The Best Possible Experience, page 3
I creaked our gate open. It was just another two-bedroom house, identical in construction to others in the street, with cemented floors and circular stairs built like a garland, leading to the terrace. The house looked normal, but the walls seemed to betray the drama. Melancholy seeped through them. I wondered if Salim could tell.
“I’ve heard so much about you,” Mother said once we were inside. She offered Salim a glass of lemonade.
Salim gave a coy smile. I looked at Mother, her hair tied in a bun, waiting for our empty glasses, a wide smile on her face. She liked him. Why wouldn’t she? She probably thought my schoolwork would improve, that I was learning from an older boy.
We left the kitchen, and I showed Salim my prized possession—a globe I’d won in school—and my favorite spot, the terrace. From there I could see that Chachi was peering at us from behind her sari.
She’d be scandalized that I’d brought home a Muslim. Chacha, her husband and a friend of my father’s, often said that Muslims were all Pakistanis. He believed they spawned dozens of kids with the intention of taking over India; he acted as though the country’s future depended on his vigil. I avoided him and his wife as much as I could.
Some parts of the terrace had already dried, and Salim sat down at the edge and whistled “My Name Is Joker.” I washed my feet at the pump and sat next to him, hung my legs in the air so that water drops fell from my feet, one at a time, onto the potted plant below. Kaali, a stray black cat that hung around our house, strode on the parapet wall. Chacha once said that a single black cat could bring a hundred years of misfortune. He urged Mother to consult a priest and determine the best possible way to appease the gods.
“What can a black cat do to a house that already has your father in it?” Mother said to me after she nodded Chacha off.
Everything around me conjured memories and experiences I wanted to share with Salim. There was so much to tell, the enormity of this task overwhelmed me. I stayed quiet, vacillating between the desire to share everything and nothing.
Salim raised his eyebrows as if to say, What’s the plan?
I’d brought my English textbook onto the terrace and placed it now on his lap. He flipped through the pages, exasperation apparent in the curve of his lips. He put the book aside and said he wanted to fast-forward to the part where he spoke English. I told him everything worthwhile took time.
He squeezed my hand.
I looked at the textbook for a minute, not really seeing anything on the page. I put the book aside and watched men burning wood in the distance. Smoke drifted over thatched houses in the eventide sky. Crows didn’t caw, dogs didn’t bark, people didn’t quarrel, and for the longest time, there was silence. It felt like we were in a picture titled Two Boys on a Terrace.
Then somewhere, a train sounded its horn. Salim smiled and said he liked the view. The train blew its horn again and it was just your regular train horn, but it sounded a lot like the arrival of happiness. Salim placed his arm around me. I pretended to yawn and leaned my neck against his arm. Like a friend. His armpits smelled like dried rice. I smelled him and I smelled him again and I swore it would be the last time I did—I didn’t want to be caught, I sensed it was forbidden, but each time I took a breath of it, time stopped and nothing mattered. My father, my mother, the neighbors, the narrow street—everything was dull and pale in comparison, and I kept breathing until my nostrils, with all their eagerness, became accustomed to his scent and my chest grew heavy. I’d lost it, and I held my breath to ease the weight of that finality, but when I breathed again, there it was, that whiff of intoxication. I held my breath again and again. It came to me that I had been waiting to answer something about myself, and now I knew what it was, and this filled me with anxiety—there’d be days, months to think about what it meant, I told myself, but I could no longer deny it. This new anxiety settled into my being like the smoke that melded into the sky, darkening it bit by bit. But in that moment, leaning on his shoulder, I pushed everything out of my mind and looked at the eventide sky, wide and unblemished, and smiled as if I were being photographed.
* * *
—
“Do you want to go to that English movie?” Salim asked the next day. We’d seen posters for Pirates of the Caribbean at the adda.
“Ooh, that’s a good way to pick up English,” I said, looking at his light stubble.
Salim’s smile took on a teasing quality. “Do you have to ask your mother?”
“I don’t have to,” I said, punching his arm.
I snuck money out of Mother’s purse, and we took the long route via the train tracks to avoid being seen by people we knew. The secrecy only increased the thrill I felt in the theater when we rubbed shoulders. We hid our faces in our hands, and when the cinema went dark, we rose in delight. The movie had more action than dialogue, half of which I barely understood. “Pirate” was a new word. We repeated to each other: “Hello, pirate,” and “Howdy, pirate.”
We watched a number of movies together, and there were always new things to discover. We learned people called 911 in case of emergencies. Sex before marriage was okay. An alien invasion was always on the horizon. We learned how to style our hair like Brad Pitt’s with coconut oil and tooth powder. The movies put Salim in an expansive mood. He’d put his arm around my shoulders and tell me what he would have done differently had he been the hero. I’d nod and then we’d go our separate ways. Often, I’d be the first to say goodbye. I sensed that Salim didn’t really want to go home. All I had to do, I thought, was invite him to mine. He’d come. But there was the anxiety, which never left. The question of appropriateness. I couldn’t invite him without an excuse; Salim wouldn’t be comfortable coming without the excuse.
But one night the excuse presented itself. We had just watched The Lord of the Rings. Salim’s father was out of town, and Salim said he’d be going back from the movie to an empty home. I felt something stir in my pants.
“I wish the movie kept going,” Salim said, his arm around me.
“Until the morning, right?” I said.
Salim turned toward me. “What?”
“Because you’re so scared of staying by yourself in the dark.” I laughed.
He held me by the neck and tickled me in the ribs. “My precious.”
I wrenched free and ran a few feet ahead. “Do you want to sleep at my place tonight?”
“Will your mother be okay with that?”
“Come with me,” I said, wishing the night would never end.
At home Mother okayed my proposition as I knew she would and brought out the extra sheets. I made his bed, next to mine on the floor. Salim wanted to shower. I opened the bathroom for him and pressed a towel in his hands. I tucked my hardness between my legs and hoped it wouldn’t show through my underwear. Salim came back from the bathroom in the towel, naked from the waist up. His body emanated heat, but it was my face that felt warm as I hovered around him, asking if he needed another towel. He had hair all over his chest, a mole on his biceps. I had one in the exact same place.
I gave him one of Father’s shirts and ran to the bathroom. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I pulled down my fly. The scent of him lingered and I stood there inhaling it, watching myself grow. The tap was wet. Salim had been naked right here. I touched the tap. Its long handle could have been his shaft. I stroked it again and again, bathing in the scent he’d left behind. I perched down and took it in my mouth and cocked my head back and forth, imagining him scrunching his face, and I knew this was wrong, something was very wrong with me, but I could not stop, and with each hold of my mouth, I felt my penis grow harder and harder, and I held my hand to the hardness while I continued to move my tongue over the tip of the handle, licking it in each untouched spot, teasing it, closing my mouth around it, working against the handle faster and faster till I came.
By the time I cleaned up and came back, he was fast asleep. I fell on my mattress and lay awake for a long time, torn between wanting to wrap myself around Salim and running away that very night before I got outed.
When I woke up the next morning, Salim had already left, and Mother was searching the house, turning up plastic chairs. She asked me if I’d taken the twenty rupees she’d placed in the folds of a magazine that had been on the teapoy. I hadn’t, but I felt my stomach tighten and I saw the same thought cross her eyes. Had Salim stolen the money? I asked if she’d maybe put the money somewhere else and forgotten. She accepted that as a possibility. But I left for school wishing I could make the money appear. I would somehow detect that the wind had swept the note to a corner. Or Mother would remember where she’d misplaced it. Anything really. I knew Salim had money problems—I paid for everything. But I thought he’d ask if he needed something. I sat through class with difficulty and returned home.
Mother said she hadn’t found the money. I dropped my bag and went looking for him. I figured I’d ask him casually if he happened to see any money lying on the ground that night. I went to his house, but the gate was locked. I didn’t see him the whole week. Mother forgot about the money. Every day after school, I did the circuit. I went to the playground, the theater, the market, the adda. I spun my globe, wondering where he was. I lost interest in school. No one asked me to teach English anymore; no one squeezed my wrist as he did. Each day I looked for him, the money became less and less important. And I slapped my thighs in anger. What I had done with the tap, my sin, had pushed him away. Every time I went to the bathroom, I remembered, and my penis began to expand. I was ashamed; I took a blade, steadied my hand, made a tiny cut. A drop of blood emerged, and the sight of it stopped my shame. I apologized to him, for desiring him, for doubting him.
Then the next week, I came home from school and saw him sitting on the sofa, laughing with Mother as if they were best friends, as if she were the reason he’d come to our house. I went straight to my room and stood by the window. Salim came in and put his hand on my shoulder. He whispered, “Sorry”; his mouth brushed against my ear.
“I had to go to my father’s village. It was an emergency,” Salim said.
“What happened?” I asked, still upset.
“My father started drinking again; we had to take him. There, he can drink all the buffalo milk he wants.” He grinned.
In spite of myself, I let out a chuckle. “I looked for you everywhere,” I said.
“Sorry,” he repeated, and enveloped me with his long arms. I turned and hugged him. Locked in his embrace, I looked out the window. A pigeon lay on the neighbors’ wall looking for grains. He held me tighter. The pigeon found a grain a couple of feet away on the wall. His hands caressed my back. The pigeon hopped to the grain. He kissed me on the cheek. The pigeon grabbed the grain and flew—not knowing that it lifted into the sky my soul.
Most days, I found Salim at home eating Mother’s pakoras, regaling her with all sorts of tales. He’d say that he’d marry a woman like her, making her blush and laugh in a way I’d never seen before, and then he’d turn to me and wink. I thought nothing of it, all it meant was that I didn’t have to explain what we were to her. I could linger in the painting Two Boys on the Terrace.
January brought my fourteenth birthday. We bought a bubble stick for laughs, something we’d both done when we were much younger, and rinsed it with soap and blew bubbles at each other, our feet grazing one another as we did. We hadn’t proceeded beyond what we’d already done. I hadn’t asked if his kiss on the cheek meant more than casual fraternal affection, the kind we saw in Bollywood movies. There was time; we’d get there. But I found myself growing in confidence; I threw away the blade in the bathroom.
Mother baked a cake for my birthday and gave us money for movie tickets. We went to the theater, this time unafraid. Salim copied the gestures of film stars, and I copied him. I cupped my palms around my mouth when I spoke in a low voice, as he did. I drank chai in the evening, as he did. How was I to know things would change so soon?
Chacha beckoned me the day after my birthday and asked me what Salim’s name was. He had seen him around the house often and wanted to know who he was. He knew Salim was Muslim and this was his way of confirming. Fucking pig.
“Samir,” I said, and ran.
February followed. Father would return any day—it was time. Dark clouds of rain lurched forward in the sky. Shadows the size of mountains cast gloom everywhere. Vendors in the vegetable market packed up their carts in a hurry. The ice cream vendor was nowhere. The playground was desolate. The cinema had a padlock—temporarily closed for projector repair. I found Salim sitting on the train tracks, throwing pebbles at the ties.
“It’s only temporary,” I said. But I couldn’t hide the fear in my voice. Chacha would tell Father, I was sure, and he wouldn’t let me see Salim again.
Salim stared at the tracks. “I’m leaving for Bombay,” he said. He wanted to try his luck in films. Every pebble echoed a dull cracking noise, again and again.
“When?” I asked. The rumble of clouds silenced everything.
“Soon. I’ll come say bye. In a couple of days,” he said. He stood up and brushed the dirt from his pants. “There’s nothing here. I have to go.” He squeezed me on the shoulder and left.
* * *
—
The night Salim was supposed to leave, I woke to the sound of a woman’s cries. Cuss words, a chorus of harsh voices. It was past midnight. A thief had been caught, I thought. But then I heard Salim’s voice, pleading. I sprang to my feet; he’d come to say goodbye.
I opened the door. I saw that Father had returned, was standing in the hall near the other bedroom. And something was happening. Father was kicking Salim in the stomach, and Salim, shirtless, twisted on the floor. Chacha and Chachi stood watching. It didn’t make any sense. Father slapped Mother, crying, semi-dressed, in the face and went back to kicking Salim. Had Salim been caught stealing money? Chachi dragged Mother inside the bedroom.
Father bent down and slapped Salim in the face.
“You circumcised bastard,” Chacha’s voice boomed.
I didn’t understand any of it. “Please don’t hit him,” I said.
Chacha shoved me, and I fell back into the room. “Stay inside,” he shouted, and bolted the door. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t move. My feet wouldn’t cooperate. I couldn’t open my mouth either. It was as if someone had bound my legs and gagged my mouth. From the floor, I watched the gap between the door and the floor, the light sneaking in, the way it fell on my globe, which for some reason was on the floor too. I couldn’t comprehend what I’d seen. Why couldn’t I move? It had something to do with what I’d seen in the seconds before Chacha pushed me inside, something to do with Mother appearing not quite herself. I couldn’t do anything other than look at the gap. Salim had taken something of what I had, this much I felt. My body shook and shook on the cold floor of my room.
An hour passed and the voices dissolved into silence. My body returned to me. I got up and ran away from home.
* * *
—
I never saw Salim again or went to Karimnagar after that. For a while, I worked at a dhaba in Odisha, several hundred kilometers away. The dhaba sat next to the highway and attracted a fair amount of dust and flies. A stray dog slept under the tables and I’d feed it leftovers. The work itself wasn’t bad. I’d serve food to customers and scrub their plates. Nights were the busiest and afternoons the quietest. Some afternoons, when I was dusting the dhaba signboard or picking at a solitary grain of rice lodged inside the stove, I’d think of Salim and I’d briefly wonder what happened that night. Before I could arrive at an answer, I’d feel a sharp pain deep within my chest, and I’d distract myself with one task or another. Occasionally, a customer would complain about flies and I’d take a grayed tablecloth and swish at them. But the flies were also like memories. They had a mind of their own, they flew out of reach and returned uninvited; they’d entice, gently whirring in the air, nasty little fuckers.
I tried to forget him. Tried to forget my last night at home, how I’d raised myself from the floor an hour after the house fell quiet. Found the door unlocked and stepped into the hallway. There was no one. I’d walked past the other bedroom, which remained closed, and felt sick. I limped outside; there was complete darkness. Kaali emerged from the black of the night and meowed at me. “Come with me,” I’d said to the cat. My knees wobbled. A song played in my head—the song Salim used to whistle. “My Name Is Joker.” I danced past the veranda. One step at a time, I shook my legs. Past the house, past the playground, past the adda, past the vegetable market, past the train tracks, past the movie theater, past the places he’d become a part of, past me.
The Immigrant
The long wait in the cold white hall alarmed Aditya. He held the document folder to his chest like he desired nothing more than its safety, like he wanted the authorities to know that he’d worked toward these documents; they were evidence that he could do the right thing, proof that he was normal, an ordinary immigrant, could be given a chance.
The blue-jacketed Homeland Security man overseeing the line strode back and forth repeating in a loud, hoarse voice, Please have your passport and arrival form ready. It had been two hours, and the line had barely inched closer to the series of glass enclosures where uniformed officers interviewed the arrivals, making people put their paws on a black box of sorts. There were quite a few immigration officers, each taking their time, each a cold, clinical inspector of mongrels. If people were nervous, they weren’t saying much; the line remained quiet, and Aditya was sure that if this were back home, all lines would have collapsed, and there would be strangers on either side of him and they’d inquire about his family and where they came from and what properties they had.
