towards the door. Two days’ salary, gained in twenty seconds.
I called her name.
What, she said. What missy, as though I have not seen you in here a hundred times, just like this.
I tried to block her path. “Put that money back,” I said.
Move, she said.
“I’ll tell my mother,” I said.
Do that, she said, and you see what I will do. She pushed one of the notes into my hand. Here, keep this, she said. Keep quiet. If you tell your mother, Terrible Things will happen to you.
Mary tucked the other note into her saree blouse and walked away, leaving me staring at the five rupees she had put in my hand, more money than I had ever handled at one time.
My mother turned the corner just as Mary left the room. My hand slipped the five-rupee note into my pocket. My mother didn’t see Mary. She walked into the bedroom and noticed the bag lying on the bed, the clasp undone. She stared at the bag, and then stared at me.
It took me five seconds to tell my mother that I had seen Mary stealing.
It took Mary half an hour. Crying, wailing, loosening her hair, beating her chest, telling my mother that she was innocent, but if my mother had any doubts to please search her, and if after that, there were still any doubts, to please take the money from her salary, for though she was innocent, she would gladly cut her entire salary to please my mother. Why, if my mother wished, she could cut Mary’s hands off, and Mary would not mind. She was only there to serve. And all the while, her eyes never leaving me.
Half an hour to convince my mother of her innocence.
My mother was never a conscientious accountant, and couldn’t tell exactly how much was missing. And the next morning, my school shirt was stained brown by the iron, my regulation white underwear was inexplicably torn, and my school shoes were left unpolished.
I wanted to complain to my mother, but her face that morning still carried traces of the upset of the evening before. So I said nothing. I looked hurriedly for a new shirt, changed into colored underwear, and desperately rubbed a piece of chalk over my white Keds to disguise the dirt. I was late to breakfast.
I was late to school.
I believed in Jesus.
It was difficult not to, given what the teachers said. Damnation and all. And I wasn’t the only one, either. By the time I was in middle school, almost everyone I knew abandoned, for eight hours, the ganeshas and allahs and mahaveers and zoroasters that peopled our homes, to clad ourselves in a uniform designed for a much colder, straitlaced climate, and cheerfully (emblazered, en-tied) congregate in the school chapel first thing in the morning to watch a Senior Prefect step behind the lectern to chant ThisMorning’sLesson is from Proverbs, chapter thirty-one, verses ten to thirty-one, and then read out, heathen voice bell-like in the wood-paneled chapel, Who can find a virtuous woman For her price is far above rubies.
And as we learned to cross ourselves, thus, with the tips of our fingers: forehead to clavicle, left to right (no, idiot, not right to left), we were worried not by our rampant infidelness, but rather by the doubt: were we, in spite of all our efforts, really English enough?
We straightened our blazers tightened our ties and took comfort in the notion that so too did all our favorite characters—in the Gospel according to Enid Blyton.
For hers was the Power and the Glory, and all of us knew it. St. Enid, the true Messiah, who wrote of the frozen-in-time nineteen forties English childhood that we aspired to and were perpetually excluded from. We ate her alive. Swallowed her down. And the teachers in class may have droned on about the greatness of Indian culture (This Morning’s Lesson: the history of India, volume two, chapter eight), but we always knew that, given a choice, we would: study in Malory Towers and St. Clare’s, spend our holidays as part of the Famous Five, the Five Find-Outers, and the Secret Seven, and have romantic, outlandish
I called her name.
What, she said. What missy, as though I have not seen you in here a hundred times, just like this.
I tried to block her path. “Put that money back,” I said.
Move, she said.
“I’ll tell my mother,” I said.
Do that, she said, and you see what I will do. She pushed one of the notes into my hand. Here, keep this, she said. Keep quiet. If you tell your mother, Terrible Things will happen to you.
Mary tucked the other note into her saree blouse and walked away, leaving me staring at the five rupees she had put in my hand, more money than I had ever handled at one time.
My mother turned the corner just as Mary left the room. My hand slipped the five-rupee note into my pocket. My mother didn’t see Mary. She walked into the bedroom and noticed the bag lying on the bed, the clasp undone. She stared at the bag, and then stared at me.
It took me five seconds to tell my mother that I had seen Mary stealing.
It took Mary half an hour. Crying, wailing, loosening her hair, beating her chest, telling my mother that she was innocent, but if my mother had any doubts to please search her, and if after that, there were still any doubts, to please take the money from her salary, for though she was innocent, she would gladly cut her entire salary to please my mother. Why, if my mother wished, she could cut Mary’s hands off, and Mary would not mind. She was only there to serve. And all the while, her eyes never leaving me.
Half an hour to convince my mother of her innocence.
My mother was never a conscientious accountant, and couldn’t tell exactly how much was missing. And the next morning, my school shirt was stained brown by the iron, my regulation white underwear was inexplicably torn, and my school shoes were left unpolished.
I wanted to complain to my mother, but her face that morning still carried traces of the upset of the evening before. So I said nothing. I looked hurriedly for a new shirt, changed into colored underwear, and desperately rubbed a piece of chalk over my white Keds to disguise the dirt. I was late to breakfast.
I was late to school.
I believed in Jesus.
It was difficult not to, given what the teachers said. Damnation and all. And I wasn’t the only one, either. By the time I was in middle school, almost everyone I knew abandoned, for eight hours, the ganeshas and allahs and mahaveers and zoroasters that peopled our homes, to clad ourselves in a uniform designed for a much colder, straitlaced climate, and cheerfully (emblazered, en-tied) congregate in the school chapel first thing in the morning to watch a Senior Prefect step behind the lectern to chant ThisMorning’sLesson is from Proverbs, chapter thirty-one, verses ten to thirty-one, and then read out, heathen voice bell-like in the wood-paneled chapel, Who can find a virtuous woman For her price is far above rubies.
And as we learned to cross ourselves, thus, with the tips of our fingers: forehead to clavicle, left to right (no, idiot, not right to left), we were worried not by our rampant infidelness, but rather by the doubt: were we, in spite of all our efforts, really English enough?
We straightened our blazers tightened our ties and took comfort in the notion that so too did all our favorite characters—in the Gospel according to Enid Blyton.
For hers was the Power and the Glory, and all of us knew it. St. Enid, the true Messiah, who wrote of the frozen-in-time nineteen forties English childhood that we aspired to and were perpetually excluded from. We ate her alive. Swallowed her down. And the teachers in class may have droned on about the greatness of Indian culture (This Morning’s Lesson: the history of India, volume two, chapter eight), but we always knew that, given a choice, we would: study in Malory Towers and St. Clare’s, spend our holidays as part of the Famous Five, the Five Find-Outers, and the Secret Seven, and have romantic, outlandish
Similar Books
