House of Books 

Fiction by ​Ravneet Kaur Sandhu

I think my father killed my mother. We had returned from a wedding, a glittery affair with disco balls and never-ending hors d’oeuvre served by tuxedoed waiters in turbans. By the end of the night I sat in my silk salwar-kameez waiting to go home to take those heavy gold hoops off. We arrived home, the front door swung open by my irritated mother furious at my father’s inability to hold his liquor that had caused us to miss yet another final dinner. My father took two steps forward and then one step back as he struggled with the welcome mat. His feet scratched on the plastic ridges, unable to move in the face of resistance. I picked his feet and put them off the mat, one foot at a time, a perversion of the ritual in which we give respect to our elders. I threw the mat in the front of the verandah, causing the wild cat hiding under the potted money plant to run away in the lawn. My mother was cursing up a storm more bitter than whiskey.

I wanted to keep the peace so I lead to him room. I had a suspicion he wasn’t as drunk as he was pretending to be. He took his shirt and blazer off easily, swift motions disturbing placid rolls of fat. He seemed bigger than before. I quietly exited, hoping my mother would leave him alone for the night.

I must have dozed off in my room. Undressing takes a while—jewelry carefully removed from the head, ears, neck and arms, snagging hair I blew away, the chunni meticulously wrapped into a rectangle, borders running right, the intake of breath to get the kameez off the bloated stomach, the drawstring of the salwar untied as it drops around my ankles, and the shoes removed and left out to polish tomorrow. The bed seemed more and more inviting after each move.

I woke up when I heard the screaming. My mother’s room was locked, the old-style ventilator of her room a solemn glow of moving light. They were inside, the both of them, yelling, cursing, so far gone that I had no idea who had instigated the fight. I pounded on the door. I don’t think they heard me over their loud voices. I yelled to be let in, half hoping the neighbors would call the police. My mother opened the door and ran out, crying out how evil my father was. He went behind her in a straight line, cutting across the furniture in measured jumps. I followed them outside, only to see my mother do a U-turn in the lawn to go back in. My father stopped, his hands clutched, as if remembering that this fight was pointless, as the ones before it and the ones after it will be, a stream of endless arguments filled with alcohol and violence. I heard the clap of my mother’s door and the rattle of the lock meant it won’t open until the morning.

Tiredness made me ignore him. I turned my back to him and went into my room. They would fight in the morning and my mother’s accusations will let me know whether he started it or he hit back. I locked the main door after drinking some water. The bed creaked in his room; all would be quiet for the night.

I was walking my dog in the street when I saw the new house at the junction. At the edge of the cul-de-sac stood a three-storey mansion with no windows or floors or even walls. Flat-roofed like its neighbors with a black gate. But the insides were spilling out; thousands of books, water-logged, torn, stained, complete, packaged, dog-eared and folded, cascading from the floors. The first floor was completely hidden under the canopy of words, greens and reds and blues glimmering from the covers. The second floor had books that decreased from the center. I couldn’t see the third floor with the sun glaring in my eyes. I edged forward to this house, expecting the people to come out and introduce themselves. In our neighborhood, people knew each other’s ancestral villages and car details, and information about income tax evasion was exchanged over tea. It was only a matter of time before this house would be bought up and discussed, but instead of the blue titles in the bathroom or the Ganesh doorstops, it would be the taste of the books. Was the hot pink cover of Herland too shiny? Did the couple silhouettes illustrate Darcy and Elizabeth? And most importantly, was a person who put Tagore and Harlequins together worth being befriended?

I saw a man walking on the other side of the street, the one that ran in front of the house. He seemed like someone’s help, walking in blue-strapped flip-flops and a yellowed shirt. My dog, who had been patiently sniffing the lamppost, wiggled herself free from the leash and ran.

“Come back! Savai, come back!”

She pushed herself in through the black bars of the gate and leapt onto the books leading to the first floor. The boy opened the gate for me as I sped in.

“Savai! Savai! Come here!”

Her tan fur had bounced to the second floor now.

“Savai! How dare you!”

I ignored the impulse to kiss each book as I stepped on it.

“Savai! Where are you now?”

I heard the boy closing the door behind me. I looked behind to see his scuttling form running into someone else’s house. He was too scared to be of help.

The second floor had a tube light. Sun fell in without the walls to hold it back. Half-dropping sunshine created orange blobs in my eyes. I could see the main road on the other side and a park directly below. I stepped on the edge and cried out, “Savai?” Certain walkers stopped, annoyed at the girl yelling from the top at honking cars. Savai won’t have survived the fall anyways.

The books, she must be in the books! I picked many up, burying my way into literature, causing domino effects that made my knees slide down. The center had to be destroyed. I burrowed on, thinking she had done the same, screaming her name at each panting interval, my legs bruised from pushing the weight around. It was all hopeless; she was lost. I edged towards the corner and cried. The books kept me company.

My mother’s head was crushed under a broken shelf of steel crockery. Usually the untenses didn’t weigh much by themselves, but they contained mangoes being pickled. The whole house stank of pickles when I came back home. I walked up to the kitchen and saw her blood mixed with the greenish oil. My father sat in the dining room, eating his plate of fried eggs and buttered toast, his knife up in the air.

I called the police. They inspected the scene with their blue-striped handkerchiefs pressed to their nostrils. “An accident. These shelves, Madam ji, aren’t sturdy enough.” I turned back to see my mother’s reaction to this, but of course, she was dead and the Madam ji was me, this sixteen-year-old with a single plait mandated by the school.

The paath was done in our house, the big door left open for neighborhood and family members. The house smelled like mothballs from the borrowed white sheets that covered the upholstery. I walked in the haze of moving white, as people offered condolences to my father and patted my head. I was in shock. My dog crashed the ceremony. The guests shrunk back as Savai slowly walked, her eyes showing the confusion I felt.

I confronted my father after the haze had lifted.

“You killed Mama, didn’t you? You killed her!”

He laughed. Sitting in my mother’s bed with his legs crossed, he laughed while I beat him with closed fists. It only prodded him to laugh more fully, opening his jaw that I tried to slap with all my strength. He stopped it too easily with his hands, knocking it away. I felt befuddled. He grew bigger and bigger until I was sitting in his lap and my blows were mosquito bites. His laughing mouth swallowed me whole. I felt myself disappearing. I could hear Savai barking in the distance. I tried to scream but his mouth closed. There was only darkness inside.

Ravneet Kaur Sandhu
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Ravneet Kaur Sandhu is a college student who loves thick novels and sugary coffee. She goes back to India once in a while or else her dog gets sad. ​