In 1988, he lay in his own sweat and heat in an empty house in America. The doctors said he had malaria. Around the house he had grown up in and visited that summer with me, the mosquitos left behind reminders on our skin. He made sure I had quinine after dinner every day, because he knew my body wasn’t used to India, wasn’t used to its germs and parasites. We lay on the roof in the night surrounded by them.
His back ached when he dreamt of the first time he had come back to India since he had left it. The town had erected a tent outside the movie theater to ask him questions; he was the first to have left Podili for America.
As his fever increased the air around him grew cold. He was no longer the returning son he had once been. He remembered the constant ring of the phone in his father’s store the summer when he had met his four possible wives. He knew he could only marry my mother. They both knew the first time they met. I have a picture. They are on the roof and the wind is blowing.
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Sep 30, 09:59 PM