Poornima followed her gaze. There was Indravalli Konda, the temple, sky. “The temple?”
“He goes and begs for handouts. Usually the priests feel sorry for him and give him half a coconut, a laddoo if he’s lucky.” She said it so offhandedly that Poornima was amazed. “It’s enough to keep him.”
They both stood, looking out at the temple. The story—not a myth; it couldn’t be a myth because it actually happened, Poornima had seen it—was that once a year, inexplicably, nectar would run from the mouth of the deity. A sweet, thick nectar flowing freely. No one knew where it came from, why it started, or why it stopped, but Poornima looked around at Savitha’s hut, at the one clove of garlic and the rotting onion and the squash that she knew was the entirety of their provisions, maybe for the week, and thought, It should run all the time. If we are truly God’s children, like the priests say, then why doesn’t it run all the time?
“I won’t give him my earnings. He thinks I’m saving for my own dowry. But I’m not. I’m saving it for my sisters’ dowries.” Savitha looked at Poornima. “I’m not getting married, not until they are.”
“No?”
Savitha looked past her, as if into a cave, and said, “No.”
*
The farmer was no longer interested. He sent word to Poornima’s father. He said he couldn’t wait the remaining eight months, and besides, he said, he had heard his daughter was as dark as a tamarind. Poornima’s father was crestfallen. He prodded Ramayya, who’d brought the news, with question after question. “What else did he say? Any chance he’ll change his mind? A tamarind? Really? She’s hardly as dark as a tamarind. Do you think she is? It’s a curse: daughters, darkness. What if I buy him another goat? A few chickens?”
Ramayya swung his head and said it was hopeless. He took a sip of his tea and said, “We’ll find her another. I already have a lead.”
Poornima’s father’s eyes lit up. “Who?”
It was a young man who lived in Repalle. He had passed his tenth-class exams and was now apprenticed at a sari shop. His parents were both weavers, but with their son working, and in anticipation of a daughter-in-law who would bring in a dowry and hopefully extra income with a charkha, they were slowing down and focusing on getting him married. “There’s a younger daughter, too, so it’s unclear,” Ramayya said. He was referring, of course, to the fact that the young man couldn’t get married until his sister was married and settled. But, according to Ramayya, the younger daughter’s marriage was already fixed. Only the muhurthum—the most auspicious date and time of the wedding—remained to be arranged. Poornima’s father was delighted. “Plenty of time, then,” he said, smiling. “And what about the dowry?”
Ramayya finished his tea. “Within our range. He’s still an apprentice, after all. But one thing at a time.”
The next afternoon, Poornima told Savitha what she’d overheard. She’d come in for lunch. They always ate after Poornima’s father, and he’d asked for a second helping of capsicum curry, leaving Poornima and Savitha with only a small spoonful to share. They ate their rice mainly with pickle. “Where did you say?”
“Repalle.”
Savitha was silent for a moment. “That’s too far.”
“Where is it?”
“It’s past Tenali. It’s by the ocean.”
“The ocean?” Poornima had never seen the ocean, and she imagined it to be just like a field—a field of rice, she thought—with ships in the distance instead of mountains, blue instead of green, and as for waves, she’d discussed them with a classmate once, when she was in the third class. “But what are they? What do they look like?” The other girl—who’d also never seen the ocean—said they were the water burping, and they looked like a cat when it’s stretching. A cat? Stretching? Poornima was skeptical. “Will you visit me?”
“I told you. It’s too far.”
“But, a train.”
Savitha laughed out loud. She held up a bit of capsicum. “You see this? You see this?” she said, indicating her full plate of rice and a fingertip’s worth of last year’s tomato pickle. “This is a feast. How do you think I will ever afford a train ticket?”
That night, Poornima lay on her mat and thought about Savitha. It was vaguely unsettling, but it seemed to her that she couldn’t possibly marry a man who lived too far away for Savitha to visit. So that, essentially, Savitha was more important than the man she would marry. Could that be true? How had this happened? Poornima couldn’t say. She thought about the fierceness that sometimes flooded Savitha’s eyes. She thought about the view of the temple from the window of her hut. She thought about her mixing rice and buttermilk with banana, and how, when she’d finally asked her for a bite, Savitha, with a wide grin, had rolled a bit of dripping rice into a ball between her fingers, and instead of handing it to her, she’d fed her. Raised the bite to Poornima’s mouth, so that she’d touched the very tip of her fingers with her tongue. As if she were a child. As Amma might’ve done. But with Savitha, there was no illness to mar the gesture, no dying; she was alive, more alive than anyone she’d ever known. She made even the smallest of life seem grand, and for Poornima, who had always ached for something more than the memory of a comb in her hair, more than the chiming of a blue clock, or a voice that she tried so often to conjure, watching Savitha, watching her delight, was like cultivating her own. And even in her daily duties—cooking, going to the well for water, washing dishes, scrubbing clothes, sitting for endless hours at the charkha—she found a sudden and glimmering satisfaction. Perhaps even joy. Though what surprised her most was that she could no longer imagine her life without her. Who had she talked to at meals before Savitha? What had she done on Sundays? Who had she cooked for? Her father, who was slow to notice most things, had said the previous evening, “That Savitha seems like a good girl. She’s a hard worker, that’s for sure.” Then he’d turned back to his tobacco and said, “Shouldn’t let a girl like that run around. Should get her married. How old is she? Too old to run around, I’d say. No telling.”
No telling, Poornima repeated to herself. No telling what?
Her father looked at her. “They’ll be here tomorrow. Probably in the afternoon.”
“Who?”
“The boy from Repalle. His family.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Here.” Her father handed her a few rupees. “Send your brother out for snacks in the morning. Pakoras, maybe.” Poornima stared at him. “Don’t just stand there. Take it.”
In the morning, when Poornima told her, Savitha only smiled. “It’ll come to nothing,” she said.
“How do you know?”
“Because these things always do.”
“What things?”
Savitha pointed at the sky. “Things that are not ordained. That are broken before they ever begin.”