THE SIKH PATIENT---Chapter 11---TWO FUNERALS AND NO WEDDING (Continued)...

Me going to Gurudwara

We were parked in the back of the parking lot, so no one would have seen us as I unbuttoned his shirt.  The hairs on his chest seemed charged.  He did rise to the occasion.  And I felt like I was taking a hot bath.  He didn’t pull off my kameez he just put his hands underneath it and felt the outside of my bra.  It was a plain white lace bra, nothing special.  This was not special.  Then we undressed each other enough to get the job done.

            He had a condom on him and I tried not to think too much about why he carried one around.  This one wasn’t pastel-colored, it was clear.  He put it on himself because I didn’t have the energy.  I was aroused but in a very physical way.  Like the difference between laughing at a joke and laughing because you are being tickled.  I only felt good because I was being touched.

            Right before he was about to come inside me, he didn’t ask me if I was sure.  My father’s corpse is waiting to be set to flames.  He understood I wasn’t even sure what that last sentence means.  I’m not sure if it’s a Wednesday.  I’m not sure if this is better for me than crying.  I’m only sure about the movements my body makes.  I’m only sure that I’m an animal.      

            “Aaah,” I sighed, half in pain, half with pleasure as he entered me. 

            “Is it in?” he asked.

            “I’m not sure,” I said as I wrapped my legs around his sides and waited for the head priest to walk by and take a picture.  I mean it was sort of in the right area, but it wasn’t exactly all the way in the right hole.

            Then he pushed harder as he lay on top of me and I moaned a little louder, it was coming inside.  It felt like I was being scratched like someone was scratching my back but they didn’t stop when the itch was over.  He was almost making me itch.  It also hurt a little.

            Apparently, he was enjoying himself because he was kissing me all over very intensely.  At least someone’s happy in this car, in this city, on this planet.  I started to get tighter because all of a sudden a picture of my mother’s face came into my head.  She would have instantaneously died of a stroke or something if she knew her unmarried daughter was fucking her boyfriend, today.  She might have even said the word fuck for the first time in her life.  Because that’s what it felt like we were doing.  We weren’t making love, we were fucking.  I think he liked it when I got tighter because his face became dreamier.  I didn’t like it.  I don’t think I like sex.  I guess it’s not for me.  Some people aren’t sex people.  This is the most boring thing I have ever done in my entire life.  I could find another hobby to take the place of sex.  I hear knitting is coming back with a vengeance. 

Why did I have to do it today?  Because I wanted to be a different person now, someone who does stuff like this so they can secure a suite in Hell.

Oh my god, it’s, is that, oh no…it’s Chaman Uncle.  My dad’s best friend just walked by the car.  “NICK!  DUCK YOUR HEAD!” I yelled and fell to the floor of the car.  He wasn’t inside me anymore and I was kind of relieved because it was getting kind of irritating.  Nick fell on top of me. 

“What?  What’s wrong?” he looked like he just gained consciousness. 

“Chaman Uncle, my dad’s best friend, just walked by the car!”  My mouth dropped open.

“Do you think he saw anything?”  Nick whispered.

“I don’t know, do you think we should go ask him?”  I turned my head away from Nick.  Goddamn it. 

“Well, it’s not like he’s gonna tell your dad…I mean…that didn’t come out—“

“Is that funny to you?” I interrupted and covered my chest with my kameez.

“No, no, no, I-I just meant—Yaz I’m sorry.”

“My name is not Yaz.  My father named me.  My name is Yasmine,” I said very matter-of-factly as I slipped my underwear back on, still ducking from the window.  My underwear was wet and I wanted to throw it out the window.  Did I lose my virginity?  I mean we didn’t finish.  I can’t even lose my virginity properly. 

“I’m sorry, I panicked…” he put his head in his hands as he lay on the seat.

“Don’t talk to me.”  I slipped my salvaar on my legs.  “I don’t care what he saw.  I don’t care if he saw anything.  I don’t care about anything except getting out of this car and attending my father’s funeral.  My dad is dead.”  Tears started streaming down my eyes as I slipped my kameez back on.

“Sweetie…I…I love you.”  He tried to wipe my tears away.  I didn’t have the energy to try and stop him.

“Well, you’re not as sorry as I am.”  I got out of the car in the freezing wind, wearing no coat, and forgot that I left my chuni or scarf in the car.  I went back to get it because you are not allowed to enter any religious Sikh ceremony without covering your head.  Nick came out of the car holding my bright green chiffon chuni in his hands.  I wanted to tell him that I thought I made a mistake and that the reason I came back to the car was to get my virginity back.  I want it back.  It’s mine, you can’t have it.  But when I saw his face, I couldn’t say anything.

I didn’t say anything to him as he wrapped the thin scarf around my shoulders and then pulled it up to cover my head.  The sun was beating on us and I didn’t see Chaman Uncle or even the trees or the sky or the air.  I saw the tears in Nick’s eyes.  So I let him hold my hand until we got to the door, and then I let go of him.

                                                            *

            When I went inside I looked over at Sonia, my baby sister.  It was probably my duty to console her.  But I wasn’t in the mood to do things for other people.  And dead father or not, she’s kind of a brat.  What am I supposed to say to her anyways?  I guess the truth is, she’s pretty responsible and I’m the brat.  She’s wearing white; she’s going to sing a shabad.  She has absolutely no problem participating in this talent show.  She’s a bigger person than me. 

            Mona had been helping my mom set things up; she was a better daughter than me.  She walked over to me with Khalid. “Hey,” Khalid said.  I waited for him to say something obscene.  But even he couldn’t be as offensive as I was this day.  He hugged me and even though I hadn’t planned on it, I was touched.  He looked angry, angry that people die.  I appreciated him for that.

            “This really sucks,” I said and looked at Mona who was appropriately dressed in a beige salvaar kameez with little flowers embroidered on the neckline.

            Ravi, my older brother, tapped me on the shoulder.  “How ya doin’?” he asked very casually.

            “I don’t know about you, but my dad is dead.”  His hair was messy, it looked like he had come from outside.  I saw Nima in the corner of the room.  What was she doing here?  They broke up six months ago and I thought she left the country.  She was wearing black because no one told her we wear light colors to our funerals.  We wear white, Nima.  And did you and my brother just have sex too, because that would mean that all my father’s children are perverted monsters?

            “Yaz, we have to be strong,” Ravi said and put his arm around me.  Why?  Why do we have to be strong?  I don’t want to.

            That’s when I saw him, the only black man in the room.  The man everyone was staring at.  “Who is he?” Ravi asked.  It was Sal.

            “He used to work in the hospital with dad, in the cafeteria.  Dad and him used to play chess at lunch.”  I stared at him and realized he recognized me, I hadn’t seen him in ten years.  He was wearing a suit and he looked older, gray hairs curled around his ears.  His eyes were red and he just kept shaking his head.  Dad used to play chess with him in the park when he worked in Detroit.  Sal was an actual pimp then.  But dad got him a job at the cafeteria of his hospital.  He even cosigned the leases for his car and his apartment. I was the only one who knew about it because I was the only one who ever met Sal, the only one dad trusted to talk about it.  He used to be homeless and now he had a home and a job but no chess partner.

            I walked slowly towards him and stared at his yellow and brown striped tie.  I recognized it, it used to be my dad’s.  I didn’t know if I should be upset by this or touched.  Someone hand me a book of guidelines on what it is appropriate to feel at any given moment. Did he remember where he got that tie from?  What would my mom say if she saw it, would she even recognize the thing?  I still think she doesn’t know about him. And anyways there are a lot of ties in this world and sometimes people have the same ones.  “Hi there, well look at you.”  He knew better than to hug me.  “Look at how big you’ve grown.”  He had this Morgan Friedman grace about him.

              “It was really nice of you to come,” I said because that’s in the instruction manual of default statements to make when you’re hosting a funeral.

            “You’re father was a really good man,” he said and shook his head again.  He meant it.  I thought he might be the only one in the room who meant it.  You know it’s supposedly against my religion to drink, (although I think it’s a myth) and my father drank himself to death.  I remember Khalid once saying, “They let you guys walk around with daggers, you’d think they’d let you have a drink.”  Khalid was referring to the Kirpan, the small sword we were supposed to carry because it was a symbol of justice, when all peaceful means fail, we are supposed to fight.  I never had a Kirpan, but I thought it might be a good idea to get one to protect me from bad men. 

            I don’t know if dad really ever wanted to be a “Cardiologist” because usually, only really important people get heart attacks.  He wanted to hang out with people like Sal.  He needed Sal’s help to figure out how to be a regular guy.  “It’s a tragedy,” Sal said and shook his head.

            That’s when it happened again.  It started slowly, with one tear, in my left eye.  I tried to control the right eye.  I tried not to shake because shaking eventually turns into sobbing.  I tried to stand still as my eyes produced a steady flow of water.  I didn’t know where the water was coming from though, and I worried that the rest of me might dry up.  “You know, he always talked about you the most,” Sal said and looked down at his black shoes that looked like they had just been shined.  “He said you were the most like him.”

            “But I’m not,” I whispered through my tears.

            “Oh yes you are, he talked so much about you.”  He kept shaking his head and I noticed tiny bits of stubble under his chin.  I remembered my dad telling me that when Sal lived on the street my dad told him that his brother was blind but he was working at GM. And Sal’s response was, “Well, hell, if a blind man can get a job, I suppose a black man can get a job.”

            “What did he say about me?” I asked Sal.  I was still crying, I felt safe crying in front of him.

            “He said you were his friend and that you were a lot smarter than you let on.  He really believed you were gonna make something of yourself one day.”  He looked me in the eyes.  “Do you still play?”

            “Chess?  No, I forgot how,” I said quietly, embarrassed.

            “Well, that is a tragedy.  You need to take it up again, you were doin’ so well, do you remember?”

            “Yeah.”

            “It’s a real good way to occupy your mind, especially at tyrin’ times like these.”  He inched his head forward slightly and took a glimpse of my father’s corpse.

            “I remember, I remember everything except how to play,” I said and stopped crying. 

            “Well then, you should come by the hospital sometime and we’ll just have to correct that little problem.”  While I was shopping for fathers, there were others who were shopping for me.  Sal.  I watched as he slowly walked away from my father and everyone stared at him.

            I had a lot of choices now that I was fatherless.  There was Chaman Uncle, who may or may not have seen me humping a guy in the back seat of a car.  When my father was alive Chaman Uncle tried to encourage him to get help, but then like the rest of us, he sort of accepted that Dad didn’t want help.  My father was almost at peace with his own demise. 

            Of course, there is a part of me that thinks I should have beaten him up, tied him up, and locked him in a room with no liquor.  You know, like in Workin’ Nine to Five.  I mean why didn’t I think of this when he was alive, I swear to god I would have done it. 

            It was time.  I hadn’t really looked at him yet.  Because like I said, the looking seems strange, almost disrespectful to me.  I walked over to his casket and a few people who were around it backed away.  That made me afraid of myself.  I looked at him.  The make-up artists had done a brilliant job, I should get their card.  There was no yellowness left in his eyes.  His blue and red striped shirt was neatly pressed.  My mother and brother washed his body because it was a custom and they wouldn’t let me participate because they thought I couldn’t handle it.  I stared at his nostrils, tiny wrinkles had formed on the sides of them.  His black turban was immaculately tied, my brother tied it.

            So umm, you talked about me huh?  I never talked about you, but I should have.  Not because I was ashamed, but because I was mad at you.  Dad why’d we stop talking?  We should have talked about this.  I could’ve told you that you shouldn’t have done this because I need you.  This wasn’t an accident, was it?

            I wasn’t crying.

            You would’ve liked me, you know.  You really died like five years ago, and I became a woman in that time.  I don’t how, but I’m just different.  I bet you can’t believe you’re dead.  Are you impressed with yourself?  Was it easy?

            I don’t hate you.  But would I say that if I didn’t, just a little?  I don’t want to love you anymore so I’m gonna try and stop.  If it doesn’t work, you have to promise to still love me back.  I don’t care if they say you’re dead, you can still love me if you want to.

                                                                        *

            Afterward at the house…Nick…everyone likes him sooo much.  Hello?  Let me tell you all a little about this person.  I have an announcement to make.  This man says he is “recovering” from alcoholism, but he tried to fuck me at my father’s funeral.  He kind of did actually.  Soo, sorry everybody.

            Mom, you call him, Narinder, his real name, because you think he’s a good catch for your daughter?  Ha!  Sonia, you think he’s like your new big brother…I’m gonna throw up.  Ravi, if you only knew, you wanna take your anger out on someone?  I just found you a punching bag.  I won’t tell you guys tonight, because you’re all a little preoccupied, but Nick is a bomb waiting to destroy us.

            Uma and Rick were in my room fighting about why Ricky never talks to his parents, and did he really marry that Cuban chick or was that an Internet rumor?  Mona and Khalid were fighting about how he thinks death is not a big deal and isn’t being sensitive…Ravi was on the phone ordering pizza and said, while he was on hold, that he never wanted to see Nima again. Things were getting back to normal.  I really just wanted to have a regular day now.  How do I do that?  How do I answer the phone, without saying first, “Hello, I have a dead dad.”  How do I brush my teeth, my dad taught me how to do that, what if I forget how?  His purple toothbrush is still in my parents’ bathroom and I want to steal it.  It’s not exactly the most conventional heirloom, but I wanna give it to my kids.  What are we gonna do with it, throw it away?  What kind of a place is a garbage for a dead man’s toothbrush?  Shouldn’t we start a museum for him, to put all those things of his we can’t touch into a vault?  He deserves that much at least.

              I’m so weird.

            So as I was thinking about the best place to hide my dead father’s toothbrush all of us kids decided to go into the basement and play ping pong.  Ping pong.  Forgive me, but that is a really dumb name for an annoying game.  Ricky went to Blockbuster to get a movie.  He was advised to get a funny flick.  A funny flick.  And absolutely no pornography even though he was convinced it would cheer us up.  The army has polluted his soul.

            I lay on the couch my dad bought in the seventies that was our furniture in the basement, it was pukey orange vinyl.  Ravi pulled out some beers and a large bottle of vodka.  I think they belonged to my father.  Well, he wouldn’t want us to waste good liquor.  We drank it like fish in sewage. 

            Cheers, Dad…to be continued…

By

Nina Kaur