There was no funeral for Devi, no puja for final rites, no pyre.

That day, six months ago, crashes into the shores of Sriram’s mind the way Devi’s blood spilled from her little body, flooding the temple and streets, staining the ponds angry. And then too quickly, the red disappeared. 

He wonders if trucks came early in the morning while he slept, like they do when it snows, drowning the roads with salt pellets and tubs of chemicals. Enough to soften the earth so much that the blood seeped right into it. Like brining the city and its people. 

He thinks of Devi when Amma puts out a pot of water to boil, when the water arcs at the drinking fountain, when he lets the tap run while brushing his teeth. While filling a cup from the refrigerator filter. 

He releases the cup from the fridge—he only ever drinks out of glass so that he can see right through it with his own eyes—and holds it up to the light to make sure it’s clear of any floating red threads. That the fluid isn’t even the faintest pink.

*****

On the days Sriram used to go to the temple with Amma, the house signals the makings of puliogre rice from the kitchen. The smell of tamarind hangs in the air so sticky sweet like candy, but the chilies blister and sucker punch him in the back of his throat. Every family is expected to bring a dish to the temple. Amma has been standing at the stove for over an hour; she holds the weight of her body with her left hand, while her right laces hot spices through the heavy rice, without burning her fingers somehow. 

It’s always the mothers who cook. Sriram knows it no other way. They’re the ones who keep up the routine in every family. It’s why Sriram grumbles that going to the temple is “a girls’ thing,” though he isn’t given a choice. 

“You’re too young to decide that,” Amma tells him, but Sriram’s not sure why age would change that.

At the temple, people sit in two long rows that stretch all the way back to the entrance to observe the puja at the front. Those who come late tap shoulders and ask, “Which puja is it today?” And then they stay, shoving those in front of them to make space, even though they still won’t see a thing. 

Sriram hates sitting. The carpet is flattened with the stench of mold and burnt wood and the loose threads itch his ankles. He crosses and uncrosses his legs, then crosses and uncrosses again out of boredom, out of discomfort, out of the sheer fact that he’s ten-years-old and has decided that patience and sitting criss-cross-apple-sauce are two more “girls’ things.”  

Then there’s the priests’ chanting. It’s a series of noises, not words, that come straight from their fat bellies. No one priest is in tune with the other, so together they are bleating sheep.

The temple isn’t so bad if the other boys from school are there to give him company. Hari is allowed to bring his Gameboy if he keeps it on silent, and Neel’s mother doesn’t even care if he pays attention at all. On these occasions, Sriram pleads to Amma with his eyes and she exhales and nods, releasing him to be a free boy with the others. But they aren’t here today.

A bell tinkles, silencing the sheep, and a song rises from the front of the lines. Sriram recognizes the Carnatic style of the bhajan, which tumbles and trembles between the notes on a scale, but he doesn’t recognize who it’s coming from.

From where he’s sitting, he has to crane his neck. It’s just a girl! He only needs to see the back of her to know who the girl is. Ropes of black hair twist down her back, coated with enough oil that it looks like wet paint. 

It’s the head Pandit’s daughter. He knows her as Devi from class.

She wears her hair the same way every day to school. Here at the temple, Devi’s voice fills the room, but in class, she’s completely silent. Sriram has noticed how she tries to take up the smallest amount of space possible; how she pulls her trailing braid across her shoulder and stuffs her hands under her thighs on the seat; how she hides in sweaters two sizes too big and wears old-people jeans. She doesn’t fit in with the other girls, who ignore her; boys’ laughter makes her look down at her shoes.  

“She’s F.O.B., fresh-off-the-boat,” the boys say. 

It doesn’t matter whether Devi is or isn’t. Sriram knows well what this phrase implies regardless. It makes him want to scrub his own brown skin till it pales. That’s why he begged Amma to buy him Abercrombie T-shirts and to let him plaster his hair with gel like the others. He thinks about telling Devi she’d be better off dressing less like an auntie or not wearing that bindi every day with American clothes.

“She smells like she sleeps in the woods,” Hari cackles to a huddle at recess. He’s the worst because he should know better. Like Sriram, he should recognize the smell as Nag Champa; they all have these bright blue boxes stacked in their homes. But Sriram doesn’t dare say that out loud. 

Devi raises her head and hands up. The notes flutter out from her throat like hundreds of birds released from a cage. Everyone else closes their eyes and bobbles their heads to her voice. They pat their hands on their thighs to the same rhythm—front, front, back, then again, then again—until their palms are red. They repeat the chorus after Devi; Sriram’s own lips make shapes around these words he doesn’t understand. The floor hums along with them. Voices tethering into a single braid, strong enough to lift Devi above them.

Devi means goddess, Sriram remembers, and watches as she transforms into just that.

At the end of the puja, everyone stands to accept their blessings from the Pandit. He wears shiny orange fabric around his waist and gold jewelry at every joint of his hands and arms, like he’s pretending to be a god. One by one, he fans a flame towards each person then presses a palm to their bowed head. Devi follows behind him—the only time Sriram’s usually has seen her at the temple—spooning glutinous prasad into people’s cupped palms. She’s returned to her form Sriram thinks of as a good, little girl. She doesn’t raise her head, and only when her father grunts, does she shift down the line. Like the cows he’s seen mindlessly roaming around the temples in India.

When it’s his turn, Sriram cups his palms—stacking right over left as Amma instructs—and stares down at his bare feet. He feels the Pandit’s hard palm and the jewelry poke into his scalp. Then he sees two feet with light pink toe tips that look like jelly beans on brown skin. He smells the woods on her. 

“I liked your bhajan today,” Sriram mutters to their feet. He wiggles his toes.

When Devi giggles, he looks up accusingly. She looks back with her chestnut eyes, set close together with a line of sandalwood paste smeared in the middle of them. It’s only just for a moment. Then the Pandit grunts and she looks down again– not before heaping another spoonful of prasad into Sriram’s hands. Enough so that the ghee overflows through his fingers.

*****

The next time Sriram goes to the temple, Devi gives him an extra spoonful again. She lingers. When the Pandit is out of earshot and Amma isn’t looking, she whispers for him to stick around after the prasad’s been served.

She pulls him aside to a hallway he’s never ventured down before. The air swirls with incense that’s lost its way. 

“Do you want to see my favorite bhagwan?” she asks. Her voice is noticeably smaller than when she sings.

“Of course you have a favorite god,” Sriram scoffs. Then quickly he adds, “I mean yeah, I want to see it.”

They approach an intricately carved wooden door: vines, lotuses, and tropical birds come out from the grains almost like they’re alive. Devi pushes her entire body against it to open it. 

The room is dark and soundless. The only light is a single stream of sun from a small barred window, falling onto a towering white marble statue in the center of the room. Sriram approaches the crowned, ten-armed goddess, sitting atop a tiger. She’s two, maybe three times his size and glows like a god. All the other deities in the temple are painted with sleepy eyes, but this goddess’s eyes fill half of her face—her irises like the fat, black raisins he picks out of biryani. And unlike the other statues that are dressed only in paint, this one is wrapped in a real golden sari, twisting into crevices within her stone arms, collarbones, waist. The sari is pulled so tightly that it’s nearly translucent, revealing two full moon breasts. Sriram looks away, fearing he’s violated her privacy. 

“Who is she?” 

“Durga Maa,” Devi says, addressing the statue and not him.

Maa. His own Amma and Amama had told him about goddesses before. He thought of these goddesses as mere women who birthed male gods. It was the men who had endless tales and bhajans written about them. 

Yet shining in front of Sriram now, Durga Maa is much more. 

“There’s something else,” Devi says. 

Hidden behind the statue is a large framed painting of another goddess that looks like Durga Maa’s nightmarish twin. Her tongue slithers out of her mouth like a hungry, threatening snake. She, too, has ten arms, some of which carry glinting weapons: a trident, sword, spiked disc, bow and arrow, and a club. One arm holds up a decapitated head of a man she’s slain. But it’s her eyes, ringed thick with black, that Sriram fears most. They bulge out the painting and have the smallest dot for pupils. It gives her an aimless look, like she’s glaring at no one and everyone at once. 

Sriram steps back.

“Kali Maa. Durga Maa’s avatar,” Devi answers, reading his mind. 

“I’ve never read stories about her,” Sriram says. If he had, he wouldn’t forget.

“That’s because people believe she’s dangerous. But she’s a goddess because she can destroy any evil.” 

The words sound misplaced coming out of good, little Devi’s mouth. But the painting reflects bright in her wide-open chestnut eyes. 

*****

After that day, Sriram comes to the temple out of curiosity, not obligation. He stops complaining to Amma that it’s “girls’ stuff.” Though, he would never let that on to Hari and Neel. He’s relieved when he doesn’t see them. They wouldn’t get why he’s spending time with a girl. Especially Devi.

“What do you want to destroy today?” Devi beckons.  

It’s become their secret game, the two of them in the goddess room “playing Kali Maa” the way other kids “play house.” 

Sriram scrunches his brows, choosing carefully. He calls out Mr. Ippolito, their gym teacher’s name. “The next time he makes us do a pull-up test.”

“Good one,” Devi claps her hands. 

 Then she stands up and shakes the giddiness out of her body, drags her hand sideways across her neck and lets it hang heavy. Her body thrashes. The dupatta, hanging long from her neck, unravels and tornadoes around her head like Kali’s spinning disc. Her braid whips like a sword. Her eyes flutter open and close as if possessed. Maybe, Devi is. She jumps from side to side, and pretends to spear the air. Sriram drums the floor with his palms, while she does this dark dance of hers. 

Then he calls out, “What about you? What would you destroy?”

“Devi!” the Pandit barks, before she can answer. How long had he been standing there? He looms like a small shadow next to the giant wooden doorway, but his voice threatens to splinter it into a million pieces. “Go help your Amma in the puja room.” He doesn’t acknowledge Sriram.

Devi obeys, wrapping her dupatta around her shoulders and chest like she’s mummifying her own body. The Pandit needs to say nothing more.

*****

Mr. Ippolito calls in sick the next week. The substitute teacher cancels the pull-up test in favor of parachute games.

Sriram and Devi continue playing in secret and that makes it all the more fun. Within the four walls of the goddess room, Kali Maa’s power is theirs to wield. 

At school, Sriram still watches Devi from afar. But he knows if he were to walk up to her desk and tap the back of her shoulder, he’d find it hard to hide a silly, toothy grin.  

But it’s Hari that jabs Sriram in the shoulder at recess.

“I heard from my mom that you’re talking to Devi. Is she your girlfriend or something?” he asks loud enough so everyone can hear, including Devi, who sits alone on a bench.

“It’s not like that,” Sriram says, rubbing his shoulder where it’s soft from Hari’s fist.

“Then what? Does she have to pray to you ‘cause she’s a priest girl?” Neel pushes.

“Stop it,” Sriram says through his teeth. 

He turns to face Devi, his heels churning the asphalt as he does. He can feel her stare. He can smell the Nag Champa. But her face doesn’t show any sort of reaction, no expression. Is she waiting for him to defend her? Why doesn’t she do more for herself? Where’s that boldness that spills out of her when she destroys evil? Stupid, he thinks. She’s just a stupid, good girl. He walks away from the huddle, till Hari and Neel’s hollering fades, leaving behind the black pebbles grinding under his sneakers and leaving behind Devi.

The boys don’t let up though. 

Not the next day: “Sriram and Devi sitting in a tree…” Or the next: “He’s going to smell like a tree the more time he spends with her.” Or the one after that: “Are you even boyfriend-girlfriend anymore?”

Always waiting till Devi’s around to hear too.

Sriram wishes she would ask him, “What would you destroy, Sriram?”  

 “The boys in our class,” he wants to say. He wants to summon Devi’s demon.

“If you break up, who’s gonna pray to you Sriram?” Hari asks today.

Instead, Sriram feels his own transformation coming over him. His temper has been flickering all week, like those trick birthday candles, though they eventually melt and make a mess. 

Sriram finally blurts out, “She doesn’t pray to me because she prays to a demon!” Devi looks directly at him, red filling the whites of her chestnut eyes the way watercolors bleed when touching the page.

Sriram’s words catch fire. Though he had meant the words in earnest, the boys think it’s a joke. 

“Devi, the demon worshiper,” Hari and Neel tease little Devi, with their hands clasped in prayer. The other boys swarm her and join the chant, turning into the sheep Sriram knows all too well. Devi continues sitting there, statuelike, and doesn’t let go of the braid intertwined in her fingers.

Sriram stands far away from them and only looks down at his shoes.

*****

Sriram has a nightmare that Kali Maa, with her big eyes which can see all the world at once, comes for his head. She chases him with her sword raised high, as he runs and runs and runs. Then when he can run no more, he stops and looks back only to realize that it’s actually Devi—her chestnut eyes ringed black, her tongue hungering for its next bite, her long braid flailing like an eleventh arm.

Sriram wakes up to the feeling of his cheek turning soggy, from his pillow soaked in his tears. Wrapping his arms tight around his bunched-up limbs, it’s he who prays to her now: “Please Devi Maa, please don’t hurt me.”

******

Devi stops coming to school. Sriram’s eyes wander to her empty seat more often than he’d like. He worries that Hari and Neel might notice his head turn ever so slightly to look the two rows ahead.

He returns to the temple to look for Devi. Without her presence, he notices again all the places where the carpet threads lift up. The fluorescent lights flicker like pests. The priests drone on, and there’s no bhajan to quiet them. Yet he knows she’s there. He can feel it.

He goes to their spot, where the door is locked. “Devi please,” Sriram calls. The wooded vines, lotuses, and birds rattle under his banging fist.

“You’re just like all the other boys.” Devi’s voice carries through the door with the same weight as her Carnatic song.

“I didn’t mean to,” he says, fists turning redder. Was this admitting he was sorry? He doesn’t stop banging against the door despite growing more afraid of what’s behind it.

For a moment, there’s no response, and Sriram wonders if Devi’s gone. He stops, listening for the sound of little footsteps. But there are none. 

When Devi finally answers, her voice echoes so that her words repeat over and over and over like an incantation: “Maybe you did mean to. Because maybe I am a demon worshiper.” 

Then she sings.

This song is a painful one—more like a tornado siren than a voice. One of the fluorescent lights above Sriram bursts and he crouches down to shield himself with his arms. Maybe this is how she’ll come for his head.

“Please Devi Maa, please don’t hurt me.” He begs like in his nightmare. But she doesn’t stop singing.

Suddenly, the inside of his nose feels raw, just like when he leans in too close to the rusty drinking fountain at school. He looks down to see red liquid oozing from underneath the door, twisting around his shoeless feet, sticking to his soles like caramel. Blood. 

Sriram stumbles backwards in horror and falls. The door begins to strain from the pressure behind it and the carved birds in the wood warp into monstrous shapes. He hears the crackle of the wood splitting open. Then the blood bubbles and gushes out with a vengeful force, like squeezing a paper cut just to feel it hurt. 

Sriram finally sees Devi through the splintered door. Her tongue whips this way and that while nonsensical notes fall out of her mouth. Her body jerks violently and her arms reach out like they’re holding golden weapons. She is a vision of Kali Maa, just like when they used to play, only he knows it’s not a game this time. Her salwar is soaked red-black, blood flooding from every thread of material and orifice of her body. 

It pools around Sriram, faster and faster in pace with her shrieking song, and he wonders if this is what it’d felt like when the boys swarmed her that day.

“Devi, stop!” Sriram pleads, but he knows she can’t hear him. Her chestnut eyes glow bright white, but they have no pupil, no single aim.

In trying to save himself, she’s become the very demon that Sriram wanted to make her out to be.

The current grows stronger and Sriram kicks hard against it, scooping palm-fulls past him to stay afloat. But he is overwhelmed by it. He begins to cry, like the little boy he is; his tears simply get lost in the bloody sea. 

The flood eventually yanks him away from the goddess room, down the dark hallway, and flushes him out of the temple where Amma and the Pandit and the other temple goers seem to have escaped from. 

Sriram stops fighting the current. He won’t wonder where anyone disappeared to that day. He won’t ask why Devi didn’t receive a final puja or a pyre—as if the Pandit were willing her to never reincarnate, so that the trauma would disappear along with her soul. He’ll wonder why the flood didn’t destroy him too. But he’ll somehow find himself in his Amma’s arms, and she won’t say a thing. He won’t either.