Free Garden of Dreams by Melissa Siebert Page B

from her frilly pink pyjama sleeves to embrace Sanjana. ‘Poor child,’ she said, ‘come in and bring your friends.’
    ‘Where’s Ojal?’ Eli asked, as the hijras settled them in fat, plush chairs in the lounge, where the lamps burnt low, and set upon them with facecloths.
    ‘We are in fact looking for Ojal at this very moment.’ It was a stern, oversized hijra speaking, who reclined like an overfed cat on a divan with her feet up and a young hijra seated at her feet. She stroked her fat tummy as she spoke. ‘Girls, remind me who is out looking for her now?’
    ‘Varuni and Ela, Guru Bhavini,’ Jasu said. ‘But they have been gone too long. Nearly seven hours now.’
    The guru, distracted for a moment, kicked the backside of the young hijra sharing the divan. ‘Chai for our guests, Sarika!’ She turned again to her audience. ‘Ojal doesn’t worry me. If anyone knows her way around G.B. Road, it is her. Most probably she is out turning a few tricks or watching the fire. You know how she loves to peep.’
    ‘Bhavini-ji,’ Jasu said, ‘may I take the children for a wash?’
    ‘Make it snappy,’ said the guru, ‘chai is coming.’
    Jasu nodded to Eli and Ravi to follow him, or her; the girls went off with another hijra in the opposite direction. They stopped at the open door to a bathroom like the inside of an Easter egg, the kind with a magical scene inside. Yellow and pink and blue pastels, pink soaps, pink toilet-seat cover – it all made Eli slightly ill.
    Jasu turned on the tap in the old tub and started ripping off Ravi’s soiled clothes. Ravi just stood there.
    ‘I’ll wait outside,’ Eli said.
    ‘No, sweetie, you and Ravi will share the bath. Not much hot water to go around.’
    Ravi was now stark naked, trembling. Jasu felt the water, barely six inches deep, and shut off the tap. ‘Get in.’
    As Jasu left, instructing them to leave their dirty clothes outside the door, Ravi sat in the tub, motionless. Eli decided he was in shock and knelt down next to him. ‘I’ll wash your back, OK?’
    Ravi nodded, mute. Eli ran the pink soap lightly over the dainty back, shoulder blades sticking out like small boomerangs, a visible chain of vertebrae. ‘Don’t worry, Ravi,’ he said, ‘you’re going home.’
    Finally the small boy spoke, not looking at him. ‘I don’t have home.’
    ‘Where are your parents?’
    ‘No parents.’
    Eli stopped washing and looked at Ravi’s eyes, trying to catch them. ‘Maybe you just don’t remember them.’
    ‘No,’ said Ravi, turning towards him with a wounded look, ‘all I remember is Auntie-ji. My whole life with Auntie-ji. Now she’s gone.’
    Hell yeah,
Eli wanted to say. ‘Maybe she escaped,’ he said, hoping above all else that she didn’t.
    Ravi shrugged his shoulders and started washing himself, feebly. Eli shed his smoky suit and joined him. Maybe he was in shock too, if this was what shock felt like. Nothing to say, just going through the motions of bathing himself, an act he vaguely remembered as comforting.
    ‘Go back to them,’ Eli told Ravi when they’d finished, only boxers on. ‘I’ll come just now.’ Using the damp pink towel as a cloak, he wandered down the darkened hallway, towards what he imagined was the kitchen; there was an eerie glow and the hum of an old refrigerator as he approached. A solitary bulb cast blue shadows around the room, just a chopping table in the middle, no chairs, and a few gas burners on the counter, no stove. But the room had what he wanted, urgently: aphone, on the wall. Really old-school, black and grimy. He reached for the receiver and prayed the operator spoke English. Cape Town, he’d say when she asked him about the collect call. I want to speak to my mom.
    Silence. No Indian voice, no voice at all on the end of the line. It was dead.
    He stared at the black thing in his hand and then replaced it, numbly, on the wall. He’d call his mother, soon, somehow. He didn’t know his father’s