Buddha's Orphans, page 10
“The Maddest Proposal” argued that the girls at St. Augustine’s should be enlisted as slaves to the sisters, “seventy-five girls per sister,” and perform a long list of tasks: sewing, mopping floors, washing smelly robes for the “Grand Madames,” and caring for all their needs, including scrubbing their big behinds with a wet towel every morning and “comforting” them at night, in bed. Mimicking Swift’s prose, Nilu wrote, “A very worthy sister, a true lover of this school, was lately pleased when she sampled the kind of comfort that an enslaved St. Augustine girl could provide, in the privacy of her own bedroom.”
The sisters carried hundreds of copies of “The Maddest Proposal” out behind the school building, where presently all the students gathered. Mother Mann asked Sister Rose to strike the match. Soon the pages burst into flames, and threads of smoke twirled up to the sky.
During the week of her suspension, Nilu expected Mother Mann to call her at home and tell her she’d been expelled. She didn’t know what she’d do if she could no longer attend St. Augustine’s; she supposed she’d start going to that local school a stone’s throw away from Nilu Nikunj, the one tucked in an alley next to the exercise gym. But there were others. Didn’t Raja attend the Jagadamba School? Nilu wondered. If she was expelled from St. Augustine’s, she could attend that school, she thought.
On the evening after she was suspended, after making sure that Sumit had left, Nilu pushed open her mother’s door. “Muwa?” she whispered. Muwa was lying in bed, eyes closed, mouth slightly open, a smoldering cigarette in her right hand. A nearly empty vodka bottle lay by the bed stand. She appeared to be dozing as the cigarette burned, the ash lengthening at the tip. “Muwa? Did you eat?” Nilu asked, sitting on the bed. More and more often, Ramkrishan brought Muwa’s meals to her bedroom, and she and Sumit ate together. On occasion Muwa was too drunk to eat, and the next morning Nilu found the food, barely touched, in the hall outside Muwa’s door.
Muwa opened her eyes. “Right now I’m not hungry, Nilu.” She sat up, leaning against the headboard. She flicked the ash to the floor and took a long drag of her cigarette, gazing at the ceiling. She asked Nilu if she’d eaten, and Nilu said that she was about to go down to the kitchen. But even before she’d finished that sentence, Muwa sighed and mumbled, already distracted.
“Something happened at school today,” Nilu said.
“Hmmmm,” Muwa said, then took her last drag and crushed the cigarette in the ashtray. The nail on her index finger was yellow from nicotine. “Did you fight with anyone?” She motioned with her finger for Nilu to pass her a small bottle of pills from the bedside table.
“Mother Mann wants you to talk to her tomorrow,” Nilu said as she handed her the bottle.
Muwa popped a pill into her mouth. Nilu poured a glass of water from the jug for her.
“Mother Mann?”
“The principal.”
“Oh, yes,” Muwa said, and leaned back against her pillow. “What for?”
“It’s about something I wrote. I’m in trouble at school.”
“What did you write? You’re a good writer. You’ve always been a good writer.”
As Nilu began to explain why the sisters were angry at her, Muwa asked, “Nilu, what do you think of Sumit?”
“Why?”
Muwa looked at her thoughtfully. “Study well, okay?” Then, she said, “Sumit and I . . . Sumit thinks that he and I. . .” Then she closed her eyes.
Nilu waited, but Muwa remained silent. Still, Nilu thought to ask, “Will you go tomorrow to see Mother Mann?”
Muwa nodded, then whispered something Nilu couldn’t fully grasp. It sounded like a reference to her father. She arranged Muwa’s blanket and, turning off the light, went downstairs. Ramkrishan was finishing up in the kitchen. Kaki was seated on the floor in a corner, leaning against the wall.
Nilu poured herself a glass of water from the filter and drank it. Most likely Muwa would forget about her errand by tomorrow, she thought, and, without anyone to speak on her behalf, she’d get kicked out of St. Augustine’s.
“Nilu Nani, is that you?” Kaki asked now from her corner.
Nilu sat on the floor beside her and took the crinkly hand in her own.
Kaki peered at the girl. Kaki’s sunken eyes seemed to swim in water. She asked Nilu, “Why do you look so cheerless? What happened? Muwa . . . ?”
“Just something small at school, Kaki.”
Ramkrishan, who was washing the pots at the sink, turned around. “What happened?”
Kaki reached, with her shaking hand, to pat Nilu’s face. “Did someone say something to you, Nilu Nani?”
“I might have to quit that school.”
“What for?” Kaki asked, her voice rising.
“It’s okay,” Nilu assured her. “Muwa is going to the school tomorrow to talk to the sisters. Let’s hope everything will be all right.”
“Is she going to go? She hasn’t been to your school in how many years?”
“I think she will.”
“Is that Sumit still in her room?” Kaki whispered.
“No, he left a while ago.”
“I don’t know what that man is up to,” Kaki said. “I don’t like the way he sticks to her.”
“You eat her bread, so you don’t have a right to say such things.” Ramkrishan rebuked Kaki as he worked at the sink. “Don’t say whatever comes to your mind.”
Kaki kept her mouth shut for a while, then told Nilu, “Make sure Muwa goes to your school. If she doesn’t, I’ll go for you.”
Nilu squeezed her hand. After Kaki lost Raja, she had turned into an old woman overnight. When she’d first started working at Nilu Nikunj, Nilu remembered, Kaki would get up in the dark before the birds started chirping and work steadily until she went to bed, complaining only once in a while about an ache in her back or a swollen ankle. Now in the morning Ramkrishan had to go to her shack and knock on her door with his shaky fingers. On occasion Nilu heard Ramkrishan scolding her. “Why are you torturing yourself like this? Raja is better off there, where he’s a master. Here he’d have been a servant.” Kaki nodded dumbly, as if she needed to be reminded of the true state of things. Over the past couple of years, Kaki’s eyesight had also gotten worse. Now she recognized people only if they stood very close to her. Her face had amassed wrinkles, and there was no question of her doing any housework—she could barely move from one spot to another without Ramkrishan’s or Nilu’s help.
“This old body should die!” Nilu sometimes heard Kaki curse herself with these words.
Every day that week, Nilu expected Mother Mann to call to ask why Muwa hadn’t come to talk to her, before delivering the news that Nilu had been expelled. On the seventh evening, a Saturday, Nilu sat on the balcony that extended from the guest room next to her room, still expecting the phone to ring and Ramkrishan to announce that it was for her. Her one-week suspension would end today. Did it mean that she could return to school tomorrow? She disliked her deep attachment to St. Augustine’s; it wasn’t the only school in town. But St. Augustine’s had been an integral part of her life for ten years, and it seemed unthinkable to relinquish the many things she loved about it—her friends, especially Prateema; Sister O’Malley and her funny impressions of other sisters; the well-stocked school library where she spent many lunch periods poring over magazines and books.
Nilu didn’t sense Sumit’s presence until he was right behind her. Then she heard the shuffle of his footsteps and his labored breathing. She’d left her door unlocked, and he’d entered without knocking. She closed her eyes, hoping he’d think she was napping and go away. But he remained, waiting even after a long minute passed. She felt something crawl on her back, so she opened her eyes and stretched.
“You shouldn’t doze in the evening like this,” he said. “It’ll disturb your sleep at night.”
She turned around to look at him. He hovered close to her, his hips almost touching her chair.
“I can do what I want in my house,” she said, and stood up.
“Sit, sit,” he said, and pulled another chair close to hers. “You don’t have to run every time you see me.”
“I have homework to do,” she said, and tried to slip around him, but his chair was blocking the doorway.
“Just a few minutes,” he said, not budging. “Don’t treat me like a stranger. After all, I’ve been coming to this house for months now.”
She remained standing, her arms crossed at the chest.
“Nilu,” he said, and she cringed at the slippery way he said her name. It reeked of suggestiveness.
“What do you need to talk to me about?”
“Don’t look so annoyed. Am I not like your uncle?” When she didn’t respond, he said gently, “What if I were to come and live in this house permanently? How would I feel if you were always like this?”
She eyed him. “What do you mean?”
“No, I’m just making conversation. Why can’t you think of me as your uncle? If I were your uncle, wouldn’t you be treating me more nicely?”
She once again tried to leave the balcony, but he didn’t get out of her way; he even stretched out his arm to block the door. “Sit down, please. This will only take a couple of moments.”
Muwa appeared behind him. “What’s going on?” She tottered in the doorway. She too was smiling.
“Oh, nothing,” Sumit said. “I was just telling Nilu that I’m like her uncle. Come, come. Let’s all sit down together.”
“I waited for you to come back from the bathroom,” Muwa said to Sumit. Reaching out to him, she stepped onto the balcony, and he put his arm around her waist. His youthful face contrasted with her aging skin. They could be mother and son, Nilu thought.
Nilu went to the balcony railing. Only a trace of light remained in the sky, and below, Ramkrishan was shutting the gate. Did that mean that Sumit was staying here for the night? He and Muwa were engaged in a whispering argument. The doorway was free, so Nilu took the opportunity to slip past them and went to her room. She heard Muwa call after her, asking her to stay, but she softly shut her door behind her.
She bolted her door and stayed inside. A few minutes later Ramkrishan knocked to call her for dinner, and she told him she wasn’t hungry. Muwa knocked too, and she told Muwa she had a headache. Sumit called, and she simply didn’t respond. She lay in bed, looking at the ceiling; then, in a while, with some anxiety she began to arrange her books for school, for the next day. She visualized Mother Mann shaking her head, explaining to Nilu that she could not return. But then Nilu imagined herself fighting the expulsion, arguing, knocking on the door of the rector, Sister Moore, whom she didn’t know but whose calm countenance and fine posture she had always admired. Maybe Sister Moore ought to know what Sister Rose had done. But whenever Nilu considered telling any of the sisters about what had happened in Sister Rose’s room, she foresaw their disbelief: their eyes narrowed with suspicion, their faces stiffened in denial.
Nilu learned the next day that during her one-week suspension, Sister O’Malley had barged into the principal’s office and demanded to know why a student—moreover, one who had distinguished herself as the school magazine editor—was being punished for what, by any standard, was “a top-rate essay,” one that even Jonathan Swift would have been proud to call his own. Apparently an altercation had ensued, and the two sisters, red-faced, had continued their shouting match into the hallway.
The girls reported this to Nilu first thing in the morning, as they were lining up for morning assembly. All morning Nilu expected Mother Mann to summon her to her office, but hour by hour, nothing happened. During the morning recess, then during the lunch break, girls kept approaching Nilu, in the hallway, in the yard, asking her questions, about the essay, about what she meant by a particular line in it, whether it was true that she had composed the piece under Sister O’Malley’s guidance, and whether she was going to submit it to The Rising Nepal.
Over the next few days, Nilu found herself in a remarkable new situation. The girls’ admiration for her was overflowing. Even junior girls from the lower grades, who still couldn’t control a runny nose and needed a handkerchief fastened to the front of their blouse, followed her around shyly, wanting to be seen with her. Other girls brought autograph books for her to sign and peered over her shoulder as she wrote their names, drew hearts, and penned words of encouragement and praise. When Mother Mann discovered Nilu’s newfound stardom, she gave a lecture during Thursday morning’s assembly, exhorting students to find correct role models and shun improper influences, especially during the impressionable years of youth.
All that day Nilu remained quiet, prompting a scolding from Prateema, who had thus far basked in her friend’s popularity. When the bell rang for afternoon recess, Nilu silently put her books in her bag and told her friends that she was going home because she wasn’t feeling well. “Make sure you get permission from Mother Mann,” Prateema advised her, and Nilu said she would, but when she reached the principal’s office, she kept walking. The guard at the main gate normally asked to see a permission slip from girls who left early, but he was dozing inside his guardhouse, and Nilu simply slipped past him.
At the Patan bus stop, she boarded a bus headed toward town, planning to go home and lie in bed for the rest of the day. The bus dropped her off at Ratna Park, and she walked past Rani Pokhari, where, right across the street from the entrance to Durbar High School, a small crowd clustered at the black bars surrounding the pond, watching people in a boat as they poked long bamboo sticks into the water. The talk was that someone had dived into the pond. A young man claimed it was a woman. “I spotted her climbing the bars from there.” He pointed a bit to the side, toward the Ganesh shrine. “She had a baby with her, and she left the baby at the steps of the shrine.”
Another man swore that he saw the baby too but didn’t know what had happened to it. “Maybe the police took it away.” Another man said that he saw a baby on the lap of the white-bearded priest who sat in the Ganesh shrine and dabbed red tikas on the foreheads of devotees.
As Nilu headed home, she remembered Raja, how he too had been abandoned across the street in Tundikhel, near the famous khari tree, Kaki had said—although that tree had been felled within a few short years of Bokey Ba’s discovering the boy. In front of the alley leading to Nilu Nikunj, Nilu lingered. Muwa most likely was in bed, drugged or drunk, or both. Sumit could be sitting next to her, or perhaps even lying alongside her, his palm casually placed on her stomach. If Nilu went home now and Sumit heard her footsteps, he’d rush to meet her at the door.
Instead of turning down her alley, Nilu moved on toward Keshar Mahal. She kept walking, even past the palace—the bats in the tall trees above her made an uproar—until she reached Lainchour. It wasn’t often she came to this part of the city, but it was hard to miss the school, which sat right at the end of the large field. Judging from the noisy chants coming from inside and her occasional glimpse of students in blue uniforms on the balcony, the school was still in session. Was Raja inside? Did Ganga Da and his crazy wife still live in the same house, which Nilu knew to be in the vicinity?
She entered a lane by the side of the school and stopped at the Mahan Restaurant, where a man was frying fritters in an enormous vat. She mentioned Ganga Da’s name and asked him if he knew where his home was. “Just a few houses down,” the restaurant owner said, and, pointing down the alley, described the house for her. Within a minute she was at Ganga Da’s gate but didn’t have the nerve to go in. Peeking through the narrow gap between the gate and the walls surrounding the house, she saw a woman sitting on a mat in the yard, squinting at the sky. Her lips were moving, and although Nilu hadn’t seen Ganga Da’s wife before, she deduced this to be her. Abruptly the woman looked toward the gate, startling Nilu, who flattened herself against the wall. Blushing because passersby looked at her curiously, she walked away. The Jagadamba School bell rang shrilly above the roofs of the neighboring houses, and the air erupted with cries of children. Nilu hesitated, then stopped. Now that she was so close, she had to see him. A few yards away from Ganga Da’s house was a store. She entered it, bought a lollipop there, and, sucking on it, sat on the store steps. Soon the students from the Jagadamba School, in their dark blue pants and light blue shirts, began to drift by her in clusters, the very young ones first, then the older ones. She kept a watchful eye on the boys of her own age as they walked by, jostling, joking, on their way home. She made sure not to stare, as that would invite attention; she pretended to gaze at a poster on the side of the shop and darted glances at the boys to see who would break from his group and lift the latch on Ganga Da’s gate. But all the boys kept passing the house, moving down the alley, deeper into Samakhusi.
Nilu’s lollipop was nearly finished, and the student traffic had stopped. She was about to head home when she noted the lone figure of a uniformed boy, one who was long-haired, tall, and gangly. He sauntered down the alley. His hands were thrust in the pockets of his bell-bottom pants, and he was looking down, whistling as he walked, kicking pebbles. When he was a few yards away, he looked directly at Nilu. Color drained from her face, and she quickly looked away and sucked on the last bit of her lollipop. Something about his eyes, dark and probing, told her he was Raja. Or was she making it up? At once she became exasperated with herself for this foolish venture. Raja most likely didn’t remember her, and here she was, far from home, waiting for him, stalking him even.
The boy stopped in front of her, and she searched his face. He had barely visible sideburns, and small hairs grew on his chin. His nose was long and thin. He was looking at her expectantly, and hope grew within her. Then she realized that he simply wanted to get to the shop counter; since the rest of the steps were stacked with boxes, she needed to let him pass. She scuttled against the wall, flattening her body. He climbed the two steps and sat on a small stool next to the shopkeeper, who asked him how school went. The boy said it was dull, that his classes were so mind-numbingly boring that he simply wondered what he was doing there.
