Common House Magazine

At five on the dot, Nisha throws aside her shovel and hikes the ramp out of the mine pit.

The sun bears down on her exposed shoulders, glinting off the hulking metal skeletons of bulldozers and excavators and blasthole drills. She ducks between workers shovelling chunks of rock onto conveyors, shouting to each other in voices like loose gravel. Sweat slicks her hair flat to her forehead and pools between her collarbones. What a waste of good water.

It’s blessedly cool inside the worker station. The staff here are clean and well-dressed, and they eye the growing line of grimy labourers with disdain. The queue moves in starts and stops. Name. A check off the clipboard. A bottle of water passed into hands rough as sandpaper. Some of them have downed half the bottle before they’re even out the door; others clutch it to their chests, licking cracked lips, heaving dry coughs.

At the head of the queue, the manager wields his clipboard like a weapon. He’s a tall, heavyset man in a grey suit, and Nisha feels jagged and ugly as she steps up to meet him in her coveralls brown with dirt, like a single rotted tooth in a white smile.

“Name.”

“Nisha and Amina. Two bottles.”

He looks up from his clipboard and his expression clears with recognition. “Didn’t I tell you yesterday–”

Nisha cuts him off, well-versed in this exchange. “My mother will be back to work tomorrow.”

Yesterday, the manager said, “She better be,” and handed her the two bottles without further comment, but today he shoots her a shrewd look. “According to our log, Amina hasn’t been to work in weeks.”

“She’s sick,” Nisha says shortly, then lies, “She’ll get better.”

“But this water’s not for her, is it?” the manager muses. “One bottle for you, and one for your… sister. I’ve seen her out here, you know. Running about, shouting for justice. Calling for a strike.” He almost laughs on the last word, but not because it’s funny.

Nisha’s dirt-crusted nails sink into her palms. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. My sister is at school.”

The queue behind Nisha is growing restless. She sees the manager reaching for a single bottle and her chest seizes.

“You can’t,” she tries, and knows she’s made a mistake when his eyes narrow. She fumbles for something to say, but Dia has always been the better negotiator. She feels the eyes of the other workers on her back. “Please.”

That one word burns worse than a lungful of toxic tailings. The manager’s weight rocks back – he heaves a deep, disapproving sigh – and he reaches for two bottles.

“Your mother works tomorrow, or you’re getting one bottle a day like everyone else,” he says finally. “But, girl–” He leans in, pale eyes down-turned, a facsimile of paternal care. “Don’t make their mistake. You can’t be your father if you’re in the ground with him.”

Nisha doesn’t respond. She takes the two bottles, turns on her heel, and leaves.

***

At the edge of the pit, a crowd has formed. As Nisha approaches, a boy breaks from the group and shoves one of the workers ahead of her – a limping, pockmarked old man – and shouts in his face.

“This mine is poisoning our land! Poisoning our water! Do you even care? Do you?”

The labourer ducks his head and limps on. Signs bob above the crowd, reading SHUT IT DOWN and LEAVE IT IN THE GROUND. Nisha pushes through. A cardboard sign crosses her path, and she shoves it aside. She’s halfway to the miners’ bus when one of them catches up to her.

“You broke my sign,” says Dia, holding up the bent cardboard. It reads, AN END TO RED WATER.

Nisha keeps walking. “You should be in school.”

Dia scoffs. “Says the dropout.”

The bus is in view. Nisha fishes for her miner’s pass in her dirty coveralls and says sharply, “I left to support our family. You’re skiving class.”

Dia matches her stride-for-stride. “I’m skiving class so that one day, you won’t feel the need to support our family by killing the planet.”

“And how’s that working out for you?”

Dia opens her mouth in outrage, but Nisha jogs her next three steps and makes it onto the bus before Dia can respond. The driver allows her on, though he narrows his eyes at Dia and her bent cardboard sign. Nisha says over her shoulder, “If you have the time to hike up here, you can hike back.” She turns and tosses Dia one of the bottles. “See you at home.”

The doors shut on Dia’s furious face.

***

The house is silent when Nisha lets herself in. She toes off her grimy boots and pads inside, pausing by the bedroom. Red-speckled tissues litter the floor.

“I’m home, Amma.”

Like the bed, her mother is worn and sunken. She eyes Nisha’s single bottle of water in trepidation, but Nisha says, “It’s fine. I gave Dia hers already.”

Her mother opens her mouth, but instead of words, she begins to cough – a wet cough, like her lungs are caught in her throat. Nisha cracks the seal on her bottle, ushers her mother to sit up, but Amma pushes the bottle away.

“No,” Amma manages. “Don’t… waste.”

Nisha rises and gets a glass from the kitchen. The corroded mouth of the faucet is painted red for Danger: Do Not Drink. Her parents earned a bottle a day at the mine and gave the clean water to their daughters. Her father died choking up his lungs. Her mother has not left her bed in weeks. They call it red water for the vermillion paint around the rim of the taps, but what pours from the faucet is clear as glass, smelling of rust. Its toxicants are no less deadly for being invisible.

She brings her mother the glass and watches her drink. “Do you need me to work again?” asks her mother. Once, her voice was soft as a dove’s as she sang Nisha and Dia to sleep. Now Nisha can barely distinguish it from the scrape of gravel beneath her shovel. “They still give you enough? Two bottles?”

Nisha thinks of the manager’s ultimatum. She says, “Rest, Amma. I have it all under control.”

***

Nisha wakes sometime in the night to hushed voices.

Amma is saying, “I want you to have a good life, get into a good university. You’re a smart girl.”

“That’s not important,” argues Dia. “You don’t understand–”

Nisha covers her ears with the pillow. A few minutes later, the bed dips. Dia’s shoulder digs into her spine.

“I know you’re awake.”

Nisha says nothing.

“I don’t understand you,” Dia continues. “Our faucet pours red water because of the mine. Our father is dead because of the mine. How can you work for them? How can you beg them for clean water when they’re the reason our water is poisoned?”

Responses rise like bile in her throat. Don’t you think I know that? or Fuck off, or even, I do it all for you. But Dia isn’t like Nisha: she’s smart, charismatic, idealistic. Her grades are excellent, when she bothers to attend classes. She could get away from this cursed town – university scholarships, job offers, they would all come easy to her, if only she cared more about herself and less about justice. She could make a better life, someplace where the faucets aren’t painted red. And if Dia is gone, Nisha can earn one bottle a day and live.

Nisha says nothing, and eventually Dia rolls over. Nisha looks at the empty plastic bottle on the bedside table until dawn.

***

The next day, Nisha hauls double the waste to the tailings pond in half the time. She shovels rock until her calluses split. She works until her throat is choked with dust and her shirt is plastered to her back. She knows the manager sees her. She thinks, maybe, if only she can impress him – if only she can prove that he needs her more than he needs that one bottle– 

At the end of the day, she stands in the queue. The manager looks impressed, and Nisha waits with her heart in her throat as he opens his mouth to speak.

And he says, “Where’s your mother?”

Nisha feels sick with exhaustion, nauseous with thirst. She tells him, “It’s only me now.”

He hands her one bottle.

***

Nisha rides home with the unopened bottle in her lap. Dia is still at school when she returns, and her mother is asleep.

She fishes for an empty bottle from the recycling bin and carries it to the sink. She turns on the tap. Red water pours in. She screws the cap on tight, until it almost looks like it might have been sealed.

That night, she finds Dia sitting on the floor, repainting her sign. AN END TO RED WATER. Nisha hands her a bottle. The seal cracks when Dia opens it.

“Will you go to school tomorrow?”

Dia doesn’t look up. “Will you go to work?”

The bottle feels cool in Nisha’s hand. Clear as glass. She tips her head back and drinks, tasting metal from the faucet, like blood at the back of her throat.