The Mistress of Spices (21 page)

In the hospital room it is so peaceful, the pain comes and goes orderly as waves. By now he is almost used to it. Only wish Veena could be here, it would be nice to have someone’s hand to hold on to when outside the sky turns inky purple like
that
night, but they took her home to get some rest. “Don’t worry,” they told me. “Worry will keep you from getting better. We’ll take care of things. Try to rest.” But what am I to do with the questions rattling in my skull-box,
will I walk again, how to make a living now, the right eye, is it totally gone, Veena so young and pretty left with a crippled scarred husband
. And over and over,
Those two
haramis,
did the police get them, may they rot in jail
.

Months later in his apartment when he hears of the acquittal he will scream, a high, moaning, on-and-on animal sound, will
bring down the crutches, hard and shattering, on whatever he can reach. Dishes, furniture, the framed wedding photos on the wall. Down and down and down, not hearing Veena begging him to stop, shaking her off. Sweet crash of window glass, the stereo he had saved for so many months to buy caving in easy as a skull under his blows. Until Veena, sobbing, runs to the next apartment to call Ramcharan and his brother.
Calm down bhaiya, calm down
. But he throws himself at the two men, clawing and screaming in that not-human voice that seems to come from a place up behind his eyes, the left one red-veined and bulging, the right one now a dark, shrunken pit. Until finally they grab him from behind and force him onto the bed and tie him down with a couple of Veena’s saris. He stops shouting then. Doesn’t speak another word. Not then, not in the coming weeks, not in the Air India plane when neighbors finally pool together ticket money to send him and Veena back home, for what else is left for them in this country.

O Mohan broken in body broken in mind by America, I come back from your story in pieces, find myself assembled at last on the chill floor of the shop. My limbs ache as after long illness, my sari is damp with shiver-sweat, and in my heart I cannot tell where your pain ends and mine begins. For your story is the story of all those I have learned to love in this country, and to fear for.

When I can stand again I make my unsteady way to the newspaper bin.

I must know.

Yes, the stories are there. Peeling page off page, going back into the months and years, I discover them slowly. The man who
finds his grocery windows smashed by rocks, picks up one to read the hate-note tied around it. Children sobbing outside their safe suburban home over their poisoned dog. Woman with her
dupatta
torn from her shoulders as she walks a city pavement, the teenagers speeding away in their car hooting laughter. The man who watches his charred motel, life’s earnings gone, the smoke curling in a hieroglyph that reads
arson
.

I know there are other stories, numerous beyond counting, unreported unwritten, hanging bitter and brown as smog in America’s air.

I will split once again tonight
kalo jire
seeds for all who have suffered from America. For all of them and especially Haroun, who is a hurting inside me, whose name each time I say it pulls my chest in two. I will lock the door and stay up all night to do it, through dimness the knife rising and falling steady and silver as holy breath. So that when he comes tomorrow evening (for tomorrow is Tuesday) I can hand him the packet and say, “Allah ho Akbar, may you be safe, in this life and always.” As penance while I work I will not think once of Raven, I Tilo who have been so self-indulgent already. All night instead I will whisper into air purifying prayers for the maimed, for each lost limb, each crushed tongue. Each silenced heart.

The day passes so slowly it is like being underwater, every movement a huge effort. The light seems dim and green, filtered. Through it the few customers swim lazily to the shelves, then
back to lean languid elbows on the counter. Their questions are tiny bubbles breaking against my ears. My limbs too give in, grow seaweed-slippery, swaying to some submarine adagio only they can hear.

Only my mind beats, more furious more helpless than ever.

So much of a Mistress’s life is waiting, is inaction. Who would have thought it. Not I, who wanted all the answers at once, who wanted domination immediate as a drug shooting up my veins.

Once upon a time the Old One said, “Power is weakness. Think on this, Mistresses.”

She said such things often. “Greatest happiness brings greatest loss.” “Stare at the sun, bring darkness upon your eyes.” Others which I have forgotten. She would give us the morning to ponder them.

My sister Mistresses would climb the granite cliffs to find a quiet place. Some would sit under the banyans or find a cave mouth. Silent, they would turn their attention inward, try to see.

But I uninterested in riddles spent the time playing in the sea, chasing rainbow fish. If for a moment I grew quiet, if I stopped to stare at the shimmery horizon, it was only to look for my serpents, hoping.

In the afternoon the Old One would ask, “Mistresses, have you understood?”

I was always the first to shake my head no.

“Tilo, you did not even try.”

“But Mother,” I would say unabashed, “the others did, and look, they too do not understand.”

“Ah child.”

But too eager to learn the next spice spell, I paid small attention to the disappointment in her voice.

Today, Mother, I am at last beginning to see. Hazily through this air that smells of tar and soot. Power is weakness.

Then Kwesi comes in and I am saved from thought.

It is a pleasure to watch Kwesi shop, I decide.

His movements are precise, not one unneeded gesture. The angle of his arm as it reaches for a packet, a box. The muscles of his back spreading then tightening as he bends to lift a sack. His fingers sifting through lentil grains, knowing what they look for, the bones broken and mended, fused hard and clean.

Not hurrying not wasting time, his body comfortable in its own space.

I can see how he would make a good teacher, having known what it is to be hurt.

Inside me an idea uncurls like a leaf.

Kwesi lays his purchases on the counter. Today he is buying whole mung beans green as moss. A slab of dried tamarind. A coconut which I imagine him breaking in two with the edge of his palm, his hand arcing a brown blur through the air of his kitchen.

“Making coconut-mung dal,” I say. “Getting ambitious, hunh?”

He nods. His smile comes slow, this man who doesn’t smile unless he means it, and then he holds nothing back.

It makes me think of Raven, as every beautiful thing does now. Under the happiness that flashes up in me is a fear, when
and whether I will see him again. I am never sure. Anchored to this store, I can only wait and hope.

“For my lady,” says Kwesi. “I like to make something new and uncertain for her once in a while. Do you think it’ll be too difficult?”

“No no,” I say. “Just make sure you soak the mung long enough, and don’t add the tamarind paste till the end.” What a fine idea this is,
new and uncertain
. I wish to take it for my own life.

As I ring them up I whisper a success word over the beans, tell him not to forget to sprinkle on a little sugar. “So it’ll be sweet and salt, spur and hot, all the tastes of loving in it, no?” His eyes crinkle in laughing agreement.

If only I could make all who come to me so easily happy.

Tilo be honest. He was happy already when he came. The ones who are in true need of happiness, you are not doing too well with them, are you.

I say, “Remember how you wanted to put a poster about your karate school in the store? I’ve been thinking about it.”

“Yes?”

“It’s not a bad idea. You never know who might come in and see, who might want to learn. Do you have one maybe in your car?”

I help him tape it up right by the door, that poster spare and elegant in black and gold so no one coming in can miss it.

There’s a little gray in his hair, like wound-up silver springs.

“Tell them I’m good but tough. No fooling around in Kwesi’s One World Dojo.”

“Tough is what they need,” I say. And here is what I don’t say: But you’re kind also. You’ve known the hard streets, their pull. You too have heard death’s siren song, the one she sings especially for the young. Maybe you will have the power to pull them back from her, to make them see how beautiful is sunshine, the curve of a wing in flight, sprinkle of rain on the hair of the one you love.

As I wave him good-bye I send a calling thought to search the scarred pitted alleys, the abandoned warehouses, the waterfront disco joints already beginning to throb in the flame-colored evening. To search and bring.

But instead it is Geeta’s grandfather who pushes open the door, who sets down on the counter with defeated hands the pewter-framed photo I had given him.

“Didi.”

“Yes?” Already by his voice I am afraid to ask more.

“I am having no luck with what you said to do. As you said, I am laying the ground carefully, during dinner mentioning how quiet the house is with only us older folks, but Ramu says nothing. Then I tell him maybe we were too hasty, after all she is our only flesh and blood. Still he is silent. Why not you call her just once, I say, or maybe even Sheela can do it. See her number here, I got it from friends. No, he says, his voice like a stone is sitting on his chest. And when I
say, Why not, listen, it’s the elder people’s job to forgive the younger, he just pushes back his plate and gets up from the table.”

“Did you tell him she’s staying with her girlfriend and not Juan?”

“I did. Next evening I put the phone number in his hand and said, For my sake Ramu, patch up the fight. The girl has been careful to not do anything immoral, to not hurt you. Why not you tell her to come back home. He gives me a look cold like ice chips. He says, We gave her everything she wanted. This was the one thing we asked her not to do, and still she did it.

“I say, I have been thinking, what if she
does
marry this Mexican boy, it is not so bad, times are changing, other people’s children have done similar. Look at Jayanta, married that white nurse, look at Mitra’s daughter, what pretty fair-skinned babies she has.

“He says, Baba, what’s this new tune you are singing now when all this time it was sighing and slapping your forehead and Hai
she is putting
kali
on the ancestors’ faces
. Who has been giving you bad advice? I tell him, What, you think I cannot reason for myself? The mark of a wise man is that he changes his mind when he sees mistake. But his face is hard like a brick wall. He says, I listened to you enough already. When she walked out of this house slamming the door so proudly behind her, she slammed herself out of my life.

“All night after this talk I cannot sleep. I am seeing it is easy to plant a thorn in the heart, not so easy to pluck it out. I am wishing I never opened my mouth in the business between father and daughter.

“In the midnight I get up and go downstairs. I leave the
photo on the side table where every morning time he sits to drink his
cha
and read the paper. I think maybe if he looks at it when he is sitting all by himself he will remember the time when she was small, maybe he will remember what-all things he did for her. Maybe it will be a little easier to take off his proud man-face and be a father.

“But when I come in later after he has left for work I see the photo frame lying facedown on the tiles. And look.” He points a shaky finger.

Shivering I see a crack, silver-sharp as a launched spear, cutting the picture in two, separating Geeta from her Juan.

I pace the inner room, running my hand along the shelves that hold the spices of power, wanting guidance. But the spices are silent and I have only the turmoil of my woman mind to fall back on.

Tilo,
what to do?

The moments pool around my feet, spent and chill. No answers come. Through the walls I can hear Geeta’s grandfather, whom I have left in charge, advising customers. His voice has gathered back a little lost confidence. “I tell you,
chana dal
will give you gas, better be buying
tur
instead. What you mean your husband refuses to eat it? Boil it soft and mix in lot of fried onion and
dhania
leaf, and he is not knowing any better.”