Before We Visit the Goddess (20 page)

Her mother's letter waited, unanswered, on the countertop. Bela felt guilty each time she passed it, but she couldn't decide on the right words with which to soften her refusal. After some time, it was covered over by flyers and bills and passed out of her conscious mind.

Then she came down with a bad case of the flu.

As Bela tossed and turned, delirious with fever, Sabitri appeared in front of her, looking as she had on the day of her husband's funeral. It was the first time Bela had seen her mother dressed in a coarse white widow-sari, her forehead wiped clean of the vermilion mark that was the privilege of married women. A well-meaning neighbor-woman said, “You've got to cry and let it out, or you'll go mad.” Sabitri had looked at her, her face expressionless. “I won't go mad. I have a daughter to bring up.”

That was what Sabitri dedicated her life to, from then on. Durga Sweets, Bela saw now, had been important to her mother only because it was a means of providing Bela with all she needed. And then Bela had abandoned her.

“I'm sorry,” Bela cried, thrashing about under the blanket, which felt like a sheet of iron. She was speaking to her mother, but also to her father. Her fever-mind had dredged up another half-remembered conversation, two women at the funeral, whispering about how that unfortunate incident with Bela had set him to drinking again, and then one thing had led to another. But what was the incident? What had Bela done? She couldn't quite remember, except that it had involved a hospital. And, somehow, the magician, whom she remembered, oddly, as a dragonfly. They had never talked about his death, Sabitri and she. They never talked about the really painful things. “I'm sorry.” Now she was thinking of her brother, how he had gone into convulsions, his hot little body rigid and shaking in turns, his face splotched red and white, and then Ayah had pulled her from the room. What was his name? She couldn't remember. In her mind he became one with the fetus inside her and she called out to them both, “Baby, baby, don't die.”

Sanjay's worried face suddenly loomed overhead; he was laying wet rags on her forehead, across her arms. He spooned ice water into her mouth.
Hush, shona, don't stress yourself, the baby's fine.
How cool his fingers were. Bishu was there, too—or was this another day? He had brought a man with him—a friend who used to be a doctor in India, she would learn later.
Give her the flu medication. If her temperature goes up any further she might have a seizure and that would be worse for the baby.
Bishu held her head over a basin while Sanjay poured cold water.
Hush, don't struggle so, we'll get through this.
Water dribbled into her ears, pooled in the corners of her mouth, tasting brackish. When the fever finally broke, Sanjay helped her drink some broth, lifting the cup to her lips, running a soft hand over her hair, turning his face so she wouldn't see his tears. All night he sat up, rubbing her back, giving her medication at the right intervals. Even her mother could not have done more. Later, when things started going bad, she would remember this. It would make her give him another chance, and then another, until the chances ran out.

After she was better, Bishu came to see her, bearing gifts. Little soaps and shampoos. Tea bags. Red-and-white-striped peppermints. He had found a job as the manager of a motel. The motel served dinner to its guests, so some nights he brought coleslaw and chicken wings. Lasagna. She ate the unfamiliar American dishes with ravenous pleasure, crunching through the thin bones. She was over the nausea now and always hungry. Sometimes she caught the men watching her approvingly. She didn't care. She no longer resented Bishu's intrusions. The crucible of illness had melded them, finally, into a family.

The men found a new tenant for the house. An Indian this time, thank God. Sanjay's project turned out better than expected, and he got a promotion. With his first month's salary, Bishu bought a secondhand crib, ignoring Sanjay and Bela's protests. The baby was big now. Each time he moved (Bela had decided it was going to be a boy), they could see a ripple go across Bela's stomach. When that happened, everyone stopped what they were doing and smiled.

Bela was seven months along now and hardly able to fit behind the steering wheel of the secondhand Chevy Sanjay had recently bought. He himself wasn't comfortable with American roads yet and preferred taking BART to work. She had been scared, too, but determined. Knowing how to drive would allow her to look for a better-paying job once the baby was born, to reclaim her house-dream. She splurged and took a driver's ed course and drove every chance she got.
House, house, house
, she chanted to herself when she found herself in challenging traffic situations.

Today she had used the freeway for the first time to drive to the clinic, which was some distance from their apartment, for her checkup. The doctor was pleased. Everything was progressing normally. There was a grocery near the doctor's office, and on the way back, she decided to stop there for ice cream. She deserved a treat.

As she was sifting through the magazine rack (she did a lot of her reading at the grocery because she couldn't afford to buy the glossy food publications she loved), she felt that someone was staring at her. She didn't think much of it. People stared at her routinely, especially when she wore her Indian clothes. Though this annoyed Bela, she had accepted it as one of the costs of living in America. But the sensation of being watched didn't go away, and when she turned around, she discovered that it was the tenant-wife. Scrunched up in the shopping cart she was pushing sat her son, sucking his thumb, though surely he was too old for it. There was something unkempt about them both, like birds that have had their feathers ruffled the wrong way. Bela decided it was best not to acknowledge them. She stuffed the unread magazine into the rack with regret and moved to get her treat.

But the woman followed her. Usually Bela liked to take her time in front of the ice-cream freezer, gazing at the cornucopia of choices, imagining all those fantastical tastes before she made her decision. It was one of the things she liked best about being in America. This time, though, feeling uncomfortable, she just grabbed a carton of vanilla and made her way toward the cash registers.

She had paid and was almost out the door when she heard the woman say, “Are you happy now that you have your house back, you murdering bitch?”

Bela whirled around, startled. The woman was right behind her, her grocery cart empty except for the child, who was hugging his knees and staring at her with wide eyes. Had she gone crazy? Her eyes did, indeed, hold a strange glitter. Bela's stomach began to hurt. She found herself laboring for breath. She considered shouting for help. Instead, she found herself saying, “What do you mean?”

“Don't act all innocent,” the woman said, glaring at Bela. But after a moment she laughed an acid laugh. “They didn't tell you what they did, did they?”

Bela sat at the kitchen table, staring at the wall. Her hands were still shaky, though it had been some hours since she reached home. She had driven badly on her way back. Several motorists had honked at her, and one man had leaned out from the car window and shouted, making a rude gesture.

She had let the woman accompany her to the parking lot, although every instinct told her that she shouldn't. She had stood in the glaring sun, sweating, as the woman described to her how Bishu had followed her one day to a similar parking lot and approached her when she stepped out of the car. He had shaken his fist in her face and threatened her: bad things would happen if they didn't move out in a week's time; worse things would happen after that. She pleaded with him, told him they didn't have a place to go, or enough money to move to an apartment. They needed more time.

“But he didn't care,” the woman said. “He said he wasn't running a charity.”

Bela was torn, but finally she said, “He was right. We didn't have enough money to keep paying the mortgage while you lived for free in our house—”

“I went home and told my husband,” the woman rushed on, as though she didn't hear Bela. “But he wouldn't listen to me. He never does. He said that if that man bothered me again, I should threaten him back, tell him I'd call the police.”

Bela's feet hurt. The ice cream she had bought was melting, she was sure of it. “I have to get home,” she said. “I know all this already.”

She tried to reach her car door, but the woman blocked her way. And then she told her.

About a week after the woman's encounter with Bishu, her son had gone into the backyard to play. She heard him scream and came running. She found him crouched over their dog, Hank, who was lying near the fence. He'd been poisoned.

The ground seemed to tilt and rush at Bela. She reached out and held tight to the nearest car, even though it was not hers.

“Maybe he just . . . died of old age,” she said. Even to her own ears, her voice sounded unconvincing.

The woman looked at her with contempt. “Hank had foam all over his mouth. And some brown caked stuff. When I checked the yard, I found that someone had thrown an open packet of baking chocolate—that's the kind that's most dangerous for dogs—over the side gate.”

It was evening, but the lights were not turned on in the apartment. Dinner was not cooked. Bela couldn't focus on anything but the woman's voice.

“Jimmy went crazy after finding Hank,” she had said. “I went pretty crazy, too. We've had that dog for ten years. He was family. Jimmy hasn't talked since that day. I took him to the clinic, but they couldn't help him. Look, just look at him! We don't have proof, so we can't go to the police or anything. But I want you to tell your friend I hope he rots in hell. . . .”

What was she going to do with this information, this thing that Bishu had done? If she revealed it to Sanjay, it would destroy their little world of three. Worse, because Bishu was the person Sanjay had trusted most of all, ever since he'd been an unwanted boy in his uncle's house. He loved Bela, yes, but he depended on Bishu. How could she take that away from him? And she—she had grown close to Bishu, too, these last months. She remembered his hands steadying her fevered head and felt, simultaneously, nausea and a sense of loss.

Bela forced herself to get up, dragging her feet like an old woman. The baby hadn't stirred since the woman had accosted her in the store. Was he in shock, like her? What a world she was bringing him into. What if someday someone did to him what Bishu had done to Jimmy?

A frozen pizza in the oven, a carton of juice on the table. She had to save the rest of her energy so that when Sanjay came home, she could smile and kiss him as though nothing had happened. She loved him, this man who rubbed her aching back night after night, this man for whose sake she had made herself write to her mother,
The apartment is too small, maybe you can visit later
, knowing that Sabitri would never ask again.

But when they were in bed in the dark, Bela lying on her side and Sanjay behind her, their bodies fitted together, his hand caressing her stomach, she couldn't hold it in. She couldn't imagine spending the rest of her nights with this secret wedged like a shard between them.