The Mistress of Spices (14 page)

“It’s okay. No, really, it’s nothing, just a scratch.”

Inside I’m thinking, I’m sure I locked the door I’m sure I—. And, Who is this man who can enter despite—.

Then the words are swept away in a wave of gladness like gold sparks.

Blood drips from my finger onto the pile of
kalo jire
, red-black now and ruined. But filled with gold gladness I cannot find room inside me for regret.

“Here, let me,” he says, and before I can say no he lifts my finger to his lips. And sucks.

Pearl smoothness of teeth, hot moist satin of the inner lip, tongue moving slow over the cut, over my skin. His body my body becoming one.

O Tilo did you ever think—

I want this moment forever but I say, “Please, I must put something on it.” And pull away though it takes all my will.

In the kitchen I find a bag of dried
neem
leaves. Dipped in honey and pressed against the skin, they are best for healing.

But when I look the finger is not bleeding anymore, and only a faint red crease to show it had happened at all.

Perhaps this body formed of fire and spell-shadow no longer bleeds as humans do.

But inside I am saying, Was it him was it him.

When I return to the front of the store, he is kneeling before the handicrafts case looking through scratched glass at miniature sandalwood elephants.

“You like them?”

“I like everything you’ve got here.” His smile opening deep petal on petal and at its heart something more than the words.

Tilo you are only imagining he sees through and through this oldwoman body.

I graze my fingers over the elephants until I find one that is perfect-carved—eyes ears line of tail, tiny ivory tusks like toothpick ends. I lift it out.

“I want you to have this.”

Another man would have protested. He does not. I put the elephant in his palm and see his fingers close over it. His nails flicker translucent in the store’s dimness.

“Elephants are for promises remembered and kept,” I say.

“And do you always keep yours?”

Ah. How does he know to ask this.

I tell him, “Sandalwood is for soothing over hurt, ivory for endurance.”

He smiles, my lonely American, unfooled by my sidestepping. I watch how one corner of his mouth creases, pushing upward, and then a dimple, a taut hollow of sweet flesh that I long to touch.

To stop myself I say, “Why did you come?”

Tilo what if he says I came for you.

“Is there always a reason?” He is still smiling, silver-edged seductive cloud-smile upon which I could float away so easily and never return.

I make my voice stern. “Always, but only the wise know it.”

“Perhaps you can tell me, then, what it is.” His face is serious now. “Perhaps you can read it on my pulses, like I’ve heard your Indian doctors can do.” And he extends to me a slim arm with skeins of lapis lazuli running under the skin.

“What doctors are these?” I cannot resist saying. “Our doctors go to medical school, just like yours.”

But forgive me spices, still I take his hand.

I place my fingers on his wrist, light as an unspoken wish. His skin smells of lemon and salt and sun beating down on white sand. Am I only imagining that we are swaying together like the sea.

“Lady! Lady, what the hell is going on?”

Haroun loud as lightning at the door, kicking it shut with his shoe. His forehead is knotted with displeasure with suspicion.

I snatch my hand back, guilty as any village girl. My words stumble over themselves.

“Haroun I didn’t realize it is so late already.”

“Please, go ahead and help him, I’m in no hurry,” says my American, his voice cool and unembarrassed. He saunters into the shadows of the far aisle among stacked sacks of mung and
urid
and Texas Long Grain rice.

Haroun turns his head to watch him, lips pressed into a thin line.

“Ladyjaan, you must be more careful who you let in the store after dark. All kinds of bad people roaming around this neighborhood—”

“Hush Haroun.”

But he goes on, switching to English, his voice raised high so it ricochets off the back walls. His tongue moves thick and awkward through the words he is still not used to. Suddenly I am ashamed of his crude accent, the grammar he hasn’t yet mastered. Then a deeper shame, like a slap that leaves my face burning, that I should feel this way.

“How come your door wasn’t locked today? Did you read or not in
India Post
just last week how some man broke into one 7-Eleven? Shot the owner—his name was Reddy I think—in the chest three times. Was not so far from here. Better you ask this fellow to leave while I am still being in the store.”

I am mortified because surely my American is hearing.

“Just because he’s dressed all fancy-fancy doesn’t mean you can trust him. Opposite, in fact. I’ve heard of men like that, dress up and pretend they’re rich, out to cheat you. And if he
is
rich, what does he want with us anyway, a sahib like him? Best to keep away from such. Lady listen, simply you leave it to me, I’ll get rid of him.”

I try to remember what the American is wearing and am angry because I cannot, I Tilo who have always prided myself on my deep-seeing. Angry also because there is right in what Haroun advises, which is what the Old One would say also.

A sahib like him. Not one of us. Keep away Tilo
.

“Haroun I’m not a child. I can take care of myself. I’d thank you not to insult my customers.”

My voice is sharp and tearing, like rusty nails. Is it the sound of denial.

Haroun flinches from it. Red rises high on his cheeks. His voice is formal with hurt.

“I only spoke my concern. But I see I stepped too far.”

I shake my head exasperated. “Haroun, I didn’t mean it like that.”

“No, no, what right have I, a poor man, a taxi driver, to advise you Lady.”

“Don’t go. In a few minutes I’ll get your packet done.”

He pushes the door open on a long creak. “Don’t trouble yourself on my account. I’m only a
kala admi
after all, not a white like
him—”

I know I shouldn’t. But.

“Haroun you’re acting like a child,” I snap.

He is bowing dignified, silhouetted against a night which opens around him like jaws.
“Khuda hafiz
. I bid you farewell. The mullah will have started the service already and I must not be any more late.”

The door click-closes behind him, such a quiet, final sound, before I can say back to him
Khuda hafiz
, Allah’s protection on your head.

When I turn to the counter again I see you, redblack
kalo jire
meant for Haroun, now defiled by my blood, spilled on the counter like a dark stain. A silence that accuses worse than words.

I stare at you a while, then sweep you into the hollow of my
palloo
. Carry you to the trash can.

Waste. Careless, sinful waste. That is what the Old One would say.

Sadness swells inside me with its hot sulfur smell. Sadness and another feeling I dare not look too closely at—guilt, or is it despair.

Later, I tell myself. I’ll deal with it later.

But as I walk toward the back of the store where my American is waiting, I know
later
is like a lid clamped over a boiling pot, and inside it the steam building and building.

“Sometimes I have an ache,” says the American. “Here.” He takes my hand and places it on his chest.

Tilo does he know what he is doing?

In the center of my palm I feel his heart beating. It is strangely steady, drip of water on old stone. Nothing at all like the wild careening in my chest, horses dashing frantic into cave walls. With effort I direct my seeing to his clothes. Yes, Haroun is right, the silk of his shirt is soft and fine under my fingers, the pants are darkly elegant, the jacket molds itself around him, perfect-fitted. The muted gleam of leather on his feet and at his waist. And on his ring finger a diamond like white fire. But already I am letting them fall out of my mind because I see his clothes have nothing to do with who he truly is. I keep only the
way in which his flesh pulses warm and shining in his throat, the way his eyes soften as I look into them.

We are at the counter, I on the inside, he long-legged and leaning against the glass, and in between us, yes, the spices like a wall, watching.

“Your heart seems fine,” I make myself say. Under the shirt his skin must be golden as lamplight, the little hairs on his chest crisp as grass.

No. A different image comes to me, its edges etched so sharp I know it to be true. His chest innocent of hair, smooth as the sunwarm whitewood we used on the island to carve amulets.

“Yeah, that’s what all the doctors say.”

Lonely American, I want to know everything about you. Why you visit doctors, since when this pain. But when I try to look in, there is only my face staring back from a quicksilver lake.

“They probably want to tell me, Maybe the pain’s in your head. Except it’d be bad for business to say it out loud.”

His eyes are laughing back at me saying Okay I’ll give you what you want, just a little. His hair gleams, a bird’s black wing with the sun on it.

You are playing with me, my American, and I am charmed. I who have never played. I suddenly light as a girl in these old bones.

“Maybe you need loving to cure your heart,” I say, smiling also. It amazes me how easily I am learning the rules of this flirting game. “Maybe that’s why the ache.”

O shameless Tilo now what.

“You really believe that?” he asks, serious now. “You believe love can cure the aching heart?”

What should I say, I who have no experience in loving.

But before I can attempt an answer, he laughs away his question. “Sounds good,” he says. “You got something for me?”

For a moment I am disappointed. But no, it is better this way. “Of course,” I tell him, my voice withdrawn already. “Always, for everyone. Just one moment.”

Behind me I hear him say, “Wait. I don’t just want what you have for everyone. I want—” But I do not stop.

In the inner room I go to the lotus root, weigh its small suppleness in my palm for one breath-catching moment.

Why not, Tilo, you who have begun breaking all the rules already.

I set it down with a sigh. Lotus root,
padmamul
aphrodisiac that I plucked from the center of the island lake, this is not the right moment for you.

When I come back he looks at my empty hands. Raises an eyebrow.

I should give him what’s waiting in the ebony box under the counter, hard nugget of king, asafetida to restore balance to my life and send him forever out of it.

The will of a thousand spices presses on me. I am bending, reaching, already I feel the darkness of the box against my fingers, the grainy asafetida rock with its bitter smoke-smell.

O spices give me a little time just a little time.

I straighten, pick out a small brown bottle on the shelf behind. Set it on the counter. “Here is
churan,”
I tell him.

“For loving?” he asks joking, but not-joking too.

“For heartburn,” I say as severe as I can. “For the too-indulgent life. That’s what you really need.” I ring it up and put it in a bag and look pointedly at the door. “It is very late,” I say.

“I’m terribly sorry for troubling you,” he says, but he isn’t. Color of black water in moonlight, his eyes sparkle amusement. They drag the words I didn’t intend out of me.

“Maybe next time I’ll have something else for you.”

“Next time,” says my American, his voice like a gift he is offering.

It is morning before I remember the knife.

I throw off the tangled quilt, the spiderweb remnants of a dream I cannot quite remember. Hurry stumbling to the counter where I left it lying, though I fear it is too late already.

“Knife speak to me.”

In my hand the blade is a dull unforgiving gray, color of a dead thing. The edge rusted with blood. When I rub, metallic flakes of it fall to the floor.

In the cramped alcove of the kitchen, I hold the knife under running water. Make a paste of lime and tamarind and work it in while I repeat the cleansing mantras.

By the time I give up, my fingers are puckered from the acid.

The stain is clearer now, shape of a pear or maybe a teardrop. Shape of things to come.

I press my forehead into the cold cement wall. The images will not stop pounding their way across my eyelids. Fistful of
kalo jire
flung useless into a garbage can that smells of woman-blood. Haroun’s face so young so unprotected, and night spreading behind it like a redblack blotch. The Old One, her sad eyes that see everything.

Forgive me First Mother.

Words only, girl. How can I forgive if you are not ready to give up that which caused you to stumble? And you are not
.

This is what she would say, her voice like branches breaking in a storm’s hands.

I do not answer her accusation.

Instead I say.

“Knife I will not forget you again. If you want new blood to wash away the old, I am ready.”

I raise the knife and close my eyes, bring it down hard on my fingers, wait for the pain like fireworks in my skull.

Nothing.

When I look again, an inch from my hand the knife quivers embedded in the counter’s wood. Deflected. By some hidden desire in me, or its own will?

O foolish Tilo, to think reparation would be so easy.