Maybe it had been her eyes, she thought later. Why else would he stammer and look away? Send the same lackey at night to tell them he’d fixed it so they could stay another year?

She’d tested her theory on the boys around the compound, and a couple of times on men in the street till one of them followed her from the corner shop until he saw her walk through the gate under the MONTGOMERY STREET POLICE STATION sign. Watching his smug face cloud with fear was almost worth the eyes that had tried to undress her as she made her way to the back of the police station and through the gap in the wall that connected it to the staff quarters on the lane behind, which had their own unobtrusive entrance with a handwritten “Gomery quarters” tacked on one side.

Further experiments after school confirmed it. She now knew her eyes were the prettiest eyes for miles till the bridge and the billboard rose and brought her competition, and renewed desire.

Rafina wanted again. But what she wanted was to rise above it all, and loom over the world like the woman in the phone card advertisement. That, she felt, would be just about the best thing that could ever happen to her. Everyone would know her. Everyone would admire her. No one would tell her what to do. Even Rosie khala’s raspy voice – there it was sawing through the door of her room again – would be drowned by the adulation she would one day inspire.

“How did she take the news?” The pigeon was grilling her mother. “She must have cried.”

“No, she didn’t. She’s not fussy all the time; sometimes she listens to her Ma.”

Of course I do, Rafina thought. Where’s the room in this hole for disagreement? Like I could have said no.

But she didn’t really mean it. Not being able to go to college didn’t bother her as much as it might once have. Ma had a BSc in Home Economics, didn’t she? It hadn’t quite taken her to the manager’s cubicle on the factory floor. Rafina knew she was destined for bigger things.

“What are you going to do with her now?” Rosie khala just wouldn’t let it be. If she’d had a son, Rafina might have thought this was leading up to a proposal of some sort, but Rosie’s son had died at twelve. They’d gone to the village and he’d choked to death before they could get him to a hospital. Bad air, Zeenat had told Rafina when she’d asked what had happened to him. He’d died of village air. Oh! She meant asthma! How did a stupid like her get into college?

Was Khala perhaps interrogating in hopes of a match for a cousin? A brother? Rosie khala never mentioned her extended family, just yakked about her dear departed mother, who Rafina imagined must have dropped dead the first time Rosie beti had dyed her hair the colour of gajar ka halwa. Who would believe someone so out of touch was in the business of beauty?

Rosie worked in a ladies’ parlour; she always emphasised “ladies” when she met someone for the first time. Rafina had found it funny at first. Then she’d overheard her telling Ma about several businesses in Defence that were really massage dens full of plump, yielding Punjabi women who had floated down river on their buoyant bosoms. Defence was the most expensive part of town, and Rosie had been nudging Naz to nudge hubby to get a transfer because that way collection would be more lucrative.

“Punjabis,” Rafina’s mother said, deflecting the attempt, “they get all the jobs.”

Mother and aunty tittered like schoolgirls, but Rafina hadn’t got the joke. Must be an old woman thing. They got softer in the head as they grew older, not just in the stomach. Last month Rafina had caught Ma standing in front of the large portrait of her father that hung over the entrance door and laughing till the tears ran down her face. It was very early in the morning; even the dogs weren’t running for their refuges yet – she must have thought her children were asleep. Rafina watched her from the doorway of the inner room and vowed she wasn’t going to be like that when she grew older. She wasn’t going to be fat either.

“I thought she could start coming to work with me. One of the women is on maternity leave for a month and the shift supervisor said she could fill in for her. If she gets a little experience now, maybe she will be able to get a full-time slot at the factory when one opens up.” Rafina’s mother worked at a garment factory, preparing denims for export. She said it was a good job, better than most a woman like her could ever get. But Rafina didn’t buy it. She’d tried to talk her out of taking the job, told her they could live off her father’s pension; hadn’t the DSP mentioned that the dependents of a policeman killed in the line of duty got a payment and a pension? Ma had mutely shown her a piece of paper. Immediate relief paid to heirs of late personnel, it told them, was Rs 15,000. Monthly maintenance to widows and dependent children of late personnel, it continued, was Rs 3000. Rafina lingered on the last line: “Marriage grant (on marriage of first and second daughters only) Rs 10,000 (non-refundable).”

“I can get married,” she had blurted. Naz had looked down at the paper again, up at her teenage daughter in silence, and down once more, then fixed her stare on Rafina for what felt like hours, taking in the length of her, her unbowed shoulders, the frighteningly precise features, the spark in her eyes, her dark skin, and asked:

“How many times?”

Note: ‘Rafina’ was written in 2003-2004, and payments to the dependents of slain police personnel have since increased.

Excerpted with permission from Rafina: A Novella, Shandana Minhas, Picador India.