In Devigaon, a village a full day's bus ride into desert country west
of Delhi, old Hari tells of times before the "long ago" of fairy tale,
when celestials battled demons and the Cosmic Spirit revealed itself in
surprising forms to devotees. The story that children beg him to repeat
at twilight--that smoky quarter hour most full of menace--is of Devi,
the eight-armed, flame-bright, lion-riding dispenser of Divine Justice.
They know that the Cosmic Spirit (assuming the appearance of gods) continually
makes, unmakes and remakes the world they live in. They know that it also
created goddess Devi and endowed her with the will to save and the strength
to kill, and that it, charged her with the mission of slaying the Buffalo
Demon who had usurped the throne in the kingdom of heavenly beings.
And in this village, named
after the serene slaughterer of a demon king, the children already know
the story's ending. Before twilight blackens, Devi will blow the conchshell
call, and brandish in her many arms a lasso, a trident, a fire-tipped
spear, a demon-splitting disc, a bow and arrows, a death-dealing staff,
a thunder-sparking axe, a pitcher of water and a necklace of blessed beads,
and will lead her soldiers on lionback. The Buffalo Demon, inheritor of
the brute strength and physical appearance of his buffalo mother and the
deceit and rage of his demon father, cunning, and magical powers, will
vanquish her men. Some of Devi's soldiers the Buffalo Demon will gore
to death; others he will stomp, still more fell with the tempest blasts
of his panting breath, and lacerate with the whip-crack of his tail. Then
he'll let loose the full ferocity of his bestial hate on the Earth itself.
With his hooves, the Buffalo Demon will scour canyon-deep trenches; with
his horns, he will shred the sky and scoop out mounds of soil as high
as mountains; with his tail, he will churn the calm waves of the ocean
into fatal hurricanes. And just as he is about to declare himself destroyer
of gods and goddesses, Devi will muster the full powers of vengeance.
She will fling her lasso around the demon neck, pierce, strike and slash
the demon flesh, pin that demon bulk to the ground with her foot and cut
off the usurper's buffalo-head.
While the children, comforted
by story, curl into sleep on their bed-pallets, the Cosmic Spirit will
smile on its daughter-goddess, then go back to creating, preserving, breaking
and re-creating the cosmos as always.
And Devi? The Earth Mother
and Warrior Goddess wipes demon blood off weapons and puts them away for
the next time they are needed.
Part One
I can almost touch the diamond-hard
light of stars and the silky slipperiness of leaves, almost taste smoke
softer than clouds and sweeter than memory, almost feel God's breath burn
off my sins.
What have I done but what
my mothers did? The one who gave me birth, and the one I am just beginning
to claim. Like them, I took a god of a special time and place as my guide.
My mothers, luminous as dewdrops
in downlight, weightless as the wings of a newborn dragonfly, float towards
me from the place where I was born. I have no clear memory of my birthplace,
only of the whiteness of its sun, the harshness of its hills, the raspy
moan of its desert winds, the desperate suddenness of its twilight: these
I see like the pattern of veins on the insides of my eyelids.
I tell myself I must have
been left unattended in the sun. Maybe the sand-yellow sun was low in
the morning sky and whichever Gray Sister was charged with caring for
me had been detained in the fields as the sun mounted. I don't want to
believe it was an overcrowded orphanage's scheme to rid itself of a bastard
half American. One murder attempt is enough. Some days while shoveling
snow off the stoop in Schenectady, I have smelled heady hibiscus-scented
breezes; I have felt tropical heat and humidity.
Tonight, in the cabin of this
houseboat off Sausalito as curtains of flame dance in the distance and
a million flash-bulbs burn and fizzle, and I sit with the head of a lover
on my lap, the ferrous taste of fear invades me as though my whole body
were tongue.
For all official purposes,
like social security cards and unemployment benefits, I am, or was, Debby
DiMartino, a fun-loving twenty-three-year-old American girl. I was adopted
into a decent Italian-American family in the Hudson Valley. That's the
upside of adoption. And believe me, I've approached this situation, my
situation, from every angle. The downside is knowing that the other two
I owe my short life to were lousy people who'd considered me lousier still
and who'd left me to be sniffed at by wild dogs, like a carcass in the
mangy shade.
The upside and the downside
of being recyclable trash don't quite balance. Debby DiMartino is a lie.
Whoever my parents intended for me to be never existed. That unclaimable
part of myself is what intrigues me, the part that came to life in a desert
village and had the name Baby Clear Water Iris-Daughter until it was christened
in a Catholic orphanage. That's the part I want to remember. But there's
another part I try to keep secret, the part that sings to moons and dances
with stars. With everything I've done, I've tried to find a balance. It's
just that Debby DiMartino has no weight, no substance. I had to toss her
out.
Cherchez le garcon. There
was a boy, back when I was a stubby little thirteen-year-old. He was a
twenty-two-year-old graduate student at Syracuse. I had no way of knowing
there'd be a growth spurt--I was adopted--I only had my sister Angie to
go by, which meant I had nothing to look forward to but getting fat and
a puberty that would be a settling down, and out, and not a shooting up.
Wyatt was a lanky, crinkly-blond
longhair (he had the first male ponytail I'd ever seen) getting a master's
in social work, and I was his project. He had that low, slow, soft voice
that just cries out sex, sex, sex! and deep brown eyes that bathed you
with attention without ever blinking. The voice, the eyes, they burned
at a very low flame, they never flared, but they consumed me just the
same. He also had my police file, and he had the power if he ever wanted
to use it to fuck up my future, all of which made our relationship an
exciting kind of power trip.
Celia Montoya and I used to
hang out at the mall, and one day (actually, many days) the temptation
got too much and we "liberated" a little candy, some tapes, some perfume
and panties--no problem--then we pushed our luck at Radio Shack since
nothing was cooler that year than a portable phone. I should have figured
out Radio Shack of all places would have some kind of electronic alarm.
And the total value of the loot was over a hundred dollars, which automatically
sent us to court and gave us a police record, and some sort of correction.
Pappy had connections in court
and with the police. Celia had connections, too, but all the wrong kind,
and site was out of school and in a facility for girls two days after
her appeal. I never saw her again. Me, I got Wyatt, and a chance to erase
my record. The penalty was I would do some service, I would read some
books and write something about them, I'd stay in school and improve my
grades, and I'd talk my problems out in a circle of troubled girls, as
we were called, led by Wyatt. I got to stay in school and no one knew
about the Circle, or Wyatt.
Celia would never have made
it, she would have laughed in his face, or she would have stared at the
floor. A couple of other girls couldn't take it either and said Wyatt's
voice drove them to drugs and housebreaking. Wyatt was the first to ask
me about adoption, what I knew, what I remembered. He put a lot of stress
on it, and I know it would have upset Pappy if he'd known that rehabilitation
meant bringing up feelings I didn't know I had.
"I've been reading your file,
Debby," Wyatt'd say, once we were out of the Circle. "How did the DiMartinos
come to adopt you?"
I'd never asked, and they'd
never told. Lawyers, they always said, but it had to have started with
the Church, all those little pledge envelopes for missions in Asia that
Mama still fills out. I knew only that they'd found me in an orphanage
run by Gray Nuns.
"You're not even interested?"
"I always figured it was fate."
"Schenectady was fate?"
Wyatt took me out to the animal
shelter. It was where he'd worked on weekends and high school summers.
It was the place that had formed his philosophy of life. It was the only
place where the Ultimates sat side by side. "Love and Death," he said.
"Kindness and Killing." He thought he could be the catcher in the pound;
everything depended on his keeping his orphans clean enough, making them
just a little more appealing, giving them cutesy names like Barbra, walking
them and running them in the park. My family always called the animal
shelter the pound, and I thought of it, if I thought of it at all, as
an alternate lodging between loving homes. You don't usually visualize
the dog pound as the palace of love. No one ever told me they gassed puppies
and kitties.
"Cuteness is all that counts,"
Wyatt said. "You have a bad day, you wake up with a dry nose, with dull
eyes, you take a nap, you scratch your fleas--it's your life."
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying you've got a chance,
don't blow it. You might never have made it out of that orphanage. Someone
must have seen something."
And what could they have seen
in a baby girl whose unnamed mother identified herself as Clear Water
Iris-Daughter, and whose father, also unnamed, was called Asian National
in the adoption papers? The nuns weren't interested in my origins, they
didn't care about filling in the gaps of my life; they were into good
works. It was the mid-seventies and I was just a garbage sack thrown out
on the hippie trail.
There's no passion in the
world like that of a thirteen-year-old girl; she'll do anything for love,
or what seems like love. She'll interpret anything as a little sign, she'll
believe anything he says, she'll do anything to prove herself worthy of
his notice. And then the time will come when site begins to feel her own
power. I was only thirteen, but I was a knowing thirteen when I didn't
want to hide it, and mellow-voiced Wyatt was the first man I showed it
to.
Our little Circle meetings
grew shorter and shorter, our trips in the country longer and longer.
There were motels in the afternoon, flowery pastures, canoe trips. I could
ruin him if I wanted, and he knew it. He shared his stash (which I knew
he had), and before long he was praising my orphan's maturity, the integrity
of shoplifting in a consumer society and of course saying that I was older
than my age (at least three years for his sake, I hoped).
Wyatt signed off on my parole,
then dropped out of grad school. I had been a bad influence on him, he
said. He decided to go to California and work for the Sierra Club or become
a nature photographer. Human emotions were too difficult. But he left
me with the most important prediction of my life, something that got me
through high school and college, and even helps today. I was just a small,
dark thing, and he said, "You know, Debby, I can tell you're going to
be tall and beautiful very soon, and someday you're going to be rich and
powerful." He thought he had everything to do with it.
After Wyatt left, I convinced
myself that I was lucky to be all orphan. Front the families I'd been
given, I'd scavenge the traits I needed and dump the rest. If a person
is given lives to live instead of just one life (Mama's favorite soap),
especially lives she hasn't even touched, she'll be far better off for
it. Once in a junior high English class, on assignment, when the other
girls were composing little rhymed Hallmark verses about love, I raged
in rhyming couplets against whole peoples who brawled inside me. The poem
shocked me. It throbbed with pains I had no right to feel. That was the
first time I'd really cut loose.
Mr. Bullock said, "Debby,
that's deep," and he forced me to read the poem out loud in class. And
the kids said, "Jeezus, it could be, like, a song, Debby!," which was
their highest compliment. Then Mr. Bullock asked, "Have you read Sylvia
Plath, Debby?" and I said I didn't know any of the senior high girls,
and he laughed. "Then you're a natural poetic talent, Debby," which sounded
to me as thrilling as a new zit on the nose. He invited me to join all
after-school geek club. I attended twice, but its members were weird and
I could feel how easy it would be to weird out too.
Until that poem, I'd been
Debby DiMartino, second daughter of Manfred and Serena DiMartino, hardworking,
religious parents. In junior high, I'd looked enough like my sister Angie
to pass for a real DiMartino, and I expected to ripen and coarsen early,
like Mama and like Angie. But I didn't thicken like Angie did, and by
my senior year, I was the tallest one in the family, including Pappy.
I stayed thin, clear-skinned, dark-haired, amazed at the assertiveness
of my body. The gym teacher encouraged me to think volleyball scholarships,
and Angie nagged at me to try out mail-order-catalog modeling. My senior
portrait was just the kind of thing that you find in People magazine at
the Price Chopper, one of those bad-hair, ugly-duckling pictures of some
high school cheerleader gone bad or murdered or of some eventually famous
movie star.
My junior-year growth spurt
ended a few months too early, leaving me a shade below five-nine. I was
a tall girl in a small school, a beautiful girl in a plain family, an
exotic girl in a very American town. I'd always had this throaty whisper
of a voice, couldn't raise it above a satiny purr, in a family of choir
singers and a town of chirpy sopranos. But I wasn't tall, beautiful or
exotic enough to trust any of it, and so I made up my mind to find out
if I was someone special or just another misfit. I didn't write another
poem, but I began to understand about mugged identities. There was something
to nature over nurture, and to the tyranny of genes. But you pay for all
the knowledge you've gained. How could I explain to a Schenectady DiMartino
that destiny's the bully you can't outpunch or outsmart? That the Gray
Nuns, Mama, Pappy, Angie, Mr. Bullock, Wyatt, the junior high geeks and
creeps I've blown off fit into the Big Picture? I need to believe in the
bigger picture. Most orphans do.
Who are you when you don't
have a birth certificate, only a poorly typed, creased affidavit sworn
out by a nun who signs herself Sister Madeleine, Gray Sisters of Charity?
And that name? No mother's name, no fathers name, just Baby Clear Water
Iris-Daughter meticulously copied out, taking up two full lines, when
Father and Mother with long spaces after them are just ink flecks of nonexistence.
What are you when you have nightmares and fantasies instead of dates and
statistics? And, in place of memory, impressions of white-hot sky and
burnt-black leaves? Nothing to keep you on the straight and narrow except
star bursts of longing?
We thought Mr. Bullock was
giving us a routine assignment, but what if a junior high English teacher
with hair in his ears is an agent of destiny? He'd made us read a Robert
Frost poem about a bird flying off a snow-dusted bough. "The Muse," he'd
encouraged us, "notices the humblest object and the tritest movement and
turns them into the gold of passion and poesy."
Mr. Bullock said he wanted
for us to write about something we knew, something we knew so well that
we didn't see it anymore. And so I wrote about the lacy, summertime shadows
of the squat oak that Grandpa DiMartino had planted in the backyard to
celebrate his escape from the Bronx--so the family story goes--the day
he got the deed to the Schenectady house, and that set me thinking that
the grandpa who'd planted that oak and landscaped the garden and put in
the lily pond was Angie's grandpa and not mine after all. That made me
hear tiny gypsy moth jaws on the tender skin of stalks, and that made
me remember other leaf patterns against other horizons. I wrote another
about the dogs I'd seen at the pound, pretending that I was alone and
that I was a dog myself. Take me, love me, shelter me, my barking said.
I felt more deeply than Debby'd ever dared let herself feel. Words ribboned
out of me. And when the assignment was done, I felt cheated of places
I couldn't draw and of parents I didn't miss. I blamed the poem for robbing
me of what I'd never owned. It was as if a psychic with a 900 number had
said to me through the poem, You're just on loan to the DiMartinos. Treat
them nice, pay your rent, but keep your bags packed.
Back then, in Schenectady,
I waited for the call. Not to be a model or a poet, which was to be not
extraordinary enough. The call would be to something more special, to
satisfy the monstrous cravings of other Debbys hiding inside. I didn't
envy Angie as I helped her into the Greyhound bound for Manhattan and
her modest transformation of a Hudson Valley accent, hair color, clothes,
muscle tone and skin. I knew by then that there was a life beyond the
state lines waiting for me to slip into. Star Quality just plays taller
and thinner and younger than it really is; second bananas just look older
and fatter than they really are. All I'd have to do was be beautiful,
be available, and my other life, my real life, would find me.
Use of this excerpt
from LEAVE IT TO ME by Bharati Mukherjee may be made only for purposes
of promoting the book, with no changes, editing or additions whatsoever,
and must be accompanied by the following copyright notice: copyright ©1997
by Bharati Mukherjee. All Rights Reserved.
Excerpted from Leave It to Me © Copyright 2009 by Bharati Mukherjee. Reprinted with permission by Fawcett Columbine. All rights reserved.
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