Asimov's SF, January 2012 (11 page)

"I'll tell you something,” he told me long before I fell in love with a lemonhead and lost his respect. “I'd do it exactly the same a second time. I'd send money where it needed to go. And if the plan hadn't worked I'd have taken up arms. The world is cleaner now, less complicated. You can see that, Mike, can't you?"

Years later, the night before Linh gave birth, Dad and I sat at the kitchen table. It was late and we were both a little drunk, arguing the same old argument in soft tones so we wouldn't wake anyone.

Then I said something that shut him up. Something I'd wanted to say for a long time. Something obvious that no one had the guts to say. Or maybe it wasn't guts but convenience. No one wanted to get him riled up.

I didn't care anymore.

I said, “Your grandma was a white woman, Dad, which means the family's only one generation removed. How does it make you feel to be responsible for her death and Grandpa's sickness?"

It felt good, but I'm glad my mother wasn't there to hear me say it.

Dad chewed the inside of his cheek. Then he reached across the table and slapped me.

"You don't understand shit, son."

The next time I spoke to him was to tell him my wife and child had been killed. Someone blew himself to hell at the intersection of Congress and Oak, taking seventeen souls with him. Witnesses said he came out of a Turkish café. No one saw what he looked like. They couldn't say whether he was Indian, African, Asian, Middle Eastern, or Native.

My wife and child's killer has no identity. The onlookers bleached him of that, and so I'm left feeling unsure. But that isn't the word. I'm left feeling
unfinished,
or maybe
undone. . . .

What am I left feeling?

12:57. Vikram and all four kids are leaned together on the couch, asleep. Ben's asleep in the overstuffed armchair, fone lighting up every couple of minutes with a text. Eta has a bad back. She retired to the guest room after two glasses of wine and 10 mg of Vicodin.

Mom and Dad are in the kitchen. Not talking, but I can tell they're awake. Some awareness from childhood.

As if he's sensed me thinking about him, Dad comes out. A brief view of the kitchen table, Mom pouring herself tea. I guess she's not going to sleep at all. It must be worse for her now. Dad's always punished her for being pure Khatri. No one in her family got sick. Her mother's still alive, so healthy she almost glows. Of course, Grandpa's dead now. There's no more reminder of the white in us all, but it'll be a while before that sinks in.

"I'm going to bed,” he says. “You can sleep there, right? It's not too cold?"

The air conditioner's blasting. It always is. The older Mom and Dad get, the colder the house becomes.

"No, it's fine,” I say. “I'll grab a blanket if I need one."

He nods. Pauses, staring over my head. Clears his throat. “Much as I hate to say it, Vikram's right, Mike."

"About what?” I ask. I know what he's talking about. Vikram repeated it enough. He latched onto the speech he gave me and repeated it ad nauseum. He and Ben nearly drove me crazy with their affected air of mature reflection. Fuckers sat at the kitchen table and lectured on the importance of perspective.
Let's not be sad. Let's celebrate Grandpa's life.

Dad's eyes meet mine briefly. He looks wary.

"Blessings, son,” he says. “Grandpa's suffering is over, and that's something to be happy about."

I barely resist laughing. I've been sitting here getting drunker and madder, waiting for an opportunity to fire off about Vikram's bullshit, but Vikram didn't give me one.

So much the better that Dad has.

When I speak, I speak carefully. “Really, Dad? I admire your attempt to make something good out of a bad situation. A situation, I might add, people like you are responsible for in the first place. So yes, by all means let's celebrate. Otherwise we'd have to take a long look at our decisions. Right, Pop? Isn't it wonderful that Grandpa's dead and we don't have to be constantly reminded anymore?"

He doesn't move. For half a minute nothing moves. My thoughts float on a sea of alcohol, muddled again after my organized outburst.

"Fuck you, Dad,” I finally say. “Go to sleep and leave me the fuck alone."

Without a word, he turns and ascends the stairs. An uncharacteristically muted reaction that leaves me vaguely unsatisfied.

The flatpad's still on, muted. A Bengali newscast, confusingly frenetic. I stare at it for a moment, focusing briefly on each of the ten different stories playing simultaneously. I linger on the last one too long and it balloons on the screen. A reporter stands on a street, yelling into his microphone. Palm trees behind him, bent nearly sideways. The man, bent also, leans backwards against the hurricane wind.

A commercial comes on, tells me the station is
All India, All Day!

I've had nearly two bottles of wine and I'm not tired at all. Instead, it feels like my entire body has a case of restless leg. Like there's an itch inside my bones.

I have to get out of the house.

Halfway down the block I think I hear someone calling my name. I keep walking. Mom, probably. I should have said something before I left, but I know I would have let her convince me not to go.

She thinks the whole world is dangerous, but I'm in Little Calcutta. Indians own everything from Massachusetts Avenue to Charles Street, Boylston Street to the Charles itself. As long as I stay in its confines, I'm safe. It's already quiet in our neighborhood, though it's only 1:10 in the morning.

I take a right on Beacon. The wall between Little Calcutta and Mexicoville is difficult to make out in this light. A band of black, cutting off the street.

I pass Cheers, which was appropriated by the Indian community soon after the walls were erected. I went inside once. The décor had been changed to Bengali kitsch, and five or six flatpads played episodes of the old show continually, purposefully dubbed incorrectly into Hindi. It amused me for a moment and then became depressing.

Sometimes I watch old sitcoms after the cleaning crew leaves the Clinton. I drag the comfortable office chair from the information desk into
Display Room B, European American Television, 1927-2017. Mary Tyler Moore, Cheers, The Honeymooners.
In the twelve years I've done security for the museum, I've seen more classic television than most professors of European American studies.

After all that television, I've become somewhat sentimental about white culture. A familiar construction, a myth all Americans have inherited.

I'm almost to the wall. Sensors notice my proximity and a section lights up, illuminating the columned black surface. Closer, the sliding doors light up in red, revealing a warning.

I've never walked into Mexicoville before. I've driven under it and ridden the maglev above it. It looked like everywhere else, no more alien than Portland or Hartford. Homes and businesses, kids riding bikes and skateboards. From above you can't tell the difference between Indian and Mexican.

Appearance tells you nothing.

For a short while in his late teens, Ben dated a Mexican girl. A bicycle courier two years older than him. Mom says no one suspected anything. She was quiet. She looked Indian. Ben said she was visiting family. When her brothers found out, they and a group of friends entered Little Calcutta, looking for Ben. The name was all they had.

They left with busted teeth and a few broken bones, robbed of their valuables.

"Normal kid shit,” Dad said.

The wall looms above me. I reach into my pocket for my I.D. A simple action, walking forward with it for the sensors to read. My feet feel light, like they can carry me through the doorway.

Into dark, deserted streets that look just like Little Calcutta's.

Before I know I've made the decision, I turn and start walking home.

Dad never killed anyone. He didn't release the virus into D.C.'s water supply. Grandpa, a better man, the person I most admired in the world, hadn't seen the value in these distinctions. You could see it in his face. He looked through Dad like he wasn't even there.

Grandpa never spoke about the virus and never bitched about his pain. He never spoke about race. He listened to me argue with Dad and I couldn't tell if he approved. The arguments got worse and worse as the years passed until I finally moved away in 2027. Put a state between Dad and me. Ran away.

I couldn't control myself around him anymore. Anything he said triggered an argument, and I felt inadequate, arguing the case of a people I never really knew. I still feel that way. Dad has justifications and I have anger. It gets the best of me and he comes away seeming like the victor.

But I have to constantly remind myself of one thing. If I thought for a moment it wasn't personal, that my primary interest was social justice, then I'd be a fool. I'd be just like Dad. Give me twenty years and I'd be a pillar of a walled community. I'd forget that everything is personal, and confuse myself trying to reconcile my beliefs with my anger.

I'd have my party lines well rehearsed. Just like Dad.

You have to ask yourself. How did the most diverse country in the world stay a white nation? How was that maintained? We elected a black man, and nothing changed. You know why? Because he was a puppet, a figurehead. The white men said, “You can't accuse us of racism anymore. We elected a black man."

And then the blacks themselves. They were a problem all on their own. Unlike Indians, they started to believe the lies. They watched too much TV. They saw rappers and singers and basketball players becoming successful. “I can too,” they told themselves.

No, they couldn't. They were blind to the problem.

It wasn't surprising that the attack didn't come from them. The world needed people who could make the tough decisions. People who weren't afraid to crack a few eggs. Those who say the measures were too severe are fools. White people wouldn't change. It wasn't in their nature to give up the power they'd stolen.

What we did was right.

There are casualties in every war.

It's not just the man's race. I don't know anything about my wife and son's killer. I don't know his religion, political stance, or sexual orientation. The killer, like those who released the virus, never named himself. He could have left a note in the café or posted something on googleface.

I want someone to do it, admit responsibility. The killer must have had friends, family, lovers. People who encouraged him to do what he did. Any one of them would do.

Go ahead, say, “I did this. It was me. I changed the world for the better."

Maybe this person won't speak up because he knows the mechanics of fear. He wants the world to be crippled. A faceless enemy is always more terrifying. It could be your neighbor. It could be a member of your family.

Or maybe he doesn't say it because he knows he's wrong. No one act changes the course of history. Without my wife and son the world goes on. Without white men the world goes on. It repeats. It resets a little skewed, but eventually it rights itself back into its worn track.

Geologically, a lifetime is no time at all. Nuclear bombs, genocide, they only affect a few generations at most. Even extinction is a minor setback on the grand scale.

These facts are little consolation to me, and no consolation to Grandpa.

A lifetime feels like a long time. One act can have lasting consequences.

Maybe the killer's allies realized this after the killer acted.

Sometimes I imagine they feel regret and now live spreading the word of peace. Other times I imagine them strung up before representatives of every race, religion, and creed.

"Look at what you've forced us to become!” the representatives cry. “You've set the clock back!"

And then I hear Dad's voice. He calls the unnamed men and women of The Revolution heroes. He describes their bodies as if they are gods. Sinew and bone and steel, Vishnu and Durga and Agni. And like the gods, the heroes have pushed mankind into a brighter future. The world can now be as it was meant to be. Not peaceful, no. Peace is a facade, but honor and dignity are not.

"We're finally free to be our own people,” Dad says.

"But we were forced,” I say. “It wasn't our decision!"

"Yes,” he says. His voice is like a knife on a sharpening stone. “It wasn't your decision."

Dad finds me in the backyard. It's 2:13 and the walking has sobered me up.

"I thought you went to sleep,” I say.

"Did you really mean what you said?” he asks me.

"What did I say, Dad?"

"You said I was happy to have Grandpa gone."

I think about it. “Yeah, I meant it."

Gravel crunches under his feet. I can't see his face in the darkness. When he speaks again, his voice is rough. There's cautiousness in his speech. I've never heard it before.

"I hated it. Having him here, I mean. He didn't understand. He never understood what I've sacrificed. He never even tried, son."

"Yeah,” I say. “What you sacrificed. You mean a grandmother? Work associates?"

A breath hisses out of him. “Shit, Mike. Why do you always have to say things like that? You think it was easy for anybody? We killed millions of people. You don't do that lightly. Still.” His voice catches. “Still, it was necessary."

"Must break a few eggs, right, Pop?"

He shakes his head. “You don't understand."

Something inside me suddenly feels loose. It flutters in my lungs when I breathe, like an engine part ratcheting against metal. The words I want come out, but they don't sound at all right. My voice grows quieter, gentler, as if I actually don't want to say what I say.

"You're right, Dad. I don't. But what I really don't understand is how you can stand before me, trying to justify twenty years of misery. Why didn't you just kill Grandpa and be done with it?"

He doesn't say anything. We stand for the better part of a minute, staring at each other across an unnavigable distance. Then he starts to walk toward the house.