A Guardian and a Thief By Megha Majumdar - 7

“Want to hear some good news? I saw a rental sign on a two-bedroom in my building. One floor below me. I applied right away, and well, it will take time for them to go through applications, but the landlord really likes me, and he said they want to give it to me.”

“Oh.”

“I know, I know. It’s not a three-bedroom. But it’s much bigger than my studio. We will manage, I promise. I was thinking, with creative use of a bookshelf, we could partition the living space and create a small room for Mishti. What do you think about that? Then I can buy a bookshelf and have it ready. I already ordered a mattress for her. That way, your father will have a room of his own. He never complains, but at that age, who wants to share a room again? The thing we can’t really do anything about is—there is only one bathroom, which is not ideal, but—”

“Oh.”

“Hmm?”

Silence.

“Are you—crying? Did something happen? Did something else get stolen? Is Mishti’s health all right?”

“No, nothing like that. I’m just—a bit tired from packing. There’s so much to do. It feels overwhelming.”

“I swear, these visa rules are inhumane. All because of what a sticker says, I can’t come and help you?”

“Let it be. It’s not free to fly back and forth either. Even if you could, better to save the money for Mishti’s kindergarten.”

“You want to know my thought? If you have to leave things behind in the house, that’s fine. Clothes and things. We can buy them here.”

“That’s a waste of money.”

“Well, you’re causing yourself so much stress. Try to get rest and be in good health for the flight. It’s a long and exhausting flight.”

“I’ll be fine. Are you taking care of your health?”

“My pressure is all right.”

“Watching the salt?”

“Every day.”

“Have you been to a doctor?”

“Not yet. You three come and get settled, and then—”

“Baba! Hey, Baba! I walk lots. And I coloring with my new crayons.”

“Are you? Mama got you new crayons? Very nice. I got you a watercolor set.”

“That’s brave.”

“Ha ha! Maybe I can start by removing the carpet and preparing the floor for Mishti’s watercolor shenanigans.”

“Or you can do watercolors with her on the kitchen counter when I’m not cooking. What’s the kitchen in the new apartment like? Is it big? Is there, what do they call it, an island ?”

IT WAS PAST TEN O’CLOCK that night when the doorbell rang. When Ma opened the door, there stood Boomba, belongings stuffed into Ma’s purse slung on his shoulder, and a sack on the floor next to him. He looked like he hadn’t slept. His eyes were red, and his hair uncombed. On his feet were sneakers that had lost their laces. Accused of being a thief at the shelter, certain that his keenly eavesdropping roommates had heard Ma’s angry words, he had not dared to return there to sleep. Instead, he had retrieved his belongings and rested on a hospital campus, unnoticed among the crowds of worried patients and their families, thinking about how to proceed, until he could no longer bear the noise—or the silence—of the sick. Then, on a call made over a borrowed cell phone, he had told his mother he was coming back for a visit. He missed them, and he needed to see them. He had a toy for Robi too. But Boomba’s mother had stopped him. Reluctantly, she had shared some bad news. The roof of their hut had collapsed during a night of strong winds. They were sleeping under a stretch of plastic that flapped and tore and let in the pouring rain. The damp was getting to Robi—he had a cold that wouldn’t let go of him. It was then that Boomba could no longer bear to sit on the hospital campus, surrounded by those receiving, despite their agony, the peace of treatment, the peace of answers and solutions, the peace of a better day around the corner.

Ma felt something resembling relief. Here he was, the blackmailer, the crook. Now they could stop fearing the scratch on the windowpane, the shuffle of feet outside the door, the creak of the hinges.

Boomba spoke at once. “That storeroom? Right there? That’s where I stay now. It’s mine, and my family’s coming, too, in a few days.”

He knew now that holding up one’s end of the deal was not the only way to enjoy the results of the deal.

“Is that so?” said Ma. “After you were no help in that horrible place? In fact you disappeared like a coward. And now you dare to show up here? We should gather the neighbors and give you a thrashing.”

“Gather the neighbors! Do it right now! Let me have a chance to tell them who you really are.” Boomba had given some thought to this speech, and now he launched into it. “Let me tell everybody that you’ve been taking food from the poor. And maybe money too? Who knows? The police will know, that’s who. People come in from the villages, each person supporting a whole family, each person saving and saving for the day when they can bring their family, and you take from them? You’re a small animal. Smaller than me. I don’t take from those who have nothing.”

Ma listened, more calmly and patiently than she might have imagined possible. Behind Boomba, the hibiscus tree and the marigold shrubs shivered in the breeze. A group of teenagers walked down the lane beyond the gate, oblivious to everything but the pop music that emanated from a device they held, and as they passed, Ma saw that one of them was walking a large lizard on a rope. The day had already bent in an odd direction. Ma had delivered the gold, taking from deep in a wardrobe her mother’s bangles, inseparable from Ma’s memories of holding her own mother’s hand, those bangles sliding from elbow to wrist as her mother moved, her presence the refuge within which Ma’s days unfurled. Ma had delivered the bangles to a man she could no longer allow herself to believe was a scammer. Now he was her only hope.

It was her duty, as a guardian, to put into action the beautiful ideal of hope. Ma thought harshly: This was what it looked like. Hope for the future was no shy bloom but a blood-maddened creature, fanged and toothed, with its own knowledge of history’s hostilities and the cages of the present. Hope wasn’t soft or tender. It was mean. It snarled. It fought. It deceived. On this day, hope lived in the delivery of gold to a man who might be a scammer, and, perhaps, hope lived also in opening the doors to a thief.

“And if you stop me,” Boomba was saying, a flash of recklessness in his eye, “I’m going to go to the shelter and tell them what you’ve done. I’m going to go to the police and tell them too. See if the billionaire doesn’t come after you then. See if the police don’t drop everything else to make your life hell. What do I have to lose? Nothing. I have time. I will sit there until somebody listens to me, and then they will come for you.”

Ma could not allow that. She could not allow the possibility that a conscientious shelter employee—the new manager, or her assistant—would look into what she had taken. What she had borrowed. What she had—all right, all right! Stolen. She could not allow the possibility of such an employee discovering the extent of her theft and deciding, with unassailable moral clarity, to lodge a police case, which would destroy any hope of receiving an honest visa in the future. It would destroy any hope of emigrating. What if Boomba was right and the proceedings wrecked her life and robbed her of her freedom? What would mother-torn Mishti do?

“You will tell the shelter,” said Ma, suppressing her fears, “a few fairy tales? You think anybody will believe you, thief?”

“What if they do? I will tell them what I saw, then it will be in their hands to find what there is to find.”

“You think this is a detective show? There is nothing to find.”

“Then tell me to get lost.”

Boomba waited. Then he laughed. He had not revealed one other advantage he wanted from Ma, and she had not guessed. Now he showed his teeth, like those of crocodiles, and Ma, sensing something maniacal in him, thought that his laughter had nothing in common with Mishti’s. His laughter was a cackle of fear and audacity and greed. But she would need to be bolder than him. She would need to perform timidity to keep the risk of him in check, and then, from the safety of America, she would strike. Ma opened the door and let him in.

AFTER MA HAD LOCKED HERSELF into the bedroom where Dadu and Mishti slept, Boomba tried in vain to fall asleep. The floor was hard where it met his shoulders and hips and knees, but it wasn’t that. The cool air from the vent was a touch too cold, but it wasn’t that either. Nor was it the lumpy purse, with its straps and buckles, pressed into use as a pillow.

It was that Boomba was afraid.

He replayed what he had said at the door, and felt now that he had overstated the threat he posed. He had no interest in going to the shelter to report this woman. He’d spoken empty words to frighten her, that was all. And he was surprised that she hadn’t challenged him—she hadn’t brought up the papers to the house, for example, and how Boomba would never be able to legitimately occupy the house. But perhaps she understood that the days of obeying documents were gone. New codes of savage behavior—or old codes, newly revealed—were taking their place.

Still, frightened animals attacked. What if she decided to gather the neighbors and assault him, as she had threatened? He was afraid, and he was defenseless, alone in this small room with nothing in it but a few bins and his sparse belongings.

He opened the door and crept up the stairs. He needed a weapon. All was silent, the house surrendered to its nighttime guise, shapes and shadows, a few passing beams of light from cars going down the lane. Upstairs, Boomba walked past the bedroom, its door shut tight, and into the living room. Glass gleamed on the daybed, and Boomba picked up a teacup from a set, squinted at it, then set it down. When his mother arrived, perhaps she would make tea, and perhaps, if Boomba found flour, she would fry nimki too. He found a phone charger plugged into the wall, and swooped down on it. Under the dining table, he saw a small cilantro plant, and he tore the leaves and, seating himself upon a chair, putting his feet up on another chair, ate them. He surveyed his new kingdom, for that was what it was. On the floor, there was a sheet of stickers that he could use to coax the child the next morning. He retrieved the sheet and put it in his pocket. Then, in a corner of the room, still packaged in a cardboard box, Boomba saw a pressure cooker. He rose and picked up the two parts, lid and body, each heavy as a cannon, it felt to him. Holding these made him feel strong, his arms ending not in small and blunt hands but in stainless steel. These he could use in the days to come.