And Dad. Yeah, and Dad. Standing at the top of the steps, hands in his pockets, staring down at me, looking me over, reading something in my posture, the way I wear my clothes.
An expression on his face. As if he can't quite place me.
* * * *
I knock on the door and everyone crowds around me in the foyer. After Mom's done soaking my shoulder and Ben's patted my back, Dad shakes my hand. I look him in the eye. He looks right back, but there's no warmth, no nothing.
“How was the drive?” he asks me.
“Fine,” I say. “Like clockwork.”
“How's the job?”
“Good. Can't complain.”
And just like that, we're caught up.
We all shuffle inside. My niece and nephew are asleep on the couch. In the kitchen Mom pours four glasses of wine. The bottle is nearly empty, which tells me she and Dad have been at it. As if on cue, she tells me Vikram's coming over in a little while. My cousin. Which means his wife and their kids. The kids will wake up my niece and nephew, Vikram and my father will argue.
I won't be going to sleep for a while.
I grab a few aspirin out of the medicine drawer, sit down across from Dad and drink half my wine before anyone's said anything.
“Do you know what happened to Vikram?” Mom asks me.
How would I know, Mom? I almost say. Instead, I shake my head.
“Oh, Lord,” she says. “Mitul, it was so awful. I don't even like talking about it.”
Dad grunts. Gets up for a beer.
Mom leans forward and grabs my wrist. “They broke his wrists,” she tells me. “Vikram was only buying some fireworks for the fourth, and they almost killed him. They kicked him in the face, in the chest. He was in the hospital for seven hours, Mitul. He has scars on his face. All for buying fireworks.”
“It wasn't that,” Dad says. “He shouldn't have been there alone. They're crazy. Vikram's an idiot for being there in the first place.”
“Who are they?" I ask.
Mom looks at me like I'm a fool. “Where do people buy fireworks, Mitul? He was in Chinatown. Harrison Avenue. You know we used to take you kids there when you were little.” She shivers, then thrusts a hand at Ben.
“And Bhanu lives only three streets over from where it happened!”
Dutifully, Ben speaks up. “That's true, Mom.” He turns to me. “It's true.”
I look at him until he looks down at his fone again.
I decide we need another bottle of wine. As I stand, Dad walks out from behind the counter and sits down again.
“And now your grandpa's dead,” he says.
I can't see him but I know the words are meant for me. I grab a bottle from atop the fridge and open it, keeping my head down. The four of us have fallen into the kind of silence that happens after someone says webe, fligger, 7-11, or buttonhead. Whoever breaks that kind of silence always ends up feeling exposed. Maybe even a little guilty.
“What does Grandpa dying have to do with Vikram?” I ask.
Dad shrugs. Ben sips his wine. Mom gets fidgety.
“It's just so sad,” she says. “We should all get along.”
I look at my watch. It's only 11:06.
* * * *
Sometimes it seems like all we talk about is race. I suppose it's understandable. Drive through Portland and there are clear lines between your neighborhood and mine. In the larger cities there are walls. We all watch each other, waiting for somebody to make a move. We make excuses for violence. Don't look at me like that, buttonhead.
Was it anything like this before? Dad says it was worse, that the violence now is the last vestige of white influence still corrupting the system, but I've learned not to trust what he says when it comes to race.
Like the textbooks, Dad doesn't use the word genocide. Or racism.
I don't think the state of the world has anything to do with white people. We didn't erect walls because white men told us to. Just the same, we're not violent because there are no Caucasians around to keep things peaceful. No. We are what we are out of instinct to defend ourselves. You could be next, a collective voice warns. You could be destroyed too, and become just a fading memory.A bunch of books written about your “culture,” a few dioramas in a goddamn museum.
We've become racial and cultural purists by default.
When I married a Vietnamese woman, Dad asked, “Don't you think that's just a little too close, Mike? Maybe you should rethink things.” Later he said, “I'm not comfortable with her coming around here, her and her parents. No, I don't want to know them. Their eyes are barely slanted. They're too light. One of them starts coughing, I go for the shotgun.”
I don't remember what I said to him. Justin was just eight months old. Even then I wanted to shield him from such language. His eyes weren't slanted either. He looked like me, only lighter. I wonder what difference it would have made to Dad if my son were half white, and smelled of lemon cleaner.
So I stopped coming around the house. I kept my wife and kid from Dad. Sometimes Mom came by, sometimes other relatives, but I could tell Linh made them uncomfortable. Justin made them even more uncomfortable. They held him slightly out from their bodies, as if they couldn't handle being too close.
Sometimes I wonder if they were secretly grateful he died along with my wife. Terrible thing to think of your family, but the human mind's not always pretty. Dad, at least, could be read easily. Linh and Justin's deaths did not so much make him happy as validate his view of the world.
“I fought for you, son. I fought to keep things like this from happening anymore.”
That's what Dad said to me at the funeral, January 15, 2032.
I thought it was in extremely bad taste.
“My wife and child were killed by people like you,” I told him. Though my voice was calm, I hit him hard enough to knock three teeth out of his head. He had to be taken to the hospital. Ambulance drove right into the cemetery.
He never apologized. Neither did I.
* * * *
At 11:42, Vikram and Eta walk through the door. The kids follow, color and noise, new clothes, squeaky shoes with white rubber soles. They're not attractive, Yuvati, Wali, and Dinar. They're fat and spoiled-looking. They look like miniature Vikrams.
“Hello, Mike,” Vikram's wife says to me. A chubby hand on my upper arm, warmth I can feel through my shirtsleeve.
“Hello, Eta,” I say. “Hello, cousin. Want some wine?”
She nods. Vikram wrinkles his nose. He doesn't hug me or offer his hand to shake. The Chinatown beating must have been a while ago, or not nearly as bad as Mom said it was. He's got no scars on his face, no wrist brace.
“How's the job?” he asks.
“Fine,” I say.
I know what he thinks of my job working security at the Clinton. I know he'll never forgive me for turning down his offer of an interview. “I can offer you something with a future,” he said. It was probably true, but working for him would be almost as bad as working at the shop with Dad. A foot on the small of my back all day.
I pour Eta a glass. Frowning, Vikram stares at it in her hand.
“How was the drive?” he asks.
I pour myself a glass. “Not too good, Vick. Grandpa's dead.”
His eyes widen. He rocks back on his heels. “Of course, Mike. I didn't mean to imply anything. Of course the ride was awful. You had that on your mind.” Awkwardly, he puts a hand on my shoulder. “But we're here for each other. It's times like these that you really appreciate what you have. Family. We have to remember the blessings. Grandpa's suffering is over. It's been hard on all of us, but thank God it's finally over.”
* * * *
Vikram turned seventeen on the day the video announcing the virus leaked onto the internet. December 11, 2017. He remembers when the white kids started coughing in class. Calling in sick. Most of them didn't come back after Christmas break, and those who did quickly realized it wasn't a good idea.
“My best friend was whit
e,” Vikram tells anyone who will listen. “Two of my classmates were beaten to death in the gym bathroom. Everybody was afraid of getting the virus, even me. Some of the kids, I swear to God I didn't even think they were white! But we got through it, all of us together.”
Vikram wears these experiences like badges. Or wounds. He talks like someone who survived a war. Who the hell knows what side he thinks he was on.
Ben was only eight when it happened. Back then everyone called him Bhanu, not just Mom. I don't know what he remembers of the virus. He won't talk about it. His expression hardens, his ears close up. He interrupts the conversation as if it hasn't been happening.
He pretends the world is the way it's always been. For my niece and nephew, there's no question this is the way the world is. The white people are all underground or carried away on the wind.
But that doesn't mean they're gone. We breathe them in. They're in everything we eat. We burned their corpses and their ashes blanketed the whole Earth.
“Why do you have to dwell on these things?” Mom asks me every time I start talking about the virus. “Why can't you leave it alone?”
She's never implied she approves of Dad's support, his vote, but this is incidental.
“You really think he did the right thing, Mom?” I ask. “If he's a hero, why isn't there a memorial? We could have a shrine. With his favorite quotes.”
“Mitul,” Mom says, and looks away.
She changes the subject to something sunnier. She's like Ben in a lot of ways. She accepts that the world is what it is.
Dad quotes Malcolm X, Oscar Zeta Acosta, and Allen Pan, though I don't think he understands what they're talking about. Arguing with him is like arguing with a religious fanatic. You have no chance of winning the argument. If he has any doubts, they were buried too far down for anybody to touch.
“I'll tell you something,” he told me long before I fell in love with a lemonhead and lost his respect. “I'd do it exactly the same a second time. I'd send money where it needed to go. And if the plan hadn't worked I'd have taken up arms. The world is cleaner now, less complicated. You can see that, Mike, can't you?”
Years later, the night before Linh gave birth, Dad and I sat at the kitchen table. It was late and we were both a little drunk, arguing the same old argument in soft tones so we wouldn't wake anyone.
Then I said something that shut him up. Something I'd wanted to say for a long time. Something obvious that no one had the guts to say. Or maybe it wasn't guts but convenience. No one wanted to get him riled up.
I didn't care anymore.
I said, “Your grandma was a white woman, Dad, which means the family's only one generation removed. How does it make you feel to be responsible for her death and Grandpa's sickness?”
It felt good, but I'm glad my mother wasn't there to hear me say it.
Dad chewed the inside of his cheek. Then he reached across the table and slapped me.
“You don't understand shit, son.”
The next time I spoke to him was to tell him my wife and child had been killed. Someone blew himself to hell at the intersection of Congress and Oak, taking seventeen souls with him. Witnesses said he came out of a Turkish café. No one saw what he looked like. They couldn't say whether he was Indian, African, Asian, Middle Eastern, or Native.
My wife and child's killer has no identity. The onlookers bleached him of that, and so I'm left feeling unsure. But that isn't the word. I'm left feeling unfinished, or maybe undone. . . .
What am I left feeling?
* * * *
12:57. Vikram and all four kids are leaned together on the couch, asleep. Ben's asleep in the overstuffed armchair, fone lighting up every couple of minutes with a text. Eta has a bad back. She retired to the guest room after two glasses of wine and 10 mg of Vicodin.
Mom and Dad are in the kitchen. Not talking, but I can tell they're awake. Some awareness from childhood.
As if he's sensed me thinking about him, Dad comes out. A brief view of the kitchen table, Mom pouring herself tea. I guess she's not going to sleep at all. It must be worse for her now. Dad's always punished her for being pure Khatri. No one in her family got sick. Her mother's still alive, so healthy she almost glows. Of course, Grandpa's dead now. There's no more reminder of the white in us all, but it'll be a while before that sinks in.
“I'm going to bed,” he says. “You can sleep there, right? It's not too cold?”
The air conditioner's blasting. It always is. The older Mom and Dad get, the colder the house becomes.
“No, it's fine,” I say. “I'll grab a blanket if I need one.”
He nods. Pauses, staring over my head. Clears his throat. “Much as I hate to say it, Vikram's right, Mike.”
“About what?” I ask. I know what he's talking about. Vikram repeated it enough. He latched onto the speech he gave me and repeated it ad nauseum. He and Ben nearly drove me crazy with their affected air of mature reflection. Fuckers sat at the kitchen table and lectured on the importance of perspective. Let's not be sad. Let's celebrate Grandpa's life.
Dad's eyes meet mine briefly. He looks wary.
“Blessings, son,” he says. “Grandpa's suffering is over, and that's something to be happy about.”
I barely resist laughing. I've been sitting here getting drunker and madder, waiting for an opportunity to fire off about Vikram's bullshit, but Vikram didn't give me one.
So much the better that Dad has.
When I speak, I speak carefully. “Really, Dad? I admire your attempt to make something good out of a bad situation. A situation, I might add, people like you are responsible for in the first place. So yes, by all means let's celebrate. Otherwise we'd have to take a long look at our decisions. Right, Pop? Isn't it wonderful that Grandpa's dead and we don't have to be constantly reminded anymore?”
He doesn't move. For half a minute nothing moves. My thoughts float on a sea of alcohol, muddled again after my organized outburst.
“Fuck you, Dad,” I finally say. “Go to sleep and leave me the fuck alone.”
Without a word, he turns and ascends the stairs. An uncharacteristically muted reaction that leaves me vaguely unsatisfied.
The flatpad's still on, muted. A Bengali newscast, confusingly frenetic. I stare at it for a moment, focusing briefly on each of the ten different stories playing simultaneously. I linger on the last one too long and it balloons on the screen. A reporter stands on a street, yelling into his microphone. Palm trees behind him, bent nearly sideways. The man, bent also, leans backwards against the hurricane wind.
A commercial comes on, tells me the station is All India, All Day!
I've had nearly two bottles of wine and I'm not tired at all. Instead, it feels like my entire body has a case of restless leg. Like there's an itch inside my bones.
I have to get out of the house.
* * * *
Halfway down the block I think I hear someone calling my name. I keep walking. Mom, probably. I should have said something before I left, but I know I would have let her convince me not to go.
She thinks the whole world is dangerous, but I'm in Little Calcutta. Indians own everything from Massachusetts Avenue to Charles Street, Boylston Street to the Charles itself. As long as I stay in its confines, I'm safe. It's already quiet in our neighborhood, though it's only 1:10 in the morning.
I take a right on Beacon. The wall between Little Calcutta and Mexicoville is difficult to make out in this light. A band of black, cutting off the street.
I pass Cheers, which was appropriated by the Indian community soon after the walls were erected. I went inside once. The décor had been changed to Bengali kitsch, and five or six flatpads played episodes of the old show continually, purposefully dubbed incorrectly into Hindi. It amused me for a moment and then became depressing.
Sometimes I watch old sitcoms after the cleaning crew leaves the Clinton. I drag the comfortable office chair from the information desk into Display Room B, European American Television, 1927-201
7. Mary Tyler Moore, Cheers, The Honeymooners. In the twelve years I've done security for the museum, I've seen more classic television than most professors of European American studies.
After all that television, I've become somewhat sentimental about white culture. A familiar construction, a myth all Americans have inherited.
I'm almost to the wall. Sensors notice my proximity and a section lights up, illuminating the columned black surface. Closer, the sliding doors light up in red, revealing a warning.
CAUTION, LEAVING LITTLE CALCUTTA.
ENTERING AREA 59 MEXICOVILLE.
I've never walked into Mexicoville before. I've driven under it and ridden the maglev above it. It looked like everywhere else, no more alien than Portland or Hartford. Homes and businesses, kids riding bikes and skateboards. From above you can't tell the difference between Indian and Mexican.
Appearance tells you nothing.
For a short while in his late teens, Ben dated a Mexican girl. A bicycle courier two years older than him. Mom says no one suspected anything. She was quiet. She looked Indian. Ben said she was visiting family. When her brothers found out, they and a group of friends entered Little Calcutta, looking for Ben. The name was all they had.
They left with busted teeth and a few broken bones, robbed of their valuables.
“Normal kid shit,” Dad said.
The wall looms above me. I reach into my pocket for my I.D. A simple action, walking forward with it for the sensors to read. My feet feel light, like they can carry me through the doorway.
Into dark, deserted streets that look just like Little Calcutta's.
Before I know I've made the decision, I turn and start walking home.
* * * *
Dad never killed anyone. He didn't release the virus into D.C.'s water supply. Grandpa, a better man, the person I most admired in the world, hadn't seen the value in these distinctions. You could see it in his face. He looked through Dad like he wasn't even there.
Grandpa never spoke about the virus and never bitched about his pain. He never spoke about race. He listened to me argue with Dad and I couldn't tell if he approved. The arguments got worse and worse as the years passed until I finally moved away in 2027. Put a state between Dad and me. Ran away.
Asimov's SF, January 2012 Page 8