by Amrit Chima
After Amandev was born, it only became worse.
Manmohan shut the truck door with a weak click, the hinges rusted stiff. He heaved his body against the door, giving a sharp shove to push it into place. Affectionately patting the metal frame of the cabin, he then made his way to the house.
“She is too loud!” Mohan bellowed. “I cannot think. Make her stop!”
As Manmohan entered the house, the baby quieted, causing a sudden and loud silence to radiate from Mohan and Lehna’s bedroom.
Navpreet was standing to the left of the kitchen entrance, holding her earlobes. Even from the doorway he could tell that they were red. When she saw him she stepped quickly away from the wall where she was not supposed to be resting. Still holding her ears, she raised her elbows up firmly like chicken wings, wincing.
“What did you do?” Manmohan asked her, his voice tired.
She shrugged.
“How long is your mother making you stay there?”
“Until she feels like telling me to move.”
“Gharwala?” Jai said, sticking her head out through the kitchen entrance. Her hands were wet, and he could see a faint trail of soap running down her arm. Glancing at Navpreet, Jai breathed hard, her lips puffing out in exasperation. “Were her arms dropped?”
He nodded.
“The dishes again. I asked her to do them, and she refused.”
Indicating Mohan’s room, he said to Navpreet, “Sometimes you are just like him. He never listened either.”
Navpreet lowered her elbows and raised her voice. “I am not!”
Jai slapped her daughter’s arm. “Up. It is supposed to be hard; otherwise it would not be a punishment.”
“Stay there,” Manmohan said, his face tightening. “I will be back to check on you in a minute. If your arms are down, even a little, we will do it the hard way and you can hold your ears with your arms tucked under your legs. You understand? She is soft on you. I will not be. And after, you will help your mother.”
Fear shaded her eyes, and she nodded. Jai disappeared back into the kitchen.
Entering the dim hallway, Manmohan slowly made his way toward Livleen’s room, again allowing himself to feel the finer points of muscle along his spine, focusing on every tendon and vertebra.
Knocking gently, he opened the door. “Livleen?”
“Yes, Bapu?”
“Everything all right?”
“Yes, Bapu.”
He crossed the room and pushed the window out to let in some fresh air. “How was school?” he asked.
She remained silent.
“You must be tired. Are you feeling well?”
She nodded.
“You can skip tomorrow if it hurts too much. I can stay home with you. We can study together.”
“No,” she said.
He regarded her for a moment, concerned. She had grown so melancholy since the fire, so taciturn and dark.
Manmohan glanced across the hall. “I know he yells a lot. It must be hard for you.”
She stared out the window into the dusk. “He never yells at me. He takes me to school and brings me back, and he never yells.” She raised her eyes, and he saw fear there. “He loves me.”
“I will talk to him.”
“You don’t have to.” She sank down into her bed covers.
He sat beside her, feeling her elbows and wrists, checking for inflammation. But her body was fine. It was her spirit that had never recovered.
~ ~ ~
Mohan was sprawled out in the bed of one of the World War II trucks in the shade of the carport. The truck had recently broken down, and despite all Junker Singh’s best efforts to save it, the old vehicle would not start again. Mohan’s bare feet hung over the end of the truck bed. His slacks were rolled up to his knees, and his hands were crossed under his turban, pulling up his untucked shirt to reveal his belly button. Manmohan remembered how muscular he was at the age of twenty-two, not soft like Mohan who was gaining weight, his stomach beginning to hang gelatinously. His son had also recently gotten into the habit of leaving his beard loose, no longer bothering to tie it up into a net. It was black and frizzy against the light gray of his shirt.
“It is not your business, Bapu,” Mohan said to his father.
Manmohan was leaning against the side of the truck, gazing at the men working in the clearing. He saw Darshan scrambling over some logs with a thick length of rope to help secure a load. Pushing his body off the truck, Manmohan said stiffly, “You are too old now for rebellion.” He kicked his boot against the back tire.
“I am Lehna’s husband, and a husband should be given the same respect given to God. It is my right to make that demand.”
Furious, Manmohan gripped the edge of the truck. “You take too much for granted. What have you done to earn it?”
“I suppose nothing,” Mohan replied, his tone sardonic. He curled his toes upward, stretching his calf muscles languidly. “But a husband is a husband, and a wife is a wife.”
“It is my house you live in,” Manmohan said. “You cause so much discomfort for us all. Livleen is scared now.”
Mohan propped himself up onto his elbows, intent. “Is that what she said?”
“She is upset for Lehna.”
Mohan relaxed, reclining again into the bed of the truck. “It is not anyone else’s business.”
Manmohan lowered his hands to his sides, infuriated. “I do not want you taking Livleen to school. It does not make her happy. It is too hard on her.”
Mohan sat up and scooted forward until his calves dangled from the back of the bed. “I thought it was important for you, all this learning and schooling,” he said with a trace of disdain. He stretched, scratched his stomach, then stood to walk away.
Manmohan grabbed his shoulder. “Why are you so angry?”
“I am not angry, Bapu.”
“You are very angry.”
Mohan spun around, violently shaking off his father. “Lehna cannot give me what I need, what I deserve, what is my right. It makes a man angry.”
~ ~ ~
“You think it is me?” Manmohan asked his wife. It was night, and they were alone in their bedroom.
Jai shook her head. “That boy was never going to listen to anyone, and when there were consequences he was always going to blame someone else.”
“I look back to when he was a child. I cannot understand what happened.”
She set her earrings on the dresser and approached her husband, appearing as though the whole matter with her son was beside the point. “You should not worry so hard about it. It might take him longer to learn than others that there are other people living in this world besides him. The time it takes him, that is something even a father—or a mother—cannot change.”
“What about Lehna and Amandev?”
“Lehna comes to me when she needs to.”
He looked down at her. The way she had to bend her head back to look up at him was reassuring. She looked so wise and handsome at forty-two. Her skin was beginning to wrinkle—just slightly—from all her time in the garden. She had strands of gray now, easy to see with her hair pulled back into the same bun she had worn her entire life. Her lips were still full and slightly pink. She was slender; anyone who did not know her would assume that she was frail.
Comforted, he opened his mouth to speak, then, uncertain, he again closed it.
“Gharwala?”
Pulling his eyes away from hers, he directed his gaze over her head, letting the dresser behind her go out of focus. “There is a problem with my spine.”
Her voice softened with concern. “What is wrong with it?”
“A disease.” He looked down at her again. “I will be stooped over.”
She frowned. “How long?”
“Perhaps in ten years.”
She smiled then, as though to say they still had time. “Do you remember,” she asked, “that jazz LP you always used to listen to in Tamavua?” She began to hum one of the tunes from Duke El
lington and his Famous Orchestra.
He was staring intently at her, and she stopped, embarrassed. “The tune is wrong.”
“No, it is good,” he replied, beginning to hum the melody where she left off, taking her hand.
Her voice joined his. She began to swing her hips, just slightly so that nothing else moved and her bare feet did not shift. He could tell that the motion was instinctual, that it was impossible to make the music and not dance to it. Catching the rhythm, he followed her, his movement equally as slight as hers, the two of them swaying like reeds in a soft breeze.
~ ~ ~
Darshan sat on the edge of the seat in Manmohan’s remaining World War II truck, his thin legs stretched out so that they barely touched the truck’s foot pedals, his chest shoved against the steering wheel, his neck straining to see above it through the windshield. He revved the engine. The fan belt squealed, and the gears ground in protest. The truck jerked forward and the engine died.
“Release the clutch slowly,” Manmohan told him, uncomfortable on the passenger side, the bench springs too firm, not shaped to his bottom. “Balance it with the gas. Try again.”
Darshan reignited the engine. They were in the emptiest part of the mill clearing and had about thirty yards in front of them before the jungle started. Carefully releasing the clutch, he gently pressed the gas, and the truck began to inch jerkily toward the tree line. He sped up a little, shifting to second gear, then eased up, pressing in the clutch again and braking to a slow stop.
“Better,” Manmohan told him.
Darshan turned off the ignition. “Anything else, Bapu?”
“No, I suppose that is enough for today,” Manmohan said, feeling that Darshan was now at least moderately ready for those many drives through Suva to the electroshock therapy ward. “You can go.”
Darshan jumped out of the truck. He waved without smiling and went into the jungle to the shack he had built. That boy always did what he was told: chores, homework, errands. He never asked questions, like why he was learning to drive when he was only twelve years old, his legs barely long enough to touch the pedals; why Junker Singh did not drive his father to the hospital; why it mattered so much that he do it. He never asked the reasons for anything. Manmohan watched him go, curious about what he had built deep in the trees, but too afraid to go see for himself.
He clamped his hand over the heavy metal of his watch. The brown leather of the band was now worn and shredded at the edges. The face was scratched, and the stainless steel push-and-wind knobs that spun the analog clock hands were nicked. Though it was shabby, he could not bear to be without it, but he knew the doctors would take it from him before affixing nodes to his body and jolting him through with electricity.
He did not offer it to the doctors at his first session, entering the chamber in his hospital gown, the watch still on his wrist. A nurse opened her palm disapprovingly, and as he sat on the padded, cold vinyl bed, he removed it, placing it in her waiting hand, watching as her fingers curled around it, taking it away from him, setting it on a tin tray. Gritting his teeth against the stick they had wedged into his mouth, that tray was where he focused all of his energy. As the currents flooded his body, the sight of his watch was a tangible link to sanity, to a moment when he would fasten it back on and go to the parking lot where Darshan was waiting to take him home.
Week after week he lay on that gurney, tiny amps of electricity replacing his arthritic aches with a tingling sensation, with a droning hum in his bones that was not at all musical. He rarely slept now, lying in bed awake at night, gazing upward, not seeing the corrugated iron ceiling, just a blank nothing that vibrated behind his pupils and threatened to consume his whole mind. He craved alcohol, a hot chug of bourbon to numb his body. Always he clutched at his watch, a solid object that grounded him in the dark, not telling him the time, but telling him he was here.
One evening he could not bear the idea of moving, of bouncing along the potholed roads that only added to the odd and uncomfortable sensations coursing through him. He made Darshan stay in the parking lot, not speaking, as he waited for the buzzing in his bones to abate, to stop ringing so loudly in his ears. The mill was dark when they finally returned home, lit only by a single lantern placed at the top of the stairs next to the front door and the truck’s headlight beams as Darshan steered through the clearing.
The boy helped him up to the house and seated him on the couch. “Would you like a glass of water, Bapu?” he asked, bringing in the lantern and placing it on the floor in the middle of the living room.
“No. I am fine here.”
“Are you sure?”
“Go on to bed. You have school in the morning.”
“If you need anything—”
“Yes, I know.”
When Darshan’s shadow had disappeared down the hallway, Manmohan stretched his fingers wide, trying to shake off the residual electricity. He shook his wrists, then stood and paced the living room, making wide, quiet strides around the lantern before extinguishing it. The pictures on the walls, dark square and rectangular shadows, seemed to float about the room.
There was a sound of a doorknob click from down the hall, someone going to the outhouse. Approaching the hallway, he saw a bulky silhouette coming from Livleen’s room.
“Mohan?” Manmohan asked.
The silhouette stiffened, caught by surprise. Apprehensive, it asked, “Bapu?”
“Mohan, what were you doing in Livleen’s room?”
“I thought I heard something. I thought it was a nightmare. But she is fine.”
A cold feeling trickled slowly up Manmohan’s spine. “Mohan. Wait.”
The silhouette turned to go. “Everything is fine, Bapu. I am tired. I am going back to bed.”
Manmohan’s heart began to pound, the chambers rapidly contracting and expanding, and he no longer perceived the electric hum in his bones. He realized that he knew something terrible now, that he had known it for a long time. A suspicion too terrifying to confront or examine made him tremble with cold and fear.
Walking briskly toward his daughter’s room, he stopped outside the door, trying to slow his breathing. He placed his palm over the doorknob, turned it, and cracked it open. “Livleen?” he whispered.
He heard a whimper.
“Livleen, can’t you sleep?”
Fighting the urge to run, he slowly walked over to touch her forehead. She shrunk into the pillow. She was sweating but had no fever.
“Where does it hurt? Your wrists? Knees? Is it your heart?”
He tried to touch her chest, but she shook her head, the whites of her eyes faintly visible in the moonlight.
“Is it Mohan?” he asked, and even as he spoke he did not recognize his own voice, the flat and mechanical quality of it.
She stiffened. “He loves me. He tells me how much.”
“How much?” he whispered.
“Without me he will do awful things. He will ask to let them out. They would come for me.”
“Who?”
“The bad people, in jail.”
“But I don’t understand,” he said, the thudding of his heart drowning out all other sound as he walked away from her. As if from a great distance, he heard a deep, furious cry, dimly aware that it had come from his mouth.
“Gharwala!” Jai screamed, running down the hall as Manmohan threw open the door to Mohan’s room.
Lehna jumped from their bed in alarm, grabbing Amandev from the basinet and backing against the far wall, her eyes large with fear. The baby began to yowl and screech. Mohan was standing by the window, his shoulders bent forward, crying, tears soaking into his beard. Lunging forward, Manmohan hit the turban off his son’s head and grabbed Mohan’s topknot.
“Gharwala!” Jai screamed again. Mohan stumbled and fell, but Manmohan did not let go of the hair clenched in his fist, dragging his son down the hallway. Mohan flailed and slapped at his father’s arms, scrambling and clambering through the living room and out to the balcony w
here Manmohan finally released him.
“Get out!” Manmohan heard himself scream. “Get out!”
Lying prostrate, Mohan reached for his father’s ankle. “Bapuji, I am sorry!”
“What have you done?” Manmohan asked with rage and pain. “I trusted you to care for her!”
“No, Bapu,” Mohan wept. He got to his knees and pressed his hands together as if in prayer. “You pretended to trust me because Junker Uncle told you to. People always had to tell you that I was worth anything, but she loves me! She tells me how good I am!”
Manmohan raised his fist, shaking.
“Stop, please!” Jai cried. “What is this about?”
“Tell Lehna to pack a bag,” Manmohan told her, lowering his arm and unclenching his fist.
She did not move.
“You tell her to pack a bag.”
After one more moment of hesitation, she scurried away down the hall, stopping only to push Darshan and Navpreet away from the living room and back to their beds.
Mohan stood, again reaching out his hand, still sobbing. “Bapuji, I am sorry.”
Manmohan slapped his son’s hand away and shoved him backward against the rail.
Then Lehna was there, stepping outside into the chill of the night with the baby. “Bapu,” she said tearfully. “You can see he did not mean it, whatever he has done. I do not want to go.”
“Lehna, I am sorry,” Manmohan said, his voice raspy and dry.
Jai returned with a few items tucked into a burlap sack. She wordlessly handed it to her husband who tossed it onto the balcony.
Lehna moaned imploringly, stepping close to Mohan, caressing her daughter’s head.
Manmohan shut the door, leaving them out in the dark. He bolted the lock, and Mohan banged on the wood. “Bapuji! Please!”
Turning to Jai, Manmohan wiped his eyes and said, trying to reassure her, “They will go to her father.”
The lantern had tumbled over, a pool of kerosene on the floor beneath it. Jai straightened the lamp, moving it away from the spill. She found another lamp and lit it. In the light Manmohan noticed the glint of his watch near the couch. Touching his wrist he realized it had come off in the commotion. He bent to retrieve it and sank into the sofa’s cushions.