Scott Cheshire - High as the Horses' Bridles

I thought twice before telling her a story this reminded me of. But then I told her about the biblical story of Korah, once a wise man of God, who bared his teeth, screaming for help, as the Good Lord punished him and turned the hard ground beneath him into a hole. A gaping and gorging mouth that swallowed him whole and all of his possessions, even his family. Bhanu asked me what he did to make God so angry. I said he rebelled against Moses (I asked, “Do you know who Moses is?” She said, “I’ve heard of him”), that Korah would not listen to God’s appointed men. That he claimed he could speak directly with God. I told her how it took up two pages in my children’s Bible storybook, accompanied by comic book — like illustrations, and that I’d seen it performed in full costume onstage at Bible conventions. At some point she’d stopped listening to me, and said, “That’s a horrible story.” She was letting her face get wet. Her mouth was open and the upward rain was on her tongue and teeth. I moved closer to her, my mouth closer to hers. The mere idea of a kiss! The possibility was so charged, I was surprised every time she let me.

We stood there and watched the rushing falls, and I imagined the observation deck collapsing and sucking us under, and I was okay with that. This was the asshole of the world, and I looked away toward the river, the Niagara River; who ever mentions the poor river? It came roaring at us like water spilled from a bottomless bucket, incoming nonstop across a long and winding table. I promised myself I would never let anything bad happen to Bhanu as we were both entirely overtaken by the drama of it all, and cued up our Walkmans accordingly.

The year I turned eighteen, Mom finally decided she was better. She sat up in bed one day, came marching down the stairs, and said she had to go for a special session at the hospital. Dad took her, and they came home with tremendous smiles on their faces; I don’t know whose was bigger.

“Full remission,” Mom said.

Dad took her face in his hands, and he kissed her. Never saw anything like that before. He kissed her so hard, she started pushing him off, and she was laughing, but he wouldn’t let her go, she was laughing so much. Then he stopped, and picked her way up in his arms, and she was up there almost to the ceiling, and laughing, while he played biting at her belly. This is my most favorite memory. Not just because of how lovely, but because it woke me up to their lives in such an unexpected way. Like a bucket of cold water over my head. I’d been living peripherally, in my own home, walking along the walls like a mouse, following the same daily paths in hopes of avoiding direct contact with the people who owned this home.

But here they were, right in front of me. Mom was back, and fully charged, and she swore she would set this house aright because this was a churchgoing family. I have to say there was a welcome sense of security in having her back and taking the lead, and we returned to church as a family. Dad was reluctant to go. He’d since taken to calling the Brothers in the Lord apostates. But he went anyway, for her. We all did, arrived just as service started, and left as it drew to a close. We spoke with no one. Mom also somehow managed to ignore the fact that I’d had a serious girlfriend for the last few years.

I’d thought I’d done a good job of obscuring the presence of Bhanu, even though she lived around the corner, but it wasn’t like Mom was blind to it. She occasionally mentioned “the Indian girl around the block,” and when she was really bugged at me, “the brown girl.” When I think back on this behavior it seems so unlike her, uncharacteristic of her. She even claimed once that I chose Bhanu because she was Hindu. I remember being shaken by such a hateful accusation and not even bothering to respond. My parents began to unashamedly hanker aloud for the old neighborhood, because in the last few years Richmond Hill had become a haven for not just Bangladeshis, but Indians and Pakistanis, and there were rumors that the construction site around the corner was the future home of a Sikh temple. This was a new strain in my parents. I didn’t like their new behavior. It appeared to be connected to Mom’s remission: maybe she felt a debt to her Heavenly Savior and nothing less than the purest of worship would do. Mom and Dad were seeing eye to eye. They talked about the old days before the high trill of Hindi ragas, before the tap and pounding dance of tablas all of a sudden sang from car stereos all summer long. Before the teenage Hindi boys in shell-top Adidas made out with white girls on brick front porches. The corner store put up a sign in its window: “Fresh Goat Meat.” And this absolutely horrified my parents because, What, now everybody’s too good for hamburger? Dad turned hot dogs on our backyard grill, and the neighborhood barbecues smoked hot yellow curries.

The faces at church had changed, too. As many brown faces as there were pale, and I could practically see the gears of my parents’ brains turning, trying to process this new information. Regardless, this was good news because the new faces probably didn’t know of Dad’s outburst. Or about me. So we got to arrive and sit and leave in relative peace. City congregations like this one are protean, always changing, just like the city. Picking a different congregation never even occurred to my parents, that I knew of. I spent most of those services thinking about everything but worship. I thought of school, and graduation, and leaving the house. I thought of Bhanu. I invited her a few times, but she’d always decline and then invite me to their temple, which I always politely declined. I told her there were people like her at our church now and she should try it just once. It wasn’t like I was trying to convert her, I hardly paid attention anymore myself. It was more like there was this significant part of my life, and she had no idea of what it looked like, much less meant. I also wanted her to understand that I was going to church again for my mother.

One Sunday, when the minister onstage spoke of the doomed unbelievers, I couldn’t help but think of Bhanu. That she was doomed. I’d avoided this for how long already, made excuses for me, and for her, for my parents, for God himself, but I could no longer cover my ears. The elder onstage said they were hiding in our homes and in our neighborhoods, the Devil-music listeners, and the adolescent masturbators, the false clergymen of neighboring churches, and closeted atheists, the New Agers and yoga practitioners, and even casual dabblers in the abominable Oriental religions. Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs. They would all be punished if they didn’t open their hearts to the Lord. And then I saw Bhanu’s lovely face. I thought of her mother’s bindhi, the bloodred dot decorating her forehead like the center of a bull’s-eye target — she who always had milk and jellied sweets waiting for us in their kitchen, ever since the first time I met the woman, in their kitchen, baskets of peppers hanging from the ceiling, when she took me into her arms and said with her lilting voice: “So this is the young man who has my daughter in a spell. Let me see you.” She set me in front of her like a melon she was considering for purchase, and said, “Okay. Be good to my Bhanu and I will be good to you.”

I sat there and looked at the minister speaking and I watched his mouth moving but I couldn’t hear a thing. I imagined Bhanu’s front porch collapsing in the swell of a blood-river wake produced by some warring millennial and messianic chariot. I thought of her sweet-smelling hair — coconut! — and I sort of swooned right there in my seat. I wanted to run out of church and do something totally dramatic, like yell into the sky and dare Him to touch one hair on her head.