No Other World

by Rahul Mehta

  Pain management. Nishit spoke of this, too. It was an essential part of treatment postoperation. On a scale of one to ten—one being just a tingle, ten being unbearable—what is your pain? With children, Nishit would show them a chart of cartoon faces depicting a spectrum from elation to agony. Which one are you today? Point. As doctors, Nishit would say, their job was to guide their patients to describe their pain accurately. Then the doctors could see what they could do about managing it.

  Seeing the boys with their walls up, Shanti knew they had devised their own defenses. What choice did they have? Still, she wished for them something else. She knew—from observing Prabhu so long ago, from watching Preeti these past few years, from struggling herself—what went into managing one’s pain, and what, in the process, was lost.

  Chapter 13

  Without realizing it, Shanti did end up contributing to an element of Bharat’s pain management—not a cure, but a treatment for the Americaria Shanti didn’t even know existed. It was discovered by Bharat by accident one day when Shanti, feeling chilly herself and fully aware that Bharat, unaccustomed to such cold, must be feeling even more so, had suggested he might enjoy a soak in a hot bath. She knew it would seem strange to him—no one in India took such baths, and lowering one’s self into a tub of stagnant water and expecting to somehow emerge clean would seem to him preposterous—but she assured him he’d feel better afterward.

  As a child in India, Shanti had taken bucket baths. Mornings and evenings she was given a plastic pail of hot water with which to wash her body. She was careful with the water, meting it out sparingly with a plastic tumbler, only half a tumbler for her face and hair; another half for her hands, arms, legs, feet; a quarter for her private areas. Her aim was to save as much water as possible, so that at the very end she could dump the bucket over her body. She loved the feeling, the sudden rush of water on her skin: a mountain waterfall, a monsoon rain, a cloudburst. It was intoxicating. She challenged herself, each subsequent bath, to save more and more water so that the bucket, at the end, would be fuller. She loved it just as now she loved rainstorms, rushing out onto the screened-in deck whenever storm clouds gathered. Were it not for what she knew would be harsh judgment from Mrs. Yamamoto, her other neighbors, and certainly her own husband, she would have stood in the yard, her arms open, her face skyward.

  Shanti had drawn the bath for Bharat—in the tub in her and Nishit’s master bedroom, since the common bathroom had only a shower stall—adding a generous pour of her expensive coconut spa oil and unscrewing three of the four sconce bulbs to create more relaxing lighting. As the tub filled, she found herself thinking of Preeti’s baptism eight years earlier. Ray of Light had not required a full-immersion baptism, not for adults, but Preeti had wanted one, so Chris himself built the water tank into which she was lowered.

  Born again. That’s what they called it, and Shanti could see it was true. Born fresh, born anew. Someone new. Shanti was surprised her daughter hadn’t traded Preeti for some bland Christian name. Mary. Or Ruth. Preeti had worn, of course, white: in the west, the color of innocence; in India, the color of death. Corpses wore white. So did widows. Brides, embarking on new lives, wore red.

  Preeti’s transformation had already started, but the baptism made it complete; Shanti could see this clearly. When Preeti was lifted from the water—Chris supporting her on one side, the pastor, Chris’s brother, on the other—her face displayed a joy (or was it a relief?) Shanti hadn’t seen in many years, if ever. Watching Chris hold her daughter, Shanti remembered the feel of his strong hand on her own back.

  Bharat’s submersion in water provided a relief as well, if not quite on the same scale as for Preeti. Normally his hives arrived unexpectedly, sometimes taking—from the first prickly tingle to full-on angry red rash—an hour or more to develop, during which time he’d be progressively more and more miserable. But the hot water sped up the process: two or three minutes of intense discomfort, and then it was over. Not only that, he found that he was often, though not always, free from another outbreak for the rest of the day.

  He told his aunt that the bath had worked. Not in soothing his Americaria (he had told no one about this affliction), but in warming his chill. She said, “Good; it’s there when you need it.” On days he had class there was no opportunity. In the morning, Shanti or Nishit would drop him, and then after his class he’d wait an hour or two until his ride was ready, a neighborhood kid named Greg who Bharat had been told was best friends with Kiran when they were very young, though they’d eventually drifted apart. But on days he was able to bathe, it was a tremendous relief. He found that when the process was sped up like that, whatever chemicals or hormones his body produced to deal with the hives also had a mild euphoric effect. He came to even, at times, in a strange way, appreciate his ailment. Bharat had grown up with a father who was numb. To feel intense pain followed by euphoria? This, Bharat decided, was preferable.

  Increasingly, Michaela was missing. In her absence, Kiran and Jeffrey grew closer. Jokes shared by three were now shared by two.

  She’d taken up with a warlock named Walter, a dwarflike twenty-four-year-old, already balding, who worked at a gluten-free bakery. Together, they were always trekking out to the remote farmland where Walter’s pagan community observed their celebrations and ceremonies. It was an annoyance for Jeffrey and Kiran for any number of reasons, not the least of which was that Michaela was the only one among them with a car. Now they had no choice but to dawdle on campus. Not that they had any serious intentions of vacating the fourth-floor lounge any more than absolutely necessary; still, it was nice to know there were options.

  Michaela convinced them to join her for a full moon festival. She picked them up in her whale of an Oldsmobile, she and Walter both wearing wool capes, and together they drove out past the edges of town, the bare branches of late autumn trees reaching toward them like gnarled hands. “Be open,” Michaela said more than once in the car. Walter rested his head on her shoulder as she drove. Kiran glanced at Jeffrey sitting next to him in the backseat, allowing his gaze to linger a moment on Jeffrey’s shoulder.

  About twenty or thirty had gathered in the dry grasses of the open field, mostly middle-aged white folks, women with glasses, pear-shaped men with beards, though there was the stray twentysomething here or there as well as some very young children. A man with wispy hair hanging halfway down his back greeted Jeffrey and Kiran warmly. “Michaela speaks so highly of you both. You are very welcome here.” The wood from a bonfire whistled and cracked.

  After invocations to the north, east, south, and west, they all formed a circle around the bonfire. Each was given a white candle inside a waxy paper cup. The wispy-haired man, gesturing toward the moon, said, “The Goddess knows your darkness, and loves you anyway.” They were instructed to visualize their deepest regrets, their most profound sources of shame, and to allow the flame of the candle, once lit, to consume them. Almost against his will, an image did pop into Kiran’s head, one that visited him often. But he was able to dismiss it quickly, distracted by Jeffrey in stitches beside him.

  The giggles started with Jeffrey, but Kiran quickly caught them. The boys tried their best to hide them. Side by side, they quietly convulsed. Kiran glanced over at Michaela, who looked so earnest, her eyes squeezed shut, holding her paper-cup candle, arms extended toward the moon. That only exacerbated the situation.

  Afterward, in the fourth-floor lounge, Kiran and Jeffrey chain-smoked and snickered. Were they serious? That ritual? Those spells? Jeffrey laughed, stubbing out a cigarette, his eyes sparkling: pyrite in clear water. Kiran felt it ripple through him. Earlier, when they’d formed a circle, Kiran had held Jeffrey’s hand, and it sent electricity surging through him. When he let go, his body was still tingling. Had Jeffrey felt what he felt?

  “And Walter? What a putz!” Kiran said, appropriating one of Michaela’s favorite insults. In the anvil game, they agreed, Walter would always end up a splat on the concrete. Though even as Kiran s
aid this, he was thinking something else; thinking, instead, of the end of the ceremony, when they had danced around the bonfire. Kiran had not wanted to look like a dork. He hadn’t so much danced as marched, trudged. Jeffrey, on the other hand, had whooped it up, but he was only being ironic. Yet Michaela and Walter: how happy they looked together. Their movements were uninhibited, utterly unselfconscious, their capes swirling around them. Kiran envied their ecstasy and abandon, but mostly he envied that they had each other. In another semester, Michaela would drop out of college and marry Walter, and not long after they would have a baby and, living above the gluten-free bakery, struggle under the weight of responsibility and parenthood. But now, dancing, they looked as if, given the right wind—and in the pull of the full moon, strong enough to swell tides—they could lift off and take flight.

  Not that he was deliberately plotting against him exactly, but bearded, ponytailed Dick Phalen, adjunct instructor of accounting, did find a certain pleasure in watching Bharat squirm. After all, the questions Dick posed in class were not difficult, especially given Bharat’s prior education. But Bharat never answered, not even when called on. He’d shake his head, looking tiredly at the desk in front him. He never turned in homework, didn’t hand back quizzes or exams.

  Three generations of Dick Phalen’s family were spread across this town. He had not appreciated the way Dr. Shah—who’d been here what? barely twenty years?—had telephoned him at home and requested Dick make space in his already overenrolled intro class for his nephew visiting from India. He’d bristled when Dr. Shah, before making his request, had asked after his son, Timothy, whose femur Dr. Shah had set after a skiing accident the previous year. He had allowed them to pay the part not covered by their insurance over time, in monthly installments, announcing this concession not in private in his office and not in a discreet letter sent to their home but rather, hurriedly, in his crowded waiting room, where Dick’s friends and neighbors and acquaintances might (and surely did) overhear.

  So it was with some relish that Dick, after another of Bharat’s in-class nonresponses, said, “Mr. Shah, it seems once again you are unprepared,” adding, as he perched on the edge of his desk, “One wonders what they’re teaching over there.” And it was with even greater delight that, days later, he encountered Nishit at the gas station, waiting at the register, and was able to say, “It’s a bit delicate, but I’m wondering, Dr. Shah, if there’s something, how should I say it? wrong with your nephew, a learning disability perhaps? Because he seems entirely incapable of answering even the most basic questions regarding accounting. I’m sorry to report this, Dr. Shah. I know he is not taking the class for credit. Even so, I thought you’d want to know.”

  “He’s an asshole.”

  Bharat had made a beeline from the classroom to the first exit he could find leading outside, the frigid air a salve for his angry Americaria. He lit a cigarette.

  “Seriously, the name Dick could not be more appropriate.”

  Bharat looked at the young woman speaking to him. How could he be both dick and asshole? he wanted to ask. It didn’t even make sense. Of course, Bharat had understood what she meant and knew she was just trying to be kind.

  His class was not large; still, surveying her acid-washed jeans and hooded sweatshirt with enormous Greek letters, her sandy brown hair pulled back in a purple scrunchy, her full cheeks that first reddened and then whitened in the cold, he wasn’t sure he recognized her. Maybe she sat somewhere behind him in the tiered auditorium. Or maybe she just looked like too many of the other students for him to distinguish her.

  Later he would learn that she was a local daughter returned from one year at the University of Rochester in order to complete her core requirements at community college, where they’d be cheaper. She was planning to go back, though. She would tell him all of this when they were in her basement one evening watching Dirty Dancing, eating popcorn. Bharat would hear from upstairs the popping, then the ping of the microwave door clicking open and shut. He would anticipate that she’d bring down two separate portions of popcorn, one for each of them, but instead she’d pour all of the popped kernels into one large plastic bowl they would share.

  “Don’t let him get to you,” she said now. “Maria, by the way.”

  “Bharat.”

  “I know.”

  Bharat was not used to kindness from classmates. Not that they were mean, but they had not been what Bharat would call warm. He wondered if it was the weather. The season’s first snow had fallen a week earlier. Bharat had watched from the window until his aunt, seeing him, said, “Come.” They walked together through the neighborhood, up the hill, past farm and woods. The snowflakes were enormous, like lacy cutouts made by schoolchildren. Bharat felt like he was in a movie. “It’s nice now,” Shanti had said, “but it becomes oppressive, and you think it will never end. Fortunate for you, you’ll miss the worst of it. Come New Year’s, this valley will be devoid of color, even more so than it already is.” She chuckled, and Bharat understood she was making a joke about the racial demographics. Shanti sighed. “All we’ll see is white and gray for three months. If we’re lucky. Could easily be four.” Bharat had already noticed his classmates starting to cocoon: layers of coats and sweaters, knit caps and gloves, thick scarves wrapped twice around necks and noses and mouths.

  Standing on the sidewalk, neither he nor Maria was quite dressed for the cold. Behind them, the bland concrete structure built in the sixties sulked. “Are you going back in?” Maria asked, her teeth beginning to chatter.

  “Yes. I have another hour before my ride.” Still trying to tamp down his hives, he added, “But I’ll stay out here for a few more minutes.” He held up his cigarette. “I’m not quite done.”

  “I can give you a ride. I have to grab something inside, and then I’m ready to go. I’m happy to take you.”

  “You’re so very kind, but I shouldn’t. My ride is expecting me. He’s in class now. He won’t know what’s happened to me.” Bharat offered the explanation, but it wasn’t the whole reason. When Maria smiled at him, he had felt heat rise in his body. Sitting in her car next to her, he’d be risking another painful outbreak. His body was clearly trying to tell him something.

  Kiran had begun seeing cranes. On the staircase in his dorm, balanced on the banister; on the counter in the bathroom at the end of the hallway; at the base of statues on the quad where Kiran smoked; on the desk he always sat at in his Cold War Rhetoric class; in the fourth-floor lounge on side tables and the arms of chairs: tiny silver origami cranes. It was weeks before Kiran even noticed the cranes, and still more weeks before it occurred to him that their placement was hardly random, that perhaps they were being left—could it be possible?—for him. But no, believing himself undeserving not just of the objects themselves but of all that the cranes represented—happiness, fortune, and in this case, though he couldn’t have known this, love—Kiran couldn’t accept that they were meant for him. Still, with some reluctance, he started collecting them, swiping them quickly like a thief from their perches. The shimmering creatures, made from the foil lining of cigarette packets, smelled of tobacco. And just as Bharat had kept foil papers in his drawer in India, Kiran too allowed these cranes to populate a dresser drawer in his dorm room.

  Kiran couldn’t imagine that they were meant for him, just as he couldn’t imagine that someone had closely observed him, had memorized his schedule, first his Tuesday-Thursday schedule, then his Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule, eventually even his weekend schedule, for Kiran was predictable and had only Jeffrey and Michaela; Kiran couldn’t imagine that a shy boy in a trench coat who mumbled when he spoke (which wasn’t often) was now shadowing Kiran in reverse, always just steps ahead of Kiran, leaving tokens of love where Kiran was about to pass. He couldn’t know that the shy boy, as he shaped the sheets into avian kisses—the folding itself a sort of magic, nothing added, nothing taken away, the ordinary becoming extraordinary through nimble fingers, flicks of the wrist—thought of Kiran,
imagined, with each fold, touching Kiran’s skin, feeling Kiran’s soft lips brush his neck, waking in a dorm room filled with Kiran’s breath.

  When the boy sat next to Kiran at a party and, unable to speak his love, and of course knowing that Kiran smoked, offered Kiran a cigarette, Kiran didn’t notice that the boy had written along the length of the cigarette, in tiny meticulous blue letters, “You’re fucking beautiful.” Instead, Kiran immediately lit the cigarette, and the boy watched his declaration, with each of Kiran’s puffs, slowly disappear into smoke.

  But Kiran couldn’t see the boy, couldn’t see what he had written or recognize the cranes for what they were, because all he could see was Jeffrey: Jeffrey sprawled on the filthy couches in the fourth-floor lounge, the bottom of his T-shirt riding up, exposing wisps of hair disappearing into his waistband; Jeffrey in the quad, copying class notes from days skipped, his hair afire in the sunlight; Jeffrey stopping to tie his sneaker, looking up at Kiran and smiling.

  There was a time, not long ago, Bharat couldn’t have imagined himself in this position. These weeks in America, sitting in the community college classroom in the introductory accounting class in that auditorium with those tiny flip-up desks, not enough space to do any real work, barely big enough to open a textbook let alone take notes. The instructor in his ponytail and tie loose at the collar and ripped jeans and the students in their shapeless hoodies and unwashed hair. He’d done none of the work, not willing to waste time on material so many levels below him. He was a good son. He would come to America when told. He would make the bed perfectly. He would inspect the green beans one by one and weigh them to a fraction of an ounce. He would even smile through insults heaped by his American cousin. But one insult he would not accept: he would not be forced into proving his worth in an introductory-level class whose material he had mastered by age sixteen.