kanjoos, not a scrooge, and she was only trying to save money for our future, Nate’s and mine. When I reminded her that she was buying the shawl for herself, I was awarded another sound slap. I sulked for the rest of the vacation and for a couple of weeks even after we got back home to Hyderabad.
Thanks to happy memories like that I never, ever, bargained. It was a relief that in the United States I didn’t have to do it for groceries and clothes; everything came with a fixed price tag. And even when I went and bought my car, I didn’t barter or bargain. The nice Volkswagen dealer gave me the price; I agreed and signed on the dotted line even as Nick insisted that I was being conned.
“You could get it for two thousand dollars less, at least,” he told me when I was signing the loan papers.
“I like the car, I’m not going to fuss over it,” I told him firmly, and Accountant Nick’s eyes went snap-snap open in shock.
And that was that. Nick told me that from now on, when I wanted a new car, I should tell him what I wanted and he would buy it. “Getting conned while buying tomatoes in India is one thing, but when you buy a car it’s criminal to not negotiate,” he said.
But to haggle equated being like my mother and I was never, ever, going to be like my mother.
The mango seller picked out two more mangoes and set them in front of Ma. “Try more. See, they are all the same,” he challenged eagerly, in an attempt to convince her.
Ma ignored the mangoes he chose and pulled out one at random from the basket in question. The man cut a slice off with his knife. Ma tasted the piece of mango and instead of swallowing it, spit it out in the general direction of the ground.
“Eight rupees,” she said, as she wiped her mouth with the edge of her dark blue cotton sari.
“Eight-fifty,” he countered.
“Eight,” she prodded and the man made a “since-you-twist-my-arm” face, giving in to her bargaining skills.
“Okay,” he sighed, then looked at me. “She drives a hard bargain, enh? I am not going to make any money on this sale.”
I made an “I-have-no-say-in-this” face and put the straw basket I was holding in front of him.
“How many kilos?” he asked, and I gasped when my mother said twenty.
How on earth were we, two women with no muscles to speak of, going to carry twenty kilos of mangoes all by ourselves?
I found out soon enough.
It was excruciating. Ma pulled the edge of her sari around her waist and heaved to lift one side of the basket, while I lifted the other. We looked like Laurel and Hardy, tilting the basket, almost losing the goods inside as we paraded down the narrow crowded aisles of Monda Market.
We reached the main road and set the basket down on the dusty pavement. My mother looked at me and shook her head in distaste. “We will have to go home and you will have to change before we go to Ammamma’s. I can’t take you looking like this and we have to take clothes for tomorrow anyway.”
We were all meeting at my grandmother’s house to make mango pickle. It was a yearly ritual and everyone was pleased that I had come to India at the right time. I regretted my decision dearly. If I had to pick a month, it should have been anything but blistering July. I was glad that Nick wasn’t there with me because he would have melted to nothingness in this heat.
I wiped my neck with a handkerchief and stuck it inside my purse. I probably smelled like a dead rat because I felt like one. My body was limp and the sun blazed down at eight in the morning as if in its zenith.
A whole day at my grandmother’s house scared me. The potential for disaster was immense. I had no idea how I was going to tiptoe around the numerous land mines that were most certainly laid out for the family gathering, as always. When I was young it hadn’t mattered much. I used to find a way to block out the bickering and the noise. But now I was an adult and I was expected to join in the bickering and contribute to the noise. I was hardly prepared for either. In addition, I had to break my not-so-good news