No Ordinary Day Read Online Free Page B

glimpse of the blue, blue sky and of the other buildings. I wanted to rush over to the low stone wall at the edge of the roof and look down. I had never been up so high!
    But Mrs. Mukerjee held me back.
    “Time enough for playing later. I have to sleep now or I will be cranky when the business opens. And I can’t sleep if I’m worrying about you. So you’re in here for a little while.”
    There was a shed on the roof. She opened the door and put me in it. It was empty except for a mat and a pail.
    “Pee in the pail if you have to,” she said. “I’ll send someone up in a minute with some food. I assume you’re hungry.”
    She closed the door on me before I had the chance to tell her I’d had breakfast already. Then I heard a bolt slide into place and lock me in.
    I decided I had better eat every chance I got in case I had to make a run for it.
    A few moments later, a very sleepy-looking woman slid back the bolt, handed me a tray of food and locked me in again.
    The shed wasn’t very sturdy. It was made of wood boards that were nailed together this way and that. Sunlight easily got through them. If I needed to, I could probably just push my way out.
    But first I would eat. I drank the hot tea. I wolfed down the roti and I ate the dal. I sat back on the mat with my back to the wall to eat the banana while I looked at the blue sky through the spaces between the boards. I had the whole mat to myself and my belly was full.
    I found myself thinking about the woman who was not my aunt and about Elamma, who was not my cousin.
    They would both be back at work by now, my aunt in the pit and my cousin carrying the baby. If they were lucky, they had gotten a good night’s sleep. But that probably didn’t happen. The man who was not my uncle coughed all night, and if he didn’t cough it was because he was drunk, and if he was drunk it meant the children were hungry, and if the children were hungry they would have cried all night. There would be more room on the floor without me, but less coal money, too.
    Today would be hard for them. Tomorrow would be the same.
    It wasn’t that I missed them, exactly. But I said a prayer to all the gods and goddesses that one day they, too, would be able to sit on a mat they did not have to share and eat a banana that someone else had worked for.

4
    Soap
    I DIDN'T TRY TO ESCAPE . I took advantage of the soft mat and stretched out. I fell asleep.
    The bolt sliding back woke me up. Mrs. Mukerjee was there, dressed in a sari instead of a robe. Her hair was combed back. She had two younger women with her.
    “You’re awfully scrawny,” she said. “How old are you? Nine? Ten?”
    I didn’t know. I shrugged.
    “Well, let’s see what we’ve got under all that coal.”
    We went back down the stairs to a little square cement yard. The water tap was there.
    “Burn those clothes,” Mrs. Mukerjee ordered the young ones.
    “I know how to scrub,” I said. “I could wash them.”
    “Burn them,” she said again. They were taken away.
    At first Mrs. Mukerjee’s assistants just poured water over me. It was cold and felt good. Black streams flowed away from my feet.
    “This will take a while,” Mrs. Mukerjee said. “I think I could use another cup of tea.”
    She left the other women to it.
    With the top layers of dust off me, they started in with the scrub brushes and soap.
    I had used soap before. Not often, because it wasn’t food, and food came first when there was money. And the soap only got to me after everyone else in the family had used it first. By then it was gray and slimy.
    This soap was different. It had a paper wrapping. When the wrapping came off, I smelled all sorts of wonderful flowers and spices. The lather it made was white and frothy like just-poured goat’s milk.
    I felt like the star of a Bollywood film.
    They washed my hair with soap that poured from a bottle. The lather this soap made was so thick it held all of my hair on the top of my head as if it were a basket