Free Sold by Patricia McCormick

Harish says.
    These are the American words I can say:
Big Bird,
Elmo,
ice cream,
soccer.

DONT CROSS THE COOK
    Today I learn a new Hindi sentence: “ Don’t cross the cook or she will spit in your soup.”
    Harish says this with a very serious face, and at first I don’t recognize the word cook.
    So he uses his hands to make a stirring gesture. I still don’t get the meaning.
    And so he draws the shape of a fat-bottomed woman in his notebook. Then he jumps up, puffs out his stomach, and stomps around the room, his skinny little-boy legs pounding out a perfect imitation of her thundering walk.
    “Cook!” I cry out at last.
    Harish throws back his head and laughs.
    And I laugh, too.
    It is strange to laugh after all these months, odd and unfamiliar. But somehow, not hard at all.

AN ACCIDENTAL KINDNESS
    The man who came to my room today was not like the others. He was young and clean and gentle.
    He did not simply stand and zip his trousers when he was finished, or fall heavily asleep on top of me the way some do. He didn’t fix his hair in the mirror and walk out without a word.
    He held me.
    Perhaps it was an accident. Or perhaps he forgot where he was, imagining for a moment he was with his sweetheart.
    But I could feel myself, my true self give in to the simple pleasure of being held. His body warmed mine the way the Himalayan sun warms the soil. His skin was soft—like the velvet of Tali’s nose. And his contentment soaked through to me like an evening rain shower.
    And so I held him, too.
    Slowly, I put my arms around him and allowed them to stay.
    Eventually, we pulled apart. I was the last to let go.
    He stood and looked at me with something like shyness. “Thank you,” he said. Harish had taught me how to say thank you m his language, but it seemed a paltry word for my debt to this man.

AM I PRETTY?
    In the days after the hugging man leaves, I consider myself in the mirror. My plain self, not the self wearing lipstick and eyeliner and a filmy dress.
    Sometimes I see a girl who is growing into womanhood. Other days I see a girl growing old before her time.
    It doesn’t matter, of course. Because no one will ever want me now.

NOT COUNTING
    It has been twelve days since the hugging man came.
    I have decided to stop counting the days until he comes back.

UNDERSTANDING MONICA
    Everyone here is afraid of Monica’s temper. When the cook put a sad song on the music machine, Monica yanked on her braid until she turned it off. When Anita asked if it was true that she had a child back home, Monica pinched her ear until she howled. And when Shahanna entered her room without permission, Monica threw a pair of shoes at her.
    But Monica is also given to strange fits of kindness. Once, when the dirty-hands doctor pushed himself up against me in a back hall, Monica pried him off of me and told him he would have to pay like everyone else. And the other day, she gave Anita a bottle of nail polish, saying she wouldn’t need it when she goes home next month.
    And so when I see her watching TV alone, I slip into the room and sit silently nearby, wondering which Monica she is today.
    She regards me, then lights a cigarette. “You know how to write, don’t you?”
    I do. At home, such a skill is something to boast about. But as Shahanna has told me, here, it is a dangerous thing to admit.
    “’My little girl can write,” she says. “I am paying her school fees.” So it is true, the rumor of Monica’s child.
    “I paid for her medicine,” Monica says, thrusting her pointy chin in the air. “And for an operation for my father. And for a pair of spectacles for my sister.”
    I raise my chin, too.
    “I am buying a new roof for my family,” I say.
    Monica exhales. “They will thank us,” she says. “They will thank us and honor us when we go home.”
    I dare not picture this, a date so far away that it is like a dream.
    “My sister wrote and said my little girl hates porridge,” Monica says.
    I try to picture