Before We Visit the Goddess (19 page)

She did not know much about being pregnant, what to expect from it. Her mind felt as bloated as her body. Was that natural? The advice in the books she borrowed from the library seemed confusing and contradictory; the world grew newly dangerous. Exercise more. Too much exercise can cause a miscarriage. Rest. Don't be sedentary. Drink fruit juices. Cut out sugars. Avoid runny eggs, caffeine, paint, nonstick frying pans, insect spray, household cleaners. How was a woman to manage, then? And had she damaged the baby by breathing in Comet fumes when she cleaned the house that was and was not hers? She thought longingly of calling her mother, asking her opinion. But Sanjay hated Sabitri. Though reasonable about most things, he still fumed about the humiliation of Sabitri sending that doorman-guard to college with Bela, to protect her from him. And he always checked the phone bill because Bishu had told him that phone companies had a habit of charging you for calls you hadn't made. He would see the call to India, Bela would have to explain, there would be an argument—oh, she didn't have the energy for it. So she wrote instead.

The reply came so quickly that Sabitri must have sat down and penned it as soon as she received Bela's letter.

Don't worry about all those newfangled notions. You and your baby come of sturdy village stock. You'll do fine. I want to go to America to take care of you—and the baby when it arrives. When should I plan my trip? Bipin Babu will be quite capable of running Durga Sweets once I go over a few things with him. I can cook for you, give oil-massages to the baby. You won't have to buy my ticket—I have enough in my bank account—

When she read that part, Bela began to cry. She knew her mother didn't have much in her savings. She'd put everything into Durga Sweets, but because she took pride in using the best ingredients and serving only what was made fresh each day, the shop wasn't as profitable as it might have been. Growing up, Bela had both loved the shop and been jealous of it because Durga Sweets was Sabitri's life. Even on her days off, Sabitri would stop in there—just to breathe that sweet air, she said. How much she must love Bela—and even more, the little one who was coming—to be willing to hand it over. But Sanjay would never agree to having her here.

Great, racking sobs erupted from Bela. She hadn't wept like this since she was a child. She couldn't stop even though she knew that getting worked up was bad for the baby: all the books had agreed on that. But everything she had tamped down, all her disappointments since—yes, for the first time she admitted it—her marriage, swirled in her like a dust storm. She was stuck in this dingy apartment, stuck in a dead-end job she hated, stuck under a load of unpaid loans so heavy that she'd probably never be able to squirm out from under them and go back to college.

“Oh, baby,” she whispered. “What am I going to do?”

Then she felt it, a movement, for the first time. It was like a tickle inside her.
As though you were trying to cheer me up
, she would tell Tara later,
to stop me from all that crying.

Shocked into silent wonder, she walked to the bed and lay down, holding her belly, waiting for it to happen again, for her baby to talk to her with its body. Warmth pulsated from her stomach through her hand to the rest of her body. All the things she had been so upset about a few minutes ago faded in its glow.

She ran to Sanjay when he came in the door, pressed his palm against her.
Move, Baby,
she whispered, and as though it heard her, there was a flutter. Once, twice. She laughed at the disbelief on Sanjay's face.
It's really real
, he kept saying through dinner—tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, which he ate uncomplainingly night after night because everything else made her nauseous. What a good husband he was. Lying in bed with his arm around her, his lips nuzzling the back of her neck, she thought,
Tomorrow I'll ask him about having Ma come and visit. Maybe, for the baby's sake, he'll agree.

Waking in the middle of the night, she found herself alone. He was at the dining table, scrunched over their checkbook, his forehead furrowed.

“What is it?” she whispered, afraid.

“Nothing, nothing.”

She massaged his tense shoulders and waited.

“It's the tenant,” he finally said. “He's lost his job. We called him when he didn't send in his check. He's asked for a month to get the money together. I was looking to see if we have enough to pay our half of the mortgage.”

Her heart raced with anxiety. It tended to do that easily these days. “Do we?”

“Yes.”

She let out her breath.

“But only just,” he added. “We'll have to tighten our belts. . . .”

“That might be tough right now,” she joked, patting her stomach. Inside her, the worry pulsed like a live creature. Determinedly, she pushed it into the locked part of her mind where she kept all the things she did not wish to think about. They laughed together, and the baby gave a small, responding leap. Back in bed, she held Sanjay's hand until his breath steadied and deepened. But sleep would not come to her. Disappointment pressed on her chest like a slab of concrete. She'd have to wait until the situation improved before she could ask Sanjay if Sabitri might visit them.

The situation was worse next month. The tenant did not pay. Now he wasn't answering their phone calls. One day, Bela saw the woman in the grocery. She wondered if she should say something. When the woman caught sight of her, however, she turned and moved quickly away, her small heels skittering on the Dur-A-Flex. Finally, one evening, Sanjay and Bishu went to the house in an attempt to talk to the tenant. When they rang the bell, no one opened the door, although Bishu was sure he caught a movement at an upstairs window. Sanjay tried their extra key, but the lock had been changed. Bishu shouted and banged on the door. It was no use. After a while a burly man came out of a neighboring house and told them to quit making such a racket and leave. Otherwise he would call the police.

Sanjay told Bela all this, pacing up and down the dining area, while Bishu sat at the table, holding his head in his hands. Bela had never seen him this way, and it frightened her.

“Can't we go to the police ourselves?” she whispered. “Surely there's some procedure to evict people for not paying rent?”

Bishu stared down at the table. He'd been ebullient the last time he came to the house, bringing expensive, out-of-season mangoes because Bela loved them. “You need to eat special things at this time,” he had said. “If there's anything else you want, tell me and I'll get it. That's the uncle's job.” Now his lips moved soundlessly and he dug at the tabletop with a fingernail.

Sanjay said, “Eviction is a messy process. I looked into it. First we'll have to serve a notice, then go to court to get a judgment. Just that much would take another month. Then we'll have to serve the judgment to the tenant, then go to the police for . . .”

Bishu shook his head. When he spoke, Bela had to lean in to hear him. “No police,” he rasped. Was it just his natural distrust of American institutions? Or had he been in some kind of trouble in the past? Did he have a record he couldn't afford to have scrutinized?

“But Bishu-da,” Sanjay said, “I don't have enough money in the bank for my share of next month's mortgage. Neither do you.”

When Bela turned eighteen, Sabitri had given her a gold chain, fastening it around her neck with her cool, skillful fingers. It was a thin chain, nothing special, and Bela hadn't cared for it much in India. But here she wore it every day because it bore her mother's touch. Apart from her wedding ring, it was her only piece of jewelry. Now, hiding the pang she felt, she took it off and slid it along the table toward the men.

“No!” Sanjay whispered. There was a broken look in his eyes. But it was Bishu who pushed the chain back toward her.

“What kind of men would we be if we sold our women's jewelry?” he said roughly. “I'll borrow the money from a friend for this month.” He stretched his lips in an attempted smile. “Bela, you must not worry. Tension is bad for the baby. I'll think of something. We'll get that bastard out of there soon, I promise.”

It used to annoy Bela in the early days of their marriage when Sanjay exclaimed, “That Bishu-da, he's a magician. He can get anything done!” Once she told Sanjay that, though Bishu was efficient, he was nothing like a magician. She had come across a real magician in her childhood in Assam, so she knew.

“Oh, really?” Sanjay said in an annoyed tone. “Tell me, what's a real magician like?” But she didn't answer. Already she was sorry that she'd brought up that distant time. Bad things had happened to her family in Assam, and she was afraid that Sanjay might ask her about matters she was not ready to discuss.

This time, though, it seemed that Sanjay was right. Within three weeks, amazingly, the tenant was gone. When Bela asked Sanjay how, he said that Bishu had waited in his car for the wife to come out of the house. He had followed her to a shopping mall and threatened her when she stepped out of her car.

“Scared her shitless, he did!” he said triumphantly. Bela winced at the unexpected coarseness of his words, but Sanjay didn't notice. “She must have gone running back to her husband and nagged him until he agreed to move. It's too bad we had to threaten her like that. But if you think of it, it's really her husband's fault. If he hadn't been such a son of a bitch, we wouldn't have been forced to resort to these tactics.”

Sanjay was right. Still, Bela felt a heavy unease, like the indigestion she had begun to experience nowadays and which, her doctor warned, would probably get worse. She remembered the child waving to her in the grocery. “Was her little boy with her? That would be scary for him—to see someone shouting at his mom.”

When Sanjay didn't answer her, she repeated the question. He often seemed preoccupied nowadays. He had told her that he was working on a difficult project at the office. Now he frowned, trying to remember. Finally he said no, the woman was alone. The boy must have been in nursery school.