Sharma Akhil - Family Life

MY MOTHER TOOK a job in a garment factory. The morning that she was to start, she came into the living room wearing jeans. I had never seen her wearing something formfitting before. Birju and I were sitting on one of the mattresses. “Your thighs are so big,” Birju said, laughing.

My mother started screaming. “Die, murderer, die.”

Birju laughed, and I joined him.

In India, when my father said we should do something, we wouldn’t really start doing it till our mother had decided whether it made sense. In America, our parents were closer to equal importance. My father had all sorts of plans for us. Mostly these involved us assimilating. He made us watch the news every evening. This was incredibly boring. We didn’t care that there were hostages in Iran or that there was a movie called The Empire Strikes Back . He also bought us tennis rackets and took us to Flushing Meadows Park. There he made us hit tennis balls because he believed that tennis was a sport for rich people. Both Birju and I wore white headbands.

My father was still irritable and suspicious as he had been in India, but he also had a certain confidence, like no matter what happened he would have done one thing that was uncontestably wonderful. “A green card is worth a million dollars,” he repeatedly told us. My mother, despite working in a garment factory, was mostly the same as she had been in India. She had been enthusiastic there about trying new things, taking me and Birju to movies and restaurants, and she was the same in America. She took Birju and me for walks in grocery stores so that we could see things we had never seen before — canned hearts of palms, boxes of colorful cereals. My mother said that she wished she was a teacher but she did not feel diminished by her work. “Work is work,” she said.

My relationship with Birju changed. In India, my mother used to come home around the same time we did. Now, Birju was expected to take care of me until she returned from work. He was supposed to boil frozen shelled corn for me and give me a glass of milk. He was supposed to sit with me and watch me do my homework as he did his. Till America, I had somehow not paid much attention to the fact that Birju was older than I was. I had thought that he was bigger, but not more mature. Now, I began to understand that Birju dealt with more complicated things than I did.

BIRJU AND I were sent to spend the summer with our father’s older sister. This was in Arlington, Virginia. She and our uncle lived in a small white two story house beside a wide road. The houses in Arlington had yards. The hot humid air there smelled of earth and the newness of green plants. Among the exotic things about Arlington was that the television networks were on different channels than in Queens. I turned nine while I was there.

In Arlington, Birju began studying for the test to get into the Bronx High School of Science. He had to study five hours a day. While I got to go out, Birju had to stay in the living room and work until he was done with his hours.

When we returned to Queens, Birju had to study three hours every weeknight and all day on weekends. Many nights I fell asleep on my mattress as he sat at the round, white kitchen table, his pencil scratching away.

Despite all the time Birju was spending with his books, my mother felt that he was not studying hard enough. Often they fought. Once she caught him asleep on the foam mattress in the room that my parents shared. He had claimed that he needed quiet and so instead of studying at the kitchen table where he could be watched, he should be allowed to go into their room to study. When my mother came into the room, he was rolled onto his side breathing deeply.

She began shouting, calling him a liar. Birju ran past her into the kitchen and returned with a knife. Standing before her, holding the knife by the handle and pointing it at his stomach, he said, “Kill me. Go ahead; kill me. I know that’s what you want.”

“Do some work instead of being dramatic,” my mother said contemptuously.

I became infected with the anxiety that Birju and my parents appeared to feel. When the sun shone and I went to Flushing Meadows Park, I had the sense that I was frittering away time. Real life was occurring back in our apartment with Birju studying.

The day of the exam finally came. On the subway to the test, I sat and Birju stood in front of me. I held one of his test preparation books in my lap and checked his vocabulary. Most of the words I asked him he didn’t know. I started to panic. Birju, I began to see, was not going to do well. As I asked my questions and our mother and father watched, my voice grew quieter and quieter. I asked Birju what “rapscallion” meant. He guessed it was a type of onion. When I told him what it was, he began blinking quickly.

“Keep a calm head,” my father scolded.

“Don’t worry, baby,” my mother said. “You will remember when you need to.”

The exam took place in a large, white cinder-block building that was a school but looked like a parking garage. The test started in the morning, and as it was going on, my parents and I walked back and forth nearby along a chain-link fence that surrounded basketball courts. The day was cold, gray, damp. Periodically, it drizzled. There were parked cars along the sidewalk with waiting parents inside, and the windows of these grew foggy as we walked.

My father said, “These tests are for white people. How are we supposed to know what ‘pew’ means?”

“Don’t give me a headache,” my mother said. “I’m worried enough.”

“Maybe he’ll do well enough in the math and science portions that it will make up for the English.”

My stomach hurt. My chest was heavy. I had wanted the day of Birju’s test to come so that it would be over. Now, though, that the day was here, I wished Birju had had more time.

Midway through the exam, there was a break. Birju came out on the sidewalk. His face looked tired. We surrounded him and began feeding him oranges and almonds — oranges to cool him and almonds to give his brain strength.

My mother was wearing Birju’s backpack. “It’s raining, baby,” my mother said, “which means that it’s a lucky day.”

“Just do your best,” my father said. “It’s too late for anything else.”

Birju turned around and walked back toward the building.

Weeks went by. It was strange for Birju not to be studying. It was strange not to see his study guides on the living room floor beside his mattress. It was as if something was missing and wrong. Often Birju wept and said, “Mommy, I know I didn’t pass.”

A month went by and then two. A warm day came when I could tie my winter coat around my waist during lunch hour, then another such day, like birds out of season. Spring came. In Delhi, they would be turning on fountains in the evening, and crowds would gather to watch.

The results arrived. Because Birju had said it so many times, I knew that an acceptance letter would come in a thick envelope. The one that he showed me was thin and white. Tears slid down his cheeks.

“Maybe you got in,” I murmured, trying to be comforting.

“Why do you think that?” Birju asked. He stared at me as if I might know something he did not.

Our mother was at work. She had said not to open the envelope until she arrived, that we would take it to temple and open it there. This made no sense to me. I thought what the envelope contained had already been decided.

My father arrived home after my mother. As soon as he did, Birju demanded that we go to temple.

Inside the large chamber, my mother put a dollar in the wooden box before God Shivaji. Then we went to each of the other idols in turn. Normally we only pressed our hands together before each idol and bowed our heads. This time we knelt and did a full prayer. After we had prayed before all the idols, we got on our knees before the family of God Ram. Birju was between our parents.