Free The Red Carpet by Lavanya Sankaran

Really. Just yesterday, she and Phiroze, a ten-year-old boy who lived next door, went behind his house, took off their clothes, and Had Sex. Were you sitting or standing, we asked. Tash thought it through for a minute and said, Standing. That’s how it’s always done. And then, to seal her expertise, she used the Word: we Fucked, she said, and watched as Bats, Benjy, and I rolled about on the ground, squealing and giggling.
    We knew the basic theory, of course: we had all pored through the
Reader’s Digest Family Health Guide
(available in every home), staring in silence at the picture of the naked woman (eighteen years old, according to the caption), and wondering if the senior girls in our school indeed had breasts like that, and waists like that, and god forbid, hair all over their privates. Then we’d turn the page over to the picture of the man (naked, also at eighteen years) and have a collective fit of the giggles. The guide described sex as “the insertion of the penis into the vagina,” but we knew better: sex was when a man’s su-su and a woman’s su-su touched.
    But according to Tash, we really knew nothing at all.
    Her authority was unchallenged. She’d come up with new stories, some to do with herself, others to do with our favorite storybook characters, who were always naked, and who had sex, it appeared, with hundreds of people, and all at the same time. We would listen agog, our heads close together, our feet walking, walking, round and round the field. We listened during lunchtime, we whispered in chapel, we waited for sports practice. We knew for certain that if we were ever caught, we would be severely punished. Maybe even expelled. “That’s why,” said Tash, “we have to meet Far From Everybody.”
    Accordingly, we called ourselves the Far From Everybody Club, and we waited for Tash’s creative genius to send us a note: FFEC meeting. Field. Lunchtime. That meant she’d thought of another good one. After a while, Tash got tired and we all had to take turns and come up with something new.
    That day was my turn, but somebody had abstracted the Harold Robbins from my bag. I fretted furiously. Was it someone at school? Or was it Mary at home?
    I didn’t know which was worse.
    “Never mind the book,” said Tash. “Tell us a story. Yourself and somebody else.”
    My brain struggled to come up with something, but it was difficult. I couldn’t make up anything. The only thing I could possibly tell them about myself and somebody else wasn’t some silly make-believe. It happened to be true.
    But the truth was the one thing I couldn’t really talk about. Not to my mother. Not to my friends. Truth was either like the
Reader’s Digest
or like my secret. Boring, or shameful.
    When I was little and disobeyed Mary or threw a tantrum, she was not allowed to smack me. That was a privilege reserved for my mother alone. Instead, she would devise new and interesting ways to keep me quiet. She slipped me forbidden sweets. She threw away the milk I did not want to drink and told my mother I had drunk it all. Sometimes she would drink it herself.
    By the time I was four, Mary had learned to manage me as she did my mother. Sometimes, though, I would still disobey her and run to hide behind my mother. Who would either scold me or scold Mary, depending on her mood. Like all baby-ayahs, Mary learned to cope with the magic rule: all credit for good behavior was given to me; any problems were attributed to Mary directly. “Not drunk her milk? Why? Why are you letting her behave like this?” my mother would ask. “What happened, baby? Mary scolded you and made you cry? Don’t scold her. Just tell her. She will listen, she is a good little
gundu
.”
    And Mary would agree with her, and nod her head in appreciation, and smile at me, and I, victorious, would put my hand in hers, while my mother watched in a pleased, self-satisfied way. See? she seemed to say. Any problems, just come to me.
    Except, that is, when