The Sleeping Dictionary by Sujata Massey Page B

telegram.”
    “May I please help with the feedings? And I should like to watch over the young memsaheb as much as I can.” I spoke pleadingly, for I could not bear to leave Bidushi when she was so weak and miserable.
    “It would be a bit of a help,” Nurse-matron said, patting me on the shoulders. “Our Sarah, she’s a good one.”
    “Very well then,” Miss Jamison answered with a thin smile. “Sarah shall temporarily halt her housekeeping duties. Use her as you wish during the day and have her sleep in the room at night.”

    I WAS ALLOWED to bring my sleeping mat from the lean-to and placed it on the cool floor near Bidushi’s bed. She slept quietly that evening, and the next morning her fever was gone. She was able to take water, weak tea, and dal soup, but nothing more.
    “I’m sorry,” my friend murmured as I wiped her hands and face clean with a damp cloth.
    “Sorry? I am so very happy to hear you speaking!”
    “Sorry for being weak like this,” she whispered. “We must prepare for the examinations. How many days have I lost?”
    “Just two,” I said, stroking back her hair. “And they are nothing to worry about.”
    Bidushi ate some more soup and was well enough to have a bath. The next day, however, the fever returned, and her body shook for hours. Although she did not hear or feel my presence, I washed her and put water to her dry lips. How ironic that she had lost her parents in a flood but now was struggling because of a lack of water inside her. I had to get the water down, I thought as I tilted the cup into her mouth. She was like a fading flower, and flowers needed water to live.
    The third day, Miss Jamison told Matron that the Bandopadhyays had found and spoken with a female physician, Dr. Sengupta, who could arrive tomorrow. I worried about that long delay, although Bidushi’s fever had again broken, enabling her to converse weakly and take more food and drink. Fever on, fever off; that was not the way cholera ran. Nurse-matron thought that her illness was starting to resemble malaria.

    THAT NIGHT, AFTER I’d lit the mosquito coils and begun to tuck the mosquito net around Bidushi’s bed, she whispered, “Sleep with me tonight.”
    “I will, dearest. My mat is here, and I will lie close by.” She didn’t know that I roused myself several times each night to put my face close to the net, to hear that she was still breathing. But what I heard—the fast, ragged sounds—did not reassure me much.
    “No, inside the bed. Only you can stop Ravana from taking me tonight.”
    She was speaking of the demon king who kidnapped King Rama’s wife, Sita. The holy story of the Ramayana, so loved by children, must have begun to infuse her dreams. I said, “That cannot happen.”
    “I have not slept with another person since my mother, when I was small,” she said.
    “Soon you will lie with Pankaj on a bed strewn with rose petals,” I said, willing it to be true. If Bidushi survived to leave Lockwood without me, I would not be the slightest bit envious or resentful. Just glad she was alive.
    “Do not leave me, Didi,” she breathed. “Come inside my bed.”
    I wasn’t frightened of catching her illness, but I did not know what Nurse-matron would think. The school’s Indian servants would be shocked, because for a Sudra to lie with a Brahmin girl would ruin her chances for a good afterlife. I thought about this seriously.
    My friend moaned, and that decided it. I lifted the mosquito net enough to creep in beside her. How strange the bed was with its soft mattress covered with smooth white cotton. Under the sheet, we laced hands, and something jolted my heart. This girl, in the space of a few years, had replaced the sisters I’d lost, as well as my brother,parents, and grandparents. I clung to her because of my own longing, not just hers.
    “You must take care of Pankaj,” Bidushi whispered to me. “Will you promise?”
    “He will soon be here,” I soothed. “He is aboard the ship