Before We Visit the Goddess (33 page)

“What does that mean?”

“There was a big story about her in the paper,” my mother says, “along with this photo.”

“About your mother? What did she do?”

“She sued the company my father worked for after he died in an accident. They wanted to hush it up, but she demanded compensation. It was quite unheard-of in that time, a widow, all alone, taking on a major company.”

“Did she win?”

My mother shrugs. “I was too young to understand what was going on. And my mother—she was a very private person. She never talked about it afterwards. They must have reached a compromise because she got enough money to start the sweet shop. I don't know how she would have survived otherwise, with a child to take care of.” She pauses. Then she says, awkwardly, “Thank you. I would never have found this photo on my own. My mother hated having her picture taken. She considered it a vanity unfit for a widow. It's the only one I have of her.”

I pick up the picture and peer at it. My grandmother looks out at me, her gaze lovely and cryptic. It bothers me that I know so little about her. I search the photo for clues to her character. Is she pressing down on her lip to keep it from trembling? Or is it a sign of determination? Is she holding on to the little girl for her own comfort, or to give her motherly support, or to make her behave with proper dignity? I want to keep staring until the photo yields its secrets to me.

Maybe now that her own end flickers like a shadow in the corner of her eye, my mother will be ready to tell me more about my grandmother.

“Mom,” I begin. “Did Grandma—”

“Let's look through my clothes, shall we?” she says, cutting me off. “Here, give me the photo.” She holds the photo delicately by its edges so as to prevent finger-smudging.

“Mom.” My voice shakes. I'm nervous as a girl. “Can I keep it?”

My mother replaces the photo in the album and snaps shut the cover. “Tara! I've just found it. I want to keep it with me for a while, look at it. You'll get it soon enough, once I'm dead. Come on, now. I have some nice saris that I won't wear again. I want you to take them.” She rises and makes her lurching way into the bedroom.

But I hang back. A familiar tingling begins in my hands and rises into my wrists, my forearms. I feel feverish and shivery. I want that photo. I want it so badly that my mouth goes dry. I must have it.

This is my secret.

In the last few years, with therapy, the episodes had been less frequent. I'd been sure I was getting better. But today it's as though I lost my footing and tumbled all the way down a hillside into the dankest ditch. Through the pounding in my head I hear Dr. Berger say,
Stop, Tara. You don't want to steal from your mother. You don't need that photo. All the things you've stolen, has even one made you happier? You're stronger than your craving. Walk away from it. Walk away now
.

She's right, of course. With my kleptomania, it helps if I remove myself from temptation as quickly as possible. Distract myself with something else. But I can't. It's not just the craving. It's also a sudden anger. I could have known this woman, visited her, loved her and been loved in return. I might have been able to turn to her when everything in my life started to go wrong. Perhaps things would have ended up differently then. My mother kept me from all that.

“Tara,” my mother shouts. “What's keeping you?”

I force myself to control my voice. “Coming, Mom.”

I lean over the album. I snatch my grandmother up. I hurry to my bedroom, slip her inside my carry-on, and cover her with T-shirts. Elation and guilt thrill through me. I feel like I'm going to throw up.

It's late at night. My mother has gone to bed. I can't sleep, so I'm in the garage, dividing things into piles.
Throwaway. Giveaway. Keep. Unsure.
My body is still jangling from the theft. Little sounds make me jump. My breath feels jagged in my chest, like I'm coming down with something. My head aches, though I've taken a double dose of my mother's ibuprofen.

For dinner we had canned soup and toast. I could tell my mother was disappointed. She'd wanted us to use up all her fresh vegetables. She hated waste, especially of food. But that's all I was capable of putting together. I would have killed for some vodka, but my mother doesn't keep alcohol in the house. The way I was tonight, that was probably a good thing. Flashes of pain pulsed behind my eyes. When Gary called my cell phone the way he does every night, I ignored it. I responded to my mother's questions with monosyllables, mumbling about a migraine. When she complained about her leg, how the pain keeps waking her up at night, I didn't respond, though I could see she was hoping for some sympathy. It's often this way after one of my lapses. I felt worse than usual because my mother had just given me three beautiful silk saris, her most expensive ones, plus an elegant white woolen shawl, which looked at once familiar and magical, an object out of a dream. I don't think I'll ever use them, though—they're not exactly my thing.

“Send me a photo when you wear them,” she said as she handed the bundle to me. Then, because she's who she is, she sniffed and added, “If I'm still alive, that is.”

I've made it to the corner of the garage. Another hour and I'll be done. Another two days and I'll be out of here with my stolen photo. I haven't decided what I'll do with it.

Everything else I've stolen, I got rid of. It started with a stuffed raccoon I took from my boyfriend. (Or was it earlier? I forget.) I let the raccoon float away into the ocean. From the thrift store where I worked, I took a Jesus statue. Left it at a bus stop. With time, it got easier, though perhaps
easier
is not the word I'm looking for. When I went back to college, I stole textbooks from other students and stamped envelopes from the department where I worked. I stole pen-holders from my professors' offices. Plaques. Things I didn't need. Things I wouldn't use. Sometimes I threw them in the first dumpster I came across. When I was dating Gary, I stole his college jersey, three novels, his spare keys, and a box of Clif Bars. I did this even though I was in love with him.

At the various jobs I've held, I've stolen coffee mugs, staple removers, cushions, wall hangings, even photographs and kiddie art off of my coworkers' desks. I once stole a rabbit paw. I'm good at it. I came dangerously close to being found out sometimes—those were the most thrilling moments—but I always believed I'd never be caught. When people started looking at me funny, I quit my job and moved on.

Then a colleague brought in a glass paperweight, one of those antique ones where, if you shook it, snow fell slow and silent over a tiny Eiffel Tower. Her dead aunt had left it to her. She held it cupped in her palms and told us in a breathless, teary voice about how she would play with it when she went to visit her aunt. She looked so happy, remembering, that I had to have it.

I took it one afternoon when I thought no one was around. But someone must have seen me. When I got down to the lobby, the security officer made me empty out my purse. Other employees stopped to gawk. My boss was summoned; there was talk of notifying the police. I was blamed for other things that had gone missing, even those I'd had nothing to do with.

The security officers accompanied me to the house. I was terrified my family would find out, but providentially, Gary was still at work and Neel at an after-school game. The officers searched, but there were no stolen goods. I'd thrown them all away long ago.

I lost my job, of course. But my boss, who'd been fond of me, said she wouldn't put anything in my employment file if I started therapy. Thus, Dr. Berger.

It took me a long time to find work again. I had to tell my poor trusting husband a slew of lies. I thought the ordeal had cured me, but it wasn't so. Over the last couple of years, I've started stealing again, no matter how much I hate myself for it afterward.

Dr. Berger says, Stealing doesn't bring back whatever it is that you feel you lost. Think about it, Tara.

She says, Why are you attracted to self-sabotage?

I don't know, Dr. Berger. Is it because it takes less courage to hurt oneself than to hurt others?

There's a big box in the corner, sealed. I'm surprised to find my name on it, and our old address from when my parents were married. It's battered, as though it's made it through several of my mother's moves. For a moment I'm confused. Then I see that it's from my dorm, postmarked from the time when I dropped out of school. I'd walked out with a backpack, leaving everything else behind, as though in doing that I could shrug off my life. I remember a message from my mother on my cell phone, saying the university had mailed my things back to the house. I hadn't responded. I'd been sure she would have got rid of them by now. But she hadn't. Nor had she opened the box to pry into my life. She'd carried it patiently with her, apartment to apartment, year to year, hoping I'd come back to her.

I carry the box to the throwaway pile, but then I pull at the packing tape. I want a glance at my old self, the Tara who would never have dreamed of stealing anything. The brittle tape comes off easily. Textbooks, outdated clothes, music CDs, a jumble of Sharpies, strips of Pepto-Bismol crumbled into pink powder, an alarm clock, bottles from which the perfumes have long evaporated, a favorite blue comforter that my mother gave me so I wouldn't feel homesick.

The girl I'd been, I can't feel her in any of this.

I throw the box on the pile. It tilts. Items spill onto the floor, clattering. I swear. More work for me now. Squatting, I start to stuff everything back. Then I catch sight of a large sealed envelope. It doesn't look familiar, unlike the rest of the junk in here. When I pull it out of the box, I see row upon row of Indian stamps. Someone spent a lot of money to mail this to me. The sender's name is Bipin Bihari Ghatak. I have no idea who he might be.

Inside is a thick stack of papers. The sheet on top, written in a cramped, meticulous hand, says,
Your grandmother spent the last hours before her heart attack writing this letter to you.

My grandmother. I imagine her sitting cross-legged on a marble floor, pulling a low rosewood table close to her. I see her unscrewing a fountain pen. She looks a little like old Mrs. Mehta, a woman I'd once known. Mrs. Mehta had told me stories about the stars. She'd gone with me to get my things out of my cheating boyfriend's house. She wrote to me twice after she went back to India, lovely, meandering, melancholy letters in which she she invited me to come and live with her. I reread the letters thirstily and thought about it. But I didn't have the courage. Then I moved, and moved again, leaving no forwarding address, and I lost her, too.

I'm afraid the letter will be in Bengali, which I can't read, but it's in English. My hands start to tremble. When I was young, I asked my mother many times about my grandmother. But she never liked to talk about her. I knew Grandma passed away around the time of the divorce, but I didn't have any details, and later, when my mother and I started speaking again, I'd been reluctant to bring up a topic that would surely have been painful for her. Perhaps, finally, this letter will help me parse the mystery that is Sabitri Das.

Dearest Granddaughter Tara,

Your mother informs me that you do not wish to continue with college. I am very sorry to hear this and hope you will reconsider. It would be a criminal waste if you do not avail yourself of the opportunity life has given you.

How would my grandmother have known about me dropping out of college? Did my mother and she discuss me? I feel a twinge of anger but drop it. It was a long time ago, and besides, I'm curious.

But the letter is confusing. Page after page is a variation of the same theme. Had my grandmother developed dementia in her old age? I shuffle the pages of clichéd advice, disappointed, glancing through them one last time before I stuff them into the box.

Then I come across this:

. . . at that, I stopped. Perhaps a part of me believed that, charity case that I was, he had the right to command me. But a part of me wanted to stay because he was young and handsome and had been chivalrous. My heart beat unevenly as I turned to face him, and not just out of fear.

Somewhere in there, my grandmother had started telling me a story. Her story. The story I'd been longing to know since I saw her photo. No, I'd needed to know this story all my life, though I hadn't always been aware of the needing. My breath comes fast as I retrieve the sheets and spread them out on the garage floor. I try to put them in sequence. It takes a while because nothing is numbered. I'm longing to read, but there's something I must do first. The universe has given me an undreamed-of gift. I must reciprocate.

I go to my bedroom and retrieve the sepia photo from my carry-on. It isn't easy. I take a deep breath and hold it. I bite the inside of my cheek until I taste blood. Twice I turn back. But finally I manage to walk with the photo to the family room, stepping carefully in the dark. I'm going to put it back in the album.