The Orphanage agreed to shelter the children with no further consideration. Someone filed a petition after the stubborn incident. Curious people tried to find clues about the identity of the petitioner, but the orphanage authority wouldn't disclose the benefactor. This act of secrecy brought doubts among the people.
Mila, who shares my adjacent apartment, said, "It's the father of one of her illegitimate children. You’ll see."
The lady came one day without any notice like an oozing autumn leaf; wavering into one corner of the hairbreadth footpath. She looked famished and frightened. Pushing the boundaries of twenty-five to six, a small round face with pimples embedded cheeks, a bloomy figure with visibly colossal breasts tottering along supported by no bra underneath the kameez. Her hair was oiled and nicely plaited backward, her clothes cheap though crisp and clean, and two-strap rubber sandals, eyes looking at everyone in bewilderment. A few people tried to talk with her while she got plastered to the walls.
We saw her sitting there the whole day and the evening. Later that night my husband and I were planning our next holiday tour when a loud thud interrupted the discussion. The hackney workers had arrived and they were dropping the bales of plastic sheets. About every housing in the society had underground ateliers here. The continuous dumping stopped at about midnight when we half-slept and dreamed about the holiday destination.
Suddenly a piercing voice came drowning the honks from retiring trucks. Several men laughing and chattering aloof; a female tone yelping without real accentuation. After a few minutes, the screaming stopped. The truck stood by the footway until dawn.
On the next morning, we had feared to see something unfortunate, but the lady was there in her discerned place gulping banana with one hand and bread with the other. Unbridled hair, swaying from top to waist where splotchy spots of blood made chaplet marks in her pajamas. The guilt of a motionless night washed away with her unscathed existence, and the devastation arose as if she was infernal. She had her regular customers, workers, drivers, vagabond roadside imposters. After the first night, we stopped noticing the lady.
The street lady bore a baby the following winter. She was miserable. From time to time, we stole gazes at her swollen belly though no one could tell where she gave birth to her son. And the toddler just appeared one day, as his mother did. She used to wrap her ragged shawl around to protect him from cold air. Somebody dropped a pouch of old baby clothes by their diurnal footing; someone threw a shabby blanket.
She used the woolen sack as the topmost envelope on which she lay before, a plastic sheet to shape walls to a crib, and built her son a pot-hole. Men from tea stalls, rickshaw pullers, or even homeless fanatics would trade stuff with her. Sometimes she had a lift in cars, which was, well dramatic! She had adjusted with her life and gradually we adjusted with her. The street lady, eyes of forlorn bewilderment. Twelve years ago she arrived with nothing, only time gave her three bastards.
The lady was murdered amidst the chaos of nature. One night she was asleep with both her daughters and son in the little shack. A Toyota minivan pulled over near the ghoulish street lamp with a screeching noise. The driver was an old customer of hers. The lady was tired of hoarding eatables from places. Also, she was precautious and refused to go with him. The driver kicked her. He was mad with lust. He grabbed her elder daughter and tried dragging her. The girl was roosting passively in her sleep while the man looked with lascivious intentions, carrying her in his arms he tried to mount up in the back of the minivan. The lady blew her fists, scratching with her fingernails she frowned at him with a perilous glare. Her eyes were talking when her mouth could not.
She was holding a sharp piece of a mirror frightfully in a manner to stab. This makeshift arsenal was used as a fancy thing by her daughter. All the children were then wide awake. The man uttered some slang. When the lady discharged towards him, he flinched forward with a pocket knife and scotched three times to the stomach which ended her extolling chapter.
When the ambulance came, we saw a handsome boy running after it in snots and sobs with desperate yelling and an unusual tone. Only then that we realize that the streetwalker's son was also a mute.
