The Mistress of Spices (16 page)

Never before have I pitted my strength against a spice’s. Never before driven my desire against duty.

Slowly the resistance lessens, is gone.

Tilo now that you have your way, why this sadness, this foolish wish that you had not won?

A prickling starts in my throat, my tongue moving in hot nimbleness, pushing regret aside.

Later Tilo. Later there will be time.

From the pot I lift out the heat-bleached slices. One by one I bite down, feel the fibers catch in my teeth. The top of my skull is lifting off.

When the sting fades, new words begin to come to me, new gestures which will let me move unseen through the streets that coil labyrinthine around the store. Inside my heads plans and promises pound.

Geeta wait for me. I am ready I am coming.

But first there is the matter of clothes.

When I came to America I was given no items for outdoor
use, just the frayed saris, color of stained ivory, in which I greet my customers.

I cannot blame the Old One for it. She wanted only to lessen the temptation. To keep me safe.

But now I must attire myself for America.

And so today at the
brahma muhurta
, the holy moment of Brahman when night reveals itself as day, I take poppy seed,
khus khus
that sticks to my fingertips unwilling as wet sand, and crush and roll it with jaggery to form afim. Opium, the spice of seeming.

Then I set it on fire.

I can tell the spices are not with me. Three times the khus
khus
ball sputters and goes out, three times I have to chant the flames back into being. And then it burns fitfully, its odor sour and heavy, reluctant. The rising smoke catches in my throat, making me cough till tears come.

But I am getting better at it, bending the spices’ will to mine. This time the heartsickness is less. And the guilt which I will not look in the eye.

Is it always like this when we push into the forbidden, which some call sinning? The first step wrenches, bone and blood, rips out our breath. The second too racks but already it is not so strong. With the third the hurting passes over our bodies like a raincloud. Soon it will not give us pause, or pain.

So you hope, Tilo.

The smoke winds around me, forms itself into a web on my skin. The clothes take shape.

All I know of American clothes is what I have seen customers wear. Glimpses of passers-by. I weave them together into a coat gray as the sky outside. A wisp of a blouse showing the neck. Dark pant legs. And an umbrella, for through the dimness before
morning light comes, I can see outside the dull silver strings of falling rain.

But already I know I cannot wear these clothes to Geeta’s.

The seeming-spells are hard to work even when all is well. And today, the spice against me, I feel the power draining away until my brain is dry. And behind it the spice, waiting for my attention to falter. For the spell to break and set it free.

Afim
, why do you fight me when it is not for myself I am doing this?

The spice’s silence is like a stone in my heart, like ash on my tongue.

Through it I can hear back to long ago, the Old One laughing bitter as bile. I know what she would say were she here.

Hasn’t that always been your trouble Tilo, you who think you know best, who choose to forget that the highest motives lead fastest to doom. And are your motives so high, or do you help Geeta because you see in her forbidden love an image of your own
.

The clothes thin as fog are tearing already as I lift my hands to my face. I know they will not help me any further, the spices.

And so I am forced to my next plan.

Outside the rain is cold and hard. It stings like needles as I turn to lock the shop door. Under my palm the knob is slick and stubborn. The hinges stick, mutinous. The store’s muscles wrestling with mine. I must put down the package, the gift I am carrying to Geeta, to tug and wrench and kick, until at length I can bang the door shut. The sound is sharp as a shot, terminal. I am left shivering on the step.
On the wrong side
, says the voice in my brain. Damp seeps into my bones, settles like silt. I run my hand over
the door, which looks so alien in outdoor light, and am struck by the sudden vertigo of homelessness.

I’ll be back soon as I can
.

The door’s nicked green face is mute as a shield and as obdurate. It is not appeased by my promise.

Perhaps it will not let me in when I return?

Stop Tilo, don’t create snakes out of ropes. You have enough to worry about.

The air smells like wet animal pelts. I breathe it in, shrug myself deeper into my coat. I will not be afraid, I tell myself. I open my umbrella, shape of a giant toadstool, over my head.

Resolute, I step down the deserted street, pushing through rain like sheets of frosted glass until I see the sign SEARS, until a door slides open all on its own like the mouth to some magic cave, inviting me in.

You who lounge lazy through Saks and Nordstrom, who pick your ennuied, everyday path through Neiman Marcus, can you understand how I love the anonymity of this my first American store, so different from my spice shop? The blandness of neon lights that fall evenly without shadow on shiny Mop & Glo floors, on shiny carts that roll along pulling dazed shoppers behind. How I love the aisles and aisles of things piled folded hung high, and no one to say “Don’t touch,” or ask “Yes, what do you want.” Aloe vera lotions for youthfulness and false silver platters shinier than real; fishing rods and chiffon nighties transparent as desire; Corning Ware casseroles and video games from Japan; new improved Cuisinarts and tubes of Neet hair remover; a whole wall of TV sets talking at you with different faces. The headiness
of knowing you can reach out and take and take, even though you don’t need.

I am drunk with it. I who for a moment can become an ordinary old woman feeling through a fabric peering at a label trying a color against my ridged and freckled skin.

Before I know it my cart is full.

A mirror. A color TV so I may see into the heart of America, into the heart, I hope, of my lonely American. A makeup kit with everything in it. Perfume of rose and lavender. Shoes, several pairs, in different colors, the last ones red as burnished chilies, high heels like chisels. Clothes and more clothes—dresses pant-suits sweaters, the intricate, wispy mysteries of American feminine underwear. And last of all a bed robe of white lace like raindrops caught in a spider’s web.

Tilo have you gone crazy is this why you broke the rule of boundary and stepped into America. For this
.

That voice, caustic as acid splashing. My face burns with it. First Mother, I think guiltfully, then realize it is my own voice. And am therefore more ashamed of my frivolity.

I abandon the cart in an aisle of hair dyes, taking only what I know I must have. Clothes to wear to Geeta today. And the mirror, though what I will need it for I cannot yet tell.

No Tilo, not that most dangerous of forbidden things
.

But this time I do not listen.

I look instead at the cashier women, their sad, sagging underarms, their colored hair with the roots showing. And wholly innocent of interest, their gaze scanning your face, like the red electric eye of the checkstand is scanning the items they are dragging over.

The cashier women who inside their heads are dreaming of minks bought at Macy’s, of high school sweethearts coming back, this time to stay, of cruises to Acapulco on a party boat. Already as their mouths say “Cash or charge,” say “You want it delivered, cost you twenty bucks extra,” say “Have a nice day,” they have forgotten me. Because inside their heads they are spinning it on the
Wheel of Fortune
, beautiful as Vanna in her star-spangled mini and even thinner.

O the freedom of it. Almost I envy them.

In a public rest room that smells of ammonia I pull on my no-nonsense pants and polyester top, button my nondescript brown coat all the way to my calves. I lace my sturdy brown shoes, heft my brown umbrella in readiness. This new-clothed self, I and not-I, is woven of strands of brownness with only her young eyes and her bleached-jute hair for surprise. She tries a hesitant smile which resettles her wrinkles. She loosens her muscles, letting go, and the seeming-clothes made of
afim
and mindpower rise off her skin like smoke, stream from her new sleeves to hang in hieroglyphs she cannot read.

For a moment she wonders if they spell a warning.

“Thank you,” says the woman to the spice and is not surprised that there is no answer. She puts the receipt for the mirror, which later someone will bring to the store, into her coat pocket. For a moment a vision hovers at the edge of her eyes: the freeze-cold border of the mirror’s mercury against her palm, the blind-silver flash of the moment when she will—. But she shakes it away. Geeta is waiting, and her grandfather also. Carefully she
picks up the package she has carried all the way from the store. She is thinking so hard about what she must do that she does not even notice when the automatic doors open their glass jaws to let her out.

Outside at a bus stop crowded with other strands of brown and white and black she will get into line, will marvel that no one even raises their eyes, suspicious at her moving through the air of America so awkward-new. She will finger in pleased wonder the collar of her coat, which is better even than a cloak of disappearing. And when the bus comes she will surge at it with the others, her blending so successful that you standing across the street will no longer know who is who.

With a great belch of smoke the bus lets me out in front of Geeta’s office and roars away. I stand awhile, craning up in wonder at that glittery tower of black glass. On the lower rectangles I see, shimmering, a face.

Mine?

I move closer to look but it ripples away, this face I have never examined. Have never till now felt the heart-hammering need to. When I retreat it reappears floating, the features remote and unreal, elongated into mystery.

Wisewoman shaman herb-healer, come to make things right.

The receptionist thinks differently.

“Who?” Her magenta lips purse around the pellet of the word. “Do you have an appointment? No?” In their armor of mascara her eyes rake my cheap coat and boots, the package I have brought all the way from the spice store wrapped in old newspaper. My umbrella pooling dark wetness like pee on her carpet. Her spine is stick-straight with disapproval.

“Then I’m afraid I can’t help you.” She smooths her skirt over trim hips with magenta-tipped fingers, turns with finality back to her typing.

But I Tilo did not step over the threshold of prohibited America, did not risk the spices’ retribution to go back so easily empty-handed.

I advance until I stand directly in front of her desk, until her typing stops and she looks up with annoyance and yes, a flicker of fear under the spiked lashes.

“You must tell Geeta I am here. It is important.”

Her eyes say, Crazy bag lady, say, Maybe I should ring for Security, say finally, Heck, why should I get involved. She jabs at buttons on a machine on her desk and speaks in a manicured voice.