Nothing Like Love
Authors: Sabrina Ramnanan
COPYRIGHT © 2015 SABRINA RAMNANAN
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the publisher—or in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency—is an infringement of the copyright law.
Doubleday Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House of Canada Limited
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Ramnanan, Sabrina, author
Nothing like love / Sabrina Ramnanan.
ISBN 978-0-385-68102-5 (bound).—ISBN 978-0-385-68103-2 (epub)
I. Title.
PS8635.A4634N68 2015 C813′.6 C2014-907431-X
C2014-907432-8
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover images: EVA105/
Shutterstock.com
, De-V/
Shutterstock.com
Published in Canada by Doubleday Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House company
v3.1
Every page is for my dad
,
hero
,
kindred spirit
,
storyteller
.
IT WAS AFTER MIDNIGHT
when Vimla Narine finally closed the enormous front door against the pelt of autumn rain and dragged her book bag up the splintered staircase to her rented room at the end of the corridor. She saw, in the dim lamplight, her silhouette slink hunched and weary along the paisley walls and vowed to spend tomorrow wandering the city instead of tucked away in a library cubicle, turning mouldy pages yet again. The hallway smelled of orange peels and cinnamon bark, and beneath those, the faintest hint of damp dog fur. She squinted through the haze and saw Tiberius sprawled like a black puddle in her path, and there, perched on a chair, curlers piled high on her head, Ms. Nelly, the landlady.
“A letter came for you today,” Ms. Nelly said. Her blue eyes sparkled in the gloom.
Vimla stopped short; her stomach fluttered with anticipation.
“From Trinidad,” Ms. Nelly said. She leaned in and whispered like she was sharing a secret. “Someone named Minty sent it.” Ms. Nelly clutched the letter to her chest. “
Minty!
What a
flavourful
name!” She shuffled ahead of Vimla into her room and flopped on the bed. “Are you going to open it now?”
It had been this way since Vimla had accepted the tiny room in Ms. Nelly’s two-storey home five blocks from the university. The landlady had taken one look at Vimla with her eyes full of stories and her brown skin stippled with gooseflesh and had hauled her out of the cold and into the foyer like a treasure from some faraway place. In the days that followed, Ms. Nelly made her rich lamb stews and casseroles, chocolate chip cookies and apple pies with the criss-crossed tops, in the hope that in turn Vimla would reveal how she had
ended up in this city with a suitcase of ripe mangoes and a soul full of courage as her only possessions. But Vimla never spoke of her past, no matter how enticing Ms. Nelly’s cooking, so that now, in their second week together, Ms. Nelly was mad with curiosity.
“In the morning,” Vimla said. She extracted the letter from Ms. Nelly’s quivering fingers and slid the envelope beneath her pillow. “I real tired. I get lost today, you know.” She gathered up her toiletries and draped a towel over her shoulder. “I spent the morning running around the campus looking for the right lecture hall, and when I find it, the only vacant seat was quite in the front under the professor’s nose.” Vimla headed for the washroom. “And everybody watch me like they never see people before!” she said over her shoulder.
Ms. Nelly scurried after Vimla. “Well,” she said. “You do
look
different, Vimla. Like butterscotch.”
“Butterscotch?”
“Your
skin
.”
Vimla slid into the bathroom and closed the door, just missing Ms. Nelly’s fingers. “Good night.”
“I can’t sleep until I know,” Ms. Nelly said. She was pacing Vimla’s room, a harried look on her ashen face, when Vimla returned wearing pajamas. “Who is Minty, and why has she sent you these?”
Vimla’s gaze fell on the bed. Ms. Nelly had pried open the envelope and scattered the contents—a dozen scraps of beautiful cloth—across the patchwork quilt. She wanted to be furious with her landlady; only, she couldn’t, because there was
such tenderness in Minty’s gesture Vimla was overcome with nostalgia instead. “No letter?” Vimla whispered. She climbed onto the bed.
Ms. Nelly strummed her fingers against her cheeks. “Nothing.” Her eyes were wide, probing.
Vimla smiled. Of course. There was no need for a letter; the fabrics were Minty’s message. Quickly, Vimla began to knot the pieces together, the weathered ones first, and then the new piece, a snippet of rich red silk from a wedding sari, until finally a multicoloured rope of a dozen different textures meandered across the bed.
Ms. Nelly watched, transfixed. “What does this symbolize?” she breathed. “Is this some sort of Trini-dade-ian custom?”
Vimla swept her hair to one side and divided it into three equal parts. “It’s a reminder, Ms. Nelly.” She held the rope of fabric against the middle part and began to weave it into her hair.
Ms. Nelly swallowed, nodded vigorously. Her curlers bobbed up and down. “A reminder to …” Her hand paddled the air.
“To keep going.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere.”
Ms. Nelly looked disappointed. “How ambiguous!” She tried again: “And do you always wear your reminders in your hair?”
Vimla slipped beneath the warm quilt and felt the trials of her day melt away. She let her eyes shut. “Turn off the lights, nuh?” she mumbled.
Ms. Nelly sighed. “Pancakes and sausages in the morning, Vimla,” she said as she closed the door behind her.
Vimla rolled onto her side and her fingers grazed a strand of satin entwined in her hair. As she tumbled into sleep, her feet stirred beneath the covers and her heart quickened. Before she knew it, she was running.