The Mistress of Spices (18 page)

But maybe I have only dreamed all this, rocking through the night between wishing and not-wishing. Maybe it is only next morning now, for a truck rumbles up to the door and two men in navy overalls with REY and JOSE stitched in red over their pockets are pounding on the door shouting “Delivery!” Or is it karma, that great wheel black as death which, once set in motion, cannot be stopped?

The men say, “Where you want it?” Say, “Sign here this line, you know English, yes?” Say wiping their brows, “Hey lady, that was hot work. Got some Coke or better some cold
cerveza?”

I give them mango juice in ice with mint leaves floating for coolness, for strength that lasts the long day. I chew at my lip waiting for them to wave me
Gracias
and
So long
and take off in their truck which jiggles and stutters over the potholes. Finally the light blinks its green eye at them and I am alone with my carton from Sears.

I try to cut through the tape, a voice inside me calling Hurry hurry, but my knife is unwilling. My knife stained like tears of accusation. It twists in my hand, wanting to leap away. Two, three times I nick myself, almost. Until at last I put it away and rip at the cardboard with fingers. Scrabble through pellets like spongy snow, lift aside Styrofoam sheets brittle as sea salt. How much time it takes, my heart worrying its bars like a caged animal, until at last I catch its slippery hardness in my hands and pull so it rises up gleaming.

My mirror.

All the spices watching me, their eyes one eye their breath one breath united in disapproval, silently asking
Why
.

Ah if only I knew. There is a feeling inside me like someone walking on thinnest ice, knowing at any moment it will crack, but unable to stop.

Here is a question I never thought to ask on the island: First Mother, why is it not allowed, what can be wrong with seeing yourself?

The afternoon sun is a flash on my mirror, making the store so blinding bright even the spices must blink.

Before they can reopen their eyes I have lifted down a picture of Krishna and his
gopis
and hooked it into the waiting nail, with a
dupatta
draped carefully over it.

Mirror, forbidden glass that I hope will tell me the secret of myself.

But not today. It is not time.

Why not Tilo our foolish Mistress for what then did you buy it
.

Out of the silence their voice, startling. A question flares like an eye inside me,
Why are they speaking
—then closes in on its dark, suspicious self.

But already I have forgotten it in the joy that floods my whole being. Scoffing yes, annoyed yes, but talking once again to me, my spices.

Ah dear ones, it has been so long.

Who knows when and how a mirror may be needful, I tell them, my voice light as a wind’s kiss on a floating thistle.

I feel their attention, curious and grave, like sunlight on my skin. Holding back their power to incinerate. Waiting on judgment.

Perhaps the Old One was mistaken? Perhaps it is not too late for us after all?

Inside my wild caged heart I am saying this over and over: Spices trust me give me a chance. In spite of America, in spite of love, your Tilo will not let you down.

“This one,” says the American. “I want this one.”

“Are you sure,” I ask, dubious.

“Absolutely.”

I smile with the irony of it. Tilo he is as certain as you were on the island, and as little-knowing. So now you, like the Old One, must take on the cautioning role.

We are standing in the aisle of snacks. The American holds up a packet of
chanachur
on which is written LIJJAT SNACK MIX VERY HOT!!!

“It really is,” I say. “Why not try one of the milder brands. What are you trying to prove.”

He laughs. “My machoness, of course.”

It is Monday. The store is officially closed. For Monday is the day of silence, day of the whole white mung bean which is sacred to the moon. On Mondays I go to the inner room and sit in the lotus asana. When I close my eyes the island comes to me, coconut palms swaying, soft sun floating on the evening sea, smell of wild honeysuckle in the sweet heavy air, so real I could weep. I hear the thin call of ospreys as they dive for salt fish. It is a sound like violins.

The Old One comes to me also, and around her the new girls whom I do not know. But the gleam on their faces is heartbreaking-familiar. The gleam that says
We will change the world
.

On Mondays I talk to the Old One. For Monday is the day for mothers, the day they should know all their daughters’ doings. But lately I do not tell everything.

As I will not today.

This is what happened today: The lonely American came to the store. In daylight. For the first time. Why is this significant, you ask.

Night draped in her glamor-scarf of stars often deceives—especially when we want something just so. It is only in the impartial light of day that we are forced to learn the daytime reality of men.

I sensed his coming long before he stood at the locked door of the shop looking at the dog-eared CLOSED sign. His body had been a column of heat shifting through the busy streets, his gait firm yet gentle as though it were not concrete but the earth’s skin he stepped on.

Ah my American, waiting part in dread and part in desire I said to myself, Perhaps now I will see that he is only ordinary after all.

Standing outside in stillness, did he feel me too? Pillar of ice frozen on the other side of the door, and inside me all the old voices clamoring
Don’t answer
. Clamoring
Have you forgotten, today is the day consecrated to the First Mother, when you must speak to no one else?

I think he heard them. For he did not knock. He turned away, my American, giving me a chance. But at the first step he took backward, I opened the door.

Just to look. That is what I told myself.

He didn’t speak. Not words. Only the gladness in his eyes telling me he saw something more important than my wrinkles.

What are you really seeing?

American, I am gathering the courage to ask you this. One day soon.

And for the first time inside his mind I caught a swaying, like kelp deep undersea, almost invisible in salt shadows.

A desire. I could not read it yet. I knew only that somehow it included me.

I Tilo who had always been the one who granted wishes, never the one who was wished for.

Gladness tugged at the corners of my mouth also, though we Mistresses are not given much to smiling.

Lonely American you have passed the test of day. You have not dwindled into commonness. But how will I rest until I discover this your desire.

I pushed at the door to open it more, expecting resistance. But it swung easy and wide, like a welcoming arm.

“Come in.” Nor did the words stick raw and jagged in my throat, as I had feared.

“I didn’t want to disturb,” he said.

Behind us the door glided shut. In the hushed, listening air of the store my voice floated, a bell of glass.

“How can one be disturbed by those one is happy to see.”

But inside me a question, grating as an eyeful of sand: Spices are you with me truly, or is this a new game you are playing.

“There’s something I have to warn you of,” I say as I hand my American the
chanachur
.

Inside my head: No Tilo you don’t, why not let it be. After all he chose it himself.

Temptation, soft as a silkbed. It would be so easy to let my body sink into it.

No. Lonely American, later you must never say I used your ignorance.

So I continue. “The main spice in it is
kalo marich
, peppercorn.”

“Yes?” But his attention is mostly on the packet, which he is smelling. The spices make him sneeze. He laughs, shaking his head, lips pursed in a silent whistle.

“Peppercorn which has the ability to sweat your secrets out of you.”

“So you think I have secrets.” Seeming-unconcerned, he picks up an awkward pinch of the snack, pieces falling from between fingers. Puts it in his mouth.

“I know you do,” I say. “Because I have them too. Every one of us.”

I watch him, not knowing if the spice will work now that I have told its power. This is a new way I am going, and in front all is bramble bush and dark fog.

“I’m not doing it right, am I,” he says as more
chana
drizzles from his fingers, studding his shirt front yellow and brown.

I have to laugh. “Here,” I say, “I’ll make you a cone like we use in India.” From under the counter where I keep old Indian newspapers, I shake out a sheet. Roll it up and fill it.

“Pour some onto your palm. When you get really good you can toss it up and catch it in your mouth, but for now lift your hand to your lips.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says with mock humbleness.

So now my American is sitting on the counter swinging his legs and eating hot snack mix from his paper cone as though he’s done it forever. His feet are bare. He took off his shoes at the door. (His shoes, handmade of softest leather, whose shine comes
not from the surface but somewhere deeper. Shoes Haroun would have loved and hated.)

“For respect,” he said. “Just like Indians do.”

“Not when they are in a store.”

“But you’re not wearing any either.”

So many months, so many people coming and going, and only he noticed. Is it foolish to feel pleasure like an electric tingle in my dusty soles?

“I’m different,” I tell him.

“What makes you think I’m not?” He smiles that smile I am learning to watch for.

My American’s feet, I decide, are beautiful. (And his face? Ah already I have lost the distance needed to discern that.) But his feet, the toes slender and free of hair, the curve arching just enough, the soles pale ivory but not too soft: I can imagine holding them in my hands, rubbing their hollows with the tip of a finger—

Stop Tilo
.

He eats with gusto. Strong white teeth crunch unabashed into fried garbanzos, yellow sticks of
sev
, spicy peanuts in their red skin.

“Mmmm, great.” But he is sucking in air, little cool sips of it to lessen the burn on his tongue.

“It’s too hot for a white man’s mouth. That’s why I told you to try something else. Maybe I should get you a cup of water.”

“And kill the taste,” he says. “Are you kidding.” And sips some more air, but absently. Something distracts him.

After a moment he says, “So you think I’m white.”

“You look that way to me, no insult intended.”

He half smiles at that but I can see his mind is puzzling
something else. I don’t try to read his thoughts. Even if I could. I want instead for him to give them to me.

“If you tell me your name maybe,” I say, “I’d know what you are.”

“Is it so easy, then, to know what one is?”

“I never claimed it was easy.”

He eats in silence until the
chana
is gone, shakes his head when I offer more. He opens up the cone and smooths out the paper on the counter as though he is planning to use it for something important. There is a sharp crease, displeasure or pain, between his brows. His eyes, lidded like a hawk’s, look past me at what only he can see in the air.

Was my question too intimate, asked too soon?

He stands up, dusts off his pants briskly like he’s late for somewhere else.

“Thanks a lot for the snack. I’d better get going. How much do I owe you?”

“It was a gift.” I hope my voice does not give away my hurt.

“I can’t keep letting you do that,” he says, the words stiff as a wall between us. He puts a twenty-dollar bill on the counter and walks to the door.

Tilo you should have waited. Now you’ve lost him.

His hand on the doorknob. I feel it as though it were fisted around my heart.

Peppercorn where are you in my time of need.

He twists the knob. The door glides open, treacherous-smooth, not a sound even.

I think, Don’t go please. You don’t have to say anything you don’t want to. Just stay with me awhile.

But I cannot speak them, the asking words that would lay
bare my need-full heart. I who have until now been the giver of gifts, the Mistress of desires.