The Weight of Heaven Read Online Free PDF Page A

finished. “Shall I grill
    you on some questions?”
    “Grill me? Like a fish?”
    “Very funny, Ramesh. Now listen, time to hit the books, okay?”
    Th e We i g h t o f H e av e n
    2 3
    She caught the gleam in his eye. “And no more puns. No, I’m not
    explaining what a pun is. You’re taking a test tomorrow in geography and math, not in joke-making.” She scanned the pages of the
    chapter again, formulating her first question. “Outside of Asia, what
    is the world’s tallest mountain range?”
    “The Andes,” he said promptly.
    “Right. And what is the height of Mount Everest?” she asked,
    even as she wondered, Who cares? Why do they make schoolchildren in India memorize all this?
    “Eight thousand eight hundred and fifty meters,” he said. “Correct, Ellie?”
    “Correct.” She had to smile at the triumphant enthusiasm she
    heard in his voice. “You lied to me. You’re not a duffer in geography,
    at all.”
    He made a face. “I am. There is one boy in the class who is getting the higher marks in geography than me. Always hundred out
    of hundred, he’s getting.”
    “But that doesn’t make you a duffer. You just have to—”
    “My dada say I’m a duffer,” Ramesh said. There was something
    in his voice Ellie couldn’t quite pick up on, as if he was defying her
    to contradict his father, even while hoping that she would.
    But before she could react, Ramesh was talking again. “Ellie,” he
    said. “I had a card for you. But Ma said not to give it.”
    Ellie cocked her head. “What card?”
    The boy suddenly looked bashful. Ellie noticed that he was
    avoiding her eye, staring at the blue table. “A Mother’s Day card.
    We made them in school. I made one for you.”
    Something crept up the base of Ellie’s neck. Yesterday had been
    Mother’s Day. She had made herself forget the fact. All day long she
    had glanced at Frank, willing him not to acknowledge it either. To
    her immense relief, he hadn’t. “I—” She struggled to find the right
    tone, unwilling to let Ramesh know how rattled she was. “Thanks,”
    she said. “But speaking of school, let’s get back to—”
    2 4 Th r i t y U m r i g a r
    “How did your boy dead?” It took her a second to realize that
    Ramesh was asking about Benny, and she was shocked. He had
    never asked her such a personal question before. But then again, she
    had never really spent time alone with the boy. “Die,” she corrected
    absentmindedly. “How did your boy die?”
    Too late, she realized that Ramesh was waiting for her to answer
    her own question. At this moment, Ellie hated this peculiarly Indian
    inquisitiveness. And if this had been an adult being so nosy, so brutal
    in his directness, she would have bristled, wouldn’t have tried to
    cover up her outrage. But the fierce, intent expression on Ramesh’s
    face was throwing her off stride. “He was sick,” she said.
    A look of such adult understanding crossed the boy’s face that
    Ellie felt naked beneath it. “Typhoid,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
    “No, not typhoid. A, a, rash. Do you know what a rash is?”
    Ramesh glanced at his welted, mosquito-bitten hands. “Like
    this?”
    Was it like that? Ellie tried to remember. She had been half asleep
    when she had first seen the horrifying purple that had covered Benny’s face within a matter of hours. At midnight, when she had finally
    put her agitated, restless son to bed, his face had been as lovely and
    smooth as the moon. At four in the morning, woken out of an inexplicably deep sleep by a single cry, she had hurried to Benny’s room,
    turned on the night lamp near his bed, and seen an unrecognizable
    boy sleeping in her son’s bed. Even now, Ellie could remember how
    her stomach had dropped, the fear that gripped her, an instantaneous, icy-cold fear that she had to consciously battle with, beat
    down, so that Benny would not see in her scared face what she didn’t
    want him to see. She had run her fingers over his body,