Before We Visit the Goddess (2 page)

Sabitri's own leap began, as so many things in Bengal do, with a platter of sweets. She has forgotten many things from that time—just a few years after Independence; she was only seventeen then—but the platter she remembers clearly: heavy, made of solid silver, with a sharp, raised edge that cut into her fingers as she carried it down a mud path behind her mother, Durga, who held a similar platter. Durga's back was bent. As she walked, the knobs of her backbone bobbed up and down under her worn sari-blouse. She was the hardest worker Sabitri knew. But for her, their household would have fallen apart long ago, for her father was the kind of man the world routinely took advantage of. Sabitri felt a churning inside her as she watched her mother, a mix of sadness and anger and love.

The platters belonged to the Mittirs, the wealthiest family in the village. Their names were etched on the rims to discourage theft, or perhaps as a kind of proclamation. Mittir's wife Leelamoyi had ordered the sweets from Durga for a luncheon. The Mittirs had their own cook, a brahmin imported from Kolkata, but Durga's sweets, famous throughout the village, were far superior to anything he could have concocted. And Leelamoyi had to have the best.

Sabitri hadn't wanted to come. Leelamoyi, who lived in Kolkata and only visited the village under duress during festival time, was known to have a sharp tongue, unpredictable moods, and an elevated notion of her own importance. She would surely remark on how tall Sabitri had grown and how, if her parents didn't act fast, they wouldn't be able to marry her off. But there was no one else to help Durga. Sabitri's sister was too young. Her father was at the temple, where he was a part-time priest. And even if he had been home, he would have reminded them in his mild, surprised way that this wasn't a man's job. So here was Sabitri, sweating and irritated and trying not to step in cow dung.

Inside the Mittir home it was cool and misty, the windows covered with damp rushes. Two maids wielded large palm-leaf fans. Leelamoyi, surrounded by a gaggle of gossips, had spread her considerable bulk over a flowery silken sofa. She must have been in an expansive mood, because she tasted the desserts, pronounced them satisfactory, and handed Durga a stack of rupees without counting them. Then she looked Sabitri up and down.

“What's your daughter's name again?” she asked Durga.

“Sabitri, Rani Ma.”

“Ha! Ambitious, aren't you, naming her after the mythic heroine who snatched her husband from the clutches of Death himself. Well, you'd better find her a match fast, else she won't have a husband at all.”

Sabitri hid her fury and tugged at Durga's sari, trying to get her to leave, but Durga said, “Sabi doesn't want to get married, Rani Ma. She wants to go to college. Wants to become a teacher. She's smart. Stood first in the matric exams in the Girls School. But we don't have the money.”

Sabitri's face burned.
Go through life with your head held high
, Durga had taught her. Why, then, would she humiliate herself—and Sabitri—by exposing to a rich, spoiled woman the tender dreams that Sabitri had entrusted to her? Dreams as impossible as sprouting wings. She would never confide in her mother again!

Sabitri thinks: If only one could erase the years—just long enough to say,
I understand
. But by the time she realized how much it had cost her mother to speak those words—Sabitri was a mother herself then, and alone—Durga was dead, beyond the reach of all apologies.

“Really?” Leelamoyi raised disbelieving eyebrows. Gold weighed down her arms. Just her bracelets would have paid for Sabitri's college twice over.

Sometimes the unfairness of the world made Sabitri feel like she might burst. She pushed her way through the entourage toward the door.

Behind her Leelamoyi spoke sharply. “Girl, did I say you could leave?”

Sabitri considered disobedience, but an angry Leelamoyi could make their lives more miserable than they already were. She couldn't do that to her family. She stopped, though she did not turn around.

“Tell you what, Durga,” Leelamoyi said, her voice indolent once more, “if your impatient daughter is as smart as you claim, if she manages to get into a Kolkata college, I'll pay her fees and let her stay in our home while she studies.”

The sycophants jostled around Leelamoyi, jealously exclaiming at this goddesslike generosity, so much more than Sabitri deserved. Sabitri stood frozen in disbelief until Durga pulled her forward and told her to touch the Rani Ma's feet in thanks.

The pure chill of marble against her forehead. Her thoughts whirling like a flock of startled birds. The drab dead-end wall of her future had just become a golden door.
Thank you
, she thought fervently, ashamed of her misjudgment. Leelamoyi's voice, booming from above, did sound like a goddess's. Sabitri could not decipher the words, though she heard the women titter in response.

A lifetime's worth of impatience, days slow as cattle grazing in a parched summer field. Then she was in front of the Mittirs' Kolkata home, peering through the wrought-iron gate, clutching a painted tin suitcase in a sweaty hand. She had expected grandeur. Still, she was taken aback by the hugeness of the mansion, three stories tall, the shuttered windows like heavy-lidded eyes. Under an enormous portico gleamed a motorcar. The brick walls surrounding the compound were topped with broken glass to keep out intruders. A gatekeeper, thick-mustachioed as a bandit, banged his lathi on the paved driveway and shouted in his terrifying voice for her to move along. When she said that Leelamoyi had invited her to live here, he sneered in disbelief and tried to snatch away the letter of confirmation the Mittirs' manager, Sarkar Moshai, had sent her.

How the matter would have ended she did not know, but right then a young man emerged from the house. “What's all the commotion?” he asked.

His shirt blazed in the sun, blinding her. She had never seen anything so white. Later she would ask him what kind of soap the Mittirs used. But his life had not taken him anywhere near the washing area of the house, so he did not know.

She gathered her courage, pushed past the gatekeeper, and held out the note with desperate, trembling fingers. The young man gave it a brief glance and ordered the gateman to send her in to Sarkar Moshai. “Make sure someone gives her food and water,” he added. “Can't you see she's exhausted?”

Before Sabitri could thank him, he stepped into the waiting car.

Later she would say, “You didn't even read that note, did you?”

“No,” he said. “But I read your eyes.”

“Eyes can lie.”

“Not yours,” he said.

Useless, these rambling memories. Focus on the letter, the one thing that might make a difference in the future.

Granddaughter, people look down on a woman without education. She has few options. To survive, she is forced to put up with ill-treatment. She must depend on the kindness of strangers, an unsure thing. I do not want that for you—

Even the most startling adventure, sooner or later, must become routine. So it was with Sabitri. Each morning she took the tram to the women's college, where most of her classes were held. For science and mathematics, she walked to a nearby men's college with a small group of girls. They sat in a nervous clump on a back bench because they had never had male classmates. The professors addressed only the men. Sabitri was mostly grateful to be ignored. The village school had not prepared her adequately; it was only with frantic effort that she managed to keep up.

After classes, she studied in the library with two girls who were also from distant villages, sharing textbooks since none of them had enough money to buy them all. Sabitri received a monthly stipend from Sarkar Moshai, but it was barely enough to pay her fees and her tram fare, and she was too shy to ask for more. In between homework, they spoke of their families, how much they missed them. The girls stayed in a run-down women's hostel, six to a room. Once they went with Sabitri to see where she lived and stood staring at the mansion. Struck dumb by their amazement, Sabitri couldn't tell them how unhappy she was there.

So many things run together in her head nowadays. But this she remembers: On the day of her arrival, Paro, Leelamoyi's favorite maid, had taken her to the second floor. Leelamoyi sat on a four-poster bed carved with massive lion paws, playing cards with three friends. Sunlight dazzled an oval vanity mirror that stood, tilted, on a mahogany stand. On the wall was a clock unlike anything Sabitri had seen. Even as she stared, it struck the hour, and a little wooden bird popped out with a series of squawks, startling her so that she jumped. And the windows—with their shutters thrown wide, they were as big as doors. Through the bars, she could see hosts of treetops dancing in the breeze. It was like living in a leafy ocean. If this was Sabitri's room, she would have sat on the windowsill all day, staring into the sky. But these women didn't even glance out.

Paro gave a small, apologetic cough and Leelamoyi looked up, frowning.

“Who's this?” she said.

Sabitri had prepared a careful speech about appreciation and gratitude, but when she realized Leelamoyi had forgotten her, she grew flustered. Her words ran into each other as she tried to explain her presence.

Leelamoyi raised her hand to cut her off. “Ah, yes, you're that sweet-maker's daughter. Study hard now, and stay out of trouble.” She turned back to her cards, and Paro pinched Sabitri's arm, indicating that she had been dismissed.

Paro showed her where she would stay, a musty ground-floor room with a tiny, barred window set too high for Sabitri to look out. A weight pressed down on her chest—she can feel it even today. Their mud hut in the village had been rudimentary, but there was dappled light, the bright emerald of lau vines climbing up a wall. She knows now that Paro could easily have given her a better room—many lay empty in that mansion. But Paro had taken a dislike to her. Perhaps she resented her because she did no housework and yet received food and lodging. Sabitri wept that night for her mother, for the lost moon. For her own folly in believing that Leelamoyi's benevolence had been something more than a moment's caprice.

It took her some time to understand her complicated position in the household's hierarchy: neither servant nor master. She was of a higher caste than the servants, but they made the important decisions: what she would eat, where she would bathe and hang her clothes to dry. They hesitated to ill-treat her because she was the daughter of a temple priest; but it was a small temple in a faraway village, so they did not feel compelled to treat her well. Someone would put her morning meal, a thala of rice with a dollop of dal thrown over it, a grudging piece of fish dumped on the side, in the passageway outside the kitchen in the mornings. She sat on the floor by herself and ate before leaving for college. The aroma of the dishes being cooked for the Mittirs—jackfruit curry, mutton kurma, biryani—assailed her. She hungered also for the bits of conversation floating from the kitchen: a moment of laughter, a raucous fight between the cook and the bazaar-servant. Her stomach ached with the longing to be included. At night she was afraid to arrive too soon for dinner; she didn't want the servants to think she was greedy. By the time she sat down to her meal, the rutis were leathery, the vegetables dry. Dinner was when she missed her mother the most. At home they had eaten together, Durga listening with fascinated admiration to Sabitri's recital of her day.