The Middleman and Other Stories by Bharati Mukherjee

Author:Bharati Mukherjee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 1988-09-15T04:00:00+00:00

FATHERING

ENG stands just inside our bedroom door, her fidgety fist on the doorknob which Sharon, in a sulk, polished to a gleam yesterday afternoon.

“I’m starved,” she says.

I know a sick little girl when I see one. I brought the twins up without much help ten years ago. Eng’s got a high fever. Brownish stains stiffen the nap of her terry robe. Sour smells fill the bedroom.

“For God’s sake leave us alone,” Sharon mutters under the quilt. She turns away from me. We bought the quilt at a garage sale in Rock Springs the Sunday two years ago when she moved in. “Talk to her.”

Sharon works on this near-marriage of ours. I’ll hand it to her, she really does. I knead her shoulders, and I say, “Easy, easy,” though I really hate it when she treats Eng like a deafmute. “My girl speaks English, remember?”

Eng can outcuss any freckle-faced kid on the block. Someone in the killing fields must have taught her. Maybe her mama, the honeyest-skinned bar girl with the tiniest feet in Saigon. I was an errand boy with the Combined Military Intelligence. I did the whole war on Dexedrine. Vietnam didn’t happen, and I’d put it behind me in marriage and fatherhood and teaching high school. Ten years later came the screw-ups with the marriage, the job, women, the works. Until Eng popped up in my life, I really believed it didn’t happen.

“Come here, sweetheart,” I beg my daughter. I sidle closer to Sharon, so there’ll be room under the quilt for Eng.

“I’m starved,” she complains from the doorway. She doesn’t budge. The robe and hair are smelling something fierce. She doesn’t show any desire to cuddle. She must be sick. She must have thrown up all night. Sharon throws the quilt back. “Then go raid the refrigerator like a normal kid,” she snaps.

Once upon a time Sharon used to be a cheerful, accommodating woman. It isn’t as if Eng was dumped on us out of the blue. She knew I was tracking my kid. Coming to terms with the past was Sharon’s idea. I don’t know what happened to that Sharon. “For all you know, Jason,” she’d said, “the baby died of malaria or something.” She said, “Go on, find out and deal with it.” She said she could handle being a stepmother—better a fresh chance with some orphan off the streets of Saigon than with my twins from Rochester. My twins are being raised in some organic-farming lesbo commune. Their mother breeds Nubian goats for a living. “Come get in bed with us, baby. Let Dad feel your forehead. You burning up with fever?”

“She isn’t hungry, I think she’s sick,” I tell Sharon, but she’s already tugging her sleeping mask back on. “I think she’s just letting us know she hurts.”

I hold my arms out wide for Eng to run into. If I could, I’d suck the virus right out of her. In the jungle, VC mamas used to do that. Some nights we’d steal right

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