A Sorry With Three Parts

Plink, plonk, plink. Rain tapped on the round water tank on the rooftop, and Juno tapped her paintbrush on the rim of the little clay lamp in her hand.

The lamp was a diya, small enough to sit in her palm. She had painted a sun on it. The sun had eleven rays, and every ray pointed a different way, as if it couldn't decide which way was best.

"That one looks like a light that laughed," said Nani, from the low wall where she sat with her shawl around her shoulders.

It was Diwali, the festival of lights, and the whole city was getting ready. All afternoon the rain had come and gone, and now the rooftop shone like the back of a wet stone. Down below, windows were coming on one at a time, and the air smelled of wet pavement and warm bread from the bakery on the corner.

Nani had drawn a rangoli on the concrete: a big round flower in chalk and rice flour, with pink petals from the bowl and a swirl in the middle. Beside her knee stood a tiny jar of gold paint, the kind that makes everything look like it belongs to a king.

"Can we light the lamps now?" asked Juno.

"When the rain holds its breath," said Nani, and she tipped her face up to check the sky.

Juno leaned over to see the gold paint, and her elbow caught the bowl. Pink petals went skating across the concrete.

"Sorry, Nani," she said, already reaching for the paint.

"Hm," said Nani. "You know a sorry has three parts? Say it. Mean it. Then do the next kind thing."

"The next kind thing?" said Juno.

"Pick up the petals without being asked," said Nani. So Juno picked up the petals, and the wind took two of them away, and she chased them, and Nani laughed so hard she had to hold on to her shawl.

Then the rooftop door creaked and Mabel came out from the flat below, carrying a plate of sweets in both hands and her diya tucked under her chin.

"Look," said Mabel. She held out her lamp. It was fat and round, painted with a ring of yellow dots all the way around. "I counted them. Twenty-two dots."

"Mine's got a sun," said Juno, "with eleven rays." "Mine's got a fat round belly," said Mabel, and she patted it, and the plate of sweets wobbled.

The sweets were pale gold spirals, sticky and sweet, smelling of butter. Mabel's mother had sent them up still warm, and Nani put the plate on the mat where nobody's feet could reach it.

The two girls set their diyas on the wide flat top of the low wall, right under the roof's edge, where the rain couldn't get them. Nani lit each one with a long twist of paper dipped in the brass lamp, and the little flames stood up and shook themselves awake.

There was one spot at the corner, where the wall turned and the wind couldn't reach. Juno looked at it. Her sun diya would sit perfectly there, steady, with all eleven of its crooked rays.

Mabel's fat diya was already in it.

"Put yours here," said Mabel, patting the space beside hers. "There's room."

"No," said Juno. "Mine needs the corner. Because of the wind." "There isn't any wind," said Mabel. "There's a little bit of wind," said Juno.

She moved the fat diya. She did it fast, without looking, the way you do when you have already decided in a hurry. Then she set her own diya down in the corner and felt how nice and steady it was.

Behind her, something knocked on the concrete. A small dry sound, like a spoon set down on a step.

The fat diya had rolled off the wall. It lay in two pieces on the ground, split right across, like a bun torn open.

Mabel knelt down and picked up one piece and then the other. She was quiet for a long, long moment. Then she said, "I counted the dots. Twenty-two."

"Sorry," said Juno. Her voice came out flat and quick, like a door shutting.

Mabel nodded. She picked up the plate of sweets, and she carried the two pieces of her diya down the stairs in her hands, and the rooftop door clicked shut.

The rooftop felt different after that. The little flames still leaned and wobbled. The city still lit up down below. But the corner felt wrong, and the plate of sweets sat on the mat with nobody near it.

Below the wall, the neighbors had set their diyas out on their windowsills, and they glowed in a long crooked line down the street. Juno counted them without wanting to.

Juno sat down beside Nani. She turned a sweet over and over in her fingers until it went soft and squashed.

Nani didn't say a word about the diya. She pulled her shawl open and wrapped it around both of them, and for a while they just watched the rain come back, soft and thin, tapping on the water tank and on a hundred other roofs all over the city.

Nani stood up and shook out her shawl, and she did not say, "Never mind," and she did not say, "It was only a lamp." She just sat back down again and let Juno lean on her arm.

After a while Nani asked, "Did that sorry have all three parts?"

Juno thought about it. "I said it," she said. "I just didn't mean it. And I didn't do the next kind thing."

"Which part is hardest?" asked Nani.

"Meaning it," said Juno. "Meaning it feels like standing still."

Nani nodded slowly. "It does," she said. "A sorry that's only half said is like a lamp that's only half lit. It doesn't light the room, and it doesn't quite go out either."

"Did you ever say a sorry like that?" asked Juno. "Once," said Nani. "To my sister. It took me until Tuesday to do it properly. I mended her umbrella in the end."

Juno looked at her sun diya in the corner, burning away with all its crooked rays. Then she stood up. "I need the gold paint," she said.

Nani carried the brass lamp, and Juno carried the two pieces of Mabel's diya wrapped up in the hem of her shirt, and they went down the stairs together. The stairs were wet, and Juno held Nani's hand the whole way. The rain said tok tok tok on the tin roof above their heads.

She knocked on Mabel's door. When it opened she said, "I'm sorry," all in a rush, and then she couldn't think of anything else, so she held out the sweet from her pocket, which had gone squashed.

"Thank you," said Mabel politely. She took it. She didn't smile.

Mabel's mother was frying something at the stove, and the whole flat smelled of hot oil and sugar. She said, "Mabel's in her room, sweetheart," and Juno's ears went hot.

Juno went back up the stairs. Halfway up she stopped. "Nani," she said. "She said thank you, but she didn't smile."

"Mm," said Nani. "Then maybe the sorry is still only half said."

Upstairs, Nani spread newspaper on the concrete and glued the two halves of the fat diya back together. Then she set the little jar of gold paint down in front of Juno and said, "Now the seam."

Nani held the halves together and counted to sixty, and Juno counted with her, all the way to sixty, twice, because glue has to be sure.

Juno painted the crack. She went all the way around, slow and careful, and her tongue poked out of the corner of her mouth the way it did when she was being very, very careful. When she finished, a thin gold river ran down the side of the diya, right through the twenty-two dots.

She carried it down to the flat below. This time she knocked slowly, and she waited. On the way she nearly turned back twice. The second time she made herself think of the gold river and kept walking.

Mabel opened the door with her hair standing up in a tuft. "Mabel," said Juno. "I moved your diya without looking, because I wanted the corner. Then I said sorry like a door shutting. I'm sorry. I really am. And I did the next kind thing." She held out the diya.

Mabel turned it around in her hands. "It's cracked," she said.

"It's cracked in gold," said Juno.

Mabel looked at it for a long time. Then she said, "Twenty-two dots. And one gold river." And she smiled, and it was the real smile, the one that goes all the way up to the eyes.

They went up the stairs together and set the mended diya in the corner, in the very best spot. Juno put hers beside it, and Nani lit them both with her twist of paper.

"Look," said Juno. "It's the one that looks like a light that laughed, and then got better."

Juno put her arm around Mabel's shoulder, and Mabel let her, and the two flames leaned toward each other as if they were talking.

Mabel giggled. Nani sat back on her heels. "Say it, mean it, then do the next kind thing," she said. "That's all three parts. That's a proper sorry."

So they ate the sweets, sitting on the mat with their backs against the wall, and the sticky sweetness got on their fingers and their cheeks, and one of them got it in her hair.

They put the plate between them and shared the very last one, which had a crumb of something green on top, and Mabel said it was pistachio, and Juno said it tasted like a green smell.

By and by the rain stopped. The clouds pulled apart. Across the street, in the tall building, a window went dark. Then another. Then another.

"Nine," said Mabel. "Ten."

"Eleven," said Juno. "The one with the plant in the window. That one's still awake."

Nani began to hum, low and round, and the diyas along the wall burned on, small and steady, the sun one and the gold-river one side by side. The rooftop smelled of rain and of the last sweet, and the stones gave back a little of the day's warmth.

Somewhere below, a door opened and closed, and a grown-up laughed, and the sound came up soft, like it had been wrapped in a blanket.

Juno leaned her head against Nani's shoulder. The flames leaned too, all together, in the small wind, and then they stood up straight again. Down below, the city turned off its lights one window at a time, very slowly, like someone yawning.