Read Online Before We Visit the Goddess by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni - Free Book Online Page B

faces him, standing tall, glowing with exhilaration, because isn’t this what he’s been missing ever since he got here, an opportunity for battle? For destruction?
    But Bela does not see any more because she has squeezed shut her eyes. She is crying so hard that her body shudders and her indrawn breath rasps her throat, until finally the doctor has to give her a shot. Even then sobs burst out of her, intermittent, effortful, as though through viscous mud. Her heart is changing from iridescence back to a flesh-bound lump that thuds uncertainly in her chest. She has lost something, but what? An opportunity to remember? To understand a mystery? To make amends? She knows this much, though: More losses are on their way. She feels a shift in the air, an imminent storm. And no one in this room knows how to stop it.

American Life: 1998
    B lanca bursts into the utility area in the back of Nearly New Necessities as I’m dumping the latest batch of donated clothing in the washer.
    â€œHola, girlfriend!” She sets her grocery bag on top of the dryer and frowns. “How come you’re banished back here? Aren’t you supposed to be working the cash register? What did you do to piss off Mr. Lawry?”
    I execute an elegant shrug. “Do I have to do anything?”
    â€œWell, there was that time when you told a customer that the pants she tried on made her look like a fuchsia hippo.”
    â€œShe asked me. I was trying to be truthful and expressive.”
    â€œThere are times when it’s good to be that. This wasn’t one.” She narrows her eyes. “Tell me, Tara!”
    â€œThis man—he was about to buy a stereo system. I pointed out that the speakers didn’t work.”
    â€œI bet Mr. Lawry didn’t take kindly to that. Let me guess: he said, We never told him that the speakers were working. If he didn’t check them out, whose fault is it? ”
    â€œSomething like that.”
    â€œYou’re going to get yourself fired one of these days, Tara.”
    â€œIt isn’t right to cheat people.”
    Blanca sighs, then changes the subject. “Look what I got us from Jehangir’s Take Out.”
    She rummages in the bag and holds up a greasy brown-paper package.
    â€œCan’t eat pakoras. I’m on a diet.”
    â€œWhy? Did El Roberto say you’re too fat?”
    â€œI don’t need a man to tell me what I am.”
    Blanca cocks her head. “Had your first fight, did you? I was wondering how long it would take—”
    She sees my expression and stops, then brightens again. “Picked this up, too.” She hands me a crumpled copy of the Indo-Houston Mirror . “You need to be in touch with your people.”
    It’s a sore point between us, what Blanca sees as my abandonment of the Indian community and I consider self-preservation.
    Mr. Lawry’s voice, mournful as a turtledove’s, floats into the utility room. “Girls, girls, why is it I get the feeling that someone back there is wasting their time and my money?” His tone turns snap-crackly. “Get your butts up here. Now.”

    Blanca and I work at Nearly New Necessities on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Just a pinch short of thirty hours, she says, so Mr. Lawry doesn’t have to give us benefits. But she doesn’t care because she’s almost done with her beauty school courses, and the manager at the Hair Cuttery, who’s sweet on her, said she can start working for him as soon as she gets her diploma.
    I’m happy and sorry, both. Ever since I wandered into Nearly—soon after I took a semester off from college, a semester which stretched into a year and then another and some more—Blanca has been a good friend. No. In the interests of truth, I must modify this statement: at this point, Blanca is my only friend.
    Sometimes when Mr. Lawry is particularly contentious, I think of quitting. My boyfriend Robert could get me a