The Blue Bedspread Read Online Free Page A

tight and through the four horizontal cracks at the top, between the glass and the window frame, the rain keeps squeezing in with the wind.
    So we keep moving away from the windows until we sit real close, Father and I, like two friends huddled in the rain.
    It’s the day after the Parent-Teacher meeting in which Miss Lopez suggested that Father take me to the white building on Russell Street near Jamuna Cinema so that I got cured.
    ‘He’s a nice boy,’ she said. ‘He needs to get over this thing,’ and she ran her hand through my hair as if she were looking for a place, a soft place in my head. ‘Usually, parents can be of great help in all this, they can make a great difference,’ she says.
    And Father looks at her, then looks sideways at the blackboard where there’s nothing, no teaching today, except for a world map rolled up. I keep looking at the stapler and the Scotch tape on Miss Lopez’s desk, feeling Father’s guilt pushing at me.
    ‘I’ll certainly take him there, Miss Lopez,’ says Father. ‘You are right.’
    It’s an apartment building, as in American films, Venetian blinds on windows, complete with a lobby and an elevator, plants lined up along the wall. There is a brass plate with names written, who is on which floor. There is a guard, in a blue suit, his buckles shine, he is also wearing a cap and he’s watching the rain drum on the steps that lead to his chair. He asks Father where we are going and Father shows him something written on a piece of paper and he points to the stairs. Third floor, he says.
    We climb the stairs up to the third floor where it’s quiet and dry. Father looks funny in his raincoat, my hair is wet, I can feel the rain squeak between my toes in my shoes.
    We wait in the lobby, dripping onto the green carpet. Once again, like in the taxi, we keep moving from one place on the sofa to another so that the carpet doesn’t get all wet in one place. We are embarrassed but it doesn’t matter since there’s no one present, just two red sofas that stretch from one end of the wall to the other. And a money plant in the middle of the room.
    I cannot recall how long we waited but it must have been quite a while since we were dry when she walked in and I had begun to shiver a bit. We were the only two people in the lobby.
    She brings out a book, a brightly coloured book. It must have been printed in a foreign country since the colours are bright and sharp, the pages so smooth they reflect the light from her table lamp.
    ‘What do you see?’ she says.
    There’s a street lamp, I say, and there’s an empty road. There are small houses on either side. I stop, my chest heaves, I can feel the breath driving through me like an express train. They are coloured red, green, blue, silver and yellow. I am trembling now, Father is looking at me one moment, at the table lamp the next. Each house has two windows and a door, I say.
    I am lying on the carpet, the words grow and grow until they fill up my lungs and refuse to come out, they gulp down my breath making my lips quiver like in winter.
    Father offers me his hand, I hold it and get up. She gives me another glass of water, this time it’s chilled, she turns the page of the book.
    Now I can see two pigeons flying, their wings half-covering the setting sun between brown hills. There’s a lake with a girl rowing in a boat, her pigtails so long they almost touch their reflections in the water. There’s a little red fish staring at the girl, its body speckled with tiny black stars.
    ‘You don’t have to say it this time,’ she says, tearing a page from her exercise book.
    It’s like the sketchbook in school, with neither squares nor lines. Blank and white, nothing to guide you as you write or draw. The paper isn’t exactly white, it’s rough, some expensive kind of parchment I have never seen before.
    ‘Write it down,’ she says and puts her arm around me, I can smell her perfume, like milk chocolate mixed with roses, the red