Goal: Sulk Conflict: Uncle tells him get up Disaster: Gets up
Happy hoped he could sleep through the pain for the next month, when it was time to fly home. He was disappointed when he awoke an hour later in the veranda of his mana’s house in Cheema. The durri under him did little to soften the feel of the rope woven together into the munja. The rope dug into the akin on his back. He turned over onto his side and winced in pain.
The cysts were larger today. They had began as one, on his ankle. Now they were multiple, all up and down hiss arms and legs. They were each the size of a dime. In the morning they were covered white with dried pus. That was the easy time of day.
Soon his mama would come in and make them feel worse.
He heard a groan to his left. It was his mummi’s mummi in her manja. She was closing in on 90 and the size of a pre-teen. Pinder Uncle came into the room but wasn’t concerned with Happy just yet.
He picked up grandma and carried her out of they veranda despite her wails. Happy could she out the grill mesh keeping the mosquitos and flies out that uncle was washing grandma at the well. He could hold her in his arms like he had hold his daughter when she was the same size. Grandma wailed as mama ji washed her.
When he was done he brought her back to a new durri that had been laid down by mammi ji in the interim. She walked with a limp she had kept hidden on their wedding day but that turned into a half-swagger as she aged in her marital home.
Now it was Happy’s turn.
Mamma ji pulled out the medical kit that he kept in the tv cabinet. He pulled out gauze and rubbing alcohol and began the toture. He dabbed the gause with alcohol and started wiping hard on the cysts further up Happy’s arm. Happy wailed just like grandma. The dried pus case off in a thin stream, mixed semi-clear in the alcohol. The flow was turned jagged by the growing hairs on his arm.
Underneath, Happy’a cysts were bright red and fleshy. The morning air was already hot but it felt hotter where it came into contact with his meat. Mama ji moved onto the next one.
Soon Happy was red all over. Mama ji told his he had to let the wounds breath and wouldn’t use any of the gauze to wrap him up. This was the fourth day of this. Happy had come to India to learn how to lay like a leper.
Mummi slept further down from the fan in the column of munjas, just ahead of mammi ji. Happy slept at the 2nd nearest position, with mama ji at pole position. Mummi did not seem to care much about his pain and was mostly worrded about who would be stopping by today to chat about how rich everyone was in Canada and how she should find a way to get their nephew sponsored to come over and thath the nephew was a responsible boy.
Mom would try and tell them that life in Canada was hard and cold. Happy’s daddi had spent his first years sleoping at work and sending home every cent he did not spend on rotis and whiskey. They really had a good in pinjab she would tell them. It wasn’t worth it to stop living off the proceeds of the land and start living off an hourly wage. In Canada you were only worth how many hours of labour you had left la your muscles. In Punjab you had your name and your land, but the visitor would inevitably not Iisten and leave thinking Mummi was lying about Canada to keep It a secret. They would find out that first winter they came.
“You have to get up,” Mummi said.
“Fuck you, you’re the reason I’m sick here. It was your idea to come and now I’m beating eaten alive by your scum of a country,” Happy said.
“I had to bring you. Suspended for fighting again? I had to tell your Daddi school ended earlier in high school so he wouldn’t go crazy,” Mummi said.
Mamma ji came back in holding his long rod of a cane, silently insisting on a walk. Happy convinced them to let him eat his meal first. He’d found an indian version of funyuns with moderately different spice mix at a roadside stall. He ate some and took 2 chugs of the glass bottle of coke. He saw mamma ji eyeing it to see if it was ready to return to the village store for the deposit.
Then happy got ready. His shirt was short sleeve, mercifully from the heat ant and the cysts. His pants were zip-legged cargo pants but mammi ji insisted he keep them long as only the homeless wore shorts in India, even in the heat.
They walked past the neighbours houses who asked if Happy was Goodie’s son. That was his mum’s name here. They looked at him as a foreign import made to look local.
At the outskirts of the village a pack of rapid dogs came out and yipped at the them. They were hungry, skinny and wild. Mamma ji turned his cane from a walking instrument to a weapon and swung it wide to connect with the alpha right in the skull and foreleg shoulder. It wimpered and retreated with the rest of them in tow. They resumed walking.
They came upon the house of the driver who would be taking them on tour that day. His white SUV was shiny from a hosedown and the leather seats were inviting enough for a nap.