Mustard Seeds

Anagha Devarakonda

She clutches the plastic rim of the shopping cart, dry hands so stiff she can see white lines weave baskets over her knuckles. The noxious smell of deli meat permeates the air around her. All she wants is a handful of mustard seeds.

 She was only six when she first saw a photo of America. Tucked between the pages of the June 1948 edition of Chandamama that she had borrowed from her neighbor was a glossy print of a stunning green statue holding a torch. She didn’t know what this statue was, didn’t even know where it was, but a feeling she couldn’t quite identify swelled up inside her. It was a feeling that made her want to rip out the meticulously oiled braids Amma had plaited into her hair.

She returned to the picture often, chasing after that swell in her chest – when she got into an argument with her mother because they ate the same dal, curry, rice, yogurt for dinner every day; when she wanted to put a ponytail in her hair instead of the painful slicked-back braids her mother subjected her to; when she wanted to run across the street on the way to school instead of walking in single-file with all the other uniformed girls.

When her neighbor came by to pick up his book a month later, she was emboldened by the honesty and independence the photo had instilled in her and she asked to keep it. After finally getting him to agree to her keeping the photo (but not the book), she asked what the photo even was. He said that it was a picture of America. He told her that America was a land overflowing with dreams, a land of wealth and success and satisfaction and excitement. In America his parents couldn’t force him to become a doctor. No. In America he could be a racecar driver, he could follow his own desires. He told her that he was going to move there when he grew older, that he just could not wait.

She heard and saw a lot about America after that. Commercials on the radio advertising face cream that American celebrities used. Articles in the local Telugu newspaper with the headline “Ten Reasons Why You Should Move to America.” Anecdotes in the marketplace about relatives of relatives who were thriving across the globe.

But she could not move to America. She sat in her room, no excitement, no satisfaction, no chance for success or wealth. She sat there itching to let her hair down but too scared to invite the disapproval of her community. She sat still, comforted only by the photo on her dresser.

Vijay readily accompanied her to the market, as always, like a hero in one of those romance movies she secretly adored. The small shop was just across the street, the owner was a mavayya, an uncle, to her, and she was better at bartering than anyone, her sharp tongue able to cut even the steeliest opponents. She had gone to the market without him tens of thousands of times. She knew this place just as she knew the number of fingers on her hands; she knew she would never experience anything new there.

An obnoxious bell chimed the second they set foot in the door. The scent of masala and humidity and the never-ending routine enveloped the air. Mavayya immediately called out a greeting, and upon seeing her face, tried to sell her a box of laddoos for a Super-U discount he’d created just for her. He did this every time she was here, and every time, she eventually gave in to the temptation of ghee and jaggery. But unlike her usual weekly grocery roundup, this time she finally had an exciting mission: mustard seeds.

Her husband had been begging Amma to make her famous pulihora since his first taste of it a year ago, the day after their wedding. Her Amma had always resisted, with laughing eyes; saying it was a comforting embrace meant only for times of change. Her daughter had never understood this and thought her mother just enjoyed speaking in riddles. There was nothing wrong with change, especially in a backwards place like this. Vijay asked for the recipe every week, over chai on Thursdays, but Amma just shook her head, and told him that comfort could not be written down. Somehow though, that day, he had managed to wheedle the dish out of her, on the condition that her daughter delivered her a bag of mustard seeds.

At the cash register, Vijay gently placed his index finger on her knuckle, smooth from the moisture in the Kakinada air. He told her in a hushed voice about the job he’d gotten in a place called Albuquerque, all the way in the United States. He told her that they were moving in three weeks. “So soon?” she almost asked, but her brain immediately responded with “not soon enough.”

She only knew one person who had gone to the United States from Kakinada, her neighbor from when she was a child. Her family, her friends, they talked about him like he was a celebrity. Every one of his annual letters home were passed from house to house like precious artifacts. His paycheck, his job as a cardiac surgeon, his adventures at all of America’s iconic landmarks, they were successes that all of Kakinada had adopted. She hadn’t seen him in twenty years and didn’t even know what he looked like. But she respected him, admired him, and wanted to be just like him.

He was out there forging a path of his own, one that was not dictated by people who had been examining him since childhood. He made his own choices, understood his own potential. He was not beholden to anyone or anything and embraced the change rather than a perfunctory lifestyle. His life was his alone.

And maybe, she thought, as mavayya handed her a bag with her purchase inside, double knotted as usual, soon, her life would finally be hers.

The train station was crowded, sticky, louder than a street after an accident. The automated voice on the intercom crackled to life announcing that the train to Mumbai would board in 30 minutes. She knew that once she set foot on that train, once her ticket was stamped, she could not come back out.

She turned to run to the train, eager to start the new chapter in her life. But a hand on her wrist pulled her back. She tried to wrench it free, but it stayed firm. Her Amma, who could not make the expensive journey to the airport to see her off, pressed a small piece of paper into her hand. Amma’s eyes, which ordinarily sparkled like the wrapper of a Hershey’s bar, glistened like polished topaz on the brink of cracking.

“Please write to us,” Amma said in a shaky voice. “Please don’t take away that little girl we’ve raised.”

Before her daughter could ask any questions or even just respond, the last call sounded, and the younger woman leapt onto the train.

It was only deep into the two-day train journey that she remembered the piece of paper. She had thoughtlessly stuffed it into the pocket of her carry-on bag. She found the slip and unfolded it. A recipe for Pulihora. 

Each day she went on a walk, chasing after that overpowering freedom she unleashed when she was six with a scrappy Chandamama book in her hands. There was nothing to see in this godforsaken town, nothing but miles and miles of dust and sand and withered, yellowing tumbleweeds. But she was determined to catch that feeling, and trap that elusive butterfly in a jar.

The first day, she ran into her neighbor, a middle-aged woman with a wad of gum in her mouth and skin that resembled a golden raisin. The woman took one look at her and clucked her tongue, “Oh you poor thing, you don’t know any English.” The neighbor grabbed a lock of her hair without warning – hair finally let loose for the wind to feel, finally free from those restricting braids. This stranger tangled her fingers through the tresses like they were termites swarming an old door. She peppered the invasion with cover-up compliments.

“How silky, I would kill for hair like this, can you tell me your hair routine – never mind it’s probably too exotic.”

The next time the young woman went for a walk, she oiled her hair and wrapped it tightly in a braid. She didn’t want even a single strand to fall out.

Four days later, an old man across the street hurled obscenities at her for stepping on his lawn. She apologized with an easy smile, hands folded in namaskaram, and uttered a small, “sorry,” one of the few English words she could speak confidently. She was honestly surprised he was so worked up about this; in Kakinada, not a single person would bat an eye. But this old man did not even dignify her with a response. He just cast a withering glance her way, overflowing with vitriol and disgust, a glance that made her want to melt into the cement and never look up again.

Each day, the doubtful whispers in her mind grew and intertwined. They were ivy, taking over a carefully built castle. She told Vijay about the doubts, but he laughed at her, proclaiming it “crazy talk.” Each day was a battle to open the door of her rickety apartment. She longed to curl up on the cold vinyl floors of their still-unfurnished flat and wait for sleep to lay its hands over her eyes.

On one of those days that blended into the next, she found a pen that looked like its end had been half chewed and then abandoned, and a piece of scrap paper buried deep in one of their suitcases. She should keep her word – if not the adventurous oath she made to herself, then at least the letters she promised Amma.

She had never been a good liar, believing honesty to be a virtue. But she realized that day that lying was a skill, and she just hadn’t been trying hard enough. Lies flowed easily from the pen, forming an exquisite portrait made of words, a painting that was an utter fake. She was good, had never been better, the letter said. The weather here was wonderful, the landscape here was beautiful. Yes, of course, she had made friends, because everyone here was so kind and welcoming. She was finding great success and freedom here, but not at all at the expense of comfort. She thought this place was heaven on earth.

She was impressed by her handiwork.

“Can you make some Pulihora?”

It was the first time he had really talked to her in a week and a half. They had been orbiting around each other all that time, she, stuck in the crevices of her mind, and he, caught up in the world outside of their marriage. She ate a dinner of Wonder Bread with peanut butter slathered on thickly at exactly 7:30 p.m., and went to sleep on the pile of sheets they had fashioned in the corner room. He came home an hour later, from his 12-hour shift as a clerk at the bank, ate the same thing, and came to their pile of sheets. She always pretended to be asleep when he approached.

“Yes,” she said, voice fragile and dry, like a cracked window milliseconds from shattering completely. She hadn’t used her vocal chords since the day she encountered the old man on his lawn. “Yes, but I need mustard seeds. Can we go to the market tomorrow?”

He looked at her softly, an undercurrent of sadness and fatigue peeking through his gaze. “I have to work, but I can drop you off.”

Must she go alone into that unfamiliar place? Must she not have a single friendly face by her side? No. This was what she signed up for when she came to America. A routine of unfamiliarity and discomfort.

Her husband had dropped her off at the store, promising to pick her up in an hour. The young woman begged him to come with her, to talk to the store clerks as she stood by him, but he simply unlocked the passenger seat door of their secondhand Datsun and drove away as soon as she got out.

Now she is alone in the store that whispers, “Why are you here?” It mocks her cotton saree; it ridicules her Bata sandals. The walls, the produce, the shelves, the carts. They all tell her to leave and never come back, to get out of their space and get back to her own.

She jumps at every shadow she sees, pretends to examine the nearest box of cereal, prays no one will try to talk to her and hopes they won’t realize she can’t speak English well and can only barely understand it. These whispers she hears are overrunning her brain.

She exits the supermarket an hour later, having scoured every shelf for mustard seeds to no avail. She doesn’t know why she thought they would be here. She’s been in the States for two weeks now, she should have known they don’t sell mustard seeds in this country. What was she thinking? A blind hope, perhaps, that maybe she’d find that slice of home.

She has to go back to her sterile apartment now, that resembles a mental hospital more than it does a home. She must tell her husband that she cannot make him the Pulihora he has been craving. He will look at her with something close to pity and disappointment, but not exactly either, and tell her that it is okay in his Telugu that is already gaining an American accent. And they will eat Wonder Bread and peanut butter, and watch their unsaid words ricochet off the walls.

At the door that leads to the parking lot, a security guard barks at her to come closer. He asks if she has bought anything, and she shakes her head. He narrows his blue eyes and tells her that shoplifting is a crime punishable by law. She knows all those words but has never heard them in that order. She stands still, her mouth drier than her knuckles in the New Mexico summer, unable to make a sound.

He takes in her brown skin and asks if she knows English, stretching out his vowels as if talking to an imbecile and making his eyes wide and crazed. She hesitates before nodding, but he takes that moment of hesitation as an invitation to pat her down. And that is when she finally understands what is happening and she wants to scream but knows that it will make him do even worse. And what good will screaming do when there is no one to hear it?

She is terrified the safety pin on her saree and the pleats she has so carefully set will come undone under the aggressive pressure of his hands. She shuts her eyes wishing this was some kind of nightmare and that maybe she would wake up in Kakinada to the smell of Amma’s dal, curry, yogurt and rice wafting through the air.

But when she opens her eyes a second later, she is still there, on the sidewalk of an Albuquerque K-Mart. She is still there, in the United States, thousands of miles away from Kakinada. She is still there, living that American Dream.