Manju stared at the balloons that were her feet. All the water seemed to have pooled at the lower extremity. Beside her, Anil was still snoring. Manju felt relieved. He was a little bearable when he was sleeping, marginally. She pushed both her hands onto the sagging mattress, avoiding the spots where any small movement made the bed screech and betray its age, then lugged her huge body out of bed. The room was a mixture of smells: tobacco, unwashed bodies and underpaid labour. The only time it smelled different was when Anil took to the neighbouring towns to sell his baskets. Then the room smelt of coconut oil, incense and jasmine.
Manju opened the window and stuck her head out. The tomatoes she had planted were ready for picking. She must get to them before the crows. They hung around waiting for the harvest to ripen. They feasted on her efforts, like Anil feasted on her soul.
Twelve Marigold bushes sprawled across the back wall. The flowers lightly bounced in the morning breeze, their faces touching each other, smiling at her like little angels. Manju looked out the window at the Marigolds every morning. It was a ritual. She sprinkled them with tears everyday. Heat hung around all year in Odisha.
Manju tore her eyes away from the merry marigolds and slowly crossed the short distance to the wooden box on the opposite side of the room. The space seemed to stretch for miles these days. Or maybe her body was so heavy that it took the effort of all her being to put one foot in front of the other. She chose a small bindi and stood in-front of the mirror. At thirty-nine, the skin of her neck had started to wrinkle. Her hair had thinned. The nails always chipped closer to base where it hurt the most. She closed the box of bindis. Such a large box to hold three tiny ones. It was much fuller at the time of her marriage. It held all the gold jewels that her father had bought for her marriage by selling his farm. It was when the sound of her bangles and their laughter used to fill the room, when Anil used to whisper sweet nothings in her ear, and run his fingers up her arm. He would touch her little earlobe. It would tickle her. Now the heavy silver hoops in her ears, her only possession, pulled them down so far that a few more days might cut the lobes in two halves.
Fits of coughing poured in from the only other room behind the thin wall. Anil’s father clung to life. They started preparing for his cremation five years ago when the fits came, left Ba’s lungs rattling and the local doctor give them a dismal warning. Now he was bleeding into his eighty-ninth year. Anil liked to say his pocket bled faster than his father’s lungs. But it was really Manju’s box of jewels that had become lighter and emptier over those years.
Manju fixed the red shawl on her head and put coconut oil on her giant belly. That was another ritual. One that made no difference. The marks on her belly were so wide they now merged with each other. She poured some more oil into her palms and rubbed them in circular motion around her overstretched midsection. The dark fuzz from the belly button to her navel seemed fuzzier and darker this time.
‘It’s a boy you carry.’ Anil’s amma had examined the belly with her shrewd, fox-like eyes. ‘Mind you, don’t anger the gods this time.’
Gods didn’t care. She had gone to the temple the first five times and prayed. But the gods didn’t hear the whispers on her pleading lips. The sixth time she only went in the last week. The prayers still went unheard. She stopped going after that.
‘Gods don’t hear me.’ She told amma. Amma would spit on the wall outside her room, streaking it with stains from the stuffed beetle leaves she chewed. She would curse Manju and place extra garlands of flowers on the black Gau Mata that stood tied up and mooing in the corner of the courtyard. Amma would join both hands in prayer, bow and beg the Gau Mata to bless them. Gau Mata would chew on the fresh hay, moving her jaws from side to side, barely able to keep the flies away that encircled her head.
Anil now slept on his back, mouth open, with spit pooling at the corner of his lips. Drool from his mouth left white streaks all the way down to his lower jaw. Manju choked back the acids and stepped outside. She clutched at her lower back. Her body was deteriorating. Her bones had started to protest. Anil said women’s bodies were designed for this. They were used to expanding and bouncing back. Outside, Gau Mata stared helplessly, with the day-old garlands around her neck now withered and stale.
The first birth was hard; the girl got stuck, and had to be dragged out with forceps, tearing Manju. The second one took a little less time. By the time she was thirty, her body had gone through the ordeal of childbirth eight times. And now she had been cursed with a new foetus just months after Anil burying their twelfth girl. Her body had barely recovered. Manju closed the door behind her. By the time she gets back from the temple, the house will be filled with Amma’s curses, Ba’s coughing, and Mata’s mooing. The loudest presence in their small house was her silence.
This time, the day she knew a new life had planted itself once more in her worn-out womb, she got to work. She sweltered in the heat. Dragged bags of soil. Suffered through the pungency of dung cakes. Manju diligently planted marigolds and jasmine, then threaded them into garlands to take to the gods. She went to the temple every week. She prayed and pleaded. The twelve little souls fluttered around her, unseen, waiting in peace to see if their mother’s prayers would be answered, or if another soul would join them soon. The marigolds grew and smiled at her every morning.
That evening she was serving Anil his meal when her water burst and drenched her legs. It was time for Anil to prepare for the birth. He took out the pick and the shovel from the shed behind the Gau Mata, then went around to the back of the house. There was one spot left in the row of the marigold bushes. There he dug fresh earth. He readied the soil, just in case. He was a poor man. He had to make hard decisions, but he made them easily.
The women from the neighbourhood had gathered, holding favours from the temple. They blew spells of good wishes on Manju’s room; their calloused hands clasped together, bodies rocking back and forth to appease the gods, hoping they may lift the curse from this house. Inside the room, the midwife crouched on the floor and held Manju’s legs apart. There was a head. Anil had prepared the death bed outside. He now stood with mud on his creased brow, watching and waiting for the rest of the body to see if it had the right parts. He was sure he would have to make use of the freshly dug spot in the row of the marigold bushes. Just like he had the last twelve times. Anil always allowed the girls a few minutes in the world before placing them in the ground and covering their tiny bodies with rich soil, while they breathed. The bushes Manju planted thrived, nourished by the flesh and the bones of the angels, breathing for them.
But Manju’s prayers were the most powerful; she had begged and begged for her release from this torment. She had prayed until the words shook the earth and shattered the skies to reach the heavens above. Her body convulsed. Blood raced through her veins; her heart unable to cope with its fury. The veins in her forehead and temple turned ink blue. Anil gave a raucous laugh and took the little boy in his arms. He looked at Manju’s now useless body. The insides of her legs were painted with the blood of her labor. Her body shook violently against the injustice of this world one last time before her tortured soul wrangled free from its threadbare shell. It joined the other twelve souls that circled above Anil, his amma, his dying father, and the other empty shells of celebrating villagers. The gods had taken mercy and granted her last wish. Manju’s soul joined the circle of angels, fluttering and welcoming her, bursting with joy at re-joining with their mother. The twelve little souls and Manju joined hands and flew under the starry night to their freedom. Below their wings, with tears of joy streaming down his dust-caked cheeks, Anil held the little crying boy and danced.
