The gate is smaller than I remember.
So is the courtyard and the assembly hall where we once stood with the other late students while PT Master Samuel tested the cane against his palm. The handwashing trough is still near the playground, its cement lip darkened where water has pooled and dried for years.
Before anyone sees me, I turn the tap.
The pipe coughs first. Then cold water rushes over my fingers, and I am back at seven-thirty, tie stuck to my throat, first bell ringing across the courtyard. I am late, rubbing my palms against my plaited, oily hair so the cane might slick off. Even then I am looking for him, along the assembly line, past the rows of white shirts.
Water splashes my polished shoes.
Chalk dust and damp uniforms come back with it. I slip in under Ms. Agnes’s stare, checking the second row, the window side. He smiles. Homework covers the blackboard. I copy mechanically before she erases the sums with the wooden duster, a shower of white clouds lifting into the sunlight. Chalk settles over the desk, cakes into the creases of my skin. Even my boogers turn white.
“Our Father, who art in heaven…” I recite, while my stomach growls through Bible class and the taste of chalk dries on my tongue.
At the lunch bell, we spill toward this trough, boys and girls pushing each other for space, the playground heat steaming up through our Bata shoes. Water runs over fingers, wrists, steel tiffin lids. He stands at the far tap, water beading on his knuckles before he flicks it from his fingers. When he laughs, a crease deepens into a dimple on his left cheek.
Once, as we pass the steel tumbler along, his hand brushes mine. The side of his little finger against mine.
For the rest of the afternoon, I press that finger under the desk. The tingling stays through sums, through PE class, through the last bell.
For annual day, I am chosen for the dance. Boney M blares from the cassette player, “Hooray! Hooray! It’s a Holi-Holiday,” while inside the classroom the others memorize stigma, style, ovary opening on the blackboard in chalky white. After rehearsal my throat is dry and sweat gathers under my ribboned plaits. I see him near the corridor grille, pretending to drink water. He looks up. The smile reaches his eyes before it reaches his dimple. I look away and let my feet follow the music.
On the way out, I miss a step.
Behind me, the reunion gate opens.
Sana walks in slowly, stiffness in her knees beneath her saree. Arun’s paunch pushes before the rest of him. We gather in small knots under the corridor windows. The bell rings, and all of us stop mid-talk before laughing.
Someone asks whether Michael is coming. No one answers. Michael, who hid chalk pieces in the girls’ desks and blamed the boys from Section B, died two years ago of kidney disease. The corridor fills with the calling of a sparrow from the playground.
Then he walks in carrying a plastic water bottle.
His hair has thinned at the temples, his shirt strains at the buttons. But when he smiles, his left cheek still curls into a dimple.
His daughter runs toward the trough, her hand reaching for the tap before he catches up, calling after her in the same half-laughing voice.
“Do you remember this trough?” I ask.
He nods. “They used to send me here to wash chalk off my hands. I was always getting punished.”
She twists the tap. The water clouds briefly, chalky froth fading until it clears and spills over her fingers.
He steps past me and shuts it off.
