It was a week before Navratri when my double had come to town. She had stood at the far end of the schoolyard, watching us as we all flooded out of the hall for lunch, with tiffins and bananas in hand. She was identical to me in every way–same plaits, same ill-fitting school uniform, same mole on her right cheek. Except, unlike me, she had this glassy-eyed expression and thin, unsmiling lips, like a fancy European doll.

At first, we called out my name to her. We thought it was me. Even I thought it was me. We had stirred up such a ruckus that the teacher came running out of the hall with a long measuring stick in hand, poised to strike. She called out my name sharply. My double did not respond, but I turned my head towards the teacher. I pushed myself out of the crowd so she could see that I was myself, and she was someone else. My teacher asked me if I had a sister, and if I did, why she was never at school. I said no, and that I didn’t know; she called me a liar. I braced myself for the measuring stick, but received nothing. Instead, the teacher had walked across the schoolyard to the far end and struck my double’s lower back three times. Her face did not change. She hadn’t even flinched. My teacher asked what was wrong with me, and I said I didn’t know. She struck my double again, this time on the collarbones–two times–but nothing. Aghast, our teacher had thrown her measuring stick to the ground. She left the schoolyard and walked towards town, without looking back.

We assumed she had gone to get help, or a sharper implement, so we played with my double. Some boys tried the stick on her, but eventually grew bored with her lack of reaction. Then, they started beating each other. The girls tried to get her to talk, but she wouldn’t. They undid her plaits and started to re-braid her hair, asking her what she thought about the new hairstyle. She said nothing; I said–in a voice that sounded like mine but wasn’t–that I loved it, and to please make me prettier. The girls cooed and laughed, and started to pick flowers to put in my double’s hair.

When the teacher came back, it was with my parents and the doctor. They pushed us away and cornered my double against the brick wall of the schoolyard. The teacher shook my double back and forth, trying to stir her. My parents asked my double if I was okay, if I was feeling well. My father scolded my double for not obeying the teacher. I meekly tugged on my mother’s sari from behind and asked her if I had a sister. They shooed me away with wrinkled hands, and I returned to the crowd of children.

In the face of scrutiny and discipline, my double was silent. The doctor leaned down to meet her blank gaze and spoke gently to her, asking if I was hungry or tired, or if I was upset about something. He pressed two fingers against the base of my double’s neck and told my parents that my pulse was too slow. My mother hissed with worry. We whispered amongst ourselves about bhuta and zombies. He lifted her hands and assessed the tips of her fingers; they were warm and pink like mine. My double’s head was tilted towards the sun, but she didn’t squint. Her eyes remained wide open, glinting like the surface of the Godavari in the mornings. I tilted my head up, too, but I couldn’t withstand the burning. When I looked back at the huddled mass of my teacher, my parents, the doctor, and my double, it had shifted. My mother was hunched over my double, clutching her face and begging her to say something. Tears were streaming down my double’s peaceful cheeks.

Frustrated, my parents left the school and took the doctor with them, leaving just us, our teacher, and my double, unsure of how to proceed. The teacher made quick work of reclaiming her measuring stick from the boys and gave them all a strike across the lower back for roughhousing. She ordered us all to come back to class. As the crowd of us went inside, I stood back. I turned to my double, still standing there against the brick wall.

I approached her. She didn’t look at me. She didn’t seem to be looking at anything. I asked her what her name was. If she were from here. If she’s ever been to school before. But there was no answer. I asked her why she looked like me, why she wasn’t saying anything. Nothing. I asked her what was wrong with her. She wouldn’t look at me. 

My teacher called my name from inside the schoolhouse. I had missed attendance. I took my double’s hands and led her inside.

There was only one desk and chair left in the dusty classroom, so I had my double sit on the floor next to my chair. She stared straight ahead at the spot on the wall just underneath the chalkboard, where many weeks ago, I had carved the face of a monkey into the stucco.

We went over linear algebra for an hour, then European history for another hour. We had become restless–girls played with their hair and boys kicked each other’s chairs, quietly but forcefully. The teacher, annoyed, slapped her measuring stick against the chalkboard. She berated our lack of work ethic, then narrowed her eyes, scanning the classroom for someone to make an example out of. She landed on the one student out of place: my double, sitting cross-legged on the floor, staring. The teacher called out my name with a shriek and beckoned my double to rise. She did not. The teacher shrieked again. We had all begun to stare at my double and snicker at her audacity amongst ourselves. After a while, it was no longer funny. The teacher stared daggers at her. The air was cold and heavy.

I stood up from my seat, walked past my double on the floor and the others, to the bench at the front of the classroom. I got on it, and the teacher demanded I turn around to face the wall. She held up her measuring stick, poised to strike, and landed one straight across the back of my right thigh. A cry of pain erupted in the air, shrill like a koel’s call, but it wasn’t mine. My teacher, not realizing this, struck me again in the same spot and ordered me to be silent, but there was only another cry. I craned my neck to face the teacher at the third strike, so she could see my unmoving face. She took a step back, wary, and scanned the classroom for the culprit. Still looking out, she struck me again on my left leg, hard and quick. This time, we had found the source: my double, now curled up on the floor, gripping her legs and crying.

The teacher was furious. With a wrinkled face, she rebuked me for my refusal to accept the punishment and commanded that I stay after school to clean the room of every speck of dust, sand, and dirt.

After another hour, we were dismissed from English Vocabulary. The boys raced out and into the street. The girls left in slow handfuls, huddled together and gossiping. I sat alone at my desk, and my double sat beside me on the floor.

The teacher abandoned her measuring stick with a grimace and dropped a bucket and sponge on my desk. I was to fill the bucket with water and get to work. My parents had already been informed and had encouraged it, after the scene I had made earlier in the day. The teacher left to go to her home and promised to be back in an hour.

I took the bucket to the water pump behind the schoolhouse and brought my double with me. She had returned to silence after her cries of pain had gotten us both in trouble. I told her as much and once again asked her what was wrong with her. She said nothing. I pushed down on the rusty water pump over and over again, each push bringing forth a splash of cold water into the bucket. Once it was full, I pulled it away and grabbed hold of my double’s wrists. I dunked her hands into the bucket. She let me and said nothing. I followed suit, letting the shock of the cool water run up to my elbows. My double gasped.

With the full bucket of water, I went back inside with my double. I started by wiping the blackboard at the front of the class clean, then going over it with the wet sponge, until it was a shiny, crisp black. I then wiped down each desk, each chair, and the door. Each had been covered with thin layers of dust, both shed from our fingers and blown in from the monsoon winds. I did this while my double watched, blankly and uselessly. By the time I had finished, the water in the bucket was half the original amount and a sandy brown. I left to replace it, leaving my double in the room alone.

When I came back, the teacher was in the room, speaking to her. Before I could be seen, I hid outside the doorway and waited. An hour had passed, the teacher said, so it was time to see if I had accepted my duties as a student and obeyed properly. My teacher examined the chalkboard, ran her fingers over each desk and chair. She approved of them all. Then, she turned to the front wall of the class, the one the chalkboard hung from, and traced her eyes over it in rows. All was acceptable until she came to the part of the wall just below the chalkboard. Crudely carved into the stucco with the tip of a dried-out pen–nearly two months ago during lunch break and now filled in with deposited dust and dirt–was the face of a cartoon monkey.

The teacher wasn’t speaking, but her breath was loud and quick. She ordered my double to tell her who drew the monkey. My double said nothing. She got closer and asked louder, but nothing. Closer. Louder. My teacher sounded like a wild animal.

Quietly, in a voice that sounded like my voice but wasn’t, I said that it was me. I had drawn the monkey because I thought it would be funny. The teacher’s scowl fell into a smile. She marched to her desk and grabbed her measuring stick with a flourish, then spun around and ordered my double to place both her hands, palms down, on the teacher’s desk. When she didn’t move, my teacher grabbed her wrists and slapped them down on the hard wood of the desk. She raised her measuring stick, angled so that the metal edge would hit the skin first. My double was given, in total, twenty strikes across the backs of her hands, ten on each hand. I watched this happen from out of sight. My double watched it happen right in front of her and said nothing, did nothing. Her face didn’t falter for a second. 

After all was done, the teacher–a little out of breath from a full day of using the measuring stick–asked my double why she wasn’t crying now. She asked her what was wrong. I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I kept watching. The teacher, tired and frustrated, asked my double if she understood that she was being a bad girl and not obeying properly. She told my double that if she kept acting like this, she would continue to be punished; she refused to listen. She remained silent. Feeling hungry, I crawled out of the schoolhouse to go back home. As I stepped out into the schoolyard, I heard the loud smacks of wood hitting skin. I ran down the street, back to my colony. It wasn’t dark yet, but dinner would be ready soon. And I had to help my mother prepare for a party we were having this weekend.

I got back home just as the sun began to set. My mother greeted me aloofly and beckoned me into the kitchen with those wrinkled, henna-dyed hands. Last week, she told me that the biggest house on the street hosted the Navratri party; now that we had built an extension for my father’s sister, our house had inherited this responsibility.

I helped my mother make sweets in the kitchen until dinnertime. I boiled the milk for kheer, mashed up pumpkin for halwa, and ground peanuts into a fine dust for laddus. I was reprimanded for making the milk boil over, then for touching the burning pot and crying out. My mother was about to send me out of the kitchen and back to my room when my father finally arrived home. He was wiping sweat off his forehead. As he came in, he pulled someone else in behind him: my double, looking completely untouched. Not a welt or bruise, or even a hint of redness. My father asked my mother if she knew I was staying out late instead of coming home. My mother looked at me for a moment, then at my double. I opened my mouth to say that the girl in the entryway wasn’t me, but then my mother shook her head and tsked. She went up to my double and grabbed her by the ear, berating her for staying out late when I was supposed to be home to help make sweets for the Navratri party. I said I was helping, but then my mother slapped my double. She forbade me from eating dinner tonight. She sent me upstairs, then took my father into the kitchen to try the kheer. I obeyed and walked up to my room, dragging my double in tow.

I took a bath and met my double in my bedroom. She still had the hairstyle given to her by the girls at school: half-up, half-down. At some point, someone had tucked a jasmine bud in her ponytail. I picked it out and pulled out the ponytail. My plaits were already undone. We looked identical then. I examined my double’s hands, but there was no blood. The skin hadn’t broken.

I tried something: I took out a safety pin from a too-loose blouse and pricked myself with it. It stung a bit. My double’s eyes welled up with tears. I pricked her finger–nothing. My stomach rumbled. I moved to prick my finger again, but she grabbed at her stomach and said she was starving. She said that. I couldn’t get her to say anything else. Dinner was soon, so I rebraided my hair–just one this time–and did the same for my double, pulling hers extra tight. My mother called me to her room.

I was to try on my Navratri dress so my mother could stitch it to fit. I made my double go instead, and watched them from the hallway. The lights were on, but my mother didn’t see me. Even my father, coming upstairs to get his reading glasses from his nightstand, did not acknowledge me. He said hello to my double, though, and reminded her to invite our teacher to the Navratri party tomorrow. I said I would, and he grunted.

My mother tugged at the mirrorwork blouse on my double, adjusting it to adequately cover her shoulders and neck without sagging on either side. She marked the dress with chalk, speaking to my double as she worked. She told her that the dress belonged to my older cousin; she passed it down to me rather than her own little sister because she knew red was my color. My double said nothing. I wanted to say that I hated red, but I didn’t. My mother went on about who would come to the party, what colors they would be wearing, and what food they would bring. I asked if there would be pakora, and she ignored me. Then, my mother asked my double why I was home late from school. I didn’t want to say the teacher was punishing me, so I didn’t say anything. But then, my double started crying. Sobbing. My mother was aghast and began checking the blouse for loose safety pins. When she found nothing, she asked my double what in the world I was crying for. The tears just kept coming, accompanied by heaving breaths and whimpers. She didn’t rub at her face or wipe her tears away, either. She just stood there, letting my mother watch her cry.

I ran to my room and opened my math workbook, spread it open on my desk, and took my pencil to a random problem on the page. I did math until I could no longer hear loud sobs coming from my mother’s room. Then, I tightened my braid and went downstairs for dinner.

My mother was too busy preparing for the party to cook dinner, so my father had brought extra roti and korma from the family next door. We sat at the circular table and ate in near silence–me, my mother, and my father. I had left my double to sit in my room. Her cheeks were still wet with tears. My father asked me how school was, but my mother cut him off and shook her head. He nodded in understanding, then gave me a hard look. I chewed on the dry roti. My mother and father discussed the guest list for the party, and which family would be in town. The roti was like thick paper in my mouth, and the korma was sour. Sour like something in it had gone bad. I almost gagged, but didn’t. I washed down each bite with a sip of water before my mother scolded me for drinking at the dinner table.

After dinner, my mother cleaned up the kitchen, and my father retired to the living room to watch television. He asked me why I never joined him, and I told him I had homework to finish. I went back upstairs to my room. 

My double was hunched over on the floor. I crouched down and peeled her head off the marble tiles, only to find a small pool of vomit trailing from her lips. I dropped her and took a step back. She gasped.

I cleaned it up with a dirty shirt from my laundry hamper, soaked in water and shampoo. The floor smelled like sandalwood when I was done. I rolled my double over onto her back and pushed her into the corner of the room with my foot. I lay down on my bed and wiped away beads of sweat from my forehead. My double let out a long, drawn-out sigh. I got up and kicked her, then sat down at my desk to do more math problems.

Two hours later, the house was quiet. All I heard were the crickets outside my window. I peered at my double; she was as still as a corpse on the ground, just staring at the ceiling. Her eyes were as glassy as ever, and her mouth drawn thin. She had a face like she was holding back a smile, or a sob. I didn’t ask her anything, just left her there and went downstairs for a glass of water. My parents were both asleep by then, so I treaded quietly down each marble step so as not to make louder footsteps than necessary. I did not go to the kitchen for a glass of water. Instead, I coaxed open the back door and stepped into the garden. I closed it behind me ever so carefully.

My mother grew flowers out here to use in pujas, or to put in my hair on festival days. She also grew bendekai and mirchi and a frail, dried-out methi tree. But at the far end of the garden–much older than anything my mother had planted in this garden–was a mango tree. Steady and green, it fanned across the back wall. Golden, just-ripe mangoes hung from its branches, each a size between my fist and my head. I walked up to it. My bare feet sank slightly into the cool sandy dirt.

I hadn’t been allowed to eat a mango since the season had begun. My mother was saving them to cut fresh for the guests at the Navratri party, and she would not serve mango to the guests before offering it to the gods first, which she hadn’t yet done. It had been a week since I last asked for a bite of mango. I had been served all manner of kheer, halwa, laddu, and rasagulla– all of which I swallowed down–but no mango. I would have a mango tonight.

The tree was too tall for me to reach the fruit just standing under it. I wiped the sweat off my hands and walked up to it. I found the highest spot of ground I could, with the lowest hanging branch; I crouched down and tensed my legs. I jumped straight up in the air and outstretched my hand as far as it would go. It was a few inches higher than I could manage before, but not high enough to reach the mango. I jumped again. This time, the tip of my longest finger brushed up against the skin of the fruit. One more time, and I could feel the mango slip out of my loose grip. But on the way down, my feet hit the ground unsteadily; I tripped and fell back. I shook my head. My hands had broken my fall, but they were aching, and the palms were red. I got up. One last time. Tonight was the night.

My legs bunched up, then released. My feet pushed off the cold ground. I reached my hand around the very top of the mango, gripping the stem. As I fell, the mango was pulled down with me, bending until the stem snapped, and it finally accepted the embrace of my fist.

Every hot day and night, every long hour of class–I would imagine the taste of the first mango of the season. The cool nectar filling my mouth and melting on my tongue. The sugar flanked by a tartness from the still-ripening flesh. I imagined it as I sank my teeth into the mango. The first mango of the season…

It didn’t taste like anything. The mushy flesh filled my mouth, but there was no sweetness or tartness at all. It was like biting into softened ice. I tried another bite. Nothing. I bit down to the pit.

It felt colder outside, and my sweat disappeared. In fact, I felt a shiver up my back. I forced the rest of the mango down my throat. The other fruits swayed from their branches back and forth. I left the garden and went back inside the house.

I knew my feet were still muddy, and the garden beds were in ruins. I left orange prints on the white marble wherever I walked. In the morning, my parents would punish me for it, but I left them anyway as I returned to my room.

My double was still lying there, pathetically, on the floor when I got back. But she was smiling softly. I hauled her to the bathroom and locked the door. I tested the temperature of the tap: cold. The geyser wouldn’t work this late. I filled my bucket with the tap on the highest setting. My parents wouldn’t be able to do anything about me, even if I woke them up. I filled it to the brim, then dragged my double by the hair right up to it. Her legs were sprawled over the wet tile, and her head was limp.

I plunged her into the bucket, holding her head down; she didn’t struggle. The strands of thick black hair danced around in the water. They surged back and forth. There were no footsteps outside yet. Just crickets. My double was still blowing bubbles. I kept her head down. Then, she moved. She kicked at me once, and I almost let go of her, but I held fast. She kicked again, this time hitting me in the stomach. I loosened my grip, and her head surged out of the water. Soaking wet, she pushed me away and scrambled to her feet. I did the same and grabbed her by the arms, but she yanked herself away. She pushed me to the ground. I pulled her down with me. There was a quiet voice in another room somewhere. I got hold of her head again and pushed it towards the bucket, but another kick shook me loose.

I took a handful of my own hair in my fist and pulled. She reeled back and yelped in pain. I did it again, then grabbed her head and dunked it. I held it down with all the strength I had. Someone was knocking on the door. It didn’t matter. My double pawed at me one last time, but had eventually accepted her punishment.

She sat limp and let me drown her. I let go when the bubbles stopped, but her head still hung in the water. I left it there. In the mirror, I combed my hair with my fingers and rubbed my face. Scratched the itch on my scalp where I pulled my hair. Flattened out my nightgown. Turned off the light and opened the door.

It was my mother. She asked me why I was taking a bath so late. I told her I had forgotten to take one before dinner. She scoffed at me, then went back to her room. I went back to mine, too.

The crickets were no longer chirping outside my window. The bed felt flatter, and the air hotter. I lay down and waited for what punishment my double and I would receive in the morning.

My chest was burning. I coughed and choked myself awake, and lurched off the side of my bed, vomiting a splash of hot water. I couldn’t stop crying. My body refused to move properly. It shook and spasmed as I tried to pull myself up. My back and legs stung, and there was a gnawing pain in the side of my stomach, like it had been chewed away from the inside. I couldn’t feel my hands, either of them, except for a cold pain. It stretched across my fingers and was so tyrannical that they couldn’t bend anymore. And my head was pounding. It took all my strength to straighten out my body once again, just to let it fall back down into my bed.

My parents hadn’t even woken up yet. The sun was not yet in the sky. I lay there, on what was supposed to be my bed, trapped by pain and a complete collapse of what was supposed to be my body.

I couldn’t stop crying.

Meet the Author

Nikhil Byakod is an Indian-American comic artist and writer from Atlanta, Georgia. His work explores the mystical, the theatrical, and the gory. He is the creator of the Webtoon Canvas series, GUT FLORA.