Free A Disobedient Girl by Ru Freeman

fine yellow paper edged in red. Her name, her age, her height, her weight, Mr. Vithanage’s address, and her medical history, which was mentioned and written down as being “clean,” in clear, flowing blue script, all of it pouring onto the page along the space allocated for Entry No. 1193. After he left and they settled her in, they taught her to pray, kneeling and standing, morning, noon, and night. She had tasks but not too many, just enough to be useful but not enough to be harmful to her. It was like a holiday. At first, they took her for walks in the convent gardens, to see and smell roses again. But the scent of real roses made her feel ill and the walks tired her out, so they gave up on that and taught her to sew instead.
    She sewed and prayed, sewed and prayed, sitting by the window of the stone wing in which they all lived. She embroidered stacks of clothes: doll clothes, with three holes in each for a newborn’s armsand head, and a ribbon to tie it on at the back. Pale green, pale yellow, pale pink, pale blue, white, like Mrs. Vithanage’s saris, which she no longer saw because she was at the convent and thankful to be there after all the trouble she had caused.
    “Who did this?” Mrs. Vithanage had asked when Soma told her about the early morning vomiting and the craving for pickled mangoes. “Who? Do you know, Soma?”
    “Ajith, sir,” Soma had said. “He’s the one who did it.”
    “Ajith? Who the hell is Ajith?” Mr. Vithanage had demanded, the angriest she had ever seen him.
    “A boy who lives down the next lane,” the driver had told them, standing by and sucking his back teeth like he had always known this would happen. Disgusting.
    “A Colombo Seven boy?” Oh, Latha was evil to have felt—and still feel—that momentary flash of glee at the horror in Mrs. Vithanage’s voice. And when Mrs. Vithanage had yanked her out of the storeroom by her hair, her hands and body shaking with rage—was it because of the inconvenience? the shame? or because Colombo 7 was just as crass and vile as the worst of slums?—and screamed at her and asked her what she had been thinking to repay their kindness with her whoring, she had taken pride in her defiance, and in the absence of a single tear.
    “I wanted a pair of sandals and you wouldn’t let me have my money,” she had said, which was the absolute truth. Then Mrs. Vithanage had slapped her. Once, so hard her face spun on her neck. And she still had not cried, but turned to her and said, “He was Thara’s boyfriend, but he preferred me.”
    “Thara? Did you say Thara ? She’s madam to you. Do you understand? You filthy bitch, you—”
    But Mr. Vithanage had stepped forward and taken his spluttering, weeping wife away, and yes, Latha had felt remorseful at the look he gave her: disappointed in her behavior, as if he had expected more of her than that, as if he had believed her to be capable of something higher. And she had cried then, heaving and sobbing on the mat in the storeroom because of that look and because of Gehan, but not even Soma had come to comfort her this time.
    The Vithanages hadn’t even told Thara the truth when she camehome from school. They had blamed it all on the driver, for whom Latha had felt sorry for the first time, for having been sacrificed in the name of the Vithanage family honor that way, and for not blaming her for her role in bringing about his fall from grace.
    “That’s how it is,” he had said bitterly to her. “They have to find someone to pile their filth on. This time it’s me. Nevermind. I can always find another family, but let’s see if they can find a better driver.” He had looked back at the house and spat on the ground before he walked out of the gate.
    As soon as they had dismissed him, they had prepared to take her to the convent. “For training,” they had told their friends and relatives, who had nodded as if they believed that story though they all knew what that meant and that it had