Bharati Mukherjee - Miss New India

She stared down at the bra and sari pooled in her lap and tried to cover her breasts. She asked, almost in a whisper, as though to ask was to plant the notion, "Are you going to kill me?" He was still using the ends of her sari to clean himself. She remembered a hugely advertised Hindi movie from years back, Jism, and when she'd asked some boys in class what the word meant-she, the top girl in English, and they the simpleton sons of clerks and shopkeepers-they said they'd be happy to demonstrate.

"Don't be stupid. I'm going to marry you," he said. "Your father almost begged me."

If there had been any way of cleaning her mouth, she would have done it. If she'd had a can of bug spray, she would have swallowed it. When she conjured the image of what she'd done, all she could do was vomit, and she did so in her lap.

"Now," he said. "You know what you have to do." Wordlessly, looking through the steamed-up window at the twisted metal spikes, he pulled her panties down.

BACK AT THE house she had to run from the car, through the parlor, directly to the bathroom.

She could hear Subodh in the front room. "It must have been something we ate at the coffee shop. It came over her suddenly."

Her father said, "Please don't worry. She is a healthy girl. We're not hiding any medical history."

Her mother added quickly, "On both sides of the family, extreme good health. No sick leave, ever. As for Anjali, except for the usual jaundice, measles, and typhoid, she is in the pink of health."

Anjali returned, in T-shirt and jeans, her gesture of defiance, but she kept her head bowed. She wouldn't look at the monster or at her parents. She would not collaborate.

Mr. and Mrs. Bose begged him to stay for dinner. Even in remote Bihar, where the big river carp were harder to come by, Bengalis knew how to cook the traditional fish curry. Mrs. Bose had gone to the Bengali market especially for fat, fresh rui, and Mr. Bose had ranged beyond the usual sweet shops featuring ersatz rasmalai for something authentically Bengali.

Still looking down at her lap, Anjali said, "Mr. Mitra said he has to get back to Asansol tonight. Eight hours-he should be making his move."

"Your daughter is correct, as usual," he said. "I should be going. You'll be hearing from my father, I'm sure."

Anjali's parents didn't know how to interpret her interjection. Was it tender concern for the boy's feelings? A desire to get rid of him? She admitted to more stomach distress and a need to sleep in the dark in the back room, and left the parting formalities to her parents.

From the back room she could overhear the front-room language of marital negotiation: "Of course, it is all subject to your father's approval… But you and she got along beautifully, anyone can see that…" And her mother breaking in: "Poor girl, you got her so excited she can't keep her food down…" And the laughter, between her father and Subodh-whose very voice brought out murderous thoughts-joking over dowry claims: "My father's a really sharp businessman, so don't let him demand too much. I want this marriage to go through smoothly," met with laughter. "We do too!" her father said. He suggested that maybe a Japanese watch and a computer would close the deal. "Yeah, maybe he'll go for the gold watch-Swiss, not Japanese-a set of matched golf clubs and an American computer and an imported laptop for me-a PC, Toshiba or Dell-and a selection of games and movies," and her father laughed. "We'll have to see about that."

Lying in the dark after Subodh had left, staring at the slowly revolving ceiling fan, timing her inhale and exhale to the thumpa-thumpa of its wobbling orbit around the oily, dust-webbed post, she remembered the echoes of an earlier melodrama. " I will call -thumpa- astrologer. I will call -thumpa- printer. I will write -thumpa- boy's father. " And in this room five years earlier, behind this door, in this very bed, she remembered Sonali's screaming, "Just give me the knife!" until she'd submitted, then apologized.

Her mother slept in the same room, on the same bed. Anjali, eyes closed, feigning sleep or exhaustion, waited for an opportunity to break the silence. She would have spilled the beans on Mr. Mitra, but her mother had simply collapsed on her bed and fallen asleep. Apparently, there was nothing of interest to discuss, not even a giddy welcome to the world of soon-to-be-married women-no "Hello, Mrs. Mitra! He's so handsome! You'll be so happy!" In the front room, just minutes after closing the door on Mr. Mitra and wishing him (if she heard correctly) "Godspeed" back to Asansol, her father dropped his trousers and began rattling the shutters with his snores. Just as though the world had not stopped.

She had expected to be assaulted by dreams. Alone in the bedroom, she'd been afraid to close her eyes until her mother came to bed, but when the rustling of the dress-sari and sleeping-sari was over, and the snoring began, she opened her eyes again. In her childhood, she'd felt the presence of ghosts. She'd often felt their weight on her bed. She and Sonali, lying side by side, had imagined ghostly faces beyond the lone high, unopened bedroom window. They'd filled the long nights with made-up names and the reasons for their reappearance. Any deceased relative could pop up unexpectedly. Family ghosts were always on a mission of vengeance. Their grievances-and she knew all of them, all the stories of rivalry and cheating, the bitterness and unkept promises, the favoritism, the thievery, the poverty, all the infidelities, the dead babies, the deserted wives, the cruel mothers-in-law-could transcend a single lifetime. Fifty years was too brief to avenge all of the indignities of a lifetime. They had to keep coming back. That was her father's excuse: his fate was cursed. A fortuneteller had once warned him he had a jealous uncle, long-long dead, who had blocked every male Bose's path to wealth and happiness. That was her mother's excuse: I must have the same name as a distant auntie; I must be paying for her misdeeds.

And now she knew the old stories were true. There were monsters, and innocent children were their victims, and no one, especially not her parents, could save her from them.

She slipped off the bed and walked through the house, staring down at her parents in their oblivious helplessness. She wandered like a ghost. She dropped her stained sari in a corner of the bathroom. Let her mother discover the traces of her glorious jamai. Nothing had changed in her house, but the world was different. She took Sonali's old red Samsonite from the cupboard and threw her two best saris and all her T-shirts and jeans into it. She stuffed her backpack with underwear and toiletries. She could have turned on the lights, banged shut the lid of the suitcase, dragged it across the stone floor, and neither of her snoring, dreaming parents would have noticed.

She took out her old Vasco da Gama exercise book, flipped through the dozens of pages of perfect schoolgirl handwriting, the meticulous notes she'd taken- all useless, useless! -and tore out two clean pages. On her last day in Gauripur, she went to the little table on the cramped balcony where she'd always done her assignments and read her books, and began writing. By the wan streetlight she composed a note and left it in her mother's "just in case" lentils jar.

Dearest Ma and Baba:

I will not marry any boy selected by anyone but myself, especially not this one. If this leads to a barren life, so be it. As you should plainly see, the boy you selected has dishonored me. He should be sent straightway to jail.

I am leaving this morning for Patna to see my sister, whose name you are reluctant to utter.

When I am settled again, I will write. The process may take many months. I am ready to take my place in the world. I beg you not to try to find me.