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to do things for myself.
    Brindha and I each started tugging at a suitcase to drag over to her room. Matthew was walking down the hall, and saw us, and called the ayah Rupa to come. He tried to take the suitcase I was struggling with, but I didn’t want to let him, so together we half-carried and half-pushed it into Brindha’s room. I had forgotten how to act around servants.
    Brindha freely relinquished the other suitcase to Rupa, and walked into our room, my sweater caped over her shoulders, my pocketbook swinging jauntily on one arm. Brindha announced, “I told her not to feel jealous. She can have you all to herself in just a week.”
    â€œAmmamma’s not jealous, don’t be silly,” I said.
    â€œWell, not jealous, but lonely, then. Since I have to go back to school, I’m glad you’ll be here with her. She doesn’t like to go to society things so she’s alone a lot unless there’s kids around.”
    â€œSociety things?”
    â€œYou know, that stuff Amma and Achan go to. Teas at the club, and tournaments, and weddings and stuff. I don’t like all that. Do you?”
    â€œWell, sometimes it’s fun to get dressed up and meet people.”
    â€œOnly cricket matches, those are the only fun ones. Do you like these cricket posters on my wall—I know you don’t know the players, but just from these posters, which one’s your favorite? I have movie posters too, Amma and Achan don’t know I have them, but I can show them to you if you don’t tell.”
    â€œWhy won’t they let you have movie posters?”
    Brindha rummaged through a drawer and pulled out a bunch of photo clippings. “Amma says the new Bombay movies are cheap—they don’t let me watch them.”
    â€œHow do you know the actors if you’ve never seen the movies?”
    â€œI’ve seen pictures of them in the magazines and read about them, and some of the girls at school are allowed to watch anything, so they tell us what happens in all the new movies. When I’m home, Rupa tells me, she loves movies, too.”
    Rupa had been rearranging Brindha’s clothes to make room for me. She looked up when she heard her name mentioned. Brindha took one of the movie star pictures to her, and Rupa smiled and said something in Tamil. Brindha translated for me, “This one, Rukmini, she just got fired from a movie because she pushed another actress overboard off a cruiseship.” Rupa fingered the pictures lovingly, carefully, as if they were delicate Moghul miniatures, or illuminated manuscripts.
    Brindha said something in Tamil to Rupa, and Rupa’s hands rose up to cover her face, the movie photos fluttering to the floor. She quickly knelt to gather them up, and Brindha helped her collect them. Brindha came over to me and whispered, “I told Rupa we don’t need her anymore, but she needs this money, she only has her older brothers to look out for her and they’re always getting into trouble. Amma will wonder why we should keep an ayah on now that you’re here, but I’ll just say that you didn’t want to play my baby games, like Snakes and Ladders, okay?”
    I nodded. Brindha went back to Rupa’s side, and told her the new plan. Rupa’s face lifted, and she put her hands together and bowed in gratitude. Brindha, pleased that Rupa was no longer upset, pressed the movie pictures back into her hands and they chattered more about Rukmini.
    I stared at the cricketers on her wall, posed like movie stars themselves, wearing flirty smiles and jeans or leather jackets. Except some of the cricketers were dark, and Indian movie stars were usually light-skinned, especially the women, often with light eyes, hazel or green. The only way I could tell they were not straight out of Tigerbeat was because they all had black hair, and they were not pencil-thin like teen idols in America.
    A bell rang out from another part of the