Read An American Brat for Free Online

and Zareen escaped to the bathroom.
    Zareen blew her nose and splashed her face. She looked into the mirror and was filled with pity for her reflection. Although her eyes were puffy and her nose red, it was still an adequate face. Zareen turned slightly to look at the delicate curve of her cheek and jaw, at the slight bump broadening her nose just where it should to give her fine eyes an erotic quality, and was gradually reassured. She touched up her lipstick, sprayed herself with perfume, and, her heels sounding her resolution on the bathroom and dressing room floors, marched into the bedroom.
    Zareen noted that her mother had removed her dentures. They lay on the bedside table in the bowl provided by the ayah. Zareen dragged the rocking chair forward and, maintaining a formal distance between them, sat down, defiantly rocking.
    Khutlibai had poured her soup into the saucer and was making a blubbery sound as she drew in air with the scalding broth.
    â€œStop making that disgusting noise, Mumma.” The rocking chair and her mother’s dentureless mouth gave Zareen an advantage. “I hate it; it makes me feel sick. Sometimes I feel so ashamed of you.”
    Khutlibai stared at Zareen in utter amazement. She averted her eyes and sat forward, her back stiff. “I never expected to be insulted in my son-in-law’s house!”
    Khutlibai swung her feet off the bed and stood up with a swiftness remarkable in one who had sunk into it so heavily a short while before. Drawing herself up to her full five feet two inches, the lower edge of her shawl resting on the projecting shelf of her bottom, Khutlibai trudged with tragic and affronted majesty to the door.
    Hastily putting her cup down and full of contrition, Zareen rushed to block her exit.
    Khutlibai gave her daughter a brief hurt-puppy look and, movingher legs in a stiff, pistonlike gait that was curiously submissive and hopeless, trudged back to the bed. She sat down abruptly, her feet dangling, her shoulders fallen, her mouth collapsed, looking unbearably wounded, sapped, and mortified.
    â€œMumma,” Zareen said, thoroughly abashed, holding out the cup with dregs of the broth still in it. “Here, finish this.”
    Her mouth slightly gaping, Khutlibai eyed Zareen meekly and obediently drained the contents.
    Zareen sat down next to her and put her arm round her mother’s shoulders. She pressed her wet cheek to Khutlibai’s and, in an awkward, sideways motion, kissed her eyebrow and the hollow near her temple. Zareen felt her mother’s cheek twitch with a persistent tic; it was as if the altercation had reversed their roles.
    Zareen felt intolerably sad.

    ~

    At word of Khutlibai’s imminent departure, the bearded cook, the sweeper, and the balding gardener, sporting new tennis shoes but no socks, gathered outside the main door.
    Bundled up in her coat, shawl, and muffler, Khutlibai emerged from the bedroom, preceded by Zareen and followed by the ayah.
    The sweeper, very dark and stocky with a mop of straight hair slanting rakishly across his forehead, clicked his heels, saluted, and stood at grinning attention. The message of Khutlibai’s remedy had been conveyed to him. The boy stood next to his father, shivering in his ladies’ cardigan, the black thread conspicuous on his left big toe.
    Instead of her usual chuckles and affectionate banter, Khutlibai smiled in wan approval at the toe, which was beginning to swell on account of the tourniquet and was turning blue in the cold.
    The dejected angle of Khutlibai’s head, and the motion she made to touch it, indicated to the sweeper that though she appreciated his antic attention, she was unable to respond as she usually did because of unwonted circumstance.
    The sweeper at once became serious and, gesturing with reassuring, open-palmed motions of his hands, inquired, “Is everything all right, baijee? You are visiting after so long; have you forgotten us? If we have