THREE LEAVES OF ALOE

by Rand B. Lee

Rand B. Lee has lived and worked in Northern New Mexico since 1987. His father, Manfred B. Lee, co-authored the Ellery Queen detective novels, and was close friends with Anthony Boucher, the first editor of this magazine.

“Amrit Chaudhury! Kindly report to the supervisor’s office. Amrit Chaudhury!”

Amrit looked up from her workstation and sighed in frustration. Around her rose the chatter of a hundred women’s voices, the ring of telephones, the clatter of fax lines. She was a small young woman with a heart-shaped face and large, intelligent black eyes perpetually clouded with worry. She had been laboring on the telephones at Mumbai-Astra Telecom, Ltd. for the better part of a year, and this day, which had not gone well thus far, was looking to become much worse.

“Amrit?” The undersupervisor, fat Shraddha Singh, was looming over her. “Madame needs a word,” she said. “At once, please.”

“What is it this time?” asked Amrit. Her tone held more spice than was perhaps prudent, and the undersupervisor raised an eyebrow. “I’m sorry! It’s just these Americans.” She pulled off her headset and let it fall with a clatter on her desktop. “They’re so suspicious. And they hate parting with their money so. I can be as sweet and as polite as one can wish, but it avails nothing. Three-quarters of the time they hang up before I’ve finished saying, ‘Hello, Mister Wayne, my name is Maggie Jones.’” She punched log-off to indicate an excused break, and pushed back her chair. At least, she thought, they have proper chairs here. The last place she had worked there had been only inverted oilcans to sit upon.

“‘Maggie Jones.’” Singh grunted in amusement. The women’s eyes met, and both fell simultaneously into a fit of giggles.

“‘Maggie Jones!’” cried Amrit helplessly.

“‘Bobbi Grant!’” chortled the undersupervisor, similarly irrigated.

“‘Jane West!’” Amrit put her left hand over her heart and fanned her right hand weakly. “I mean to say, it isn’t as though they can’t tell by our voices that we’re Not From Around These Parts.” She spoke this last in an exaggerated American accent, which set them both off afresh.

“Amrit Chaudhury! To the supervisor’s office at once!”

The women sobered quickly, and followed each other down the main work-aisle toward management offices. “Madame sounds angry,” said Amrit. “Do you know what this is about?”

“Your daughter, I think,” said Mrs. Singh, puffing to keep up with the younger woman’s quick strides. Amrit stopped dead and threw her a terrified look. “No, no! She’s fine, she’s fine! It’s just the school. I overheard Madame talking. A fight with one of the other girls, which I gather your Meera won rather spectacularly. They have ‘concerns’ which they wish to express to you, that’s all.”

“Not again!” groaned Amrit, and doubled her pace, adjusting her sari as she ran. When she reached the door of the supervisor’s office, she knocked timidly, then opened the door a crack and stuck in her head.

“It’s Amrit, Madame. You called for me?”

“It’s about time. Come in, come in! Don’t hang about in the hall.” Amrit entered quickly, shutting the door behind her, and stood with her back to it. Whenever she was called into Madame’s office she felt as though she were nine years old and back in school, facing the headmistress. Madame Kattungal had steel-gray hair, a prominent caste mark, and deceptively grandmotherly features. Today she was wearing a Western business suit, and when Amrit entered, she was just slamming down the phone. “You took long enough, girl. This is Mister Mehta, whom I believe”—this last heavily weighted with sarcasm—”you know.”

“Well, Mrs. Chaudhury! We meet again!” Vice-Principal Mehta’s lean figure rose from its chair near Madame’s desk and, smiling broadly, extended a hand. Amrit shook it gingerly. “I am so terribly sorry to trouble you at your place of work, but I thought it expeditious to come here directly rather than summon you to the school. Is there a spot where we might chat in private?” This last he addressed to the supervisor.

Amrit said hurriedly, “How is my daughter, Vice-Principal?” Aside from the lavatory, they were standing in the only private room available in the large, barnlike structure that made up the main headquarters of Mumbai-Astra, Limited. And Amrit had no desire to be alone with Mehta. She had several times been forced to endure his caresses in return for his leniency with her daughter Meera, and she had vowed to immolate herself rather than endure them again.

Madame gazed upon the thin man expectantly. He shrugged. “Very well. Meera quarreled with one of the upper form girls this morning. The other girl started it, I believe—some altercation over a cell phone of which your daughter was in possession. The quarrel escalated into fisticuffs. Your daughter possesses an admirable right hook, Mrs. Chaudhury. Perhaps the school ought to consider instituting a girls’ boxing team so as to make better use of her talents.”

“I’m so sorry, Vice-Principal Mehta,” said Amrit. “I’ve told and told Meera that fighting is not acceptable behavior. I can’t think what’s come over her.” She added, “Will the other girl be all right?”

“Oh, right as rain,” said Mehta cheerfully, “save for a loose tooth.” Amrit groaned. “The cell phone, however, is unsalvageable.” He drew it from the pocket of his suit jacket and handed it over to her. Amrit groaned again. It was her Mumbai-Astra phone. All the employees were issued one so that they could be on call at a moment’s notice to fill in gaps in the phone banks as they arose, and it had been missing for three days.

“Is it your habit to permit your daughter the use of your company phone, Amrit?” Madame asked with asperity.

“No, Madame.”

“A replacement will be issued immediately. Its cost will of course be deducted from your wages.”

“Naturally, Madame. And I’m sorry. It won’t happen again, I promise.”

“That’s as may be.” As if they were linked telepathically, at that moment Undersupervisor Singh knocked on the door, opened it, and looked at Madame inquiringly. “Ah, there you are, Singh. Issue Mrs. Chaudhury a new phone, charged against her weekly.” With a sympathetic glance at Amrit, the fat woman nodded and withdrew. “Will there be anything else, Mister Mehta? Amrit must return to her post.”

“I’m afraid so, Madame Kattungal. You see,” said the Vice-Principal, “at the Gupta Academy we have a policy, borrowed from the Americans, of ‘Three strikes and you are out.’ This is the fourth occasion upon which your daughter Meera has demonstrated an inability to coexist on cordial terms with her fellow students. Our normal course of action—and one which we are for many reasons loath to pursue except in times of dire necessity—would be to expel Meera forthwith, for mastering one’s temper is a skill crucial to the workings of a civilized society (as I am sure you will agree).”

“Expel her?” gasped Amrit. “Oh, no, Vice-Principal!” She had worked so hard to get her into the school, despite opposition from Meera’s paternal grandmother, who felt that too much education was bad for a girl, leading to late night parties, pierced eyelids, heroin addiction, and prostitution. “Is there nothing that can be done?” She opened her eyes as wide as she could and gave him a look so beseeching it might have melted the heart of a stone Buddha.

“Well, perhaps,” said Mehta, eyeing her back, stroking his bearded chin. “Perhaps we can discuss, ah, terms. But until such time as we come to some further understanding, the Academy will consider keeping Meera on only if you consent to have her outfitted with a nannychip.”

“A nannychip?” Madame Kattungal had been sitting silent during this interchange, impatient to have them out of her office so she might return to her appallingly busy schedule. But this last had startled her to fresh attention. “Is Meera Chaudhury such a menace to your scholastic society, then, Vice-Principal? I was under the impression that nannychips were most commonly used among potentially violent prison populations.”

“You surprise me, Madame Kattungal,” Mehta replied jovially. “I had assumed, considering your place of employ, that you would be more conversant in what the Americans are so fond of describing as the ‘cutting edge’ technologies. There are many types of nannychip nowadays. We are speaking here not of electronic lobotomization, but of the temporary outfitting of the girl with an aggression-inhibiting nannychip to ensure her cooperativeness over a predetermined and limited period, as a method of bringing home to her the importance of learning proper skills of social interaction. We’ve done it before with problem students, and the experiment has been met with much success, particularly in Germany.” He winked at the appalled women, then. “A much more humane method, you will agree, than caning, to which we were forced to resort in former days. And I assure you that Mrs. Chaudhury’s willingness to cooperate will go far in assisting the Board in envisioning a long-term future for Meera at the Academy.”

“Never,” said Amrit. She walked up to the Vice-Principal and stood so close to him that he was forced to take a step backward. “I will never consent to such a procedure. It is monstrous. It is inhumane. Why, you admitted yourself it was the other girl’s fault!”

“Four times now it has been the fault of the other girl,” said Mehta placidly. “Four times, Mrs. Chaudhury. If your Meera does not learn to master her temper, her prospects for success in this altercation-ridden world look bleak indeed.”

“What of the other girl? What of her prospects for success? Will she, too, be outfitted with a nannychip to curb her excesses of aggression?” Amrit heard her voice rise. She knew her face was red and her fists were balled, and that everyone in the outer office could hear her, but she did not care.

“That is a matter for the Board to decide,” said Vice-Principal Mehta. “I see that you are upset. Take time to think over the matter before you make a final decision we might all regret. Now if you will excuse me; I have another appointment. I came here only as a courtesy.” He attempted to step around Amrit, but she blocked his way.

“Where is she? Where is my daughter now?”

“Mrs. Chaudhury, calm yourself.” The supervisor had risen. Her quiet voice cut through Amrit’s mind-whirl. Tossing her head, she stepped aside to let the Vice-Principal pass. Mehta bowed to Mrs. Singh and paused, his hand on the office doorknob.

“I apologize again for having interrupted you ladies’ workday. Mrs. Chaudhury’s daughter should by now have arrived at their place of residence. I instructed the Assistant Vice-Principal to shepherd her safely home. And I am afraid that is where she must stay until such time as other arrangements can be agreed upon.” He smiled again at Amrit. “If you change your mind about the chip, do ring me up, Mrs. Chaudhury. That ought not to be difficult for you to do, now that you have your cell phone back.” And with that he closed the door behind him.

When Amrit got home that night to the apartment she shared with the elder Mrs. Chaudhury (her late husband’s mother), Amrit’s paternal uncle Saavit, his far-too-young-of-a-wife Gloria, their six-year-old son Dakota, Dakota’s pregnant and gender-inappropriately named rat-shrew Ganesa, and Amrit’s criminal progeny Meera, Amrit was in no mood for compromise. She marched right past her mother-in-law’s squawking complaints; through Uncle Saavit’s cloud of in-the-process-of-being-hurriedly-extinguished cigar-smoke (Gloria was still crosstown, at the Internet café where she worked long hours); pushed open without knocking the door to Meera’s little room (not much more than a converted closet, really); tore the earphones off the head of the closed-eyed, finger-tapping, unread-schoolbook-open-before-her fourteen-year-old, and said, “Meera. Put on your coat. We’re going out.”

“Ma!”

“Now.”

And then reversed the process, this time with Meera in tow (earphoneless, eyes now fully open, shrugging into her Adidas knock-off, still wearing her school uniform underneath), past Ganesa (who waffled her nose at them as they went by), past Dakota (who was plugged into his M-box and wouldn’t have noticed an atomic bomb if it had exploded under his nose), past Uncle Saavit (who had once been a professional boxer but now was huffing, “What is the fire alarm now, Amrit?”), past the elder Mrs. Chaudhury, whose complaint-squawking had not slowed one monosyllable either in Hindi or English, and out the apartment door again, nearly slamming it shut on Meera’s braid.

“Ma! Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”

And then down the six flights to the busy Mumbai street, where Amrit stopped to get her bearings. Around them, cars honked, bicyclists careered, motorized rickshaws put-putted, chapati sellers waved fragrant pancakes and called out to passersby, signs advertising Microsoft computers, Toshiba implants, and permanent waves (“Be mistaken for a film star!”) blinked on and off, and skinny pickpockets trailed camera-festooned Brazilian tourists. In the far distance, she could hear the rumble from the Mahim Railway Station. “This way,” she said.

“Ma, I won’t do it again! I promise!”

The fear in her daughter’s voice brought Amrit up short. The child was looking at her the way a mongoose observes a cobra that is beginning to rear. Amrit felt a pang. She did not wish her own daughter to fear her—not beautiful, bright, long-fingered Meera, remnant of her brief happy marriage, her only concrete contribution to the world’s future. But if fear was what it took to stop the child from throwing her life away, Amrit would harden her heart and use that fear for the child’s own good until she could find something better with which to motivate her. So all she replied was, “I want to show you something, Meera.”

They walked to the bus stop past beggars, businessmen, newspaper vendors, police. On the bus, which was nearly filled with after-work shoppers and evening-shift workers headed for cleaning jobs in the offices and apartment buildings round about, they sat side by side, Amrit still holding tight to Meera’s hand, as though she feared losing her, as though any moment she might declare her independence, run off to a party, get drunk, get her face pierced, take drugs, enter upon a life of prostitution. At the Mahim Railway Station, they got off the bus. As they mounted the steps into the station, still hand-in-hand, Meera asked, “Are you sending me away?”

“Don’t be foolish. Of course not. I said I wanted to show you something.”

“She started it!” The girl planted her feet, stared up at her mother (up? no, truth be told, only very slightly up, they were nearly of a height now; how could Amrit have not noticed that before?). “She called me a thief, Ma! She said I stole the cellphone, that it was her phone, that it could not possibly be my phone because we could not possibly afford anything so toff, and that I must give it back at once or she would tell the Vice-Principal. I told her it was not her cellphone, that it was our cellphone, that I was not a thief, and that Mother Kali could pluck out her lying tongue and feed it to her for breakfast, for all that she was of the Kshatriyas and very nearly a Brahman.” Her daughter gulped, caught her breath. “And then she slapped me. So I struck her the way Uncle Saavit showed me.”

“Are you finished?”

Meera nodded. There were tears in the corners of her big eyes, and her cheeks were flushed with passion, but there was no remorse at the corners of her mouth at all. “Then come,” said Amrit. “It’s only a little farther, this thing that I wish to show you.”

There were high brick walls between the back of the railway station and the thing Amrit wished to show her daughter, but Amrit knew every square inch of this area from childhood hours spent staring up at it from the other side. They threaded their way unnoticed through the knots of waiting commuters, sellers, and alms-seekers, past a group of saffron-clad Buddhist monks wearing sunglasses (at seven o’clock at night?), past a magazine rack sporting lurid film-star magazines, and finally to the spot she had remembered: a narrow doorway with a chain across it saying ABSOLUTELY NO ENTRY in seven languages. “We are going up there?” inquired her daughter querulously, peering up into the dimness.

“We are,” said her mother firmly, and lifted the chain. “For what I have to show you may only be viewed conveniently from the top of this stair.”

“But,” said Meera, and that is all she said, for Amrit was half-pulling, half-pushing her onto the staircase with her.

The stairs were made of wood and smelled of old urine, chapati grease, stale cigarettes, and ancient durian. A faint light filtered down the stairwell from someplace high above, but it was very dark, and the stairs were littered with trash left by squatters down through the years. Twice Meera stumbled. The first time her mother was able to arrest her fall, but the second, Meera ended up on one knee on the stair, narrowly escaping being stuck with a discarded hypodermic needle. In later years she would recall this upward passage as the most horrific experience of her young life, yet in the end they attained the top of the stair and emerged onto an open causeway under a Mumbai night sky that had somehow become overcast during their million years in the dark.

The women paused to catch their breaths. Meera was surprised to realize how far they had climbed. Behind and below them through pollution haze stretched the Mumbai they had just left: the railway station, apartment buildings, office blocks, tooting thoroughfares. Meera could see the tracks for the Western Railway stretching away into the distance, where they crossed the Mahim Sion Link Road; beyond that, she could see the filthy black waters of Mahim Bay. “Turn around,” said her mother. Her voice sounded distant, like a goddess’s. Meera turned, and found herself looking down onto a vast, confusing jungle of silent, swampy slum. “Do you know what this is?” her mother asked, sweeping her arm outward to encompass the world before them.

“Of course, Ma. Dharavi.” She could not keep the contempt from her voice.

“And what is it, this Dharavi? What do you know of it?”

“It is where the poor people dwell.” The wind picked up, bringing with it from Dharavi the scent of sewage.

“What sorts of poor people? Specify.”

“Well, potters,” she said. “Furniture makers. People from the provinces who can’t afford to live anywhere else. Tailors, people like that.” Meera found the contrast between the hooting hum of the Mumbai behind them and the deep quiet of the slum before them deeply unsettling, and she looked uncomfortably around her. They were alone on the causeway. “They all look dead from up here,” she said.

“They are not dead, child. They are resting, those who are not sewing garments all night for less income than the beggar outside our sweetshop makes in three hours. One and a half million persons living in a reclaimed mangrove swamp. No sewage treatment facilities. Uncertain electricity. Water of such poor quality that one considers oneself fortunate merely to contract dysentery from it.” Amrit looked thoughtfully out over the maze of little lanes and thoroughfares. “But see the temple, there? And the mosque? And those buildings, that school, there? Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Jains. Recycling everything, because one cannot afford to buy anything new. Your father was born there”—she stabbed the dark with her chin—”off Ninety Feet Road, not far from Kumbharwada.”

“My father? Born in Dharavi?” She could not believe what she was hearing. Meera did not remember her father; she knew him only from the holos on her mother’s old e-album, a small man, small like her mother, with ropy-muscled arms, large knuckles, and intense dark features. “You said he was from Rajasthan!” Meera’s tone was accusatory.

“I never did. I said his people were from Rajasthan. They were weavers and textile-painters. His parents came to Mumbai after the great famines, and settled in the Potters’ District. When I met your father, he was living with ten other young men in a garage, refitting automobiles for resale.” She had literally run into him, having ducked into the garage in an attempt to evade an irate fruit vendor from whom she had swiped three small green mangoes and a bar of chocolate. She had been eleven, a little girl; he, fifteen, nearly a man; out of pity he and the boys had hidden her, and afterward he had walked her home. When next she had encountered him, at a Kumbharwada street festival, nearly three years had passed, and neither he nor she had thought of her as a little girl any longer. He had known her at once. “Why, it’s the little thief!” he had cried upon seeing her again.

She had laughed in his face, giddy with the news she had just received in the post: that she, youngest daughter of a factory worker and a dockhand, had been the first female student to be accepted as a trainee computer specialist at the newly revamped and expanded Bandra-Kurla Complex. He had bought her sugared wafers, under the watchful eye of her three older sisters; and that summer, at the height of the worst dysentery outbreak Dharavi had endured in several years, they had kissed for the first time in the pouring rain.

Standing with her daughter on the border between light and darkness, Amrit turned to Meera and said, “Listen to me, girl. No, listen. The Kshatriya girl? The one who called you a thief? She was speaking the truth.”

“No, Ma!”

“The cellphone was not yours to borrow. Nor was it mine to loan, though had it been I would have loaned it to you for the asking. It belonged to the company for which I work. Today I had to purchase another cellphone to replace the one that was broken in the altercation between you and the Kshatriya. The cost of that phone will be deducted from my wages.”

“I’m sorry!”

“It is too late for sorrow.” Harden your heart, she reminded herself. “The Vice-Principal from your school came to see me at work today. I suppose you know this?” The girl nodded miserably. “Do you know what he said to me?” Meera shook her head. “He told me that in light of the four violent quarrels in which you have been engaged this term, unless I agree to have you outfitted with a nannychip to curb your aggressive response tendencies, he will see that you are expelled from the Academy.”

Having hurled her bomb, Amrit watched it hit home and burst behind the girl’s eyes. She had not let go of her daughter’s hand the entire time they had been in the street, and it was well that she had not, for the moment comprehension dawned in Meera’s young face, the child turned and lunged for the nearest guard-rail.

Amrit yanked her, pulled her back. “What are you doing?” she cried. “What are you doing?”

“Let me go! A nannychip? I would die, rather!” Her mouth was an open wound. Howling, Meera reversed direction and barreled into her mother, sending her staggering backward. “I hate you! A nannychip? I hate you, I hate you!”

“Stop it! I did not say that I had agreed!” Amrit slapped the girl’s face. Meera cried out, once; then stood stock-still, hands over her eyes, thin shoulders shuddering in the thin jacket of pirated ripstop nylon, sobbing raggedly.

“What is going on up here?”

Amrit turned, clutching Meera to her protectively. A man had come up the stair and was shining a flashlight in their faces. “You are not permitted on this causeway! Did you not observe the sign below? What is going on here?”

“We were just,” said Amrit, and for some reason she was having a hard time summoning enough breath to form the words, so that they came out in puffs, like Uncle Saavit’s cigar-smoke, “we were just, just, seeking the, view!” And then she was pushing past the man, half-carrying her daughter, half-dragging her, tumbling down the stair as fast as she could, while the man shouted, “You are not permitted! You are not permitted!” over and over again.

When they returned to their flat, they found that Dakota had been pried from his electronics and sent to bed, and that Gloria had returned and was huddled in fierce consultation with Uncle Saavit and the elder Mrs. Chaudhury. These three looked up as Amrit and Meera came in. To their questions Amrit replied not a word, but marched Meera past them and into her little room. Less than a minute later, Amrit emerged from the room, sans her progeny, shutting the door firmly behind her. Then she went into the tiny kitchen to fix a pot of tea.

Gloria followed her into the kitchen and stood silently, waiting, her arms crossed over her chest, while Amrit filled the teakettle and lit the pilot light on the ancient propane stove. Gloria was nearly half Uncle Saavit’s age, and would have been a beauty, thought Amrit, had it not been for her absurd adoption of the latest youth styles from China: LEDs imbedded in her forehead and chin and chop marks tattooed on her neck. Gloria, Mumbai born and bred, had been working as a waitress in one of the new holo-discos when she had met Saavit, and Amrit was not blind to the effect Gloria’s excruciatingly modern presence in the house was having upon impressionable young Meera. Young! Amrit thought, waiting for the water to boil. In the old days, at fifteen Meera would already have been married a year, with a child on the way. She herself had married Meera’s father at seventeen, and now here she was, a widow at thirty-two, with a dead-end job and no romantic prospects, certainly. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, she chided. You speak of the old days? In the old days, you would have been expected to have flung yourself upon your husband’s funeral pyre. At least you have a job.

The kettle sang. Amrit had readied the tea leaves in the next-best steeping pot; she poured the boiling water over them until the steeping pot was filled, then replaced the kettle on the stove and put the lid on the pot. Only then did she turn round and smile at the waiting Gloria. “Would you like some tea, Auntie?” Amrit asked.

It was an old joke between them. When first Uncle Saavit had brought his fiancée home, Amrit had judged her an opportunist fishing the river of senility, and had said as much to Saavit in so many words. But over the weeks and months, and after the wedding when a pregnant Gloria had moved in with them, Amrit had come to appreciate her probity, practicality, and intelligence; and she was certainly a hard worker, contributing to the communal treasury through long hours at the e-café a substantial portion of the revenues that Saavit’s ailing limousine service failed to provide. So Gloria and Amrit had taken to calling one another “Niece” and “Auntie,” and usually it eased the tensions that occasionally cropped up between them.

But this time Gloria did not smile. She said, “Saavit and Parvati just told me what has happened.” For reasons unclear to Amrit, Gloria was the only one in the household suffered to address Amrit’s mother-in-law by her given name.

“And how would Saavit and Mrs. Chaudhury know?”

“The Assistant Vice-Principal told them when he brought Meera home this afternoon.”

“Ah. Of course. No tea?” Gloria shook her head. In the dim kitchen, her LEDs were pinpricks of light. “Then you all know that Meera faces suspension for quarreling.”

“Yes. It is so unjust!” The words came out slowly, almost thoughtfully. “It was the other girl’s fault. Saavit says that the Assistant Vice-Principal admitted as much.”

“Nonetheless. Meera knew the rules. This was her fourth offense. She must take her share of the responsibility.” Amrit turned away, took down a teacup, saucer, and tea strainer from the shelf, and removed a teaspoon from the kitchen drawer. She noticed that her hands were trembling. She set the tea things on the little kitchen table to await the completion of the tea leaves’ steeping. Without looking round again, Amrit said, “Did the Assistant Vice-Principal also inform you under what circumstances Meera would be permitted to remain at school?”

“It happened to me.”

Shocked, Amrit turned. Though her expression was calm, tears were running down Gloria’s beautiful brown cheeks. “Sit,” Amrit ordered. The girl sat down at the table. Amrit sat down on the chair next to her. “What do you mean, it happened to you? What happened to you?”

“The nannychip. Saavit knows about it, but there are other things he doesn’t know about, and would not understand if he did.” Gloria glanced toward the parlor. “Promise me you will not tell him what I am about to tell you.”

“I promise.” Amrit pulled a handkerchief from a sleeve and handed it to her. Gloria took it and dabbed at her eyes. When she spoke, it was precisely and with an odd detachment, as though she were reading from a teleprompter.

“It was when I was at Girls’ Reformatory. They were just experimenting with them then, the chips. I was thirteen and a half. I had been sent to Reformatory for selling pirated Mufti HDs at school.”

“Mufti?” said Amrit. “The singing group?” She had heard of it, vaguely, a neo-Raj rock band that had enjoyed a brief and shocking vogue in the Sixties.

The girl nodded. “My older brother had me sent there. It was a Christian school; very strict. He said I needed a lesson; that I had gone wild since our parents had died; that he couldn’t cope. The sisters were demons. Nothing one did was right. I fought back, so I was targeted for extra remedial discipline.” She looked up at Amrit, black eyes glittering. “They brought in the chips program. They had been tested in the prisons and were just then being reconfigured for less violent offenders. It was a government sponsored project. My brother signed the permission papers; Sister Kamala showed them to me. Then they made us go through with the operation.”

“Oh, Gloria.” Amrit took the girl’s hand. “What was it—how did—?”

The hand beneath Amrit’s balled suddenly into a small, hard fist. “There were six of us. They gave the chip to each of us. They implanted it here,” she said, pointing with her free hand to a spot on her skull. “We were kept awake for the operation; we had to be, for the testing: everyone’s brain is different, they told us; one’s chip had to be fine-tuned, they said. They touched us here and here and here and said, ‘Can you feel this, Miss? What about this, Miss?’ And, ‘What do you see now? What do you smell now?’ for the chips, they sometimes cause hallucinations.”

“Yes,” said Amrit faintly. “Yes, I read that. Auditory and olfactory hallucinations. Visual ones as well, if the chips are not adjusted correctly.”

Gloria’s fist did not unclench. “Do not misunderstand me,” she said. “The operation did not hurt. The doctors were not unkind. We were treated with great politeness. And of course we were not the only ones.”

“I read that also,” said Amrit. “The second-generation chips were tried in over sixty reform schools throughout India. Mostly state-run schools, but some religious institutions as well. There was no official pronouncement made; rumors on the Internet, that is all. Not until the change in governments, when the scandal broke.” She kissed the girl’s fist. “Oh, Gloria. I had no idea. I am so terribly sorry.”

“But wait,” said the girl. “I have not told you the best part of the story.” She did not seem young, now. Her voice, though still pitched low, had both cooled into ice and sharpened into steel, and her gaze was so intense that it was all that Amrit could do not to look away. “At first, the first week after they implanted the chips, none of us felt much different. I felt rather good, actually: calmer, insulated, as though I were wrapped in cotton wool. The others, they felt the same. We would meet in the lavatory and talk about it. When someone, one of the unchipped girls, would make a nasty remark, instead of flying into a rage I would simply laugh and walk away. It was as though nothing could trouble me, not even Sister Kamala.”

Her lips quirked into a small smile. “That was the best part of it, actually: feeling as though nothing that demon bitch might do could reach me. It drove her and the other sisters insane. You would have thought they’d have been pleased that their little hellions had been becalmed, but it seemed to disappoint them instead. I think they thought we were playacting. So they used extra humiliations in an attempt to make us angry, so they would have an excuse to punish us again. But it didn’t work. We simply didn’t react, beyond, ‘Yes, Sister. No, Sister. At once, Sister.’ The other girls and I, we said to one another, ‘This isn’t half bad, really.’ It was as though our chips were our friends: better than drugs, because they didn’t ruin our lungs or spoil our concentration. We could still study our lessons. In fact, our minds felt clearer than ever they had before. Relaxed, but clear, the way the yogis say meditation makes you feel if you bother to practice it long enough.

“At the end of that first week, when they herded us into the center again for our first check-up, the doctors and sisters seemed very pleased. The technician who examined me joked that if the chips made everybody feel as good as ours were making us feel, perhaps everyone could benefit from an implant.” She laughed again, a hint of bitterness in her tone. “Then it changed.”

Amrit waited for a moment, then said, “I have read—that some of the second generation chip recipients—began displaying symptoms not unlike those suffered by autistics.”

“I suppose you could put it that way.” Gloria stood up abruptly, pulling her fist free from Amrit’s hands, and crossing her arms again, uttered her next remarks with her back half-turned and her hair half-mantling her face. “By the third week two of us were dead—suicide; one of us was in hospital suffering from concussion—self-induced; and two of us had gone straight round the bend: full-fledged delusional—UFOs, past-life recall, bloody Krishna and the shepherd girls, what have you. Or was that Vishnu and the shepherdesses? I can never bloody remember.”

“That makes five,” said Amrit. “You said there were six of you implanted. Were you—”

“Was I the concussion victim or one of the nutters? None of the above, Niece. I was the success.”

“The success?”

“That’s right. The success.” Her profile was beautiful and still, a statue’s profile. “Throughout it all—Pinnai leaping from the chapel roof, thinking she could fly; Fatima setting herself afire so she might free herself from the wheel of karma; Varali trying to pound the voices out of her skull—I felt nothing.”

She looked at Amrit then, the LEDs shifting the shadows on her brow. “Do you understand me, Amrit? I felt nothing. Nothing at all. I saw these things—I was there when Pinnai jumped—and it was as though I were watching a thriller on the telly. None of it reached me at all. I even helped Sister Kamala clean up the mess in the chapel yard. By that time, I couldn’t even hate her. And now we come to the part you mustn’t tell my husband.”

“I don’t understand,” said Amrit. “I thought—the reformatory—”

“No. Saavit knows about that. He knows about the chip as well. I told him, the night before the wedding. I thought it was only fair, considering his kindness to me. But I was afraid to tell him everything.”

“No, Gloria, wait.” Amrit found herself upon her feet. Suddenly she felt terribly afraid. “Perhaps—perhaps it would be best not to tell. Not to tell me.”

The girl’s face was implacable. “But I must. Because if I do not, your decision concerning Meera will not be a fully informed one. And I care about Meera, in my way; she reminds me so of myself at that age. Well, of myself as I would have been had I reached that age intact.

“What I need to tell you, Amrit, so that you know precisely and without a shadow of doubt the possible repercussions of chipping your daughter, is that the detachment the chip gave me? It never went away.”

After a moment Amrit said, “I do not understand. They took the chip out, didn’t they? I mean to say that I have seen you: angry, sad, happy. I have seen you with Saavit. You seem happy with him. They did remove the chip?”

“Yes. They removed it,” said Gloria. “They removed it. And yes, I could feel things again. The entire range of human emotion was available to me once more. But I found that I no longer cared. My body cared: it experienced revulsion, and lust, and terror, and comforts. But I did not. I feel all those things—I watch my body experience all those emotions—but at the core of me, there is nothing.

“It’s all right,” she added, smiling at Amrit. “I’m used to it, now. I do care for Saavit, as much as I can care for anybody; he has been very good to me. And for Dakota, of course. And for all of you. I am very grateful to be a part of the family,” and somehow the way she said it made Amrit wish that the girl would shout, and curse, anything other than what she was doing, which was simply standing there, speaking of those closest to her as though they were very distant relatives she had read about in a history book. “And that is why I spend so much time working at the café, I suppose. I do it, not only because by doing so I am contributing materially to the family’s welfare, but because there I do not have to pretend to have a self. I can lose myself, in the Net, in the graphics programs, whatever it may be. I become—information, if you will.” She cocked her head. “Perhaps I am not putting it very clearly.”

“Do you mean,” said Amrit desperately, “that you experience a disconnect with the feeling part of yourself? As in post-traumatic stress disorder?” Even as she said it she knew that it was not what Gloria had meant at all. Her horror mounting, she looked at her uncle’s young bride again, and it was as though she were seeing her for the first time. So that, when the girl said, “No, this is what I mean,” and picked up the pot of barely cooling tea, and lifted it over to the kitchen sink, and held out her slim-wristed hand with its long lacquered fingernails, and calmly poured the scalding tea over it with no trace of concern upon her face. Amrit watched the skin redden and the fingers twitch in agony and thought, She is not human. She is not human anymore. And nearly laughed, because was not this supernal recognition of nonexistence what the Buddhists always seemed to be striving for? The enlightenment of no-self? Was not this what the Christians meant when they said, Not I, but Christ in me?

Then she had grasped the girl’s wrist, and had knocked the teapot from her grasp; and, as quickly as she could, was turning on the cold-water-faucet and holding the girl’s hand beneath the resultant flow. Gloria made no attempt to resist. She simply observed the process, as though it were not her hand at all, but someone else’s, despite the fact that the pain must certainly have been very great indeed.

“What has happened? We heard a crash!” Mrs. Chaudhury appeared at the door, Uncle Saavit close behind her. At a glance she noted the teapot, which had shattered upon the floor in its fall; the spreading pool of hot tea; the sodden detritus of steeped leaves; Gloria’s reddened wrist. “My God! Are you all right? Here, girl, let me. Saavit, get the mop!” She interposed herself between Amrit and Gloria and took the girl’s hand into her own. “Amrit, the aloe.” Dumbly Amrit turned and left the kitchen, pushing past Saavit’s concerned bluster. In the windowbox on the fire escape, aloe plants were growing; Amrit snapped off three large leaves and hurried back with them.

Meera had come out of her room and was standing in the middle of the parlor. She looked pale, but red around the eyes, as though she had been crying. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “What’s wrong, Mama?”

“Nothing, Meera,” Amrit said over her shoulder. “There’s been a little accident, that is all. Return to your room; I shall be with you momentarily. I wish to speak with you.” She went back into the kitchen. Saavit was busily mopping up the spilled tea and rounding up pieces of broken pot, but otherwise the tableau was the same as when she had left it: her mother-in-law bent over Gloria’s raw wrist, laving it, while Gloria looked on, placidly unconcerned. “The aloe,” Amrit said.

Mrs. Chaudhury did not look up. “Thank you, Daughter. If you would be so kind as to split the leaves and scrape the gel into a bowl.”

“Yes,” Amrit said, “Mother.” She took a knife from the drawer, sat down at the kitchen table, and carefully halved the aloe leaves, revealing their glistening interiors. Scoring the gel with the knife, she took the spoon from her saucer and used it to scrape the innards of the leaves into her teacup. Then she conveyed the cup to her mother-in-law, who took it from her without comment. Amrit stood there for a moment, uncertain what to do next; then she turned and left the kitchen.

Meera had left the sitting room. In the hallway outside of Meera’s closet, Amrit hesitated, then knocked. “Meera?”

“I’m here, Mama.”

She sounds so tired, thought Amrit. She pulled the door ajar. Meera was sitting crosslegged on her carpet. A schoolbook lay opened upon her lap. She looked up, saw her mother standing there, and burst into tears. Amrit went over to her and sat down on the carpet beside her. “I’m sorry, Mama,” Meera said. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Don’t let them chip me. Please, Mama, don’t let them, please don’t let them, I’ll be good, I’ll do anything, only don’t let them chip me, please please.”

“Hush now, hush.” Amrit took her daughter into her arms and pressed her head against her chest. “Hush, now. Nobody’s going to let anybody chip anybody.”

“But Assistant Vice-Principal said—”

“The Assistant Vice-Principal can go suck a mango,” said Amrit, “and for that matter, so can Vice-Principal Mehta. No one is going to nannychip my daughter, and that is the end of it.”

“But he said—they will expel me—and you work so hard—”

“Yes, yes, your mama works so very hard in her foolish pride to give her daughter the opportunities she was too timid to seek for herself. There are other schools, perhaps not as famous nor as fine. What of it?”

“But, Mama—”

“That is the end of it, Meera. There will be no nannychipping and that is that.” She kissed her daughter upon the top of her sweet head. Then she placed her lips close to Meera’s beautiful ear. “Do not stop feeling, Meera,” she whispered fiercely. “It is good to feel, however inconvenient those feelings may happen to be. For if you cease to feel, you are as good as dead, bugger the bloody Buddha. Do not forget, Meera. Promise me.”

“I won’t forget, Mama, I promise,” said her daughter, who, though perhaps not quite understanding, showed no signs of inclination to break the embrace they shared. So Amrit continued to hold her, for the longest time, thinking in her own mind how many forces in her own life had conspired to deaden her own passions. Then she had another thought, which made her pull herself from Meera’s grasp and hold her at elbow’s length. “However,” Amrit added, in a fierce voice, “if you are going to quarrel with every bully who accosts you, you had best become more proficient at fisticuffs. While we are seeking another school in which to place you, you will resume your boxing lessons with your Uncle Saavit. Am I understood?”

“Yes, Mama!” cried her fierce young troublemaker. “Yes!” And they held one another again until old Mrs. Chaudhury came into the room, took in the scene, and asked in a very mild tone if, now that the storm of crises appeared to have passed, anyone in this madhouse would mind if she attempted to make another pot of tea.

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