of grass, but we were like flowers, beautiful and rare. They suspected our differences and hated us for it. So we had to pretend to be what we were not, so we would not be harmed for what we were.
But they harmed us anyway. No matter how hard we tried to remain unseen, someone would always recognize or suspect us. On our third day in the most recent village, they took Sister as night fell, the way they’d taken Uncle. The way they tried to take me.
Arms pinched my flesh and I was grabbed from my mat. Sister was screaming, begging them not to hurt me, swearing to our innocence, our harmlessness, but before I was even properly awake, her words were cut short. A man had smashed a rock into her head. Just once, but it had been enough.
I went slack in the arms of my captor as the same man raised the rock again to hit me with it. I wanted him to die.
His body shuddered, and something ripped inside him, sending a torrent of blood from his nose. He dropped his rock and moaned, backing away from me.
The others backed away as well. I did not speak to them. I did not scream at them. I looked at Sister, her mouth slack, her body limp, her hair glistening with blood, and I wanted.
I wanted them to feel as she felt. I wanted them to never see another sunrise, since she would not either.
I sat beside her, cradling her crushed skull in my lap. The others formed a wide circle around us. Then someone threw a stone.
It missed me. And struck someone else.
Shouts erupted, and the air filled with fear. The village emptied that night as the men—the murderers—fled, taking their women and children with them.
I saw tools but ignored them. I began to scoop dirt with my hands, and buried Sister when I finished digging her shallow grave, right where she had fallen. I slept there until the following day. Even the insects did not disturb me. When I woke, I began walking to Calcutta alone. I passed the scattered bodies of the villagers on my way. The skin above their lips was smeared with blood, but the flies did not touch them. They did not dare.
I avoided people. I bathed in my bloody, simple shift. The forest would not give up its gifts for me, so I skirted villages and stole from them to eat. I was ignorant of everything but my loneliness. I missed Sister, and Uncle, too, in my way. But they were gone now, and all I had left of them and my life with them was ash and dust and the doll Sister had made me, and the words Uncle had given me, taught me, so that I could speak with my benefactor in England someday.
Someday had arrived.
I walked to the port, to Mr. Barbary, unaccompanied for the first time in memory. He took in my stained clothes and my matted hair. I looked like a wild thing, but I spoke as cleanly and crisply as he did, and in his own tongue at that. I told him my education was complete. He sent me to an inn nearby, and would fetch me when my passage to England had been arranged, he said.
I bathed in clean water that night, and scrubbed my body with milled, formed soap, a luxury I had learned of but not experienced. I marveled at the foam on my skin, the lather in my hair, and when I was finished, I climbed into bed naked, and let the air dry my body. I felt as though I had shed my skin like a snake, and this new skin would carry me to my new life.
The next day Mr. Barbary appeared at the door to inform me that my benefactor had died the previous week, but not to worry as he had provided for me in the event of his death. His widow had been informed of my existence and had agreed to take me in, as he would have someday. Mr. Barbary had booked my passage on the first available ship. It would leave the following week, and I was to entertain myself until then.
And I did. He left me a purse with my own coins, and I bought new clothes and food I did not have to prepare. My body softened after a week in the city, after stuffing myself whenever I wanted with glistening, steaming sweet and spicy foods.
The night before I was to leave, I laid my new things in my new small trunk with great care. I took out my doll from beneath my pillow, where I hid her during the day. I ran my fingers over her seams, touched the spot of Sister’s blood that marked her wrist, and wondered what shape my new life without Sister would take.
“Why does the white man pay for me?” I had once asked Uncle, after a trip to Calcutta for my inspection. The coins jingled with his steps.
“Because he believes you are valuable. And when you go to him, you will be.”
I took this in. “When will I go?”
“When you become,” Uncle said.
“Become what?”
“Yourself.”
But if I am not myself yet, then who am I? I thought.