Palm of My Hand
by Nina Rubinstein Alonso
In the hotel corridor Miguel notices a
sign by an open door, gold letters with a curlicue border, “Palm Readings,
Pandit Sharma.” We see a man at a mahogany desk, dark eyes behind thick lenses
labeling us strangers. He glances at his Rolex then gestures toward high-backed
chairs.
“We’re leaving Delhi soon, but if
there’s an opening? My mother knew a
London palmist.”
Mr. Sharma writes his fee on a
business card, and Miguel nods accepting a slot Thursday afternoon.
I’ve heard the story, never sure what
to make of it. “What are you doing?”
“Leah, my mother’s palmist predicted
she would meet a non-Brit, travel ‘across the great water,’ have four sons. She
married her Spanish professor, moved to Argentina, gave birth to four boys,
fled Peron, reached London, then the States. Meditation isn’t the only path.”
“But this palm reading path is paved
with rupees.” We’ve been together for years, and Miguel’s usually
skeptical.
The Delhi Emporium displays beautiful
handmade things. We buy an inlaid box, two small rugs and a carved elephant,
then rickshaw through a maze of scooters, cars, bullock carts and over-loaded
bicycles to the zoo. There’s a white tiger, Asian elephants, Indian rhinos,
emus, and we wander until smog-heavy heat flattens us. Monkeys are everywhere,
inside and outside the zoo, in trees, on the hotel roof.
Back in our room Miguel’s
sipping chilled tonic water, smoking a joint procured somewhere in the hotel.
At the ashram in Shahjahanpur there was no ice, no tonic water, no ganja. I
came to India to meditate with Babuji, but now we’re tourists visiting the Red
Fort, museums, temples, The Taj Mahal, dodging street vendors and pickpockets.
While he smokes I go downstairs to
hotel shops— jewelry, shawls, saris— impulsively buy another salwar kameez,
pink with apricot embroidery, not wanting to leave India, nervous about meeting
the palmist.
Mr. Sharma’s magnifying glass hovers
above my left palm, counts creases on the outside of my fist. “At least one
child.”
“Fertility problems but we hope to
adopt.” His words sting, years of doctor visits, test after disappointing test.
“I teach ballet,” I say, which he
ignores.
“Your career line shows several types
of work, sometimes more of one, sometimes more of another.” He almost says
something else, but changes his mind and shifts his magnifying glass to Miguel’s
right hand and says, “Chemicals, chemicals.”
I think of the ganja, the cigarettes,
the wine, the drugs he’s experimented with, while Miguel soaks it up,
quasi-hypnotized.
“Only one wife,” Mr. Sharma adds,
noting Miguel makes friends easily but struggles to find direction in life,
elastic topics that fit many hands.
I say, “I came to India for meditation, but you never mentioned
that.”
“Yes, spirituality is strong in your
hand, but I didn’t want to emphasize it because you’re young and too much
meditation can pull you from the physical world, even make you hate sex.” Mr.
Sharma’s expression is serious, but I’m wondering what he’s choosing or
omitting. Is he merely a nimble fraud uttering impressive phrases? Our sex life
happens to be good, dammit.
And what did he mean ‘only one wife?’ He
didn’t say I’d have only one husband. Is he implying I’ll outlive Miguel, marry
again? My thoughts are so tangled I miss his last words.
“Gives me plenty to think about.
Thanks,” as Miguel counts rupees into Mr. Sharma’s hand.
Whatever it was, it’s over.
We’re at the hotel’s
roof-top restaurant, Ming Palace, pink tablecloths, coiled pink glass bangles
garlanding the ceiling. Miguel’s smiling as if he’s seen a good movie.
“Couldn’t believe it when he said ‘chemicals,
chemicals!’”
“Maybe he smelled the pot you’ve been
smoking?” I’d like to cancel the idea
anything visionary happened. Miguel’s sipping Rosy Pelican beer, nothing like a
man who’s heard a death sentence.
As the waiter sets down platters, I
remember meeting a man who saw the Palm Leaf Oracle.
“Predicted I’d divorce, live apart
from my son, move to another country, return to the States and start a new
business. I forgot everything, even when my marriage came apart, my son stayed
with my wife, and I moved to Munich for work. Only found the notes before
returning to the States, maddening because I couldn’t see where anything was
going. Might as well give an encyclopedia to a baby.”
“You’re blaming the
oracle?”
“Not about blaming, just blundering
because predictions are disconnected, incomprehensible.”
“Something wrong?” Miguel notices my blank stare.
“Last year at a seminar a man talked
about the Palm Leaf Oracle in Chennai, forgot what he was told, later realized
everything happened as predicted.” I’m
picking up a green pea pod with my chopsticks.
“Doesn’t mean our reading won’t help
us.” Miguel’s sipping his beer.
“How can it help to be told you’ll
have only one wife?”
“Well, if I lose you, I won’t remarry.”
He leans close and kisses my cheek.
“Lose me? I thought he meant I’d lose
you.” The flip of meaning stops me cold.
“Well, guess you could see it that
way. Think you’d marry again? Maybe we’ll appreciate each other more, knowing
the possibilities. Doesn’t mean either of us will croak next week.”
I drop my chopsticks,
rush to the bathroom, puke in the pink marble sink, run water to clear the
mess, but can’t clean fear. I’m ghostly in the mirror, fried in psychic hot
oil, but where does it lead? Whose death sentence? Mine? Miguel’s? Why obsess
about the future, the ultimate lock box with no password? At the table, I pick
up my chopsticks, try to focus on ‘now.’
Miguel’s in the shower when the phone
rings, a close friend on her way to the ashram.
“Uma, I need to talk. I could rickshaw
to your hotel?”
“No time, Leah. Leaving soon to catch
a train. What’s the matter?”
“Miguel wasn’t into meditation, then
wanted a reading with the palmist at the hotel.”
“I have friends who consult astrologers
and psychics, seek messages from spirits. But what about interpretations and
predictions? Who to trust or believe? Not someone who charges thousands of
rupees,” Uma sighs.
“I met a man who saw the Palm Leaf
Oracle, forgot what he was told, but insists everything happened as predicted,
and what about Miguel’s mother’s reading? He says it all happened.”
“Well, I’ve heard this sort of thing a
lot, Leah. Better avoid astrologers and fortune tellers, in business to make
money, want you running back for the next prediction. It’s a product, purchase
and sale. Writing Guruji may help.”
“I shouldn’t have gone.”
“But you did. Got to catch a train,
but I’ll call when I’m back. Don’t fret over it too much.”
Miguel comes out of
the bathroom wrapped in a fluffy white towel, dark hair dripping, and I kiss
his freshly shaved, handsome cheek.
“You’ll get your new outfit all soggy,”
he says.
“It comes off.”
In bed we pull into deep honey, though
for a moment I wonder, ‘Why now?’ But I love him, I just love him.
For the trip home I wear a black
t-shirt and jeans as my Indian clothes feel too bright for the long flight to
London and the gray hours of lay-over before boarding again. I pack my bangles
so they won’t trigger airport sensors or get lost in the security shuffle.
Buckled in, I can’t relax, can’t read.
Miguel sips beer, puts on ear-phones and falls asleep watching a western
shoot-em-up, images flashing across the screen, bodies falling off galloping
horses. I try to meditate but get distracted by the steward rattling trays and
glasses, lights snapping on and off, a baby wailing, drunk men guffawing.
Change is all we’ve got, birds taking
off, waves breaking on the shore. I lean on Miguel’s shoulder, close my eyes,
sleep.
Months later our packages from Delhi
Emporium arrive safely, but Miguel’s been complaining of back pain. The first
doctor says it’s pulled muscles and advises therapeutic exercise, then a
chiropractor tries adjustments. The next doctor runs tests and discovers ‘atypical’
lung cancer, leading to rounds of chemo and radiation. Though we’ve completed a
home study for adoption, we’re forced to cancel. I’m hoping for a cure because
he’s so young, but nothing works, three years repeating cycles of pain, fear,
disappointment.
On a sunny day, July 18th, my darling
Miguel stops breathing in the blankness of a Boston hospital. I’m with his
brothers and elderly mother who says I’ve taken ‘magnificent,’ care of her
youngest son. But he’s dead.
As the doctor pulls the sheet over his
face and pats my shoulder, I notice the bedside photo of Babuji is gone.
Someone stole spiritual comfort from a dying man, sickeningly common hospital
theft. My nephew Marc drives me to my apartment, keeping up a stream of talk,
but I’m silent, wounded, hollowed out by grief and loss.
The Delhi palmist? Forgotten. Months pass before I open the
closet where Miguel’s jackets are hanging, find postcards from the Taj Mahal we
never got around to sending, my journal and Babuji’s letters on thin blue
airmail paper. I sit on the floor crying as I read what he wrote about palmists
and astrologers:
“Mind is only confused by so-called
oracles, mere charlatans preying upon the vulnerable. No one knows the number
of their days,” signed with love and prayers.
My mother-in-law’s palmist story was
baffling, but supposedly true. And, though forewarned, I forgot the palmist’s
predictions even as the dark sword lifted and fell.
Much happened as predicted. He’d have only
one wife, me, and, yes, chemicals and more chemicals, but were these merely
chance arrows hitting the target? The palmist touched some topics precisely,
others ripple like multiplying mirrors.
‘Mind is only confused by these
so-called oracles,’ unless we give up trying to understand, stop trying to ‘solve.’
The carved elephant we bought in Delhi
is on my desk, and maybe sometime I’ll reread my journal. Can’t yet.
Uma was with me when I sprinkled
Miguel’s ashes by a granite boulder under a huge oak.
Whatever people want to believe, there’s
no such thing as ‘closure.’ Miguel is permanently part of me, though his death
left me blank empty, surviving mechanically.
In a few months I’m going back to
India, but no palmists, no oracles, no predictions.
* * * * *
Nina Rubinstein Alonso’s poetry has
appeared in Ploughshares, The New Yorker, Ibbetson Street, U. Mass. Review,
New Boston Review, Constant Remembrance, MomEgg, Sumac, Cambridge Artists
Cooperative, American Poetry Review, Bagel Bards Anthology, Black Poppy Review,
etc. Her stories were in Southern
Women’s Review, Tears and Laughter, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Broadkill
Review, Peacock Literary Review, etc. David Godine Press published her book
This Body, and her chapbook Riot Wake is upcoming from Cervena
Barva Press. She says, “‘Palm of My Hand’ emerged from mystifying experiences in
India.”
