Akhil Sharma - An Obedient Father

Outside, the light reminded Kusum of how little she had slept. The morning smell, thinly herbaceous, with whiffs of diesel and sweat, meant India to her. Everything was so much the same, she could have left yesterday. Kusum's stomach clenched. A crowd waited along the terminal windows. Terrorism in the early eighties had forced people to greet returning relatives on the airport's wide sidewalks.

Even after ten years, Anita was immediately recognizable. She had some wrinkles and her hair was almost white. She stood slightly at an angle, as if to keep a greater area under surveillance. Rajesh was near her. He had gotten so enormously fat that his head seemed supported by his chins.

"Say namaste to Kusum Mausiji," Anita said in English, and that's how Kusum realized that the tall, broad-shouldered girl standing a few feet away was Asha. Asha was wearing a long olive army raincoat and eating a sugar cube. Kusum's image of Asha was from a decade-old photograph in which she sat tiny between her parents on a sofa. Asha still had a child's moon face, round and soft, and this was the only part that looked her age. Kusum had expected someone less distinct.

"Namaste. Can I go to America with you?"

Laughing politely, Kusum replied, "If you want."

"I do. When?" Asha stared at Kusum.

"Quiet. They're too tired for your jokes," Anita said, again in English.

"We slept on the plane," Ben said, smiling in a puzzled and slightly conciliatory manner.

"Shall we take a bus?" Rajesh asked. Etiquette should have required that he, as the man from Kusum's side of the family, pay for a taxi. Rajesh owned two Pizza King restaurants and could afford the taxi.

"Shame, Rajesh," Anita said in Hindi. "We should pay" Rajesh grimaced and did not answer. Kusum knew Anita had little money. Inflation had destroyed the value of what little Pitaji had left her. She was planning to sell the flat she and Rajesh had inherited and either move in with Rajesh or rent a single room.

"You don't want the presents I brought?" Kusum said to Rajesh in Hindi, smiling as if she was teasing.

"Teach him a lesson," Asha said, and laughed.

K bed dominated the front room of the flat. Rajesh sat

/X^beside Ben on two chairs and showed him a five-hundred-rupee bill. "Three, four years ago, you almost never saw these. Soon they'll have bills as large as an undershirt." Kusum sat cross-legged next to Anita on the bed and looked at Asha's report cards. Everyone but Carolyn was drinking tea. The report cards were from first standard through ninth. In the last two years, Asha's marks had improved enormously.

The report cards, Kusum understood, were marketing materials for Asha, but she did not feel put upon. Kusum looked at Carolyn sitting near her and thought how difficult it was to be a good mother. Carolyn was staring anxiously at the twirling ceiling fan.

"It won't fall on you," Rajesh said to Carolyn.

Carolyn looked at him and then at the fan, which not only spun but shuddered, as if its speed was about to wrench the bolts out.

"God is kind," Asha added, "they tend to fall when their owners

are asleep." She was sitting cross-legged on the floor. Carolyn's face tensed. Kusum noted the teasing. "Don't worry, every flat in India has one," Asha said.

Carolyn kept looking at the fan.

Ben laughed. He was sitting on a chair against a wall. "Tell Asha you're going to sleep on the side of the bed and make her sleep right beneath the fan," he said.

Carolyn looked shyly at her father and, unable to muster up the meanness to tease, said, "I'm going to sleep on the side," and giggled.

Asha laughed as well.

"Asha would be number one in her class, but the father of the student who is first is a doctor and gives free medicine to the principal," Anita complained.

Ben laughed.

"It's true," she said. "This is India."

"Does the principal take whatever medicine is given or does he ask for specific ones?" Ben asked.

Rajesh chuckled, and Anita began protesting.

"Mummy says the secret to success is working hard and cheating," Asha said. As everyone stopped in surprise, she grinned.

"You don't cheat, do you?" Ben asked.

"Asha, what's wrong with your head?" Anita asked. "Do you think a stick would fix it?"

"Take me to America." Asha addressed Kusum. "Here the answer to everything is 'stick.' "

Now Kusum worried whether Asha cheated. One more complication she would have to deal with if they adopted Asha. "Why did your marks go up so much the last two years?" Kusum asked.

"She began going to an all-girl school," Anita said.

"I found a friend with a VCR and I started watching movies and understood I would never have any of what I saw unless I worked," Asha added.

"What about wanting to make me happy?" Anita asked.

"You'll never be happy."

"rm making more tea," Anita said, and stood. From the kitchen she called for Asha.

Asha hissed, "Stick," and left.

In the aisle, between the chairs along the wall and the bed, Kusum began unpacking the suitcases. To make space for her, Rajesh moved from beside Ben to the bed. She was glad to be able to talk with Rajesh without Anita present.

The sound of Asha's and Anita's voices arguing came from the kitchen.

Kusum took an electronic thermometer out of a suitcase and placed it on the bed. "Is that the one I asked for?" Rajesh inquired.

"Yes."

He took the thermometer from its box and, after spending several minutes discovering how to use it, put it in his ear. "Did Anita write crazy letters?" he asked Ben, because Ben was the husband.

"No," Ben said. Another reason Kusum loved him was that he was discreet, even on behalf of those who were not discreet themselves.

Rajesh appeared offended at being rebuffed so directly. A moment later he spoke in the patient voice of a friend delivering a warning. "Anita's crazy. Whether she acts it or not." Rajesh had written Kusum once in ten years, and then only to ask for the thermometer and a Walkman because he had learned she was coming to India. Listening to him, Kusum wondered why being away for so many years did not make things feel more unexpected.

"She must be unhappy," Ben said.

"What does that explain? I'm unhappy, too. What she says Pitaji did happened how many years ago? After all those years she suddenly had to tell people?"

Ben's face froze the way it did when he was offended and was waiting so that he would not speak from automatic disgust.

"Pitaji threatened Asha," Kusum said. She was thrilled to hear evidence that she need not adopt Asha and wanted to confirm the evidence.

"I don't believe that. Ask Asha what Pitaji was Uke and she'll only say good things."

"Why do you think Anita's crazy?" Kusum asked.

Rajesh took the thermometer from his ear and looked at his temperature. When he spoke, he sounded embarrassed. "After she told everyone about Pitaji — who knows whether everything she said was true — the family said she should get married and she wouldn't."

"You want to use the bathroom, Carolyn?" Kusum said. This was the excuse she and Ben had developed to tell her to leave a room. Carolyn departed. "That's not crazy."

"But she kept telling everyone about Pitaji — who knows whether it was true — even when it would do no good. After he was dead. She told everyone in the compound. Did she expect them to be kind to her? Did she expect them to admire her bravery? Asha walks down the street now and boys grab their buttocks and show her their tongues."

"Is that true?" Ben asked.

"Asha keeps a razor blade with her in case she's attacked. Once, in her old school, she was suspended because she used it on a boy who attacked her."

"No," Ben exhaled. Kusum knew this story. When the first of Anita's letters arrived telling of Pitaji, Kusum had felt accused, as if she had stolen something. This sense had not faded over the years, and when she translated Anita's letters for Ben, she left out the details that most revealed the abjectness of Anita's and Asha's lives.