She glared one last time at the dormitory, then turned away and headed for the gate. I followed her, cursing myself for my insensitive attempt at a joke. Whatever I’d said had set her off. I’d tripped over some terrible memory. She jumped into the car, and I joined her.

“She called me dark,” said Sushmita, and a fat tear ran down her cheek. “For seven years she made me feel ugly. Called me a black jungli. She stole my soap and replaced it with a jar of Afghan Snow. Then she invited the other girls to laugh at me.”

“Afghan Snow?”

She glowered. “Skin cream. It makes your skin lighter. Until you wash it off. Then you’re just as ugly as before.”

“That’s horrible.”

“I hated her,” she said and wiped away the tear. “I was glad when she died.”

“Died?”

“Yes. One day she went out and never came back. No one ever found out what happened to her.”

Sushmita and I drove off, away from the bitter memories of St. Mary’s. How sad. She’d been enjoying her return to the campus until I’d teased her. I wanted to apologize and dry her tears. But I wanted even less to remind her of the pain that woman had caused her. Over the color of her skin? Something she couldn’t have changed even if it had mattered. A child, for Christ’s sake. What kind of monster would make a child cry? A monster charged with the care of children.

And yet, as Sushmita drove, I felt like a coward yet again. Wasn’t there something I could say to console her? I reached for her hand instead, but she was shifting gears.

“She was a fucking bitch,” was all I could manage.

Somehow it was just right. Sushmita nearly choked as she tried to steer. Then she glanced at me with more love than I’d ever seen in a person’s eyes before. She yanked the wheel to the side, nearly crashing into another car, and skidded to a stop on the side of the road. There, after shifting to neutral and setting the brake, she rolled out of her seat on top of me and smothered me in a warm, wet kiss. We sat there for some time, me trapped beneath her, her stroking my hair and gazing into my eyes as if she could never get enough.

“I love the glass lotus you gave me,” she said, her nose pressing against mine. “I’ll keep it at my bedside always.”

Then a tap came on the window.

Jesus, it was a cop.

He wasn’t pleased to find an Indian woman straddling a gora in a fancy car in broad daylight. I was sure he was going to arrest us for public indecency. He demanded she get out of the car.

“Give me fifty rupees, Danny,” she whispered frantically. “Now!”