They freeze.
“Am I sweating to earn your keep so that you can torture…?” He jabs his hand at them, and then lapses back into his ruminations.
Supper is a silent matter. Laddu makes one attempt to tell the story of something funny he saw on their journey, but Goli breathes harder, the huff and puff of a coming storm. Janaki signals her less barometrically sensitive brother to abandon the story.
Sita is still suspiciously happy. She serves all of them first and eats afterward with Thangam.
The days pass, without school, almost without talk. Janaki has never lived with so few words. They continue to play with the neighbour children, games the children know from home; you don’t need to talk to play kabbadi.
Sita, though, seems to be completely occupied in housework. Janaki is suspicious because she has always tricked others into doing her chores, faking a cut by making blood out of vermilion powder mixed in water, or trading tasks so relentlessly that Janaki would lose track of who owed whom and end up doing all the work. Here, Sita is industrious to the point of making them all a bit nervous.(Is Sita happy because all is finally as it should be? For the first time she feels part of the natural order? But few admit, even though they know, that the order’s nature is that its elements line up only to drift apart again. Sita appears happy, but she smells of desperation.)
Thangam works alongside Sita, offering no instructions or suggestions even when Sita turns out rubbery dosais and powdered condiments one would sooner use to dust a baby’s bottom than to fire up a meal. It is strange that the house and position don’t come with a government-issue cook, Janaki thinks, but perhaps no stranger than anything else.
One evening, Janaki and Kamalam see their dad at the end of the road, talking with two dark and paunchy men. They are all laughing, slapping their thighs. Goli spots his daughters and calls them over. As they arrive he grabs them by the shoulders and tells the men, “Two of mine.” He slaps his daughters on their backs. “Finally got them out of the grip of my brother-in-law. None of his own, you know?” He turns his head sideways and gives a wink. “None of his own. Right?”
The men laugh again.
“I’ve got more than I can count,” Goli brags. “That brother-in-law, rich as a Chettiar, but will he share it? Ah, what to do? The poor fellow can’t have kids…”
The two men giggle.
“I’ll forgive him.” Goli shakes his head and squishes the two girls together. They can’t remember him ever touching them before. “You know, if it’s true that a man’s real fortune is his family, and you and I know it is, well then I’m a millionaire.” Goli shoves the girls toward home and says, “Run. Tell your sister I’m on my way home, coffee better be ready. Scoot.”
Generally, home supplies are purchased on credit, the bill paid quarterly. Cash is used only for the daily purchase of vegetables from the market or passing vendors. Here, in the Karnatak country, the merchants have told Sita they will not give credit. She doesn’t understand and they will not explain. Is it because their father is not a local, because he’ll move on? But he’s been here a year and is posted here one year more, long enough, certainly, to have established a reputation.
Sita had pooh-poohed the merchants, rudely and with dignity. She bought supplies with the ten rupees Sivakami had slipped her; she had splurged, believing her father would want nothing but the best. She was right; he does want nothing but the best. But he clearly had forgotten to give her more money-poor man, she thinks, so much on his mind and now his household has doubled in size. She decided to remind him, show how willing and able she is to take over running the household.
While serving him his afternoon coffee, she asks, “Can I give the houseboy a shopping list, Appa? Will you give me money to give him?”
He looks at her as though he doesn’t know who she is and how she came to be in his house. “Money?”
“For groceries, Appa, we need some-”
“Management, management!” He raps his knuckles hard and humorously on her noggin. She winces. He winks. “What have I been keeping you at your grandmother’s for, if you still do not know how to manage money?”
“I…” She thinks she does know how to manage money, but she is probably wrong. That was Vairum’s house, an upside-down world, everything wrong. She needs to learn things again.
“Payday is Thursday.” She beams, but he is looking elsewhere. “Thursday I will bring home such food as you have never seen, squashes and cucumbers and sweets, yes?”
She happily claps her hands and retires to the kitchen.
The following evening, Janaki and Kamalam are sitting on the veranda. They forget the palanguzhi board between them when they see their father appear on the seat of a bullock cart. Radhai, who has been watching covetously, seizes a handful of cowries. Kamalam grabs her wrist but then releases it as Goli shouts, “Come! Come!”
Janaki and Kamalam’s instinct is to run into the house, which they do, with Radhai following, scared, on their heels, but Goli soon follows, still shouting, “Come! Come! Come!”
When the girls run into the house, looking like a startled school of fish, Sita guesses the reason and decants the coffee. Flushed with pleasure, she trots it out with two sweets, but Goli takes no notice.
“Come, I say!” he hollers, waving. “Into the cart! Where is your precious mother? Thangam! Thangam!”
Sita looks anxious and eager to obey but unsure of what action to take to do so. Goli blusters past her into the next room, then reappears and clarifies, “Into the cart!”
Moments later, they are all nested in damp straw, trundling up the road clinging to boards that threaten to pull away. Janaki whispers to Kamalam, “There is a cow pulling this cart.”
Goli hears and makes a grunting noise-“Huh?”-but has his nose pointed at the horizon.
Janaki whispers, “Cows are mothers, they give us everything. They must be worshipped, not made to work.”
Sita’s eyes narrow at them in a skilled imitation of her former self. “Hoi,” she instructs. “Stop telling secrets against Appa.”
Kamalam looks as though she’s been struck. Goli whips round in his seat, glaring. Janaki hisses at Sita, “We weren’t.”
The cart rolls on and Goli’s eyes roll reverentially back to his fantasies. Sita twists her mouth at her sisters. Goli leaps from his seat to the ground. He stumbles slightly and readjusts his dhoti. As the bullock cart jolts to a halt, Goli is already some distance away, gesturing to a building by the side of the road and asking, “Unh? Unh?” in a tone suggesting they should say what they think, and what they should think is that it’s great.
They all climb out cautiously, Sita holding the baby while Thangam dismounts. Goli has already run up to the building, evidently a recently defunct cinema. He turns as they trudge toward him, and whispers as if all the world is a stage, “Criminal, really. The price. Got it for a song-a filmi song! Can you sing one, kids?”
The kids can’t or don’t, but he’s not stopping.
“Lots of people going under these days. The stupid ones. Used to be you could get away with not being on the smarts. But not these days. These days it’s be smart or die. Kids, the sinking has started-and you are hitched to a swimmer.”
Thangam’s voice is both unbelieving and utterly without surprise. “You bought it?”
Goli beams at her and calls back as he starts running around the building, peering and banging and measuring things with the span of his hand. “Lock, stock and barrel. Me and several of my associates. Opportunity is knocking down our door. The ground floor suddenly lowered and why, we just got on.”
Thangam is whispering now, “I thought… it was a gamble…?”
Goli is in front of her in a flash, the pockets under his eyes pulsing. The humidity is giving Janaki a slight headache.
“You are repeating your brother’s words to me? He wanted me to work for him. For him!” Goli has begun chopping his right hand against his left palm.