Akhil Sharma - An Obedient Father

In the morning Anita's face looked as though the bones had given way. When Radha saw her, she was shocked. "Sick all night," I hurried to explain.

"Vomiting?"

"Twice." Anita did not contradict me. How could she have?

For a week and a half I did not go near Anita. I told her she still sounded sick and sent her to sleep by herself Anita began speaking again and her eyes started moving to follow what was in front of her. The fact that Radha did not ask questions to discover what had happened appeared to me complete proof that she was almost consciously choosing not to know. I think this, but I know that Radha was honorable and would not have shunned her duties.

I believed at that time that it was my unavoidable doom as much as lust which made me tell Anita to come sleep in my room again. But it was probably simply that I did not actually believe that I would ever be discovered, for I could not imagine the world after I had been caught.

When again Anita entered the room, I closed the door and turned off the Hghts. Anita found her way to my cot. I lay down beside her and lowered my pajamas.

On the bus I moaned again. The man sitting beside me prodded me in the arm and asked, "Are you going to throw up?" I shook my head no. He shifted to the edge of the seat anyway. "Move away from the window," he said. "You lose all your water from the wind." I hugged myself I was cold.

The memories of the following days are so morbid — the newspapers under Anita to keep the sheets clean, the painful penetration each night, an ejaculation which I would try catching in my hand because I was afraid of pregnancy, Anita going to wash the blood from her vagina — that in later years I tried blotting them from memory.

It was obvious that something was very wrong with Anita. When she walked, she looked pained. She almost stopped talking completely, and only when I scolded her would she eat. Radha was watching all this, I knew. Watching perhaps in confusion or in growing certainty.

But for four or five nights there was the same horror. The details of what we did, Anita holding her cries in and breathing as though there were sand in her lungs, were so terrible that whenever I finished I felt as if I were swallowing my tongue. Yet each night Anita sat on the edge of her cot and I closed the door and switched off the light before turning around.

Maybe Radha came down to the courtyard to pee and then heard something. Or maybe Anita's condition over the last few weeks had finally forced her to admit the obvious. Or Radha might have just wanted to see if we were sleeping all right.

And there I was, arching on top, Anita flat and still far below me. Radha was silhouetted in the doorway before I had even turned my

head. The roUing off Anita and pulling up pajamas and sheet seemed incredibly slow and clumsy even as I did them. Radha stood unmov-ing long after I was on my back, my pajamas at my knees, the sheet reaching my waist, and Anita beside me.

Radha moaned. Then she grabbed Anita by the arm and swung her onto the floor. "Go upstairs," Radha shouted. For a moment Anita stood there. Then she hobbled out.

I sat up.

"What's this?" she said, noticing the newspapers. Radha slapped me, and the heel of her hand struck my nose. I tasted the iron flavor of blood. She hit me again. "Dog. Disease," she shouted. She kept slapping and cursing. "If people knew about you, they would kill you like a mad dog. They would break your head with bricks. If I told my brothers, they would cut you to pieces with a machete. Do you know what you've done?" I had so much adrenaline in me that I felt no emotion. Radha's blows did not get weaker. I said nothing and did not try to protect myself "Your own daughter, animal. What is going to happen to her now? Have you done this many times? Have you been doing this long?"

Her questions cut through my befuddlement and made me wail, "I don't know why. I'm a leper." Now that the worst had happened, I felt none of the relief I had expected would come when things ended. I could imagine Radha telling everyone and me being driven from my home and becoming a beggar on the street. "I swear I haven't been doing it long. God is good and let me be caught the first time. I deserve to die."

"Kill yourself, then," she yelled.

"I should. I should." I nodded and wept. A part of me was interested only in escaping blame. Another part would actually have liked to die.

"Do it, then. Use a knife. Use rope. Drown yourself in a spoonful of water."

"I should." As I said it again, I think we both simultaneously realized that this would not happen.

Radha became quiet. "Who will marry her?" she asked. I think she said this only because this is the type of question they ask in movies after a rape. Suddenly Radha took off her rubber slipper and swung it hard at my cheek. The sound was like a wet cloth whipping against a rock. I felt as if my cheek had peeled off I howled and then became abruptly quiet. Radha grabbed my face and, holding me by my lips and chin, slapped me again with the rubber slipper. I howled and stopped as soon as I could. Radha punishing me herself made me think that she would not tell anyone of her discovery. Immediately following this came grief at what I had done. I tried to speak, to beg pardon, but no words were right. My crime stood out terrible and solitary in my mind. It was sick.

All night I sat there as Radha cursed and hit. By dawn my face was purple and Radha was staggering from exhaustion. When she spoke, her sentences sometimes made no sense. Sometimes she wept. "I should kill myself and the children," she said at one point. "I should pour kerosene over all of us and set us on fire." Part of me wondered if this would not solve my problem.

After Rajesh and Kusum left for school that morning, Radha, Anita, and I went to Hanuman temple. My face was still purple and I could hardly open my lips. Radha and Anita sat in a corner all day and prayed. Most of the morning I crouched on my knees before an idol of God Ram, with my forehead pressed to the floor. Over and over I asked God to take away my evil and madness. I cried and stopped, cried and stopped. I knelt till cramps caused me to fall on the floor. Then I lay there praying, with my face to the floor and my arms stretched out before me. This was a Tuesday, God Hanuman's day, and so the temple was especially full. I was praying in the main chamber, and by early afternoon even this was so crowded that people could no longer go around me and had to step over me.

That night we sent Rajesh and Kusum to bed early and talked with Anita in the living room. Radha and I sat on the sofa. Anita sat across from us on a chair so high that her feet did not touch the

ground. We had agreed that Radha would be the one to do most of the talking.

"We don't want you to have any confusion about last night," Radha began. Radha had accepted my story that I had entered Anita only once. Anita pushed herself as far back in the chair as possible and sat still. "Your Pitaji did something bad. It is a shameful thing that he did and God will one day punish him." Since Anita's face was expressionless, Radha stopped and said, "Yes?" Anita nodded, and Radha continued from where she had stopped. "You can't tell anyone about what he did. He is ashamed. He will never do anything again." Radha looked at me and, as if overcome with emotion, slapped me. "But you have to forget what happened. From now on, you empty your head of everything that has happened. What happened wasn't anything." There was a long silence when it was difficult to know if Radha was looking for more words to say or whether it was time for Anita to speak. "You understand? Empty your head." Anita nodded again. The day of praying had made me so remorseful that I felt outraged on Anita's behalf But I was glad for what Radha was doing anyway. I wondered whether it was in fact possible for Anita to forget. All three of us understood, though, that what actually mattered was Anita's silence. The conversation had lasted not even an hour when we kissed Anita's forehead and sent her to bed.