Free Homeless Bird by Gloria Whelan

hour. The chanting never stopped. Somehow I believed that as long as the chanting went on, I had nothing to worry about. It would only be a matter of time before Sass would return for me and all would be well. It was nearly dusk when the chanting stopped. The second samosa had been eaten long ago. The widows in their white saris stole silently from the temple. A terrible panic came over me. I rushed from the temple.
    I didn’t know where to start looking for Sass. I was used to our small village. The streets of Vrindavan were like an overturned ants’ nest. I wondered if I had misheard Sass. Perhaps she had changed her mind about staying in Vrindavan. Maybe she had told me to meet her back at the railway station. I stopped one of the widows and asked for directions to the station. She looked at my white widow’s sari. I thought I saw in her look pity, and something more frightening—a look of kinship.
    Though the sun was setting, it was still hot, as if some invisible sun were beating down on me. Beads of perspiration formed on my forehead and my upper lip and ran down my face. My sari clung to me. Shops and businesses were closing, and the streets became moving rivers of people pushing against one another.
    Twice more I had to stop someone to ask directions. Each time there was a pitying look on the face of the widow I asked. It was nearly dark when I finally arrived at the station, where passengers waiting for the morning trains were cooking their suppers on small stoves. Some were already stretched out on mats. I quickly made the rounds of the station, but Sass was not there.
    I went to the parcel counter where we had checked our things and got my basket and bedroll. “Did the woman who was with me come for her things?” I asked, but the attendant had just come on duty and knew nothing of Sass.
    At the entrance to the station stood a line of rickshaws. I had forty-seven rupees tied up in my sari, but I could not waste them on a rickshaw, and anyhow I would not know where to go. In the line I saw a rickshaw with small flags, and next to it stood the boy with the wayward hair. I felt a great relief in seeing someone in the city I had seen before, someone I almost knew. I hurried toward him. “Have you seen my sass?” I asked.
    He stared at me for a long while as if he were trying to remember me. “Oh, yes,” he said with a bitter smile. “I was back here when she returned. She tried to cheat her new driver just as she cheated me.”
    “If she came back, where is she now?”
    “On the train. I saw her get on the train to Delhi. It wasn’t an hour after I had taken you to the temple.”

eight
     
     
    I suppose part of me had known all along. The thought had been waiting like a scorpion at the edge of my mind. Now it stung me, and I nearly cried out with the pain. There had been the letters from her brother in Delhi that she had never let me see. There had been the secret buying of the railway tickets. There had been the mysterious smile. She had taken care that I did not know her address in Delhi. I knew I could never find her in that city of millions. All I had were the forty-seven rupees tied into my sari. I understood now why she had entrusted me with so much money. It was to ease her conscience. Much as I hated to let the boy see me weep, I could not keep tears from streaming down my cheeks.
    The boy looked at me. “It happens every day here,” he said. “You can go and chant in the temple like the other widows do. The monks will give you food.”
    He continued to look at me. The insolent look was gone, and there was kindness in his face. He was about to say something when a man with a briefcase jumped into his rickshaw and ordered, “Get along.” The boy gave me one more look and pedaled away.
    It was evening. The shadows climbed up the walls of the jumbled buildings and fell across the narrow alleys. I walked aimlessly. One street looked like another, and I could not tell if I had been down them