Out of the Cages Read online

  ***

  ‘How old is she?’ A different doctor stood beside her bed now with a chubby-faced nurse. Meena blinked. The room was quiet now. The doors to Emergency pulled closed. All evidence that an ambulance had come and gone had been cleared away. She was the only body on a bed.

  ‘Does she have a file? When did she arrive? Who brought her here?’

  The chubby nurse hurried to check the end of the bed. ‘No file, sir.’

  Meena heard a familiar voice crack and then lift, ‘Excuse me, sir. The police brought her, sir.’ It was the woman with the broom.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Last night, sir. I told them to take her to OPD, but they said she was Emergency. They said she came from the … The Cages, sir.’ The cleaning lady faltered.

  Meena’s mind struggled to understand. Cages? Trapped birds were kept in cages. She had come from Madam’s hotel.

  The doctor folded his arms, his eyes locked on Meena’s face. Her vision of him shifted. He wobbled and grew transparent before her eyes. Would he buy them new clothes? She didn’t want new clothes. No new clothes. No jewellery ... she flinched.

  ‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ the doctor spoke too loud. He reached his cool ungloved hand against Meena’s cheek and gently pulled down her eyelid with a finger from the other hand. ‘She’s malnourished. And dehydrated, on top of whatever else she’s dealing with. Has anyone given her anything to drink?’

  The nurse remained silent. The sweeping lady mumbled something about being paid to sweep. The doctor shook his head. ‘She’s a sex worker, then?’

  Meena stared at his shiny face, clean shaven, nick-free. Sex worker? But she hadn’t had a choice. Not like Sarita, who had paid back her debt and chose to stay. Not like Madam, who had made enough money in her younger years to run her own hotel. Not like Ganga. Ganga? Something in her chest pounded panic. She crawled as far away from the doctor as she could.

  He frowned. ‘Make her a file. Do a basic examination, then send her over to OPD. They can see if there’s a poor bed for her. She can’t stay here any longer.’

  ***

  The nurse returned sometime later with a thermometer. ‘Open your mouth,’ she said. Meena obeyed without thinking.

  ‘Now, hold it still,’ the nurse instructed.

  Meena forced herself still. Reality seemed thin. Memories tiptoed at the corners, threatening to barge in, to wake something she couldn’t stop.

  The nurse bustled about her. She wrapped a thick black band around her arm, then tightened it, making Meena’s hand ache. She took the stick of glass from Meena’s mouth and listed a series of numbers to another nurse to write down. Then she stretched Meena’s body out flat on the plastic mattress.

  ‘I’m going to check your stomach,’ the nurse explained as she pushed the grotty blanket bundle aside and tugged Meena’s skirt down to sit low on her hips. She poked Meena’s belly with cold gloved fingers. ‘Tell me where it hurts. Here? Here?’

  Meena gritted her teeth. Her gut ached everywhere. Around her middle it was sore from constant vomiting. Lower, below her belly button, it burned with pain that swelled and sunk, but that pain had been around for months. Acute pain always came before she had diarrhoea, and now as the nurse prodded, her intestines churned and made her wince.

  The nurse made several comments and the other nurse wrote them down.

  ‘Lift your skirt,’ the nurse instructed.

  Meena blinked. Her stomach was still sore from where the nurse had been poking. ‘Your skirt. I need to check between your legs,’ the nurse said.

  Meena fumbled for the damp fabric. The nurse made a loud sigh and pushed up the entire weight of the dirty sari skirt, exposing her knees, her thighs, her pubic hair. Meena shut her eyes. She was worse than a cheap goat today. The nurse poked around Meena’s vagina with her cold gloves and spoke some words Meena didn’t understand. Long words. Words that didn’t sound pretty in any language. Words that burnt like the gloves did on the tender flesh. Eventually the nurse snapped Meena’s legs back together and pulled the skirt fabric back down to cover her pelvis. Shame stank all around her. She tugged at the skirt and struggled to make it lie lower, but the nurse told her to hold still and placed the glass rod under her tongue again.

  More words were written as the nurse changed gloves. Then came the questions. How long had the pains been in her abdomen? How long had she been aware of sores between her legs? Sores no one could see? How long had the diarrhoea been coming? What about the nausea and vomiting? What about the fevers? Then the metal clipboard was hung on the back of a wheelchair and Meena, along with her dusty, sticky blanket bundle, was lifted into it.

  They wheeled her down the hall, then another. Faces swam past her. Sick. Desperate. Concerned. The Outpatients Department heaved with people. She heard them say something about sex workers, and beds for the poor, and not being ‘Emergency’ and she was left waiting. It must have been several hours later when her wheelchair jolted forwards, down a different corridor, into a small metal room with doors that shut by themselves only to open again later to another view.

  Along another hall and to a nurses’ station. She heard herself being discussed and the older nurse behind the desk waved towards the left saying, ‘poor beds’. Yet another nurse appeared and ordered whoever was pushing Meena to follow her, down one final corridor to the very last room on the floor. A room with a door that hung crooked on its hinges.

  There were sick bodies on all but one of the six beds lined up under the fluorescent tube lights. Each body clung to a blanket that looked only slightly better or slightly worse than Meena’s own. None of the beds had visitors beside them, and all of them held women.

  The nurse wheeled her to the first bed on the left. The mattress was brown vinyl that had split and been patched repeatedly. The nurse from the desk and a new one wearing gloves lifted Meena onto the bed. The sudden coolness of plastic shocked Meena’s body to shivering. She didn’t want to be here, not with these cold hands, these cold people.

  ‘Give me your blanket.’ The desk nurse tugged Meena’s blanket away.

  ‘No—’ Meena tried, but her hands were too weak even to reach out after it. The nurse scowled. She shook out the bundle. Meena watched Sarita’s scarf, the kurta-suruwal and the final shards of the Cetamol bottle fall to the ground again. The nurse spread the sticky, smelly blanket over Meena with a look of disgust then lifted the kurta-suruwal and scarf from the floor.

  ‘What’s this?’ The nurse held up the knotted scarf. ‘What’s inside? Drugs?’

  Meena blinked, confused. Drugs? She remembered Sarita’s final urgency: ‘Don’t lose my scarf!’ And she wouldn’t. ‘It’s nothing,’ she stammered. ‘Just a gift. It’s mine—’

  ‘And inside?’ The nurse’s eyebrows raised. ‘I know your type.’ She began unravelling the purple threads of the scarf, un-knotting it.

  My type? Meena reached for the scarf. The leaving scarf.

  ‘Oh,’ the nurse’s tone changed. She tossed the scarf to Meena and held something up for the other nurse. Meena tried to see too, but her head pounded and dizziness threatened to overwhelm again. It seemed to be a card, a business card. From Sarita.

  ‘Little Sister Rescue Foundation,’ the nurse read. She looked at Meena with renewed interest. ‘Really? Well this will make Matron happy. They can pay for you. Where’d you get this card? Kamathipura? A drop-in centre?’

  ‘I don’t ...’ Her gut cramped in warning. ‘It was a ... It’s mine ...’ She squeezed her eyes shut as pain overtook her abdomen.

  ‘I wonder where she got it. Madams don’t let the young ones outside, let alone visit a drop-in centre,’ the second nurse whispered as they moved away.

  Meena’s stomach twisted around itself. She needed the toilet. Another stab of pain wrenched her gut then the foul warmness sank into her skirt. Shame. There was nothing left of beauty now. O
ne of the nurses turned around. The stench of her was spreading. Meena looked away. The nurse called an aide in from the hall. ‘Clean her up.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘The skinny one,’

  The aide glanced wearily around the room. ‘They’re all skinny in poor beds, Nurse.’

  ‘Ahh. Ek-dum dublo,’ the woman in the fabric shop murmurs. The measuring tape runs around Meena’s waist and then under her arms, across the new bumps of breasts. ‘Very skinny.’

  Meena laughs. Her uncle had been serious about the clothes. Two sets each, he’d said. So Meena has chosen the blue swirly one and the pink fabric with shiny silver patterns. Putali decides on a very traditional dhaka pattern, then umms and ahhs over lengths of green or turquoise.

  Meena takes the fabric from her friend and holds it up against the sunlight streaming across the shop floor from the open doors. Then she does the same to the turquoise.

  ‘Choose hario, green,’ she advises with a cheeky smile. ‘It’s not so see-through in the sun.’

  ‘And you can always have another later,’ Rajit suggests from where he sits with Santosh on stools by the door. Santosh winks over his cigarette.

  Putali blushes, then holds her arms out so the woman can measure her. Putali doesn’t have any bumps yet. She is still a child really, but Meena is impressed with her courage. She hasn’t complained once since they’d made their decision to go with the boys. She just trusted, like Meena did, that this was going to work out brilliantly.

  Meena lets her eyes run along the rows of coloured fabric. They are beautiful, but not as lovely as what Meena has seen on TV. One day they’ll have enough money to buy the very best, and won’t have to rely on the kindness of uncles and cousin brothers.

  ‘Bahini!’ Santosh calls, interrupting Meena’s dreaming. ‘Come on, we’re finished.’

  She quickly stands as the store woman ties her bundle of fabric together and tosses it with Putali’s to land in a pile beside the tailor and his pedal-operated sewing machine.

  ‘When will they be ready?’ Rajit asks the tailor.

  ‘The day after tomorrow,’ the tailor says as he turns the hem on a business shirt.

  Rajit glances at Santosh, then shakes his head. ‘No. We need them tomorrow.’

  ‘We’re very busy at the moment. Festival time,’ the tailor explains.

  ‘Can you have them ready by tomorrow, or not?’ Santosh’s tone is condescending.

  ‘150 rupees,’ the tailor mutters.

  Rajit snorts. ‘Haus, okay. 150 rupees. But I need them in the morning, not the afternoon,’ Rajit clarifies.

  The tailor scowls, but agrees. He pulls the white thread from his machine and begins winding on a bright green cotton. Meena grabs Putali’s hand excitedly and follows the boys out.

  Eight

  ‘Awake now?’ The white-hat nurse was barely older than Meena. She lifted Meena’s wrist with a cold hand and squeezed it as the nurses in Emergency had done earlier. Meena stared around the room, taking note of the occupants with more clarity than she had the day before. Some of them returned her stare. Others had their eyes closed or were turned away. The room was too bright for all of them. The light, cold and artificial, exposing their shallow cheeks and sallow skin. Somehow, looking at them, Meena knew she’d been cleaned up—roughly, inadequately—but enough. Her legs felt bare under the blanket; the only clothing remaining was the glittery sari blouse.

  ‘Your clothes are being washed,’ the nurse clipped, answering Meena’s unasked question. ‘And your blanket. You soiled them. Remember?’

  Meena didn’t answer. The weary familiarity of shame wrapped itself around her. She stared at the bag of water hanging from the metal pole beside her bed. The nurse was checking it now, adjusting the speed at which the water dripped through a clear cylinder into a thin tube that ran down past the edge of the mattress and back up again to disappear under the blanket. Meena pulled her arm out from beneath the blanket. The tube was attached to the back of her left hand. A pale, sticky plaster fastened something to her skin and Meena could feel the movement tugging gently at the tubing.

  ‘What is it?’ Meena watched her hand shake weakly, as if it wasn’t her own. ‘I don’t want it. Take it off ...’ She moved to peel the sticky plaster free but the nurse hurried forwards and pushed Meena’s arm back to the bed, holding it firm against the mattress.

  ‘Settle down!’ the nurse snapped, the aniseed on her breath clashing with the smell of bleach and sickness in the room. ‘You mustn’t fiddle. You’re sick. The IV will give you strength. Lie still!’

  Meena felt her body go limp by automation. The nurse frowned, a strange expression flashing across her face. A soft, unarticulated groan came from the next bed, taking the nurse’s attention. Meena blinked. Her mind fighting memory, fighting emotion. The sound came again, weak. Too weak. Meena tried to roll over, to pull her back to the sound. Hadn’t she heard a sound like that before? Long ago, when she had been very small. It had been a hospital then too, but she hadn’t been the patient. Or had it been someone else ... someone more recent? Meena’s mind tangled the images, now swirling with the scents of hospital. Her mother had died on a poor bed like this, died with a baby in her belly. And Meena had been the one to take the news home to her father, drunk in the fields by mid-afternoon. She remembered that clearly, but there was another groaning from the past too. Stronger than this one ... and a petite sparkled sari set stained with blood ... No! She wouldn’t think of it. She couldn’t. Not when Madam could come and collect her. Force her back to the hotel. To Vishnu. To Waman. Not when she didn’t understand what Sarita had done.

  ***

  It was several hours later when the nurse returned, this time with a doctor. Meena didn’t bother to watch them, but she heard them move bed by bed around the room; asking questions, supplying answers, requesting medications, taking notes.

  ‘How old’s this one?’ the doctor asked in crisp Hindi when they reached her bed.

  ‘She won’t say,’ the nurse replied.

  The doctor stepped closer. Meena could see the folds of his neck crease as he spoke. ‘Dehydration decreasing. Good. How much fluid has she had?’

  The nurse rattled off some numbers, almost confident.

  ‘Tell me your age, bahana, little sister.’ The doctor used a voice for children. ‘Age first and then your name. This isn’t a police station. We won’t arrest you. We just want to make you healthy again.’

  ‘Tell him,’ the nurse snapped. ‘Your blanket and clothes have been washed. I’ll bring them once we finish the rounds, if you cooperate.’

  The doctor pursed his lips, waiting. Meena turned her face towards him.

  ‘I am fifteen ... maybe,’ her voice was soft.

  The doctor passed the clipboard to the nurse who hurried to write down Meena’s answer.

  ‘And your name?’ The doctor continued.

  ‘M ... Meena.’

  ‘Are you Nepali? Were you trafficked to India to work in the sex trade?’

  Meena didn’t answer. The doctor was using words she didn’t understand. He tried again, ‘Trafficked? Sold? Were you sold to the brothel by someone? A relative maybe?’

  Meena ducked her head. The memories continued to struggle forward. Memories she didn’t want. Buffaloes were sold. Or goats. Or a piece of tin from the roof of a slum home. Her father said they didn’t need it after mother died. He said if they slept close to the wall they wouldn’t get wet. He would find rice bags to patch the hole later. It wasn’t long after that Meena had begun sleeping somewhere else. Somewhere safe, with someone small—

  The doctor broke through her thoughts. ‘You’ll need your blood tested, so we can find out what diseases you may have. An HIV test would be good too. Have you heard about HIV?’

  Meena shook her head but she pulled her arms under the blanket. Blood tests were something Sa
rita had told her about. Needles and blood spread AIDS, Sarita had said when she’d come back to the hotel late one afternoon. Her voice had been dull, matter-of-fact and tinged with an uncharacteristic defeat. AIDS, Sarita had said, would make you die.

  But the doctor was still talking. ‘There’s high exposure to HIV in the red-light districts. Have you had your blood tested before? At Little Sister’—he paused and checked something from the file the nurse held. ‘At the drop-in centre?’

  Meena shook her head again. The nurse spoke for her, ‘We think the card was a gift. This girl probably never went there. She’s too young. They don’t let the young ones out.’

  The doctor considered this then asked the nurse, ‘But you called Little Sister Rescue anyway? They’ve agreed to pay for her treatment?’

  The nurse nodded. ‘Twice.’

  ‘Good,’ the doctor checked his watch, then began talking to the nurse as if Meena was no longer there. He spoke with complex foreign sounding words all of which the nurse wrote down in her file. Then the two of them left the room. The nurse returned several minutes later with a trolley and began giving medicines to some of the patients. The girl in the bed next to Meena received no treatment. Her eyes were now mostly closed except for the thin stripe showing the whites.

  ‘I need to give you an injection,’ the nurse explained when she reached Meena’s bedside. Meena watched as two new syringes were popped out of plastic packets and filled from separate canisters. ‘Roll over.’

  The nurse shoved one syringe into each bottom cheek, like she was jabbing a stake into the ground to tie up a goat. Meena cringed but didn’t cry out. The nurse returned the blanket, placed a bottle of water on the bedside table and tipped a sachet of powder into it. The water turned orange.