Anita heard a rustle and turned to see a black crow with a reddish bone marrow in its mouth behind her. She scrunched up her nose at it the bloody bone hanging from it's black beak. She swung her arm at it, pretended to throw a rock at it. The crow flapped back, almost dropping the bone from its beak. It jumped and then hopped and settled up on the antennae, shrewdly eyeing Anita from its perch.
 
As the wind picked up, sheets and saris rushed up and fluttered, waving at Anita. It had taken her about two hours to do all the laundry. She would have done more, but the Surf washing powder finished. The Ma'am Saabni would have to get more detergent before she could finish the rest of the laundry. Tuesday was laundry day.
Since it was such a nice day, Anita felt that it would be a shame to just waste it just because she couldn't do the laundry. So she had stripped down to her petticoat. She wrapped it over her gentle breasts and had dunked her head under the faucet of the aluminum tank to take a bath in the sun. The water sparkled through her hair and rushed between the curves of her body. The cool water reaching her through the heat of the sun reminded her of the Mayalu soap commercial she had seen on TV. She had closed her eyes and had pretended to be the actress in that commercial through all her hand movements massaging her body.

As she tightened the faucet and stepped out of the water, Anita squeezed her dark tangly hair. Water streamed on the concrete of the balcony floor, splattering. The tiny spots of water quickly disappeared off of the hot concrete floor, leaving only a dark trail of water going towards the drain.
She ran a black comb through knots of her hair and squinted, peering below down at the streets three storeis below. The only thing she had seen constantly moving like cars and buses in Kathmandu was the river over looking her home. And as much the river in her village roared, it wasn't like the honking of the cars here. The colorful cars and their bright horns winked and smiled at her. All she could do was stare back, unsure whether to allow it to woo her or not. She looked at the cars cautiously, not knowing whether to dance along to the music of their life or to shun them. She couldn't help admire the drivers with their right elbows cocked out, the wind rustling their shirts.

Anita glanced at the houses over the streets. It was all so odd, looking out. The village she came from, the only thing that was as plentiful as the houses in Kathmandu were the trees in the forest. And even those were getting chopped up for villagers needing firewood.
She enjoyed these moments. On the days when when the Saab and the Ma'am Saabni went to work and the kids of the house were gone to school, Anita would try to finish her household work as fast as she could. This was so she could climb to the third floor where the balcony was. And sitting up here, she sat on the sill and looked at the on goings in every house that her eyes could reach. 

The yellow house with brown windows, she had seen a middle aged woman with two girls. Her husband had a moustache. Anita wondered how the couple must make love. She imagined the husbands hands roving the wife's body. Did the guy like to grab his wife from behind? Did he bite her cheek? Did he slap her butt in mischief? Anita smiled to herself, shy.
She dared herself to imagine him aroused. Anita watched herself cross the line of decency. Sufficiently pleased to meet her dare, she grinned and looked around for another house to molest.
Sometimes it felt sacriligious to let her imaginations violate the sanctity of the privacy of other people's lives. It seemed so presumptous of her to just let her wishful and rude thoughts just barge into these people's homes. She wanted to stop herself. She wondered if letting the sewer of her thoughts flow into their homes pollute the natural rhythms of the rivers of their lives. Anita feared never being able to drink from the pure waters of their true lives, of truly knowing the gravity of their lives, if she stunk those rivers up with her playful imagination. 
 
What about the big white house where all three floors were different apartments? What did they eat in those houses? She had noticed that strangely enough, the man in that house stayed home. The wife worked. This disturbed Anita a lot. Did they eat the same kind of foodstuffs as Anita's Saab and Saabni did? Could they afford it?

Sure they lived in fancy houses and spoke fast and smiled when they didn't really mean it. Anita sometimes wondered if the people in Kathmandu were really that different from her friends in her neighborhood from the village she came from. Anita tried to see through the fancy clothes and the slick talk and the rush of laughter. Something in her wouldn't let herself see that these people were superior than her. Yes it was true that they had more money than her family would ever see. Yes, she was a servant who bowed down to them and served and said, "Hajur, Hajur," respectfully when they called her. But just because they lived in a fancier house, did it make them so different from her? Were they not, at the end of the day, just like her?

She knew that if her father or her brothers heard her strange thoughts, they would slap her across the head or pull one of her hair braids and tell her to sift the corn or to use the broom to sweep the porch. She herself couldn't understand how she thought of these strange thoughts. But she found it fun. Asking these strange questions and twisting and turning the answers. She felt her thoughts being spread apart like her hair was by the moving wind. They were being pulled apart, like they were going to be braided afterward. And sometimes that was exactly what she did with her thoughts.

Anita knew her place as the servant of the house. She bowed her head, eye lashes cast down, taking orders with a soft whisper to show acknowledgement. She was queit going through the house putting everything where it went. She found out that this was the best way to be for everyone to leave her alone with her thoughts. And her thoughts and dreams were where her mischief lay. Anita smiled, winking at herself. That world was hers. Her bold world where she crossed all lines she dared not when she was around others. No one could touch her here. 
 
Here she was queen and the world was a crow looking at her cautiously, afraid.