Renuka has a visitor

Renuka feels better in the evening, after she has had a nap. She tries to make Lavu feel better by taking the child to the park nearby.

The park has scanty grass which looks more like weed, a few rusty bars and an old slide with its edges dangerously broken. Lavu finds another six year old girl to play with, and they sit on the ground, raking in the dirt with their fingers, grubbing for enough mud to pile up with stones and build a house. Renuka takes a walk with the girl’s mother, her eyes shifting back to the children in the corner, where she can hardly hear them any more, only see them, specks in the corner, Lavu’s plum colored frock against the other girl’s white, hunched so close together. She only hopes the other girl doesn’t have lice in her hair, surely they will get transferred, children catch these things so quickly. Renuka wants Lavu to be atleast as happy and healthy as she was when she got here, if not made into an improved version.

The girl’s mother is a woman she has seen often at the supermarket nearby, though this is the first time she is meeting her. The women at the park are an exclusive club, the club of mothers with young children, who walk in everyday at five o’clock to watch over their children playing. Renuka doesn’t belong to this club. She has no children who need watching over, no children of any kind at all. Lavu has brought her today a kind of temporary membership into this coterie, where she will walk and make new friends, pretend that she has a child who refuses to eat, a child who needs money again for a new uniform, a child who wants to listen to stories all day long, a child who will accept only barbie, not just any doll. Today, and for the next month that Lavu is here, she will be here at five everyday, watching over Lavu and the other children

When the month is over, she will return to her former self, a woman who doesn't have a club to go. She isn't unhappy that way though. She's fine.