I turned to the villagers and laughed. They heard the mortal tinkle; they shivered with the deadly ring. I had been underestimated.
I giggle (even now) as I recall their shock when my throat opened up to the sky. I screamed into the sun, roared sacred and profane words. I clapped my hands and the thunder applauded me. Tears overflowed in my eyes and the clouds mimicked me. The smoke funneled around me, a pregnant pause gave birth to the belated monsoon. The lightening echoed- the night received- the black dog whimpered- all feathers levitated- and the lotus bloomed. Fingernail deities could rule at last.
The rains poured pitchers into the earth. The pyre was doused. The storm swept away the mourners, the admirers, the curious and the perverted onlookers. Haha! The Whip watched incredulously as rain poured onto every field to the horizon, fat droplets in every field, excepting his own.
And the Dead Vulture Rains washed me away. I drowned.
The next incarnation began. I had polluted Parvati and scarred Sita. On the edge of the reclaimed river I ripped out my hair, renting my head smooth. I grieved not for The Goat, oh no! I mourned myself. The black snakes were released into the river, mingling with fresh seaweed.
I ripped off the sari. Henna faded from my hands. I left my village, I left my grandmother, I left The Whip, I left The Goat and I left my treacherous female body. I fed off my own destruction and reclaimed my life. I stole Shiva’s strength. I would not be beaten, I would not be married. I danced the storm into creation and swam away with webbed toes. Donning the chooti hidden earlier in the morning I wrapped myself in new identity. I would spend my life pretending, but this mask was preferable to cursed face I was born with. I would be the next Vishnu, the warrior Arjuna, the opulent Ganish: I was a god.
Reincarnated as a man.
The next day, in the cool drizzle of monsoon, a dark young boy was found wandering in the mud. His feet plowed through the field, his lips smiled at the strangers and his eyes, undisguised, searched out their own fate.
The Dead Vulture Rains
Morgan Whitfield
The meticulous planning for my husband’s death was nothing compared to the detail and research invested in my own demise. You may be impressed at his sticky sweet termination, but remember that this is not a mundane story of petty revenge, his life just happened to be somewhat entwined in mine. His murder was not a crime, rather an inevitable and predictable event, though not- obviously- forgettable or forgivable.
I killed him in the twelfth year of my life (the word ‘kill’ seems harsh, doesn’t it?) Rather, I assisted him in reaching enlightenment; I set his slow and stupid soul free from earthly entanglements (believe me; if I hadn’t nudged him along he would have been eternal, too ignorant and lazy to get on with the business of dying). Besides, without ending my husband, how could I end myself?
At this point, you politely raise your eyebrows in concealed shock at the suicidal tendencies of a child murderess. I am not a violent or morose person (we just met, and you can tell this right away, my grin is too frank and my toes are too honest). You are curious to ask what propelled my morbid inclinations, I will tell you: The Goat, The Whip and The Drought.
You are curious about The Goat, already vaguely alluded to, I’ll try to explain.
An explication on goats: the fundamental characteristic of any goat (as you can probably attest) is its careful and devout attention to urination. Urinating goats are visual treats when your eyes are lucky enough to happen upon one. The goat’s back is arched and proud as it liberates its urea in a strong and continuous waterfall, which streams into yellow rivers and pungent tepid lakes. Splayed front hoofs are acrobatically forward and hind legs are squatted low, while the indolent goat’s urinating-face has a peace the envy of Buddha, a perfect expression of vapid bliss.
There is nothing aberrant about these insipid animals. You probably would find them amusing and harmless. However, you were never married to a goat. I was.
Ah! You pity me now! You empathize with my tragic and bestial situation! But don’t get ahead of yourselves, be patient. Let us now begin with The Whip, because he is intrinsic to my own beginning.
The Whip was the original source of my discontent (he was also my father). The nickname of his youth went beyond his sharp flinging shadow and frayed ears. My father’s thin body was the tangled rope around my feet, the hangman’s noose around my neck and the bonds around my wrists. How could a child born of this seed, inheriting his long neck and leather lids, be blithe? His airy cracks seeped and slithered in my fingertips. The hour of my birth commenced our animosity.
(most definitely, for how could he waste such an opportunity?) consume his own dead body. He reveled in his irony. His spirit fed off himself. He was the catalyst for the Dead Vulture Rains.
In the twelfth year of drought, in the almost empty village, I hauled my belongings to The Goat’s house, for my womanhood had been attained. (And I had formulated a plan) His mother greeted me with false smiles and acrid welcomes. (I had plotted escape) The Goat sneezed, and then wheezed, a welcome. (That night he would snort his last) I brought with me a gift for my husband, very befitting a young wife. (Teeheehee!) Gulab jamun. The doughy dark balls soaked in honey syrup were an appropriate tribute for The Goat; dark dung soaked in saffron urine. I shyly scooped the balls into his bowl, my head bowed, eyes cast and lips wearing Sita’s seductive smile. He would lick his chops satisfyingly and… well; the sticky sweet death would come.
How did I poison him you ask? I have my grandmother to thank. My savageness was inherited from my grandmother and began with the accident of birth. When I slipped into this world my Grandmother held me in her enigmatic third arm. She slung me under the protection of her sari and saved me from my father’s ire. This was the same third arm she used to subordinate my grandfather. This appendage would snake out and thrash his face and sting his leg. It was with this barbarous third arm that she crushed the almonds and juiced the potency. She instructed me in dousing the balls and permeating the poison. Her evil limb gesticulated and encouraged me with its dancing waving motions.
The Goat swallowed my offering while honey drooled down his chin. He choked and sputtered and spoke in milky overtones. He lay down on the ground. The Goat looked especially smug and self-satisfied, his half closed eyes (a self imposed blindness) and half open mouth (into which a fly investigated) abruptly froze. And I was widowed.
And I made a very good show of my despair too. I cried and moaned! I bellowed out my misfortune! I hysterically scratched his face! I was inconsolable!
Which is why I demanded to go with him.
Sati! I screeched! I will burn on his pyre! I will become one with his smoke! I will succumb to his ashes!
My father agreed that this would be the best. Burn! He bellowed. Burn! Burn!
As I have mentioned, my own death was painstakingly planned. I had pressed my ruby sari, practiced my tragic expressions, hennaed my hands, and rehearsed my last moments. I did this with the elation of someone free. I nearly was. The Goat’s virgin wife would emerge clean and unscathed. My fidelity proven; my destiny altered.
Thus unencumbered, I slowly, ceremoniously, marched in bare feet towards The Dead Goat. Trailed by adoring looks, sympathetic coos, a flowered path, the funeral The drunken Whip was sluggish and slapping while my mother was pushing and panting. The monsoon rains screamed and let loose a torrent upon the thin walls, already muggy and oppressive from my mother’s sweat and panic. Her assiduous and dormant lips were embittered with my father’s drink. Agitated from constrictions, her built up reproaches bubbled up through her throat and erupted across the room.
The newborn hate in the clammy wet chamber excited my entrance. I broke free from my placenta pomegranate and slipped into wrinkled third arm of my taciturn grandmother. Amid the burgundy thrusts, my mother maliciously cursed my useless and intoxicated father. She cursed him repeatedly, staining my inexperienced skin, poisoning my first air, and then with a heave she pushed out one last obscenity and died.
Indignant at my loss of milk, my womb less state, but most of all at my father’s inebriated condition, I vowed that I would avenge my mother and live out her curse: my father would never drink again, whether water or wine.
My mouth opened with a cry that stopped the rains. The clouds rolled back and brought a reprieve to the wet dead room. The water welled up in my eyes instead, but no drop escaped. I would not let a tear saturate his wicked earth or flickering tongue. My father looked at the sky (through the hole in the thatch roof), and his head proceeded down into the depths of the empty bottle, finally collapsing into a stupor. I had begun the drought that would convey me to death. For this a lack of water The Whip would throw me into the arms of The Goat, from whom I fled and delivered myself into the next life.
This chain was instigated while my grandmother, the silent, dripping and unnoticed midwife, swaddled me and bathed me in new light she didn’t notice the puddles and rivulets on the ground outside; she didn’t appreciate how rare they would become.
The Drought that came with my birth grew more intense with each day of my existence. Drier. Dustier. Deader. Nevertheless, I would not relent. I took my first steps across burning sand, sifting the lifeless soil between my toes and enjoying the burning sensation that thickened my skin.
Naturally, there was resentment in the village. The whispered insinuations, pointed slights, blameful glances- that I answered in indignant gurgles and babbles- were fuelled by my father’s true rumors. My father’s complaints were threefold: I killed his wife, I killed his crops, and I was a girl.
Even my grandmother suggested, whispering into my little ear in a singsong voice and breaking her customary silence, that I should bring back the rains. I would have done this to oblige her, but unfortunately, whatever power I yielded at my birth, whatever spell I had cast, was immovable. In my third year, after the sun shone without setting for a fortnight and the wells were lower than they were had been in a century, a general din brought an astrologer to the village.
For a preposterous fee, the one-eye browed astrologer promised a cure. He examined my feet and he examined the stars. He prayed to the gods and he ate all my supper. He furrowed his lip and curled his eyebrow impressively. Then he announced to an impatient, but obedient, throng that the answer was simple: I had to marry. The crowds were awed at this innovative suggestion. My first child, a son (he insisted, for an extra ten rupees), would agitate the rains from my womb. The astrologer then brought forward a matrimonial candidate, none other then: The Goat.
Of course, The Goat came from a respectful family of merchants, his father the local shopkeeper. His parents lived in denial of their son’s goat-like state, they mildly suspected that he was different, but generally accepted his receding chin, squinting eyes and goat goatee as a matter of course. I forget my husband’s actual name. It was no use remembering his inconsequential name when, clearly, calling him The Goat was much more practical and realistic.
Hence, in my third year of life, and the third year of drought, I was leashed to The Goat with my scarlet sawaar suit. My baby steps toddled behind his hoofs while he bleated and brayed his eternal devotion. I distinctly recall at one point, during the second rotation around the table, resolutely refusing to carry on. I had to be dragged the rest of the way through the ceremony. Thereafter, to my father’s house I returned, until such a time that I would reach womanhood, and give my husband his horned and hairy children.
I grew. Encountering the thick silk of marigolds, slick spines of feathers, sandpaper paws of beggars, sun licks across arm fuzz, forehead curry dew, grainy cow tongue, custard seed spittings, matted boar hair, foreign thorn pricks, gummy orange blessings, smooth banyan bark, tickling dancing flies, sleek plaited tresses, stringy guava pulp and various aches, throbs, stings and smarts. The Whip bruised me with word and hand. With every bruise my skin simmered with anger and shaded darker; the darker I became, the lighter the soil. It didn’t help that I occasionally hit back.
Inauspicious signs speckled my surroundings. My inherent aura haunted my shadows, my circles, my ripples, my moles and my breath. Destiny betrayed me first and karma castigated my spirit. This was treachery I anticipated, an assumption set forth after my angry red birth, but I never expected to my compliantly body follow suit. My trusted skin stretched, my contumacious bones spread, my tender chest sprouted. My body decided to cooperate with fate, stealing my childhood, propelling me closer and closer towards The Goat. With every passing moment my life edged closer to a confrontation with reality. A beating from The Whip or prurient relations with The Goat. Suffocating heat or drowning dank. Until one day I saw the answer beside a shrine, I recognized that nothing could save me from this life.
The dead vulture bathed in morning light beside the temple entrance. He was freshly departed and his beak was frozen in compliance. His cynical unblinking eyes wore an expression of expectation, knowledge that his peers would, after a decent interval, resort to cannibalism. Understandably his brother’s beaks would tear into his feast of feathered flesh, gouge out his grape eyes and tongue out his gizzards. If he had not died he would
« return.