Family Life by Akhil Sharma Page B

important.
    People kept arriving until nine or ten that night.
    T HE NEXT DAY began with a bath for Birju. I came downstairs around six. Birju was lying naked on his hospital bed. My father was rubbing him down with coconut oil.
    We had given Birju sponge baths before but never a bath in a tub. “Hello, fatty,” I called out. I smiled. I walked boldly. I was nervous. The room was bright, and my mother was there, too, near the bed, spreading a towel over the back and seat of the wheelchair.
    My mother looked over her shoulder at me. “Birju, say, ‘I’m your older brother. Speak with respect.’” She was smiling. She moved quickly, and her glass bracelets jingled as she smoothed the towel. Because I was pretending to be cheerful, I assumed she was acting, too.
    I stood at the foot of the bed. Birju’s pubic hair was shaved to stubble. His stomach was a dome, and his G-tube, bound in a figure eight, resembled a ribbon on the side of a girl’s head. “Brother,” I said, “I have never met anyone as lazy as you. Making people bathe you.”
    My mother, finishing with the towel, straightened herself. “Tell him, ‘I’m not lazy. I’m a king.’”
    My father slipped his arms through Birju’s underarms. He pulled him up until Birju was half sitting. My father grinned. He leaned down and said into Birju’s ear. “Why are you so heavy? Are you getting up at night and eating? You are, aren’t you? Admit it. I see crumbs on your chin.”
    I laughed. I grabbed Birju’s legs below the knees. My mother rolled the wheelchair next to the bed, and my father and I counted to three. We swung him into it. My father began pulling the wheelchair backward through the room. He pulled it out a doorway and across a narrow hall, into the bathroom.
    The bathroom had a tub with a small bathing chair inside. My father put one leg into the tub and kept one leg out. He put his arms through Birju’s underarms. Again, we counted. “One, two, three.” My father yanked and twisted, and I lifted. We hefted and slid Birju onto the chair.
    My father held an arm across Birju’s chest to keep him from toppling forward. I took a red mug and poured warm water over Birju’s head. He began to relax. His legs, which had been sticking out toward the tap, eased down. I poured water over his shoulders and arms. My father rubbed Birju’s neck with soap. He lathered his shoulders. Birju started urinating, a thick, strong-smelling, yellow stream. When Birju finished peeing, my father bent him forward. He shoved a bar of soap in the split between Birju’s buttocks. Gray water and flecks of shit dropped into the tub.
    I chattered. “I dreamt I was fighting twenty people. I hit one. He fell over. I hit another. He fell over. It was fun.” I kept talking and talking. I was smiling, for I wished it to appear that I wasn’t seeing what was occurring before me.
    Around noon, my father and I went to the pharmacy. This intimidated me. I had seen my father scream at my mother about how much things would cost. I was scared of spending money. I felt that once money was spent, it would be gone forever and couldn’t be replaced.
    The pharmacy was on Main Street, a few shops from the train station. The store had a glass front. In the back was a high counter where one submitted one’s prescriptions and where the store owner sat.
    I stood with outstretched arms near the counter. My father put a case of Isocal formula in my arms. Then he placed another on top of this.
    “How do you want to pay?” the store owner said.
    “Put it on my tab,” my father answered and to me, in Hindi, said, “Move.”
    I turned around and began hurrying.
    “No,” the store owner, a slender white-haired man with a goatee, called. I stopped and turned back around.
    My father signed a receipt. He signed it with his left hand, the pen moving awkwardly and not making full contact with the paper. I believed he was signing with his left hand so that perhaps he could deny that it was