The Mistress of Spices (15 page)

“I wanted to ask you something,” Kwesi says, coming in with a cardboard tube tucked under his arm. “Would you mind if I put something up in your store window?”

I am taken aback. Is it allowed? I am not sure.

Indian people do it all the time of course. Just look. All over the window, glossy ads of upcoming cine-star nites, MADHURI DIXIT IN PERSON. Neon-hued flyers inviting you to a DISCO-BHANGRA PARTY, FIVE-DOLLAR-ONLY COVER, MANNY IS YOUR DJ. BHAVNABEN’S FRESH
CHAPATIS
AND
DHOKLA
VERY REASONABLE
PRICE. TAJ MAHAL TAILORING, CALL THIS NUMBER FOR BLOUSES STITCHED OVERNIGHT.

But Kwesi, an outsider?

“What is it?” I ask, buying time.

“Here, look.” He pulls it from the tube and lays it carefully on the counter, eye-catching in gold and black, a poster. A man in a belted uniform and bare feet, arms fisted, leg raised to the side in a powerful kick. And under it in simple letters, KWESI’S ONE WORLD DOJO, then the address.

“I knew you were a warrior.” I am smiling.

He smiles too. “A warrior. I guess you could say that.”

“Have you been doing it long?”

He nods. “Fifteen years, easy.” He sees my intrigued eyes. “You want to hear how it started?” And even before I’m done nodding he has begun, settling his elbows comfortably on the counter, Kwesi who loves a good story, who has the telling of them in his bones.

“I was in bad shape back then, heavy into the drug scene, dope, smack, blow, you name it. I lived from high to high, did a lot of crazy things to support the habit. That’s how I had a run-in with the man who would become my
sensei
. I challenged him to a fight—I used to think of myself as quite a fighter in those days—but he knocked me out in less than a minute. Next day I made some enquiries, went to his dojo after classes with a gun, planning to make him pay. He opened the door and I jammed the gun up against his head. But he wasn’t scared. He said, Why don’t you come in, I’ve just brewed some Japanese tea, you can always shoot me afterward. He wasn’t faking, macho stuff like I might’ve pulled in his place. He really wasn’t afraid. I was so amazed I put
the gun away and followed him. One thing led to another and I ended up staying six years. Can you believe that?

“I never did develop a taste for that green stuff, though. Give me a strong cup of Darjeeling anytime.”

We are laughing but there’s a raw edge to it, a laugh that knows how easily it could have turned to weeping. A laugh like this, when you share it, loosens the knots in the heart. And so I wipe my eyes and tell Kwesi, “You’re welcome to put up your poster here. Though frankly I’m not sure how many people would be interested.”

We look around the store. Two plump middle-aged women in saris argue the respective merits of Patak and Bedekar pickles. An old
sardarji
in a white turban brings a bottle of Original Nilgiris Eucalyptus Oil Excellent for Coughs to the counter for a price check. Someone’s children play catch around a bin of
atta
. A long-haired youngish man in Ray Ban glasses and tight Levi’s comes in, but he gives Kwesi a suspicious scowl and disappears down the aisle of lentils.

“I see what you mean,” Kwesi says dryly. He starts to roll up his poster. “I’ll find another place for this.”

I am sorry to have disappointed him. I search out a large box of uncut black Darjeeling, the best kind, and pack it for him. “My compliments,” I say. “No no, the story was more than worth it.” I walk with him to the door. “Come again anytime. Good luck with your dojo and your life,” I say, and mean it.

One morning he comes into the store with his mother’s list and hair that stands up straight and stiff as brush bristles making him taller, this teenager I almost do not recognize. But then I look some more and it is Jagjit. “Jagjit how are you?”

He spins around, his hands already fisted. Then sees me and lets them go loose.

“How d’you know my name?”

Jagjit sullen in T-shirt and baggy Girbaud jeans and untied laces, the uniform of young America, speaking its staccato rhythms already.

“You came into my store with your mother three-four times, maybe two and half, three years back.”

He shrugs turning away, not remembering. He has lost interest already.

“Couldn’t be that long. I’ve only been here two years.”

“Only so little?” I make my voice admiring. “Who would think that, looking at you.”

Jagjit doesn’t bother to answer. He knows old women, grandmothers aunts mothers, forever saying Don’t don’t don’t. Don’t spend so much time with your friends. Don’t miss any more school, they gave us two warnings already. Don’t go out so late in the night, it’s not safe.
Hai
Jaggi is this why we brought you to Amreekah.

I watch him fill his basket too fast and clatter it down on the counter even though he got only half the list. I watch him tapping his foot because he has places to go.

“Are things better now at school?”

He gives me a hostile stare. “Who told you?”

I say nothing. Jagjit so busy always fighting always putting
on toughness like a second face, look into my eyes. With me you need not struggle so.

A long-ago expression like shyness hovers over his lips, then is gone.

“Yeah, school’s cool.”

“You like studying?”

He shrugs. “I do okay.”

“And the other boys, they don’t give you trouble?” Flash of a smile, showing his teeth sharp as chisels. “Nobody messes with me no more. I got friends.”

“Friends?”

But even before he nods I see them in his eyes, the boys in their blue satin jackets like midnight embroidered with that special sign, their black berets, their hundred-dollar Karl Kani boots. Thick glittergold chains, bracelets with names engraved, a diamond ring for their little finger.

Yeah, the big boys
, Jagjit says inside his head.
Sixteen and already driving a droptop Beamer a
‘72
Cutty a Lotus Turbo. Carrying in their deep pockets sheafs of dead presidents
—what you need, rogue—
peeling off C-notes, even a couple of G’s
—no problem, blood, plenty more where that came from.
And hanging on their arms the girls, so many girls, with their wide lacquered eyes
.

Boys rolling and taking a deep drag and passing it on amused to a kid standing nearby. And his mouth opening in wonder
.

For
me?

My friends
.

The big boys who stood at the other end of the school grounds watching and watching, and one day they came over and shoved the others away and said Fuck off. Brushed me clean of dirt and bought me an
icecold Coke in that afternoon blazing like brushfire and said We’ll take care of you
.

And since then I never had no trouble. They’re like my brothers, better than my brothers
.

I see his eyes glisten gratitude, Jagjit all alone whose parents were too worn with work and worry in a strange land to hear him, Jagjit who went home each day from America to a house so steeped in Punjabi how could they help. Who held his cries in until red swam behind his eyelids like bleeding stars.

Jagjit remembering:
They took me places with them. Bought me stuff, clothes shoes food watches Nintendo games stereos with speakers to make the walls shake, even things I didn’t know yet to want. They listened when I talked and didn’t laugh
.

They taught me how to fight. Pointed out the soft fleshy parts where it hurts most. Showed me how to use elbow knee fist boot keys and yes, knife
.

And in return, so little. Carry this packet here, drop off this box there. Keep this in your locker for a day. Stand on the corner and watch for
.

Who needs mother father school? When I’m older, maybe fourteen, I’ll be with them all the time. I’ll wear the same jacket, carry deep in my pocket the same switchblade with its snake-flick tongue, see the same bright pull of fear in the girls’ eyes and the boys running
.

Inside me thoughts whirl like dust-devils. I cannot breathe.

O cinnamon strength-giver, cinnamon friend-maker, what have we done.

And one day they’ll give it to me, cold and black-shining and heavy with power in my hand, pulsing electric as life, as death, my passport into the real America
.

I clasp my fingers to stop the shaking. Clove and cardamom that I scattered on the wind for compassion, how did this happen.

“Jagjit,” I say through cracked lips, a voice with the confidence leached out of it.

His eyes dreaming, not-seeing even when he turns toward me.

“You are such a handsome boy, growing so well, it is a joy for an old woman to see. I have for you a tonic to make you stronger even and more smart, no charge, just wait one small minute while I get it.”

He gives a short scoffing laugh, a sound trying to be so grown-up it twists my heart.

“Shit I don’t need no smelly Indian tonic.”

Jagjit slipping away from me, moving toward the door into the maelstrom never to return, so I must go down quick into his past and use whatever I find.

“Jaggi,
mera raja beta
.”

A shudder goes through him at the childhood name, smell of his mother’s hair in a simpler time, her hand rubbing his back, smoothing nightmares away into the warm Jullunder night, and for a moment he wishes—

“Okay but make it fast. I’m late already.”

In the inner room I fill a bottle with elixir of
manjistha
to cool the blood and make it pure. Rush a prayer over it, missing words because he’s at the door already yelling “Hold on dude” to someone outside. Hand it to him and watch him toss it in the bag and wave a careless Bye now.

A motorcycle roars to life and he’s gone.

And I left alone to walk stiffly back to the counter, to lower
my aching head into my hands, to wonder in dismay what went wrong. To ask myself over and over, was it him, was it his parents, was it America? Or that other question so devastating I can frame it only phrase by broken phrase.

Spices is this. The way. You have chosen. To. Punish me.

This morning when Geeta’s grandfather came into the store, the spring gone from his step, he did not speak of Geeta. But his whole face was asking Have you yet and When will you.

Therefore tonight I prepare myself with ginger for my first foray into America.

For as you know, when I woke in this land the store was already around me, its hard, protective shell. The spices too surrounded me, a shell of smells and voices. And that other shell, my aged body pressing its wrinkles into me. Shell within shell within shell, and inmost of all my heart beating like a bird.

Today I plan to stretch my wings, to crack perhaps these shells and emerge into the infinite spaces of the outside world. It frightens me a little. I must admit this.

And so I call on ginger.

Root of gnarled wisdom,
ada
in your hide of banded brown, help me in this my seeking. I weigh your speckled solidness in the hollow of my palm. Wash you three times in lime water. Slice you translucent-thin as the curtain between waking and dream.

Adrak
ginger, be with me.

I drop the slices in a pan of boiling water, watch them rise and sink, rise and sink, in a slow whirl. Like lives caught on karma’s wheel. Steam fills my kitchen, clings haze-heavy to my lashes so it is hard to see. Steam and that wild smell like bamboo grass torn and chewed that will stay in my sari long after.

Golden ginger used by the healer Charak to relight the fire that simmers in the belly, may your bright burning course up my sluggish veins. Outside, America is flinging itself against the walls of my store, calling in its many-tongued voice. Give me strength to answer.

I wait a long time for the spicesong, but it does not come.

Ah Tilo, bending the rules and sliding through them, what did you expect.

I pour the liquid, color of palest honey, into a cup. Raise it to my mouth. The pungence is like a blow to the throat. It makes me gasp and cough. When I force myself to swallow, it churns in my bowels, rebelling. Wanting out. But I hold it down with all my will.