The Story Hour by Thrity Umrigar Read Free Book Online Page B

something prideful in my chest. The husband look like he Pran and he got beat up by Amitabh Bachchan. He don’t know whether to go or come, sit or stand. He look at me for help but I look straight at him. What he call this room? A hotel room? If I’m in hotel, he the visitor.
    Chup-chap, quiet as a lizard, he gather the tiffin box and take the dirty plate. The gulab jaman, wrapped in foil, he put on the table for me. He look at me again, and then at the black lady, and then he leaf the room.
    Soon as he go, I feel like to cry. So alonely I’m feeling without the husband. And wicked, for how I happy when this lady make him defeat. Some jadoo she do, to make me side with her over my husband. I decide I will not speak to her. Let her leaf my room as she make my husband leaf.
    She sit down on chair across from me. “I heard you’re not eating much here, Lakshmi,” she say. “So I’m glad your husband is bringing food from home.”
    Who tell her I not eating? How she know my husband bringing the food? “Who telling you such lies? Why you care what I eat? You mind your own business.”
    â€œIt is my business,” she say. “Look, my goal is to evaluate you and make sure you’re fit to be discharged, okay? So I require your cooperation, Lakshmi.”
    Such big-big word she using. I don’t understand anything she say.
    She look at me close. “Are you getting what I’m saying? It’s really important that you understand. If you don’t, we can get a interpreter, okay?”
    â€œWhat ‘inter-printer’ mean?”
    â€œSomeone who speaks your language. Hindi? Punjabi? Gujarati? Whatever you speak. And that person can tell you what I’m saying.”
    â€œWhy you need to speak to me?”
    She give out big breath. “Lakshmi. You’ve just tried to kill yourself. If your husband had not come home early with a headache, God knows what would’ve happened. Okay? So we can’t let you go from here until I’m convinced . . . until I’m sure you won’t do this again. Do you understand?”
    I nods. “I’m sorry. I am wicked woman for the suicide. I am sorry.”
    â€œSweetie. You’re not wicked. You’re just in pain. You’re hurting. I can see it on your face. And I’m here to help you. But you’ve gotta let me in.”
    â€œYou already in,” I say, confuse.
    She laugh. “In, like, into your heart. Your mind. You have to tell me why you took this step. So that we make sure you don’t do it again.”
    I feel as if I walk into a dark room and turn on the light. I now understands what she is wanting from me. She is wanting my story. Just like when you go to the doctor sahib with cough-cold and he is asking questions—when it started, were you walking in rain, were you eating too many sour mangoes all of once? Then only he knows what medicines to give.
    She is wanting my story. In my village, I was champion storyteller. When Ma became sick with the ’rthritis, I would tell Shilpa stories at night so she could go to sleep and not hear Ma’s crying. When the bad men hurt Mithai the elephant, I spend night with him and tell him story after story. In school, I always make the other childrens laugh by stories and jokes I was telling.
    But I have not told story to anyone in very long time.
    â€œLakshmi,” the lady say. “What happened? What made you do this on Thursday? Did your husband beat you? What brought it on?”
    I thinks of Bobby and how he look, standing in that parking lot, holding the statue I gave. I thinks of him getting in his car and how it feeling like my heart remove from my body and get in his car with him. How I know, even then, that Bobby only think of me as waitress in restaurant but I . . . I think of him as . . .
    I wants to tell her about Bobby and about his kindness and the California. But then I ascare. What if she tell