IV. The Bat #3
“Ruhee,” I said. “I could take you. We could ask the owners to let you look around the house, your old room, they won’t mind.”
Abruptly Ruhee stood up and went to sit again on the edge of my bed. She looked frightened.
It was surreal, to hear Ruhee tell me she wanted me. Asking me if I wanted her too, sitting on the edge of my bed, in my childhood bedroom. It was as if a dream had suddenly come true.
I think the answer to her question was written so plainly on my face that she nodded. She took a deep breath and looked away.
When she talked again she kept looking away, her eyes fixed on a spot near my window.
“For the longest time I did not want to come back here. This street we are on. It reminds me of everything that happened. Reminds me of him. You remind me of him, the way you stand, speak, even the clothes you are wearing right now, everything reminds me of him. You were the last person I wanted to see again, Arjun. I’m sorry if that hurts to hear―”
“―It doesn’t hurt.”
She looked at me sadly and said, “What’s the last thing you remember? There isn’t anyone else who remembers.”
The last thing I remember? Suddenly Ganesh flashed in my mind, the memory more clear and brilliant than anything else I recalled.
Ganesh jumping into the water tank on Gita Miss’ terrace, coming up briefly for air, to take off his sopping shirt.
Going back into the water again, aware that I was watching him, and letting me, brilliant water foaming the surface of the water tank.
“Just being around you, Arjun, it … it brings up all this stuff…” Ruhee dug her fingers into her hair, pulled lightly at the roots.
She said, “Arjun, I want to be honest with you. I want you to have the chance to say walk away from me. It is important that you know that I can never be … normal? Whatever that means. I understand that about myself. Whole? You cannot have me whole.”
I went to Ruhee. I touched her cheek. I knelt in front of her.
“I don’t want all of you,” I said.
She slid down from the bed. “Make no noise,” she said. And in a minute it became clear what she meant by that.
The whole time, I was thinking about the cricket bat, still leaning against the window, exactly where it was when my father came in and told me to break things off.
It was a different bat, surely I was not stupid enough to keep it.
After all, why would I? All I had to do was walk down to the trash yard and toss it inside.
Who’d come asking after it? Who came asking after Ganesh?
Nobody. He was a nobody. What did his life matter?
Flashes. It came in flashes. Why did I go to the Red House that night?
Surely I was jealous. Jealousy was the right word, after all I loved Ruhee, and they were having sex at the Red House.
I couldn’t let him have her. I went there to protect Ruhee. That’s what I told him.
When Ruhee sank into me, I gasped. “Make no noise, Arjun,” Ruhee whispered, putting her face against mine.
I felt her teeth graze my lips, just for a second.
She was biting down on her lip, the effort it was taking her to make no noise herself.
I reached up and held her hair away from her face.
I wanted to see her face, the only girl I ever loved, whom I wished to marry, what her face looked like with all the weight of her body resting on mine, what did she look like with such unbearable desire, pleasure, pain on her face?
She pulled my hand away. She held it and slid it underneath her skirt.
Here, she whispered. I sensed the place where she wanted me to push my fingers.
She wouldn’t let me see her face, but what she wanted, the pleasure or pain; is this what you want?
I said; is this what you want? Anything, Ruhee.
Anything you want. Now, she said. Now, Arjun.
Afterwards, I took the shaving kit and went to the Hospital.
I don’t know if Priya suspected what happened in my room. We had been quiet. We had made conversation in the aftermath. She asked me, looking at my windowsill, if it was the same cricket bat from when we were children.
I said no.
When I arrived at the Hospital, I went in the gate, traced the same route I’d been tracing for―how many years now?
―a decade? since college? My father had only managed to keep it from me for a few years.
I counted the cracked cement steps of the long-term ward as I climbed.
Twenty-eight, the same as before. I repeated the number to myself.
Twenty-eight. Twenty-eight. What was I reassuring myself of?
No, the world hadn’t split down the middle―twenty-eight, twenty-eight―no, the world hadn’t split down the middle and swallowed me whole simply because Ruhee and I had sex in my childhood bedroom.
At the top stair, I heaved and threw up over the balcony railing.
I shut my eyes, breathed through my nose until the nausea ebbed. Twenty-eight. Twenty-eight. Twenty-eight. There were still twenty-eight steps to Ganesh’s room at the hospital, I told myself. Same as before.