The young goat to be slaughtered was tethered to a pole outside the hut. It was brown and white; the white in bands, one around its midsection, around each hoof, and another patch dropping down its head and between its eyes. Poornima tried to feed it some dry, dead grass she’d plucked outside the hut. The goat sniffed it and then looked at her. Its eyes were dark globes, and its gaze curious—to see if she had any other food—but when it saw that she didn’t, it looked away. Poornima knew she shouldn’t look at it for too long, that looking would only increase her sympathy for the doomed goat, but its smell was what kept her there: urine and wilderness and hay.
She thought of its smell when she watched it being slaughtered. The knife—clearly not sharp enough—had to be run back and forth across its neck as if it were a loaf of tough bread. In order to hold it down, they forced the goat onto its side, and one man sat on the hind part of its body, while two others each held a pair of legs. Another man held a bucket under its neck. But there was no need to have done all that. The goat, struggling at first, and then seeing the knife, or perhaps sensing the knife, let its body go limp. Losing hope, Poornima thought, or maybe losing nerve. The first slice of the knife left it bucking in pain, one quick surge that ran the length of its body and then came to rest. The knife drove deeper, but the goat still blinked, looking now into a grayness, Poornima guessed, a falling darkness, the globes now losing their light. Its tail wagged one last time, the muscles no longer beholden to their master, and the man who was sawing its neck put his thumb into the mouth of the young goat. Poornima wondered whether he meant to do it, to give the goat one last comfort, one last suckling, or whether it was simply accidental. The goat was dead a moment after. First its body, then its blinking. But something of it seemed to Poornima to go on for a moment longer, an energy, a feeling of life; and then that, too, went away.
The smell—the urine and wilderness and hay scent of the goat—was drowned out by the scent of copper and other metals Poornima couldn’t exactly name: the smell of her hands after she’d lifted the bucket at the well, the smell of the freshly scrubbed pots, the smell of river water and silt. It was also hot, the scent, and flies gathered around the goat in great armies. They drank and drank, as armies do, and then they settled on the flesh.
*
That night, Poornima lay awake for a long while. She thought she would be kept awake by images of the goat, the globes of its eyes, but she wasn’t. She was instead thinking of her mother. They had, when she was nine or ten, set out to visit Poornima’s maternal grandparents’ village. Kaza was a two-hour bus ride away, and she and her mother had started early, hoping to be back by nightfall. Her mother had woken her while it was still dark and washed Poornima’s hair, then scrubbed her with a cleansing powder that left her skin red and tender. Then she’d had Poornima put on her best langa, red bangles, and silver anklets, which had been part of her mother’s dowry; on the way to the bus stop, her mother had splurged on two pink roses, one for each of their braids. The bus ride had started a little after seven A.M. It was packed with people. They sat in the front, in the women’s section, with the back reserved for men. Poornima stepped over chickens, over bundles of produce and kindling that cluttered the aisle; babies wailed and fussed. She sat next to her mother and looked out the window. She’d rarely been on a bus, and the speed with which the fields spun past her window delighted her. She looked out and tried to count all the dogs and the pigs and the goats they passed. But there were so many she lost count, and started over with huts, and when even those became too many, she laughed and thought, Mountains, I’ll count mountains.
But then, with a loud clank and a screech, the bus came to a halt. Everyone looked at everyone else. A few of the men in the back yelled out. The bus driver, seated calmly, upright, with a neat mustache and a freshly pressed khaki uniform, turned the engine. It ground but didn’t catch. The voices in the back rose. “Aré, aré, maybe the RTC will send a car.” “Sure they will,” someone yelled back, “its name is Gowri and she runs on grass.” The driver told them to shut up.
The bus driver got out—along with most of the men—and looked under the hood. Poornima heard the sound of a wrench or a metal pick clanging against the engine, maybe, and then it went still. The bus dropped. Actually sagged, as if it were suddenly too exhausted to go on. The women, too, exited the bus. The babies quiet now, alert.
The day was cool, late in October, and the morning chill still hung in the air.
Poornima got down with her mother. She’d brought a shawl with her and this she wrapped around Poornima. Most of the mothers had already settled on the side of the road, their children running or playing in the dirt. The men huddled around the open hood.
Poornima looked up and down the road. There was a bullock cart in the far distance, almost a haze, coming toward them. Women in colorful saris tucked between their legs dotted the fields, bent over the flooded rice paddies. There was a small temple, white against the emerald stalks of rice. She thought of that temple, and of the black carved deity inside, and the simple offering of a flower—maybe a pink rose, the kind that was in her hair—left at its feet. She settled, then, beside her mother. The men were now smoking their beedies, spitting, laughing, and the women minded the children. Another bus was due to go past in an hour or two, and they would all pile into that one, space allowing. Some would probably have to climb on top of the bus, or hang by the bar on the door. But for now, everyone seemed perfectly content to sit there by the side of the road. The sun like a small yellow bird, fluttering awake.
Poornima turned to her mother. She had never been alone with her; her father or brothers or sister had always been nearby, or just outside the hut. She was sent on errands for her mother, but never with her mother, and when they’d traveled to her grandparents’ house in the past, one or more of her siblings had always been with them. In a kind of revelation—in the morning light, sitting on the red dirt by the side of the road—she saw that her mother was beautiful. Even with all the other young mothers crowded around, and the blossoming adolescent girls, youthful and lovely, giggling among themselves, her mother was still the most beautiful. Her eyes were deep black pools, with tiny silver fish gleaming in them when she laughed. Her hair curled at the nape of her neck in ringlets, and her lips were the pink of the rose. Even the dark circles under her eyes had a certain prettiness, as if they were gray crescents, moonlit, pulling in the light.
“Are you hungry?” her mother asked, opening the bundle of last night’s rice and spiced yogurt and the dollop of mango pickle she’d brought from home.
“Yes,” Poornima said.
And her mother, unthinkingly, her gaze not even on Poornima, but on the distant horizon, watching for the second bus, perhaps, or maybe the approaching bullock cart, took handfuls of rice, rolled them into balls in her palm, and—as she had when Poornima had been a small child—fed them to her. Poornima chewed. The rice, having been cradled in her mother’s hand, tasted better than anything she’d ever eaten; she couldn’t imagine a greater food. Her mother, though, still paid her no attention. Her thoughts were elsewhere. On her husband, maybe, or the children she’d left behind, or the chores she’d left undone. But for now, for these few moments, Poornima thought her mother’s body was enough. It was more than she could ever ask for. To be fed by her hand, to sit next to her, so close she could feel the warmth of her skin in the chill of an October morning, and to know that life, its crowds, would soon separate them. But not now. For now, just until the next bus, her body belonged to Poornima. And when her mother finally noticed the tears brimming in her daughter’s eyes, she stopped, looked at her quizzically, and then she smiled. “The bus will be here. Any minute now. There’s no need to cry, is there? We won’t be out here for much longer.”
Poornima nodded, the rice having caught in her throat.
7
Savitha shook her awake early the next morning, while it was still dark. “Will you make tea?”