Before We Visit the Goddess (7 page)

One day, in the kitchen at the back of the store, I held in my hand a new recipe I had perfected, the sweet I would go on to name after my dead mother. I took a bite of the conch-shaped dessert, the palest, most elegant mango color. The smooth, creamy flavor of fruit and milk, sugar and saffron mingled and melted on my tongue. Satisfaction overwhelmed me. This was something I had achieved by myself, without having to depend on anyone. No one could take it away. That's what I want for you, my Tara, my Bela. That's what it really means to be a fortunate lamp. . . .

In the car, Bijan asked Sabitri, “Do you feel better, now that you've seen Leelamoyi?” She could feel his breath, warm on her hair. “Will it help you forget?”

The solicitousness in his voice brought her close to tears. She nodded, unable to speak.

Bela said, “There was a man, downstairs. He kept crying and kissing Mamoni's hands. Mamoni, why was he kissing your hands?”

Bijan pulled away his arm and sat up straight. In the dead silence that took over the car, Sabitri was aware of the driver's curious eyes in the rearview mirror.

“Just someone I knew long ago,” she said, speaking to Bijan. “He doesn't even live in this house anymore. I hadn't expected to see him. We met by the merest chance as I was leaving. He means nothing to me.” The words tumbled out of her too fast. She knew she sounded guilty, even though it was the truth she was telling.

“I understand,” Bijan said. He looked coldly at her sari, her jewelry. “I understand perfectly.”

“I love you, only you,” she cried, though she knew it was a major faux pas to speak in this manner in front of servants.

Bijan leaned forward. “Drive me back to the office.”

“Aren't we going to the zoo?” Bela asked.

“You can go wherever the hell you want,” Bijan said to Sabitri. In the mirror the driver's eyes widened because Bijan-saab never spoke like this. Sabitri guessed it would not be long before the rest of the servants heard about it.

They rode in silence. Near the Maidan they passed a herd of goats crossing the street; heat rose from their coats in shimmery waves. Sabitri had never seen such a sight in the city. For a moment, with a thin spike of hope, she thought she had dreamed it all.

When they had dropped Bijan off, Bijan now transformed into someone she did not know, Sabitri told the driver to take them home. She had difficulty meeting his eyes, but she forced herself.

“I want to go to the zoo!” Bela cried. “I want my ice cream. Why can't we go to the zoo? Baba said we could. Why can't we go?” She kicked the seat-back again and again. The noise thudded inside Sabitri's head.

“It's because of you we aren't going!” she shouted. “Stupid girl—you've ruined everything.” The Bengali word for “ruin,” noshto, which could also mean “rotten,” or, when applied to women, “unfaithful,” hung in front of her, as visible as her future. Her hand arced through the air, there was a sound like something bursting, and Bela cried out in pain.

The first time you hit your child with all your strength, wanting to hurt, it changes things.

She feels that sting again now. It travels up her arm and lodges in her shoulder. The shock with which Bela had stared at Sabitri. The splotch blooming red on her cheek. The way she shrank back against the car door. Was that when the troubles between them began?

“I'm sorry, Bela,” she says. “Forgive me.” Words that all these years she hadn't been able to speak.

The pain has taken up permanent residence in her chest. She must have dropped something with a crash, because here comes Rekha, rubbing at her eyes, then running forward with a cry. Sabitri tries to push the letter toward her. But she's on the floor. When did she fall? Rekha shouts for the milkman, who's rattling the door, to help her get Ma onto the bed.

Sabitri tries to tell her about the letter. It is the only thing that matters now. It must be put in the mail. It must. “Tell Bipin Bihari,” she whispers. She thinks of his dear face, calm and steady and attentive, even in the worst of her times. “He'll know what to do.”

But Rekha does not hear. She is sobbing on the phone, urging Doctor Babu to get here fast. Something terrible has happened to Ma. The milkman lifts Sabitri up. Or is she flying? The bed is very soft. The pain is very large. She lifts her eyes, and there is Death in the corner, but not like a king with his iron crown, as the epics claimed. Why, it is a giant brush loaded with white paint. It descends upon her with gentle suddenness, obliterating the shape of the world.

B
ela stands on the veranda, sweating as she watches Sabitri and Bijan—that's how she's been thinking of them lately, rather than as her parents—drive off in a cloud of orange dust into the Assam evening. It smells like thunder, but the sky is mild and pale. Nothing in this place is what she expects it to be. Why doesn't the heat seem to bother Sabitri and Bijan? she wonders angrily. In the back seat of the ancient Ambassador the National Oil Company has provided for their use, along with an equally ancient uniformed chauffeur, they lean in to each other. Their faces come together like colliding planets, and they kiss.

Bela should be happy at this effort at intimacy. It is certainly better than the fights they had before they came here, Sabitri dissolving into tears, Bijan stalking out of the flat. Still, Bela can't help feeling embarrassed—and a little worried. It's as though, in this outpost surrounded by jungles and oil fields and (according to Ayah) all manner of bloodthirsty creatures, Sabitri and Bijan have decided that the rules they used to live by in civilization (Kolkata, to be exact) no longer matter. Bela guesses that Assam, too, has its rules, but no one has taken the trouble to tell her what they are.

Just before the car disappears around the bend of the bamboo forest, Sabitri turns and raises her hand. Is she waving at Bela? Or is she ordering her to go into the house? Ayah, who stands beside Bela, carrying the baby, tugs at her arm.

“Come inside, Bela Missybaba. Mosquitoes will be biting soon, big-big like elephants.”

Bela shakes her head. She can feel the prickly seeds of tears behind her eyes. They've been in Assam for three months, and still, each time her parents go somewhere, she's certain that she'll never see them again. There is no one to whom she can confess this new timidity, dizzying like the tropical fever she succumbed to during her first week here.

Bela knows that, at eleven, she's too old for this ridiculous behavior. They're only going to the club. It's part of Bijan's responsibility to attend official gatherings. They have explained this to her. Being the new manager of National Oil (Assam Branch), he needs to meet people, make the right impression, get the local big shots on his side. She knows also (though no one explained this part) that Sabitri must go along to ensure that he sticks to his tonic water so that incidents like the ones that got him transferred from Kolkata don't happen again. They are responsible parents. When they return, they will come into the children's room, no matter how late it is. Sabitri will touch their foreheads (always the baby's first) to gauge if anyone has fever. Sometimes this wakes Bela up and she cannot fall asleep again, but she minds only a little. It is a price worth paying for the feel of Sabitri's cool fingers trailing over her jawbone, so rare nowadays. For her warm, minty breath on Bela's cheek.

“Come, come, Bela Missy, getting late, darkness coming. And after sun is disappeared, worse things coming than mosquitoes.”

Worse things
feature prominently in Ayah's stories. To keep them at bay, when she first started working for them, she put a little dot of soot on the baby's cheek. “Bloody superstition,” Bijan said when he saw it. He wiped the mark from the baby's face roughly with his handkerchief, making him cry. In the corridor, Bela saw Ayah's face, hard and sullen. The next day, she put another soot dot on the boy, but on his back so no one except the spirits would see it. She looked at Bela, eyes squinted, daring her to tell. But Bela did not. Not yet, anyway.

“You go,” Bela says now. She pushes rudely at Ayah, surprising herself, because generally she is fond of the Assamese maid.

A haughty stillness takes over Ayah's entire body. She hitches the baby higher on her hip, turns on her heel, and disappears into the house without a word. Bela feels ashamed, but not enough to follow her.

That is when she hears the man.

“Namaste, Miss Bela,” he says from the side of the veranda where thick hydrangea bushes give way to wild honeysuckle, where snakes may be hiding.

Bela spins around and there he is, a little blurred by her tears: tall, thin, dark as a burnt chapati. His cheekbones are craggy and crooked, as though they might have been broken and then put back together. The band tied pirate-style around his forehead shimmers in the last of the sun. His cloak—or maybe it is a large shawl—shimmers as well, and when he smiles, there's gold in his teeth.

Her breath is a solid thing, stuck like a bone in her throat. “How do you know my name?” she manages to say.

“I know.” His eyes crinkle in amusement. “Your father is Bijan Das Babu, and the company has brought him here to help them put in better pipes to take our oil away.”

He bends forward slightly and Bela can see, for a moment, the oil rushing through steel tunnels, swirling black flecked with gold, rushing with a great roar that dies away, and then the tunnels are empty and then they, too, are gone.

The man steps out from behind the bushes and begins to walk toward Bela. The fear she had forgotten rises in her again, because only yesterday Ayah had warned her about the children-snatchers. “Always looking-looking,” Ayah said, “most of all for girl-children to sell. Fair-skinned like you, lot of money. Better watch out.”

Bela gathers her breath to push a scream out from the clogged tunnel of her throat, but the man shakes his head in such a knowing, indulgent way that she feels foolish. Besides, he isn't carrying a giant-sized sack to put children in, as snatchers are supposed to. His hands, which he holds out in front, are empty and elegant and curiously smooth. Even his palms are unlined. As she watches, his fingers do an intricate dance like the leaves in the breezy pipal tree above, weaving a pattern of light and shadow.

“Who are you?” Bela asks.

The man bows, his long hair swinging around his glistening chocolate face, and Bela knows what he is going to say before he speaks. Then he reaches out and pulls something from under her chin. She gasps and he puts the coin on her palm, the silver dull and cold as though it hasn't been touched by human hands in a long time. She sees the profile of Queen Victoria staring haughtily into the horizon, like in her history book. “How—?” she begins, but Cook is at the door, swatting at mosquitoes with his dish towel, yelling for her to come to dinner right now, food's getting cold, and why is she standing outside at this time of evening, does she want to catch a fever again?

By the time she turns back to the magician, her palm is empty and he is gone.