“I came home,” he said. “But by then, both my parents had died. From heartache, some said. But that’s what people want to believe. It’s more romantic that way. If I had to guess, I’d say my father died from rage and my mother from boredom. They were childless at the end of their lives, it’s true, even after having had two sons. I wish I could’ve apologized to them for that. I wish for many things. But they must’ve searched, too, for the forest floor.”
And with that, the former fugitive, who was now a customer, and yet had not once touched Savitha, his face as placid as the surface of a still lake, said, “So how did you lose your hand?”
4
The ticket for Saudi never arrived. Guru called her into his office three months after her operation and said the prince had found somebody more suitable. More suitable? Savitha asked. What’s more suitable?
“Apparently, a missing leg.”
“He told you that?”
“He didn’t tell me anything. His people did.”
Her left hand—the phantom one she’d been feeling over the past few weeks—clenched. It drew phantom blood. “What about the money?”
“Forget about that measly one lakh. I have a better deal.”
Savitha was seated in front of his desk, but she still slumped. She was tired. She was tired of deals. Every moment in a woman’s life was a deal, a deal for her body: first for its blooming and then for its wilting; first for her bleeding and then for her virginity and then for her bearing (counting only the sons) and then for her widowing.
“Farther away, though,” he said, twirling a pen in his hand.
She waited for her exhaustion, her despair, to pass. Then she said, “Farther is better.”
“A temporary visa first. Then they’ll figure out a way for you to stay. Or you can come back, if you want.”
“What do they want me for?” she asked, afraid of the answer.
“To clean houses. Flats. Apparently, they have to pay maids so much over there, it’s cheaper to buy them from here.”
“But how will I—” she began, but Guru, before she could finish, said, “I told them you’d work twice as fast.”
“Where?”
“America. Someplace called Sattle. Good money, too.”
Unlike Saudi, America she knew. Everyone knew America. And it was indeed far away. Far, far away. On the other side of the earth, she’d once heard someone say.
“How much?” she asked.
“Twenty thousand. Ten for you, ten for me.”
“That’s hardly anything! You said yourself I was worth more than that.”
Guru put down the pen. He leaned back in his chair and smiled. “Dollars, my dear. Dollars.”
*
But why would Guru split the money with me? Why would he ever have? That was the first thing that passed through Savitha’s mind, sitting across from him, watching the avarice glow in his eyes. The second was, He won’t, of course. Still, what bothered her was not that he was lying, which didn’t really matter, nor that she had been so slow to see it, but that she, she, had said the word worth.
*
It was a Telugu man who’d bought her, Savitha learned. In this town in America, she was told, he owned hundreds of apartments and a handful of restaurants and even a cinema hall. Maybe I’ll finally get to see a cinema, she thought, not with excitement or bitterness, but with a kind of shame. She’d always have to sit to Poornima’s left, she realized, so that they could hold hands during the scary parts. The man in America had two sons and a daughter. The daughter was married to a doctor, a famous doctor, the kind who made women’s breasts bigger or their noses smaller. Savitha had never heard of such a thing, had never known there were doctors who did such things, but wondered whether the extra nose bits went to the same place her hand had gone, and whether the extra breast bits came from that same place. The two sons helped the father run his many businesses, and Savitha didn’t know whether they were married. The man in America had a wife who was from Vijayawada, which is how they’d come to know of Guru, and she was exceedingly devout. She was involved in good works all over the city, giving money to the poor and the sick, and every year, she donated ten lakh rupees to the Kanaka Durga Temple, along with a new set of gold ornaments for the deity.
Then she learned of a thing called the exchange rate.
Guru, out of this deal, would make over thirteen lakh rupees. That was a sum Savitha couldn’t even imagine, and she smiled with him when he said, “We could buy Indravalli, you and I.” After a moment, she asked him why her, why someone with only one hand, why not one of the other girls, one of the ones with both hands; they would certainly agree to go to America, and they would also clearly make better maids. Guru’s eyes sparkled. “That’s the beauty of it,” he said. “Only you can go.” Apparently, this all had to do with something Guru had mentioned earlier, something called a visa. There were visas to do different types of things, such as one to visit a place, and another to work in a place, and another to study in that place. And then there was one to get treatment.
“What kind of treatment?” Savitha asked.
“The kind you’re going to get,” Guru said. “At least, that’s what they’ll tell him. To whatever official.” Then he nodded at the stub of her left arm, resting on her lap. “They’ll say you need to enter America for a special operation, one only they can perform. One doctor here, a doctor there—their son-in-law, maybe—will vouch for your need for American medical treatment. And once you’re there, well, the rest is easy.”
“But will I get the operation? Will they give me a new hand?”
He looked at her with something like incomprehension, maybe even a trace of contempt. “Of course not, you fool. There is no operation. You’re going to clean houses.”
*
So she was going to clean houses. That was fine. That was better than sleeping with men. But something Guru had said kept echoing inside of her. No, echo would indicate it was his voice she heard. It was not. It was her own, and it repeated, over and over and over again: Only you can go.
Only you can go. What did those words mean? They meant that of all the girls in all of Guru’s houses, only she could go. And why was that? Because she was the only one with a hand missing—the others might be prettier or stronger or sweeter; they might be lighter skinned or bigger breasted or have longer and thicker hair, plumper and rounder hips; but only she could go.
But what did that mean?
Savitha smiled.
It meant that she had leverage. It meant that she had power.
*
“I won’t go,” she said to Guru a week later.
His eyes widened in alarm. He laughed nervously. “What do you mean, you won’t go? Think of all the money.”
“I am.”
He was an animal in the dark, she thought. His eyes scanned the night forest for movement, sound. “You’re afraid I won’t give it to you? How could you? It’s just that I won’t get the money until after you’re there. Upon receipt. It’s like goods, you see.”
It wasn’t like goods, she thought.
“I’ll go on one condition,” she said.
He relaxed into his chair. He lifted his arm in munificence.
“My little sisters. I want you to give my parents enough money for their dowries. I want you to give them enough money for a new house. I want you to give them enough money to last the rest of their lives.”
He roared with laughter. She sat very still. He looked at her face, then at the strength of the one hand resting on her lap, and he stopped. “All right.”
“I want you to do it before I leave. And I don’t want them to know it had anything to do with me.”
He nodded.
“And one other thing,” she said. “I want you to loan me a car.”
“Why?”
“Because once you say it’s done, I want to make sure it is.”
*