Family Life (15 page)

I lie here, listening to my wife cough, and it is hard to believe that she is dying.

It was strange to write something down and for that thing to come into existence. The fact that the sentence existed made Birju’s coughing somehow less awful.

As I sat on my bed, I thought about how I could end my story. I held my pencil above the sheet of paper. According to the essays I had read on Hemingway, all I needed to do was attach something to the end of the story that was both unexpected and natural.

I imagined Birju dying; this had to be what would eventually happen. As soon as I imagined this, I did not want him gone. I felt a surge of love for Birju. Even though he was sick and swollen, I did not want him gone. I wrote:

I lie in my bed and listen to her cough and am glad she is coughing because this means she is alive. Soon she will die, and I will no longer be among the lucky people whose wives are sick. Fortunate are the men whose wives cough. Fortunate are the men who cannot sleep through the night because their wives’ coughing wakes them.

Writing the story changed me. Now I began to feel as if I were walking through my life collecting things that could be used later: the sound of a Ping-Pong ball was like a woman walking in high heels, the shower running was like television static. Seeing things as material for writing protected me. When a boy tried to start a fight by saying, “You’re vegetarian—does that mean you don’t eat pussy?” I thought this would be something I could use in a story.

A
t the end of ninth grade, as I was about to turn fifteen, I and ten other students had straight As. This meant that we were all ranked first in our class.

The day school ended, there was a carnival atmosphere. Students emptied their lockers into the hallways, throwing papers, magazine cutouts, and greeting cards all over the floors. In each classroom a sheet of paper was pinned to the bulletin board and typed on this were the names of those ranked first in their grade. Seeing my name in type made it feel like another person’s.

When I came home, my mother was exercising Birju, moving his arms up and down as if he were marching.

“Mommy,” I said, my hand on Birju’s foot because by showing respect I could make myself younger, “I’m ranked first in my class.”

“Very good,” my mother answered, continuing to pump Birju’s arms.

She didn’t say any more. I had been feeling proud as well as guilty, and now I felt a collapse. And then I became disgusted with myself for my vanity in wanting to be thought special when ten other children were also ranked first.

P
EOPLE PHONED AND
asked my mother if I could speak to their children. I remembered how the same thing had happened when Birju got into the Bronx High School of Science. I remembered my jealousy then. Now, talking on the phone to those children, it seemed to me that to be one among eleven students was nothing compared to Birju getting into his school after only a year and a half in America.

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 getting 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.”

W
ITHIN 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.