Before We Visit the Goddess by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Page B

places. Better than anything I’ve heard you recite before. And the emotion—almost made me cry. It was as though someone had trained you—”

    Chewing on the hard sweet sticks of sugarcane that leave fibers between her teeth, Bela asks Sabitri, “Do you believe in magicians?”
    â€œLike in Sleeping Beauty ?” Sabitri says as she spoons mashed banana into the baby’s mouth. “But no, that was a wicked fairy—and a good one, wasn’t it, that kept the princess safe? I want to believe. It would be lovely if a good fairy was watching over us here. We could do with some extra protection.” She looks into the distance, where a tiny train puffs soundlessly across the rice fields. She watches it for such a long time that Bela thinks that she has been forgotten.
    Then Sabitri swivels toward Bela with a mother-glint in her eyes. “Why do you ask?”
    Bela wishes she could press her head into her mother’s chest, the way she did when she was little, and tell her everything. But she no longer trusts her mother that way anymore. Besides, if she talks about him, the magician will never return. She is certain of this. It’s a calamity she can’t bear on top of all her other losses.
    â€œJust a book I read,” she says, nonchalant. As Sabitri busies herself with the baby again, Bela presses her tongue against the ridges of her palate, trying to find the exact spot where the globe melted into her, trying to recapture the taste.

    â€œI did well in school today,” Bela tells Ayah, who carries into her room a tray with her afternoon snack of milk and biscuits. “In elocution, I recited my poem without a single mistake. Miss Dhekial was surprised.”
    â€œWhy surprised? You smart missy.”
    â€œNot here in Assam. Here I feel stupid. I was terrified that I’d forget my lines and everyone would laugh. But it was perfect—like magic.” She isn’t sure Ayah, who has never attended school, can gauge the height of her achievement, but the woman nods solemnly.
    â€œLike magic,” she says.
    â€œDo you believe in magicians?” Bela asks, her breath quickening.
    Ayah looks at Bela speculatively. Then she settles herself on Bela’s bed, on the peacock-colored bedspread, though as a servant she’s only supposed to sit on the floor. She picks up one of Bela’s biscuits and bites into it. Bela knows she should chastise her, but she doesn’t.
    â€œIn my village,” Ayah says in a hushed tone as she munches, “is big magician. Very strong. Very danger.” She proceeds to describe to Bela how he once battled an evil lake-spirit by burning mustard seeds and chanting a powerful spell until the spirit was forced to flee, bleeding from its eyes and mouth and anus. Now it wanders around looking for unwary individuals that it can drag to a watery death. Bela listens in horrified fascination even though she knows she will wake at night with the worst nightmare.

    Bela is on the old swing at the far edge of the lawn, urging it higher than the branch it hangs from—something she has been expressly instructed not to do. She has been out here under the hot sun for a while. That, too, she has been told not to do, but no one at home seems to have noticed. She is waiting for her magician, but with each moment her hopes wilt further. When he does appear, perched on a nearby branch, she is so startled that she forgets to push into the arc of the swing, which plummets downward. The rope makes a terrible snapping sound. She feels herself sliding off the seat. But the magician catches her before she hits the ground. Then he cocks his head, birdlike, and looks at her sadly.
    â€œI have come to say goodbye.”
    â€œNo!” Bela cries. “Don’t go.” There is so much she wants to tell. The admiration on the faces of her classmates in elocution, and how in the afternoon they let her join their games. The bitter