By Hana Shareen
The first thing I noticed about the little girl were her eyes.
They were hauntingly bright, desperately illuminated as if they would never flicker, neither in sickness nor death. Flames that could rupture the entire place if she tipped over and scraped her little knee, letting the pitch in her head sneak out as blood, one to match the dried one on her shorn head.
The first thing she said was, “You’re not the lady.”
I was not. I would never be a lady, or a man–no matter how I craved to be. My fate was strewn with curses and my footsteps were never marked on the sand. I never strung sea-shells, giggled until it hurt to be happy, but perhaps, the most human thing to wish for is to be human at all.
The bottom of the well was dark.
“If you hold my hand, I can get us out of here.”
She blinked, her eyes never leaving mine, maybe searching for a soul that was no longer there. “You’re not the lady,”
I could hear the faint notes from the veena from the house next to the well. A type writer clacked along, longing to make music of its own. A gardener hummed a song his mother used to croon to him when he was this girl’s age. A mother sobbed herself to sleep. I could hear the entire world and the hollow emptiness of the well at the same time.
Nausea overlapped my insides. A part of me hoped it would swallow me whole, to show the world I felt something.
“Who is this lady?”
The little girl evidently thought the question was ridiculous. “She’s the lady. Who else?”
A beat of silence. How was she supposed to tell me? She was a little girl at the bottom of the well in the middle of a small village in India.
I clenched my fingers, feeling the knuckles crack. Bones were hardly a sign of humanity, but being wistful was a common occurrence. I loosened my grip, and outstretched my hand.
My voice came out strangely hoarse. “Come with me.”
She blinked, and took it without another thought. Her fingers clenched against mine tightly, digging into my skin as if needing assurance I was there.
“Cold,” she complained. The girl blinked, and we were in the meadow outside the well.
Grass that tickled her ankles stretched for miles, with marigolds popping out all over the land, some hanging, some standing tall. Crumbs of soil slipped into her shoes. She shuffled her feet—toes wiggling—as she tried to get the dirt out.
I observed for another minute. “Take them off, and dust them.”
She stared at me, her feet, and then back at me again.
I tried again, motioning towards her shoes while saying, “It’s easy enough,” but the girl only looked at me.
Would God laugh when Death knelt down in front of a little girl? Or would he think that perhaps, when he took everything that made me human, he missed a few specks? Kindness was always smiling at strangers, it was giving flowers to people who never received it. It was never Death.
I lowered myself to one knee and held out a hand until she placed her foot on it. Gently peeling off the soles from her feet and tapping them against the earth, I wondered if kindness was strongest when you knelt down to simply help.
I got up again.
“Come along now, little one.” I picked up my scythe, and slid it across my back. She trotted alongside me, marvelling at the outdoors as if she had never seen them before. The wisps of clouds gliding past, the dew clinging on to the leaves by a thread, everything earned a wondrous gasp.
I shouldn’t have been impressed. Everything everyone ignored when it was there, was what they praised the most when it was gone. I trudged along, footfalls heavy.The street lights flickered, light snipping in and out. Flies that would burn for the light circled around them. Dogs barked words nobody understood. The world was normal, it still was going on. Yet, a little girl was dead.
“What’s your name?” I reasoned I asked it for the sake of small talk, but little girls in small wells as the veena played and the typewriter clacked made curiosity burn.
“My name?” She clinged on to her dirty frock tighter. “I don’t know.”
The meadow came to an end. A cracked road began, the barriers on the side overlooked a river. I hummed a song a soldier had been humming when he was in the trenches, a long lost reminder of a place he called home.I wondered where he learned the song. From his mother? Or maybe it was a song he first danced to in a club. A song his child used to beg him to sing. Humans were made of pieces, of hearts, of souls, of minds. Of all the memories they have. Of all the people they’ve ever known.
And yet. A little girl had died. Next it would be another girl. And for all the love the people had in their hearts, the world still moved on.
“You must know something,” I said, impatience creeping into my tone. “The lady, the well, anything.”
She chewed on her lip and looked away. She clearly did not know.
“How did you know the lady?”
The girl clicked her tongue. “I opened my eyes, and she was always there.”
Always there? A promise, of some sorts. Dangerous things, to vow to bend reality itself if it meant granting a wish.
“What did she look like?” I asked, still thinking of the veena on the front veranda, the melancholy dream of waiting for someone.
The girl stopped and looked at me solemnly. “She had long hair.” Her fingers gestured towards her thigh, tapping it. “Till here.” Then she ran a hand along her own shaved head. “I want hair like her. Long and pretty.”
Long and pretty. She said it like it was all she longed to be. Like if she could grab it with her own two hands, she would, selfishly claiming it for herself. But she was a little girl…and dead.
“Was she your mother?”
The girl frowned. “What’s that?”
How do you define a mother? The person you hate, yet you unconditionally love. A person who limits, yet breaks boundaries.
“A person who loves you,” I said, the first thing that came into my mind.
The girl grinned and nodded feverishly, stars in her eyes. “Yes! That’s her. That’s what she is,”
The woman sobbing. The sound cut through my head, ringing in my ears. Was that the same woman the girl meant? An oiled long plait as tears streamed down her cheeks? A lover’s squabble, or the mourning of a piece of herself she cared the most about? Her own blood, her own daughter?
“How did you end up in the well, little one?” I asked slowly, chewing on the thought.
She shrugged. “Angry man.”I stopped.“Was he a stranger?”She blinked. “No. He’s been there ever since I saw the lady–my mother. I love him too.”You would love everyone, I thought bitterly, but you can’t get the same for yourself.
“He liked everything about me. He just didn’t like that I was a girl,” she said, picking at her tiny nails. “I promised that I’d make him proud.”
I understood. The foolish longing for a boy rather than a girl, even though daughters wished to be their father’s favourite son. The willingness to have blood on their hands rather than a little girl to throw up in the air and catch again, to tell stories to, to pick them up after school.
She continued dragging her feet across the ground, pebbles in the dirt falling over themselves as she barged through. Her eyes were like a flame that refused to be put out. Like a spirit that never gets to rest. Like a promise–a promise to her mother, that she would always be so cheerfully alive.
“He was smiling. He threw me up in the air, but I fell into the well.”
It was on purpose. It was looking for vengeance for simply existing.
“I’m sorry.” I believed her fate to be the worst death of all. To be betrayed by a man you’ve trusted since you were born.
There was a silence between us.
“I want long hair,” she said, her voice quiet. “Will I never see the lady again?”
“I don’t know.” I wasn’t sure if I was lying. I didn't remember the last time I loved, but when I looked at the girl, the taste of honey was at the back of my throat and the cold wind made me feel warmer.
Was love grand, with chandeliers hanging down as the main character secured their final kiss as the curtains hurried to close? Or–
No, I decided. It was a mother crying for her child. It was humming a song a person once sang to you. It was sitting in the bottom of the well and still believing your mother would arrive.
We reached the bottom of the bridge, and I headed towards the shore of the ocean, foamy waters washing up to my ankles. Sand stuck to the bottom of my feet, and it did to hers as well. She was dead and I was Death itself.
“Your name is Naila.” I whispered, knowing it from her mother’s cries, the same repetition of a name, as if it would bring her child back. I swallowed, hardly hearing myself over the ocean’s waves. “Your mother loves you.”
Naila inclined her head. “I know.”
As we waded through, as the activists slept soundly, as a mother cried herself to sleep, as a father tried to cleanse himself of his sins, I could almost see Naila’s long hair that should have been hers as she grew old–the wet hair clinging to her shoulders.
“Goodbye, lady.” She mumbled, casting a glance backward. No one in the village was surprised the next day at the absence of the daughter of the household. Everyone knew that daughters in India knew death all too well.
By Hana Shareen
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