But my mother had to stop when the rains came, beating on roofs, muddy water rising from the wheels of passing rickshaws churning waves that soaked the stove and licked at our high mattress. I took a bucket, its handle cracked so that I had to hold it by the bottom, and tipped the water out on the street, where it joined a stream in which seedpods and the brown shells of cockroaches floated.
