But the girl was too full of herself to listen. She just sang all day:

“I’m getting married, I’m getting married!”

So at night, it was the Baby Krishna who got to hear the story of the luckless Ambika, punished for her sins in a previous life:

Ambika, the sixth daughter and the last to be married, was the family beauty. A rich doctor wanted her for his son. Excellent news! When the groom came to see Ambika, he left for the bathroom repeatedly. “See how shy he is,” the women all said, giggling. On the wedding night, he lay with his back turned to Ambika’s face. He coughed all night. In the morning, she saw blood on the sheets. He notified her that she had married a man with advanced tuberculosis. He had wanted to be honest, but his mother would not let him. “Someone has put black magic on your family, you wretched girl,” he said, as his body was racked by fits of coughing. A month later, he was dead on a hospital bed. His mother told the village that the girl, and all her sisters, were cursed, and no one would agree to marry any of the other children.

“And that’s the true story of why I’m a virgin,” Jayamma wanted the infant Krishna to know. “In fact, I had such thick hair, such golden skin, I was considered a beauty, you know that?” She raised her eyebrows archly, like a film actress, suspecting that the little god did not entirely believe her. “Sometimes I thank my stars I never married. What if I too had been deceived, like Ambika? Better a spinster than a widow, any day…And yet that little lower-caste can’t stop singing about it every minute of the morning…” Lying in the dark, Jayamma mimicked the little lower-caste’s voice for the baby god’s benefit:

“‘I’m getting married, I’m getting married…’”

The day came for Shaila’s departure. The advocate said he would himself drive the girl home in his green Ambassador.

“I’m going, Jayamma.”

The old lady was brushing her silver hair on the threshold. She felt that Shaila was pronouncing the name with deliberate tartness. “I’m going to get married.” The old lady kept brushing her hair. “Write to me sometime, won’t you, Jayamma? You Brahmins are such fine letter writers, the best of the best…”

Jayamma tossed the plastic comb into a corner of the storage room. “To hell with you, you little lower-caste vermin!”

The weeks passed. Now she had to do the girl’s work too. By the time dinner was served and the dishes cleaned, she was spent. The advocate made no mention of hiring a new servant. She understood that from now on it was up to her to perform the lower-caste’s work too.

In the evenings, she took to wandering in the backyard with her long silver hair down at the sides. One evening, Rosie, the thick-lipped Christian, waved at her.

“What happened to Shaila? Did she get married?”

Thrown into confusion, Jayamma grinned.

She started to watch Rosie. How carefree those Christians were-eating whatever they wanted, marrying and divorcing whenever they felt like it.

One night the two demons came back. She lay paralyzed for many minutes, listening to the screeching of the spirits, which had disguised themselves as cats once again. She clutched the idol of Baby Krishna, rubbing its silver buttocks while sitting on a bag of rice surrounded by the moat of DDT; she began to sing:

A star is whispering

Of my heart’s deep longing

To see you once more,

My baby-child, my darling, my king.

That next evening, the advocate spoke to her at dinner. He had received a letter from Shaila’s mother.

“They said they were not happy with the size of the gold necklace. After I spent two thousand rupees on it, can you believe it?”

“Some people are never satisfied, master…what can be done?”

He scratched at his bare chest with his left hand and belched. “In this life, a man is always the servant of his servants.”

That night she could not go to sleep from anxiety. What if the advocate cheated her out of her pay too?

“For you!” One morning, Karthik tossed a letter onto the rice winnower. Jayamma shook the grains of rice off it and tore it open with trembling fingers. Only one person in the world ever wrote her letters-her sister-in-law in Salt Market Village. Spreading it out on the ground, she put together the words one by one.

“The advocate has let it be known that he intends to move to Bangalore. You, of course, will be returned to us. Do not expect to stay here long; we are already looking for another house to dispatch you to.”

She folded the letter slowly, and tucked it into the midriff of her sari. It felt like a slap to her face: the advocate had not bothered to tell her the news. “Well, let it be, who am I to him, just another servant woman.”

A week later, he came into the storage room and stood at the threshold, as Jayamma got up hurriedly, trying to put her hair in order. “Your money has been sent already to your sister-in-law in Salt Market Village,” he said.

This was the usual agreement anywhere Jayamma worked; the wages never came to her directly.

The advocate paused.

“The boy needs someone to take care of him…I have relatives in Bangalore…”

“I only hope for the best for you and for Master Karthik,” she said, bowing before him with slow dignity.

That Sunday, she collected all her belongings over the past year into the same suitcase with which she had come to the house. The only sad part was saying good-bye to the Baby Krishna.

The advocate was not going to drop her off; she would walk to the bus stand herself. The bus was not due till four o’clock, and she walked about the backyard, amid the swaying garments on the clothesline. She thought of Shaila-that girl had been running around this backyard, her hair loose, like an irresponsible brat; and now she was a married woman, the mistress of a household. Everyone changed and moved up in life, she thought. Only I remain the same: a virgin. She turned to the house with a somber thought: This is the last time I will see this house, where I have spent more than a year of my life. She remembered all the houses where she had been sent these past forty years, so that she could fatten other people’s children. She had taken back nothing from her time at all those houses; she was still unmarried, childless, and penniless. Like a glass from which clean water had been drunk, her life showed no trace of the years that had passed-except that her body had grown old, her eyes were weak, and her knee joints ached. Nothing will ever change for me till I die, thought old Jayamma.

All at once, her gloom was gone. She had seen a blue rubber ball, half hidden by a hibiscus plant in the backyard. It looked like one of the balls Karthik played cricket with; had it been left out here because it was punctured? Jayamma brought it right up to her nose for a good examination. Although she could not see a hole anywhere, when she squeezed it next to her cheek, she felt a tickling hiss of air on her skin.

With a servant’s instinct for caution, the old cook glanced around the garden. Breathing in deep, she tossed the blue ball to the side of the house; it smacked against the wall and came back to her with a single bounce.

Good enough!

Jayamma turned the ball over and examined its skin, faded but still with a nice blue sheen. She sniffed at it. It would do very nicely.

She came to Karthik, who was in his room, on the bed: Bip! Bip! Bip! She thought how much he resembled the image of his mother in photographs when he beetled his brow to concentrate on the game; the furrow in his brow was like a bookmark left there by the dead woman.

“Brother…”

“Hm?”

“I’m leaving for my brother’s home today…I’m going back to my village. I’m not coming back.”

“Hm.”

“May the blessings of your dear mother shine on you always.”