the baby begins to cry.
Jeena is not the only baby here. Several of the women have children. They dote on them, going even deeper into debt with Mumtaz to buy them fresh clothes for school, hair ribbons, and sneakers. The others—the ones without children—treat them like pets, buying them sweets from the street boy when one of their good customers gives them a tip.
I ask Shahanna why this is so.
“We all need to pretend,” she says. “If we did not pretend, how would we live?”
“But why does Mumtaz go along with this?” “Only Mumtaz does not pretend,” she says. “She knows that once the women have children, they cannot leave. They will do whatever she asks, or be thrown out in the street.”
I ask Shahanna why the women don’t get the shots that will keep the babies from coming.
She looks at me like I’m mad. “All the girls want babies,” she says. “It’s our only family here.”
And so the children of Happiness House go off to school in the mornings and come home in the afternoons and do their homework. They play tag in the alleyway, eat sweet cakes, and watch TV But in the evening, it is harder to pretend. As soon as dark falls, the bigger ones go up to the roof. They fly homemade paper kites until they are too tired to stand, daring to come down to sleep only late at night after the men have finally gone. The younger ones, like Jeena, are given special medicine so they can sleep under the bed while their mothers are with customers.
Morning comes early for the children at Happiness House, and they beg for more sleep with dazed and cloudy eyes. It takes a great deal of coaxing to get them dressed in their school clothes to begin another day of pretending.
THE CUSTOMERS
They are old, young, dirty, clean, tall, short, dark, light, bearded, smooth, fat, thin.
They are all the same.
Most of them are from the city. A few are from my home country.
One day, a customer addressed his friend in my language as they left.
“How was yours?” he said. “Was she good?”
“It was great,”
the other one said. “I wish I could do it again.”
“Me, too,” said the first one. “If only I had another thirty rupees.”
Thirty rupees.
That is the price of a bottle of Coca-Cola at Bajai Sita’s store.
That is what he paid for me.
MATHEMATICS
In the village school we were taught to add, subtract, multiply, and divide.
The teacher gave us difficult problems, asking us to figure out how many baskets of rice a family would have to sell to buy a new water buffalo. Or how many lengths of fabric a mother would need to make a vest and pants for her husband and still have enough for a dress for her baby. I would chew on the ends of my braids while my mind whirred, desperate to come up with the answer that would spread a smile on her soft moon face.
Here I do a different set of calculations.
If I bring a half dozen men to my room each night, and each man pays Mumtaz 30 rupees, I am 180 rupees closer each day to going back home. If I work for a hundred days more, I should have nearly enough to pay back the 20,000 rupees I owe to Mumtaz.
Then Shahanna teaches me city subtraction.
Half of what the men pay goes to Mumtaz, she says. Then you must take away 80 rupees for what Mumtaz charges for your daily rice and dal. Another 100 a week for renting you a bed and pillow. And 500 for the shot the dirty-hands doctor gives us once a month so that we won’t become pregnant. She also warns me: Mumtaz will bury you alive if she sees your little book of figures.
I do the calculations.
And realize I am already buried alive.
MONICA
There is one girl here who gets the most customers. She is not the prettiest among us—she has a face like a fox and pointy gray teeth—but she is the boldest. While the rest of us wait for the men to point in our direction, Monica trains her hungry eyes on them the minute they walk in the door.
She does not bat her eyelashes and act the little girl. She preens and struts and
Jeena is not the only baby here. Several of the women have children. They dote on them, going even deeper into debt with Mumtaz to buy them fresh clothes for school, hair ribbons, and sneakers. The others—the ones without children—treat them like pets, buying them sweets from the street boy when one of their good customers gives them a tip.
I ask Shahanna why this is so.
“We all need to pretend,” she says. “If we did not pretend, how would we live?”
“But why does Mumtaz go along with this?” “Only Mumtaz does not pretend,” she says. “She knows that once the women have children, they cannot leave. They will do whatever she asks, or be thrown out in the street.”
I ask Shahanna why the women don’t get the shots that will keep the babies from coming.
She looks at me like I’m mad. “All the girls want babies,” she says. “It’s our only family here.”
And so the children of Happiness House go off to school in the mornings and come home in the afternoons and do their homework. They play tag in the alleyway, eat sweet cakes, and watch TV But in the evening, it is harder to pretend. As soon as dark falls, the bigger ones go up to the roof. They fly homemade paper kites until they are too tired to stand, daring to come down to sleep only late at night after the men have finally gone. The younger ones, like Jeena, are given special medicine so they can sleep under the bed while their mothers are with customers.
Morning comes early for the children at Happiness House, and they beg for more sleep with dazed and cloudy eyes. It takes a great deal of coaxing to get them dressed in their school clothes to begin another day of pretending.
THE CUSTOMERS
They are old, young, dirty, clean, tall, short, dark, light, bearded, smooth, fat, thin.
They are all the same.
Most of them are from the city. A few are from my home country.
One day, a customer addressed his friend in my language as they left.
“How was yours?” he said. “Was she good?”
“It was great,”
the other one said. “I wish I could do it again.”
“Me, too,” said the first one. “If only I had another thirty rupees.”
Thirty rupees.
That is the price of a bottle of Coca-Cola at Bajai Sita’s store.
That is what he paid for me.
MATHEMATICS
In the village school we were taught to add, subtract, multiply, and divide.
The teacher gave us difficult problems, asking us to figure out how many baskets of rice a family would have to sell to buy a new water buffalo. Or how many lengths of fabric a mother would need to make a vest and pants for her husband and still have enough for a dress for her baby. I would chew on the ends of my braids while my mind whirred, desperate to come up with the answer that would spread a smile on her soft moon face.
Here I do a different set of calculations.
If I bring a half dozen men to my room each night, and each man pays Mumtaz 30 rupees, I am 180 rupees closer each day to going back home. If I work for a hundred days more, I should have nearly enough to pay back the 20,000 rupees I owe to Mumtaz.
Then Shahanna teaches me city subtraction.
Half of what the men pay goes to Mumtaz, she says. Then you must take away 80 rupees for what Mumtaz charges for your daily rice and dal. Another 100 a week for renting you a bed and pillow. And 500 for the shot the dirty-hands doctor gives us once a month so that we won’t become pregnant. She also warns me: Mumtaz will bury you alive if she sees your little book of figures.
I do the calculations.
And realize I am already buried alive.
MONICA
There is one girl here who gets the most customers. She is not the prettiest among us—she has a face like a fox and pointy gray teeth—but she is the boldest. While the rest of us wait for the men to point in our direction, Monica trains her hungry eyes on them the minute they walk in the door.
She does not bat her eyelashes and act the little girl. She preens and struts and
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