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know soon enough.”
    I see my face reflected in a silver glass on the wall. Another Lakshmi looks back at me. She has black-rimmed tiger eyes, a mouth red as a pomegranate, and flowing hair like the tiny gold-pants woman in the TV.
    She is fancy, like Auntie Bimla, like a movie star, like these
    other city girls.
    I smile at this new Lakshmi. And she smiles back. Uncertainly.

OLD MAN
    Mumtaz studies me.
    “Are you ready to go to work?” she says in my language.
    I nod and say yes, then nod again, although I do not understand how these city people do their chores in such fine clothes and uncomfortable shoes.
    I follow Mumtaz down a hallway lined with tiny rooms. We pass by girls sitting cross-legged on the floor. Girls drawing on tiger eyes. Girls spraying themselves with flower water. Some of them stare at me. Some take no notice.
    We go up some stairs, down another hallway, then into a room where an old man is lying on a bed. His skin is yellow and he has tufts of hair poking out from his ears. Mumtaz speaks kindly to him and I wonder if he is sick.
    Across the hall, in another room, where a red cloth is hung across the doorway, I hear the sound of grunting. It is a strange, animal sound that makes me shudder.
    Mumtaz points to me and says something to the old man. He licks his palm and smoothes down his hair. They do not seem to notice the grunting.
    Then it stops. The red cloth is pulled back. And a man stands in the hallway zipping his pants.
    I look down at my red-painted nails and my new shoes. Something is not right here. I don’t know what is going on, but it is not right, not right at all.
    Mumtaz pats the edge of the bed and tells me to come closer. The old man makes a clucking sound.
    “Don’t be afraid,” she says. “Come here, now.”
    I don’t move.
    Her voice turns hard. “Get over here, you ignorant girl,” she says.
    Still, I do not move.
    Then Mumtaz flies at me. She grabs me by the hair and drags me across the room. She flings me onto the bed next to the old man. And then he is on top of me, holding me down with the strength of ten men. He kisses me with lips that are slack and wet and taste of onions. His teeth dig into my lower lip.
    Underneath the weight of him, I cannot see or move or breathe. He fumbles with his pants, forces my legs apart, and I can feel him pushing himself between my thighs. I gasp for air and kick and squirm. He thrusts his tongue in my mouth. And I bite down with all my might.
    He cries out “Aghh!” and I am running. Running down the hall, past the other girls, losing my fancy city shoes along the way, until I am back in the room where I started, pulling my old clothes out of my bundle.

SOLD
    I’m wiping the makeup off my face when the dark-skinned
    girl comes in.
    “What do you think you’re doing?” she says.
    “I’m going home.”
    Her tear-shaped eyes grow dark.
    “There is a mistake,” I tell her. “I’m here to work as a maid for a rich lady.”
    “Is that what you were told?”
    Then Mumtaz arrives at the door, huffing, her mango face pink with anger.
    “What do you think you’re doing?” she says.
    “Leaving,” I say. “I’m going home.”
    Mumtaz laughs. “Home?” she says. “And how would you get there?”
    I don’t know.
    “Do you know the way home?” she says.
    “Do you have money for the train?
    Do you speak the language here?
    Do you even have any idea where you are?”
    My heart is pounding like the drumming of a monsoon rain, and my shoulders are shaking as if I had a great chill.
    “You ignorant hill girl,” she says. “You don’t know anything. Do you?”
    I wrap my arms around myself and grip with all my might. But the trembling will not stop.
    “Well, then,” Mumtaz says, pulling her record book out from
    her waistcloth.
    “Let me explain it to you.”
    “You belong to me,” she says. “And I paid a pretty sum for you, too.”
    She opens to a page in her book and points to the notation for 10,000 rupees.
    “You