beginning of Joker's

note: not a new idea -- it's a year old, but the characters haunted me enough that I tried it all again. not very polished, but you get the drift.

JUNE THIRTIETH

1:01 AM

My mother gave it her best effort. She failed.

1:30 AM

She's been taken to St. Peter's. The Cadillac's stuck deep into a tree somewhere on Dean's Lane. I have to get to the hospital immediately. Nobody else knows. Ramesh is in bed and the others are out. Just as I'm about to slip into the garage I can still hear him snoring, so I'm sure he hasn't noticed.

When I get into the car there's silence in the hundred-degree heat. I'm grateful for this. One more stupid techno-mix CD and I might crash this car into something myself. Indu and Shalini both listen to garbage and I'm not in the mood for it right now.

I wish this was unexpected but it isn't. I know that Amma's been trying to harm herself for months now. She's been careless with vegetable knives. She takes scalding showers. I've seen her casually lift up a can of bleach and tip the can into her mouth only to let the liquid fall on the floor, instead. She's taken an academic interest in cutting herself up with keys. She knows that I can see her, and doesn't care. Ramesh never notices anything. And I think Shalini and Indu would celebrate on my mother's grave.

She started sabotaging herself a month ago. My mother is still beautiful at forty with hair grown calf-length, her face still smooth, and her figure unchanged even through a pregnancy and the death of my father. She knows exactly how to talk to others, something I've never managed. Though I can never tell what she believes about Ramesh, I didn't know she had it in for herself.

Last week Junie auntie told me she narrowly avoided skidding into a ditch. I tried everything I could to hide the keys from her since then, but she always managed to find a set. My mother is too smart for me. She knows this, too. "Sony," she's always said, "it'll take a lot for you to get a one-up on your mother."

It's only ten miles from here to St. Peter's but it's a thousand years of driving.

1:51 AM

The Nurse is Indian. When I tell her my name is Sony, she had to ask: "short for Sonia?" and when I said, "no, after the electronics company." she gave me a pretty dirty look. But it's true. I always carry around pair of grimy headphones I've had since I was a kid. It's one of the few things I have left of my father's.

My real name is Kamala, but no one calls me that.

When I'm finally taken to her room, I chomp down on the urge to vomit and look at her. She is at peace, a million needles into her translucent arm. I can see the machinery that brought me to life. It's a humbling feeling. I know that this isn't the most obvious thing to notice, but anything else is beyond me. Since my mother married Ramesh I've realized she is an enigma, and will likely stay that way for the rest of her life. Her blue shirt is stained with blood, though I know they will take that from her eventually and put her in a disgusting hospital gown with butt-flaps.

I am in too much pain to react, so I watch. There's nothing left to think about now.

4:00 AM

Indu drunk-dials me. I think she meant to dial her "secret" boyfriend, but when she realizes she's reached me, she demands a ride home. I tell her that I'm about to hang up the phone, when I hear her retch and the sound of free-falling vomit. "I'll tell Dad," she threatens. Ramesh is scary enough for this to work ninety-nine percent of the time. Except my mother is dying in a hospital, and I'm in no mood for her bullshit.

"Go ahead," I tell her. She barfs again, screaming gibberish into the phone. I hang up. I'm actually grateful for the sterility of the room.


After about a half-hour of staring into Amma's arm, I find that her wrist is attached to the strap of her handbag. Gently, I untangle the glossy red leather from her arm and kneel to open the bag. She's got a wallet, tons of quarters, a couple of bad action novels and the notepad in which she writes her shopping lists. There are endless reminders to bring milk, bread and butter.

Some nurse kicks me out of the room and I'm now resolved to sleep across all these chairs until someone brings me news of Amma.

7:00 AM

Three hours. I've managed to sleep for three hours. I want to go to Amma again, but my phone's buzzing. It's Junie Auntie.

I cut her off so that I can check the rest of my missed calls. As I expect, I have many. Sixteen from Ramesh. Eight from Indu. Two from Shalini. I don't want to return the calls, so I dial Junie Auntie's number.

Junie Auntie and Krishnamurthy Uncle are our closest family friends in the country. Krishnamurthy Uncle and my father went way back. Even my mother, who can't stand socializing, loves them. It's impossible to resist their company. Junie Auntie never has a bad word to say about anyone, is such a good cook that people show up at her house -- unannounced -- at very odd hours just to try her newest rice or curry or pasta concoctions, and she never loses her temper. Krishnamurthy Uncle is as tranquil as his wife is exuberant. He knows everything about anything -- from computer engineering, to the law, to literature and even puppetry. (Uncle took up puppetry to amuse his daughters, who are now both grown, married, and very, very boring women.) And Hari, their nephew and permanent guest, doesn't have much use for a puppet theatre.

My visits to their house are some of the only moments of real calm I feel in a day, a week, or even a month. Even the place itself is calm. It's along Dean's Lane, which is lined with trees that have branches so low they scrape the windows and with fields of corn and soybeans that stretch out in erratic patches of fluorescent green.

I expect Junie Auntie to be calm and cheerful. I'll have to deflect her enthusiasm. When I reach her -- on the second ring -- she's neither.

"Where is she?" Auntie demands. The television, usually blaring on her end, is silent. There's no disturbance.

"I -- how did you know?"

"Never mind that," she says, "where are you?"

I tell her where I am.

"Damn Hari," she swears. "Does he have to be in the city?"

Hari. I'm relieved he's in Manhattan. I don't know what to do around him anymore. Then, she cuts into my relief and says she will be here in fifteen minutes, sharp.

Auntie always knows what to do. In the meantime I can only hope that my mother won't die. Now it occurs to me that I've talked to her properly in almost four months, since she stayed home from work at the library and started manning the house full-time. As soon as she's lucid I will have to talk to her. I'll have to ask her why she's doing these things. Why she doesn't care about me. Why she's letting me sit in this chair to watch her die slowly of a mysterious self-hatred.

7:30 AM

I've never seen Junie Auntie this distressed. Her curly gray hair has a yen for the Blaxploitation seventies. A mulch-ified gardening glove sticks out of her khaki pants. She finds me in the waiting-room with drool caked to my lips and asks me how long I've been waiting here. I can barely reply with a glarrggh. I show her to Amma and together we watch her pincushion body smell more like Hospital by the second.

"Your stepfather called me at least a thousand times," Auntie says, after ten minutes of crying over Amma's comatose body. She cries loudly and bunches up her tears in her fist. "He was so worried about her."

"Worried about himself," I say. "he doesn't care."

I hear myself speak and don't know where the words come from. I'm shocked that I can. My entire nervous system wants to jump out of my body. My arteries and capillaries pump like subwoofers.

"Of course he cares," Junie Auntie says, and at first I'm afraid she's admonishing me, but even she doesn't look convinced. She watches me as I stand there and then holds my hand. "You were such a happy kid," she said, "but I know the past six years haven't been good for you."

Six years. I'm astonished that it's been that long.

Six years ago, my mother married Ramesh Reddy.

Six years ago, I lost my freedom.

Six years ago, I lost my mother.

9:00 AM

This time when Ramesh calls me, I have to pick up the phone. Junie Auntie won't let me ignore him. I stare down at his name at the screen, swallow my bile, and press the SEND.

My eardrums suffer from the moment he starts speaking. It's the usual: WHERE ARE YOU WHY HAVEN'T YOU CALLED ARE YOU CRAZY THERE'S SO MUCH WORK LEFT AT HOME AND INDU TELLS ME YOU WOULDN'T GIVE HER A RIDE HOME FROM THAT SHAH PARTY AND WHO'S GOING TO GET THE LUNCH READY BY THE TIME SHALINI COMES HOME

Junie Auntie snatches the phone from me and speaks to him calmly in her singsong Telugu. I don't know how someone can make the news sound halfway pleasant or slightly less than totally life-threateningly urgent, but somehow she manages it, and I can hear the screaming come to a halt. Now, he's going to feign concern, or something. After all, it wouldn't look acceptable otherwise.

Instead, he tells Junie Auntie to send me home because I've got a sink-full of dishes, the family laundry, and Indu's law school homework to edit. I've never hated Indu, Shalini and Ramesh more than I do at this moment. I know that I rue the day I caught seventeen grammatical errors on the first page of Indu's essay on the Reformation when she did her BA at TCNJ. She's four years older than me, and is now in her second year at NYU law. I'm sure no one ever told her how difficult law school was, or maybe she thought she'd sail through it on her princessy heels and supreme networking skills. It involves a great deal more writing than she thought, so she commutes from home on Ramesh's advice; that way, they can milk the most out of me. I don't resent it. Since I've dropped out of college, I have lots of time to review her stupid homework assignments.

Junie Auntie shakes her head (am I seeing her get impatient with him?) and insists that I will stay at the hospital. I hear Ramesh getting terse with her, insisting that he would come to see her straightaway and that I should expect all three of them in an hour. Auntie nods and hangs up the phone. She asks to borrow it to call Hari.

I nod, still watching my mother. I try not to listen to the conversation she's having with Hari. Hari and I keep our conversations to a minimum these days, though I always savor his every word, I know he doesn't find me interesting. Yet I take what I can get. My greatest hope is that when we're adults, we'll have a full-length conversation, if only about reminisces. So I watch the door. In a minute a plump nurse comes in to check her vitals. She smiles at me.

"You look so much alike," she says, nodding towards my mother's body, "are you sisters?"

It's such a nice thing to say that I have to smile at her. You'd think that that wouldn't be the case, but my mother's one of the most good-looking people I know. And people always say that I look like my father.

9:30 PM

Ramesh is in full form. He barges into the hotel room like some Telugu hero (he's a dead ringer for that corpulent mega-superstar actor Rajinikanth) complete with ridiculous mustache and disgusting, thick guttural spitting. First he curses at me for a full five minutes. It's mostly about Indu's homework, though I've learned to tune him out by now. I'm kind of thrilled, actually. Junie Auntie might begin to believe the kind of nonsense I face at home. I can see by her expression that at first she's shocked, and that her incredible sense of politeness prohibits her from acting on this shock, so she stands there awkwardly.

Indu follows him in mid-rant, her hair pulled back in an effortless, glossy ponytail and her feet squeezed into strappy sandals that show off her toned legs. Her face looks fresh. I wonder how she's concealed the effects of her nasty hangover.

Shalini is not here. I'm not surprised. The day after our parents' wedding I tore the skin off her face for calling my mother a whore. If my mother died, she would celebrate. Now I'm very happy she's not here, because if she said anything, a word, I'd rip the rest of her face off and some other skin besides.

Auntie is right. I've become too bitter.

Then I tell him I'm not going home.

Ramesh looks like he's going to collapse. I've never been this combative with him. The trillions of hairs on his dark arms are static-upright, porcupine quills on something decidedly less cute. I'm sure if my mother could speak to me while still comatose she'd tell me to go home. Listen to your father, she always told me. But we both know that this man is not my father. "If Indu wants help with her work, she can bring it here."

This gets her whining like crazy. I mean, whining is Indu's default voicebox setting, but she's raising it to a true art form now. She's stomping slightly in her uncomfortable heels. She's told her father that there is no way she's going to go home and get her things when I didn't give her a ride home from the Shah party yesterday. The Evil Crazy Stepsister in her claws its way out of her gut to flap its ugly leather wings in my face. I realize that from here I can still smell booze on her clothes. The sterility of the room carries her scent.

"I'll take her back with me," Junie Auntie says, "We'll bring food for you all while you wait here." I can tell from Indu's shock that she will open her mouth to refuse to wait here, especially for that woman (which is a step up from being that whore) when suddenly her face basks in the glow of an internal 100-watt bulb.

"Auntie," she says, very politely, "Is Hari home?"

Oh, Jesus Christ. But of course.

10:15 AM

My stepsisters knew Hari through us. And since they've met him, I've had a long time to get to un-know him.

The first time we took them to the Savidi's was the day after the engagement ceremony. Ramesh and the girls came with us to Junie Auntie's, and there they met Hari, latching onto him the instant they were introduced. Before this, Hari and I talked about dumb things like the news, or violin music, or the fish Auntie just bought to stock the fake lake at the back of their house. We were even almost friends. Now Shalini and Indu tripped over themselves to get his phone number. They were both irritatingly beautiful in their tight-fitting shalwars made from extravagant Park Lane cloth. Shalini, even at thirteen, was a creamy-skinned pale-eyed over-sexed knockout. Indu, though darker, was cool and mysterious in a way that made people instantly attracted to her, throwing themselves away in hopes of becoming her bestie. Though at that party she had had eyes only for Hari. I never felt more effectively sidelined in my own life as I felt then.

At every opportunity they got, the accompanied us to these parties. They even made an effort to be nice to my mother as long as it got them an invite to one of Junie Auntie's seasonal bashes. From start to finish (or, by Junie Auntie's party timings, from five in the evening until three or four in the morning) they monopolize Hari's attention. I watched them from a book-stacked corner of Junie Auntie's sunroom as they socialized on the lush carpet grass on the lawn. Mid-joke, the three of them -- or more -- would collapse together in happy laughter, the grass tickling their bare feet and arms. As I plowed through Bronte and Austen and Dickens and Dumas, I had a good view of Hari charmed by my stepsisters' company. Soon, they began seeing Hari (and his impressive circle of friends) independently of us. They were free to be as rude to Amma as they were before.

Not only has Indu taken any prospects of Hari's friendships away from me, she insisted on riding shotgun on the way to their place from the hospital. She slammed herself past me so that she won't be subjected to the backseat and is now talking up a storm with Junie Auntie, who's is her usual engaging, effusive self with her. I know what Auntie thinks of Indu; she's motivated. She's elegant. I should be lucky to have such wonderful sisters in her and Shalini. Auntie's the one who told me to embrace the idea of having extra people in the family. I might've, if I'd inherited different siblings. By the time her steady stream of self-promotion is through, we've crossed Easton Ave, two highways, a jughandle and a crawl up Dean's Lane. Each time Indu's shoes scrape against the gravelly driveway, I feel a twisting sensation in my gut. She's invading my sanctuary.


Junie Auntie's just painted her house bright red because she can. The sidings are sports-car red. According to Amma, it's a a flashy (mostly harmless) manifestation of her mid-life crisis. She is such a cheerful person that even her moodiness comes out in rich red. It's a split-level house that looks like it's been meandering because of the constant additions. First Auntie had to have a sunroom, and then, when the burden of guests became too great she built up the top floor. The thick black window shutters are shattered but still resilient; those've yet to be painted over.

(It's one cranky Frankenstein of a house, but I love it and its mad scientist creators.)

When I cross the threshold after Indu and Junie Auntie, I notice that it's dark and the curtains are drawn. It's instantly cooler and I begin to get goosebumps on my exposed arms after having just been fried by the unrelenting sun outside. Now I realize I've left the house in sweats and a tank top, but I don't care about the potential embarrassment or about the fact that I'm sweating from every orifice imaginable. In fact, I don't care about anything at all except basic human functions, like breathing. I never knew breathing could be so difficult, but there's a very elaborate process that involves 1) making sure your lungs expand and contract and 2) not choking on your own spit.

I thought Indu wouldn't come, but she always surprises me. Though Auntie told Indu that Hari was in Manhattan, Indu decided to join us anyway. "Doesn't matter," she'd said, "I wouldn't mind waiting for a while." No longer the Empress of Instant Gratification, she is all magnanimity.

Now, we sit beside each other on the battered mauve leather couch.

"Hari," Indu begins, "just broke up with his girlfriend."

"That's nice," I say.

The humongous standalone TV winks at me. The thousand remotes used to operate that, the cable box, and the four different players lay on the ancient coffee table across from us.

"Well, Tina Agarwal wasn't his girlfriend, really, but they were going out, sort of. Dating, I think, but not exclusively. She loved him, I think," she says. I can hear the motors churning in her head; she's wondering how to make a grab for Hari.

"I think we should invite him over," she continues, extracting a lipgloss from her bag, smearing it onto her full lips until they're saturated with berry liquid. She is so put-together. The contrast between us is so obvious I can't help but feel wretched. I hear Junie Auntie pottering around in the kitchen. The phone rings, and she goes over to pick it up. Satisfied that Auntie's distracted, she turns again to me. "What kind of food does he like? I mean, you've known him forever --"

I shrug.

"Nothing I know that you don't," I tell her. She pouts, but I think she's satisfied with this answer. I have gotten by unscathed (by comparison) because Indu doesn't find me threatening. If she ever suspected that I had something that she didn't, I'd be dead. I'd be food for a murder of scavenging crows.

Junie Auntie hangs up the phone and comes into the room with a humongous bowl of popcorn. I don't take any. I can't even eat. Auntie sits on an armchair by our loveseat and digs in. Indu refuses these verboten calories. How will she snag Hari if she puts on a half ounce extra weight?

In between fistfuls of popcorn, Junie Auntie tells us that Hari will come home soon, and that he'll take her and Indu to the hospital.

"I really want to go, too," I say, and before I can finish, Auntie interrupts:

"You'll see her in good time," she tells me, "but when Uncle comes back from work for lunch, you're going straight home. Your father is right, Sony. You should help around the house." She says this with such seriousness I don't know what to do. She can't really mean it.

This is my mother.

She's in a coma.

I don't care about Indu's education.

I won't help her with her awful essays.

I start to say something when I catch Auntie glaring at me, and this action is alone to stop me in my tracks. Auntie never glares. I swallow. Is it truly unreasonable to want to see my mother in the hospital? I can dismiss Ramesh Uncle, but Junie Auntie is a rational person. Why would she ...?

I can hear the dull sound of a garage door creaking itself upward and the accompanying thud of footsteps. Though I think I'm beyond it, I still feel my throat constrict even more than it has over the past few minutes. It's Hari.

He's even better looking than I remember him. Since he has gone to medical school I've seen him only at these parties. And over the past two years I've been avoiding the parties.

His face has become almost angular, though a lot of his face remains the same; according to Indu and Shalini, his friends called him Dollface in high school because of his very rounded nose. He's also thinner; the stubborn baby chubbiness that clung to his neck and arms vanished. As he clutches the handles of his bags I can see the clenched muscles of his forearms exposed by the rolled up sleeves of his black woolen sweater. Why he's wearing one in the ninety-five degree heat, I have no idea.

Indu's so excited she springs from the sofa and offers to take a bag for him.

"What happened?" he asks Junie Auntie. I notice he's speaking in Telugu; his voice is so low I almost can't catch it.

Junie Auntie shakes her head. Ignoring me, Hari gives Indu his arm. "Where am I going?"

"We can go to my place," Indu says, brightly. "my dad will meet us there when he comes home from the hospital."

Hari smiles at her. Without moving, he throws the bags at my feet. They land squarely on my toes and are quite heavy.

"I think we'd better go get Ramesh Uncle, then."

He still does not look at me. I wonder if I'm imagining this, because Junie Auntie nods her head, smiles, and asks him if there's enough gas in the car (which, of course, there isn't) so Junie Auntie wanders off into the kitchen to get a crisp twenty from the kitchen drawer. By the time Auntie presses the bill into Hari's hand, Indu is rubbing her toes together, somehow, in those constricted shoes. She's in a tearing hurry to leave.

Junie Auntie tells me to Wait There as she shoos Hari and Indu out the door. I'm reminded of a wooden-spoon toting Supermom, a benevolent matriarchal figure. Hari and Indu could be a married couple on their way to some event. Junie Auntie even looks a little like Kiron Kher, who's perennially cast as the long-suffering mother of dashing movie heroes in Hindi movies. I hear the garage door close behind them. According to the clock above the TV, the time is 10:30.

"Sony?" Junie Auntie calls from the end of the kitchen hallway, near the door leading into the garage. "Just wait there. I be right with you."

Nothing to do but sit in the dark and stare at the ceiling.

11:30 AM

Someone shakes me awake. At first I think it's Junie Auntie, but when I wake up, I'm looking into Hari's face.

I have to bite back from screaming.

"Mom's taking a shower," he says, "but I wanted to wake you up."

These are the first words he's said to me in years.

I wipe my eyes. "Haven't slept," I inform him, except it sounds more like, "pllrggggg". I can feel the drool flowing freely from the corner of my mouth.

He shakes his head. I notice that we're not even two inches from one another. I back away, and a second later, so does he. Hari ends up sitting in the armchair Junie Auntie left an hour ago. He watches the floor so I do the same, tracing the worn carpet fibers. Then he says,

"Your mother is getting better."

"Not out of the coma, though."

"No," he says, "but her situation is improving."

What does that mean? I want to ask. I don't.

Hari tells me that Indu's disappointed I won't go home with her. It bothered her the whole ride home from the hospital, and even Ramesh was very upset. I'm sure he complained to Hari the whole ride home. But Hari doesn't mention anything else.

"I hope they don't go too overboard," I say, "Uncle's taking me home in less than an hour."

"No, he's not."

Hari arises and takes his bags from their spot right by my feet. "I'll talk to you later," he whispered, slinking into the hallway. "Chithi will be out in a few."

12:30 PM

Help.

That's all I'm asking for. Please tell me what I'm doing here and why. Where is everyone? Why am I not going home? Why am I not with my mother?

It occurs to me that this might be some awful dream. I never thought there was something worse than the status quo, but I feel it now. Only one more thing has to happen before getting caught in a tree-twisted Cadillac becomes an attractive option.