Family Life Read Free Page B

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    “I didn’t believe him. I said, ‘If you’re a ghost, why do you sound like Ajay?’ He said, ‘Since I haven’t been born again, I haven’t committed any sins, and so I have a child’s innocence.’”
    “Maybe the ghost was lying.”
    “Why would he lie?”
    I was quiet for a moment. Birju appeared to have the truth on his side. I asked, “Did the ghost say anything about me?”
    “Why should I ask about you? I have my own problems.”
    B IRJU SOBBED WHEN his bicycle was taken away. He refused to go downstairs to watch it being put into the back of a truck. Instead, he sat on the living room floor with the heels of his hands pressed into his eyes.
    Among the things that remained was my plastic bucket of toys. My mother said that I could just leave it behind in the apartment. The thought of the yellow bucket standing alone in the empty living room, the apartment locked, made me feel guilty, like I would be abandoning it. I decided to give away my toys.
    On our last morning in India, I took the bucket with me to the milk shop. When I saw the crowd of boys, shoving and pushing on the sidewalk, I felt embarrassed. I wanted the boys to remember me, and yet in the past, I had tried to make them feel bad.
    “Will you take something?” I said, standing on the sidewalk and speaking to a boy whose head was covered in stubble. I took a little car from the bucket and held it out. My voice trembled. “I’m going away and perhaps you would like to have it.”
    The boy’s hand struck my palm. As soon as it did, I wanted my car back.
    “Would you like something else?” I said, my voice shaking. I put the bucket down and stepped away. The boy bent and hurriedly searched through it. He took out two plastic soldiers, a horse, and a large see-through plastic gun that made a noise and flashed light when the trigger was pulled.
    I moved to another boy. I knew this boy was poor since, instead of bringing a milk pail to the shop, he brought a cup.
    Soon the bucket was empty. I didn’t know what to do with the bucket. “Will you take it?” I asked the poor boy. He nodded shyly. As I was leaving, the milk man cried, “Remember me in America.”
    That night, my mother’s younger brother arrived to take us to the airport.

I used to think that my father had been assigned to us by the government. This was because he appeared to serve no purpose. When he got home in the evening, all he did was sit in his chair in the living room, drink tea, and read the paper. Often he looked angry. By the time we left for America, I knew that the government had not sent him to live with us. Still, I continued to think he served no purpose. Also, I found him frightening.
    My father was waiting for us in the arrivals hall at the airport. He was leaning against a metal railing and he appeared angry. I saw him and got anxious.
    The apartment my father had rented had one bedroom. It was in a tall, brown-brick building in Queens. The apartment’s gray metal front door swung open into a foyer with a wooden floor. Beyond this was a living room with a reddish brown carpet that went from wall to wall. Other than in the movies, I had never seen a carpet. Birju and my parents walked across the foyer and into the living room. I went to the carpet’s edge and stopped. A brass metal strip held it to the floor. I took a step forward. I felt as if I were stepping onto a painting. I tried not to bring my weight down.
    My father took us to the bathroom to show us toilet paper and hot water. While my mother was interested in status, being better educated than others or being considered more proper, my father was just interested in being rich. I think this was because although both of my parents had grown up poor, my father’s childhood had been much more desperate. At some point my grandfather, my father’s father, had begun to believe that thorns were growing out of his palms. He had taken a razor and picked at them till they were shaggy with scraps of