The Lowland

her body, made of white cotton, was plain as a sheet. Her pupils were milky, navy instead of black. Taking in Bela, her grandmother’s eyes traveled between Bela and her father, as if following a filament that connected them.
    Watching them unpack their suitcases, her grandmother was disappointed that they had not bought special gifts for Deepa. Deepa wore a sari, and a gem in her nostril, and she called Bela Memsahib. Her face was shaped like a heart. She was strong enough, in spite of her lean frame, her wiry arms, to help Bela’s father carry their heavy suitcases up the staircase.
    Deepa slept in the room next to her grandmother’s. A room that was like a large cupboard, up a half flight of steps, with a ceiling so low it was not possible to stand. This was where Deepa unrolled a narrow cushion at the end of the day.
    Her grandmother gave away the American soaps and lotions Bela’s mother had picked out, the flowered pillowcase and sheet. She told Deepa to use them. She set aside the colorful spools of thread, the embroidery hoop, the tomato pincushion, saying Deepa did the sewing now. The black leather purse shaped like a large envelope, fastened by a single snap, which Bela had helped her mother choose in Rhode Island, at the Midland Mall, went to Deepa also.
    The day after they arrived her father sat for a ceremony to honor her grandfather, who had died a few months before. A priest tended a small fire that burned in the center of the room. Fruit was heaped beside it on brass plates and trays.
    On the floor, propped against the wall, was a large photo of her grandfather’s face, and beside it, a photo of an older boy, a smiling teenager with glasses, in a dirty frame of pale wood. Incense burned in front of these pictures, fragrant white flowers draped like thick necklaces in front of the glass.
    Before the ceremony a barber came to the house and shaved her father’s head and face in the courtyard, turning his face strange and small. Bela was told to put out her hands, and without warning, the nails of her fingers, then her toes, were pared off with a blade.
    At dusk Deepa lit coils to ward away the mosquitoes. Celery-skinned geckoes appeared indoors, hovering close to the seam where wall and ceiling met. At night she and her father slept in the same room, on the same bed. A thick bolster was placed between them. The pillow beneath her head was like a sack of flour. The mesh of the mosquito netting was blue.
    Every night, when the flimsy barricade was adjusted around them, when no other living thing could enter, she felt relief. When he had his back to her in sleep, hairless, shirtless, her father almost looked like another person. He was awake before she was, the mosquito netting balled up like an enormous bird’s nest suspended from one corner of the room. Her father was already bathed and dressed and eating a mango, scraping out the flesh with his teeth. None of it was unfamiliar to him.
    For breakfast she was given bread toasted over an open flame, sweetened yogurt, a small banana with green skin. Her grandmother reminded Deepa, before she set out for the market, not to buy a certain type of fish, saying that the bones would be too troublesome.
    Watching Bela try to pick up rice and lentils with her fingers, her grandmother told Deepa to fetch a spoon. When Deepa poured Bela some water from the urn that stood on a little stool, in the corner of the room, her grandmother reproached her.
    Not that water. Give her the boiled water. She’s not made to survive here.
    After the first week her father began to go out during the day. He explained that he would be giving a few lectures at nearby universities, and also meeting with scientists who were helping him with a project. Initially it upset her, being left in the house with her grandmother and Deepa. She watched him leave through the terrace grille, carrying a folding umbrella to shield his shaved head from the sun’s glare.
    She was nervous until he returned, until he pressed the doorbell and a key was lowered and he unlocked the gate and stood before her again. She worried for him, swallowed up by the city, at once ramshackle and grand, which she’d seen from the taxi that had brought them to Tollygunge. She didn’t like to imagine him having to negotiate it, being prey to it somehow.
    One day Deepa invited Bela to accompany her to the market, and then to wander a bit through the narrow lanes of the neighborhood.