The Unknown Errors of Our Lives (16 page)

And so I don’t write back.

THAT DAY, AFTER
the phone call from Malik’s henchman, Radhika and I looked at one last photograph in the desert book. It was the picture of a woman holding out a handful of sand.
WOMAN MINER PANS FOR GOLD, INYO COUNTY
, read the caption. The woman wore jeans with frayed knees, a vest of some sort, a broad-brimmed hat which pulled her face into its oval of darkness. She didn’t look at the camera but at something (someone?) whose shadow fell across the edge of the photograph—coyote perhaps, or a horse. Her lips were parted in a small, secret smile.

ON FRIDAY EVENING,
Ajit taps his fingers on the register, slides a card shyly at me, and clears his throat to ask if I’d go out with him. Next Friday, maybe? My head is full of a dim vibration. I open my mouth to say no. But when I look, he has the eyes of an antelope. And here’s another surprise: the way my heart thuds inside my chest, like runner’s feet, light and rapid,
why not, why not
.

Perhaps this, at last, will be how I climb out of my water tank.

When I go to the back office to ask the manager if I can have next Friday night off, he throws up his hands. “Absolutely not possible,” he says. “We don’t have anyone to take your place.”

“How about Ramesh? I could do his lunchtime shift, and he—”

“You must be joking. That banana-fingered bumbler? Every day after lunch we are spending one hour correcting all the things he rung up wrong.”

“Come on,” I say. I’ve gained a certain weight around here since I started sharing Radhika’s apartment, and I attempt to use it. “It’s just for one day!”

“What so-important thing is happening next Friday?”

I tell him about Ajit, and he throws up his hands again. “Dating with a boy who’s no better than an Amreekan! Nothing except trouble in it! Chee chee, what would your mother say!”

A hardness twists its way along my shoulder bones. “That’s none of your business,” I say through rigid lips.

Then I hear the soft voice at the door: “What’s all this hallah about?”

It’s Malik, who seems to have a knack for appearing magically. Perhaps that is the key to his success? He is dressed with more care than usual, in a beautiful dark suit—the way I’d originally imagined him. With his glossy new haircut, he is almost dashing. His tie looks like silk, looks like he’s on his way to someplace important, a party perhaps in some glittery penthouse, uniformed servers carrying silver trays.

Then a thought comes to me. It’s Friday—could it be for Radhika that he has dressed?

When the manager has poured out his complaints, he says, “A date, hanh? Our Mira wants to go on a date?” His eyes move over me, appraising but absent, as though he is thinking of something else. In the corridor’s shadows, his expression is hooded, satyrlike. Finally he says, “Perhaps
that’s
what she needs.”

My cheeks burn. What does he mean?

But already he’s turned a suave smile on the manager. “Oh, don’t be such an old fogey. Let the girl go. And give her an advance so she can get something fancy to wear.”

Still smiling, he stands back courteously to let me pass. The cologne he is wearing—understated as only the most expensive ones are—follows me down the dark corridor like a suspicion I can’t quite put into words.

THE EVENING LIGHT
is rich and gold this Friday, the day of my date with Ajit, and when I enter our apartment, the tiny mirrors on the sofa cushions Radhika finished embroidering last week dance and wink. The room is filled with a smell I know well—there they are, a platter of samosas, sitting on the kitchen counter, ready for frying.

“Is that you, Mira?” Radhika calls from her room. “Good timing! I just finished filling the samosas. Let me fry you a couple.”

I set down the packages I’m carrying and collapse on the sofa. My feet hurt, and my head. Already I’m regretting my extravagance, wondering if what I’ve bought is all wrong.

I’ve never been a good shopper. Even in India, where you sit on a large white sheet spread under a cool ceiling fan and drink Jusla and point while the storekeeper takes out one sari after another and tells you the name of each and where it came from, I would ask my mother to do my shopping. She always knew what was suitable for a particular occasion, what would look good on me.

Radhika comes out of her room wearing a thin batik robe that molds itself to her body as she walks. She moves, like many Indian women, with delicate, careful steps which hardly disturb the air around her. Her hips ripple under the silky robe. It’s a new one, and beautiful, but not something you would go out in. My heart beats out of rhythm. Did she refuse Malik again?

“I bet you’re wondering how I knew you weren’t working this evening!” From the kitchen Radhika throws me a mischievous smile. “One of the girls downstairs mentioned that Ramesh would be doing his first evening shift—the entire restaurant is nervous about it! So I thought this would be the perfect time to make you some samosas—I know how much you like them—and chat a little.” The oil sputters as she turns the stuffed triangles that must have taken her hours to prepare. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you.”

She brings me a plate of golden-crisp samosas and a bowl of deep brown tamarind chutney, and sits across from me. Her face is flushed and lovely. I give the clock a hasty, guilty glance. In a few minutes I’m going to have to tell her about my evening plans.

“When I met Malik,” Radhika says, “I was so young, just a village girl. I thought being the wife of a rich man was the best thing that could happen to a woman.” Her lashes tremble darkly against her cheek as she looks down. “When he told the matchmaker he was mad for me, that he’d do anything to marry me, I couldn’t believe it. I was so proud to be desired by such a successful man, I didn’t stop to think of anything else. My parents didn’t want to send me so far away, with a man they knew so little about, but I persuaded them. I insisted I’d be happy with him. And then I got to America and found out about his—” Her voice splinters apart.

“Radhika—” I reach for her hand—“maybe it’s better if you don’t talk about such—”

“No.” She is crying, openly, unashamedly. Her hand closes on mine the way, in the Bombay ocean, a woman’s might have closed upon sea froth at the last minute—as though it could hold her up. “I’ve had enough of silences. But it’s not Malik I want to talk about. I learned to live with him years ago—like I learned to live with this.” She turns her wrist to gaze at her scar. Then she looks at me, her lashes spiky with tears. “No. It’s something quite different I want to tell you. Something sudden, like a summer rainstorm. Something that’s given me more happiness than I hoped to have in this life.”

I hate myself for what I’m going to say next. But it isn’t merely selfishness that drives me, it is also a fear I cannot articulate.

“I’m terribly sorry, Radhika. Can we talk about this later tonight? I have to go out. I promised”—I stumble over the next word—“a friend.”

She lets go of my hand right away. Wipes her eyes. “Then of course you must.” Her voice is polite, but I hear the hurt in it.

“We’ll talk as soon as I come back—it’s just a couple of hours. . . .”

“Yes,” she says distantly, then goes into her room. When, dressed in my new clothes, I knock to say that I’m leaving, she doesn’t answer. I stand in front of the shut bedroom door, guilty as a teenager. I know I should turn the knob, go inside. But I don’t. Right now I need to feel confident. And I know Radhika would disapprove of the lacy white dress which stops at my thighs, the stiletto heels in which I stumble a little, the glittery crimson outlining my mouth. My flyaway hair from which I’ve shampooed all traces of the jabakusum oil she rubbed in with such care.

WHEN AJIT SEES
me, he lets out a long whistle. “I’d planned a quiet dinner.” He laughs. “But now I see we’ve got to go dancing.”

So that’s what we do. And even though I’ve never danced in my life, in the dimly lit nightclub where music ricochets off every glistening surface, and swaying bodies brush against us unselfconsciously, I find that I can do it. I shimmy my shoulders and throw back my head, dancing my way into the new life I’d begun to dream—it seems so long ago—on the Greyhound bus. When Ajit spins me so I end up against his chest, I don’t shove away as an earlier Mira would have done, the Mira on whose hair rust flecks from a water tank had settled like dried blood. I lean there a moment, savoring the wholesome, lemony smell of his skin. When after a walk along the riverfront with its glimmering waters, he kisses me, I find it pleasant, and not the disgusting, spit-and-groping occurrence I’d feared. And when, somewhat timidly, he asks if I would come to his apartment, I am not outraged or even embarrassed. I lay my fingers lightly on his lips, as a woman in a movie might do, a dangerous woman, and say, with a smile, “Not yet.”

IT’S AFTER MIDNIGHT
when I open the door of our apartment. Inside, all is silent. Dark. I slip off my heels, tiptoe toward my room.

“Mira, do you know how late it is! I was so worried!” Radhika’s voice is a whip, lashing out of blackness. When she flicks on the light, it blinds me.

She’s still wearing the batik robe. It’s wrinkled now, and her hair, come undone, is mussed as though she’s been running her hands through it.

“I’m sorry—”

Now she notices my dress, the high heels I’m holding. “Where did you go?” she asks hoarsely. “With whom?”

My cheeks are hot, but I lift my chin. “I went dancing—with my friend Ajit.”

“Dancing! With your
friend
Ajit!” Her voice is thick. She takes a step toward me. “Look at you—out all night with some man, half-naked in that dress—” Her eyes take in my hair, my makeup, stop on my mouth, kissed bare of lipstick and a little swollen. “Like . . . like a common—”

“Like what?” I’m angry too, now. What gives her the right to talk to me this way? “Like you?”

Her eyes widen in shock. For a moment she’s silent. Then she says, very quietly, “Not like me, Mira. I’d never want you to be like me. To make my mistakes. To end up tied to the man who tricked you in the worst way, because what else is possible in your life—”

There’s something heavy in her voice, about to break open. To forestall it, I shout, “Stop trying to be my mother.”

“Your mother!” Radhika makes a small sound in her throat that could be a laugh. “I don’t want to be your mother. I only want to save you from the suffering I see you rushing toward.” She puts her hands on my shoulders. “If I could take all the pain from your life into mine, I’d do it right now. Mira, my dear.” She pushes away a wisp of hair from my face, kisses my cheek. “My love,” she says. Then her lips are on mine.

For a moment or a lifetime, I stand stunned, surprised and yet not so, trying to make sense of what’s happening. Trying to make sense of my body, the shivering that rises up from the soles of my feet. Do my lips want to kiss her back? Do my treacherous arms want to crush her softness against mine? Then I thrust her away.

“No,” I whisper. “No.” My voice shakes with horror. But who am I horrified by? My shoes have clattered to the floor. As I stumble to the apartment door, I hear Radhika cry, “Mira, don’t go—” Then I slam it shut.

I STAND ON
the curb outside our building, shivering. When numbness has seeped into all the bones of my bare feet, I call Ajit from the pay phone. I am not sure what I will do if Radhika comes looking for me. When she doesn’t, I’m not sure if it’s thankfulness I feel.

The choices in our lives, what impels us to them?

A few late-night folks pass by. I cringe back against the wall, but they don’t seem to notice me. Perhaps an Indian girl, barefoot in a gauzy white mini, is a common sight to them. Perhaps they have worse problems of their own.

Ajit’s car takes the corner too sharply, screeches to a stop.

“Mira, what happened?”

Dressed in sweats and sleep-tousled, he seems startled and young. Too young, I think tiredly.

“God, you’re freezing,” he says as he shepherds me into the car. He pulls off his windbreaker and guides my arms through its sleeves. In his apartment, while I sit on the couch and stare at the wall, he brings me a pair of woolen socks. When I begin to cry, he puts an awkward arm around me, not sure of what to do.

Inside I am split in two. One Mira watches the other crying, tries to figure out why. Is it Ajit’s kindness? Or the loss of the only friendship in my life? Are they for a mother who believed she must keep her daughter safe at any cost, these belated tears? Or for myself, being sucked into a vortex from which whispered words rise like ancestral ghosts:
disgusting, perverted, unnatural
.

I turn to Ajit, pull his face to mine, press my lips on his. When he says he doesn’t think it’s a good idea, I’m too upset right now, I hold him tighter. I will the pounding in my head to grow louder, to drown my thoughts. I rake my nails across Ajit’s back and hear him gasp. I tug off his sweatshirt and kiss whatever I come across—earlobe, throat, the curved line of his collarbone. He no longer protests. Against my mouth, his skin is salt and smoke. My head is exploding. Briefly, before the pounding pulls me under, I wonder if a woman’s skin would have tasted different.

THERE IS, IN
empty apartments, a certain shifting of energy, an absence of breathed air. I feel this as soon as I open the door to Radhika’s place. But I am too exhausted to wonder where she is at 3:00
A.M.
Or where I will go when I leave this place, as I know I must.

I stumble to the bathroom and start the water. I kick off the too-large men’s sandals that Ajit had insisted on giving me, shrug off his jacket. I’ll leave them for him at the restaurant. My own clothes—the lace dress ripped carelessly under the arm, the panties stained with blood, I throw into the wastebasket. My aim is shaky. The basket tips over, spilling crumpled wads of paper over the bathroom floor.

Sex had been a disappointment. I hadn’t expected pleasure, but I had hoped for ecstasy—in the way the Greeks had meant the word. Something that took you out of yourself, made you forget who you were.