Read The Hope Factory for Free Online Page B

bite of chiles and peppercorns. She pushed past Kamala, vanishing into the servants’ bathroom in the back.
    “Ey!” Kamala swelled up with an annoyance that was quickly deflated by Vidya-ma’s echoing voice. “Kamala!”
    “Aanh, barthini, coming, ma!” Kamala ran up, impeded by the brooms and plastic bucket slapping against her legs. Thangam might walk out when she liked, but Kamala lacked that blithe courage. She herself would ask for permission.
    Vidya-ma was in her night pajamas, her hair knotted on her head, her face bearing traces of anger from her conversation with Shanta and smeared with fairness cream. “At least you are not late. Good. I am tired of people taking advantage of my kindness. Kamala, you will do the housecleaning today, for Thangam is not free; she will help me turn out the children’s clothes cupboards, they are utterly messy.”
    Kamala knew that she had not picked the winning ticket inthe day’s work lottery. She and Thangam were responsible for cleaning the house and ideally they would be allowed to do so, working their way from top to bottom, sweeping, swabbing, dusting, and tidying. But Vidya-ma had the habit of intruding on their work with ideas of her own, of mixing them up, asking each to do this and that and something else again, so sometimes the day was half over before their regular cleaning could even begin. Occasionally, on a day like this, one was asked to do the work of two.
    Kamala risked her request. “Amma, if it is not a trouble, may I leave work for one hour before lunch? I have something to attend to.”
    She saw the shadow pass over Vidya-ma’s face and felt her anxiety rise. But her employer nodded reluctantly. “Very well, but do not delay. I will not be taken advantage of.”
    Kamala planned her work, quickly finishing the master bedroom and Pingu’s room. She glanced at the clock on the wall; she was right on schedule. In Valmika’s room, it was just as she suspected, the bed covered with piles of clothing; Thangam stood bored and idle while Vidya-ma finished some telephone call in the next room. From tiresome past experience, Kamala knew such telephone calls could lead to other plans in which Vidya-ma might decide to go out, the turning-out job either abandoned with the clothes bundled back into the cupboard in greater disorder than when they had emerged or, worse, resumed hours later, involving everybody now, all the maids, the children, the watchman, the neighbor’s cat, headaches, grumbles, and dragging on well past Kamala’s usual end-of-job timings into the late hours of the evening. In compensation for such extra toil Vidya-ma might say, “Eat your dinner before you go,” but who could sit in the kitchen stuffingfood into her belly when there was a child waiting hungrily at home?
    Thangam’s eyes widened appreciatively when she saw Kamala work hurriedly through the room, for this was cleaning in a style she understood. “Come and help,” said Kamala, crossly, “at least the beds.”
    “Very well,” said Thangam, “but why do you act like a pregnant woman whose water is about to break?”
    “I have permission to take a leave of one hour,” said Kamala, low-voiced, “but do not tell anybody just yet, all right?” By which she meant Shanta.
    “Aiyo, no fears,” said Thangam, with immediate understanding. “I am not speaking to her today. She is in an awful temper … as though I did not warn her! And besides, such a shouting she gave me last night, just because my head hurt and I could not help her wash the dishes. She is a serpent, that woman.”
    But Kamala would not be distracted by such enjoyable gossip, not today. She did not even stop for her usual eleven o’clock cup of tea and slice of bread in the kitchen. In a frenzy she worked, finishing the bedrooms and the study, bearing from room to room the brooms and bucket and other tools of her trade; rolling up the carpets after sweeping them with the hard coconut broom; using the