Page 60 of The Henna Artist

“Or did youofferyourself in return for something—like you did with Hari?”

Red splotches appeared on her cheeks. “What choice did I have? I had to get to you and I couldn’t do it alone. So what if I used him to get to Jaipur? You chose one way to escape and I chose another! I haven’t blamed you, so why blame me?”

“Whatever your boyfriend said to you, it isn’t true. And if you think he’ll claim it—”

“He will!”

“Oh, how could you be so stupid? Listen to me, Radha. This child has no future!”

“He does!”

“I know the world, Radha. You don’t. If you think the father will marry you, you’re dreaming!”

She lowered her head. She was crying now. “He loves me.”

I wiped my hands on my sari and walked to the Primus stove where a pan filled with water lay ready for tomorrow’s tea. Looking around, I spied a stray match on the floor. I picked it up and struck the tip against the stone countertop, then held it to the burner. The blue flame lit up the room.

“Come help me, Radha,” I coaxed, forcing my voice to be gentle, as I had done a thousand times to put my ladies in good humor. I gripped the handle of the pot with both hands so she couldn’t see how badly I was shaking. “Tomorrow, everything can be the way it was. Back to normal.” My jittery voice belied my words.

“You worry what your ladies will think.”

I stiffened.

“Your respectable MemSahibs who don’t know what you do outside their drawing rooms,” she sneered. “How you make babies disappear.” She sounded so different, this Radha, whose words had a dagger’s edge.

I turned to face her.

“What would they say if they knew you had gotten rid of your own babies?”

She must have seen the stricken look on my face. “Hari told me. Then, after Joyce Harris, I figured it out. What you’d done to stop from having your own.”

I was finding it hard to breathe. “This isn’t about me! This—this is about you. You’re thirteen! A girl with a chance to do more, be more—”

“You’re talking about yourself, not me! I’m notyou.”

I pressed a hand against my chest. “No, we’re talking about you—a girl with a child and no husband,” I wheezed.

She thrust her chin. “We’ll get married.”

She was overwrought. Delusional. I gripped the edges of the countertop to keep myself upright. “By this time tomorrow, Radha, you won’t even remember you drank the tea. You’ll be whole again, and clean. Tomorrow, we’ll start over.”

“You’re not listening. You never do! I’ll tell the father, and we’ll marry. We’ll keep the baby.”

“And what if he refuses, Radha? Then what will you do? Think about it. Who will dress your child and give himdalto eat when you go back to school?”

Her eyes grew huge in her face, Maa’s face. Even now, incredibly, she hadn’t thought of this. “I won’t go back to school. I’ll work. Like you.”

I shook my head. “You think it’s that easy? This house took thirteen years of hard work andYes, JiandNo, JiandWhatever you say, Ji. You’ll never have to do that if you go to that school. You have many years in which to have a child, after you’ve finished school. Listen to me, Radha. Please. The Maharani School is a prize—few get in—and you go there for free. You can be something better than a henna artist. Better than me. You can have a meaningful life.” The water was almost boiling. “Just—please help me find the cotton root bark.”

Her voice trembled. “He said I was just another cheap pair of hands to you. Your business only took off after I arrived. You told me yourself you book more appointments now because of my henna. If that’s true, then why can’t you trust me to think for myself?”

She moved to stand in front of me, her face inches from mine. The blood on her lip was glistening. “You didn’t trust me at the holiday party and you don’t trust me now,” she said. “It doesn’t matter how hard I work, how much I do. You’ll never have faith in me!”

More than her words, the tone of her voice, its bitterness, was worse than any insult I’d ever endured from my ladies. What had I ever done for this girl but house her, feed her, clothe her! My heart closed in on itself, curled into a ball.

I pointed a finger at her chest. “You’re going to drink every drop of this before dawn arrives.”

“I won’t. I’ll prove you wrong!”

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