Free Sold by Patricia McCormick Page A

this, a feisty little Monica.
    “I bet she pinches your sister when she tries to make her eat it,” I say.
    Monica looks surprised, then she laughs and pinches my ear, ever so slightly, and we go back to watching a TV world full of brides and white horses.

A GIFT
    Today, Harish tells me, is the festival of brothers and sisters. He shows me the rag doll he is giving to Jeena. “I bought it with my own money” he says.
    Then he hands me a pencil. It is shiny yellow and it smells of lead and rubber. And possibility.
    “For you,” he says.
    And then he runs off, his paper kite in his hand. And I am glad because something strange is happening. Something surprising and unstoppable.
    A tear is running down my cheek. It quivers a moment on the tip of my nose, then splashes onto my skirt, leaving a small, dark circle.
    I have been beaten here,
locked away,
violated a hundred times
and a hundred times more.
I have been starved
and cheated,
tricked
and disgraced.
    How odd it is that I am undone by the simple kindness of a small boy with a yellow pencil.

SOMETHING FOR THE DAVID BECKHAM BOY
    The next day, I am at the window waiting for Harish to return from school. I see him come down the lane, playing make-believe soccer with a tin can. I tap on the windowpane, and a few minutes later I hear him bounding up the steps.
    He walks into our room and I offer him my gift: it is a ball of rags, my old homespun shawl, ripped into shreds and tied in a tight round bundle.
    He is puzzled at this bundle of ragged cloth.
    “A soccer ball,” I tell him.
    He takes the ball of rags and balances it on his toe. He nods his approval. He nudges it around the room. Then gives it a good, solid kick toward the door frame. He spreads his arms wide, like a bird in flight, and calls back a quick thank you over his shoulder.
    Then he is gone. I hear the front door close, and I run to the window to watch him turn into a barefoot David Beckham dodging shoppers and rickshaws as he heads down the lane.
    I follow him with my eyes for as long as I can. A piece of me has left Happiness House.

WHEN MONICA LEFT
    She gave away all her makeup and fancy baubles. She even gave Shahanna the shoes she’d thrown at her. She came to my room to say good-bye, but I hid under the blanket, feigning sleep so she would not see the envy in my heart.
    After she left, I found the movie magazine she’d left on my pillow.
    That afternoon, the cook put a sad song on the music machine. And we who remain at Happiness House listened all the way through to the end, too unhappy for tears.

SORRY
    By the time Harish comes home today, the sun has set and it is already time for me to go to work. But he takes a minute to teach me two new words before going up to the roof to fly his kite.
    The first word is marbles. He holds out his hand and shows me the colorful glass balls. He explains, I think, that he was late for our lesson because he was playing marbles with his friends at the American lady’s school.
    The other word is sorry. He says he is very sad that we can’t have our lesson today. This, he said, is what sorry means.
    I ruffle his hair and tell him not to be sad. Anyway, I say, today my head aches too badly to have a lesson.

THE COST OF A CURE
    I lie on my cot, drenched in sweat, struggling to wake up.
    I slip into a dream, and Gita and are I playing the hopping’on-one-leg game in the dirt path between our huts. She bends, scoops a stone up from one of the squares we’ve drawn with a stick, then she skips away, her long, black braid swinging side to side, in time with her singsong chant. She turns back and beckons me to follow her. But somehow she has turned into Auntie Bimla singing the same song through black-stained teeth.
    I open my eyes and see the place where I live now: a dank room with four beds, four dirty curtains hanging from the ceiling, and iron bars on the windows.
    Now I am shaking with cold. I pull the thin sheet around my shoulders, but the trembling goes