The Story Hour by Thrity Umrigar Page A

After floor wash, I begin to wash Menon sahib’s wife’s saris and cholis and bedsheets. My arm feel on fire as I scrub soap on clothes and rub them together. I wish Ma was here doing this jobs, but then I remember how her feets all swollen like a ripe mango, and I feel ashame. I push the hairs out of my eye and scrub harder.
    The rain has stop when I finish washing and the sun is coming out. I takes the wet clothes out to dry. Munna is outside also, running around me, making zoom-zoom noise like aeroplane. He try to help me but he too short to hangs the clothes on the line. Even I having problem to reach the top but I managing.
    After five-ten minute, Munna quiet. The sun is so hot on my face, it make my skin cry. I hear the mynah bird making song in the trees and I answers back. Woo-hoo, I say, and it listen and then talk back to me.
    One minute everything is sweet and peace-like, but then I hear door open and Menon sahib is giving the shout and running toward me. I ascared, thinking I hang his wife’s clothes wrongly, but then I see he cover mouth with one hand and pointing with the other. I turns around. Munna has climb on the stone wall of the well in Menon sahib’s compound. He now leaning into the well, looking to find his face in the water. As I looking, he move in more, his little feets pushing against the stones.
    The mynah bird still making song. The sun still making my face cry. But now there is no sweet in this day. I feel ascare, because in one minute Munna will fall into the well. I kick off my chappals and run. The mud is soft and make shuck-shuck sound from my feet as I move in it. The mud trying to pull me back and so I know running no good. If I to save Munna, I must to fly, fly like the mynah bird in the tree. So I does. I fly. As I get closer to well, I open my hands, like wings of big bird. Just as Munna slipping into well, I close my hands around his legs. He hanging upside down and my knee hit into stone wall and bleeding. But I don’t let him go. I hold him tightum-tight until Menon sahib come behind of me and take Munna out of my hands. For one seconds, I ascare Menon sahib has gone mad because he kissing Munna and slapping him at same time. Then he making some noise and moving forward-back, forward-back, and I see he crying. Munna start to crying also, and then Menon sahib kiss his son, all over his face and head. Menon sahib is always so strict, like the schoolteacher. When my dada go to him last day of every month to collect his money, Menon sahib never ever smiling at Dada, just writing numbers in big red book and counting a few rupee notes to give. Dada always feeling poorly when he leave Menon sahib’s shop and come home. We never becoming rich, Dada say, because Dada can sell what we grow only to Menon sahib and he never pay enough.
    But now Menon sahib is crying more than Munna do, and I feels shy, like I watch something not my business. I begins to walk toward the house, but he put his son down and touch my shoulder to stop. “Lakshmi,” he say. “I am in your debts. If I take five more births on this earth, I still be in your debts.” And then come part that nobody belief, not even Shilpa: Menon sahib fold his hand to me. Dada say I lying when I tell him. Stupid girl, Dada say. Menon sahib is like a raja. He own our whole village. Why he join hands in front of a eight-year-old girl?
    But he do. He say, “Beti, from this day on, you are like my little niece. I will pay your school fees for as long as you go to school.”
    I so happy, I run all way home to tell Ma and Dada good news. I run through sugarcane fields, and while I run, I seeing myself in my future. I am seeing the Lakshmi that is high school pass. Shilpa and I is now living in Mumbai, in big house next door to Sharukh Khan. I have a big car like Menon sahib and a driver. And I is buying a new sari every week.
    But that Lakshmi, high school pass, will never be allow to be born. My