Goddess for Hire (3 page)

I FELT LIKE
a character in a bad movie who suddenly remembers incredibly vital information she somehow coincidentally forgot, until prodded, but that's how it was. After all, most people can explain away coincidences faster than Joan Rivers reaching for a Botox-laden syringe. “We'd just moved to Newport Beach,” I began, “and some of the neighborhood kids started calling me Gandhi girl.”

Sanjay handed me a bag of pretzels and a Pepsi from the minibar. “Kids can be cruel.”

“And surprisingly knowledgeable about historical figures.” I crossed my legs and flicked open the can of soda. “But what do you expect? When you bring chicken tandoori sandwiches to school and everyone else is packing bologna on white, you're bound to have some peer-adjustment problems.”

A sharp ringing startled me into stopping. Sanjay reached inside his windbreaker and pulled out his cell phone. “Hello?” His face broke out into a huge smile. “Indira! No I'm not busy.”

Ram cleared his throat, his face stern. “Sanjay.”

Sanjay turned away and dropped his voice. “Friday then? It's a date.” He hung up and straightened, shooting me an apologetic smile.

“Whatever.” I shrugged and took a sip of Pepsi. “One day the kids were having a contest to see who could jump off the highest point. Determined to prove I was as good, if not better than they were, I shimmied up the side of our house, stood on the top of the garage and yelled,
'Hey losers! Did you know Gandhi could fly?'
They came running.”

I paused to see if my audience was still paying attention, they were. “I was about to jump when I decided to do something a little more risky and pulled myself up until I was standing on top of our second-story roof. The kids were staring up at me with a mixture of fear and awe. This was my moment. I jumped and landed smoothly on the driveway.”

A smile tugged at the corner of my mouth. “I became sort of a hero after that. I had full access to all the Atari games in the neighborhood.”

Ram scratched his chin. With his protruding jaw, shock of white hair, and chocolate-colored skin, he resembled a wizened old monkey. “I see.”

Obviously my story wasn't the heavenly example he was expecting. So maybe it didn't compare to Clark Kent twirling tractors at the age of five, but at least it was something. I jumped up. “Hey! That's a distance of like, twenty-five feet! No one can do that without protection
and not get hurt, but that day I knew I could. It was weird.”

“I think it sounds somewhat miraculous,” Sanjay said in a comforting voice.

“Damn straight it does!” I was about to continue when it occurred to me my stance had changed from arguing why I wasn't a goddess to why I was. I shot Ram a suspicious look. He was smiling. I placed a hand on my hip and tossed back my hair. No one could do sassy and outraged better. “You tricked me!”

Ram blinked his eyes innocently. “The priests of my temple do not indulge in trickery.”

I picked up my bag. “I don't know why I'm still here. This is all a mistake. Birthmark aside, you've got the wrong chick.”

Ram opened his mouth to protest, but I held up my hand and silenced him. “In sixth grade Dana Padilla called my mom a clown because she picked me up from school dressed in a sari. Know what I did? I paid Stephanie Dawson, the tallest and widest girl in our class, twenty bucks to beat the shit out of Dana while I watched. Aren't divine beings supposed to be gentle and nurturing? I totally enjoyed watching Dana get her ass kicked, and that hardly sounds like the actions of a goddess.”

Ram leaped to his feet, his voice booming out. “Not the actions of a goddess? Kali-Ma is the Goddess of Destruction! She is the bringer of death so that life may resurrect!” He threw out his arms. “Kali is womb and tomb, giver of life and devourer of her children.”

I curled my lip. Devourer of her children? Didn't sound too appealing.

Ram's face was alight with joy and a feverish excitement. “The Dark Mother gives life to us all. Jai Ma Kali!”

“Long live mother Kali,” Sanjay translated for me.

“I know what it means,” I snapped. My bag suddenly felt like it weighed a ton. I wanted to go home and crawl into bed. “I'm leaving.”

Ram quickly scribbled a number on the notepad provided by the hotel and tore off the sheet, handing it to me. “I cannot afford this lovely Holiday Inn room. I will be staying with Sanjay.” He shot his cousin a disapproving sidelong glance. “Even though I have seen shanties in Bombay more accommodating than his flat.” Sanjay's lower lip trembled, but Ram ignored it. “Please call me when you are ready for your lesson.”

Lesson? I took the paper and stuffed it in my purse. Ram was getting quite adept at reading my expressions, and spoke up before I could leave. “You are still doubtful. Tomorrow after you are rested, go outside, close your eyes, and call the Goddess Within. See the power flowing up from your womb and radiating down from your third eye. You will have your proof.”

“Your car is on parking level one, C2,” Sanjay added, and handed me the ticket.

I was about to leave when the most obvious question struck me. “Wait, how'd you guys know I'd be at the airport today?”

“Sanjay was under strict orders to follow you around
until I arrived and ascertained you were indeed the
One
,” Ram explained.

“You were following me?” I turned to Sanjay. “I didn't even see you.”

Sanjay grabbed the bag of pretzels and popped one in his mouth. “It's fortunate you're Kali and thus protected from harm.”

“Why?”

“Because”—he paused and grabbed another pretzel—“you're one god-awful driver.”

"TEN BUCKS
,” the thin, pimply-faced, male attendant said in a sleepy voice.

I handed over the bill and jammed out of the underground garage. I'd been kidnapped, drugged, and now I was getting screwed up the butt for parking.

On top of that Sanjay had rudely criticized my driving. Was that any way to treat a goddess? So what if I drove with my cell phone in one hand and a Frappuccino in the other? Most Southern Californians did the same.

I sped down Sepulveda Boulevard, miraculously free of airport traffic. This particular Holiday Inn was right next to LAX. So Ram and Sanjay didn't go very far.

I couldn't believe no one noticed two Indian men, one dressed in orange robes, smuggling an unconscious body into a car and out of the airport parking garage. I imagined Ram and Sanjay casually strolling through the hotel lobby, my comatose form propped up between them. Hadn't that rated at least one raised eyebrow from the concierge?

Because of the late hour, traffic in LA and Orange County proved relatively sparse. Forty-five minutes and I was home.

I stepped inside, expecting my parents to be up, demanding to know what happened to their only daughter. Instead the house was quieter than a cluster of nuns at a Marilyn Manson concert. Mom and Dad were obviously asleep.

Just as I reached my room, the guest bedroom door opened and the last person I expected to see stood there.

“What on Earth happened to you?” Tahir demanded. “Your parents were absolutely ill with worry. I offered to wait up so they could get some sleep.”

I yawned. “That was nice.”

“Not quite. I happen to be suffering from the most awful jet lag.”

I slumped against the wall. “What are you doing here anyway? I thought you were staying with my aunt?”

“Thanks to your shockingly vulgar display of manners at the airport, I was forced to converse with a ruffian of a baggage handler on where to get a taxi. Public transportation is pathetic here. Your parents were understandably horrified to hear of my ordeal and kindly offered to let me stay.”

I yawned again and felt my eyelids droop. “Well good night then.”

“Excuse me,” Tahir snapped. “I'm not quite finished.”

I looked up and smiled. He was as beautiful as I remembered. “Kiss my brown ass.”

Before he could respond another door opened and my parents stood there, tired and rumpled in their pajamas. My mom tucked a lock of black hair behind her ear. “Maya, where were you?”

Staring at their weary faces lined with concern, I longed to tell them the truth. Maybe they'd take the news their daughter was the incarnation of the goddess Kali by exchanging high fives and hugging each other.

After all, my decision not to major in premed had gone over pretty well. Mom had fainted twice, and Dad had faked a heart attack.

I just wasn't ready to share this particular news with anyone, not until I figured it out for myself.

I decided to resort to the excuse one of my high school friends, Lisa Kim, had used with her parents to great advantage. Facing them I took a deep breath. “Mom, Dad, it was terrible, there were these white supremacists and…”

Enough said.

MY EYES OPENED
at the crack of noon.

I blinked and spared a thought for the events of the night before. Goddess incarnate, please. It had taken me two months just to learn how to insert a tampon correctly.

I staggered out of bed and retrieved my purse from the floor. My cell phone fell out, and I winced at the number of missed calls, all from one number, home. I plugged it into the charger, then jumped in the shower. I wasn't sure my parents accepted my excuse from the night before. If I were going to face them, I'd do it feeling zestfully clean.

 

No one was home.

I checked the dry erase calendar in the kitchen where family members were supposed to record their daily schedules. My parents had duly filled out their whereabouts. Mom would be at her office until six, administering lollipops, diagnoses, and shots with equal aplomb
to her young patients. Dad had a vasectomy scheduled for ten and something called a urologic oncology seminar from one to four.

Tahir was nowhere to be seen. Thank Vishnu for small favors!

I fixed myself a bagel and cream cheese, then thought, what the hell, and stuck a dollop of homemade, spicy, mint chutney on top like my dad was always telling me to. It was actually good.

Munching on my impromptu meal, I went through the house, out the French doors, and stepped barefoot onto the deck. The wood was pleasantly warm under my feet. To the right the pool gleamed and sparkled in the sunlight. I'd never seen either of my parents in a bathing suit, they'd never seen each other naked, and there wasn't a single copy of the Kama Sutra in our house.

To the left was my dad's garden filled with plump prizewinning roses. He'd told the neighbors the credit went to an ancient Indian gardening secret. His trick? Feeding them Budweiser beer.

I walked toward the edge of the pool. It was a beautiful day, mild, despite being the middle of January. The sky was a wide expanse of blue with a cloud dotted here and there to break the seemingly endless azure infinity.

I stuck out a toe and swirled the water. I wasn't about to swim. I did my laps at night. My golden complexion was natural, and I didn't want the risk of skin cancer, or worse, wrinkles.

Dusting my hands free of crumbs, I stuck out my right
arm. I was wearing a black GAP signature T-shirt, and the birthmark on my shoulder was easily visible. Three dots in the shape of a triangle.

Could I really be Kali?

Or what if this was some elaborate scam?

Ram kidnapped women all over the world, told them they were goddesses in disguise, then hit them up for a fat check, all in the name of divine duty. I'm sure if I'd hung around the Holiday Inn a bit longer, he would've started his spiel on how his temple really needed a bigger altar and for just a few thousand rupees more…

Still.

There was the matter of my birthmark. And Ram's description of a young woman with the body of a lush lotus blossom pretty much fit me to a tee.

Meanwhile, there was definitely one thing I could do.

Time to do a little research on the dark goddess Kali.

INDIA IS CONSIDERED
the bastion of spirituality. Every mountaintop is supposedly sprinkled with wise men in orange robes contorting themselves into complex yogic positions or communing with trees. So just because I share the same ethnic heritage as those men doesn't mean I have some inborn sense of the metaphysical.

At the age of ten I'd taken a stand to stop attending the Cerritos Hindu Temple with my family. There were far more important things than learning the origins and teachings of one of the world's oldest religions, namely, Sunday morning cartoons.

Not that it really mattered; I was pretty much failing Hinduism 101. It was the pundit's fault. He should've taken my suggestion to put epics like the Mahabharat and Ramayan in comic book form. As a result I could barely tell the difference between Vishnu and Shiva.

Of course I'd heard of Kali, along with gods like Ganesh and Hanuman. However, with regard to the sec
ond two, I couldn't remember which one was a monkey and which had the head of an elephant.

I went back through the house and into what, according to the real estate agent, was supposed to be the library. My parents had converted it into a Puja room, where they laid garlands, burned incense, and offered coconuts to the Hindu gods on a white marble altar. I didn't have any coconuts on me, but I did put half of a Twix on the offering plate.

There were several deities my family worshipped, and as I gazed at the statuettes, some of it began to come back. The flute-playing man in blue was Krishna, probably the most famous incarnation of the god Vishnu. He'd definitely set the bar high for future divine embodiments like me. Krishna's teachings were summed up in the Bhagavad Gita, sort of the Hindu Bible.

Next to Krishna was Lakshmi, seated in a yogic position on top of a lotus blossom, her lovely face a perfect picture of serenity. Lakshmi was the Goddess of Wealth so I said a quick prayer over my Lotto numbers.

I was surprised to see two non-Hindu icons. A bronze Buddha in the laughing pose and a small, framed painting of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism. Apparently my parents were more open-minded than I thought.

Now if they'd only get off my back about marriage.

The last statue was of a chubby god with an elephant head. Staring at his appealing face I remembered he was
Ganesh, the remover of obstacles. I said a quick prayer to him over my Lotto numbers, too.

Lakshmi was the only female featured on the altar, so my parents obviously didn't worship Kali. This was a dead end. There was another place I could try, though, and they happened to serve Starbucks coffee.