Today

Today
She fell hard on the red, rocky ground. Rust colored dust filled her nostrils, sprinkled through her hair like dandruff and clouded densely around her body as she decided whether it was worth it to cry. Darting her eyes around, she noticed no sympathetic adult was in earshot. Gathering herself up, she carefully examined the cuts on her knees, elbow and forearm. She began walking towards her home while straightening her blue and beige salwaar kameez.
Laxmi entered her father’s home with her eyes lowered and glancing around hoping things might be different than every previous day of her enduring twelve year old life. Though the scratches stung as she moved, she kept mum and began her daily evening chores. The first room when she entered through the doorstep was a parlor-like room where guests were entertained and where her father, grandfather, uncles and brother sat when they weren’t having dinner or supervising workers. Sparsely furnished, the room contained several cushion pallets which lined the walls and a swing hung leisurely from the ceiling by linked metal bars.. Walking in a straight line from the front doors, she stepped over the doorway to the second room in the house. This room was a bedroom of sorts, as this was the room where the women of the home congregated when not cooking, preparing to cook, or supervising workers. She immediately removed her school clothes, neatly folded them and placed them in the wash pile, and put on her home clothes.
The early evening had begun to sink into the day like teeth biting into a soft, round panda, Laxmi’s most favorite sweet. She walked to the back of the home, behind the kitchen and behind the back outdoor work area, where they kept their three black buffalos. She had grabbed the steel bucket on her way, which she put on the ground next to Rani. To most everyone else, these buffalos were indistinguishable in their deep chocolate coats and angry eyes, but to Laxmi, the three had become some sort of an audience to her thoughts and desires. She deftly flicked a long piece of straw in her mouth and chewed on it ferociously while she squatted to milk the buffalo. Right, left, right, left, right, left, right left. The pressurized, warm squirts made high pitched ringing noises as they bounced off the walls of the bucket. As Laxmi fell into the lull, her chewing ceased to a lazy suckle, and the high pitched tings began to taper off into thick liquidy deposits. When she had first learned how to milk them, her knees ached before the bucket was even half full. Her feet used to fall asleep regularly and she often had bumps and bruises from the kicks the three Ani’s used to bestow on their strange new molester. Laxmi knew better than to let anyone know of these things. She also knew that soon enough her limbs would stop aching and the kicks would stop, so what was the point in making a stink of this temporary matter. She wondered if everyone else thought thoughts like her. Her ache for a freedom that she could not dream of having, not in this lifetime anyhow. She wanted to go to Delhi, to Bombay, to Agra, to Amhedabad even. She wanted to walk alongside freedom fighters, run through the streets after speaking her mind to any authority who dared near her, and wildly shout however she felt whenever she pleased. Rani, Bani, and Nani knew this about her, and somehow encouraged her, but Laxmi could not ever bring herself to do any of these things. The highest form of insubordination that she ever allowed herself was to “borrow” books without anyone’s approval from wherever she wished. Down the road at her friend Shanta’s house, from the school teacher, and once even from a store in the city. There was little in most of the books that Laxmi could comprehend, these worlds of England, France, Italy and America confused her, frightened her and angered her. She could not stop, it was these fleeting moments during her readings that she felt anything at all.
Done with the milking, she took a finger and rushed it across the frothy cream that had gather over the meniscus. As she stepped into the kitchen area, her finger was still in her mouth and Laxmi was savoring the rich emulsion mixed with the salty sweat of her fingers.
In a village dialect of Gujarati, her mother retorted in a tone dripping with disgust, “Out of your mouth! What are you doing, like a little child!” An insult isn’t an insult until you have been compared to something smaller than you, something dumber than you, something beneath you. This was the way her family, her culture, her world tried to tear someone down. Laxmi’s mother, Ma, as Laxmi called her, was a sturdy woman of just under 30. Six months pregnant, she waddled around the kitchen shouting orders, perfecting the seasoning in the dinner dishes and chastising her children and any stray neighbor child or niece or nephew.


stay tuned for more on this . .and of course edits as well.