Akhil Sharma - An Obedient Father

be doing something wrong. Anita couldn't see. I continued leaning over Asha's shoulder. "What a nice daughter you have," I said to Anita.

There was no emotion on Anita's face as she stared at me. "What are you doing?" she asked me.

"Giving Nanaji water," Asha said.

She stared at us a moment and then motioned for Asha to come to her. "Brush your teeth." Asha left me and went past her mother into the common room. Anita stayed in the doorway. I wondered whether she remembered. How could she remember after decades of silence? She kept looking at me. "I'm drunk," I said in case she remembered.

Anita stepped out of the doorway and out of my sight.

I

TWO

P

itaji is dead. Asha and I are on the roof. The sky is ashy from the city's trapped lights. It is three in the morning, or later. Moisture is finally collecting on the sheets. I am sitting on my cot. I have not slept at all since I saw Pitaji dead. I am staring at my daughter, because otherwise Pitaji appears before me. Asha's hands are on her hips above the white sheet that reaches her waist.

On a nearby roof a woman coughs and spits. Asha rolls onto her side so her back is to me. A few months ago, Pitaji's ankles turned black for lack of blood. Before, I had seen this as a sign of death and been happy. Since he died, I've been thinking of the ankles, like a child's socks, and wanting to wrap my head in my arms.

Pitaji appears against the night. He is on his stomach, lit by the summer sun coming through the common room. His eyes are turned toward where I stood in the doorway; blood covers his chin from bit-

ing his tongue; one arm is buried beneath him; the other is draped over the edge of the cot. I try peering through this. The image does not fade. I close my eyes. He is inside my Hds.

I wish Rajinder were here to say, "Don't think too much." Once Rajinder decided to put something out of his mind he did it. If I had loved him or even let him hold my attention, perhaps I would have become more like him. Then the last year and a half might have been completely different. If I had been more like Rajinder, I would have been able to maintain the agreement between Pitaji and me. Instead, when he broke it, I took revenge.

I move to Asha's cot. She does not wake. I try to lie beside her. Half my body is on the cot's wood frame. Rajinder was necessary for Asha to be born. Even when I am angry with her, I always think there is a reason for her to be in the world, and for me. I may be stupid, but Asha was born from me.

I did love Rajinder once, through an afternoon's end, the whole of an evening, into a night. I was only twenty-two when I fell in love. It was easy then to think that even love was within my power. Six months married, suddenly awake from a short deep sleep in love with my husband for the first time, I lay in bed that June afternoon, looking out the window at the swiftly advancing gray clouds, believing anything is possible.

We were living in a small flat on the roof of a three-story house in Defense Colony. Rajinder signed the lease a week before our wedding. Two days after we married, he brought me to the flat. Although it was cold, I wore no sweater over my pink sari. I knew that, with my thick eyebrows and broad nose, I must try especially hard to be appealing.

The sun filled the living room through a window that took up half a wall. Rajinder went in first. In the center of the room was a low plywood table with a thistle broom on top. Three plastic folding chairs lay collapsed in the corner. I followed a few steps behind. The room was a white rectangle.

"We can put the TV there," Rajinder said softly, pointing to the right corner of the living room. He stood before the window. Rajinder was slightly overweight. I knew he wore sweaters that were large for him, to hide his stomach. But they suggested humbleness. The thick black frames of his glasses, his old-fashioned mustache thin as a scratch, the hairline giving way, all created an impression of thoughtfulness. "The sofa in front of the window."

I followed Rajinder into the bedroom. The two rooms were exactly alike. "There, the bed," Rajinder said, placing it with a wave against the wall across from the window. He spoke as though he were describing what was already there. "The fridge we can put right next to it," at the foot of the bed. Both were part of my dowry. Whenever he looked at me, I said yes and nodded my head.

From the roof, a little after eleven, I watched Rajinder drive away on his scooter. He was going to my parents' flat in the Old Vegetable Market. My dowry was stored there. There was nothing for me to do while he was gone. I wandered around the roof Defense Colony is composed of rows of pale three- and four-storied buildings. There was a small park edged with eucalyptus trees behind our house.

Rajinder returned two hours later with his older brother, Ashok. They had borrowed a yellow van to carry the dowry. It took three trips to bring the TV, the sofa, the fridge, the mixer, the stainless-steel dishes. Each time they left, I wanted them never to return. Whenever they pulled up outside, Ashok pressed the horn, which played "J^^g^^ Bells." With his muscular forearms, Ashok reminded me of Pitaji's brothers, who. Ma claimed, beat their wives.

On the first trip they brought back two VIP suitcases that my mother had packed with my clothes. I was cold, so when they left, I went into the bedroom to put on something warmer. My hands were trembling by then. When I swallowed, my throat felt scraped. Standing there naked in the room gray with dust and the light like cold clear water, I felt sad, lonely, excited to be in a place where no one knew me. In the cold, I touched my stomach, my breasts, the inside of my thighs. Afterward I felt lonelier. I put on a salwar kameez.

Rajinder did not notice I had changed. I swept the rooms while they were gone. I stacked the kitchen shelves with the stainless-steel dishes, saucers, spoons that had come as gifts. Rajinder brought all the gifts except the bed, which was too big to carry. It was raised to the roof by pulleys the next day. They were able to bring up the mattress, though. I was glad to see it. Sadness made me sleepy.

We did not eat lunch. In the evening I made rotis on a kerosene stove. The gas canisters had not come yet. There was no lightbulb in the kitchen. I had only the stove's blue flame to see by. The icy wind swirled around my feet. Nearly thirteen years later I can still remember that wind. We ate in the living room. Rajinder and Ashok spoke loudly of the farm, gasoline prices, politics in Haryana, Indira Gandhi's government. I spoke once, saying that I liked Indira Gandhi. Ashok said that was because I was a Delhi woman who wanted to see women in power.

Ashok left after dinner. For the first time since the wedding there wasn't anyone else nearby. Our voices were so respectful we might have been in mourning. Rajinder took me silently in the bedroom. Our mattress was before the window. A full moon peered in. I had hoped that this third time together my body might not be frightened. But when he got on top of me, my arms automatically crossed themselves over my chest. Rajinder had to push them aside. Then I lay looking at the heavyhearted tulips in the window grille. Once Rajinder was asleep, my body slowly loosened.

Three months earlier, when our parents had introduced us, I did not think we would marry. Rajinder's ambiguous features across the restaurant table held nothing significant. Ashok on one side of him, his mother on the other were more distinctive. I sat between my parents. I did not expect to marry someone particularly handsome. I was neither pretty nor talented. But I had believed I would recognize the person I would marry.

Twice before, my parents had introduced me to men, contacted through the matrimonial section of the Sunday Times of India. One