Outside at a bus stop crowded with other strands of brown and white and black she will get into line, will marvel that no one even raises their eyes, suspicious at her moving through the air of America so awkward-new. She will finger in pleased wonder the collar of her coat, which is better even than a cloak of disappearing. And when the bus comes she will surge at it with the others, her blending so successful that you standing across the street will no longer know who is who.
With a great belch of smoke the bus lets me out in front of Geeta’s office and roars away. I stand awhile, craning up in wonder at that glittery tower of black glass. On the lower rectangles I see, shimmering, a face.
Mine?
I move closer to look but it ripples away, this face I have never examined. Have never till now felt the heart-hammering need to. When I retreat it reappears floating, the features remote and unreal, elongated into mystery.
Wisewoman shaman herb-healer, come to make things right.
The receptionist thinks differently.
“Who?” Her magenta lips purse around the pellet of the word. “Do you have an appointment? No?” In their armor of mascara her eyes rake my cheap coat and boots, the package I have brought all the way from the spice store wrapped in old newspaper. My umbrella pooling dark wetness like pee on her carpet. Her spine is stick-straight with disapproval.
“Then I’m afraid I can’t help you.” She smooths her skirt over trim hips with magenta-tipped fingers, turns with finality back to her typing.
But I Tilo did not step over the threshold of prohibited America, did not risk the spices’ retribution to go back so easily empty-handed.
I advance until I stand directly in front of her desk, until her typing stops and she looks up with annoyance and yes, a flicker of fear under the spiked lashes.
“You must tell Geeta I am here. It is important.”
Her eyes say, Crazy bag lady, say, Maybe I should ring for Security, say finally, Heck, why should I get involved. She jabs at buttons on a machine on her desk and speaks in a manicured voice.
“Ms. Bannerjee, there’s a person to see you. A woman. Yes, I think she’s Indian. No, I’m quite sure she isn’t representing anyone. She’s—uh—different. No, she didn’t give a name. Okay, if you’re sure.” Then she turns to me. “Fourth floor, ask someone when you get off, elevator’s to your left.” Her eyes are saying, Just go.
“You didn’t ask,” I say to her gently as I gather my belongings.
“What?” The word startled out of her.
“For my name. And I do represent someone. Why else do you think I’m here.”
Geeta’s office is a tiny square and windowless, the kind given to newcomers who should be too busy to look out anyway. A metal table stacked with files and blueprints takes up all the space.
Sitting behind the table she is writing a business report but not really, because the pad is filled with doodles. From where I stand they look like roses with huge thorns. She seems thinner. Or is it just the severity of the dark pantsuit she is wearing today, the lapels slanting hard and angled across her chest, the inkblue cloth pulling the color out of her face. Its grown-upness only making her look more young.
The last time she came to my store she wore blue jeans. A red T-shirt that said ¡Uxmal! Her hair in a thick braid down her back, wavy as water as she laughed at something her mother said. Together they were picking out raisins and almonds and sweet white elachdana to make desserts for Bengali New Year.
Today her eyes are faintly puzzled as she tries to place me. And dark with disappointment. She was expecting someone else, perhaps her mother come like a miracle to say I forgive. She presses her lips together, trying to make them not tremble. There is a small mole on her chin and it too is trembling. I wish I could tell her how beautiful it—she—is.
“Please sit down,” she says finally, straining at politeness, “This is a surprise. You look different.”
And then because she can’t hold it in anymore, “How did you know where I work? Did someone ask you to come see me?” I nod.
“My mother.”
When I shake my head no she says, “Not Dad?” Her voice is high with hoping.
O Geeta my songbird, how I wish I could say yes, wish I could pluck the thorn bleeding in your rose-heart. But I must shake my head again.
Her shoulders crumple. “I didn’t think so.”
“It was your grandfather actually.”
“Oh, him.” Her voice is acid now. I can hear the thoughts, gnawing and corrosive in her brain. He’s the one who turned them against me with all that shit about good women and family shame. They never would have behaved so prehistorically otherwise. Dad, especially. If only he’d stayed in India none of this would’ve—
“Your grandfather loves you a lot,” I say, to stop the poison eating at her heart.
“Love, hah.” She spits out the sound like a sickness. “He doesn’t know what the word means. For him it’s all control. Control my parents, control me. And whenever he doesn’t get his way it’s O Ramu send me back better I die alone in India.”
Her imitation of the heavy oldman accent is exact, vicious. It shocks me. Still, better hate spoken than hate silent.
“If it weren’t for his medieval ideas about arranged marriages I wouldn’t have had to tell Mom and Dad about Juan like this. I would’ve introduced him to them slowly; they would’ve gotten a chance to see him as a person, not as a—”
Her voice stumbles.
I know what I should say. The Old One taught it to us many times. Your fate is born with you, stitched into your birth stars. Who can you blame for it?
But that is not what she needs to hear, Geeta for whom the old words no longer fit her song.
Spices, I know I have no right to ask but spices guide me.
A hot sand wind rubs at my words, eroding them. The minutes fall around us like drops of lead.
What shall I do now.
Then she says, “What the hell did he think you could do, anyway?” She is staring at me, her brow wrinkled as though trying to recall. But her eyes are no longer crusted over with hate.
“Nothing really,” I say hurriedly. “Just let you know that angry words like buzzing bees hide the honey underneath. Just see you so I can go back and tell them Don’t worry so much she’s well.”
“I don’t know about that.” Her sigh shakes her whole body. “I’m taking pills every night and still I can’t sleep. Diana’s been getting real concerned. She thinks I should get some help, go see a shrink, maybe.”
“Diana?”
“Oh, I didn’t move in with Juan. I couldn’t do that to Mom and Dad. Besides, I knew it would be really bad for our relationship, what with me being so stressed and everything. So I called Diana, she’s my best friend from college, and she said, Sure, you can stay with me for as long as you need.”
Thankfulness loosens my clenched lungs so I can breathe again. “Geeta,” I say, “you are a very intelligent girl.”
She tries to hide her smile but I can tell she is pleased. “Would you like to see his photo?” she says and wipes the pewter frame sitting on her desk carefully on her blue sleeve. Hands it to me.
Earnest eyes, dark wings of neat-combed hair, a mouth that has learned kindness from growing up with too little. His arm around her a bit awkward as though he isn’t yet used to so much luck.
“He looks very intelligent too,” I say.
Now she is openly smiling. “He’s a lot smarter than me. Can you believe, he came out of the barrio, went to college on a scholarship, graduated with a 4.0. And so modest you’d never learn any of it from him. I know if Dad just talks to him he’ll see what a wonderful guy he is.”
“Maybe you will bring him to the store one time so I can meet him?”
“Sure. He’d like that. He’s real interested in Indian culture and especially our food. I cook it every once in a while at his apartment. You know Mexicans cook with a lot of the same spices that we—”
Suddenly she
stops, Geeta who is nobody’s fool. Looks straight at me, her eyes black as lakes and in them my face floating.
“Now I remember. Grandpa said once that you knew spells.”
“Simply oldman talk,” I say quickly.
“O I don’t know,” she says. “Grandpa can be pretty smart about some things.” She examines me some more. “It’s okay, I don’t mind. I have a good feeling about you. I’ll bring Juan to you sometime soon, maybe even next week. They have them in his culture too, curanderas I believe they’re called.”
“Next week then,” I say rising, my work almost done for now, though ahead it will surely be rocks and stumbling. “Here, I brought you something.”
I take it from its wrappings, bottle of mango pickled in mustard oil into which I’ve added methi for healing breaks and ada for the deeper courage which knows when to say no, and also amchur for deciding right.
She holds it up to the light, its thick redgold glow. “Thanks! It’s my favorite kind. But of course you know that.” Her eyes glint, mischievous. “Did you say some magic over it?”
“The magic is in your heart,” I say.
“But seriously, thank you for coming. I feel so much better. Listen, why don’t I walk you down.”
In the lobby she gives me a hug, Geeta come down from her glitter-black tower, her arms light as wings around me. Slips something into my hand.
“Maybe you could show them this, you know, if they come to the store or something, and you could maybe tell them also we’re not living together?” Her mouth is a hot rose blooming for a moment on my cheek. “And here’s my number, in case—well, just in case.”
A plan stirs inside me, a rustle like wings. I will give them to her grandfather when next he comes, the phone number and photo both, tell him what to do.
All the way back in the bus my shoulders glow and burn where she touched them. The skin of my face, scorched where she breathed the unsaid words of her wish: The people I love most, make them love each other. My eyes too scorching as I stare at the photograph, the two lovers so young, smiling up with wrenching faith as though I could fix it all, I Tilo who is myself in more trouble than ever they could be.
She is sitting by my head when I wake, the store dark except for a radium-green glow coming from I can’t tell where, and the smell of the hibiscus oil she would sometimes let us rub into her hair. The Old One sitting cross-legged, her spine curving inward as though something is too heavy for it to hold up, my life or hers, I do not know which. The scars on her hands glow like firelines against that seared-white skin. I start flinching away but then I don’t, because on her face is not the anger I imagined but sadness. Such deep sadness it is like a monsoon cloud, like the bottom of the sea. And inside myself someone is twisting and twisting a wet cloth until the last drops are wrung from it.
“First Mother,” I say and put out my hand, but there is nothing to hold. She is spirit-traveling, as I should have known. I am sorry again, for I remember how after such journeys she would lie on a pallet in the healing hut a little longer each time, her breath shallow, the flesh under her eyes loose and purple as with bruising.
“First Mother is it that bad, what I did?”
“Tilo.” Her voice is small and echoing as if caught inside an underwater cave. “Tilo daughter you should not have.”
“But Mother how else could I have helped Geeta, how else helped her grandfather who came to me asking for the first time in his life.”
“Daughter the help you try to give outside these protected walls turns on itself, don’t you know that? Even in here you have seen how all does not work the way you want it to.”
“Jagjit,” I whisper, my voice bowed in failure.
“Yes. And there’ll be others. Don’t you remember the last lesson?”
I try to think but inside my skull is a jumble of broken parts, thought shards whose ends do not fit each other.
“Ultimately the Mistresses are without power, hollow reeds only for the wind’s singing. It is the spice that decides, and the person to whom it is given. You must accept what they together choose and even with failure be at peace.”
“First Mother, I—”
“But when you lean out past what is allowed and touch what is not, when you step beyond the old rules, you increase the chance of failing a hundredfold. The old rules which keep the world in its frail balance, which have been there forever, before me, before the other Old Ones, before even the Grandmother.”
Her voice fades in and out as though buffeted by a sea storm.
I want to ask so much. I who in my naivete had thought it had always been her since the beginning. Who were the other Old Ones who was the Grandmother. And that question formed of dark curiosity and perhaps a darker desire, which I cannot bring myself to speak.
Who when you are gone.
Then I forget because she is saying, “Don’t let America seduce you into calamities you cannot imagine. Dreaming of love, don’t rouse the spices’ hate.”
My voice is a stunned whisper. “You know?”
She doesn’t answer. Already her image is growing dim, the phosphorous glow fading from the walls of the store. “Wait, First Mother—”
“Child I had to fight with all my heart’s strength to bring you this warning,” she says faintly through lips blue as air. “Next time I will not be able.”
“Mother since you know my heart, answer this question before you go. What if a Mistress wants her life back. What will the spices—”
But she is gone. The walls are cold and cobweb-dim again, not even a brief waver of wind to tell she was here. No sigh of sound, no smell of her hibiscus-hair drifting like incense. Only the spices watching, the spices stronger than I ever thought, their dark power clenched in their core. The spices sucking all the store’s air into themselves until none is left for me, letting me know this was no dream.
Letting me know they heard it all.
Time passes, time passes. Sun rises, the color of turmeric, falls in a scatter of sindur vermilion. On the naked tree outside, fennel-beaked birds cry their sorrow. Sky presses down so clouds black as kalo jire scrape the top of a downtown tower I once traveled to. I think of Haroun I think of Ahuja’s wife I think of Geeta and her Juan. I dust the shelves of the store and pile packets up neatly and wonder why they do not come. Cars gun their en gines racing by. There are shots there are screams then the keening of the ambulance and lastly the stains hosed off the pavement. Jagjit Jagjit I cry inside my heart. But I remember the Old One’s face, I remember her warning and do not step even to the window to look.
But maybe I have only dreamed all this, rocking through the night between wishing and not-wishing. Maybe it is only next morning now, for a truck rumbles up to the door and two men in navy overalls with REY and JOSE stitched in red over their pockets are pounding on the door shouting “Delivery!” Or is it karma, that great wheel black as death which, once set in motion, cannot be stopped?
The men say, “Where you want it?” Say, “Sign here this line, you know English, yes?” Say wiping their brows, “Hey lady, that was hot work. Got some Coke or better some cold cerveza?”
I give them mango juice in ice with mint leaves floating for coolness, for strength that lasts the long day. I chew at my lip waiting for them to wave me Gracias and So long and take off in their truck which jiggles and stutters over the potholes. Finally the light blinks its green eye at them and I am alone with my carton from Sears.
I try to cut through the tape, a voice inside me calling Hurry hurry, but my knife is unwilling. My knife stained like tears of accusation. It twists in my hand, wanting to leap away. Two, three times I nick myself, almost. Until at last I put it away and rip at the cardboard with fingers. Scrabble through pellets like spongy snow, lift aside Styrofoam sheets brittle as sea salt. How much time it takes, my heart worrying its bars like a caged animal, until at last I catch its slippery hardness in my hands and pull so it rises up gleaming.
My mirror.
All the s
pices watching me, their eyes one eye their breath one breath united in disapproval, silently asking Why.
Ah if only I knew. There is a feeling inside me like someone walking on thinnest ice, knowing at any moment it will crack, but unable to stop.
Here is a question I never thought to ask on the island: First Mother, why is it not allowed, what can be wrong with seeing yourself?
The afternoon sun is a flash on my mirror, making the store so blinding bright even the spices must blink.
Before they can reopen their eyes I have lifted down a picture of Krishna and his gopis and hooked it into the waiting nail, with a dupatta draped carefully over it.
Mirror, forbidden glass that I hope will tell me the secret of myself.
But not today. It is not time.
Why not Tilo our foolish Mistress for what then did you buy it.
Out of the silence their voice, startling. A question flares like an eye inside me, Why are they speaking—then closes in on its dark, suspicious self.
But already I have forgotten it in the joy that floods my whole being. Scoffing yes, annoyed yes, but talking once again to me, my spices.
Ah dear ones, it has been so long.
Who knows when and how a mirror may be needful, I tell them, my voice light as a wind’s kiss on a floating thistle.
I feel their attention, curious and grave, like sunlight on my skin. Holding back their power to incinerate. Waiting on judgment.
Perhaps the Old One was mistaken? Perhaps it is not too late for us after all?
Inside my wild caged heart I am saying this over and over: Spices trust me give me a chance. In spite of America, in spite of love, your Tilo will not let you down.
“This one,” says the American. “I want this one.”
“Are you sure,” I ask, dubious.
“Absolutely.”