His mom! His mom! Coming into the room! His mom is beautiful! He forgets his mom is coming into the room and then she comes into the room, and it’s a surprise and then here she is and he loves her. He forgets how beautiful she is, and then suddenly she is coming into the room to take him home, and he remembers that she is so beautiful, because she has hair this dark, and she has dark eyes, and she is beautiful and round. And she’s his mom. And she has the spot right between her eyes which is a beautiful spot, and nobody else’s mom here has that spot, which means it is beautiful. And when his mom smiles, it’s a beautiful smile, and when she doesn’t smile, that means it’s a time before smiling, and this is a beautiful time because a smile will come along soon. And his mom talks in a beautiful way that is different from the way that everybody else’s mom talks. She says things in a beautiful way, a way that sounds different, because she comes from another place, but he can’t remember what this place is called. He knows that he lives in Queens, and he is in Queens now, at least he thinks he is, and his mother is in the room and she is talking to the nice lady, and the nice lady and his mom are smiling and they are pointing. He is good and maybe he is the best of all the children. And the nice lady is going around the room and she is showing his mother all the things that everybody has made today, like Eddie made an airplane and then Eddie spent a long time standing in one corner with the airplane, making the noise of an airplane. He was there almost all day, and the nice lady had to tell him he needed to do something besides just make the airplane noise, and he didn’t pay any attention, and later another boy went over and pushed him down and told him to shut up, took away the plane, stamped on it, and everyone started crying. The nice lady tried to explain about how they didn’t need to cry and that this was a problem to solve, but Jaspreet didn’t understand what she was saying and neither did Eddie or the other boy, the stamper, and anyway, Jaspreet just wanted to use the glue stick and to be left alone. He’s excited about lining up the glue with the edges of things that he has cut out. He’s excited because he will not use too much glue on these pictures that he has cut out. If you put too much glue on, then the picture won’t stick. But if you put down just the right amount of glue, then the picture stays, and this makes him happy, like his mother coming in makes him happy. Also, there is a girl called Denise, and Denise makes him happy, he isn’t sure why. When she gets mad, she throws everything on the floor and cries, and one day she wouldn’t stop biting other people and she punctured the skin on Jaspreet’s arm. But even when she is crying, he always wants to put his hand on the top of her head. Sometimes he just gets up in the middle of the class, and then he goes over and puts his hand on the top of her head. No matter what she is trying to do, he will put his hand on the top of her head. Usually there are pigtails or there is a braid, but sometimes the hair is all pulled up on the very top, and there is a thing that makes it stay on the top of her head, and if he puts his hand on the top of her head when this thing is making the hair stay up, then she will squeal or cry, and the nice lady will say, “Jaspreet, stop touching the top of Denise’s head.” Or the nice lady will tell him to stop touching her ear. Because he also likes to touch Denise’s ear, the little part at the bottom of her ear, it has a gold ring in it, and he just likes to go and touch this spot. If she’s in a good mood and has not thrown things on the floor or bitten anybody, then she smiles when he puts his hand on the top of her head, and they stay there like that.
His mom goes and looks at all the things that everyone made out of paper, and she tells Eddie that his plane is good, and she tells Denise that her picture of a horse is good, and then she tells Maurice that his boat is good, even though it’s crusted with glue, and she tells Mohammed that his racing car is very good, and then she comes and looks at the picture that Jaspreet has made, which is a picture of the sun. The sun is smiling down on the land. And his mother comes and asks him what the land is that the sun is smiling down on, but he doesn’t answer because he doesn’t like to answer. But he smiles up at his mother because his mother is beautiful and so is the nice lady. Then the nice lady asks, “Jaspreet, can you just this once tell your mother what it is a picture of?” And she points at the sun, which is smiling. “What is this that’s smiling here? We know you know the name of it. Just tell your mother how you know the name. Can you do that for me?” Jaspreet smiles at his mother and smiles at the nice lady, but he has a feeling like he does not want to say the name of the sun. If he had drawn a tree, then maybe he would say that its name was tree, though maybe he wouldn’t say that, either, just because. If he felt like it, maybe. But today he doesn’t want to say that the sun has a name, because he just doesn’t want to, and what he wants is what he wants, even though his mother is beautiful. It’s important to go home now because it’s the end of the day, or at least he thinks so, and when his mother picks him up, then he doesn’t have to go out into the hall with the other kids, because when he is with the other kids out in the hall something horrible happens. One time he threw up.
“Come on, Jaspreet, just one word, and it will make our day complete. We will feel like we have had an especially good day if you will just say one word.”
He says nothing. He can see that his mother is not smiling now, and actually she is making a face that is not such a nice face, and she is taking him by the wrist, telling him that it is time to go, but he has not put away the glue stick and the picture, and he begins to cry out about the glue stick, but not exactly about the glue stick, because he would rather not have to use any words, but it’s just a fake cry, a fake sound coming out of his mouth, a mouth-wide-open cry, and Maurice starts to cry out, too, and some of the others, too, and soon everybody is pounding on the table, and the nice lady looks afraid because it’s scary when everybody gets mad, and they could start spilling paint. Jaspreet just wants to put away the glue stick, put the lid on the glue stick and take it over to where the supplies go, where the glue sticks and the pens and the crayons go, but his mother has him by the wrist and she is telling him not to argue with her now, just come on along, please, because there are things to get for dinner and she does not have time. There’s some more about the glue stick, and he wants to tell her about the glue stick, how wonderful the glue stick is, and that’s when he finally gets out the words “Glue stick,” and everyone hears the words, the nice lady hears the words, and everyone applauds because they know it’s a good day when Jaspreet finally says something.
Later he’s in the supermarket cart, standing. Even though he is way too big to be standing in it. He can see that no other kids his size are standing in the supermarket cart, just kids that are half as tall, and he has ripped open the box of cereal with his teeth and he is putting cereal in his mouth, piece after piece. And his mother is pushing him down the aisle in the cart, and he is making a trail of cereal behind him. His mother used to try to get him not to eat the cereal on the way down the aisle, but now she just lets him. She could get him to stop with the trail, but so far she hasn’t noticed. One day a man frightened him by telling him not to eat the cereal. Another time he saw the same man, and the man didn’t say anything. Cereal is Jaspreet’s favorite meal. Sometimes in the morning there are television shows that have a lot of commercials with cereal. He just waits patiently until the television is turned on. He watches whatever is on. If there is cereal in the show it’s even better.
What is the best kind of cereal? The best kind is whatever kind he is eating. Sometimes he eats cereal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. In the aisle, his mother says there will be dried lentils, and there will be chapattis and there will be aloo gobi and there will be cashews and naan bread, which is a bread that he likes. There will be achars. He likes cereal better. Soon they are clumped in a line behind all the people clumped, and his mother hands him a newspaper with a lot of ladies in it. He is distracted by the ladies until his mother is going past the man with the machine where you rub the boxes. This man asks if Jaspreet would like to rub one of the boxes, and Jaspreet looks at his mother, and his mother sighs. What he really wants is to ride on the belt that goes past the man, but he will not do that today, since there are a lot of people behind them. Instead he will put the box on the machine. He runs around the end and stands where the man with the apron is standing, and he takes the box of cereal that he has already eaten most of, and he rubs the box and rubs the box again, and the machine beeps. He wants to do it again.
The man says, “Just once, otherwise you’ll have to pay for it twice.” To Jaspreet’s mother: “He’s a natural.”
He can tell that the man is saying something that’s a joke, except that Jaspreet can’t understand what’s so funny. And his mother, who should understand the joke, doesn’t seem to think it’s funny. She looks cross. Maybe there were other funny things that happened today, but he can’t exactly remember. After the exchange-of-money part, they are out on the sidewalk, and he is carrying the bags because that is one thing he can do that no one else can do. Except that he gets bored. Maybe his mother will be singing something in her feathery voice while they carry the bags back to the house.
Sometimes when they get home his father is waiting in his car out in front of the building, and sometimes he isn’t waiting because he is working late into the night. On those evenings, Jaspreet needs to go to bed without his father telling him a story. Being strong is always the moral of the story. Be strong, you have to be strong, but if his father doesn’t tell him a story, then he is not strong, he’s weak, because there’s a moment at the end of the day when he always knows that something is going on, some joke is being told, except that he doesn’t understand what’s so funny and he wants to be included, except that he’s not included, he’s standing off to one side, no matter when it is, and if it’s during the day, then there are some other kids standing with him, all of them looking like they forgot something important, and then there are those other kids in the hall, whispering. At night, in bed, he can remember all of this, in bed, and it doesn’t matter if his mother is beautiful and his father is strong and drives a fancy car, it only matters that he doesn’t understand the jokes. The feeling is like wanting to break something over his head.
His father is not waiting when they get home, and his mother is short-tempered, and she is unlocking the front door in a way that is not good, and Jaspreet knows not to speak. Instead, he goes into the room where the television is, and he looks at the lone fish in the goldfish bowl and he watches the fish turn and turn again. Soon someone will have to feed this fish. What the fish does is rush to the top of the water, which is good.
His mother calls, and he goes into the kitchen. His mother! She asks him to use the rolling pin, which is a special task. He likes to help roll out the dough for pastries, and he eats some of the dough, and suddenly he is hungry and doesn’t know if he can wait until dinner because he is hungry, and his mother slaps his hand and tells him not to eat all of it yet. But there is a dish of dried lentils, and so he eats some. The chapattis will be better than the raw dough.
Then there is a knock on the door.
Someone is at the door! Jaspreet goes to hide in the television room, beside the couch. He doesn’t know why he goes running to hide. He always does. Sometimes there is a cat living in the apartment, which is the cat belonging to the neighbors, because sometimes the neighbors go away, and Jaspreet’s father brings in the cat. And when the cat comes to stay, Jaspreet tries to pull the tail of the cat, and the cat goes running and hides under the couch.
It’s just his father, who is knocking at the door, and now he is putting his key in the door, and now he is opening the door, and now he is coming inside. His father is strong! His father has special gloves. His father has a beautiful turban, and sometimes his father takes off the turban and Jaspreet sees his father’s hair. One day he, too, will wear the turban. Jaspreet likes to pull on his father’s hair, and he likes to pull on the tail of the cat, and he likes to smell his father’s hair, and his father lets him pull on his hair as long as he doesn’t do it hard. He comes running, out from behind the sofa to where his father is, and he trips over a yellow bulldozer that is right in the middle of the floor, a bulldozer that his mother told him to pick up, and he did pick it up, and then he put it back where it was, and now he has tripped over it. When he dusts himself off, he sees that his father is not alone.
The pale lady has yellow hair, hair that is the color of the sun in his drawing of the sun. And the lady is thin like a coatrack. She is wearing a long red coat. A raincoat. His father gives him a hug and he musses his hair, but Jaspreet doesn’t know why. Jaspreet stares at the pale lady for a long time, until his father tells him he doesn’t need to be staring, and then his father says her name. And he tells Jaspreet’s name to the pale lady, and she extends her hand, and Jaspreet looks at her thin hand. Then his mother comes out of the kitchen, and she is wiping off her hands on a towel, and she sees the pale lady, and then Jaspreet and his mother are staring at the pale lady, and the pale lady is staring back at them. The pale lady tries to get his mother interested in her hand, but she continues wiping off her own hands and then after a while she extends her hand. Jaspreet makes a noise in his throat that is not a word. The noise is like there’s a lot of water in the back of his throat, and he keeps making it, and then he goes over and touches the raincoat of the pale lady and puts his hand in her pocket.
“He likes to see what’s in a person’s pockets,” his father explains.
She nods and she pulls out a piece of fabric. It’s many colors, the piece of fabric, and she gives it to him, and he wraps it around his head.
“Jeanine has come here to meet Jaspreet.” His father is saying something else, but Jaspreet has the colorful fabric and he goes back into the television room, and the pale lady comes with him into the television room. And he’s carrying the fabric, and he is holding it around his head like it’s a turban. He points at the goldfish, and the pale lady, in a surprised way, says the word goldfish, and when he taps on the glass, the fish startles, and he points at it again.
“Do you feed the fish?” She keeps saying everything slowly like he can’t understand, when he can understand fine. Jaspreet goes into the kitchen to fetch the can that has the fish food and when he’s in the kitchen, he can see his mother with her hands on her hips, and he can see his father, who is tugging on his beard. His mother is whispering.
“Did you get paid for this fancy new job? Did you get paid for it? And is it part of your job that now you are bringing home the sexy Americans on a Friday night? From the job that doesn’t actually pay any money to you? The one where you quit your job that paid? Like you think you are working in a movie? Maybe the white lady in the living room will start singing a ballad to you, which you can put in your American movie? You think they actually want you to work at this company? You are not a student anymore and you have a family to take care of. That is your responsibility, and you are fooling around like a child, and your employer from the taxi service is calling the house, wanting to know why you have not come in. Did you even tell him that you are not working there any longer? I didn’t come all this way to raise my son in this country with a lazy husband.”
There’s more, but Jaspreet can’t understand. He can’t understand because the shouting is in the other way of talking that his parents talk to each other, and also sometimes his cousins talk in this other way, and he can understand some things and other things he can’t understand. His father watches his mother, and then when they see that Jaspreet is standing there, they start doing other things, and his father goes to the cabinet where there are special bottles, and he starts pouring from these special bottles. And Jaspreet is underfoot, trying to get to the drawer that houses the can that has the food in it for the fish, and his mother bats him out of the way, but he comes back. She tells him to get out of the way and then when she looks up, the pale lady is standing in the doorway. Everyone remembers that she is there, and so his mother lets him get the fish food, and he holds it up like it’s a trophy.
“Would you care to have a drink?” his father asks. And the lady says she would, and his father goes back to the mixing of special things. Jaspreet leads the pale lady back to the goldfish bowl, and there is the magic feeding, and the little mouth of the goldfish troubles the surface of the water. And they watch the fish until it is time for dinner.
The table is laid for four, and soon the four people are sitting at the table. Jaspreet does not like to sit at the table, and so he takes his chair into the kitchen and he comes back and he stands at his place at the table. His mother gets up and turns on the television because now is the time of a show that has to do with a million dollars. Jaspreet doesn’t like the show that has to do with a million dollars because the man who is on the show looks like he is catching on fire. Jaspreet tries not to look at the television and the man, but he keeps looking over anyway. Whenever the television is on he has to look over at it whether he wants to or not, and he keeps seeing the man, and the man is repeating the same things over and over again. And Jaspreet’s father asks if they must have the television on right now, and the pale lady is looking around the room like she forgot something.
“We have a guest,” his father says.
His mother frowns.
The room smells of spices, just as the kitchen smells of spices, and Jaspreet loves the smell of spices, even if he likes cereal better. The pale lady tries to eat. She is not saying anything. His father asks Jaspreet how his school was today, and Jaspreet doesn’t say anything, he just smiles. Was it good? his father asks, and Jaspreet smiles. Did you make anything? his father asks, and Jaspreet smiles. And how were the other children? Jaspreet smiles.
“Can you at least turn the program down, please?” his father says to his mother. Jaspreet’s mother is pretending that she cannot hear his father, and the man on the show is asking the questions. Are you sure? the man is saying.
Next, his mother is saying something very hard to follow. This is about how she met Father when she was just a child, and how her parents knew his father’s parents, and that is how they came to meet, she and his father, because this is how things were done, and for this reason, his mother is saying to the pale lady, she is meant to pay attention to Jaspreet’s father’s remarks, even when his remarks are not worth listening to. And she is meant to put up with him, even if he decides to quit his job for no good reason at all and begins claiming that he is a leading expert on television shows. Jaspreet understands some of this, but every time he tries to understand something his eyes stray back to the television set to watch the man who is on fire.
The pale lady says, “Maybe it would be better if I left.”
Jaspreet lets out an involuntary squeal. He doesn’t know why.
“No, no!” says his father.
His mother is quiet and looks at the plate of food in front of her. The pale lady is looking at the plate of food in front of her. Jaspreet pushes his chapatti through the sauce like a boat. Everybody is looking at their plates, which makes Jaspreet want to reach out and touch food. That’s what he thinks he should do. He could throw aloo gobi on the floor or he could just go in the kitchen and eat cereal, he could take it into the basement, because everyone is quiet. The pale lady seems to get ready to say something, and then she is saying it.
“Well, it’s true, if you don’t mind my saying, that in our business, the way you make money, most of the time, is through the studios. You need to have a project in place, and then you charge fees to the studios, production expenses. Sort of like with a law firm. And that’s why you have to keep costs down, you know, during the period when you don’t have that many projects in production. And the thing is, your husband has an idea that we like, a great idea, and we’re hoping that we can find a way to develop the project, and then when we do, he’ll be able to make some money at it. The possibility of making money is an incentive for him and it’s an incentive for us, too. See what I’m saying? Until that time, the time when we start charging fees to the studios, it might be a little tight as far as salary goes, that’s true. But I think you should know that Ranjeet’s idea is very good and that everyone in the office thinks it’s a really good idea. Vanessa, who started our company, she thinks it’s a very good idea. So we’re moving forward with it. And that’s really why I came tonight, to tell you that Ranjeet has become a part of the Means of Production family. He’s well liked in the office, he’s a real innovator, and we’re grateful that he brought his talent and expertise to us. Of course, I also wanted to meet Jaspreet.”
The lady turns to look at Jaspreet and smiles, but he can see that she is not happy about the smiling or about the talking. And her smile is not a happy smile. And that’s when he decides that he will throw the aloo gobi on the floor after all. It’s not a decision, really. He feels something coming to the surface of him and he either lets it happen or he gets distracted, but he doesn’t think whether he should do it or not because he has a habit of forgetting. He forgets what came before, and so he doesn’t know what to do, so the action either takes place or it does not take place, and if it takes place it is already decided, but it is decided in his bones and his muscles. And sometimes when these moments of activity overcome him it is like a storm, and he is doing many things, most of them bad things. That is what his parents tell him, that he is doing bad things, and if he continues doing bad things, they don’t know what they are going to do with him. He may be poking someone’s dog with a stick, or he may be painting the windows with nail polish, or he may be throwing things out the window, and now the thing he is doing is he is screaming, not some particular word, he is just screaming, and he is throwing the aloo gobi on the floor, and then he is sweeping objects off the table, like he is sweeping off the dish with the cashews in it, and the plate that has the naan bread on it, this is now on the floor, and soon many things are on the floor, and the shouting rises up like a balloon in the sky, and the objects must be on the floor, and things should be broken, certain plates must be broken, and he is shouting and he is making fists and he is pounding on furniture, and this all happens very quickly, so that his father and his mother don’t have time to stop him before he has made a very big mess. Now his mother is crying and saying, “Oh, my Lord, what is happening to him?” And his father must get up from the other side of the table and he must start trying to hold back Jaspreet, but Jaspreet shakes himself loose and he runs into the television room, and he takes the goldfish bowl and throws it on the floor, which he has actually done many times, and he spits at the man on the television set who is on fire. He doesn’t know why he does anything, but he knows that the pale lady is part of his tantrum.
“We must put him upstairs,” his mother says.
“This is your fault,” his father says. They are not even thinking about the pale lady now, who has risen from the table and is walking toward the closet where the coats are hanging.
“What do you mean? Is it my fault that we do not have the income that we had because you have this mistaken belief that you are now an artist? That is not my fault. And I did not bring home a strange woman for dinner. I went to the store as I always do, and I brought home my son, as I always do.”
“You know nothing.”
The goldfish is wriggling on the floor like a comma trying to slip between two clauses. His father makes an angry gesture in the direction of his mother and then he goes to pick up the goldfish bowl. Jaspreet takes the goldfish into his hand and it is undulating, before he in turn is bundled up by his father. He goes under one arm of his father’s, and his father says, “Give me the fish.”
Jaspreet shakes his head.
“Give me the fish.”
Jaspreet shakes his head.
“The fish will die. Do you understand? Give me the fish or the fish will die. Do you want the fish to die?” Jaspreet is kicking, he is swinging wildly, but he will not open his fist with the fish in it. The women, his mother and the pale lady, are swarming around his father and they are telling him that he mustn’t hurt Jaspreet, and then his mother has caught him by the hand and she is prying open his hand with a fork because she can’t get his hand open, and the goldfish tumbles out of his hand and onto the floor, and he screams at letting go of the goldfish, and his mother shouts, “He killed the fish, you see? He killed the fish because of you. You made him kill the fish, and now we will have to buy another fish.”
“The fish cost ninety-nine cents! That’s how much you know about it!”
She takes Jaspreet’s legs, which are still kicking, and they carry him upstairs by his arms and legs, and his father says that they are going to have to put him in the room, as if Jaspreet doesn’t know which room that is, the room that they are talking about, but he does know, so he kicks and screams harder, because it is the room that doesn’t have anything in it, not a thing, it is just a room with nothing in it. The room scares him horribly, not because it has no lights. Well, it does have a light, which he cannot reach, but it has no television, and it has no fish, and it has no parents in it, it is just scary and quiet, and there is nothing to do, and he doesn’t like to be in there. Sometimes he is in there for a long time because he will not be quiet, and that is where they are taking him, of course. His father is complaining about how they are having to do this more often now that Jaspreet is getting older, and why is it that he is doing it more, is it because he is in America? Would he keep doing this if they were in India? Jaspreet’s mother will not answer him, and soon they have put Jaspreet in the room, which is just a closet, really. Jaspreet’s father is saying, “Jaspreet, you cannot ruin dinner. It is not fair to your mother, who worked very hard preparing the dinner, and it is not fair to me, because I brought home a guest, and you ruined dinner for the guest, and she came a long way from the city to meet you, and you made her never want to come to dinner at our house again. And every time that you do these things, you make us worry. We do not want to have to worry about you. You have to try to help us, rather than hinder us. Do you understand what we are saying?”
He is in the corner, and he is feeling bad at the way his father is talking, and he does not want to reply, nor does he want to say anything.
“Are you doing these things because your mother and I are arguing? Because we do not mean to upset you by arguing. We argue sometimes because we have known each other for many years, and that is what people do when they have known each other for many years. It’s nothing personal and I love your mother, and she is my most perfect friend and my ally. Do you understand?”
Here the parents of Jaspreet try to hug each other in a way that will prove what they are saying. But he is looking at the floorboards in the room that has nothing in it, which is really just a closet, and he is tracing the shape of his hand, palm down, on the floorboards in the room that has nothing in it.
“Many good things are about to happen. I believe this. And we will purchase a new fish. This is my solemn vow. Many good things will happen, and we will purchase a new fish, and when the weather is warmer we will go to the tops of tall buildings and look at the view from these buildings, and we will ride roller coasters, and we will watch the horses run at the racetrack, and I will take you to the Gurdwara, and you will learn to be a devoted son and a devoted Sikh. And we are going to shut this door now, but we are not going to lock this door. Do you understand? We are shutting the door and we are not locking it, and then on the other side of this door, I am going to be making up with your mother. Do you understand what I am saying to you?”
And then the door is closed, and the silence is big and scary. Jaspreet tries to keep the silence on the far side of the room, but it’s like a slow leak. The silence leaks into the room, coming in under the door first, pooling on the floor just inside the doorway, creeping across the floor to the corner where he sits, where he has rolled up his trousers so that the leak of silence will not get on the hems of his trousers. It is like the leak in the basement when the rain is heavy, and soon it will be all the way across the floor. And it will begin to get deeper. He likes the basement, and this is something he can tell himself in the silence, that he likes the basement, he likes the basement, he likes the basement, there are many things in the basement that are his friends. He likes the sound of the thing in the basement, which is a boiler. He likes that sound that the boiler makes, and he likes it when there are clothes strung up on a line in the basement. And he likes the bin full of old sheets and he likes the stacks of old magazines where he can look at pictures. He feels sure that these clothes strung up are like the other place that his parents talk about, their home, which he believes is a place with many colors strung up on lines, and in that place the houses are all full of cereal. That is what he thinks, because he is trying to think. He tries saying things, even though he does not like saying things, because it is too quiet in the room, and so he says glue stick a few times. He is just trying it out, he is trying out saying glue stick over and over, as if it is a question. Somebody must be listening at the door. Otherwise there would just be too much silence. He puts his ear to the floor because he wants to hear what is being said downstairs, but he is not sure that anything is being said. He will say things, he will try to say things, he will not be silent, and he will not make more silence in the world. He will say things. No one likes silence. He will do better, because his father loves him and his mother loves him and he will do better.
Finally, he pushes open the door, which is guarded by no one. And it is night! Night is beautiful! And everything in his house is where it is supposed to be! There is his parents’ room, and he walks on the carpet because he likes the feeling of the carpet in his parents’ room on the bottom of his feet. And then he goes across the hall and he goes into his room, in which there is a bed and a few banners of baseball teams because his friends at school have banners of baseball teams. He wants to be like his friends, doing the things that they do. He can hear a clock somewhere. He can hear the faucet downstairs. He can hear the distant sound of the television, which is the sound of his family, the sound of a television drifting is the sound of his household, and when there isn’t the sound of the television, then something is wrong. His mother is somewhere cleaning something. He goes to look out the window because what he sees when he looks out the window is other people looking out of their windows, and then he is part of the group of people who are looking. That is good, because the street is beautiful, and the sky at night is dark pink, until the sun comes up, and people are all looking at other people who are looking, except that he can see out the window that there is his father, and his father is walking up the street with the pale lady, and they are near the stairwell that leads to the elevated trains. On the first step of the stairs, his father leans down and he embraces the pale lady and then he puts his lips on her lips, and there is the sound of the television overheard from downstairs, and then there is his father, up the block, kissing a pale lady.