The heat—after a slight cooling—had risen again like a wounded beast. Dripping, thrusting, moving across the plains of Andhra Pradesh with a hatred so intense it had killed more than three hundred people the previous week. Anytime after midmorning was far too hot to work; by afternoon, everyone slept from exhaustion, waking with sweat pooled around their bodies. Even so, and even with the heat, just as she’d said she would, Savitha began making the sari that afternoon. After lunch, while everyone else spread out their mats, she strung the loom with the indigo thread, with red thread along the border. “Sit with me,” she said to Poornima. “Bring your mat in here.” Poornima sat against one of the wooden poles until her eyes nearly closed, and then she dragged her mat inside.
They talked; Poornima stayed awake as long as she could, until her eyelids, in the searing heat of midday, closed like lead. Mostly, she listened to Savitha talk. She told Poornima that her father was sick. Sicker than he had been. She said most of the extra money she’d made over the past few weeks had gone toward his medicines. “But we may still have enough by next year,” she said. Her face soft and ochered against the surrounding bright white of the sun, her braid pulled into a knot at the back of her head. Concentrated now, focused on the working of the loom.
Poornima heard it clattering, repetitive, and yet so like a lullaby. The swooshing of the shuttle felt like water washing over her, and Poornima closed her eyes. Savitha was telling her something. Something about one of her sisters, and how she’d scorched a pot of milk. And then she heard her saying that they were building a cinema hall in Indravalli. Maybe we can go to a cinema when you come to visit, she was saying. Floor seats, of course. But imagine, Poori, a cinema!
Poornima felt herself sink, sink like a stone. She knew she was asleep, but she could still hear Savitha’s voice. It seemed to go on and on. Like the murmuring of wind, the fall of rain. And she heard her say, Don’t forget a thing. Not one thing. If you forget, it’s like you’ve joined the stone at the bottom of the sea. The one we’re all tied to. So remember everything. Press it. Press it between the folds of your heart like a flower. And when you want to look, really want to look, Poori, hold it up against the light.
*
That night, Savitha let Poornima sleep. She sat at the loom alone. She adjusted her lantern so that the light fell on the sari, half done nearly. The indigo thread was simply the night, weaving itself into the sky, the stars. Her hands and her feet merely the day, watching it fall.
Her mind wandered. The clacking of the loom led her away. Back to her childhood. Back to what she had pressed into the folds of her own heart. What she now held up against the light.
And it was this: She was three, maybe four. Her father was doing odd jobs at the time, and on some days he would take her along, whenever her mother was busy cleaning or collecting. On this day, he was working for a rich family whose daughter was getting married. Her father’s job was to make the tiny sugar molds shaped like birds. Savitha had no idea what the birds, hardly bigger than her hand, would be used for (decoration, her father told her, but how could they, she wondered, when they looked so tasty), so she sat quietly and watched the pot, and then the molds, hoping some of the sugar would dribble out. Her father had only been given a dozen molds, so the pot was left to simmer while they waited for each batch to harden. Once they set, he carefully lifted out each of the white sugar birds, their wings outstretched, and placed them in the sun to dry. She wondered whether she could lick one, just once, without anyone noticing, but when she looked over, her father was watching her. By now, he’d made nearly a hundred or so. She sat hunched by the birds for some minutes when she heard her father gasp; his eyes grew wide when she turned to him. He pointed. “Look. Look at that one. Its little wing is broken.”
Savitha followed his finger. There! One of the birds, drying in the middle of the grid of birds, did have a wing that had broken off. She jumped up, alarmed. “What will we do, Nanna? Will they make us pay for that bird?”
Her father shook his head solemnly. “No, I don’t think so. But we’d better eat it, just to be sure.”
Savitha thought about that statement, and then she smiled. Laughed. “I’ll get it, Nanna. I’ll get the bird.” She ran to the edge of its row and leaned over, carefully, carefully, but she lost her footing and fell, crushing all but one or two of the birds beneath her. Savitha lay for a moment on the broken birds. Her eyes flooded with tears. She knew she was in for a scolding, maybe even a beating, and what was more: her father would have to make all those birds all over again. She finally got up, gingerly, her arms and legs and frock and even her face studded with splintered pieces of sugar. Her cheeks hot with tears. She was afraid to look at her father, afraid to raise her gaze, but when she did, to her surprise, he was laughing. His eyes were shining. She couldn’t understand it. “But Nanna, you’ll have to make them all over again.” Her father still laughed. Now he pointed at her. “And I thought you were sweet before,” he said.
It took her a moment to understand, and when she did, she flew into his arms; he laughed some more and hugged her close and lifted her off the ground. “Forget those birds,” he said. “You, you, girl of mine, you’re the one with wings.”
Sitting at the loom now, on a hot June night, she considered those two wonders: a girl bejeweled with sugar and the words you’re the one with wings.
A darkness fell over the lantern light.
Savitha turned and saw Poornima’s father. He smiled, and she thought, But he’s never smiled. And then he said, “Come with me.”
8
Poornima was asleep. A sound reached her. Cut through her dreams. She thought the sound might be an animal, a stray dog or a pig. Poornima listened. Then it came again. A cry.
From where? From where?
The weaving hut.
Poornima jumped up. She ran.
The weaving hut, she saw, was dimmed by shadows. A lantern burned. “Savitha?” she whispered.
At first only silence, except heavy, as if it had grown viscous in the heat, the dark. And then a low moan.
“Savitha?” She walked toward the sound. From the corner of the hut. Her eyes adjusted, and she saw a bundle, a shadow deeper than the surrounding shadows. She passed both looms. They looked massive, sinister in the dark, as if they were giants, hunched and full of hunger. But the bundle—she could see now that it was weeping, this bundle, sobbing so quietly, so achingly, that Poornima wondered if it was human, if the creature before her was born with anything besides this weeping.
She stumbled. She bent down.
Then she stilled. For a single moment, fleeting, she thought, Maybe I’m dreaming. Maybe my eyes will open. But when she reached out her hand, she touched bare skin. Hot, heat like sunburned earth. Like desert sand. It was then that she saw Savitha’s clothes, ripped. Some on, some off. Lying around her like torn sails. “Savitha. What is it? What’s happened?”
The sobbing stopped.
Poornima knelt and took her shoulders. She felt the bones, the sharpness of them. The bones of a small animal. The hull of a tiny ship. Savitha shrank away. As she did, Poornima saw the part in her hair. The lantern lighting a river. Her braid undone, her long hair in disarray, but her part untouched. Silver. Waters pulsing through a mountain pass.
It was then that her grip on Savitha’s shoulders loosened. “Who?”
Savitha—whose head was bent over her knees, let out a wail. Low and tender and broken.
“Who?”
Her eyes filled with tears.
Savitha shook so violently that Poornima held her body against her own. She clasped her head to her chest and they rocked like that. Poornima thought she should get help, rouse her father, the neighbors. But when she made a move, the slightest stirring, Savitha gripped her hand. Gripped it so tightly that Poornima looked at her in astonishment.
“Who?”
Their eyes met.
“Poori,” she murmured.
And it was then that she understood. It was then that Poornima knew.
*