Movie Dynasty

My Mother-in-Law Took My Daughter to a Baba While I Was at Work. My Husband Had Already Said Yes. My seven-year-old came home with a lemon tied to her wrist and ash smeared across her forehead, and her father told me not to wash it off. I'd worked a double at the boutique and got home at 7:40. The house smelled of camphor and burnt incense. Siya was sitting on the sofa in her school uniform with a red thread knotted around her arm, staring at the television, which wasn't on. "Siya? Beta?" She didn't answer. Her eyelids fluttered and her lips moved slightly, like she was chewing something. It lasted about ten seconds. Then she blinked and said, "Hi, Mummy," as though nothing had happened. "Where were you today?" "Dadi took me to a baba." Ankit came out of the kitchen with a glass of water. He's an electrician, a quiet man who fixes things for a living. He had the careful, guilty expression of someone who knew exactly what was coming. "Ritika, before you shout." "You took her to a baba?" "Maa did. I only drove." "I booked a paediatrician for Saturday. We talked about it. You said yes." "And I still said yes. This is just one afternoon." He lowered his voice. "Baba Shivdas has helped half our family. He says it's saaya. A shadow. Siya has been going blank for months, you've seen it." "I've seen a child who needs a doctor." "Maa says it comes from your side." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Your Masi used to go quiet like that. You told me yourself. She died young." "She had a heart condition." "That's not what Maa heard." I looked at my husband and, for the first time in nine years, I couldn't find the man I'd married. "You went behind my back." "If you want to wash it off, wash it," he said. "But if something happens to her, that's on you." I turned toward the bathroom with Siya's hand in mine, and that's when I heard his mother in the hallway, on the phone with his sister Neha, not bothering to lower her voice. "Baba said so clearly. A shadow follows a child when the mother's blood is heavy. Ritika's family has always had something. That's why the girl goes blank. The mother must have done something, a curse maybe, and now the child pays." I stopped. Siya had stopped too. She was looking up at me with huge, wet eyes. "Mummy? Did you put a shadow in me?" "No, jaan. Never." "Dadi said it's from you." Her voice shook. "Papa didn't say it wasn't." Ankit was standing behind us. I turned and looked at him, and I waited. Three seconds. Four. He looked at the floor. Siya let go of my hand. She pressed the lemon tightly against her chest with both palms and said, in a tiny, serious voice, "Dadi said if I hold it tight, the shadow can't pull me away." She walked to her room holding it like something that might save her. I heard the door close, and then I heard something I'd never heard from her before: the small, steady sound of a child whispering to herself, over and over, "Don't go blank, don't go blank, don't go blank." Savitri and Neha were at my house by nine the next morning, carrying a steel tiffin and a small cloth bundle that clinked when they set it down. "We're not blaming you, beta," Savitri said, taking my hand. "A mother's family carries things she doesn't know about. We only want to cleanse the house." "Cleanse it of what?" "Whatever came with you," Neha said, smiling thinly. I looked at Ankit. He was holding his tea and watching the steam. By afternoon, Neha had posted in the family WhatsApp group, seventy members: Please pray for little Siya. Some shadows travel through the mother's side. Folded hands. Flowers. A cousin replied, Poor child. Poor Ankit. A neighbour I barely knew stopped me at the gate and said, "If you need a good pandit, I have a number." I hadn't told her anything.