Poornima waited, watching the tins.
Another customer—a fat lady with her fat son—came into the store. The boy—even to Poornima’s young gaze—struck her as spoiled. He was older than her but seemed slower, as if he’d been fed all his life on butter and praise. He didn’t even ask for a candy. He simply pointed at the toffee he wanted and yanked on his fat mother’s pallu. The owner obliged him by opening the tin, and then, laughing obsequiously, he said, “Take as many as you want, Mr. Ramana-garu.” The boy grabbed a handful and walked away. The owner was busy helping the mother, and so he, too, walked away. Poornima’s mother was bent over the jars of spices, examining a handful of cloves. Poornima turned back to the tin.
Its lid was still open.
She didn’t eat it until she got home. She’d clutched the toffee in her little fist all along the walk home and then she’d waited until she was alone—while her mother was making dinner and her brothers were playing—and then she’d slowly unwrapped it, the red toffee in the middle of her palm nearly as big as her palm, and sparkling like a gem, a smooth and sugary gem. She licked it, once, twice, until she could no longer stand it. Then she popped it into her mouth. She’d had toffee before, but never a whole one; her mother had always broken them into pieces so she could share them with her brothers. The worst part of it was the shattering, Poornima thought: to take a perfectly luscious round gem and to break it into shards. It was indecent. She resented her mother even more than her brothers. But this, this one was whole. She sucked on it and sucked on it until the sweetness flooded her mouth, tickled her throat. It was down to nothing, barely a sliver, when she heard her mother calling for her. She swallowed it down, and when she went to the back of the hut, where her mother was cooking, she started to cough from the woodsmoke.
“What is that?” her mother said.
Poornima looked at her.
“Come here,” her mother said.
Poornima took a small step toward her mother. She grabbed her daughter’s cheeks and squeezed. Poornima puckered her mouth like a fish. “Open up,” her mother said. “Don’t think I don’t see you.”
Poornima finally opened up, a little, and then when her mother squeezed harder, her entire mouth gaped open, red and shining and slippery like the inside of a pomegranate.
“Did you steal it?” her mother asked.
Poornima said nothing, and then she nodded.
Her mother sighed. She said, “Stealing is wrong. You know that, don’t you, Poornima. You should never, ever do it.” Poornima looked at her mother and nodded again. “You’ve already eaten it, so we’ll have to go tomorrow and give him money. I won’t tell your father, you understand, but it wasn’t yours. Remember that, Poornima: never take what isn’t yours. Can you remember that?”
Poornima remembered, but she no longer agreed. Sitting in the middle of the terrace, on the evening of her wedding night, she looked at the wrapper and she thought about her mother. She thought about the red toffee; she could taste it still on her tongue, feel the sweetness, still, traveling down her throat. But she didn’t agree. Amma, she said to the wrapper, if only I had taken what wasn’t mine. If only I had taken a moment to insist, insist on meeting him before the wedding, I could’ve counted his fingers like they counted mine. If only I’d refused. Refused it all: to let you die, to let the goat die, to let that blue clock stop chiming. If only I’d said, You are flute song. She picked up the wrapper. She said, Don’t you see, Amma, if only I had taken the things I wasn’t meant to take. If only I’d had the courage.
She dropped the wrapper and watched it blow away.
She walked to the door, behind which her new husband was waiting, probably asleep by this time, and picked up the glass of now cold milk. She saw on its surface specks of dust that had blown in, sailing on the wrinkled layer of milk. She looked at them, the specks, and decided to let them convince her: hold fast, they said, stay on the surface, and these waters, these creamy, sumptuous white waters, let them carry you. Where would they take her? She had no idea, but behind that door was a man who was not her father. And to whom she now belonged. That seemed an improvement; that alone was a better place.
*
Inside the room was a bed, a wooden armoire with a long mirror fringed with a design of berries dangling from curling vines, a desk, and a television. A television! No one in Indravalli had a television. Kishore saw her staring at it, and said, “Don’t get excited. It doesn’t work.” Her eyes left the television and returned to the glass of milk in her hand. He took it and placed it on a small round table beside the bed. The thin yellow sheet on the bed was covered with rose petals arranged in the shape of a heart, and Poornima wondered who’d done that: shaped them into a heart. It was a gesture so enchanting, so unexpected, that she wanted to sit on the edge of the bed—gingerly, so as not to disturb the petals—and look at it. Just look at it. But Kishore seemed not at all interested in the heart, because without prelude, he pulled her onto the bed, tugged at the folds of her sari, and burrowed his head, his wet lips, into the dip of her blouse, his fingers stabbing at her breasts like the ends of a potato. In the ensuing confusion, Poornima missed whatever it was that lanced into her. She let out a whimper, too scared to scream, but by now, Kishore was grunting away on top of her. She couldn’t decide—as she watched his face, its grimace, its shudderings—what hurt more: the thing coming in or the thing going out. But then it ended. Just like that. After one final push, Kishore looked down at her and smiled. A true smile. And she thought, Yes, after all, yes, you are the one I belong to now. Then he rolled off her, and in the dark, just as Poornima felt for the first time the velvet of the rose petals against her back, cool and forgiving like rain, he said sleepily, “I like two cups of coffee. One first thing, when I wake up, and one with tiffin. Do you understand?”
She nodded into the dark. And tried her very hardest to understand.
4
At the end of their first month of marriage, on a Sunday, Kishore took Poornima and his sister Aruna, seventeen and younger than Kishore by six years, to Vijayawada. His other sister, Divya, who Poornima saw for the first time at the wedding, was ten years younger than him, and studious. She was quiet, the opposite of Aruna, and didn’t want to come along to Vijayawada because she had exams. So Poornima and Kishore and Aruna set out after breakfast. Poornima wore her best sari, an orange one with a pink border that she’d gotten as a wedding gift. They ate masala dosas at a restaurant near the bus station. Aruna and Kishore didn’t enjoy their dosas—Aruna said the curry was flavorless and that the waiter was insolent; Kishore added that the restaurants near the company where he worked, on Annie Besant Road, were far better—but Poornima had nothing to compare hers to; she’d never been to a restaurant before. Afterward, Kishore took them to the cinema.
This was also a first for Poornima.