“Yes.”
“And you still sat at the table after.”
“Yes.”
She put her forehead to his. The film kept going. The bed stayed hot.
“Now it is not only a cable mummy in a doorway, Bhaiya. Now it is Aparna Mummy against the tiles, saying another man’s name, and you in the hall with maths in your hand.”
Sanjay did not deny it.
On the screen, someone cried out.
In the room, the cologne of a man who was not there seemed to arrive before he did, the way it used to, before the study, before the lamp, before the door that had not been shut.
Puja did not let the steam-story sit alone for long.
She pulled back just far enough to see Sanjay’s face.
“That makes four that we know of.”
Sanjay blinked, as if she had changed the language of the house.
“Four.”
“Haan, Bhaiya. Count.”
She tapped his chest, once for each name, cruel and calm.
“Papa. You saw that yourself. Payal. Two a.m. Red light. She was riding him like a wife who still wants it.”
Tap.
“Arvind. Just now. Tiles. Petticoat. His mouth on her. You with the notebook.”
Tap.
“College boyfriend. I already told you. Before marriage. She sat on the cot and said his name like it still had heat. Stay-back after class. That was not a rumour. That was her mouth.”
Sanjay’s throat moved.
“That’s three.”
Puja’s eyes flicked to Sonam, to Akriti, then back.
“Four. The neighbour. Not the boy at the gate. The other one. Mama ka friend. Older. He used to come with paan and that laugh. She told me one night when she was angry at me for chatting. She didn’t say it like a lesson. She said it like a slip she decided to finish.” Puja’s voice dropped. “He took her cherry. Before Papa. Before the college one even, if I put the years in order. She said it hurt and she still went back the next week. She said nobody in this family knows how to count the beginning.”
Sanjay sat up half an inch, dried mess pulling, cock still shameless against her.
“Aparna Mummy told you that.”
“She told me to study. Then she told me she was not born in a kitchen. Then the boyfriend. Then, when I didn’t look away, the neighbour. Mama’s friend. Her first.” Puja swallowed. “So four that have a face. Papa. Arvind. The college man. The one who took her first. After that the number is a dark room. We don’t know who else. We don’t know how many times. We don’t know if Papa knows Arvind. We don’t know if Arvind knows Papa only as a friend who marks homework.”
The television threw another moan across the bed.
Sonam’s voice was thin.
“Four is already a house.”
Akriti laughed once, no humour.
“And we were hiding bookings like we invented sin.”
Puja looked at all of them, nipples still tight in the blue flicker, sister and witness both.
“No one knows how many our mummys and papas have been with. That is the real sentence. We sit here counting sisters and brothers and clips and last night, and the generation before us already ran the same film with the doors half shut. Aparna Mummy. Anjali Mummy. Kalpana Mummy. Your papas. Maybe more Arvinds. Maybe more neighbours. We only have four names on one woman because one son stood in a passage and one daughter listened on a cot.”
