Family Life: A Novel by Sharma Akhil

Author:Sharma, Akhil [Sharma, Akhil]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2014-04-07T00:00:00+00:00

The day Birju was supposed to be brought to our house, Mr. Narayan rang our doorbell at around eight in the morning. He stood in the doorway smiling, his face eager. “I thought you might have work for me,” he said.

More people came. The morning was very bright. Cars filled our driveway and then others parked on the street along our lawn. As the doorbell rang and rang again, the excitement of having visitors gave the day some of the festiveness of Diwali in India when people, dressed formally, visit from morning till evening.

The ambulance arrived around eleven. The cars in the driveway backed out. When the ambulance was parked, two orderlies, a large black man and a smaller white one, tugged Birju out of the ambulance on a stretcher and brought him up the cement path that curved from the bottom of the driveway to the front door.

Birju’s room was the former dining room. It had yellow walls, a hardwood floor, and a chandelier with plastic candles hanging from the center of the ceiling. A hospital bed stood along a wall with a narrow window beside where Birju’s head would be. The orderlies rolled Birju into the room. They hefted him onto the bed. The people visiting stood against the walls. When he was on the bed, Birju raised his head and moaned, and turned his head this way and that, like he was trying to look through his darkness. My mother leaned over my brother and whispered, “You’re home.” She stroked his face, kissed his forehead. “Your Mommy is here.” I stood and watched. My chest hurt. I wondered, What now?

The orderlies left. Mr. Narayan joined my parents at the bedside. They stared at Birju. Birju’s chin and cheeks were covered in saliva. The window was open, and its lace curtain drifted up trembling in the air. Mr. Narayan, looking moved, turned to my father. “Tell us what you want,” he said, “and we’ll obey.”

My father stared at my brother. His face appeared swollen. He seemed stunned. I worried that he would complain. I wanted us to be dignified.

Later, in the afternoon, in the kitchen, the women sat at the table and cut vegetables and sang prayers. The men did heavier work. They installed two air conditioners and lifted the washer in the laundry room and placed it on bricks. From outside came the roar of a lawn mower as one of the men cut the grass. All this activity made our house feel like a temple being gotten ready for a festival, when the people of the neighborhood gather and mop the floor and string flowers into garlands. Having so many visitors gave me the sense that my family was important.

People kept arriving until nine or ten that night.

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