What the Body Remembers by Shauna Singh Baldwin

She wore it last to a party full of Europeans.

She knows every link in it and the sheen of its red enamel.

She knows the gold of this one well she ordered it from the goldsmith herself, And she sees Sardarji has given her a kantha necklace, one of her own. Satya's hands drop to Roop's neck and encircle it lightly, for she is not trying to frighten her. Some remnant of Afghan blood in their past in other circumstances she might have been Roop's aunt or cousin. Presses her fingers to Roop's cheekbones, they are high, like her own. Roop's tongue is soft and a healthy pink and from it a man will hear no truths he cannot explain away. She hopes that as they come they will bring pain. She examines Roop's teeth and finds all of them whole, the back ones barely visible. It falls, a moonlit river, down the valley of her spine. Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, they are like the three strands of her hair, a strong rope against the British, but separate nevertheless. Roop is a new Sikh, then, an uncomprehending carrier of the orthodoxy resurging in them all. Satya lifts Roop's plait around her shoulder and examines the tip-too few split ends it has felt the scissors

Unlike Satya's, it has no need yet for henna. Roop's hair is long, to her thighs, softened by amla and scented with coconut. Unlike Satya's grey ones, they are demurely lowered, innocent.Ī man could tell those eyes anything and they would believe him, a man could kiss those red lips for hours and they would look fuller and more luscious for the bruising. Skin, smooth as a new apricot beckoning from the limb of a tall tree, her wide, heavily lashed brown eyes. She studies Roop's features, her Pothwari She takes Roop's chin and raises her face to the afternoon sun, willing it to blind her, but it will do her no such service. If in welcome, so she can study the girl. When she comes before her, Satya does not speak, but rises from the divan and takes Roop's chunni from her shoulders, as She has a servant summon Roop to her sitting room in the afternoon, when Sardarji has gone to a canal engineers' meeting.

She tells herself she pities Roop, but hears laughter answering her-how difficult it is to deceive yourself when you have known yourself a full forty-two years. Satya's heart is black and dense as a stone within her.

What the Body Remembers by Shauna Singh Baldwin