Excerpt from Flash House by Aimee E. Liu, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

In fact, on closer examination, Joanna did recognize her. Two weeks earlier she 'd received an alert from the Vigilance Society about a "blue-eyed hill child," ten, maybe eleven years old, believed to be a kidnap victim living in a brothel in the red-light district. The rescue agencies kept an eye out for girls around this age because there was still a chance of taking them into custody before they were initiated into prostitution. Joanna and her assistant, Vijay Lal, had investigated and promptly located the child. There was no mistaking her identity; the eyes marked her, even from a distance. They were aquamarine in color, almost Chinese in shape, and they burned so brightly they might have been lit from within. Her skin was golden, and though she'd worn the same clothing and seemed familiar with the other girls of G. B. Road, she had looked distinctly out of place, solitary even in the crowded lane. The expression on her face--neither forlorn nor self-pitying, but strangely reserved--alerted Joanna that this was an exceptional child. Unfortunately, she had not had the forethought that day to secure a search warrant. If the child had come forward and asked for asylum, all would have been well. But she ducked from their approach, and they were forced to leave without her. When they returned a few days later with the necessary warrant, the girl was nowhere to be found.

Now those same eyes trained on Joanna, waiting for her to get out of the car. Which she did slowly, closing the door with her hip. Without speaking, she extended her right hand.

The child stared at her naked fingers. No gloves. Perhaps this seemed too intimate, a brute violation of caste code, but just as Joanna was about to pull back, the girl snatched at her fingers, all but crushing them in her own small, powerful hands. "I am called Kamla," she said loudly in English. "You are Mrs. Shaw."


Everything had changed after I was returned from the police station. Indrani beat me with a leather thong--as a warning, she said. I saw her as an old woman, but her greed and anger gave her strength, and the strap ate the flesh off my bones, so when she had finished I could barely move. She locked me in the storage hut behind the house and refused to let Mira tend me, though I could hear through the wall Mira's arguments on my behalf. Why the child? my sister demanded. What can the child do? She cannot refuse. She would not dare to run away, and in any case, where could she go? She has no one, knows no one, is a stranger outside this house. But Indrani told Mira this was none of her concern.

Bharati had warned me, and now I knew. I was broken and worthless, yet only now was I worth the trouble of beating and locking. Now Indrani would take money for me. Now I had bled. But the bleeding had been forced on me. I was still a child. Still the girl they called Kamla. I told myself I had not changed, though I knew this was not true.

Days passed. The hut was mud-walled, tin-roofed, the floor packed dirt like an oven. During the day I could not move for the heat. My companions were old crates and packing boxes, scraps of cotton, a typewriter missing most of its keys, broken lamps, beer bottles, dented trays, a chair without a seat, a child's sandal with torn straps, rolled-up wall calendars six years old. In front, by the door stood sacks of dal, wheat, and rice, which attracted rats. I cleared a path through the rubbish into the farthest corner and made a nest of newspapers and cloth, but there was no way to stay clean. I tore rags from an old white mourning sari to sop the blood between my legs. Each time Indrani came for a cup of grain from her stores she would squint at me there in my corner before leaving a bowl of water and scraps. She would wrinkle her nose at my stink and make a noise of derision, but even when I called out to her, she did not speak. I chewed on bits of the raw grain, letting it soften in my mouth for many minutes before chewing and swallowing, and for the most part I kept it down. As my flesh healed, however, I grew weaker. At night, when the darkness threatened to smother me, I first took comfort in the sounds coming through the walls. Calling, commanding, crying--they were alive. But soon I realized that these noises belonged mostly to men. They would shout out the full range of emotion as if megaphones were implanted in their hearts. Meanwhile the answering silence of my sisters seemed a dirge.

Copyright © 2003 by Aimee E. Liu. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher.