Before We Visit the Goddess (21 page)

She felt his body stiffen as the words rushed from her. But she couldn't control her shrill outrage. “It was criminal. You should have seen that child, curled up in the shopping cart, sucking his thumb. You'll have to tell Bishu that we found out what he did. You'll have to tell him that he can't come here anymore because I don't think I can stand to look in his face. And all this while, he pretended to us that he got rid of the tenants just by talking to the wife! Please, let's sell the house so we don't have to be partners with him anymore. . . .”

Sanjay was saying something. It took a moment for Bela to register his unsurprised tone. “We didn't have the money for any more mortgage payments. Bishu was afraid the house would go into foreclosure. We'd lose it, lose all our savings. Our credit would be ruined. We'd never be able to buy a house again. We had to come up with a plan that would work for sure—”

“You
knew
what he was going to do?”

“Yes. The week before he did it, I went over to the motel and we talked about it. We decided not to tell you because you'd be upset. And we were right—look at you now.”

She ignored the comment and jerked upright. “You didn't try to stop him?”

“No. In fact, I told him to go ahead and do it.”

She could hear the hardness in his voice, the lack of apology. A part of her raged against him for that. But another part grudgingly respected his refusal to lie.

“How could you encourage such a terrible thing?” she whispered.

“Because I have a family to support. And they're more important to me than some dog belonging to a bastard who was taking advantage of us. Bishu felt the same way. He told me, No one's going to cheat our baby out of his birthright. No one's going to take away the house Bela loves so much. Oh, yes, he knew how you felt. And you—look at you, acting like you're so much better than him. Than us. You know nothing of what it takes to survive in the world, the values you have to sacrifice, the choices you have to make. You never had to learn, because he and I were taking care of you all along.”

The dark swayed around her like seaweed, choking. For the first time, she hated Sanjay with a deep and committed hatred for the way he had unhesitatingly taken Bishu's side against her. But that other thing he accused her of, could it be true? She pushed herself to the edge of the bed and got unsteadily to her feet. In the dark she grabbed a pair of pants, a top. She went to the family room and pulled them on. She picked up her purse and car keys. She slid open the corner drawer in the kitchen carefully, so it would not squeak, and took her passport. She ignored Sanjay's voice:
Come back to bed, it's the middle of the night, what on earth are you doing?
Soundlessly, she closed the apartment door behind her. It would take her five minutes to reach the ATM, another five to withdraw enough money for an air ticket to India. She could be at the airport in an hour.

But no. She was still sitting on the bed, motionless, because there was an anchor inside her belly, heavier than anything she had known. It held her down. Sanjay was wrong. She did understand about sacrificing values for the sake of love. She'd learned it just now—as Sabitri, too, must have, during those long widow years, bringing Bela up on her own. It was a lesson all mothers had to memorize.

Bela slid down in bed and pressed her hand against her stomach until the baby, who must have been sleeping, gave a displeased kick. All of a sudden, she was certain it was a girl. The knowledge filled her with tenderness and sorrow. She needed to pass on something wise to her daughter, something that would help her with the choices the relentless world would force her to make. But the darkness fell upon her, blotting out all eloquence, so that all she could think to whisper was,
Baby. Baby
.
Baby
.

I
'm in a foul mood. Driving down 288 will do that to me anyway because of the memories, and it doesn't help that last night's vodka makes my skull feel like someone's going at it with a baseball bat. But today I have another reason to be pissed, and he's sitting in the back seat, scowling. Though what
he
has to scowl about I don't know, being chauffeured as he is in air-conditioned luxury all the way out to Pearland for sightseeing. He's about five-foot-one, bald, very dark skin, thick-framed glasses, and Indian like me.

That's what my supervisor Yvonne said when she called me at home at the crack of dawn asking if I could come in early, they needed me for a job. I pulled the ratty blanket over my head, hoping she'd give up, but Yvonne knows me well. I've been working for her part-time in University Transportation since I dropped out of school, six years now. She kept calling back until I rolled over swearing and groped for the phone. I knocked over a bottle of Hawkeye, but it didn't matter because it was empty already, and in any case the carpet has so many stains that one more wouldn't have made a difference.

Yvonne's voice boomed through my head, “He's Indian, Tara. Just like you. He's visiting the university, and he wants to go to the temple in Pearland. I figured you'd be the perfect person to take him.”

I wanted to tell her, no, I wouldn't. I was certain this person—whoever he might be—was nothing like me. I'd never been to India, I didn't hang with Indians, I didn't even think of myself as Indian. And even if I had, no two Indians were
just like
each other. But it was too early, and my mouth was dry and my tongue was large and floppy like a beached fish.

My silence didn't deter Yvonne. She told me that the Indian was some kind of genius economist from India. Last night he'd given a lecture to a packed hall about a small-business model he's come up with to improve the lot of poor women in third-world economies. Got a standing ovation.

I wasn't surprised. People love hearing about other people's misery. Keeps their mind off of their own shitty lives.

“Were you there?” she asked, though not with much hope.

“Please, Yvonne,” I groaned, “can't you find someone else? I don't know where the damn temple is. Hell, I don't even know where Pearland is.”

“I'll get you a map,” Yvonne said. Her voice went hard and supervisorial. “Don't be late. You'll have to drive him to the airport right after, to catch his flight.” She hung up.

I lay there wondering if I could dial her back and say I felt sick. Except I'd already called in sick twice this month. I threw the phone down, picked out a pair of jeans and a semi-clean T-shirt from the tangled heap on the floor, and stumbled into the bathroom.

That was when it hit me, what I'd almost managed to forget with the help of the vodka: what today was. I walked out of the shower, dripping and soapy, to tell Yvonne I just couldn't do it. But finally I didn't call her, because it struck me that staying at home alone today would be the worst thing of all.

When Dr. Venkatachalapathi had caught sight of the young Indian woman in the hotel lobby that morning, he experienced a cramping in his abdomen and sent up a belated prayer.
May she not be my driver. Please send me instead someone of a different race, white or black, I do not care which.
This was not because he was at ease with people of other races. (He was not.) But being forced to consort with an Indian woman with spiky dyed hair and a ring through her eyebrow (and a stud, he would discover, all too soon, pinned to the center of her tongue) was far worse. The fact that she appeared to be about the same age as Meena somehow complicated matters. For this reason, when she opened the front passenger door for him with a half smile, he told her in a stern tone that he would prefer to sit in the back.

“Suit yourself.” Her smile vanished. She popped her gum loudly, conveying, at once, annoyance and disdain, and banged the door shut with undue force, causing him to jump.

This same month, two years back, I'd been traveling on 288. I was in the passenger seat of a souped-up secondhand Mustang, the darling—the car, not me—of my boyfriend. I was doubled up and in the process of vomiting; Justin was in the process of instructing me to do so inside the barf bag he had handed me, thus solidifying my suspicion that he cared more for the car than his girlfriend's condition—for which condition he was responsible. When I got out, I skillfully tipped the bag so that the vomit fell into the impossible-to-clean-out area between our seats. Sorry, I said in my most contrite voice, so that Justin would never really be sure whether or not it was an accident.

I thought I'd won that one, but I hadn't won shit. A few weeks later, when I drove back down 288 to Planned Parenthood, I had to drive alone because soon after the barf bag incident, Justin had exited my life.

Dr. Venkatachalapathi could see that the young woman had a less-than-perfect knowledge of their destination. From time to time she consulted a sheaf of directions, causing the car to veer in an alarming fashion on the narrow lane. The single frown line between her brows was uncannily like Meena's. They had left the towers of the medical center behind them long ago; even the garish strip malls that seemed ubiquitous to this city were gone. Recently, they had passed a field of cattle with enormous, unfriendly horns. It seemed that they were heading for deep country. Would the girl be able to get him to the temple and back to the airport in time?

He shook out from his pocket a white handkerchief that Mrs. Venkatachalapathi had ironed and placed in his suitcase before he left India, and patted his perspiring neck. He wished he had not mentioned to her that there was a Meenakshi temple in one of the American cities to which he had been invited. Her face had paled for a moment and then flushed. She had delicate, fair skin, which he loved and which their daughter had inherited.

“It's a sign,” she cried, her eyes hot and shiny. “An opportunity. Promise me you'll visit the temple and offer a puja for our Meena.” It was the first request she had made in a long time. He did not have the heart to say no.

For a while I've had a suspicion; now it's a reality. The road, which had narrowed as we continued along it, had just ended at a gate bearing a sign:
PINEY CREEK RIDING STABLES TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT
. In Texas when they say that, they might not be kidding. I try to turn the car around, but there isn't enough space. We tilt alarmingly. It feels like one of the back wheels is dangling over the ditch. Shit! I glance in the rearview mirror. My passenger appears apoplectic, so I look away quickly. I'm not feeling that great myself. I can feel my heart doing its crazy-prisoner thing, throwing itself against my breastbone like it wants out right now.