Akhil Sharma - An Obedient Father

I go back into the flat. The refrigerator even looks empty. I smile.

At night, before I go to bed, I unbolt Pitaji's door.

When Pitaji comes and kneels beside where I sleep, the fluorescent arms of the clock are past two. I am not afraid and do not reach for the hammer or the knife. "My medicines. They're not in the fridge."

"I don't know." I pretend to have been woken. I am on my side facing him.

"My medicines?"

"Am I your doctor?"

Pitaji sits on a chair across from the bed. I keep my eyes slitted open. He stays there for nearly an hour. He looks like a dark mound.

Earlier, he looked so weak standing at the edge of the gallery that I know I can fight him.

The next morning Pitaji goes to his doctor. I feel that I must continue my war. A few minutes after the door closes behind him, I phone Dr. Aziz. I tell him who I am and say, "My father raped me when I was twelve." He does not respond to this. I want to tell him all the details but am embarrassed. "I have a daughter who is young. Do you think he might rape her?"

"I don't know anything about that. I have never talked with him about such things." His voice is hesitant and sad.

"Thank you."

"Can I help?"

"No," I answer.

Pitaji returns and, unexpectedly, puts his medicines in the refrigerator again. When he is sitting on his cot undressing, I come and stand in his doorway. Pitaji looks up, frightened. His thinness and fear turn him mysterious.

I ask, "What did Dr. Aziz say?"

"He said I was fine and gave me new prescriptions."

"What do I care about that?" I smile to let him see my hate. "Did he tell you I phoned and told him about you? He kept quiet, so I told him about the newspapers you put under me to catch the blood. He called you a monster."

Pitaji watches me. I glare at him. He stands unsteadily and closes his door in my face. I bolt him in. I then take his new medicines, put them in the paper bag he brought them home in, and slip the bag over the balcony's ledge into the squatter colony.

My revenge begins this way.

I start cooking six rotis for Pitaji instead of four and pouring a spoon of butter on each. I am not responsible for his appetites.

Pitaji is locked in all day. At night, before going to bed, I unbolt

him. He so thoroughly eats everything I prepare that I worry he is throwing away the food. I check in the latrine and I check in the squatter colony, but there is no indication of this. We rarely speak. He occasionally comes into my room and wakes me to ask where the laundry soap is or where to find a needle and thread. He does not mention his medicines again.

One Sunday afternoon, while I am in our room, Asha opens Pitaji's door and demands that he come out and watch television. She is saying, "Come here," when I enter the common room. Pitaji is on his cot staring at Asha. I grab her and hurl her away from the door. I lock him in again.

The weeks pile into months. Mrs. Chauduri from work phones. I can tell from her false solicitousness that she is hoping for gossip. "He is sick," I say, and we end the conversation. No one from Ma's side of the family tries to contact us. Krishna calls. "You have the shamelessness to pick up the phone," he says. "Bring my brother." I hang up. I am surprised that the news has taken so long to spread. He calls a minute later and, without any insults, asks for Pitaji. Pitaji says he is fine and that yes he cannot understand the lies I have told about him. Pitaji's stomach has again begun to spill into his lap. I am in the doorway to my room. After Pitaji hangs up the phone, he tells me, "I do everything you want." He appears to wait for me to say something. I do not, and sighing, he stands and leaves for his room. I bolt him in.

Perhaps three months after I first locked Pitaji in his room, Shakuntla Mausiji and Sharmila Mamiji visit one afternoon. I had stopped thinking of the outside world. I hear the doorbell and unbolt him. I often wonder how he spends his day. The only times I see him are when he wants to leave his room. Pitaji is lying on his cot in his underpants looking at the ceiling fan. He must have heard the bell, too.

Mausiji and Mamiji sit on the living-room sofa. Both are small and fat, with nearly white hair. I prepare tea and bring out biscuits.

"How are you?" Mamiji asks when I return from the kitchen.

"Good."

"We worry about you," she says. This cannot be true, for why has it taken them so long to visit?

"Now what, daughter?" Mausiji asks. Shakuntala Mausiji is Ma's older sister, and even though I know not to believe that people of her generation are especially protective or wise, I expect them to be.

"Have you thought of marriage?" Mamiji interprets the question. "There is a man I know who works in a ball-bearing factory. He is good, but was married to a Muslim for two years."

Because I am worried they might discover what I am doing to Pitaji, my voice remains softly polite. "One marriage in one life," I say, trying to appear as traditional as possible.

"Throw yourself on a pyre, then?" Mamiji responds.

"Asha can live with us," Mausiji says. "It'll make getting a husband easier."

Hearing this is a shock. "Asha is the light of the world."

"Daughter, don't cry."

I wipe my face with a fold of my sari.

"Something has to be done," Mamiji says.

"Pitaji is fine to live with."

"It might be safer for Asha to be away," Mausiji adds.

Immediately tears roll down my cheeks. "Don't say that." I cannot imagine what might force me to give up Asha. Without her not a single good thing would have happened in my life.

After a while Mamiji asks, "Should we say hello to your father?"

This frightens me. "He's lying down," I say, hoping they will understand this as his being asleep.

"Is he awake?"

"I don't know."

Together we go into the common room. Pitaji is still lying in his underpants.

"Namaste," Mausiji says.

After a moment Pitaji replies, "Namaste."

"How is your health?"

"All right."

Mausiji and Mamiji exchange glances. They linger. I think they

cannot decide whether to mention the man who works in the ballbearing factory.

"Namaste," Mausiji says. They depart.

This time I do not close Pitaji's door till I have washed the pot the tea was made in and the cups in which it was drunk. Bare and still and so passive, he does not seem dangerous. But I cannot imagine the future with him in it. The need to live is so strong that only a mountain piled on top can stop it. With Pitaji, living is the same as destroying. He was able to wait twenty years and then act exactly the same as he had before. Yet nothing in his soft round face or his swollen stomach demands the death I wish him. When I close his door that afternoon it is not to cage him, as it has been before, but to remove him from sight so I can forget.

"I am a good woman," I say to myself

"Who can understand what I have suffered?"

"Or how alone I am."

In the weeks and months that come, I forget him, sometimes for several hours. Then something will remind me and I will know exactly when I last thought of him and how I nearly imagined him while mopping the floor, and again when the fan's breeze stirred some newspapers. I talk so little, I begin to envy Asha for being able to go out into the world and speak to other children.

Late one night Pitaji begins to scream. He is so loud that Asha jumps upright on the bed still half-asleep. "What?" I say to her, as if I cannot hear. Pitaji continues. The shrieks are high and desperate. I turn on all the lights and go to the common room. Asha follows. I look at his blue door. It is unbolted and he has not been out that night. "He'll ask if he needs help," I murmur.

"Do something," Asha says angrily.

"He knows what's best for him."