The Weight of Heaven (4 page)

evasion, of subtlety, of telling the truth slant? But most of the time

Ellie felt happy to be among people who did not play games, to

whom the very expression “playing games” meant a vigorous game

of hockey or cricket. A practical, literal people. Frank, she knew,

was appalled by how bluntly his employees spoke, saw it as rudeness, crassness. And in the beginning she, too, was unnerved by

it, by the lack of artifice, by the absence of the sheen of politeness

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that covered all interactions in America like Saran Wrap. Except for

the clerks working in the fancy shops of Bombay, no one in India

said inane things like “Have a nice day.” Once, soon after they’d

moved to Girbaug, Ellie had told Edna to have a nice day and Edna

had replied, “Only if God’s willing, madam, if God’s willing.” And

Ellie had heard what Edna had not said—that having a nice day was

not up to the will of mere mortals but depended upon the benevolence of a kind God. She had never used the expression again. And

volunteering at NIRAL, the clinic that Nandita had started for the

villagers, counseling the women about mental health and domestic violence issues, Ellie had grown to appreciate the direct, guileless way in which they spoke. Husbands were roaches and rats and

kuttas
, dogs. The women used words like
Satan
and
evil
casually

and without irony. The ease with which they spoke about the devil

and of evil reminded Ellie of the Christian fundamentalists in America, their vocabulary so different from that of Ellie and Frank’s liberal, secular friends in Ann Arbor. When the women in the village

found out that a husband had gambled away his family’s life savings,

they tracked down the man and removing their rubber slippers beat

him with them. Last year, when a corrupt politician who had broken

every promise had the audacity to visit their village before the next

election, they had made a garland of their dirty, filthy slippers and

placed it around his neck. The man tried to beat a hasty retreat to his

air-conditioned car, but the mob of women chased him, hooting and

hollering and jeering and hissing.

“Ellie,” Ramesh was saying. “I’m asking and asking. Where’s

Frank?”

“I’m sorry, baby. He’s gone back to work. I don’t think he’ll be

home in time to help you tonight.” Even as she said those words, Ellie

was amazed that Frank hadn’t taken the time to cross the courtyard

and knock on Edna’s door to tell the boy not to come over tonight.

Something really serious must have called him away.

“Can you help me?” And intercepting the look of refusal on

2 2 Th r i t y U m r i g a r

Ellie’s face, Ramesh added, “Please, Ellie. I have two big-big tests

tomorrow. And in geography I’m a duffer.”

She smiled at his choice of words. This boy was charming. She

could see why he’d stolen Frank’s heart. Still, Frank needed to be

careful—and so did she. She didn’t want to fall victim to Ramesh’s

undeniable charms. On the other hand, she couldn’t refuse the boy a

shot at doing well on his tests. “Well, lucky for you, I’m very good

at geography. So let’s do a quick revision session, okay? Where do

you need to start?”

Ramesh sat at his usual spot at the kitchen table and flung open

an ominously thick book. He turned the yellowing pages fast and

carelessly as Ellie murmured, “Careful, careful. You must treat

books with respect.” But even as she spoke she noticed how used

the book was, saw the passages underlined by the scores of students

who had used the textbook before Ramesh had purchased it. She

remembered how clean and crisp the pages of Benny’s books used

to look. From the time he was little, Benny had always taken good

care of his books, turning the pages carefully and tenderly, as she

had taught him. But God, how much easier it was to do when the

books were worthy of that care.

Ramesh had opened to the section about different mountain

ranges. Ellie looked at the chapter uncertainly. “So what do you

want me to do?”

He looked at her impatiently for not knowing the routine, as if

she were the student, and a rather slow one, at that. “I’ll review the

chapter quickly. And then you ask me test questions.”

“Sure.” She read over his shoulder and, despite herself, marveled

at how fast the boy read. Frank was right. Ramesh was as bright as

the Indian sunshine.

“You ready?” she said after they’d both finished. “Shall I grill

you on some questions?”

“Grill me? Like a fish?”

“Very funny, Ramesh. Now listen, time to hit the books, okay?”

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2 3

She caught the gleam in his eye. “And no more puns. No, I’m not

explaining what a pun is. You’re taking a test tomorrow in geography and math, not in joke-making.” She scanned the pages of the

chapter again, formulating her first question. “Outside of Asia, what

is the world’s tallest mountain range?”

“The Andes,” he said promptly.

“Right. And what is the height of Mount Everest?” she asked,

even as she wondered, Who cares? Why do they make schoolchildren in India memorize all this?

“Eight thousand eight hundred and fifty meters,” he said. “Correct, Ellie?”

“Correct.” She had to smile at the triumphant enthusiasm she

heard in his voice. “You lied to me. You’re not a duffer in geography,

at all.”

He made a face. “I am. There is one boy in the class who is getting the higher marks in geography than me. Always hundred out

of hundred, he’s getting.”

“But that doesn’t make you a duffer. You just have to—”

“My dada say I’m a duffer,” Ramesh said. There was something

in his voice Ellie couldn’t quite pick up on, as if he was defying her

to contradict his father, even while hoping that she would.

But before she could react, Ramesh was talking again. “Ellie,” he

said. “I had a card for you. But Ma said not to give it.”

Ellie cocked her head. “What card?”

The boy suddenly looked bashful. Ellie noticed that he was

avoiding her eye, staring at the blue table. “A Mother’s Day card.

We made them in school. I made one for you.”

Something crept up the base of Ellie’s neck. Yesterday had been

Mother’s Day. She had made herself forget the fact. All day long she

had glanced at Frank, willing him not to acknowledge it either. To

her immense relief, he hadn’t. “I—” She struggled to find the right

tone, unwilling to let Ramesh know how rattled she was. “Thanks,”

she said. “But speaking of school, let’s get back to—”

2 4 Th r i t y U m r i g a r

“How did your boy dead?” It took her a second to realize that

Ramesh was asking about Benny, and she was shocked. He had

never asked her such a personal question before. But then again, she

had never really spent time alone with the boy. “Die,” she corrected

absentmindedly. “How did your boy die?”

Too late, she realized that Ramesh was waiting for her to answer

her own question. At this moment, Ellie hated this peculiarly Indian

inquisitiveness. And if this had been an adult being so nosy, so brutal

in his directness, she would have bristled, wouldn’t have tried to

cover up her outrage. But the fierce, intent expression on Ramesh’s

face was throwing her off stride. “He was sick,” she said.

A look of such adult understanding crossed the boy’s face that

Ellie felt naked beneath it. “Typhoid,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“No, not typhoid. A, a, rash. Do you know what a rash is?”

Ramesh glanced at his welted, mosquito-bitten hands. “Like

this?”

Was it like that? Ellie tried to remember. She had been half asleep

when she had first seen the horrifying purple that had covered Benny’s face within a matter of hours. At midnight, when she had finally

put her agitated, restless son to bed, his face had been as lovely and

smooth as the moon. At four in the morning, woken out of an inexplicably deep sleep by a single cry, she had hurried to Benny’s room,

turned on the night lamp near his bed, and seen an unrecognizable

boy sleeping in her son’s bed. Even now, Ellie could remember how

her stomach had dropped, the fear that gripped her, an instantaneous, icy-cold fear that she had to consciously battle with, beat

down, so that Benny would not see in her scared face what she didn’t

want him to see. She had run her fingers over his body, one hand unbuttoning his pajama top even as the other inspected the skin on his

chest, his neck, his arms. And everywhere she touched there were

bumps and welts. “Are you okay, sweetie?” she had asked. “Does

it hurt?” And he had nodded no, but with a rising panic she took

in the heavy-lidded eyes, the hot, flushed cheeks, the hair sticking

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to his sweaty forehead. And when he formed his lips to say, “My

throat feels funny,” she saw the effort it took him to speak, heard the

hoarseness in his voice. Still, she managed to keep her voice steady,

as if she were walking a plank on a particularly turbulent sea. “I’m

going to call Dr. Roberts again, okay, sweetie?” she said. “I’ll be

right back.”

“Is this a rash?” Ramesh was holding his hand up for her to inspect.

Ellie glanced toward the door, willing Frank to walk through it

and distract Ramesh from this line of questioning. “No, not really,”

she said. “
Achcha
, let’s get back to the books, shall we?”

“
Achcha
,” Ramesh said but the boy was in a strange mood tonight,

because the next minute he stuck out his index finger and touched

Ellie’s wrist. Just that—the light touch of a single finger that nevertheless felt to Ellie like a lit match against her flesh. Idly she noticed

the black crescent under his fingernails. They both stared at the spot

where Ramesh’s finger rested on Ellie’s wrist. Then Ramesh said, “I

am feeling so sad for your son.”

And Ellie thought back to the funeral—to Father O’Donnell’s

rageful, heartfelt eulogy, to the whispering women clad in black,

the silent, solid presence of the men, the brave, lip-trembling steadiness of her mother, the fierce, protective support of her sister, Anne,

the terror on the faces of the mothers of Benny’s friends, the pity

on the faces of their husbands. She thought of the weeks and months

that followed—the lasagnas and pot roasts dropped off by neighbors; the spontaneous hugs in grocery stores from people whose

names she couldn’t recall; the condolence cards from well-meaning

friends who felt compelled to include pictures of Benny from their

own photo albums; the cautious, careful looks she got from her own

clients when she finally returned to the practice, as if they wanted

to measure the temperature of her grief before they shared any of

their own; the treasured, handwritten note from Robert, Benny’s

best friend, that read, “I will always love him.” And then she looked

2 6 Th r i t y U m r i g a r

at the dark-skinned boy with the dirty fingernails who sat touching her with one finger, and she knew that nothing that had happened in the weeks after Benny’s death—not the notes or the cards

or the whispered messages of courage and hope or the prayers or

the homilies or the platitudes—had penetrated her as deeply as this

boy’s awkward, ungrammatical words. Everyone else had said they

were sorry, everyone else had said it was a tragedy, a shame, a pity,

a travesty, some had shaken their fists at God, others had advised

her to bow to His will. But no one had told her that they felt sad

for Ben. No one had understood that sentiment—that much of her

anger, her rage, her grief at what had happened, was not for herself or for Frank, though, of course, their grief was monumental,

almost inhuman in its size and dimensions, so that she felt as if mere

humans could not understand it, only the ocean and the mountains

and the wind could. No, what she felt most of all was a screaming

anger for what Benny had been cheated out of, at the destiny that

had been wrestled out of his tiny, unformed fist. She and Frank had

lost Benny, but Ben, Ben had lost not just his parents but his unborn

children; not just his best friend from elementary school but the

unknown friend from college and the women he would have dated

and loved, the woman he would have married. Sometimes, when

Ellie thought about the enormity of Benny’s loss, she was dumbfounded by its magnitude—the books he’d never read, the movies

he’d never see, the symphonies he’d never hear (or compose), the

geometric theorems he’d never solve, the all-night college rap sessions he’d never bullshit his way through, the junior year abroad

that he’d never take, the debates about Nietzsche and Kierkegaard

he would never participate in, the first kiss he would never have, the

continent of difference between having sex and making love that

he’d never discover, the thrilling knowledge that he’d outgrown his

parents that he’d never possess, the first job, the first promotion, the

first trip abroad, the first love letter, the first heartbreak, the first

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child—and God, so much more—the pimply awkwardness of being