Family Life: A Novel

by Akhil Sharma

  Around eight my uncle arrived in his dark pants and short-sleeve shirt, with his triangle of wispy white hair. He stood by the sink drinking a glass of water. He still had his shoes on. For him to be wearing shoes in the kitchen was so strange that it made the kitchen feel like it wasn’t a real kitchen but a display in a furniture store.

  “What’s happened?” I asked.

  He patted my head. “We don’t know.”

  About ten thirty, my uncle drove us to the bus station. We were going to pick up my mother. The fact that my mother was coming made what had occurred seem very serious. When I breathed, I could feel my chest.

  The bus station was a large, high chamber, with ceiling fans spinning far overhead. The air was heavy and warm and smelled of gasoline and salty french fries. Periodically there were loud announcements in which a man told us what bus had arrived or was about to leave. I sat on a wooden bench partitioned by wooden arms. A series of automatic doors kept flapping back and forth like the paddles of a pinball machine.

  Finally, my mother walked through one of them. Her hair was loose, her face flattened with fear. She was wearing a yellow sari and carrying a black duffel bag.

  Seeing my mother, I worried that she might think I was bad for not crying. I walked up to her. She looked down. It was as if she didn’t recognize me. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ve cried already.”

  The hospital room was bright and white and noisy. There was the whir of machines and something beeping. There was a loud motorized rumble, almost like that of a generator.

  Birju was lying on a bed with railings. The railings reminded me of a crib. There were poles on wheels all around the bed. The poles had bags hanging from them and also machines that were attached with clamps. Wires and tubes came from these and touched Birju. It was like he was in the middle of many clotheslines.

  My mother stopped in the doorway. She started to cry. I stood beside her, holding the duffel bag before me. I became angry with Birju for having created this problem.

  Birju had a plastic mask over his mouth and nose, making him look like a fighter pilot. His eyes were wide open, as if in panic. He appeared to be staring up at some invisible thing and that thing was pressing down on his chest.

  Was the mask pumping a gas which was keeping him still? I imagined removing the mask, and Birju coughing and starting to speak. He would complain that people had not removed the mask earlier, that even I had known what to do.

  BIRJU HAD DIVED into the swimming pool. He had struck his head on the pool’s cement bottom and lain there stunned for three minutes. Water had surged down his throat, been dragged into his lungs as he tried to breathe. His lungs had peeled away from the insides of his chest.

  Back at the house, my uncle carried a large cardboard box into the room that Birju and I had shared, and he placed it against a wall. My aunt and mother draped a white sheet over the box. They taped postcards of various gods on the wall so that these appeared to be gazing at the altar. On the altar itself, they placed a spoon and in the spoon, a wick soaked in clarified butter. They put a wad of dough on the altar and stuck incense sticks into the dough. They did all this quickly and quietly. When they spoke, it was in a whisper.

  The ceiling lights were turned off. The flame in the spoon and the smoke rising from it sent shadows shaking over the walls. I lay down on a strip of foam beneath one of the windows. My aunt and mother stretched themselves face down before the altar. They sang prayers. “You can make a mute sing. You can make a cripple leap over a mountain.” Their singing kept waking me. I understood that it was proper to pray in moments like these, but still, I knew that Birju was going to be all right—wouldn’t it be better for everyone to get some sleep?

  Around four in the morning, the ceiling lights were turned on. My first thought was that I had imagined everything.

  But my mother was standing before the altar and the air was thick with incense. She had her hands pressed together and was wearing a blue silk sari and a gold necklace—she looked like she was going to a wedding. My aunt came into the room. She, too, was dressed as if for something special. She joined my mother in saluting the altar.

  A little later, about to leave for the hospital, we stood in the driveway. It was still night. I looked up at the stars. There were thousands of them, some of them bright, some of them dim. I suddenly had the sense that what was happening was a mistake, that we had been given somebody else’s life.

  At the hospital, Birju’s bed was empty. He had been taken for an operation. The four of us sat by the bed and sang prayers.

  IN THE DAYS and weeks that followed, I spent most of each day sitting by Birju’s bed chanting to him from the Ramayana. The book was a large hardcover wrapped in saffron cloth. Some of the pages had grease stains from the butter used in prayers, and one could look through the stains and see the letters on the next page. Every time I opened the book, there was a puff of incense smell from the book having spent so many years near altars.

  I had never prayed like this before, every day, hour after hour, praying till my throat became raw and even my tongue and gums hurt. I had not believed in God till then. Now, I started to think that people wouldn’t be building temples, going on pilgrimages, if they weren’t going to get something out of it. I began to believe there had to be a God, but that he was like the president, distant, busy, not interested in small things.

  Time passed. One afternoon, I watched my mother cut Birju’s fingernails. She looked scared as she did this. She had his hand forced open and was trying to keep it from clenching. “Is it all right?” she asked him. I felt like I was dreaming.

  Birju had his oxygen mask removed. Many of the wheeled poles were taken away. Now with his eyes open he looked the way he always had except it was as if he was lost in thought. A doctor said Birju was blind, that oxygen deprivation had destroyed his corneas. It seemed disloyal to believe this; it seemed that the loyal thing was to believe that nothing much was wrong with him and that he would be better any day now. Hearing the doctor, I felt that I should be angry at him, that I should say God could do anything. I didn’t feel anger, though. What I felt was pity for poor Birju. I wanted to kiss his cheeks. I wanted to tell him he was beautiful and that we would take care of him always.

  Birju moaned, he yawned, he coughed, but even with his eyes open he appeared to be dreaming. Birju responded to things. If there was a loud noise, he turned his head in the direction of the sound. Then he rolled his head back and just lay there. Often he smacked his lips and puffed spit. Occasionally he had a seizure. His teeth would clamp shut and squeak against each other. His body would stiffen, his waist rise off the bed, and the bed would begin to rattle. Seeing this frightened me. I would stand by the bed and look at him through the railings and wonder what to do.

  The accident had occurred in early August. September came and school began. I started attending school in Arlington. The school was three-quarters of a mile from my aunt and uncle’s house.

  I didn’t cry at home or at the hospital because I didn’t want to add to my parents’ problems. On the way to school, though, I would. Strange things made me cry. The weight of my book bag, how it pushed me down would set me crying. Sometimes some thought of Birju would brush against me. My mother had written to the Bronx High School of Science and obtained a year’s deferment. As I sobbed, I would be amazed at how much I loved my brother. I had not known he mattered so much to me.

  At school, too, I wept. Sometimes when I felt the sobs starting, I looked down and held my breath and tried to think of other things—a television program, a book—but this wasn’t always enough. My teacher would send me out into the schoolyard so that I didn’t disturb the class.

  The schoolyard had a swing set for little children and a slide. Otherwise, there was only a grassy field surrounded by a chain-link fence. I was embarrassed to be sent out. I felt foolish for behaving immaturely. I would walk along the fence and frequently I cried so hard that I lost my breath. When this happened, I became deta
ched from myself. I walked and gasped and, as I did, I could feel my unhappiness walking beside me, waiting for my breath to return so that it could climb back inside me.

  THE MOST IMPORTANT thing was to appeal to God. Each morning, my mother and I prayed before the altar. To me the altar was like a microphone—whatever we said in front of it would be broadcast directly to God. When I did my prayers, I traced an om, a crucifix, a Star of David onto the carpet by pressing against the pile. Beneath these I drew an S inside an upside-down triangle, for Superman. It seemed to me we should flatter anyone who could help.

  One morning, I was doing my prayers before the altar when my mother came up to me. “What are you praying for?” she asked. She had her hat on, a thick gray knitted cap that had belonged to my uncle. The tracings on the carpet went against the weave and were darker than the surrounding nap. Pretending to examine them, I put my hand over the S. My mother did not mind the crucifix or the Star of David, but I knew she would be angry to catch me praying to a superhero, and in my nervousness I spoke the truth, “That God give me hundred percent on the math test.”

  My mother was silent for a moment. “What if God says you can have the math grade but Birju would have to be sick a little while longer?”

  I looked at the altar. Kali Ma danced on a postcard, sticking out her tongue and waving her many swords and daggers. I knew my mother wanted to be angry. I saw that she wanted to complain. I thought of Birju in his hospital bed. I thought of how proud he used to be of dressing properly, tucking in his shirt so that it was snug around his waist, lacing and unlacing his shoes until the loops were as even as dragonfly wings, and of how nowadays he got rashes on his penis from the urinary catheter. I thought of these things, and it seemed OK that my mother should complain before the altar, where God was likely to hear and would take pity.

  “Are you going to tell me about Kusum mausiji again?”

  “Why not? When I was in tenth standard and your aunt was sick, I walked seven times around the temple and said, ‘God, let me fail as long as you make Kusum better.’”

  “If I failed the math test and told you that story, you’d slap me and say, ‘What does one have to do with the other?’”

  My mother turned toward the altar. “What sort of sons did you give me? One you nearly drown and the other is this fool.”

  I made my face earnest and looked at the altar so that God could see my sweetness. “I will fast today so that God puts some sense into me.”

  “No,” my mother said. “You are a growing boy. Fasting is good for me. I gain blessings and lose weight at the same time.”

  IN THE MORNINGS I prayed, and at night, when I was supposed to be sleeping but couldn’t, I spoke with God. One rainy night, the room was gray with light from the street and my mother was lying nearby, her breath whistling. I was on my strip of foam and I asked God whether he minded being prayed to only in need. “You think of your toe only when you stub it,” he said.

  “Still, it’s better to pray just to pray.”

  “It’s human nature. I don’t mind it.” God looked like Clark Kent. He was wearing a gray cardigan and slacks. He sat cross-legged at the foot of the mat. Originally, right after the accident when I had first started talking to him, God had looked like Krishna. But it had felt foolish to discuss brain damage with someone who was blue and was holding a flute and had a peacock feather in his hair.

  “You’re not angry with me for touching the tree?”

  “No, I’m flexible.”

  There was a large oak tree on the way to school. It stood half on the sidewalk and half off it. Because the tree looked very old, I thought it might know God from when there were fewer things in the world. Usually as I passed it, I would touch the tree and bring my hand to my forehead the way I did when I had touched my grandfather’s feet.

  “I respect you. The tree is just a way of showing respect to my elders.”

  God laughed. “I am not too caught up in formalities.”

  I became quiet. I was convinced that I had been marked as special by Birju’s accident. To me it appeared obvious that the beginnings of all heroes contained misfortune. Both God Krishna and Superman had been separated from their parents at birth. Batman, too, had been orphaned. God Ram had to spend fourteen years in the forest, and it was only then that he did things that made him famous. I waited until it would not seem improper to talk about myself.

  “How famous will I be?” I finally asked.

  “I can’t tell you the future,” God said.

  “Why not?”

  “Even if I told you something, I might change my mind.”

  “But it would be harder for you to change your mind after you have said something will happen.”

  God laughed again. “You’ll be so famous that fame will be a problem.”

  I sighed and wiggled into the foam strip.

  “I want Birju’s accident to lead to something.” Saying this felt noble.

  “He won’t be forgotten.”

  “I can’t just be famous, though. I need money, too. I need to take care of Mommy and Daddy.”

  “First you grab the finger, and then you grab the wrist.”

  “I’m just being practical.”

  “Don’t worry. You can hardly imagine the life ahead.”

  This last statement made me happy.

  IT SEEMED OBVIOUS that God was more likely to help people who were good than those who were ordinary. This is why it felt very important that we behaved impeccably. My parents refused to do this, however.

  My father was strange as always. Right after the accident, when he had first visited Birju, he had stood by the hospital bed, his face swollen and dark, his voice choked, and said, “Don’t think I don’t blame you. Don’t think I don’t know this is all your fault. What was in the pool? What was in there that you had to jump before anybody else got to it? Was there gold? Was there treasure?”

  Since then, he had continued to say embarrassing things. Recently he had said that perhaps Birju had dived into the pool because of all the comic books he read, that Birju had thought he might gain superpowers by doing something like this.

  “Shut up,” my mother had replied.

  But my mother was not behaving well, either. She picked fights when she could have just been quiet.

  Every Friday night my father arrived on a Greyhound bus. He left on Sunday evenings to go back to New York. All weekend my parents would fight.

  One Saturday afternoon in October, a nurse’s aide, a large black woman in a white uniform, came into Birju’s room to replace his catheter. As she walked out, my father accompanied her to the door. “Thank you,” he said in the doorway.

  When he came back to the hospital bed, my mother glared at him. “Don’t say, ‘Thank you, thank you.’ Don’t say, ‘You are so good. You are so kind.’ If you do, they will think you’re weak.” Recently, the hospital had told us that Birju needed to be moved, that now that his condition was stable, he needed to be put in a nursing home. The problem was that the insurance company was saying it wouldn’t pay for a nursing home and so over the last few weeks, my mother had been getting into screaming matches with the hospital administrators who wanted us to leave.

  “That’s how you think,” my father said, flaring up. “To you everybody is an enemy. If I smile, I have committed a sin.” It seemed obvious that my father felt caught and so was trying to distract from his mistake.

  “If I weren’t willing to fight,” my mother shouted, “if I weren’t willing to scream, they would put Birju on the street. They would say it is time to go and here is your bill and there is the door. The only reason they haven’t forced Birju out is because they are frightened, because they don’t want to fight with someone who’s crazy.”

  “Yes, you are crazy. I have always said you’re crazy.”

  “And you’re a coward. You don’t want to do the hard things. You want to flatter and be nice and hope that these nurses and doctors will do everything Birju needs on their own. The
y won’t. They will do the ordinary things but not the hard things. For the hard things you have to fight. These doctors and nurses just want you to be silent. They don’t care what happens as long as you don’t cause trouble.”

  My parents fought, and I was becoming lazy. Now when I came to the hospital after school, I no longer wanted to sit by Birju’s bed and sing prayers. Singing prayers bored me. Often when I got to his room, I would tell my mother that I had homework and would go to the children’s lounge down the hall.

  The lounge had blue walls and yellow bookcases with picture books. There was a yellow beanbag and a large television. I liked to sit on the beanbag before the TV with a book in my lap and read while the TV played. Whenever commercials started, I would look down at the book and read. I liked books where the hero was a young man, preferably under twenty-five, who had a magical power that he discovered over the course of the book. Riddle of Stars, The Chronicles of Amber, A Wizard of Earthsea—I read these over and over. Reading a book a second time was more comforting than reading it the first because during the second reading everything was in its place. I read and watched TV so much that sometimes when I closed my eyes, images flickered before me.

  I felt that there was something bad about being lost in my imagination. Occasionally, there were fall days that were so beautiful that I thought I would never see a day so lovely again. I would think this and then go back to reading or watching TV.

  One evening when I was in the lounge, I saw a rock star being interviewed on Entertainment Tonight. The musician, dressed in a sleeveless undershirt that revealed a swarm of tattoos on his arms and shoulders, looked past the interviewer and began shouting at the camera. “Don’t watch me! Live your life! I’m not you.” I was filled with a sudden desire. I hurried out of the lounge and went down the hall and left the hospital. I stood outside the main entrance.

  Now that I was outside, I didn’t know what to do. It was cold and dark and there was an enormous moon. Cars leaving the parking lot stopped one by one at the edge of the road. I watched as they waited for an opening in the traffic, their brake lights glowing.