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billows of white powder, and said fiercely, “
Wicked
blight, may the Lord’s spit hail down upon you.”
    Then she turned to the rest of the class, her tangerine hair flying out of her bun like streamers, and demanded with deep bitterness, “What do you
junglee
donkeys know of fields of golden daffodils nodding and dancing in the breeze?”
    If Miss Manley found someone not paying attention, she casually picked up a piece of chalk, broke it in two and flung the bits with unerring aim at the miscreant, smiling at the yelp of pain as the chalk caught the dreamer on the face, or head, or on a tender ear.
    “Very smart, think you can quietly sleep in my class and I won’t notice, what? Think again, too-too smart. Not only is Miss Manley watching you, but God in his Heaven, too!”
    I usually finished Miss Manley’s homework first, because I couldn’t bear the shame of being a dustbindunce. One afternoon, she was in an unusually bad mood, flinging chalk like tiny missiles at various corners of the classroom. Twice Miss Manley had shouted at Devaki, my best friend, for stammering over an answer, and I hated her for it.
    “She is a
vir-gin,”
I whispered to Devaki.
    She clapped a hand over her mouth and giggled. “Miss Manley is a
vir-gin,”
she hissed to Shabnam.
    The chalk sang across the room and caught Devaki on her cheek. “I didn’t say it, I didn’t say it. It was Kamini,” she babbled, fat tears winding down her face.
    “Say what?”
    “That you are a
vir-gin.”
    It was a bad word, I discovered, for Miss Manley made me sit under my desk. “The dustbin is too good for you,” she roared. “You stay down there where the Lord cannot see your sinful face!”
    I crouched under the desk, so terrified that I did not come out even after the last bell rang and Miss Manley left. She did not seem to remember that I was still waiting to be forgiven.
    Linda Ayah, who had come to take me home, squatted patiently at the door of the classroom and tried to persuade me to emerge. “God is kind and generous, your teacher is a mad woman. She does not know anything, come out Baby-missy,” she begged. “I will pray to Jesus and tell him that you are a good child who looks after her baby sister, shares all her toys and listens to Linda Ayah. I will tell God to fix that nut-case teacher of yours, don’t worry. Let us go home now, your Ma will be waiting with milk and biscuits.” When I finally crawled out, she hugged me fiercely and added,“Whatfor you have to be scared when Linda is here to look after you? God listens to this
ayah,
I am telling you.”
    Linda Ayah had been with our family for years and years. She was allowed to boss the other servants and nobodycould utter a word. Ma said that she had never really hired Linda, at least not officially. When she came to this house as a bride, Dadda had left her alone and gone away to work. She would have been completely lost if it hadn’t been for Linda Ayah, always there like Aladdin’s genie, getting things done, making sure that Ma was settling in and everything was righty-tighty. She travelled with us every time we were transferred, insisting that if she wasn’t around we would all sink in chaos.
    There might have been some truth in what she said because Ma became horribly disorganized when we had to move. She hated the whole process of packing, of rolling out yards of stale gunny sacking that had been stored in the garage from the last time we moved, of sending the
peon
around to neighbours’ homes for old newspaper to use for the china and the glass bottles in which Ma stored spices. Nobody wanted to part with old newspapers, for you could sell them to the
raddhi-man,
who paid by the kilo.
    “So much expense, imagine having to beg other people for their rubbish, imagine having to
buy
their rubbish from them! Why do you have to keep getting transferred? Can’t you say your wife is sick, you are allergic to new places, something, and stay here?” grumbled Ma