Page 13 of The Henna Artist

“These are all yours, Jiji?” Radha, her body wrapped in a towel, fresh from her bath, peered inside thealmirah. She rubbed her fingers together, as if she were longing to touch the fine cottons, the silks. Last night in the rickshawI’d told her about the women I worked for and warned her, “Fourth thing—do not touch anything that is not yours. The ladies will accuse you of stealing faster than you can deny it.”

I chose a rose pink sari bordered in small fuchsia flowers and, with practiced fingers, pleated the folds before tucking them into my petticoat. “Most of my ladies don’t wear cottons, only silks so fine you can pull them through a ring. For special occasions, they wear saris heavy with embroidery. Mostly gold and silver threads.” I looked at my sister. “I did the henna of a bride recently. There was so much gold on her sari that three of the bride’s sisters had to help her up the steps to themandap.”

“How did she manage to walk around the fire?”

I raised one eyebrow. “Very, very slowly.”

Radha’s laugh was surprisingly deep. It fluttered like the sound of playing cards that boys wove into the spokes of their bicycle wheels.

Slapping a pair of brown sandals on the stone floor, I urged her to slip them on. The heel was flat, the straps plain. From her calloused soles, I could tell she was used to walking in bare feet. These would ease her transition into shoes.

As she unwrapped the towel, my eyes went to her bruises again. Their color had faded from the angry red of yesterday. When our eyes met, she crossed her arms across her chest to hide them. “A sheep on the truck—she butted me in the ribs. The marks will be gone by tomorrow.”

So much remained unspoken between us. It had been the same on the roof when I’d bathed her this morning, at dawn—before the female street sweepers made their rounds and before Mrs. Iyengar’s servant girl took yesterday’s saris off the clotheslines. Radha refused to talk about some things while I stayed mum about others. I was torn: part of me wanted to know if Hari had hurt her (as he had hurt me), but another part of me was afraid to find out. Whatever her answer, I was sure it would have been my fault. He would have done it to get back at me.

I pulled a tunic in leaf green cotton over her head and smoothed the fabric over her thin shoulders. Thekameezwas loose through her small chest, and I gathered the extra fabric to see how much needed to be taken in. The white cottonsalwaaralso needed to be hemmed a few inches; the pants were pooling around her feet and the waist was five inches too loose. Finally, I draped a white chiffonchunniloosely around her shoulders. I stepped back to inspect my work.

The green of the tunic intensified the pond-green of her irises and made her hair appear blacker. My zealous scrubbing had made her skin rosy and the coconut oil had given her arms a lovely sheen. With her hair piled high on her head, a jewel or two around her neck and a little more flesh on her bones, she could have been mistaken for one of the daughters of my ladies.

She could tell the effect pleased me and she pressed her lips in a shy smile. “Jiji, do you have something in a brighter color?”

“Gaudy colors will mark you as a village girl,” I said. “The only way to wear bold colors is on silk, like my ladies do. And forget those ticky-tacky mirrors sewn into your clothes like a common washerwoman.”

Her mouth fell open and her lips trembled.

Had I sounded too harsh?

Her gaze fell on themutkishe had carried all the way from our village. From the mouth of the vessel, the hundreds of tiny mirrors on Maa’s wedding sari twinkled at us.

Too late, I realized I had hurt her feelings, just as I had on the roof when I was picking ticks out of her hair.

“Don’t you ever wash?” I had asked.

“For ten days we rode a sugarcane cart, and then we were picked up by a truck carrying sheep to Jaipur.”

Her voice had been small, apologetic, and I’d instantly regretted my tone. If Hari had wanted to spend my money in other ways, what could she have done? Besides, hadn’t ticks also latched on to me back in Ajar when I’d wandered among goats and mangy dogs? I would have to be gentler with her.

Clang-clang.The jostling of metal canisters announced the arrival of the milkman in Mrs. Iyengar’s courtyard. Relieved by the distraction, I hurried into my sandals. “I have to catch thedoodh-walla. We’ll need another liter to makeburfi.”

I opened the door just as Malik was about to knock. His thick hair was uncombed, but his shirt and knickers looked clean. His jaws were working on something.

“Arré, Malik! You’re early.”

He jutted his chin at Radha. “Who’s she?”

“That is Radha, my sister. She has come to stay.”

No further explanation would I give and, with Malik, none was required. “Chewingpaanwill make your teeth black, you know.”

Unfazed, the boy replied, “Today’s market day, Auntie-Boss. No ladies to swoon over me.” He grinned, his teeth stained with tobacco paste.

From my petticoat, I pulled out a shopping list and handed it to him. Malik scanned it. “Anything else?”

I glanced at the row of bottles on my worktable. “Lavender oil.” We’d used the last of it on Radha’s bruises this morning. “And magnolia extract.” Radha’s feet had been far drier than Lala’s. I wondered if Radha had ever worn shoes in her life.

Malik nodded. He was staring at my sister again.

From the floor, I picked up Radha’s dirty traveling clothes. “When you come back from the market, burn these.”

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