The Best Day of My Life (10 page)

I tried to remember the last time I had eaten, not counting the unripe melon I threw up.

It was the day before yesterday, I decided. I had begged some rupees from the tourists on Sudder Street.

‘You should be in school,' they had said. Then they argued about whether or not they should give me money.

‘It only encourages them,' one tourist said. ‘We should give it to a charity.'

‘We should go shopping,' another said. ‘When the economy is strong, everybody wins.'

They talked and I stood in front of them with my hand open, wanting to snatch the five-rupee note out of the tourist's hand so I wouldn't have to listen to them anymore. But tourists don't like it when you take money from them. I watched another child do that once. They held onto him and called the police on their cellphone. He always begged in front of the Indian museum, but I never saw him again after that.

Leave the table, I tried again. Leave the food.

‘I want ice cream!'

‘Why can't you make him behave? Every time we go out, he acts up. Finish your Coke.'

‘Maybe if you were home more instead of always off with those friends of yours.'

‘Let's just go. You don't want your pizza? Leave it.'

‘Ice cream!'

‘You're not getting ice cream. I'm not buying you another thing.'

The child screeched and wailed, but the family got up. Customers' eyes followed the wailing as they left the eating area.

I moved fast.

With one hand I folded the pizza and stuck it in my pocket with the nail polish. With my other hand I stuffed my mouth with curried potatoes, dal, tomato chutney and the little bit of cucumber salad the mother had left. I grabbed the pieces of paratha and downed the rest of the cold Coke in one gulp. Then I ran before the guards could grab me.

The Coke bubbles rose up in my stomach. Out came a huge burp. I thought it was funny. I didn't care if the other diners did not.

I ate the paratha as I walked through the mall. Food in my stomach made all the difference. I could look and enjoy and pass the time in clean, cool air.

‘Only four more shopping days to Christmas,' a young man called out. He stood outside a shoe store trying to encourage people to come in and buy.

I kept wandering and trying to distract myself from eating the pizza in my pocket. I was still hungry, but I would be more hungry later.

I stopped in front of a bookstore. There was a poster in the window of a human body cut in two. One half showed the bones. The other half showed the organs. It was like the picture Dr. Indra showed me in the hospital.

I put my finger against the glass, over the picture of the human heart. I put my other hand over my own heart.

I could feel it beating. I remembered what it sounded like through the stethoscope.

Out of the heart came red lines that traveled all over the body, including to the spot on my arm where Dr. Indra had taken out my beautiful blood.

So, blood came out of the heart. Was it made there? Where did it go?

I stared hard at the poster, trying to figure it out.

‘Get away from there!'

The bookstore security guard tried to shoo me away.

‘Get away!' he said. ‘This has nothing to do with you!'

‘I look like that inside,' I told him. ‘So do you.'

‘Do you have money? You have no money. This is not for you.'

‘I have plenty of money,' I said, patting my pocket where the folded-up pizza was. ‘And I'd like to buy …' I reached into my memory for the right words. ‘I'd like to buy a biology book.'

I walked past the guard into the store.

I didn't get far.

‘Get out,' the manager said. ‘Take your filthy hands off the books and get out. There is nothing here for you.' To the guard he said, ‘If you let this happen again, you're fired.'

The guard tried to grab me, but I left on my own.

I was mad. How did they know I didn't have any money? Could they see into my pocket? Maybe I had as much money as those fancy ladies who didn't want their purses searched.

And then I saw my reflection in one of the windows.

I had been looking at the inside of the windows, so I hadn't noticed it before.

Now I saw it.

I was filthy. I had stayed away from the river because I was afraid I might run into Dr. Indra there. My kurta was torn and covered in grime. My hair was knotted and matted. I scratched my head a lot because ants crawled around in it at night and that made it all bunch up. Wind and living did the rest.

They were right, I thought. Books were not for me. I probably didn't even look like everybody else inside. Under my skin, there was probably just more dirt.

I left the mall.

I walked out past the guards at the gate, who yelled, ‘How did you get in here? Get out!' I tried to sit on the steps, but they chased me away.

I sat on the curb across the street. They couldn't stop me from doing that.

But it didn't make me feel any better.

11

Feet

A
nd then I forced myself to do what I had avoided doing since I'd left the hospital.

A I looked at my feet.

Even caked with dirt, I could see they were a mess.

There were large nasty-looking sores on the sides and the bottoms. There were blisters from the burns that were green and puffy. There were cuts from glass and bruises and scrapes from all the falls I'd had just that morning, hitching rides on the backs of trucks.

And they smelled bad.

Not just ordinary street-dirt bad. Worse. Like walking-by-a-dog-that-had-been-dead-for-three-days bad.

I looked at the feet of the people passing by. I was close to the ground, in a good position to look at feet. I saw feet in high heels, feet in army boots, feet that were bare and feet in canvas runners. I saw the dancing feet of children who were eager to get into the mall and the tired feet of tradespeople pushing their barrows.

What was the worst that could happen? My feet wouldn't fall off. So what if they had sores? So what if they smelled bad? Nobody ever died from having bad-smelling feet.

Or did they? I didn't know.

‘I don't know anything,' I said out loud.

Maybe I should try to make my way back to Jharia. I could pick up coal, live with the woman who was not my aunt and it wouldn't matter that I didn't know how the body made blood or what it took to make someone die. I knew how to find bits of coal on the ground, pick them up and put them in a bag. A lot of people lived their whole lives that way.

‘Get along. Keep moving.'

I thought the guard was snarling at me. I wasn't sure I had the strength to argue with him, even though he was a mall guard and had no power over who sat on the curb. Of course, that wouldn't stop him from hitting me anyway if he wanted to.

‘Spare a rupee for my baby?'

The voice was weak, but there was a lull in the traffic and I heard her.

I looked up.

A thin woman in a torn and dirty sari was slowly climbing the stairs to the gate where the guards stood. Her baby was in a pouch across her shoulder. She cradled it with one arm and held the other arm out, the palm of her hand open to the sun.

‘Please, one rupee.'

She would never get anything. After months on the streets, I could generally tell who was not worth begging from. Guards didn't get to be guards by doing anyone any favors.

‘Get away from here!'

The woman kept climbing.

Mall customers pushed by her. They ignored her open hand and hurried through the security check to get into the stores.

Four more shopping days to Christmas, I thought.

Four days suddenly seemed like a long time.

I realized that I had gotten through these months by not thinking about time. I thought about food, and somewhere to sleep, and being entertained, but I never thought about time.

What was there to think about? Each day would be the same. Some days I would eat more, some days I would eat less. Some nights I would sleep in a cemetery. Some nights I would spend on the pavement. Sometimes I washed in the river. Usually I didn't wash at all.

Just like on the best day of my life when I stood on the edge of the coal pit and looked into my future, I looked into my future now.

I could see it.

My future was the woman with the baby, who was walking with her head down across the road to my curb, her palm still open and hanging down empty at her side.

She got closer to me. She was crying. A thin wail rose up from the pouch across her chest.

‘It's a lousy day,' I said to her.

‘It's just…' She eased herself down onto the curb. Then she said, ‘It's just an ordinary day.'

I reached into my pocket and took out the folded-up piece of pizza. There was some pocket fuzz on the crust. I brushed it off.

‘Here,' I said.

She took the pizza from me and stared at it for a moment, as if she wasn't quite sure what it was. Then she took a small bite of the crust, softened it with her mouth and took it out and gave it to her baby. I saw two tiny hands come out of the pouch to grab hold of the food. The wailing stopped.

The woman looked up at me.

‘Thank you,' she said.

I walked away.

I kept walking. I had a long way to go.

The mall was in the Salt Lake area of Kolkata, far from the middle part of the city. I could have hopped rides to get back downtown. But walking seemed like the right thing to do.

I didn't know what was going to happen to me. I couldn't picture it. I walked through the streets as if it were my last walk.

I walked past the smooth green lawns and marble palaces of the neighborhoods where rich people lived. I walked along the narrow pathways between the small square lakes where fish were hatched and caught. I walked through the bamboo bustees and pavement dwellers, past shops and mosques, movie theaters and yoga parks with their pergolas and quiet gardens. I walked as the sun went down and the headlights shone on the thick dust and exhaust that turned the air to fog.

I grew very tired.

But I kept on walking.

I was afraid that if I stopped, I would think. And if I thought about it, I would talk myself out of it.

It was quite late at night by the time I got to Dr. Indra's hospital. The gates across the driveway were closed and locked shut.

Across the street was a row of large cement construction pipes. I climbed into one.

From pipes on either side of me came the sounds of snoring. Others had the same idea I did. But I didn't sleep.

I kept my eyes on the gates. I waited out the night and tried hard not to think.

At dawn the guards came out to open the gates. I jumped up.

I walked quickly across the road and into the hospital. Up the stairs, and then I was back in the room full of beds and monsters.

Everyone was still asleep. They were just lumps under sheets. Just lumps. They did not look like monsters.

I remembered which bed I had been in. It was the one next to the one next to the window. I walked right over to it and stood at the end.

Someone was sleeping there.

I assumed it was a woman because everyone else in the room was a woman. I couldn't tell for sure because of all the bandages over the face. There were bandages on the arms and across the chest.

I had walked a very long way and sat up all night in order to be back in the hospital, and now I didn't know what to do. It had never occurred to me that there might not be room for me.

I had no other plans.

And so I did the only thing I could think of to do.

I banged on the bedframe.

‘Get up,' I said loudly. ‘You're sleeping in my bed.'

12

A Decision

N
ot everyone was glad to see me.

In fact, for several hours, until Dr. Indra came, nobody was glad.

The women in the ward were not glad. I had woken them up from a sound sleep, ages before the tea was hot and at the hour of the morning when mosquitoes were most hungry. It was hard to get back to sleep with the noise of their buzzing.

The nurses were not glad. They had been awake and working all night. Their shifts were coming to an end and they were busy writing notes and shuffling papers around. None of them had been on duty when I had been in the hospital before. They didn't know me. They didn't know that was my bed.

And the security guards were not happy. I hadn't climbed the fence or broken any windows. I had waited until the gate was unlocked. But I caused a commotion, and they were tired, too.

‘If she can get in, anybody can get in,' I heard.

‘No one is coming in,' someone else said. ‘People run away from us. They don't sneak into places to be with us.'

‘And yet here she is,' the first voice said. ‘I knew she was trouble.'

‘Miss, please come with us to the waiting room.' A guard stood beside me. I waited for him to hit me, but he must have been too tired. ‘The doctors will be in soon.'

I knew I couldn't leave that room. If I did, I might leave the hospital, and I needed to be there. But I was scared. I held onto the metal frame of that bed and I did not move. I kept my eyes on my hands.

‘Dr. Indra wants me to be here,' I said. ‘This is my bed.'

They left me alone.

The guard went away and the nurses worked around me. They changed bandages, carried bedpans, fluffed pillows and gave out pills. Sometimes they said ‘Excuse me,' but they didn't sound angry. And nobody hit me.

I had walked a long way and sat up all night. Once the excitement of my arrival died down, the ward got quiet again. The walk and the night started to catch up with me. My eyes wanted to shut and my body wanted to slide to the floor.

‘You can sit.' A patient with a cane pushed a chair over to the end of the bed. ‘No one will think less of you if you do.'