Cheers

The year is 1995, and across cities, idols of Ganesha are making milk disappear. Devotees are flocking to temples with bowls of milk to see the miracle for themselves. Amma and I won’t go. We never go anywhere.

At home, Appa, my father is making his whiskey disappear. Balding, bitter, angry, thighs fat and hairy, penis fat and long. He often talks about disappointments, growing up with no money, always being the one with potential, never the one living up to it. “My mother didn’t have milk for me in her breast,” he weeps. An old song whines and skips on the stereo, one he listens to every day before his neck plops, drool crawls to his ear.

Alcohol in flat, squat bottles stinks up the house, and Amma pulls the doors and windows close. Open doors invite eyes of neighbours, who lash their tongues, speak titillated, excitement throbbing in their throats from living next to an alcoholic and his crumbling family. 

Appa, a husk of a man he was, a token adult with no part in my creation. An accountant for an ice cream factory, he drinks before, during, and after work, blood eyes permanently glazed. “Why are you so sad?” Amma asks. He labours to lift his head, opens his eyes, and blinks.

I have no friends, and Amma knows no other ammas. Persona non grata wherever we go. Amma feeds me the same story each night—he wasn’t always like this, your Appa—raising her voice to drown his wails in the other room.  

One day, Appa offers me a drink he says is Pepsi. Whiskey burns my throat, my chest. He explodes into laughter. When Amma returns home, she sees me mirroring Appa’s footwork under the influence. She inserts two dry fingers down my throat to lure vomit. Amma, a lonely, panicked bird, then lies on the floor and says, No, the single yellow bulb in the room orbs in her eyes. 

Everyone knows us, of us, even the refuse collector who knocks on all the doors but ours. So I lug the reeking, leaking plastic bags of eggshells and tea leaves and ends of vegetables to the street corner where cows come to get their fill, reaching the good bits by chewing through the bags.

Amma rejects dinner invitations from those who still remember us, want us in their lives. She believes they only want to see how far we’ve fallen and how much further we can. Sometimes Amma and I forget there’s a third person in the house. 

On a Monday evening, Appa drinks and drinks and drinks, more than he ever has. He’s abnormally agitated, mumbling something about how his entire life people have cheated him: out of promotions, out of money, out of a life he hoped he’d have. “We love you. We’ll always love you,” Amma says. Appa scoffs, keeps drinking. She begs, tries to pluck the bottle from his hand(s). “It’s Vishnu’s birthday, won’t you wish him?” She pulls me to the front, and I act like I don’t care that he doesn’t know how old I am.

Appa stumbles past us and out of the house and starts urinating on the road. When someone objects, Appa calls him a sister fucker and gets punched, the hinges of his mouth almost unscrewing. Amma goes to break up the fight, but he shoves her. Don’t pretend like you care. He keeps falling, trying to swing his fists. Neighbours gather to dissuade the man. The poor man’s not himself. The man disengages, anger blunted by pity, knuckles bloodied and drying. 

Appa’s face is an exploded cooker, yet he reaches for the man, now amused. What’s wrong with you? Amma screams, body trembling under her purple nightie. We somehow bring him inside; his one foot’s missing a slipper. Amma looks like she’s about to cry. Appa’s punching the walls, the sofa, breaking empty bottles, saying he’s going to kill the man. I duck under the dining table and stay there. Appa calls my name, and I stop breathing. Amma holds his chin. Shh, she says, like indulging a child. “What do you want?”

 “I want a drink.” He’s breathing so hard his words are whistles. Amma goes to the bathroom. I hear a bottle clink in the flush tank where she hides them. Appa’s hands shake as he snatches it from her.

“Cheers,” he says.

Amma extends a glass. He looks baffled, then obediently fills it, and when Amma’s face puckers at the first sip, that seems to calm him. 

“Cheers,” he says, and puts his whole mouth around the bottle.

Kailash Srinivasan is a writer residing in Vancouver. His work has appeared in The Coachella Review, The Selkie, Antilang, Oyster River Pages, Sidereal, Queen Mob's Tea House, Bad Nudes, Lunch Ticket, OxMag, Going Down Swinging, Regime, Tincture, and others. He has been shortlisted for Into the Void Fiction Prize and longlisted for the Bath Short Story Award and Bristol Short Story Prize. He's currently at work on his first novel.