Family Life: A Novel

by Akhil Sharma

  My mother and I began to be invited to people’s houses so that their children could see me and realize that boys who were ranked first looked and sounded like anybody else.

  One night, I sat between two girls, six and ten, at a dining-room table. My mother and the girls’ parents, both doctors, sat across from me. I spoke and spoke. I remembered how my father had talked when we sat in Mr. Gupta’s Mercedes.

  “For Indians, it is important to do well in English. There are so many of us who do well in math that colleges don’t pay math and science much attention.”

  The mother of the girls asked, “These teachers—they don’t favor their own?” She said this in Hindi, as if this fear of favoritism, which was a reasonable one in India, prompted her to speak like she was still there.

  Her husband asked whether I played Atari and whether I thought it was worth buying a computer. “A typewriter is all one needs,” I said. Like his wife, the man also spoke timidly. I found it strange that two doctors could have fears.

  A few of the men we visited appeared to see me as competition. One man twisted my earlobe and said, “So, genius, you are very smart.” Another man had me sit on a white sofa while he sat on a white easy chair at a right angle from me. Then, he tested me on how much I knew. He asked what words “percent” was a contraction of and how many elements were on the periodic table.

  I felt important because of my class rank. Soon after tenth grade started, I tried getting a girlfriend.

  Rita was five foot three. She had thick eyebrows, a heart-shaped face, and wavy hair that fell to her shoulders. She spoke without an accent. This and the fact that she sat with white girls at lunch placed her in a better world than mine.

  One afternoon I phoned her from my parents’ room. I paced by my parents’ bed, the phone to my ear. My mother had just prayed, and there was an incense stick smoking on the altar. The phone began to ring on the other end.

  “Hello?” a girl said.

  “Is Rita there?” I asked. I stood looking out a window. Outside, the trees were changing color.

  “Yes. Hold on. Who’s this?”

  “Ajay.”

  “Ajay from Morristown?”

  “From school.”

  “Rita,” the girl screamed.

  A moment later, there was an echo as an extension was lifted.

  “Who’s this?” another girl said.

  I thought this was Rita but wasn’t sure. “Rita?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s Ajay.”

  “Ajay from Morristown?”

  “No. From school.”

  “Ajay?”

  “We’re in math class together.”

  “OK.”

  There was silence. I had decided to tell Rita I loved her. This was because from having watched Hindi movies, it seemed that if one was to have a relationship with a girl, one had to be in love. Also, it seemed easier to say I loved her than to have a conversation. “I think you’re very beautiful,” I said.

  Rita didn’t reply. I became silent again. I stared out the picture window above my parents’ bed. Our backyard ran into another, and this second yard into a third, and the leaves of the trees were gold and orange.

  “You are the most beautiful girl in school.” My face and neck were burning.

  “Thank you.”

  “Would you like to go on a date?”

  Rita was silent for a moment.

  “With you?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  I began to make excuses for having called. “I only asked because I thought you didn’t have a boyfriend.”

  Suddenly Rita shrieked, “Are you on the phone?”

  “Yes,” I murmured.

  “Get off. Get off.”

  I heard the “huh, huh, huh” of somebody laughing.

  “Get off.”

  I wanted to hang up. “I love you.” I felt somehow obligated to say this.

  “Huh, huh, huh,” went the other person on the line.

  “I’ll call you back,” Rita said.

  “Do you need my phone number?”

  She hung up.

  For a few days I was embarrassed. The first time I entered math class after the call, I saw Rita and my entire back became hot.

  I KNEW ENOUGH ABOUT myself to realize that I had to immediately try again with another girl. If I didn’t, I would seize up with shyness. With this second girl, I tried not to be too ambitious.

  Minakshi was not pretty. She was shorter than Rita and had a worried, pinched face. When she walked down the school’s hallways, she kept both straps of her book bag over her shoulders, and she hunched forward as if carrying a heavy burden. Minakshi’s father owned a television repair shop and said that he was an engineer, though my father said that it was obvious that he had not even finished high school. Right after we brought Birju from the nursing home, Mr. Nair had suggested we transport Birju to his house and try dipping him into his swimming pool. Mr. Nair was very conservative. My mother had once volunteered my father to drive Minakshi and her sisters somewhere, and Mrs. Nair had said her husband did not like men who were not relatives to be alone with their daughters.

  One afternoon, Minakshi was walking down a set of the school’s stairs. She was holding a binder across her chest and she looked pained, as she often did. I was climbing the stairs. There were boys and girls around us and their footsteps and voices made the stairwell loud. Passing her, I said, “I love you.” I said this in an ordinary conversational voice. Minakshi continued down the stairs. She seemed not to have heard.

  A few days later, she was kneeling by her locker, a forest of jean-clad legs around her. I went up to her and, walking swiftly, dropped a scrap of paper in her hair. She grabbed the top of her head, looking angry, like someone used to being treated badly. I remembered being spat on while crouched before my locker. The note said, “I love you.”

  For a while I continued trying to hide myself when I told Minakshi I loved her. We were in the same gym class. Running past her in her big, baggy shorts, banging a basketball against the floor, I whispered, “I love you.” Sometimes she appeared to have heard me. She would look around open mouthed.

  Telling Minakshi I loved her, slipping notes through the grill of her locker door, was like taking part in an adventure. I also, though, regularly blamed Minakshi for the nervousness I was experiencing from telling her I loved her.

  About a week after I started doing this, I was walking down a hallway and she was walking toward me. The hallway was crowded and noisy. There were voices and locker doors slamming and rattling. I was thinking about whether it was possible to drift across the hall toward Minakshi, whisper my love, and disappear without being noticed.

  Minakshi saw me and stopped. I came near her. We were two or three feet apart. She was wearing a shiny pink blouse. “Ajay,” she said. I stopped. She crossed over toward me. She looked hurt. “Are you the one telling me you love me?”

  I worried she might tell her parents, who would then inform my mother. I was afraid, though, of passing up the opportunity of getting a girlfriend. “Yes.”

  “OK. We can talk after school.” She walked away.

  Immediately I felt regret. To me, all relationships were serious and full of obligations, and the idea of having one suddenly felt like a burden.

  At the end of the day, Minakshi and I met outside our school’s doors. Yellow buses lined the horseshoe driveway. We walked up toward the road. At first we didn’t talk. My mouth was dry. When we reached the road, we turned right, in the direction of where she lived. The sidewalk went up a slope. Both of us were bent under our book bags.

  A part of me was still afraid that Minakshi was going to threaten to tell her mother. I had known boys who had approached girls, and the girls had done so.

  Minakshi, not looking at me, said, “My father won’t let me receive phone calls.”

  This seemed to imply that she was open to being my girlfriend. I was relieved. “My parents don’t like me gett
ing calls either. Except from boys.”

  “I don’t want anyone to know I have a boyfriend. Somebody might tell my mother just to cause trouble.”

  “Me, too. People gossip.”

  “Studies come first.”

  I nodded quickly. “For me also. Marriage and love can come when studies are done and one is established in one’s profession.”

  “We can talk,” Minakshi said.

  “But only if we are alone and nobody can overhear.”

  “I don’t want sex until I’m married.”

  “I don’t want to kiss.” Raising the standards of what was proper was a way of making myself more appealing, more trustworthy.

  We stopped talking. The air was cold and smelled of moist earth, and this seemed wonderful. We came to a street corner and crossed. On the other side, Minakshi said, “If you had a dog, what would you name it?”

  In the past, when I had thought about having a dog, I had imagined that possessing one would make me white, like one of those boys on TV who hugged their pet when unhappy. I had given this dog an American-type name like Scout or Goldie. Now, imagining a dog within the context of having a girlfriend, it seemed disloyal to give the dog a white dog’s name, as if then I would be giving affection to a white dog instead of an Indian one, and so would not be acting adult and proper. “Something Indian,” I said.

  “Me, too.”

  Minakshi became silent. The road we were on began to curve away. After a moment, Minakshi said, “I’ll be your girlfriend.”

  “Good,” I said and stopped. “I have to turn back.”

  “Don’t call me,” she said. “My parents will get upset.”

  “OK. I won’t. You don’t call either.”

  WITHIN A FEW weeks Minakshi and I were kissing. When I tried to get us to start doing this, I wasn’t sure how to suggest it without appearing like I was going back on my word. I therefore pouted and hinted vaguely at Birju being sick so Minakshi would try comforting me.

  Behind our school was a football field bordered by a track. Beyond this were woods. The woods, mostly maples and crab apples, were where students who did not have places to make out went. Minakshi and I walked into the woods one afternoon. The day was very cold and the fallen leaves reached our ankles. When we had gone far enough for the school between the trees to look distant, we stopped.

  I was excited to kiss for the first time. I also felt that I was taking advantage of Minakshi. To me, it seemed that the only reason she was coming into the woods with me was because she was trying to soothe me, that she felt no desire of her own.

  Minakshi was wearing a long blue parka that came to her knees. I was wearing a blue ski jacket. We hugged. Our coats squeaked. My heart was racing. I brought my face down to hers. The warmth of her body, the smell of spices from what she ate surprised me. She felt real and mysterious in a way that took me aback.

  I believed that proper kissing required not breathing on the person one was kissing. We kissed and kissed. I held my breath. Blue sparks floated before me.

  School ended at 2:35, and the nurse’s aide left at four. I had to get back before then. I walked home. The sky looked somehow new. I was so happy that my pace kept speeding up. I had the feeling that everything would be OK for me, that one day everything would be fine.

  Birju was lying on his exercise bed beneath the chandelier. Seeing him, I remembered our apartment in Queens, how the intercom would ring when his girlfriend was downstairs. I remembered Nancy’s long black hair. I wondered what had happened to her.

  MINAKSHI AND I kissed every day. Once, it was raining and I didn’t think we could go out, and she said, “I have an umbrella.” When she said this, I thought I had misheard her. The fact that she, too, wanted to kiss was hard to believe.

  I had meant to be like Amitabh Bachchan with Minakshi—silent, mysterious. I found, though, that I could not stop talking, that when we were in the woods and I would pull away from her to breathe, I would immediately start speaking, that I wanted to talk as much as I wanted to kiss.

  At first I said the sorts of things that would stir up pity or portray me as brave. I told her about how smart Birju had been. I told her how I bathed him in the morning and how, often, after we put him back into his hospital bed, Birju, warm and relaxed, tended to piss on himself. After a little while, though, I began telling her things which were so awful that I had somehow managed not to acknowledge them.

  When Birju had gotten pneumonia, he had had a series of convulsions. These had caused more brain damage. Before the convulsions, if there was a loud noise, he would swing his head in the direction of the noise. Now when there was a noise, he wouldn’t react—he’d remain smacking his lips and looking lost in thought. Earlier Birju had been able to sit mostly straight in his wheelchair. Now, when we sat him up, he began slumping. To keep him upright, we had to put his arms through a vest of sorts. The vest was missing a back but had long straps on the sides. We used these to tie Birju to his wheelchair.

  I did not normally spend money on the vending machines in school. Spending money made me anxious. After I told Minakshi about this additional brain damage, I went back into the building and bought an ice cream. I think telling her was like releasing some enormous stress and the ice cream was like how one sits down after a shock.

  I found myself falling in love. Minakshi seemed kind and wonderful. Her small body, how I could gather it up in my arms like a bouquet, seemed the most extraordinary thing in the world. Loving her, I was scared. There were certain things I didn’t tell her because they were humiliating—my father’s drinking, my mother’s irrationality and meanness. I expected to be judged based on my family, and not telling her about my parents, I felt as if I were pretending to be better than I was.

  SOMETIMES, COMING HOME from kissing Minakshi, I would see Birju on his exercise bed and get upset. I couldn’t understand why everything wasn’t better. I wanted to hurt someone or something. The only thing I could find to hurt was my relationship with Minakshi.

  Priya was taller than I was and very skinny and had a nose like a beak. We were in biology class together, and I had spoken to her only a few times. I knew, though, that her father was a doctor and she was very smart. Also, she sat with Rita and the white girls.

  I began telling Priya I loved her. Passing her on the staircase, I whispered this. I slipped little strips of paper into her locker. On the strips I wrote poems. I did this four or five times, and then Priya came up to me in biology class. I was standing in the back alongside the bulletin boards.

  “Did you write this?” she asked, holding out one of the strips.

  The class had not yet begun, but most of the students were already there. I was conscious of their presence. I thought of Minakshi finding out.

  “No,” I said.

  Priya laughed. “I heard you told Rita you loved her.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  Sometimes on weekends my parents went to temple or a prayer ceremony and were away for the afternoon. Minakshi came over then. First she would stand in Birju’s room and say hello to him. When she did this, she looked serious. Afterward we went upstairs. We would lie on my bed fully clothed. We would kiss and rub against each other. I couldn’t believe I was getting to do something so wonderful.

  Minakshi seemed the embodiment of a future. The possibility of escape made me more impatient with my mother instead of less. She and I were now bathing Birju most mornings. Nearly always we fought as we did this. One morning in Birju’s room, perhaps inspired by how eunuchs in India show up at people’s houses and demand money and begin taking off their clothes to show they will do anything unless they are paid, I started stripping. I had just finished bathing my brother, cleaning his ass with a bar of soap, and my mother had been telling me that she knew I hated him, that whatever I did for him I did because of guilt and not because of love.

  “Why should I have any shame?” I shouted once I was naked.

  My mother was near the foot of the bed, embracing a
folded towel. She looked at me stunned. This pleased me. We often sought to show that there was no limit to what we would say or do.

  After a moment, my mother wagged her head from side to side. “If Birju were all right, I would tell you to get out. I’d tell you to leave right now. Go with your stupid grades and die.”

  I was not going to let her have the last word. “How can they be stupid when they’re so high?”

  WHILE MY FATHER’S drinking was getting so bad that he hardly helped and my mother and I were fighting every day, my family was also becoming more and more famous. This was not only because my good grades had brought another level of attention to us, but also because the community was growing and so there were simply more people to give attention.

  A large apartment complex, a row of brown brick buildings called Hilltop Apartments, had opened along a wide, busy road about a mile away. Almost all of the people who lived in Hilltop were Indians, new arrivals. Riding on the school bus, I often saw them walking along the sides of roads because they didn’t have cars. At temple, the women from Hilltop, women who worked at Kmart and grocery stores, carried see-through plastic purses. These people began visiting us. Many of them spoke neither Hindi nor English. When they came, they brought coconuts and bananas as if they were visiting an actual temple. Usually they said nothing or only the few words of Hindi that they knew: namaste, beta, khush. Some of the women came into Birju’s room, gripped his feet with both hands, and bowed and touched their foreheads to his feet.

  My father was now drinking all night long. Many nights, I woke at three or four in the morning from hearing him coming down the hallway. The upstairs bathroom was next to my room. My father kept a bottle of scotch beneath the bathroom sink. If the creaking of the hallway floor didn’t wake me, the buzz of the fluorescent tube light turning on did.

  The wood of the bathroom door was swollen. One night, I heard the door being pulled close. I lay in bed and, unable to go back to sleep, became enraged.