The Flower Boy Read Free

fires were burning, the firewood had been brought in and sat in neat stacks under the hearth and the variety of soot-blackened pots and pans lay neatly on the shelf above the long kitchen table.
    But it wasn’t normal.
    Krishna leaned against the kitchen doorjamb lazily scratching his armpit, while Ammi rushed past without stopping to twist his ear and hiss, “You lazy hog, there’s work to be done,” like she usually did.
    She didn’t stop to say Happy Birthday either.
    He went out into the backyard and urinated into the drain, swinging from side to side, trying to wet as much of the dry concrete as he could.
    The sky was a sullen gray, heavy with unfallen rain. The birds knew something was up because they were silent. The few that dared to sing sang quietly, as if they were afraid of waking the sleeping stillness. Even the leaves were still.
    Chandi wondered if he could get away without brushing his teeth this morning. He hated the taste and feel of ground charcoal in his mouth, and didn’t really believe his teeth would fall out if he didn’t brush them every day, although he didn’t say anything to Ammi when she told him so.
She
obviously believed they would, so who was he to disillusion her? He was only four years old. Today.
    He went back inside and immediately bumped into his mother, who was hurrying past with the mulberry jam to set on the dining table. “Chandi, not now!” she said impatiently. “I have so much to do! Don’t get in my way!”
    She had been in
his
way. Not the other way about. But he said nothing. Five minutes later, she rushed in, pushed a plate of roti and jam into his hands.
    That was when she had said, “Eat it quickly before someone comes in. One day I’ll get into trouble because of you! Jam! What next!”
    He sat down and ate.
    When the last bit of mulberry jam had been wiped up by the last piece of roti, he took his plate over to the sink.
    The sink was a cemented square pit set into the floor, with an outlet for water and a tap in the wall above it. He had strict instructions not to go near it so he set his plate down and waited for someone to come along and open the tap so he could wash his mulberry-jammy hands.
    When someone finally came along, it was his sister Rangi. Rangi was his favorite. She walked to school with him, sometimes holding his hand and swinging it gently. His other sister, Leela, never had time for him. She never walked. She rushed, like Ammi.
    Chandi could share his secrets with Rangi. He showed her his collection of stones from the spot in the garden where the overhead gutter leaked, his onion plant which he had grown himself, and he even let her feed his guppy, who lived in a jam bottle in a corner of their room.
    Rangi teased him and tickled him until fat tears of laughter ran down his face. Then she would gently wipe them away and brush her nose against his. His heart would swell with love, and for the rest of the day he would follow her around with doglike devotion, knowing she would not get exasperated or impatient like Leela did.
    HE WASHED HIS hands and splashed cold water on his face.
    Rangi looked at him. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
    He looked innocently at her. “What?”
    She tweaked his nose. “You’d better brush your teeth or Amma will get angry. And it’s not a very good idea to make her angry today.”
    â€œWhy not?” he asked, hoping he was finally going to get an explanation for the strange goings-on. He wasn’t disappointed.
    â€œSudu Nona is having her baby today,” she whispered. “That’s why Amma is so busy. But she will notice if you don’t brush your teeth.”
    â€œIsn’t she going to the hospital?” he asked. He knew that people had babies in hospitals because that was where Ammi had had him.
    â€œThey were going to, but there’s been a landslide farther down the road. They won’t be able to