Leave It to Me - Bharati Mukherjee [66]
In reel time, dying cowboys hit the saloon floor, but in the twitchy, gory moment of going down, they don’t crush to death cute spider monkeys. It’s Master’s accidental death that I still mourn. My sweetest dreams dissolve on Master’s panicky screech.
“One down, and more to go.” Ma Varuna punctured Jocko’s forehead with the sharp heel of a silver sandal. Blood seeped and rimmed the edges of the small puncture wound.
“Why?” Reason, logic, the homey decencies of Schenectady: Were they delusions?
“I’m doing the fool a favor.” She said that without a snicker. “Every soul needs a door.”
“Why?”
“The body is a temporary home. The soul can’t exit without a proper exit-hole.”
If Ma V was right, if Devi is a name you can’t earn or be given, if it’s a branding iron that blisters cool, smooth flesh with a hot, metallic howl, I was branded “Devi” the moment that Ma V’s slipper bored deep through a dead man’s anemic skin and let out an unprepared soul.
The next few hours took Ma V and me places that didn’t show up on the MindWorks Press itinerary. Maybe because Mikki, the MindWorks publicist, was destined to learn the Dee Law of Perturbation. In which case, Ma V’s will cooperated with Mikki’s destiny. Only the self-centered blame themselves for perturbation’s damaging aftershocks. We survivors stay loose, we take small lateral steps out of the nasty reach of things, we dodge, we feint and, only when apocalypse opens up, do we deliver our knockout punch. The rigid, like Mikki, resist. Mikki now rests on a cot on the most secured floor of Creedmoor, doped into a serenity beyond misery and bliss.
Ma Varuna and Bette Ann Krutch: Of the two, which was the impostor?
I, a ragpicker of wisdom, hoard what I need. From Bette Ann’s promotional material, I grabbed the Master Butcher chart of prime “cuts” of emotion. From Ma Varuna’s psycho-nutrition, I stashed away hallucinogenic aphorisms. My favorite among her one-liners: “Destruction is creation’s necessary prelude.”
Zen masters have it too easy, answering disciples’ questions with questions of their own. What I’ve learned—am still learning from unwitting teachers like Frankie, Al, Baby, Fred, Larry, Mother, Ham—is that for each question there are a zillion correct answers. Mother’s milk; cobra’s venom. Since both are right, and of equal value, pick the one that feels good.
A question for Bio-Mom: How did it feel when the Gray Nuns brought me to you in your Indian prison?
I was listing in my head all the correct answers to why Ma V aka Bette Ann K. should have “bile-eliminated” Jocko when she surprised me by taking off her clothes in front of me with the taunting efficiency of a professional stripper. Her first divestiture was her long hair. She flung the wig at my feet. The wig was of human hair, but I’d assumed the hair was her own. Black strands writhed like serpents around my ankles. Next, she shrugged off the vest. In the whirl of gold brocade and rich silk, I thought I glimpsed the twisted, accusatory face of Master. And after that, with gestures that were lithe, lewd but also mysterious, she freed herself of the long tunic of gauzy material. The torso she revealed paralyzed me with its … its oiled luminosity, its mean muscularity, its scornful splendor. I heard a flawed heart pound the arrhythmic beat of adoration. The harem pants shimmied to the floor. I heard Mr. Bullock’s voice recite half a line. Not by then-you’re-a-natural Debby DiMartino, but by Emily Dickinson. “ ‘You may have met Him …,’ ” my junior high English teacher cautioned. The rest of the line was drowned out by Jess’s ringing exultation. “And wham! There was this … apparition.” Ruddy, roused male genitalia and silver heels mocked me. The apparition worshiped at its own altar with a frenzy of ecstasy or impudence. In that four-hundred-dollar hotel suite, the diffuse yellow light from a chandelier melted into the carnelian glow of sunset limning a tropical horizon.
Apparition, “narrow fellow,” blackmailer: it spoke. “That silly woman, what’s her name, Betty