The room, which was a single room and looked onto the internal courtyard where at that hour the sun beat the concrete in such a way that the concrete gave the heat back upward, toward the windows, toward inside, held Sunita's work arranged in three piles: the pieces still to be finished, the pieces being worked on, the pieces done; and the finished pieces lay under a damp cloth, because Sunita kept them the way you keep something that needs to rest, even though a finished shirt has no need of rest, no more than the person who finished it does.

The trimming scissors were small, embroidery scissors. Sunita had wrapped one of the two rings with a strip of fabric, because the metal, in the heat of those days, burned to hold. Forty-seven degrees, they had said. Perhaps forty-eight.

Sunita's work consisted of taking away: every shirt that came out of the big factory arrived at her room with the excess threads, the threads the machine leaves at every seam, and the trade, hers, the only one her hands knew, was to go over every shirt, find every thread, cut it flush with the fabric without catching the fabric; and payment was by piece, not by hour; which means that the heat, which on an hourly wage would have been a burden shared among all, on a piece wage was entirely hers, unloaded whole onto her hands, which at forty-eight degrees moved more slowly; and the more slowly they moved, the fewer pieces ended up under the damp cloth, fewer pieces under the damp cloth meant fewer rupees when at five o'clock the thekedar came to count.

The thekedar counted the pieces and paid for the pieces; about the heat he said, when he said anything, that it was not his problem, and in this he had his reason, because the thekedar in turn delivered to someone who counted for himself, and so along a chain at whose end stood a shirt in a shop with a tag, and on that tag the heat of Delhi was not written.

That day the schools were closed. They had closed them for the heat, across the whole city, and so Roshni, who was ten years old, was at home; and a ten-year-old girl in a single room, with her mother working against an hour that is drawing near, does not stay long a girl who only watches. At a certain point Roshni had taken the second pair of scissors, the one without the fabric around the ring, had sat down beside the pile of pieces still to be finished, had begun.

Sunita counted the pieces under her breath, in Marathi, as her mother had counted; and counting the pieces in Marathi was something that came to her by itself, from before, from when the trimming scissors were not hers but were the ones her mother had put into her hands in another room, in another city, at the same age Roshni had now, ten years old, the same fingers, the same gesture of cutting flush without catching; and the thing her mother had said then, putting the scissors in her hands, had not been a cruel thing, it had been a practical thing, it had been: this way at least you learn, this way at least you're useful.

Sunita was counting, and she stopped on the number.

She stopped because the number she was counting included the pieces Roshni had finished. They were in the right pile. They were done well. Roshni had learned by watching, as everything is learned in a single room.

Sunita set down her scissors. She went to Roshni. She said nothing of what one says. She opened her fingers, one by one, took the second pair of scissors from her hand, the one without the fabric, the one that burned; and the pieces Roshni had finished she put back into the pile of those still to be done.

At five o'clock the thekedar came. He counted the pieces under the damp cloth. They were fewer than the agreed number, considerably fewer, because Sunita's hands, alone, at forty-eight degrees, had not made the number, and Roshni's pieces had gone back among those to be done. The thekedar paid what there was to pay for the pieces there were. He said that the next day, if the number did not come back, he would give the work to another house. Then he left with his count.

Sunita put the small scissors, the ones with the wrapped ring, under the damp cloth, beside the pieces that were resting and had no need of rest.

Roshni watched.

The radio from the courtyard, on in another room, was giving the evening news; and among the evening news was word that the heat would not drop, that the forty-eight degrees were holding, that the city's schools would stay closed the next day as well. The next day as well. And the next day the number would again fall short, Roshni would again be home, the scissors would again be two.