Sharma Akhil - Family Life

My father kept talking. “It’s not so much that we are better than whites, but that the people who come from India to America are the best Indians.”

We visited several houses that day. It was strange to go into bathrooms and to think that a white man had stood in the tub, that the dirt and smell of meat that had covered the white man had been rinsed into the tub. It was strange to walk on carpets and to think that the bare feet of white people had walked over them. I kept expecting to find a Playboy magazine on a coffee table.

After that first Saturday, we began visiting houses for sale every weekend. One afternoon, we were in a house whose owner had already moved away. He had left behind his furniture. I stood in the kitchen. It had a sliding glass door. My parents were outside on the small back lawn. I could see them talking to Mr. Gupta but couldn’t hear them. The kitchen was completely furnished. There was a table, a toaster oven, a coffeemaker, a wooden block with knives in it. Standing there I had the sudden realization that probably we would never go back to India, that probably we would live in America forever. The realization disturbed me. I saw that one day I would be nothing like who I was right then. I felt all alone.

I had not told anyone at school about Birju. I had been afraid that if I did, they would misunderstand in the same way that the women at the Ramayan Path had misunderstood, and then their confusion would remind me that what had happened to Birju did not matter for most of the world.

One morning, while the teacher was taking attendance, I leaned over my desk toward Jeff, the boy who sat in front of me. “Hey,” I hissed. “I have a brother. When I said I didn’t have a brother, I was lying.” Jeff turned around. He had a pale oval face, sandy hair, and a nose that came to a point. “My brother’s name is Birju. Birju. My brother is fifteen, almost sixteen. He had an accident in a swimming pool. He jumped into a pool and bumped his head on the bottom and was underwater for three minutes. He became brain damaged. He’s in a nursing home near Menlo Park Mall. This happened nearly two years ago. It happened in August. Not last August, the August before.” I said all of this in a rush, feeling scared, feeling almost like I was watching myself from the outside. “I’m sorry I lied to you.”

For a moment Jeff looked at me silently. Then he nodded. “That’s all right,” he said. “Just don’t do it again.” He turned away to face the front of the class.

Mr. Esposito called Jeff’s name. Jeff raised his arm and said, “Here.” Mr. Esposito then called my name and I too raised my arm.

As attendance continued, I looked at the back of Jeff’s head. Beneath his light brown hair was very white skin. My heart was racing. I wanted Jeff to turn around and express pity. Attendance ended. Mr. Esposito asked us to take out our social studies textbook. The children around me began doing so. I leaned over my desk once more. “My brother was very smart,” I said. “He had gotten into the Bronx High School of Science. The Bronx High School of Science is one of the best schools in the country.”

Jeff nodded. The back of his head went up and down.

Above the blackboard was a banner with capital and lowercase letters side-by-side: AaBbCc. Big brother, little brother.

I sat back in my chair. I had decided to tell Jeff because I was so unhappy, because everything was terrible, and because I had thought that if I told him about Birju, he would pity me and become my friend. Now I had the feeling that I had wasted something.

After school, I stood on the sidewalk and waited for my mother. She picked me up in our station wagon. At the nursing home, the door to Birju’s room was open with the blinds raised and the lights on. We left Birju’s room this way so that Birju would be easier to see from the corridor, in case something went wrong.

My mother entered Birju’s room. She yelled, “Hello, lazy! Hello, smelly!”

Birju jerked in place. The springs of the bed squeaked.

“Fatso!” I shouted as I walked in behind her, and Birju jerked once more.

“Look at what your brother calls you,” my mother said. She pulled Birju up by the shoulders and slid a second pillow under his head.

“Fatty! Fatty!” I cried.

“Tell him, ‘I’m no fatty.’”

Birju was chewing his mustache. His face was swollen and almost square from medication. “Fatty, fatty,” I said. I smiled and wagged my head. Pretending to be younger than I was, too young to notice Birju’s gruesomeness, always seemed the proper way to behave.

My mother spread a newspaper over Birju’s chest. Sitting sidesaddle on the bed, she began feeding him pureed bananas using a long spoon that was coated in rubber. “Yum, yum,” she said as she pressed the spoon to Birju’s mouth. Birju smacked his lips, took the mush into his mouth, and then puffed it onto the newspaper.

I saw this and thought, Even a baby swallows what it likes . Immediately, cool guilt slid over me like a cloud’s shadow.

I WAS AT THE school playground the next morning, waiting for the starting bell, when Jeff came up to me. He had a book bag dangling from one shoulder and both hands in his back pockets. He said, “Have you ever asked your brother to blink once for yes and twice for no?”

One of the reasons I had not told anyone was because I was afraid of questions like this. “I have. It doesn’t work.” Even as I had tried this in the hospital, with nobody else around, I had known that it would have no effect.

“Have you ever shouted ‘Fire!’ and run away and then seen if he would get up?”

“No,” I murmured.

Jeff stared. “That might work.”

“I’ll try.” I was quiet for a little while. Jeff remained standing before me. I said, “My brother was a genius. He took French for two weeks and after that he could speak it perfectly.”

Jeff nodded. He looked serious, like he was being given a secret mission.

The school doors opened. Jeff and I went inside together.

At lunch I sat down across from him and his best friend, Michael Bu, a Chinese boy with a round face and sharp little teeth like a fish. “Can your brother not talk at all,” Michael asked, “or does he sound retarded?”

My face became hot. I had considered asking Jeff not to tell anyone about Birju, but it had seemed too much to ask. “Not at all.”

“What does he look like?” Michael asked.

I put a tater tot in my mouth and pointed a finger at my lips.

“What’s wrong with your brother?” Mario asked. Mario was sitting next to Michael. Mario was very tall and wide. He had fuzz on his upper lip. Once, when the class sang, “You Are My Sunshine,” he had cried. The children sometimes mocked him by singing the song.

“He had an accident in a swimming pool and became brain damaged.”

“Does he open his eyes?” Mario asked.

“Yes.”

Jeff said, “I saw a television show where a woman sees a murder and goes unconscious.”

I pursed my lips to appear serious. “That happens.”

“How does he eat?” Jeff asked.

I began to feel attacked.

“There is a tube in his stomach.” I told them about the Isocal formula and the gastrointestinal tube. I said, “My brother was a great basketball player. He played two games and immediately got so good that he began beating people. When he played, people came to watch.” By lying, I felt that I had placed a finger on a balance that was tilting too far to one side.

Within a few days, everybody in class had heard about Birju. Still, boys and girls came up to me during recess and asked eagerly whether I had a brother, as if the secret could be revealed once more.