Before We Visit the Goddess (12 page)

The Western clothes suit Mrs. Mehta surprisingly well. Along with the frumpy cotton sari, she seems to have shed several years. She takes small, self-conscious steps. I realize that she has never worn pants before. She sees me watching and flashes me a terribly guilty look. I can tell she's on the verge of retreating to the fitting room and changing back into her old clothes.

I clap loudly and whistle. Blanca joins me. Keysha cheers. A shy, girlish smile breaks out on Mrs. Mehta's face.

After that, there's no stopping her. She finds a leopard-print skirt, jeans, a sweater, an embroidered peasant blouse, and a pair of capris, all of which she throws down with an air of triumph on the checkout counter. Mr. Lawry is so taken aback that he charges her the yellow tag price even though none of the articles are on sale.

By now a surprisingly large number of customers crowd the store. Has someone been spreading the news? Mrs. Mehta points them to the corners where she discovered her treasures. “There's a gorgeous bedspread on the left, by the wedding dresses,” she calls after a bearded man who looks as though he hasn't been acquainted with a shower in the recent past. When he shuffles back with the bedspread and two pairs of shoes, Mr. Lawry promotes me to cashier. Mrs. Mehta has taken off her glasses. “They were for reading only,” she confides with a grin as she slings the tote over an insouciant shoulder.

I pull her into a corner and warn her not to use up all her money.

“But I haven't had so much fun since I came to America,” she says. “Everyone here is so
real
. Even that Mr. Lawry—he is all bark, no bite. I told him he can call me Sonu. It's my pet name, what my parents used.

“Besides,” she adds, “what should I be saving for?”

She looks at me inquiringly, and I see it's a genuine question, one to which I have no answer.

During my break, I phone Robert to inform him of the developments.

He laughs, a sound that's like a sliver of ice on a parched tongue. “A hip Indian grandma! Maybe you should bring her to Victor's.” He adds, quietly, “I miss you.”

My heart balloons in my chest. I miss him, too, more than I expected.

When I invite her to Victor's party, Mrs. Mehta's face scrunches in apology. “Oh, dear. Mr. Lawry just hired me for tomorrow. And you, too, because I said I wouldn't come otherwise. He says he hasn't had such good sales since Christmas. Plus, tomorrow Blanca is giving me a haircut.”

“A haircut! What—”

I'm interrupted by Mr. Lawry, who waves as we leave. “Bye, Miz So-noo. Don't forget our lunch date.”

Things are spiraling out of control. “A lunch date?” I say, once we're in the car. “Are you crazy? I can't let you go off alone with him. He's—he's—” I rummage my mind for details that will shock her into canceling. “He's an alcoholic. He cheats his customers. He—”

In reply Mrs. Mehta touches my eyebrow ring, the one I bought after my father left, a shivery, bird's-wing caress. It silences me.

Nighttime. Mrs. Mehta and I are making chapatis. My efforts—as always—look like cutouts of various U.S states. But Mrs. Mehta says they are delicious. She eats three of them—mostly to encourage me, I think.

I'd called Robert from Nearly to tell him we couldn't make it to the barbecue.

“Leave her at the store and come,” he said. “The guys want to meet you.”

“I don't feel comfortable leaving her alone. She's like . . . a newborn.”

“You're going overboard with this. She isn't a newborn. She isn't anything to you except a few extra dollars. And here I am, your boyfriend, asking you. Doesn't that count?”

Words jostled in my mouth. It counted. I loved him. I couldn't abandon Mrs. Mehta, who was counting on me. She wasn't just a few extra dollars. I tried to formulate these thoughts into coherence, but all I managed was, “Sorry.”

“Fine,” Robert said.

I called him twice before I left the store; both times I got his voice mail.

Over dinner, Mrs. Mehta tells me of her India days, growing up in a joint family with eleven cousins. They lived in an old house that had so many wings added on that it resembled a warren. They didn't bother to make friends with outsiders because they had each other.

I've never been to India. Never felt the desire to go. But now, as I listen to Mrs. Mehta's stories, I feel a jab of regret.

Her husband, she tells me, saw her at a Diwali party when she was seventeen and sent his uncle to her parents with a proposal. She didn't want to get married so soon; she'd been accepted into one of the better women's colleges. But she gave in—that's what girls did those days. They were married for forty-five years, mostly good ones. Then one night while they were watching TV, Mr. Mehta slumped to one side. He was gone before she could call the ambulance. Soon after that, it was decided that she should come and live with her son.

Mrs. Mehta pauses. I expect sorrow, or complaints, or, worse, a request for similar confidences, but she says, “Tell me about American life.”

I want to offer her something deep and true—but what? So much that I was sure of has proved undependable.

I tell her I'll have to think about it.

Mrs. Mehta nods. “We need to sleep, anyway. I have a big day tomorrow.”

In my ocean of a bed, without Robert to protect me, I'm invaded by memories. One of the last times I saw my father was the day he moved out of our house. I remember him walking toward the door, lifting his feet with fastidious decisiveness over whatever was in the way.

Toward my father, whom I'd loved more than anyone ever, my feelings are as unambiguous as a knife. My mother is a more troublesome case. She's probably still living in the Houston suburb where I grew up, though not in our house, which was a casualty of the divorce. The last time I saw her—just before I dropped out of college—her face had been puffy, the beautiful bones of her face blurred by grief. She hadn't made the bed or taken out the trash. She poured wine into two paper cups for us. “Chin-chin,” she said, with a gaiety that was worse than tears.

Dressed in her leopard-print skirt, Mrs. Mehta moves regally through the store, wielding the feather duster like a wand. Sales are brisk; she has a talent for saying just the right things to customers. Late morning, she and Blanca go off to the utility area with an armload of fashion magazines. She emerges with a perky bob and a defiant smile.

“Come here,” says Keysha. She outlines Mrs. Mehta's mouth with her favorite lipstick, Raisin Hell, and stands back to appraise. “Awesome!”

She's right, but I make a mental note: collect rest of money before letting Mrs. Mehta's son set eyes on her.

Then it's lunchtime. Mr. Lawry is wearing, in Mrs. Mehta's honor, a checkered suit and a matching brown hat. “After you, Miz So-noo,” he intones, opening the door with a flourish.

“Relax, girlfriend,” Blanca says. “They're just going down the street. How much trouble can they get into?”

To distract myself, I ask Blanca's advice about what Mrs. Mehta wants to know.

“You can't
tell
people about American life,” she says. “You got to show them. Take her a couple places—maybe a club in the Montrose, or the Art Car Museum. Maybe she'd like a massage. You could ask El Roberto for a friends-n-family rate!”

I glare at that suggestion. Then I give in to the longing gnawing at me. This time when I call, Robert picks up, but my efforts at meaningful conversation are hampered by ear-endangering music, raucous shouts, and the fact that he's had a fair bit to drink.

“You should have come,” he says, his voice truculent. “I was all ready to show you off. You let me down.”

“Next time. Promise!”

He doesn't respond.

“Tell the guys that I'm dying to meet them.” Not exactly, but this isn't the time to be truthful and expressive.

He sounds a tiny bit placated. “What time are you coming home Sunday?”

I inform him that it'll be night by the time the Mehtas return. I fear resistance, but he merely says he'll stay over at Victor's tonight, then.

Voices in the background, male and female, are yelling his name.

“Gotta go. Love you, babe.” To his credit, he waits until I say I love him, too, before he hangs up.

Mrs. Mehta and I have spread a map of Houston on the dining table. I point out various attractions: NASA, the Art Car Museum, the gator reserve, but she zeroes in on the blue expanse to the south.

“Is that the ocean? My son didn't tell me we were so close! I've never seen the ocean.”

“Would you like to go for a beach picnic to Galveston?”

Mrs. Mehta informs me that there's nothing she would like better. She has had some experience with picnics, girlhood excursions with carloads of provisions: potato curry, puris, jalebis for dessert, countless thermos flasks full of tea, a goat for the grandmother, who had to have fresh milk.

“We're only getting bread and cheese and maybe a salad,” I warn.

She accedes magnanimously. “But of course. I understand. I am in America now.”

Before we sleep, she lays out plans for our future. She will encourage the younger Mehtas—through bad behavior, if necessary—to take several vacations in the coming year. Each time, she will insist on me being her caretaker. We'll work at Nearly and go on forays into American Life.

I nod, trying not to imagine the fireworks this would cause between Robert and myself.