capitol || bhagyalakshmi 'shmi' keya bhatt

i lay my body down
to rest my weary head
i think i left someone there
i left myself for dead

---

“Bhagyalakshmi, you come here this instant!”

Picture the girl, six years old and tearing through the grass just outside of her room in full formal attire, gold-trimmed peacock blue-green dress gathered in her tiny hands. She beams at the world, long dark hair undone and streaming behind her as her little legs carry her farther from the furious voice of her caretaker, Madam Orna. There is nothing she cannot see or do in the moment, the girl believes. She is unstoppable, uncatchable, as she charges for the trees on the far end of the compound. With hardly a thought, she flings herself at the nearest tree and scales it with ease despite how small she is. Thick, dark leaves are spread all around her, covering her up as the shouting voice grows closer and more footsteps accompany it. Through the leaves, she can just barely see Madam Orna speaking to one of the new Avoxes from the house, a girl with long red hair in a braid down her back. Madame Orna talks quickly in hushed whispers before she stalks to the other side of the patch of trees and resumes her shouting.

They do not find her for another fifteen glorious minutes.

Shmi concedes defeat when they do. They did find her, after all. As soon as she touches her wiggling toes back to the earth, Madam Orna spins her about-face and backs her against the trunk of the tree. Wisely, the Avox stays clear of her wrath.

“What is wrong with you, child?” the woman crows, face close and voice overwhelming at such a distance. Shmi feels herself begin to shake in the tight hold. “Look at yourself! We have to wash you all over again. You’ve got cuts on your hands, and your arms, and your face. And your dress! You’ve ripped your dress!”

Wide-eyed, Shmi looks down at herself in shock. One of the top layers in the skirted portion is ripped clean through. She must have caught the dress on a branch on the way up the tree and not noticed. Oh, her dress… After weeks of begging, Shmi had been allowed to pick this one out herself, and now look at it. Her eyes begin to well up with tears, and she releases a hiccupping sob.

Slap!

The whole world seems to go silent with the sound. Nothing dares disturb the delicate situation that comes in its wake. Beside her, Shmi can see the Avox girl flinch and lower her eyes to the ground. Shmi copies the movement, bringing her face back to center and biting her lip to try and keep herself from crying. It doesn’t quite work, not when the pain throbs across the left side of her face in sensitive pin-prick waves. In front of her, Madam Orna sighs and grabs her wrist, leading her back to the house. The Avox follows closely behind, silent as always, as Madam Orna begins to speak again in a quieter, more subdued tone.

“Your father has been planning this dinner for months, Bhagyalakshmi. You will not ruin this night.”

It had never been her intention. Shmi had just spent the whole day cooped up in the house despite the good weather, and she’d nearly gone mad watching the trees sway from the large bay window in her room. She'd just wanted to play. The last thing she wanted to do was disappoint her father. It seemed she did that enough already, if the daily disapproving looks and side-comments about how she behaved were any indication. Some days, he wouldn’t say a word to her at all. All she wanted to do was make him proud, make him love her. Perhaps she’d have to try a bit harder.

Her father gave her a nod that night at dinner when he saw her sit up straighter in her chair.

It was a start.

---

waking in the afternoon
a captive in a passive tomb
moments turn to long decembers
stoking fires from dying embers

---

The sun paints splintered lines across her bedroom wall, rippling through the canopy over her bed and greeting her in warm splashes beyond her eyelids as the clouds roll through. It is late in the morning, at least the late that she knows as late. It’s probably only nine. Still, it feels like noon, and Shmi snuggles deeper into her covers with a smile in the hope that Ina will not come in and disturb her bubble.

As if summoned by the thought, the Avox enters just moments later in silence with a tray in her arms, toeing her way through the room to the young girl playing dead under layers of blankets. Only three years older than Shmi’s nine, Ina is the closest thing to a friend she has in the compound, if by friend you mean someone you can talk to who cannot talk back and who you own. Shmi is pretty sure that’s not what friendship is, but she’ll take it. Of everyone living inside the wrought iron gate, Ina is the only one that really smiles at Shmi, though. The others curve their lips into empty approximations of what they assume Shmi expect of them, but Ina smiles. It makes her feel giddy in a way she doesn’t understand, and she doesn’t devote much of her time figuring it out, not when she has to learn how to be a proper girl and get Father’s approval.

The blankets get pulled back abruptly, cool air flooding Shmi’s senses as she whines and tries to grab them back blindly. She can hear Ina snort, and the sound makes her laugh into her pillow. Catching the edge of her comforter, she tugs and sits up straight in one motion, pulling the little slack in the fabric around her and chasing the little warmth that’s left.

“It’s too early,” she cries, frowning as she sees the Avox roll her eyes just before she turns to set the table by Shmi’s window. Shmi flops backwards into her bed, rubbing at her tired eyes and letting out a quiet sigh. Tomorrow, she’d turn ten. Father was having a party at the house, inviting all of the extended family and all of his business partners and their children. She’d have to sit through conversations with stupid boys that her father would insist she get to know. Her aunt Jayashri would surely have some honest words to say about how she was sitting, or smiling, or nodding, or eating. Nilima, of course, would be auntie’s perfect daughter, as always. By the end of tomorrow night, Shmi fully expected to get an earful about her auntie and cousin from her Mother, as always. Today, however, she gets to breathe. No tutoring today, or etiquette lessons, or even a family meal, as both of her parents were away preparing for tomorrow.

No, today, Shmi would get to be a kid for the last time. Ten seemed like an adult number, she figured. Two whole digits.

"I'm scared to be ten, Ina," she mumbles, slipping out of bed in a tangle of limbs and blankets and her nightgown, graceless and charming in a way only kids are. The Avox turns to her with a little laugh, stepping forward to grab Shmi's robe and hold it for her as she puts it on. When Ina presses a kiss to Shmi's hairline and laughs again, Shmi feels flustered and annoyed and unsure of herself, and she pulls away with a huff to start in on breakfast. Ina keeps her company the whole morning, humming at all the right moments and and playing with her long, red hair as the sunlight streams in the windows.

It pours after lunch, clouds and water alike blurring sightlines across the grounds, and Ina chases Shmi through the gardens as the grass turns slick. Ina knows all too tell how becoming two whole digits begins to change things, and cannot help herself in indulging Shmi who shrieks as she is caught and whirled around, rain pelting them from all sides. It is the most fun that Ina has had since her tongue was cut from her mouth.

Ina wishes she could tell her that.

Sopping wet and barefoot, the pair enters through the back doorway the Avoxes use, dripping over the stone and smearing mud across the floor. Shmi smiles all the way up the stairs and through the kitchen until she sees her mother, immaculately dressed in purple robes, not a trace of rain on her despite the fact that she must have just gotten in. The world feels as if it drops out from under her as Shmi meets her mother’s keen, kohl-rimmed eyes, all cool emotion and disappointment. It seems that’s her constant expression with her daughter. Beside her, Ina seems to shrink as she tucks her chin to her chest, trying to shy away from eyes that are too quick to let her go.

“Bhagyalakshmi, go bathe. Elia will be there to help you momentarily.”

Everything in her wants to stay, to take the blame for her dirty feet and wet, tangled hair, but Shmi knows second-guessing her mother's resolve will cause more trouble in the long run. Shivering and feeling as if she has been exposed all the way down to her bones, Shmi bows her head. Without a word, she slips from the room, turning the corner and glimpsing back to see Ina stood alone against the wall where Shmi left her just before her mother shuts the door.

It is Elia who wakes her the next morning.

Shmi knows better than to ask questions.

---

i try to move a limb
but there's a disconnect within
a devil in the alchemy
a phantom staring back at me

---

It will be another hour before one of the Avoxes comes to wake her so she can get ready to go out with Mother, but no matter how hard she tries to close her eyes, Shmi cannot seem to tear them away from her own chest. Breathing in deep, she watches as she rises and falls with the tide beneath her nightgown for several breaths before pulling it up to rest just below her breasts. She takes another slow, deep breath, skirting her nails across the grooves of her ribs and settling in-between them to plug up the gaps. Despite her best effort, the air seems to escape between the cracks in her chest, and she breathes out with a spinning head.

The dizziness doesn’t go away as she swallows saliva and prays it will satisfy, continuing to breathe in measured breaths and pressing at her ribs from both sides to make herself smaller. She wishes it would work, that her fingertips could squish her into near nonexistence. Perhaps then, at her most insignificant, she could be enough for Mother and Father. Instead, the dizziness makes her vision swim a little deeper into blurry waters. They may be tears. Shmi doesn’t keep track any longer, not at sixteen when a girl shouldn’t be crying. If she doesn’t name the moisture running down her cheeks and into her hair, it doesn’t count.

She skates one of her hands lower, feeling over the soft skin and peach-fuzz hair, the tiny bump of her stomach. Another deep breath and she blinks through the haze to watch as her stomach caves down between the jagged mountains of her ribs and hips. As she breathes out, her hip-bones continue to jut up from her skin, sharp angles towering above the soft planes of her body. Still, Shmi looks at the way her stomach bumps up just barely where her organs lie and wishes, just for a moment, that she could tear them all out. Maybe if she had nothing left inside her, Mother wouldn’t look up from writing a letter later that day in her sitting room and ask with faux-innocent curiosity if Shmi had eaten yet, as if she doesn’t know the answer, doesn’t see the result.

Her fingers shake, and she closes her eyes as she tugs her nightgown back down, feeling the phantom touch of her own bone-thin fingers across her skin like trails left by tiny, relentless snakes searching for a weakness. Shmi doesn’t have those. She’s not allowed to, not now that her finishing lessons are over, now that Mother has spent so much money making sure she is flawless in her presentation.

It’s always a presentation.

After the Avox has come and gone in silence, Shmi sits at her table to stare blearily at the rising sun and eats an apple and a piece of toast, washing it down with still scalding green tea. Minutes later, she's perched on the rim of her tub, meticulously ripping up the other two pieces of toast into tiny enough pieces to be flushed and licking the butter from her fingertips. The eggs get sent along to keep the ripped up toast company, as does the orange juice. The only other thing that survives her routine is the banana, tucked away into her closet for her to eat later, maybe, if she gets too lightheaded before dinner. Yesterday’s banana had been flushed in pained silence, just like the one the day before.

Her bones get hidden under layers of colorful fabric, wrapped tight to keep her from spilling out of her skin, skirts and shawls in pinks and purples vibrant enough to rival the smudge of color under her eyes. It takes little time for her to swipe makeup over her face, and Shmi watches as she disappears behind her mask of rich-toned creams and contoured cheekbones. By the time she is finished, the only thing that remains of the girl who is Shmi is the soreness of the burns in her mouth, tongue feeling flaky and dry already.

Presentation.

All her life, she has known this world to be one of appearance and presentation. Shmi had learned young how to smile demurely and bow her head, how to hide under the image that her family had crafted for her. Father looks at her and does more than nod now, pleased with how well she’s adapted to leaving herself behind, it seems. Sometimes it is a quirk of the corner of the mouth. Other times, it is an idle hand smoothing her baby hairs back as he introduces her to another business associate and their son. At home, they don't speak unless it's about meeting another son. Mother praises her in public, both at parties and within the earshot of Jayashri, but it’s all calculated glances and subtle suggestions in the privacy of their home, a constant watchful eye. In public, they are a wealthy, well-bred family who love and care for each other. It is everything Shmi had wanted as a child when she would sit up straighter at parties and look for Father’s subtle approval. She had pieced together the life she had wanted from the tools her parents offered her, carefully crafting a visage just as flawlessly as Mother’s tutors taught her.

But in the process, where had she misplaced herself?

Shmi takes tiny footsteps as she and Mother walk wordlessly down Style Street. All the while, Mother points out jewels and dresses that had changed since their last trip while Shmi responds with hums of feigned interest. Her eyes never stop moving, though, taking in the colorful displays of new goods and artful demonstrations of new skin-pigmentation techniques. It’s all too much to make sense of, to find a purpose in, other than creating the perfect picture so that no questions will be asked. With each passing moment, the airiness in Shmi’s head grows until she feels like she is floating with every delicate step. She doesn’t make a sound, but she watches.

And slowly, just as she had this morning when she drank her tea too fast, Shmi begins to burn from the inside out.

---

so is there anybody here
who can tell me where i am
or at least where i have been
because i fear i'm lost
and i cannot be found again

---