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whom she holds high above harm’s touch. But one drop of walnut juice in mandragora, with their names whispered over it. And.
    Dust of crushed bay leaf falls from my fist like smoke. A desire leaps clawed like a tiger from its hidden place in me.
    I will boil petal of rose with camphor, grind in peacock feathers. Say the words of making and be rid of this disguise I put on when I left the island. This disguise falling like old snakeskin around my feet, and I rising red and new and wet-gleaming. Draped in a veil of diamonds. Tilottama most beautiful, to whom these girls will be like mud scraped from the feet before one crosses the threshold.
    My nails cut into my palms. With the blood comes pain. And shame.
    “You’ll be tempted,” said the Old One before I left. “You especially with your lava hands that want so much from the world. Your lava heart flying too easily to hate, to envy, to love-passion. Remember why you were given your power.”
    Pardon, First Mother.
    I wipe contrite hands against my sari. My sari old and patched and stained to guard me against this vanity that presses hot at the walls of my skull, swollen like steam. I breathe it out, red mist. And when I breathe in, I hold on to the smell of the spices. Clean, sharp, sane. Letting me see again.
    And so I bless them, my bougainvillea girls. Bless the roundbones of their elbows, the glide of hips beneath their silky
salwaars
, their Calvin Klein jeans. With the fervor of repentance I bless the curve of their moist palms against the bottles of lime pickles they are holding up to the light, the cans of
patra
leaf they will fry tonight for bridegrooms or lovers, for they are always newly wed, the bougainvillea girls, or not at all.
    I crinkle my eyes and see them in evening: the lights turned low, silk cushions the color of midnight embroidered with tiny mirrors. Perhaps a little music in the distance, sitar or saxophone.
    They are serving their men
biriyani
fragrant with ghee, cool bowls of
raita, patra
seasoned with fenugreek. And for dessert, dripping with gold honey,
gulab-jamuns
the color of dark roses.
    The men’s eyes too darken, like roses under a storm sky.
    Later the women’s mouths, moist red O’s opening as they had for the
jamuns
, the men’s breathing hot and uneven, rising and plunging and rising again into a cry.
    I see it all. So beautiful, so brief, so therefore sad.
    I let the envy drain out. They are only following their natures, the bougainvillea girls. As I against every advice followed mine.
    Envy like green pus, gone now. All of it. Almost.
    I breathe a good thought over each purchase as I ring it up. The bay leaves, a new packet, their brown edges crisp and whole, I put in for free.
    For my bougainvillea girls, whose bodies glow saffron in bed, whose mouths smell of my fenugreek, my
elach
, my
paan paraag
. Whom I have made. Musky. Fecund. Irresistible.

     
    I sleep with a knife under my mattress. Have done it for so long that the little bump its hilt makes just below my left shoulder blade feels as familiar as a lover’s hand pressing.
    Tilo you’re a great one to be talking of lovers.
    I love the knife (I cannot call it mine) because it was given to me by the Old One.
    I remember the day, muted orange of butterfly wings, and a sadness already in the air. She was handing each Mistress a going-away gift. Some received flutes, some incense burners, some looms. A few were given pens.
    Only I received a knife.
    “To keep you chaste,” she said, speaking for my ears only as she put it in my palm. The knife cold as ocean-water, supple-edged as the yucca leaf that grows high on the sides of the volcano. The knife humming its metal knifesong against my lips when I bent to kiss the blade.
    “To keep you from dreaming.”
    Knife to cut my moorings from the past, the future. To keep me always rocking at sea.
    Each night I slip it under when I unroll my bedding, each morning lift it out and wrap it in its bindings with a thanking