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(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.
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Morgan Whitfield
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