The Red Carpet by Lavanya Sankaran

Short, sturdy, as dark as the bark on the shemaram tree, the strength of ten elephants quiescent in her arms.
    Rosamma, dressed in a white saree bordered with blue, long dark hair oiled and twisted into a tight bun at the back of her neck, funereal, rice-christianized, radiating competence and the warm smell of sun-baked skin that cannot afford to bathe more than three times a week, squatted at my mother’s feet and smiled up at me as I carefully gathered my child into my arms.
    I could not bring myself to smile back.
    Too much like her mother, Rosamma was.
    Mary first came to us when I was three. The previous ayah had been dismissed by my mother in a fit of temper. For four days afterwards, my mother muttered and scolded. “That lying good-for-nothing!” she would say, as she dragged a comb painfully through my hair. “That thieving mongrel, taking advantage of my goodness, just like everybody else. Who else will let her get away with so much, tell me? Hurry up, do you think I have time for nothing else?” And her palm would smack me hard across the arm in her impatience to get me ready. On the fifth day, she relaxed. “Such a problem, finding a good servant,” she told my father. “But I think this one will do. She looks clean and polite.”
    I missed my old ayah and stared resentfully at this replacement, refusing to go to her when she sat on the floor and smiled and tried to tempt me into her arms. I hid behind my mother, and heard her say:
    “She doesn’t like you. I thought you said you were good with children.”
    She’ll come to me, Ma, Mary said. She’ll come.
    “We’ll see,” said my mother. “If she doesn’t settle with you quickly, I can’t pay you so much.”
    Mary was engaged at a hundred rupees a month, as much, in those days, as my mother spent on a cotton saree. Far more, as my mother unfailingly pointed out, than she would get anywhere else. I ended up clasped in her arms before the day was through, sucking on the sweet that had tempted me there, and she stayed with us for years, turning quickly into an extension of my body, her smell as familiar to me as my own.
    By the time I was ten, however, I didn’t need her for much. I dressed, bathed, and fed myself. She no longer slept on the floor beside my bed at night, wrapped in an old sheet like a soon-to-be-burned corpse. I wouldn’t be shushed, I didn’t listen when she scolded. Instead, I learnt to scold her back, carelessly, imitating my mother’s voice and querulous intonation.
    Mary, to me, was nothing. I had other, more important things to think about—like school. That was all I talked about at home, school, chattering to my mother, ignoring everything else. In the afternoons, when my mother rested on her bed under the slow-soughing fan that gently stirred the stewy summer heat, Mary squatted on the floor by her side, massaging her feet. I didn’t notice that, every afternoon, Mary’s strong dark hands eased the pain out of my mother’s ankles and, at the same time, massaged her opinions about me deep into my mother’s skin.
    It is a shame, she said, that missy does not like the tasty food you are putting on the table. So much effort you put, one bite in this house is worth ten in others, but when you are not at home, missy complains of it to me.
    And: It is a shame that missy does not learn your good manners. See how she speaks to the cook. I don’t mind, what else do I live for but to serve this family, but the cook is threatening to quit if she shouts at him again.
    Lately, I could not even ask Mary to bring me a glass of water without my mother saying: “Go bring it yourself. You have legs. Use your legs as much as you do your mouth.”
    I would sulk, but briefly, my attention wandering immediately back to the most important place on earth, school, where even parents, when they visited, had to be attentive, mind their manners, and pay attention to what was said.
    School was where we went to get a “convent education,”