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“Don’t bother looking for your friend,” she says. “She’s out on the street.”
Her words are thick and watery, the way they get when she has been drinking the liquor the street boy sells her. I wonder if I have misunderstood. I run to the window and look out on the street. There is the usual assortment of vendors, schoolchildren kicking a ball, a policeman smoking a cigarette. But no Monica.
“Where is she?” I say.
Shilpa shrugs. “Mumtaz has no use for her anymore.”
“Why?” I say. “Monica was a good earner.”
“Don’t you know?” she says. “She has the virus.”
In this city, there are many diseases and many remedies. For the fever-and-chills disease, there are white pills. For the coughing disease, there is a special tea. For the itching and scratching disease, there is a golden ointment. For the burning pain in the groin, there is a shot from the dirty-hands doctor.
But for the virus, there is no remedy.
I have been watching the street boy for some time now.
I still do not buy his tea, but I no longer flee the room when he arrives.
I know that he lets Anita have her tea even if she doesn’t have the money until the next day. I know that he puts extra sugar m the cook’s tea in exchange for a stale heel of bread. And I know he sometimes cheats Mumtaz out of her change if she is not paying attention.
Each day I hear him coming, the sound of his teacups clattering in his caddy as he arrives at the kitchen door. And each day when he comes to our room, I turn my back so I will not be tempted to spend even a single rupee on a luxury I have learned to live without.
Today when he arrives, I am alone. He holds a cup of tea in my direction. The day is chilly and his tea is warm and fragrant, but I pretend I do not notice.
He lifts the cup to his lip and pretends to drink. “Some tea for you today?” he says. His brown eyes are dark as Tali’s.
I shake my head no.
He lowers his head and scuffs one bare foot against the other. He seems about to say something more, but I turn my back, all the while thinking about his tea, about how good it would taste, how the cup would warm my hands, my throat, my whole being. And then he is gone, the cups on his caddy clinking and chattering as he retreats down the hall.
What I remember is this:
It was the middle of the afternoon. Shahanna was upstairs painting her nails, Mumtaz was out getting herself fitted for a new sari, and Anita and I were in the TV room with the other girls when there was thunder at the front door. A man’s voice shouted, “Open up!”
The goonda at the front door, a skinny boy Mumtaz hired just a few days ago, leaped to his feet and ran for the back door. The girls jumped out of their seats and scattered like roaches. I couldn’t move.
Anita was running for the kitchen, but when she saw me frozen in place, she came back, grabbed my wrist, and pulled me along with her. The cook was waiting for us, holding open a panel beneath the sink. Anita crawled in first, then pulled me in behind her.
In the tiny dark space, there was barely enough room for one person, let alone two, and so once the door was shut, we huddled there amid the pipes and rags and buckets, holding our breath.
Soon we heard yelling. Men’s voices came closer. Heavy footsteps coming toward us, down the hall, then into the kitchen. A man shouted at the cook. She cursed at him. Cupboard doors were flung open and slammed shut. There was the sound of rice spilling, a pan clattering to the floor, the cook shrieking and stomping her foot.
The footsteps came close, then closer, and stopped.
Anita’s hand found mine and we held on tight.
Then angry voices came from upstairs. I could hear furniture being overturned, wood splintering, a man yelling, a woman crying.
There was a stampede of footsteps, then running. And then the men were heading away from where we were hiding. Next came a heavy thud, a crash, then quiet.
After that, all we could hear was muttering and the shuffling of feet. Eventually the front door slammed shut.
When it was finally still, the cook came and opened the cup’ board. I climbed out, but Anita refused to budge. When finally she crawled out, I could see that Anita had wet herself.
What I saw next was this: rice and lentils, flour and spices, enough food for a week, strewn about the floor, a pair of rats nibbling on the spoils as the cook fought with them for what remained. In the next room, the TV was dashed to the floor, its magic window now a hundred shards of glass.
I ran upstairs, saw our room in chaos, our beds overturned, Anita’s movie star posters ripped from the wall.
The worst is what I did not see:
Shahanna.
When all the other girls come out of their hiding places, and the ones who ran down the lane come back, we all huddle in the TV room. The cook runs off to the sari shop to find Mumtaz.
“I bet it was the Americans,” whispers Anita.
Shilpa spits. “It was the probably the police. Sometimes, they take a girl when Mumtaz falls behind in her payment.”
I swallow and say nothing.
Mumtaz storms into the TV room, her fat mango face slick with sweat.
“Get to work, you lazy whores,” she says.
When no one moves, she shoves Shilpa and she falls to the floor, nearly landing in a pile of broken glass.
“Clean up this mess,”
Mumtaz cries. “So we can be back in business tonight.”
She doesn’t say anything about Shahanna.
And when I dare to ask, the only answer comes from her leather strap.
The next day at the morning meal, Anita says it was the Americans who took Shahanna away. The peanut vendor said he saw the whole thing. He told the cook and she told Anita.
“They probably stripped her naked and left her in the gutter,” she says.
Shilpa says it was the police. A police officer who is one of her regular customers told her it was because Mumtaz didn’t pay up this month.
“They probably beat her and left her for dead,” she said.
I cannot stand to hear them talk about my poor, good friend, and so I rise and leave the table. The last thing I hear is one of them saying that well never know the truth.
I go up to my room, lie on my bed, and pull the thin blanket over my head, because I know at least one truth: if these terrible things have happened to Shahanna, it is all my fault.
Now that Shahanna is gone, Mumtaz says we must service her customers as well as our own.
I tell her I am ill, but the truth is that all I do is lie in bed and read Harish’s beautiful American storybook over and over again.
And so Mumtaz sends the men up to me. They come, a parade of them, and I simply lie here unmoving.
As I lie in bed this afternoon, I see a rat crawl out of the privy hole. He claws his way up the bedsheet, then scrabbles toward the crust of bread Anita must have left on my pillow.
We look each other in the eye for a moment. Then he runs away, my breakfast between his teeth.
Anita says Mumtaz is going to sell me to another brothel. Her crooked face is wet with tears. She says that if I don’t get up and join the other girls, I will be gone by nightfall.
“Please,” she begs.
All I want to do is lie in my bed and repeat the beautiful American words from Harish’s book, to say them over and over until one blends into the other, a chant that keeps all other thoughts away.
I can feel Anita shaking my shoulders and I can see her mouth moving in frantic pleas. But her voice is far away.
All at once, there is a smack.
I hear it more than I feel it. Then, vaguely, I am aware of a smarting sensation on my cheek. And I understand that Anita has hit me.
I sit up, as if waking from a long sleep, and see this poor girl with the lopsided face. She is all I have left in the world.
I rise, shaky, as Anita helps me to my feet. She puts her arm around my waist and guides me toward the mirror. Then she gets out her makeup brushes and lip colors and paints my face with such tenderness that I think my heart will break.
The next day as I am walking down the hall, I hear a voice coming from the closet. “Psst, Lakshmi,” says someone. “In here.”
I stop, open the door, and see Anita inside the shallow cupboard, her body flattened against the wall.
“Next time there is a raid,”
she says, “I’m going to hide in here.”
“But, Anita,” I say, “anyone can open this door.”
She holds up a metal lock with numbers on its face.
“I stole it,” she says, her crooked face half smiling, “from the grain bin.”
I don’t understand. Until she points to a hasp on the inside of the door.
“We can lock ourselves in,” she says. “Then no one will be able to open this door.”
This one comes to the door looking somewhat lost. He is not as tall as the first one, and his eyes and hair are as dark as a normal man’s, but my heart thuds when he points to me and he follows me up the steps.
I wait for him to shake my hand, but he just looks around the room. I wait for him to ask if I want to go to the clean place, but he fumbles through his pants pockets and mutters something in a language I cannot understand.
I know what to do. I lift the corner of the mat on the floor and feel around for the white card the other American gave me. I hold it out to him.
He looks puzzled. He sits down on the bed. He seizes my braid and pulls me down on top of him as the white card flutters to the floor.
It is then that I see the red veins in his eyes and smell the liquor on his breath.
He is not a good American. He is just another drunk.
It has been more than two weeks since Shahanna left.
A new girl is sleeping in her bed, but I take no notice of her.
All I care about is my book of figures.
I pore over the book that shows all my careful penciled entries:
the money I’ve earned
and the money I’ve paid Mumtaz,
for makeup,
for nail paint,
for the rotten rice that is my daily dinner,
for my bed,
for the visits from the dirty-hands doctor.
Today I will show her my calculations, the figures I’ve checked and rechecked and checked again, the numbers that say I will have paid down my debt—by this time next year.
The street boy is at my door again today. Again he holds out a cup of tea. And again I shake my head no.
I go back to my book of figures and wait for him to leave. But he crosses the room, places the tea on the little table next to my bed and, without saying a word, disappears.
It is against the rules to speak to Mumtaz. It is Shilpa who does the talking for her. But I am standing outside the room where Mumtaz counts her money. Waiting.
I tap on her door frame.
“Shilpa? You miserable girl, get in here,” she says.
I push aside the curtain and enter her darkened room.
She looks up, astonished. I say nothing. I simply hand her my ledger book.
She studies it, glancing up at me, then down at my calculations.
“You are a clever girl,”
she says.
I bite my lip.
“But you are forgetting a few things.”
She gets out her own ledger book, with entries more copious than mine.
“The medicine I gave you,” she says, licking the tip of her pencil.
“Your clothes …
The shoes on your feet …
The electricity bill.”
She waves her hand toward the ceiling, where the fan chugs dully.
“Who do you think pays for the comforts I provide?” she says.
“The fans? The music? The TV you girls love so much?
Do you think all that is free?”
I bite the insides of my mouth.
“And then there’s interest,” she says.
“You don’t think I gave this money to your family for nothing in return, do you?”
I dig my nails into my palms.
“Of course not!” she cries. “I charge half again as much for interest.”
I blink back the tears welling in my eyes.
“You are a clever girl, but not so clever, are you?” she says.
I simply stare at her.
“Let me do the calculations for you,” she says.
She pretends to be adding and subtracting.
“Yes,” she says. “It’s as I thought. You have at least five more years here with me.”
Here at Happiness House,
there are dirty men,
old men,
rough men,
fat men,
drunken men,
sick men.
I will be with them all.
Any man, every man.
I will become Monica.
I will do whatever it takes to get out of here.
I have a regular customer now.
He makes me do a nasty thing, but he gives me 10 rupees extra.
I had a drunken customer yesterday. When he fell asleep afterward, I went through his wallet and helped myself to 20 rupees more.
A deformed man came to the door yesterday. I told him I would be with him, for 50 rupees extra.
It is only midmorning, well before the customers usually arrive, but a wealthy man with fine clothes and a shiny gold watch has come to the door. It is too early for others to be awake, so I go to him and ask if he would like to be with me.
He looks me over.
I tell him I will make him happy.
He is considering this when Shilpa comes in and pushes me aside. Her eyes are wide and unblinking, the way they get when she has been drinking. She greets the man by name and wraps her arms around his thick waist. Then the two of them go to her room.
Later, when they are finished, she comes to my room. “Stay away from him, you understand?”
I understand that this wealthy man is one of her regulars. But I will not agree to what she asks. I will do what I have to do to get out of here. I shrug.
“Stay away from the ones that are mine, you hear me?” she says.