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Chelsea Handler Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang (epub
Brit Brinson [Dia of the Dead Dia of the Dead (epub)
Cody Goodfellow [Radiant Dawn Radiant Dawn (epub)
Cate Tiernan [Immortal Belove Immortal Beloved (epub)
C J Busby [Deep Amber 01] Deep Amber (retail) (epub)
Carl Ashmore [Time Hunters 01 The Time Hunters (epub)
Drew Hayes [Super Powereds 02 Super Powereds Year 2 (epub) i
Beth Harbison [Shoe Addict 02 Secrets of a Shoe Addict (epub)
Cara Lynn Shultz [Dark World The Dark World (retail) (epub)
Bethany Kris [Filthy Marcello Lucian (epub)

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.”“We were not babies anymore when you came back.”“No,” Baba Singh said quietly.“Nearly men.”Manmohan shook his head, remembering.“The last thing you told me before leaving was that I was spilling too much water.I was bringing it to Bebe.You told me that I was wasting it.”“I had forgotten about that.”“I never did.”“Your mother needed a full pot,” Baba Singh said, gently bouncing the baby on his knees.There were things he would also never forget.He wished it could be different, but maybe they all had something like that, something that stuck, like field burs hooking into their clothes.“It was a challenge.It kept you from spilling more.”Manmohan bit the inside of his cheek, feeling small again.Baba Singh bent down and touched his long nose to Darshan’s.The baby’s eyelids fluttered momentarily and Darshan studied his grandfather’s looming face with unruffled intensity.Then drowsily he closed his eyes again, falling seamlessly from consciousness back into sleep.~ ~ ~At one year of age, before uttering his first word, Darshan took his first steps.Crawling did not come naturally to him.It was almost painful for Manmohan and Jai to watch him struggle across the floor on one knee and one foot in a crawl-limp.The motion was not only awkward, but it was very clear how much Darshan hated the slow pace.This was the only time Manmohan had seen his son’s expression, usually lively with laughter, colored red with impatience and frustration.Walking was better suited to Darshan.It allowed him to more easily map out his environment as he peeked into rooms and drawers and closets, to more quickly traverse the space of the living room, and to carry toy blocks over to the corner where he liked to arrange them in relative neatness.Jai had great difficulty putting him to sleep at night.His legs flailed like motors long after he closed his eyes as he battled his drowsiness.The boy had a need for movement that sometimes seemed more primal than the need for even food and water.It was not until Darshan reached two years of age and his increased dexterity allowed him to undertake more challenging activities that Manmohan thought he understood why.While polishing one of his police boots before his assigned patrol of their neighborhood in Tamavua, Darshan struggled with the other.Dipping a rag into the black polish, he clumsily imitated his father’s circular hand motions across the leather.When Manmohan was in the garden picking cucumbers, Darshan also tugged at the vegetables, holding each one up triumphantly before depositing it on his own small pile.If Manmohan opened a book, Darshan climbed onto his lap and stared patiently at it as though he too should read.He seemed to achieve a profound sense of satisfaction with each turn of the page, like living was a series of tasks requiring immediate completion, even if he did not yet comprehend the reason why those tasks needed to be accomplished.His mind was consumed with action, with always doing.It was not surprising then that Darshan developed a particularly keen interest in tools.Though his first word was bebe for his mother, his second sounded much like the word hammer.The word was not always attributed to an actual hammer but was his term for all tools, even the rag with which Manmohan polished his boots.Darshan often stood beside his father to peer into the toolbox, carefully examining the level, the cable cutters, pliers, and manual crank hand drill.He frequently watched his father use them: a trowel to dig holes in the garden, or the hammer to replace a slat in the fence out back.Each instrument allowed for a more productive means to do things.Soon he began to participate, clutching the trowel with Manmohan’s help to dig holes for seeds and wrapping a hand over his father’s grip on the hammer, staring at the nail as it sank deeper into the wood with each blow.So it was that when Manmohan happened across a novel set of plastic toy tools in Suva’s local general store, he brought them home.They had been quite expensive, rare, and manufactured to appear real.The handles of the hammer, shovel, and screwdrivers were painted a wood-brown grain, their heads as well as the plastic wrench, coated gray to look like carbon steel.Delighted with his new tools, Darshan used them for every imaginable repair in and around the house.He banged the knobs on the stove with his hammer as well as the corners of linoleum flooring that had started to peel away with age.He tried to tighten bolts under the sink with his wrench while Manmohan fixed a leak, he dug holes for cucumber seeds with his shovel, and where he thought necessary attempted to adjust screws with his screwdriver.Jai—who had noticed that Darshan was tucking his tools into the waistline of his trousers because they kept falling out of his pockets—tailored a cotton sack in which he could comfortably carry them all.This she soon regretted.Slung over the boy’s head and across his shoulders, it was difficult to pry away.Darshan wore it always: during meal times, in bed at night, and often during bath time where it would need to be forcibly removed.His favorite game was asking Manmohan to arrange bricks one by one into a square in the backyard.Smiling, he would pound each brick with his plastic hammer as though nailing it in.When the structure was done, a piece of wood placed over the top for the roof, he would point at it and say, “Home.” The game never became tedious.Manmohan would dismantle the bricks in the evenings, but the next day Darshan would insist they rebuild.He and Jai assumed the boy would eventually tire of it, but their son continued to erect his little houses well into his third year.Just as Jai concluded that perhaps Darshan might one day become a master architect, he became suddenly and seriously ill.His movements one morning were sluggish, his face the gray color of clouds, his forehead alarmingly hot, his body wracked by shivers.“Get the doctor,” Jai told her husband.The examination was brief.“His temperature is too high,” the doctor said gravely.Jai rubbed her son’s hand as though rolling a snake of dough.“What does that mean?”The doctor shook his head.“I do not know what else to say.There is nothing I can do.Keep his body cool and wait for the fever to break.”Manmohan and Jai sent word to Baba Singh, who came as soon as he received the message, and they all waited, together.Most days they sat silently in Darshan’s room, wishing for some miraculous shift, for some invisible healing hand to revive the boy [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]