No. He had wandered in that dark forest long enough. He called to the priest in Tamil and briskly requested that an archana be performed for Meenakshi Venkatachalapathi. He provided the necessary information and the priest limped off toward the goddess, carrying his bell and his bowl of vermilion powder.
For a moment, thinking of Meena, he had forgotten the girl. But now she came up to him, glowing in his white shawl, whispering questions with an avidity that surprised him. What was the priest going to do? What was an archana? Did the prayer have a special significance? Her eyes, full of wonder, made her seem suddenly younger.
“It’s for good luck,” he said. “For blessing, in this life and the next. Wait, I will offer one for you, too. But I will need your name.”
“Oh, no! You don’t have to do that.” But her face was bright with pleasure as she gave him the information.
“Why,” he said in surprise, “you’re named after the goddess, too.”
When Venkatachalapathi asked the priest to add Tara’s name to the archana, the old man scowled.
“What is her clan? Her birth sign? Her star?” he demanded. They both knew the system. Without this crucial information, a prayer offered in the temple would not be fully effective.
Venkatachalapathi glanced at Tara. She was looking at him inquiringly; she had caught the disapproval in the old man’s tone. He feared that she would not know the answers to any of the priest’s queries, that she came from a family that did not keep track of such things. She probably did not even possess a birth chart. He hoped he was wrong. Without a birth chart, how would you know who you really were? Adrift in the universe, how would you navigate your life?
“What’s he saying?”
“Nothing important.” He turned to the waiting priest. “She is from the same family,” he said firmly. “Same gotram.”
“But—” the priest began.
He cut him off, giving the name of his own birth star as hers.
It was clear that the priest didn’t believe him. But ultimately he was only a hired man. All he wanted, Venkatachalapathi correctly surmised, was to finish his shift and get back to his apartment so he could take a proper nap. He shrugged and, in surprisingly resonant tones, began to chant the holy names.
Something had happened in the temple. I’d read the lines of the priest’s body, the tenor of his voice. Distrust isn’t hard to decipher, no matter what the language. I was ready to leave, but Dr. V stopped me. He spoke to the priest, glowing with authority, until the man muttered and looked away. A prayer was offered in my name—probably for the first time in my life. Now I’m jubilantly carrying back a handful of squished flowers, an apple, a paper cone of ash, and a Styrofoam container filled with mushy porridge. And the magical smell. I wonder how long it’ll last. But I know that answer already: nothing good lasts long enough.
Outside, I fold the white shawl and hold it out to Dr. V. I will him to tell me to keep it, but he takes it from me with an absent nod and lays it on the back seat. I’m surprised by my disappointment, and, yes, a surge of anger. Stupid, I know. What would I do with a shawl like that, anyway? I’ll never have an occasion to wear it again, and the last thing I need is more stuff in my tiny hole of a studio.
We get in the car, crank up the air conditioner, and eat. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was. The upma—that’s the name of the porridge—tastes a lot better than its gooey texture led me to expect. When I step out to throw away the garbage, I open the back door and pretend to fix something. But what I do is stuff the shawl under a seat in one quick, surreptitious motion. This way, Dr. V won’t remember it when he gets down at the airport, and I’ll get to keep it.
I slide back into the driver’s seat, heart pounding. I know I shouldn’t have done that, but I can’t help it. It’s the way I feel sometimes, like a fever I can’t stop from spiraling up. And then I have to take whatever’s in front of me, even though I know it’ll get me in big trouble someday.
Inside the temple I hadn’t understood what the priest was chanting, but the rise and fall of the syllables was hypnotic. Dr. V had told me that the mantras were thousands of years old. For a long time they had been considered too sacred to write down. I thought about how they’d wandered through the centuries until they found their way here, to America, to be recited for me. There was something breath-stopping about it.
“What was the priest chanting at the end?” I ask Dr. V. “When he went over to the black Shiva stone and made circles with the lamp?”
“That was the forgiveness prayer,” he says. I’m hoping he’ll tell me the meaning, but he’s busy crushing his Styrofoam container in his fist, and then he says, “It’s time to start for the airport.”
I drive while Dr. V navigates; he’s in the front passenger seat now, and we’ve got it down to a science. Pretty soon we’re on Broadway, which leads us to 288. In less than an hour we’ll be at the airport, and he’ll be gone. I’m surprised to realize I don’t want that to happen. But why? Ever since Dad went on his merry way, I’ve avoided Indians, males in particular. Why should this bald old man mean anything to me?
Dr. V’s staring out the window, clearly somewhere else. I want to follow him there. I ask, “The woman you offered the prayer for—is she related to you?”
“My daughter.” He’s silent for so long, I think he’s done speaking. Then he says, “She died last year.”
Shit.
“I’m sorry—” I begin, but he turns further into the window, ending my attempt at apology.
We pass the exit that leads to the Planned Parenthood clinic. We’re close to downtown now. Lanes split and merge. Traffic’s getting heavy, folks driving with Friday frenzy, like the world’s going to end if they don’t make it on time to wherever they’re rushing. I maneuver around a flotilla of trucks, searching for something to say. I don’t want this to be our final exchange.
Maybe he feels the same way. With an effort, he says, “What are you studying?”
It’s that favorite fallback Indian question, one my parents’ friends annoyed me with routinely as I was growing up. I’d toss off flippant, outrageous answers to them, but today I’m not sure what to say. If I tell Dr. V I’ve dropped out of school and am working at a dead-end job, he’ll look down on me. On the other hand, he told me a truth and deserves the same. I opt for something in-between. “I’m taking some time off from college.”
I glance over to gauge his response. He flinches and flings up his arms. I hadn’t expected such a dramatic reaction to my disclosure. Then I see it: an eighteen-wheeler moving into our lane, blithely oblivious to the fact that its tail end is inches from the side of our car. In panic I wrench the steering wheel sharply to the right, but I’m too late. The truck’s rear wallops our front. There’s a huge bang, sparks from metal tearing metal. But maybe the sparks are inside my eyes. The impact sends us flying across the next lane. We crash into the guardrail. More sparks. Someone’s screaming. I think it’s me. An airbag rushes out from nowhere. It punches me back into my seat. Everything goes white and silent, like when someone dies in a movie and wakes up in heaven.
But then the bag deflates and the world takes over. Cacophony of honks, brakes screeching all around, stench of burning rubber. My mouth fills with salt. Bile or blood, not sure which. The front of our car has accordioned up so I can barely see over it. Pellets of broken glass are scattered across the dashboard. I can feel some of them inside my T-shirt. Steam pours from under the hood. Are we going to blow up? It feels like every bone in my body is jarred loose. I glance over at Dr. V, who has an ugly gash on his forehead. He’s trying to unbuckle his seat belt, but his hands are trembling too much. I yank it off him, and somehow we’re on the asphalt, crawling away from the car. Then we’re sitting on the shoulder of the freeway, scrunched up against the bent guardrail, and it hits me, what just happened. I start shaking. The sensation is oddly familiar. Then I remember. After the abortion, I’d been this way, chilled and shivering, unable to stop.
“Sorr
y,” I mumble. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.” The traffic shrieks around me. I’m not sure whom I’m addressing.
When Dr. Venkatachalapathi saw the monstrous rear end of the truck swinging toward him, he was surprised at how indifferent he felt about the imminent ending of his life. He feared the pain, of course, and he was filled with sorrow for his wife, who would now be alone in the world, and for the girl in the car, who would be gravely injured, if not worse. But the actual shucking off of his own life—he almost looked forward to it. In the video games that Meena used to play obsessively, when the odds were against her, she would just let her character die and start again, clean and new, without scars. Would this be similar? As his head struck the dashboard, he wondered if he would meet Meena in the afterworld, as the scriptures suggested, and what he would say to her. Would she respond? Would she turn away?
But he was not dead, after all. Somehow he was out of the ruined car and sitting on the hot asphalt, gulping smoggy air, vehicles swooshing past perilously close. In the distance he could see that the truck that had hit them had pulled over, a rear light blinking like a Cyclops eye. The driver had climbed down and was hurrying toward them. Other cars had pulled over. How kind strangers were in America. Someone was talking on a cell phone, gesturing toward the smoking car. A face hung over him, lips moving. He did not respond, and after some time the face went away.
Next to him, the girl rocked back and forth, crying. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Now she was talking in a garbled rush. She had done something terrible. He couldn’t pluck the words out of the weeping, to make sense of them. Nausea climbed, burning, up his gullet. Please, goddess, not the added indignity of throwing up in public. The girl’s face twisted, shiny with snot. Pity and disgust fought inside him until he was overcome by a great exhaustion and rested his forehead on the guardrail.
But she would not let him go. She was clutching his shoulder, digging in with her nails. “I had an abortion. Do you hear me? An abortion. I never told anyone this. Two years ago, this exact day, I killed my baby.”
The words echoed inside him as though his body were a huge, empty room. He wanted to leave them behind, leave her, but he had no right.
“I thought you might understand,” she said, “but you don’t. How can you? Nothing you ever did could be this terrible.”
So easy to agree. To end this conversation. Pat her back and tell her he was sorry. The moment would pass. The police would arrive, the medics, the fire engine with its familiar, consoling redness.
Instead, he made himself touch her hand. It took all his willpower not to jerk away when she clasped it. He started to talk about Meena. Haltingly, then faster, because he only had these minutes. Tara was listening, her head tilted close to his. It struck him that he had not spoken of his daughter—apart from mouthing polite, meaningless responses to expressions of sympathy—since she had died. Even to his wife, he had said, Please don’t.
She had a zany sense of humor, a way of pushing back her mass of curls with both hands when she dissolved into laughter. She had a temper and got into fights with him, but she forgave quickly. She wasn’t pretty in the conventional sense. Her nose was too big; her chin too strong, like his. He thought she was beautiful. She was straight as a knife edge, and as sharp. She rolled her eyes when she told him about classmates who secretly met boys in cinema halls; she had no patience with subterfuge.
He would explain to her the complicated economic theories he was working on, even though she was in high school and surely did not understand. Still, she sat and listened patiently into the night. After she went away to college in Delhi, they continued their late-night conversations on the phone. His wife would come knocking on the door of his study, rumpled with sleep, complaining that he talked more to the absent Meena than to her.
Meena graduated; found a job in Delhi with an NGO that helped teens create small businesses. He was proud that he had inspired her. He showed their relatives the photos she sent, groups of girls with embroidered bags, jars of pickled chilies and mangoes.
When he started looking for a suitable match, she came down to Chennai to talk to him. There were circles under her eyes as though she wasn’t sleeping well. She worked too hard, that girl. Dad, she said, I don’t want that kind of marriage. I love someone.
It had been a shock. Love matches had been unheard-of in their orthodox Brahmin family. But he swallowed back his objections. Times were changing, and he was willing to change along with them if it made her happy. That was how much she meant to him, his lovely daughter.
Tell me, Amma, he said. Is it someone at work?
Yes, Meena said, her thin face flushing. I would like you to meet her.
Children. How they can tear your life apart with a single word.
At first he was sure he had heard wrong. Even after she explained, he refused to believe it. It is a mistake, he kept saying. This is not normal. You do not know what you are saying. You have fallen into the wrong company, become confused. Let us take you to the doctor.
Several times she broke down in tears, but she was also firm. This is me, Appa. I can’t hide it from you anymore.
What had he said then, with his world crashing down around him? Maybe, Disgusting. Maybe, You’ve shamed us. He had not shouted, he knew that much. Perhaps that had made it worse, his cold, controlled voice. At the end he had said, We want nothing more to do with you. Go. Never come back.
She hadn’t believed him. She had called from Delhi every night, hoping he would talk to her, until he blocked her number.
It was the police who came next, carrying the news. Death. Overdose of sleeping pills.
The paramedics check us for damages, the ones that can be gauged with instruments. They tell us we’re lucky. Most of what we’re feeling is shock; we don’t need to be hospitalized. Appropriately bandaged and medicated, we’re driven to the police station, where our statements are taken. Mine barely makes sense. My mind is full of Meena, her still, pale body on the hospital gurney, her long hair falling over its edge like sorrow. My wife clung to her, weeping, Dr. V had said. But I couldn’t touch her. I felt I didn’t have the right.
The police must have contacted the university, because here comes the chair of the Economics Department, huffing with apologies. He’s going to take Dr. V to the airport and try and get him on another flight. He glares at me as he stashes Dr. V’s suitcase in his trunk. Dr. V explained to him that the accident wasn’t my fault, but I’ve a feeling I’ll be looking for a new job pretty soon.
Dr. V turns to wish me goodbye. I only have a moment.
“Thank you for telling me about your daughter,” I say. I want to add something about how I feel now, not better exactly but less alone. But words would spoil it.
“No,” he says. “Thank you.” And then, “Go back to school, Amma. Don’t give up.”
He holds my gaze until I nod.
The chair clears his throat. Dr. V gets in the car. They’re gone.
Waiting outside the station for a policeman to give me a ride, I heft my handbag, and suddenly that temple smell is all around me. I unzip the bag. The paper cone has burst. A fine gray ash coats everything: wallet, lipstick, keys, fingers. I lower my face and breathe it in, but all it does is make me sneeze.
How much do I have in the bank? How much do I have in me? Can I stick with it this time? Just thinking about the effort it’ll require exhausts me, all that information I’ll have to ingest and spit back out.
My head’s aching like crazy, like someone’s tightening a spring at the base of my skull. It’s the kind of pain that requires some serious tending to. I’m out of Valium, but I still have a quarter bottle of emergency vodka in the back of my closet.
I realize that I’ve forgotten to rescue the stolen shawl. It’s gone, towed along with the car. Like so many things in my life, I won’t see it again.
My teeth are chattering. Delayed shock or withdrawal. How much longer is that idiot policeman going to take?
I consider going back into the statio
n to complain. I’m a citizen. I have rights. But then a memory sideswipes me.
At the entrance to the temple, Dr. V informed me that we had to remove our shoes. Grudgingly, I pulled off my boots. The bricks of the wide courtyard were scorching-hot. They seared my feet. I hurried on tiptoe toward the temple door, trying to get inside the building as quickly as possible. But Dr. V called me back.
“Before we visit the goddess,” he said, “we must cleanse ourselves.”
There was a spigot beside the doorway, a green hose attached to it. Dr. V turned it on. His own feet must have been scalding, too, but he aimed the hose toward me. Water pooled over my feet and under my burning soles.
That cool silver shimmer in the blazing afternoon. That small benediction. How can I forget it?
Bela’s Kitchen: 2000
The first time I met her was the night David left me.
After the front door clicked behind him, I needed to get out of the house. I headed to the grocery, the fancy one next to the independent bookstore where I was the events coordinator. I filled my cart with items he disapproved of. I bought ice-cream sandwiches, a six-pack of Budweiser—regular, not Light—and a family-sized package of chicken nuggets. But he had ruined me. I found myself reading the backs of the boxes, how many calories per serving, how much cholesterol. I wondered what kinds of hormones the poultry had been injected with. I pronounced the names of the preservatives—potassium nitrate, erythorbic acid, L-cysteine—as though memorizing a dangerous chemistry lesson.
Before We Visit the Goddess Page 14