When her relatives in India-aunties, grandmothers, spinster cousins-heard that she was coming to America, they had shuddered-with horror or envy, Malathi wasn’t sure which-and warned her to stay away from black men, who were dangerous. (And they had been right, hadn’t they? Look how he ran up to the door and attacked that poor Indian boy, who was half his size. For the moment Malathi forgot that the auntie brigade, ecumenical in their distrust of the male species, had gone on to caution her to stay away from white men, who were lecherous, and Indian American men, who were sly.)
No one, however, had thought to caution her about earthquakes. Where she came from, when people said America, many images flashed in their heads. But an earthquake was not one of them.
Malathi had followed the aunties’ advice-partly because there was not much opportunity to do otherwise, and partly because she had other plans. She shared a tiny apartment with three other women who had been hired by the consulate and brought over from India around the same time. They spent all their spare time together, riding the bus to work and parting only at the elevator (the others worked upstairs in Tourism), walking to Patel Brothers Spice House to buy sambar powder and avakaya pickle, watching Bollywood movies on a secondhand DVD player, oiling one another’s hair at night as they discussed hopes and plans. The other women wanted to get married. From their salaries, which had sounded lavish when translated into rupees but were meager when you had to pay for everything in dollars, they put money aside each month for their dowries, for even though dowries had been officially banned in India, everyone knew that without one you had no chance of landing a halfway decent man.
But Malathi, who had noted how her two sisters were ordered around by their husbands, had no intention of following in their foolish footsteps. She had set her heart on something different. When she had saved enough money, she was going back-though not to her hometown of Coimbatore -to open a beauty shop. At night she clutched her lumpy pillow, closed her eyes, and was transported to it: the brass bells on the double doors (curtained for privacy) that tinkled as clients came in, the deliciously air-conditioned room walled with shining mirrors, the aproned employees who greeted her with polite, folded hands, the capacious swivel chairs where women could get their eyebrows threaded or their hair put up in elaborate lacquered buns for weddings or relax while their faces were massaged with a soothing yogurt and sandalwood paste.
Then Mr. Mangalam had arrived at the visa office and derailed her.
Malathi’s roommates agreed that Mr. Mangalam was the best-looking man at the consulate. With his swashbuckling mustache, designer sunglasses, and a surprisingly disarming smile, he looked much younger than his age (which, Malathi had surreptitiously dipped into his file to discover, was forty-five). He was the only middle-aged man she knew without a paunch and ear hairs. But alas, these gifts that Nature had heaped on Mr. Mangalam were of no use to her, because there already existed a Mrs. Mangalam, smiling elegantly from the framed photo on his desk. (The photo frames had been provided by the consulate to all its officers, with strict instructions to fill and display them. It would make the Americans who came to the office feel more comfortable, they were told, since Americans believed that the presence of a smiling family on a man’s table was proof of his moral stability.)
Malathi, a practical young woman, had decided to write Mr. Mangalam off. This, however, turned out to be harder than she had expected, for he seemed to have taken a liking to her. Malathi, who harbored no illusions about her looks (dark skin, round cheeks, snub nose) was mystified by this development. But there it was. He smiled at her as he passed by the customer-service window in the morning. The days it was her turn to brew tea for the office, he praised the taste and asked for an extra cup. When, to celebrate Tamil New Year, he brought in a box of Maisoorpak, it was to her he offered the first diamond-shaped sweet. On occasions when she stepped into his office to consult him about an applicant’s papers, he requested her to sit, as polite as though she were a client. Sometimes he asked how she was planning to spend the weekend. When she said she had no plans, he looked wistful, as though he would have liked to invite her to go someplace with him-the Naz 8 Cinema, maybe, where the latest Shahrukh Khan mega-hit was playing, or Madras Mahal, which made the crispiest dosas but was too expensive for her to afford.
Could anyone blame her, then, for visiting his office a little more often than was necessary? For accepting, once in a while, a spoonful of the silvered betel nuts he kept in his top drawer? For listening when he told her how lonely he was, so far from home, just like herself? For allowing his fingers to close over hers when she handed him a form? In idle moments it was her habit to doodle on scraps of paper. One day she found herself writing, amid vines and floral flourishes, Malathi Mangalam. It was schoolgirlish. Dangerous. Symptomatic of an inner tectonic shift that disconcerted her. She tore the paper into tiny pieces and threw them away. Still, she couldn’t help but think the syllables had a fine ring, and sometimes at night, instead of visualizing her beloved beauty shop, she whispered them into her pillow.
Today, Mr. Mangalam had pulled her into his arms and kissed her.
Malathi had to admit that the action, though it surprised her, was not totally unexpected. Hadn’t he, just yesterday, placed in her palm a small golden cardboard box? She had opened it to find four white chocolates, each shaped like a shell and tucked into its own nest. Try one, he urged. When she shook her head bashfully, he took one out, ran it over her lips, and pushed it into her mouth. The crust had been crunchy, but the inside-it was the softest, sweetest thing she’d ever tasted. Guilt and elation had filled her throat as she swallowed it.
That same guilty elation had made her scalp tingle as he pressed his lips against her mouth. If he had groped or grabbed, she would have pushed him away. But he was gentle; he murmured respectfully as he nuzzled her ear. (Oh, how deliciously his mustache tickled her cheek!) Though Malathi had never been kissed before, thanks to the romantic movies she’d grown up on, she knew what to do. She lowered shy eyes and leaned into his chest, letting her lips brush his jaw even as a worrisome thought pricked her: by dallying with a married man, she was piling up bad karma. When he drew in his breath with a little shudder, a strange power surged through her. But then her glance fell on Mrs. Mangalam’s photo, which sat next to a small sandalwood statue of Lord Ganapathi. For the first time she noticed that Mrs. Mangalam’s shoulder-length hair was exquisitely styled-obviously from a tiptop-quality beauty salon. She displayed on her right hand (which was artfully positioned under her chin) three beautiful diamond rings. Had the man whose face was currently buried in Malathi’s throat given them to her? Mrs. Mangalam smiled sanguinely at Malathi-sanguinely, and with some pity. The smile indicated two things: first, that she was the kind of woman Malathi could never hope to become; and second, that no matter what follies her husband was indulging in right now, ultimately he would return to her.
That smile had made Malathi untangle herself from Mr. Mangalam. When he bowed over her hand to plant a kiss on the inside of her wrist, she had snatched her hand back. Ignoring his queries as to what was wrong, she had fixed her sari and her expression and hurried out of the office.