We look around the store. Two plump middle-aged women in saris argue the respective merits of Patak and Bedekar pickles. An old sardarji in a white turban brings a bottle of Original Nilgiris Eucalyptus Oil Excellent for Coughs to the counter for a price check. Someone’s children play catch around a bin of atta. A long-haired youngish man in Ray Ban glasses and tight Levi’s comes in, but he gives Kwesi a suspicious scowl and disappears down the aisle of lentils.
“I see what you mean,” Kwesi says dryly. He starts to roll up his poster. “I’ll find another place for this.”
I am sorry to have disappointed him. I search out a large box of uncut black Darjeeling, the best kind, and pack it for him. “My compliments,” I say. “No no, the story was more than worth it.” I walk with him to the door. “Come again anytime. Good luck with your dojo and your life,” I say, and mean it.
One morning he comes into the store with his mother’s list and hair that stands up straight and stiff as brush bristles making him taller, this teenager I almost do not recognize. But then I look some more and it is Jagjit. “Jagjit how are you?”
He spins around, his hands already fisted. Then sees me and lets them go loose.
“How d’you know my name?”
Jagjit sullen in T-shirt and baggy Girbaud jeans and untied laces, the uniform of young America, speaking its staccato rhythms already.
“You came into my store with your mother three-four times, maybe two and half, three years back.”
He shrugs turning away, not remembering. He has lost interest already.
“Couldn’t be that long. I’ve only been here two years.”
“Only so little?” I make my voice admiring. “Who would think that, looking at you.”
Jagjit doesn’t bother to answer. He knows old women, grandmothers aunts mothers, forever saying Don’t don’t don’t. Don’t spend so much time with your friends. Don’t miss any more school, they gave us two warnings already. Don’t go out so late in the night, it’s not safe. Hai Jaggi is this why we brought you to Amreekah.
I watch him fill his basket too fast and clatter it down on the counter even though he got only half the list. I watch him tapping his foot because he has places to go.
“Are things better now at school?”
He gives me a hostile stare. “Who told you?”
I say nothing. Jagjit so busy always fighting always putting on toughness like a second face, look into my eyes. With me you need not struggle so.
A long-ago expression like shyness hovers over his lips, then is gone.
“Yeah, school’s cool.”
“You like studying?”
He shrugs. “I do okay.”
“And the other boys, they don’t give you trouble?” Flash of a smile, showing his teeth sharp as chisels. “Nobody messes with me no more. I got friends.”
“Friends?”
But even before he nods I see them in his eyes, the boys in their blue satin jackets like midnight embroidered with that special sign, their black berets, their hundred-dollar Karl Kani boots. Thick glittergold chains, bracelets with names engraved, a diamond ring for their little finger.
Yeah, the big boys, Jagjit says inside his head. Sixteen and already driving a droptop Beamer a ‘72 Cutty a Lotus Turbo. Carrying in their deep pockets sheafs of dead presidents—what you need, rogue—peeling off C-notes, even a couple of G’s—no problem, blood, plenty more where that came from. And hanging on their arms the girls, so many girls, with their wide lacquered eyes.
Boys rolling and taking a deep drag and passing it on amused to a kid standing nearby. And his mouth opening in wonder.
For me?
My friends.
The big boys who stood at the other end of the school grounds watching and watching, and one day they came over and shoved the others away and said Fuck off. Brushed me clean of dirt and bought me an icecold Coke in that afternoon blazing like brushfire and said We’ll take care of you.
And since then I never had no trouble. They’re like my brothers, better than my brothers.
I see his eyes glisten gratitude, Jagjit all alone whose parents were too worn with work and worry in a strange land to hear him, Jagjit who went home each day from America to a house so steeped in Punjabi how could they help. Who held his cries in until red swam behind his eyelids like bleeding stars.
Jagjit remembering: They took me places with them. Bought me stuff, clothes shoes food watches Nintendo games stereos with speakers to make the walls shake, even things I didn’t know yet to want. They listened when I talked and didn’t laugh.
They taught me how to fight. Pointed out the soft fleshy parts where it hurts most. Showed me how to use elbow knee fist boot keys and yes, knife.
And in return, so little. Carry this packet here, drop off this box there. Keep this in your locker for a day. Stand on the corner and watch for.
Who needs mother father school? When I’m older, maybe fourteen, I’ll be with them all the time. I’ll wear the same jacket, carry deep in my pocket the same switchblade with its snake-flick tongue, see the same bright pull of fear in the girls’ eyes and the boys running.
Inside me thoughts whirl like dust-devils. I cannot breathe.
O cinnamon strength-giver, cinnamon friend-maker, what have we done.
And one day they’ll give it to me, cold and black-shining and heavy with power in my hand, pulsing electric as life, as death, my passport into the real America.
I clasp my fingers to stop the shaking. Clove and cardamom that I scattered on the wind for compassion, how did this happen.
“Jagjit,” I say through cracked lips, a voice with the confidence leached out of it.
His eyes dreaming, not-seeing even when he turns toward me.
“You are such a handsome boy, growing so well, it is a joy for an old woman to see. I have for you a tonic to make you stronger even and more smart, no charge, just wait one small minute while I get it.”
He gives a short scoffing laugh, a sound trying to be so grown-up it twists my heart.
“Shit I don’t need no smelly Indian tonic.”
Jagjit slipping away from me, moving toward the door into the maelstrom never to return, so I must go down quick into his past and use whatever I find.
“Jaggi, mera raja beta.”
A shudder goes through him at the childhood name, smell of his mother’s hair in a simpler time, her hand rubbing his back, smoothing nightmares away into the warm Jullunder night, and for a moment he wishes—
“Okay but make it fast. I’m late already.”
In the inner room I fill a bottle with elixir of manjistha to cool the blood and make it pure. Rush a prayer over it, missing words because he’s at the door already yelling “Hold on dude” to someone outside. Hand it to him and watch him toss it in the bag and wave a careless Bye now.
A motorcycle roars to life and he’s gone.
And I left alone to walk stiffly back to the counter, to lower my aching head into my hands, to wonder in dismay what went wrong. To ask myself over and over, was it him, was it his parents, was it America? Or that other question so devastating I can frame it only phrase by broken phrase.
Spices is this. The way. You have chosen. To. Punish me.
This morning when Geeta’s grandfather came into the store, the spring gone from his step, he did not speak of Geeta. But his whole face was asking Have you yet and When will you.
Therefore tonight I prepare myself with ginger for my first foray into America.
For as you know, when I woke in this land the store was already around me, its hard, protective shell. The spices too surrounded me, a shell of smells and voices. And that other shell, my aged body pressing its wrinkles into me. Shell within shell within shell, and inmost of all my heart beating like a bird.
Today I plan to stretch my wings, to crack perhaps these shells and emerge into the infinite spaces of the outside world. It frightens me a little. I must admit this.
And so I call on ginger.
br /> Root of gnarled wisdom, ada in your hide of banded brown, help me in this my seeking. I weigh your speckled solidness in the hollow of my palm. Wash you three times in lime water. Slice you translucent-thin as the curtain between waking and dream.
Adrak ginger, be with me.
I drop the slices in a pan of boiling water, watch them rise and sink, rise and sink, in a slow whirl. Like lives caught on karma’s wheel. Steam fills my kitchen, clings haze-heavy to my lashes so it is hard to see. Steam and that wild smell like bamboo grass torn and chewed that will stay in my sari long after.
Golden ginger used by the healer Charak to relight the fire that simmers in the belly, may your bright burning course up my sluggish veins. Outside, America is flinging itself against the walls of my store, calling in its many-tongued voice. Give me strength to answer.
I wait a long time for the spicesong, but it does not come.
Ah Tilo, bending the rules and sliding through them, what did you expect.
I pour the liquid, color of palest honey, into a cup. Raise it to my mouth. The pungence is like a blow to the throat. It makes me gasp and cough. When I force myself to swallow, it churns in my bowels, rebelling. Wanting out. But I hold it down with all my will.
Never before have I pitted my strength against a spice’s. Never before driven my desire against duty.
Slowly the resistance lessens, is gone.
Tilo now that you have your way, why this sadness, this foolish wish that you had not won?
A prickling starts in my throat, my tongue moving in hot nimbleness, pushing regret aside.
Later Tilo. Later there will be time.
From the pot I lift out the heat-bleached slices. One by one I bite down, feel the fibers catch in my teeth. The top of my skull is lifting off.
When the sting fades, new words begin to come to me, new gestures which will let me move unseen through the streets that coil labyrinthine around the store. Inside my heads plans and promises pound.
Geeta wait for me. I am ready I am coming.
But first there is the matter of clothes.
When I came to America I was given no items for outdoor use, just the frayed saris, color of stained ivory, in which I greet my customers.
I cannot blame the Old One for it. She wanted only to lessen the temptation. To keep me safe.
But now I must attire myself for America.
And so today at the brahma muhurta, the holy moment of Brahman when night reveals itself as day, I take poppy seed, khus khus that sticks to my fingertips unwilling as wet sand, and crush and roll it with jaggery to form afim. Opium, the spice of seeming.
Then I set it on fire.
I can tell the spices are not with me. Three times the khus khus ball sputters and goes out, three times I have to chant the flames back into being. And then it burns fitfully, its odor sour and heavy, reluctant. The rising smoke catches in my throat, making me cough till tears come.
But I am getting better at it, bending the spices’ will to mine. This time the heartsickness is less. And the guilt which I will not look in the eye.
Is it always like this when we push into the forbidden, which some call sinning? The first step wrenches, bone and blood, rips out our breath. The second too racks but already it is not so strong. With the third the hurting passes over our bodies like a raincloud. Soon it will not give us pause, or pain.
So you hope, Tilo.
The smoke winds around me, forms itself into a web on my skin. The clothes take shape.
All I know of American clothes is what I have seen customers wear. Glimpses of passers-by. I weave them together into a coat gray as the sky outside. A wisp of a blouse showing the neck. Dark pant legs. And an umbrella, for through the dimness before morning light comes, I can see outside the dull silver strings of falling rain.
But already I know I cannot wear these clothes to Geeta’s.
The seeming-spells are hard to work even when all is well. And today, the spice against me, I feel the power draining away until my brain is dry. And behind it the spice, waiting for my attention to falter. For the spell to break and set it free.
Afim, why do you fight me when it is not for myself I am doing this?
The spice’s silence is like a stone in my heart, like ash on my tongue.
Through it I can hear back to long ago, the Old One laughing bitter as bile. I know what she would say were she here.
Hasn’t that always been your trouble Tilo, you who think you know best, who choose to forget that the highest motives lead fastest to doom. And are your motives so high, or do you help Geeta because you see in her forbidden love an image of your own.
The clothes thin as fog are tearing already as I lift my hands to my face. I know they will not help me any further, the spices.
And so I am forced to my next plan.
Outside the rain is cold and hard. It stings like needles as I turn to lock the shop door. Under my palm the knob is slick and stubborn. The hinges stick, mutinous. The store’s muscles wrestling with mine. I must put down the package, the gift I am carrying to Geeta, to tug and wrench and kick, until at length I can bang the door shut. The sound is sharp as a shot, terminal. I am left shivering on the step. On the wrong side, says the voice in my brain. Damp seeps into my bones, settles like silt. I run my hand over the door, which looks so alien in outdoor light, and am struck by the sudden vertigo of homelessness.
I’ll be back soon as I can.
The door’s nicked green face is mute as a shield and as obdurate. It is not appeased by my promise.
Perhaps it will not let me in when I return?
Stop Tilo, don’t create snakes out of ropes. You have enough to worry about.
The air smells like wet animal pelts. I breathe it in, shrug myself deeper into my coat. I will not be afraid, I tell myself. I open my umbrella, shape of a giant toadstool, over my head.
Resolute, I step down the deserted street, pushing through rain like sheets of frosted glass until I see the sign SEARS, until a door slides open all on its own like the mouth to some magic cave, inviting me in.
You who lounge lazy through Saks and Nordstrom, who pick your ennuied, everyday path through Neiman Marcus, can you understand how I love the anonymity of this my first American store, so different from my spice shop? The blandness of neon lights that fall evenly without shadow on shiny Mop & Glo floors, on shiny carts that roll along pulling dazed shoppers behind. How I love the aisles and aisles of things piled folded hung high, and no one to say “Don’t touch,” or ask “Yes, what do you want.” Aloe vera lotions for youthfulness and false silver platters shinier than real; fishing rods and chiffon nighties transparent as desire; Corning Ware casseroles and video games from Japan; new improved Cuisinarts and tubes of Neet hair remover; a whole wall of TV sets talking at you with different faces. The headiness of knowing you can reach out and take and take, even though you don’t need.
I am drunk with it. I who for a moment can become an ordinary old woman feeling through a fabric peering at a label trying a color against my ridged and freckled skin.
Before I know it my cart is full.
A mirror. A color TV so I may see into the heart of America, into the heart, I hope, of my lonely American. A makeup kit with everything in it. Perfume of rose and lavender. Shoes, several pairs, in different colors, the last ones red as burnished chilies, high heels like chisels. Clothes and more clothes—dresses pant-suits sweaters, the intricate, wispy mysteries of American feminine underwear. And last of all a bed robe of white lace like raindrops caught in a spider’s web.
Tilo have you gone crazy is this why you broke the rule of boundary and stepped into America. For this.
That voice, caustic as acid splashing. My face burns with it. First Mother, I think guiltfully, then realize it is my own voice. And am therefore more ashamed of my frivolity.
I abandon the cart in an aisle of hair dyes, taking only what I know I must have. Clothes to wear to Geeta today. And the mirror, though what I wi
ll need it for I cannot yet tell.
No Tilo, not that most dangerous of forbidden things.
But this time I do not listen.
I look instead at the cashier women, their sad, sagging underarms, their colored hair with the roots showing. And wholly innocent of interest, their gaze scanning your face, like the red electric eye of the checkstand is scanning the items they are dragging over.
The cashier women who inside their heads are dreaming of minks bought at Macy’s, of high school sweethearts coming back, this time to stay, of cruises to Acapulco on a party boat. Already as their mouths say “Cash or charge,” say “You want it delivered, cost you twenty bucks extra,” say “Have a nice day,” they have forgotten me. Because inside their heads they are spinning it on the Wheel of Fortune, beautiful as Vanna in her star-spangled mini and even thinner.
O the freedom of it. Almost I envy them.
In a public rest room that smells of ammonia I pull on my no-nonsense pants and polyester top, button my nondescript brown coat all the way to my calves. I lace my sturdy brown shoes, heft my brown umbrella in readiness. This new-clothed self, I and not-I, is woven of strands of brownness with only her young eyes and her bleached-jute hair for surprise. She tries a hesitant smile which resettles her wrinkles. She loosens her muscles, letting go, and the seeming-clothes made of afim and mindpower rise off her skin like smoke, stream from her new sleeves to hang in hieroglyphs she cannot read.
For a moment she wonders if they spell a warning.
“Thank you,” says the woman to the spice and is not surprised that there is no answer. She puts the receipt for the mirror, which later someone will bring to the store, into her coat pocket. For a moment a vision hovers at the edge of her eyes: the freeze-cold border of the mirror’s mercury against her palm, the blind-silver flash of the moment when she will—. But she shakes it away. Geeta is waiting, and her grandfather also. Carefully she picks up the package she has carried all the way from the store. She is thinking so hard about what she must do that she does not even notice when the automatic doors open their glass jaws to let her out.