Free Homeless Bird by Gloria Whelan Page A

before. I didn’t know what I was looking for, only that I hadn’t found it and didn’t think I ever would. My bedroll and basket were heavy. I was tired and hungry and only wanted to lie down. I knew others must have felt the same, for charpoys and mattresses began to appear on the sidewalks. Sometimes one person, sometimes a whole family settled down to sleep. I would have welcomed dropping down on a bit of sidewalk, but I didn’t know what was allowed or what bit of sidewalk was spoken for.
    An elderly woman was watching me from a doorstep where she huddled, her dirty white widow’s sari drawn about her. She beckoned to me with a long, bony finger. When I went over to her, she moved even further into the corner of the doorway. She pointed to the empty space she had made. “You can sleep here,” she said. “The people in the house will not chase you away. They even threw out a little food for me.” She handed me a small portion of rice. It was cold and sticky. Gratefully I swallowed it. “Have you just come?” she asked.
    “Yes, my sass left me this morning. I don’t know where she is. Maybe she will come back for me.”
    The old woman shook her head. “You won’t see her again. It was the same with me. I came two months ago. When my husband died, I was no longer needed. His property was divided between his brothers. The brothers brought me here.”
    “Why would they bring you here and leave you?” I asked. “Why didn’t they take care of you?”
    “Once they had my husband’s property, they had no more use for me. They said widows were unlucky to have about. The truth is that I am too old for hard work.”
    If there were such cruelness in the world, then it might indeed be true that Sass had taken me to this place of widows just to get rid of me. I was alone in a strange city with only a few rupees and no friends. “How do you get by?” I managed to ask.
    “I am a servant of the Lord Krishna. Like the other widows I go each day to a temple and chant for four hours. The monks in the temple feed us, and there is the pittance of my widow’s pension. I had a room I shared with other widows, but the landlord wanted it back for his family, so we were all turned out. Now I must find a new room.”
    All around us people were settling down on the sidewalks. Babies and small children snuggled against their mothers or sisters. Some of the people fell asleep immediately, as if their square of sidewalk were as much a shelter as a house would be. Others chatted with their neighbors or prepared a bit of food, feeding the cooking fires with leaves and twigs. Across from us small children were pushing dogs aside to hunt for bits of food in a pile of rubbish.
    Even with my bedroll to soften the stone of the doorway, I could not sleep. Often I reached down to assure myself that the rupees were still tied carefully in a corner of my sari and then tucked securely into my waist knot. I told myself I should see if the rupees would buy a railway or bus ticket back to my maa and baap. But how could I do that? What the woman had told me was true. Because they had lost their husbands, widows were considered unlucky. If my family learned what had happened to me, it would bring them unhappiness and even shame. By now my older brother might be married, and his wife would be living in the home of my parents. There would be no room for me. Somehow I would have to make my life here.
    The next morning I was awakened by the chanting of morning hymns coming over loudspeakers. The widow I had shared the doorstep with was gone. The mattresses and charpoys were disappearing from the sidewalks. At a street corner I joined a line at a faucet for a little water to wash in and to drink. I bought the cheapest bowl of dal I could find.
    I could not keep myself from returning to the railway station. I did not really believe I would ever see Sass again; still, I could not help hoping that she would come back. I waited all day. Once I saw a woman