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AT WHOLE FOODS, a throng of people were clustered around a tall, burly man in a chef’s hat showing people how to make some kind of super-nutritious smoothie (enough to give you energy for weeks and weeks, he claimed in his New England accent) with weird ingredients like camu and moringa, names Naina had never heard of.
All Naina wanted was a shopping cart. But all the enthusiastic, earnest people in her way were too engrossed in Chef Marco and his special smoothie. Could the smoothie be frozen? Did it have any historical origin? Could you substitute raspberry with strawberry? And what about the child who was allergic to camu? Nobody seemed to realize that they were blocking the carts. Or they knew and just didn’t care. Naina first said excuse me, softly, politely, as she usually did, but when the person ignored her and shouted to Chef Marco if cacao could also be included without giving the smoothie any stimulant properties, she raised her voice further. And finally, after being ignored for several more minutes she got so exasperated that she squeezed herself through a tiny space between two people and went and grabbed a cart. An interloper in the smoothie-worshipping crowd. People turned and glared at her.
Naina quickly pushed her cart away only to see that there were a whole bunch of carts just a few feet to the left that she had missed. She shouldn’t have charged in like that. What was the matter with her? Why hadn’t she stopped and looked around properly?
But it didn’t matter now. The smoothie worshippers had already forgotten her; it was late, she was tired and there was so much to buy for this big meal she had planned for Amaya. A big elaborate meal that would be so delicious, so succulent, so flavorful, that not only would her daughter’s mouth melt, but her heart too, like chocolate ice cream softening into rivulets of forgiving, sticky sweetness everywhere.
She could hear Chef Marco’s blender whirring, an angry, noisy sound. She hated smoothies, those sloppy, gloppy, slimy, clumpy, watery things. And Jai, that giant scorpion of a man, loved those damn smoothies. He would make his own, filled with kale, blueberry, strawberry, and some other ingredients that sounded as dubious as he was. What was it—mango spleen? Baga, raga, caga? Every time he had spoken about them, she had felt dizzy with nausea.
She ventured toward the produce section, in front of the various varieties of organic onions: white, red, shallots, scallions, and leeks. The memory of the potato leek soup, heavy, garnished with rosemary, she had that night with John at Manzana, came to her, bringing with it creamy, delicious sensations. Harish’s shadow appeared, tall and lanky, and she readied herself to be scolded. But it was a silent shadow that minded its own business. It cast a bit of darkness and then went to sit at the dining table to read the newspaper.
She looked at her list. She needed to buy three white onions and two red onions. And scallions? The scallions looked so beautiful with those long, green stems—couldn’t she add some to the vegetable korma? No, she decided. It could ruin the dish. She couldn’t take a chance. What she was planning to do was risky enough.
Things had improved between Jai and Amaya, her daughter had told her last week. He was less jealous and much more affectionate. He had said he recognized he had issues he needed to resolve and had promised to go to a therapist. But he wouldn’t say when. And at the end of the month, he was taking Amaya on a weekend trip to New Hope, Pennsylvania, where he was going to surprise her.
When Amaya had told her that on the telephone, Naina felt her skin turning as white as the onions now in front of her, and the blood in her body rushing like a frenzied river. What did he mean by a surprise? Was he going to propose to her?
Her resolve had coagulated and solidified, like wet clay turning into an immobile fork, spoon, or bowl. She was going to do the right, moral thing. Tell Amaya the truth. She had to protect her daughter from harm.
Again, Naina’s organs had screamed, shrieked, and wailed. And even now, five days later, those primal sounds still reverberated in her, stopping her, startling her, unsettling her.
Naina picked up some onions and examined them with unusually meticulous care. No, this one had too many soft spots. No, this one was not firm enough. Everything had to be just right. It was then that was she was going to tell Amaya the truth about Jai.
How was she going to do it? How would she start? How would she portray Jai’s role? Would she be able to go through with it?
Two onions dropped from her hand with a thud to the floor. Another glare from a stranger.
Of course, she knew the chances of Amaya forgiving her for what she had done were slim, but there was always a chance, she thought, picking up the onions from the floor. There was always a chance. Hoping against hope. Dreaming when there’s no good reason to dream. This was what she had learned in her years in America, the only place she associated with a dream. As a psychotherapist, Amaya worked with people who had done horrible things and she had found a way to empathize with them. Perhaps she might be able to empathize with her mother as well.
Perhaps Amaya would understand that her mother started with a small hole in her soul that over the years grew and grew and grew, becoming vast, deep, and dark, like a well. So much bigger than she was. And so much more powerful. Pulling her into its cavernous depths where she fell headfirst, disabling her eyes and head.
Or perhaps Amaya would understand that her mother too was a flawed human being like everyone else and then—who knows—she might forgive her.
Naina picked up the bright orange sweet peppers. Were they organic? How could such large and vibrant peppers be organic—they never looked like that in India, not that she cared about organic stuff that much. But Amaya did care, which was why she was shopping at Whole Foods. One pepper’s stem curled like a finger pointing at her. She put it back down.
Naina moved her cart to the adjoining herbs section. There she saw mint, both her and Amaya’s favorite herb. She held some tiny mint leaves in her hand, inhaling their cool, calming scent. Of course, all this was superstition, and she didn’t really believe it, but her grandmother used to tell her that, according to Hindu sacred texts, when you cook, all your emotions seep into your food. If you cook with anger, the person eating the food will be able to taste its hot rancor, whether they realize it or not. Her grandmother’s aunt was an excellent cook, but a very sad woman, and even her sweetest gulab jamuns and ladoos had a tartness, an absence of something. Therefore, her grandmother’s aunt was forbidden from cooking at weddings.
Now examining the waif-like coriander leaves, Naina said to herself that she would cook this meal with all the love she had in her heart for her daughter. That probably wouldn’t make a difference, but she was going to try anyway. If it didn’t help, it certainly couldn’t hurt.
After spending more than an hour shopping, Naina walked toward the checkout counter, passing by boxes of blueberries, deep indigo and plump—they too had a big sign announcing “organic,” but once more she had to wonder how anything organic could become so big. She pictured Amaya and Harish sitting at their mahogany Queen Anne dining table, gobbling blueberries, always two at a time. Blueberries were their favorite fruit, their little squishy balls of bonding. Something Naina herself was indifferent to. Staring at the blueberries, Naina sighed and rubbed her forehead—Amaya and Karan would never see their father again. Death was so ruthlessly final.
Was she doing the right thing in telling Amaya about herself and Jai? Was it really the correct, ethical thing to do? Was it really the best thing for Amaya? Why were these blueberries with the tiniest, barely noticeable seeds planting seeds of doubt in her?
She walked away and lined up at the checkout counter. No, she was not going to second guess herself. To the best of her judgement, this was the honorable thing to do.
––––––––
SOUNDS OF THE toy piano and clock chimes bounced, clinked, and dangled off the walls of Naina’s apartment. Sometimes, they wildly swung across the space. She was listening to a work called the “Mundane Intricacies of Flight” by the Contemporary World Group. This piece had now become one of her favorite pieces of music. It was a special kind of piece—it had the sweetness of a child’s make-believe world and the haunting knowledge of an adult’s world. The music became more frenzied. Naina’s mind whirled.
Flames roared around the one-legged tin soldier who was still standing at attention, melting him, while the paper ballerina flew off the table with her tinsel rose. The ballerina was quickly fluttering into the fire and, along with her love, the tin soldier, was burned to nothing at all.
It was Hans Christian Anderson, the master of fairy tales, who had first taught her about tragedy, irreversible, heartbreaking tragedy, as a young child. Naina had read Hans Christian Anderson when she was just five or six years old. But she had not given those stories to Amaya until she was eight or nine years old, wanting to protect her from the dark side of life for as long as she could. And now she was about to expose her to the darkest darkness. Her hands trembled, and her heart tumbled into the infernal pit of her stomach. She got up from her dining table where she had been eating a simple lunch of arugula and pear salad and paced around the room.
The music ended. Naina sat back down. She wanted silence.
Sometime later, she finished up the last few pieces of pear and wanted music again. But this time, something more familiar, more conventionally melodic. Something calming. Or pleasantly distracting. She put in a CD of the bossa nova king Antonio Carlos Jobim, and his music transformed her apartment into a moody, atmospheric space where the warm sea languidly swished, carrying away secrets of the heart.
The buzzer rang. Naina did not register it. She was floating away, weightless, on a melancholy ocean, somewhere far away. Dusk was turning into nightfall, the clouds were getting heavy and dark, and land was nowhere in sight. All she could see was water, the sustainer of life, the substance of tears. The buzzer rang again, more insistently. It registered somewhat on Naina’s brain, but she ignored it. She was not expecting anybody and had no desire to see anybody. It must be for another apartment. But the buzzer rang again, for a long time, wailing like an infant crying for food.
Naina was back on land, on her bamboo floor in New York, and there was no water in sight. She was annoyed. She got up from the dining table.
From the video intercom system, she saw a black-and-white image of a disproportionately long face of Amaya and bare shoulders. Naina was surprised. Her brain became more alert.
“Let me in,” Amaya shouted.
Why was she shouting? What happened?
“Is everything okay?”
“Just let me in. Right now.”
“Of course.”
As soon as she saw Amaya, Naina knew something was very wrong. Her daughter looked much older, as if she had learned something terrible about the world, like a child suddenly grows up after reading Hans Christian Anderson. What happened? Had Jai done something?
Amaya slammed the door behind her. She roughly shook Naina by the shoulders, looking at her directly with eyes that were spewing fire.
“How dare you? How could you?” she screamed.
Naina’s heart sank down to her ankles. “What . . . what are you talking about?”
“Oh, don’t you play innocent with me. Don’t you dare. I know something happened between you and Jai. Something that you both kept a secret from me. You make me sick.”
Naina’s head slumped and she covered her forehead with her hand. She could no longer hear the sounds of Jobim that were still wafting like silk across the room. All she could hear were babies shrieking, the moon howling, and trees falling. Each word that Amaya uttered felt like rocks hurled at her.
“Jai was out today, and I went into his computer to get some pictures of our Costa Rica vacation. I was scrolling through the pictures and what do I see in a folder named “Cinema.” A murky silhouette of the back of a woman’s body . . . she’s dressed in a tunic-like top with some sort of abstract design . . . the kind that you would wear . . . shoulder-length, layered hair, and your short, thin neck. And the tiny curl of a birthmark on the right shoulder. Though I could not clearly see the face, I knew it was you. It all makes sense now, it all makes sense. I don’t know how I could I have been such a fool. Your wanting to buy him that silly bug tie, your encouraging me to go out with other men, your so-called stress, both yours and his discomfort around each other. My gut told me something was off, it told me so many times, but never, never in my life could I have imagined such a thing . . . my own mother and my boyfriend. You make me sick.”
Again, Amaya shook Naina by the shoulders, and she could feel the rage and sorrow, electric rivers of blood and fire, convulsing her daughter’s body. Amaya looked as fierce as Goddess Kali.
“What kind of mother are you? What kind of woman are you? How could you? How could you?”
Naina continued to stand motionless and silent, her head slumped forward. Earlier, guilt had stabbed her, pinched her, and shaken her, but now it had a different power. Now there was no skin to protect her; she was just a skeleton. It punched her in the stomach, kicked her in the ribs, bludgeoned the chambers of her heart. She felt as if she were going to crumble. She deserved to crumble. She deserved to be kicked. Somewhere out there, Sister Rosemary, the Goan nun with the bushy unibrow at St. Therese’s Convent School, was declaring in her hoarse voice, “Girls, sin is an offense against God. Against God. Do you understand me? Like the first sin, it is disobedience, a revolt against God through the will to become like Gods. And you are not Gods. Just mere mortals. Mere mortals. Is that clear?”
Naina could no longer stand. She sat down on the floor, a couple of feet away from Amaya’s feet. She broke down into tears.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said while hearing how feeble and foolish those words sounded. “Forgive me, forgive me, please forgive me my child, please forgive me.”
“Were you ever planning to tell me or just keep this a little secret between the two of you?” Amaya said, thrusting her face in Naina’s direction without bending an inch.
“I was . . . I was going to tell you . . . in two days . . . I was going to prepare this big meal and then . . . then . . . tell you everything.” Naina could hear her voice cracking; it was becoming harder and harder to combine syllables to form words.
Amaya snarled. “You liar, you witch.”
Naina closed her eyes. The babies shrieked with more agitation, the moon howled more savagely, and the trees fell with bigger, noisier thuds.
“All I want from you now is to tell me everything. Everything that happened between both of you. Say something, dammit. Don’t just sit there, deaf and dumb.”
“I’ll . . . tell you . . . everything. Everything.”
“And dammit, I want the truth.” Now Amaya’s voice had heightened into a lancing scream. “You owe that to me, dammit. You owe that to me.”
Naina could feel the searing hurt in her daughter’s voice. On the fine hairs on her skin. On her skin itself. In her bones. In her blood.
“Why don’t . . . why don’t we sit down?”
––––––––
AND THEN NAINA told Amaya. Sitting on the couch, staring at the window. In a quivering, strained, halting voice. She told her that Jai was the kind of man she had always fantasized about, and when she met him, she tripped and fell. For the longest time, she never even realized she had fallen for him. She just thought they were kindred spirits and that she enjoyed spending time with him. Yes, she had been selfish. An awful mother. The worst kind. The thought gnawed at her every day. But it—whatever it was—had ended a while ago. Still not a day passed when her transgression didn’t eat her up.
As for Jai, yes, some of it could have been her own imagination, but not all of it, not all of it, for sure. Jai did lead her on and gave her the impression that he was interested in her.
“Did you sleep with him?” Amaya asked, her lips and hands shaking.
“No. There was nothing physical between us. Ever.” Naina left out the part about her trying to kiss Jai. She told herself that was irrelevant and there was nothing to be gained from telling her daughter about it.
Amaya looked relieved. “Well, thank God for small mercies.”
And then there was a silence. A charged, potent silence. Naina could feel her daughter’s entire body throbbing. She shrouded her face with her hands.
“You did remind Jai of both his mother and his ex . . . wild and unpredictable . . . that’s how he described you—” Amaya suddenly stood up. “What did I ever do to you to deserve this?” she shrieked, flinging the empty salad container across the room. “What did I ever do to you? What? What?”
“Nothing, my darling . . . nothing . . . It was all my fault . . . my fault . . . my fault . . . and Jai’s. You, sweetheart, you did nothing wrong . . . nothing at all . . . nothing.”
“Don’t you dare darling and sweetheart me, you witch.”
Witch. Witch. Naina hung her head down before digging it into her hands again. Another silence.
A little while later, Naina slowly uncovered her face and clasped her twitching hands tightly in her lap. “Amaya, I know there’s no good reason to . . . I know it’s all my . . . I know I did something terrible, too terrible, but I do love you very, very much . . .”
Amaya laughed, a dark, hollow laugh, and headed toward the door.
“Will you please, please, please, at least consider forgiving me? I’m begging you . . .”
“You witch. You disgrace of a human being. How dare you even ask?” Amaya snarled before slamming the door.