We each gritted our teeth, called out the person’s weaknesses, narrowing in on an unsightly piece of flesh. We were spectators, and watched one another’s bodies as we did the television. Was it Rancière who said looking was the opposite of knowing? Staring at the square screen all these weeks, we had wanted to know everything but we had only seen the surface, the impressive smile that might have been false all along. What did our own bodies hide?

  Within this undressing and revealing of our hidden parts, we matched our bodies against one another, arm along arm, leg along leg, breast along breast. A swirl of pubic hair like wildfire. Nakedness so near the bone we could smell death. Perhaps that was why when we picked at the areolas, trying to unravel the seams of the human body, we felt a sudden burst of life, an ancient arousal we felt acutely for the first time. The erotic possessed its own kind of cruelty. Within pleasure was a deeper loneliness.

  We wondered at the strange mechanics of the body. Was each orifice meant to be prodded? How deep could one reach before tearing through the body? What then, on the other side—eternity?

  In radical compassion, we cared for the body in order to liberate ourselves from it. Now we bore the weight of all our limbs. Leela wanted each of us to inhabit ourselves fully, feel these sensations pulsing within our temporary encasements. She smoked cigarettes, she told us, in order to feel the dark phlegm in her throat, the release within her chest as her worries turned gaseous, her brief existence windswept. She returned from trips to the hillside with wild mushrooms, and we watched her take measured bites, scraping a precise fraction before lying under the shade of a banyan tree, hands behind her head, her eyes closed. It felt like expansion, she said, and we wondered if we would have enough restraint, if hunger or curiosity would overtake us, and we would eat a whole mushroom, losing our minds entirely, becoming everything.

  She viewed these indulgences not as shortening life but as deepening the moment, the way light could fall through a keyhole of a locked room, which could never be opened except at a nondescript hour of the day, when time and light distilled into a brief and perfect key.

  Now we could see Leela had more of an artistic eye. The suffering all around us, our own, this parched land that some might have called hell, was ripe material for her work, which was a way of living. One night after three Paraiyar students were beaten to death in the neighboring town after consuming beef, we followed her as she dragged cricket bats all the way to the shoreline to where the golden statue of Gandhi stood. His bald head glowing, encrusted with salt from the sea.

  Leela, insect-thin, stood with an armful of cricket bats, each triple the size of her bicep. Diminutive and quick-footed, she positioned herself in a proper batting stance. In all our games of American baseball, she was our best batter, but she had never played against our nation’s copper-lined legacy.

  Leela had not anticipated an audience, and maybe, as she was swept away in her fury, she did not see us hemmed into the darkness. If we had a video recorder, we would have wanted to keep this memory that no one would call newsworthy, except perhaps to bring attention to the moral depravation of this generation’s youth. No one would see it as a performance of grief.

  Young girl with bare, fleshy feet versus the founding father, half naked, made out of copper. David versus Goliath. Ambedkar versus Gandhi. Paraiyar versus Baniya. Leela versus Avvaiyar. Who would win?

  Though we tried not to think of one another’s caste, we knew who was Lower, Upper, and everything in between. Some of our grandparents spent a lifetime as shadows for others’ wealthy grandparents. They walked behind them, heads bent, never raising their eyes to the sun. And the rules were passed down to us. No touching certain people. No touching certain things touched by certain people.

  Before organized religion, a Paraiyar was simply the one who beat the drum and carried messages. He was welcomed to the royal court, his words as valuables as gems. It must have been fear that changed the properties of an occupation, marked the man who brings news or the one who skins animals as untouchable. Perhaps the kings and priests fearful of their own mortal lives shunned anyone who named death, touched the flesh of it.

  We had heard the story of Baseema daring Leela to eat a dead lizard killed by a motorcycle. This was before the drought, before even insects possessed a nutrition we craved. Leela brushed off the flattened thing, briefly toasted under the heat of the tires, and ate it expertly but with no enjoyment. “Paraiyars are fearless because we have nothing to lose,” she said to Baseema, who had never heard Leela speak of her own caste. “The rest are cowards believing in their own unspoiled goodness.” Later Baseema would tell us how the British carried that word, Paraiyar, from Madras to their cold coast, where it became rootless, lost all sense of history. Pariah. The outcast formerly known as the messenger. Weren’t those who brought the truth always exiled or killed?

  Once after we divided the little meat from a mouse, Brinda wept when she realized the mouse had been pregnant, and Leela told us that Hindus ate vegetarian not because they thought all life was sacred but because they thought somehow they could stay pure. “Imagine eating a vegetarian meal after killing off some beef eaters,” she said, and we thought of how a mouse and all her future progeny could not feed us, how we could suck on the tiny bones for an entire lifetime and feel a grief that would never be subdued.

  On the shoreline, we watched Leela slam smooth wood into the bare metallic feet and then move her way upward, leaving no dents or bruises, except to her own skin. In the morning the cricket bats would look as though they were chewed by vermin. We could not understand how she possessed the strength to injure water-resistant, athlete-proof equipment, and how in the beating heart of her rage, we had sensed a generosity, as if she was giving everything she had. She was sacrificing a piece of herself to unleash that fury.

  Part of us wanted to stop her from flogging an old man, even the image of one. With his loincloth and yarn spinning, he was the upholder of tradition, caste being one of the deepest traditions. The father of our patchwork nation, where thousands died in every nook and no one blinked an eye. Sanctioned killing by a mob, Special Forces, poverty, the government. Billboards about overcrowding filled up the air space like newly built condos: We need to make room, find ways to ease the burden.

  On television, there were debates on whether watching television made viewers want to procreate. Men in suits and dark-framed glasses argued over the state of contemporary lust. All those sexy ads of beautiful women spraying perfume, bare-chested men climbing out of pools, and images of perfectly light-skinned families eating breakfast with spoons. What could be more irresistible than the idea of a chubby pale child of your own slurping muesli?

  They could not have foreseen the image of a young woman fighting Gandhi, or been able to pinpoint who was more defenseless: the statue or the woman. We kept waiting for the unexpected, the potent and inexplicable intervention of the divine that we had seen so often in television dramas. When a mother would pause from her weeping, right before she was about to end her life, and see her son, missing for twelve years (after a mysterious train accident), walking up to her, all grown and too tall for her to compress in her arms. Or the wife who would call out to the goddess Durga as she was pushed by her husband from the seventh floor of her apartment complex, and in the middle of her falling would turn into a goose.

  We waited for Leela’s bat to harden into an irrevocable steel blade and cut the statue in half. We would watch in an ecstatic revulsion as it tipped over in defeat. Without his image, who were we—still servants to the British, fighting off imperialism? His ink face smiled at us from our currency. Would he want us to trade him in for all those beauty products that promised to lighten our insides?

  We had wondered if, like Gandhi’s grandniece, we would have slept naked side by side with him as he experimented with restraining his sexual desire and cleansing his system. A service for the nation. We’d slit our wrists to prove the milk color of our purity.

  In the aftermath of the fire you now sleep in Mr. and Mrs. Ahmed’s bedroom. The air stale with the smell of burnt coffee and Vicks. In the room it’s easy to lose your bearings, and hours can pass without you knowing it. You are no more than a cloud, you repeat to yourself, except you’re heavy with rain, stirring with lightning and thunder.

  Sal places your tea and breakfast on the nightstand and reminds you to eat. When you don’t, she holds the spoon to your mouth and tells you to swallow and says, Very good, like you’re a child again.

  * * *

  On your way to the bathroom, Judith floods you with questions: What was he like? Did he cut his toenails? Clearly, he was crazy, right? Are you crazy for letting him stay? Was he handsome in that slightly malnourished way? Did you ever think about him without his clothes on? Did he ever walk around without his clothes on? What did he talk about with you? Are you angry with him? How about Rosalyn? Would you rather she stay silent forever? Shouldn’t you be more upset with him than with Rosalyn, since he burned down the house? Didn’t you say your mother was cremated? So doesn’t it seem apt that the house is cremated as well? Why are you calling yourself houseless? What kind of name is Cheeze in the first place? Why do you think Cheeze did it? Is he alone now wandering the streets? Do you want to cut a giant onion? Will that help release your negativity?

  * * *

  After the success of her solo, Sal now works on a new exhibit inside the house. She asks you to destroy the kitchen and you smash the cupboards and make them into tiny chairs for mice that you hope will eat the recent crumbs of your memories—you standing on the asphalt as your mother’s archive glows with heat until all the objects pass the point of existence, your throat gritty with ash and your aunt Zee’s voice repeating like a soundtrack, Can we die twice?

  * * *

  The four of you are together in one house on different planes of reality. Rosalyn sleeps in the basement, watching reruns of Soldiers’ Diaries. Sal works downstairs, painting over the pistachio-colored walls. Judith tests out a new occupation as Sal’s manager and supervises the labor. On the top floor, in Mr. and Mrs. Ahmed’s room, you reach under the bed and find nothing except a cream of dust.

  * * *

  Petrov tells you his ancestors were refugees, so he knows what it’s like to lose a home. He lets his whole face sag in commiseration. You’re trying hard to act normal, so you ask Petrov about his son, his ex-wife, and his three-legged dog, though you’ve never asked about them before.

  * * *

  You don’t want to talk to Rosalyn ever again, and since she has gone silent, just like her father, it shouldn’t be a problem.

  * * *

  Everything feels filtered through a Distant-Scene, so much so that you go back to the manuscript and replace television with its literal translation:

  The Distant-Scene was an unblinking, blind eye, an ever-changing box of images. And we controlled it. The channel and volume buttons fit neatly into the space of our fingertips, and we felt then, so keenly, the minute, potent force of our own will and indecision. With only a single bulb in our rooms, the Distant-Scenes brightened our space, washing us with light in the middle of the evening. The images on the screen carried a vitality, an almost translucent glow. When we saw the image of a chair, somehow an actual chair looked plain, dulled by reality. Lifeless. Of course, none of us expected to speak to our furniture, but we were aware of a slight shift in our bearings. Even after we turned off the Distant-Scene, our eyes kept returning to the blank screen, wondering what we were missing, as if our everyday lives had become more muted.

  You keep Distant-Scene for a few days before changing it back. Good translators keep themselves out. But for some reason, you can’t, your fingerprints are all over.

  * * *

  Late at night you walk around the neighborhood, taking a long detour, hoping to run down your mind before you reach your mother’s, your grandmother’s, your great-grandmother’s house, bandaged with yellow warning tape, still standing even after the fire. On your hands and knees you search through the rubble, with no one else to blame if meteorite-like chunks of the roof pummel you or your sole pair of lungs collapses.

  On this scavenge you find a Prince record melted into a soundless dish. You wrap it up in cloth to bring with you, along with a warped pair of glasses that your mother said belonged to a descendant of Geronimo. All these things, all imbued with your mother.

  On an episode of Soldiers’ Diaries, a young civilian returns to his house in the occupied area after a year of imprisonment and discovers it inhabited by another family. His belongings replaced. Family portraits of strangers hang from the wall. The young man is treated like a guest. He stares wide-eyed into the camera. Son, don’t you know you don’t live here anymore? a voice asks.

  * * *

  At work, Lucille returns from maternity leave with her six-month-old. She and the baby share the same wet laugh and unwieldy tilt of the head. The baby, who is being raised genderless and nameless, sits on the rec room table wrapped in a yellow cloth and admires everyone with an intensity that you find disconcerting. Petrov leans over and coos closely, baptizing the baby with his spit. You wave from afar.

  Everyone asks the baby a question and tickles their belly.

  Baby, do you like this planet?

  Baby, what do you want to be when you grow up?

  Baby, are you terrified whenever you open your eyes?

  Baby, do you remember where you come from?

  Like a wise alien, Baby opens a gummy mouth and stays quiet. Drools.

  Lucille takes over Ricky’s desk. For the time being, she says, and arranges photos, plants, to-do lists so it looks like a well-decorated terrarium. When she sits in his chair, testing the cushion, you feel a pressure in your chest.

  Before she went on maternity leave, she got drunk at a work party and kissed you. She probably doesn’t remember it. She was on a temporary break from her husband and she’d blabber about one thing or another to you, because what she missed most was spending hours with him, filling each other up with all these useless details about the day. And isn’t that love, the accumulation of the ordinary regurgitated into someone else?

  She rolls over and offers you a caramel candy and you suck it slowly until you can think of something to say.

  You ask her what it’s like to have a baby.

  Ineffable, she says. A one-of-a-kind experience.

  She massages the baby’s limbs and says, I think you’ll make a good mother.

  You press your knees to your chest and imagine turning into a fetus.

  * * *

  After your mother died, you felt her absence, especially around your relatives. Sitting at the kitchen table with your aunt Zee, you were hyperaware that she was your mother’s sister, and you were your mother’s daughter, and in order to reach each other, you would both need to cross a valley of death. But in an instance of grace, your stomach rumbled, and your aunt answered the call by making grilled cheese sandwiches that you ate side by side, holy square testaments to the decision to continue humanly existence, as if your mother was just away on one of her long trips and the two of you were biding your time.

  During your lunch break, you sit outside with your aunt on a bench, her gyro untouched on her lap. The days are growing colder, and she wears a jacket that reaches all the way to her knees like a blanket.

  I told you to clean. I didn’t think you’d burn down the whole place, she says, and pokes at her meat.

  You didn’t order any food because you’re fasting, which she seems to understand. You haven’t told her exactly what happened, and she hasn’t pressed you for details. Part of her probably doesn’t want to know, since when does knowing ever change the facts of the matter? The house burned down. You and Rosalyn are alive. She knows what she needs to.

  Has Ros started talking again?

  No.

  She shrugs. I thought you and Ros could help each other, but I see it’s just the blind leading the blind.

  She rubs her eyes with a napkin from her purse, wiping mascara. I blame Bobby. Whenever they leave the country, this family falls apart. She plops a pill on her tongue and swallows. They always preferred animals over humans. I wouldn’t be surprised if they never come back.

  Humans are animals.

  The worst kind of animals.

  She takes a few bites of her gyro and stores it away. Nowadays your uncle folds and unfolds a piece of paper.

  Origami?

  More like crumpling and uncrumpling a piece of paper.

  Your aunt is not in her best shape, her shoulders are in a perpetual slump, and her neck often tucks to the ground, bowing to gravity. She has asked a few doctors if silence could be a genetic disorder, and they responded with a silence that made her feel even more ill.

  On the sidewalk a pigeon pecks at morsels of bread and plastic. Your aunt tears off some of her gyro and feeds it to the bird, which unknowingly consumes part of a cow.

  She’s trapped in the thoughts swarming in her head, and you don’t know how to lead her to safety, somewhere outside herself. You call her name, and slowly, as if from a trance, she turns like she’s seeing you for the very first time. She cups her hand against your cheek. You had acne when you were a teenager, didn’t you?

  You nod.

  I remember it was a difficult time for you. She passes you her smudged napkin and you blow your nose.