I moved.
My hips found a rhythm that was not kind. The sound of it filled the small room — skin, wet gel, her broken breath. She abused me in two languages while she took it.
“Yes, son— ah— madarchod son— you like your aai’s gand? You like that your friend opened it and you came second? Cheap boy. My cheap boy. Harder. If you cum too fast I will laugh in your face.”
“Grab,” she gasped, when she could still make orders. “Boobs. Grab them. Pinch. Pull the nipples. I want it to hurt the nice way. And spank. His slaps were polite. Don’t be polite.”
I reached under and filled my hands with her breasts, hanging, heavy, still faintly marked by teeth that were not mine. I pinched. She cried out. I pulled the nipples away from her body and she pushed her ass back onto me as if the pain were a wire connected to the place I was buried. I spanked the other cheek, once, twice, the flesh shaking around my cock, red coming up in the lamp.
“Again. Madarchod again. Mark me where a saree will hide it. School Monday. I will stand at the blackboard with your hand on my ass under the cotton.”
That was when her eyes, half-open, wet, found the wall.
The photograph.
Old. A cheap frame. Me at nineteen, Sonam at fifteen then — no: a later one we had never taken down, Sonam already grown, twenty-one, Holi colour on both our faces, her arm around my neck, my hand at her waist, two children of this woman smiling in a house that had not yet learned the jali. Sonam’s mouth red with colour. The kurti wet. The shape already there if a person had eyes.
Aparna saw it while I was in her.
The laugh that came out of her was wild. Unmothered. A little crazy with cock and night and the empty bungalow.
“Look,” she panted, pointing with her chin because her hands were fists in my sheet. “Look at that while you fuck me. You and your sister. Sweet photo. Sweet beta. You look at her waist in that picture the same extra second you look at mine in the kitchen. Don’t shake your head, I have known since her chest came. You think I am the only filthy one in this family?”
“Maa—”
“Say her name and I’ll stop. No? Then take it.” She slammed back onto me, brutal now, using me. “Your aai’s gand and your sister’s photo on the same wall. What a house. If she saw you now she would die. Or she would watch. I don’t know that girl anymore. Those tits in that Holi kurti — you think I didn’t see you see. Fuck me and look at her. Be honest for once in your respectable life, madarchod. Look at Sonam and come in my ass.”
I looked because she pulled my hair and made the line of my eyes.
The photograph did not move. Sonam smiled forever with colour on her cheek. Below the frame her mother grunted like an animal and told me to pinch harder, to spank the other side, to pull the nipples until she said tulsi, and she did not say tulsi.
Dirty talk ran out of her like sweat.
Son. Madarchod. Aai’s hole. Friend’s sloppy seconds. Sister’s waist. Bank-boy. Terrace-thief. Pi me, fill the back, I already drank the front, give this also. She mixed Marathi when English broke — ghal, zada, mazya gandit, tuza friend nantar tu, family pack. She laughed when I hit a depth that folded her elbows. She swore when I grabbed both breasts and used them as handles. She looked at Sonam’s frozen smile and blew a kiss at the frame, insane, filthy, and said, “Sorry baby, your bhai is busy in your aai.”
