Nothing Like Love (24 page)

Vimla thought of the information Soohoo had for her. Her heart flip-flopped behind her rib cage like a captured tilapia and she knew that fishing was just as frantic.
Tell me about Krishna!
she wanted to scream.

“You blasted web-foot, ugly-mouth, white-backside, little—” Om’s mutterings stole Sookhoo’s attention. “You think you fast, ain’t?” Om turned to Vimla and Sookhoo holding a drake up by its wings, its orange feet piercing the air like arrows. “Vims, bring me a feed bag!” Sweat glistened on his brown face.

Vimla swiped an empty feed bag made of jute off the table
and hurried to the pen. She held it open and turned her face away as Om lowered the drake inside. The bag felt heavier than she had expected.
The weight of fear
, she told herself.

Om nodded to Sookhoo beneath the caimite tree. “Is two drake you want?”

“Yeah. Give me a next fat one like that again.” Sookhoo pointed to the bulging bag in Vimla’s hands.

Vimla hoisted the bag high as Brownie came flying around the duck pen and barrelled into her leg. The dog sprang up and balanced his paws on Vimla’s belly, barking and scratching at the bag. “Down, Brownie!” she scolded. Brownie backed away and then trotted at Vimla’s heels again as she set the bag on the table that was pushed up against the back wall of the house.

Chandani came out of the kitchen and craned her skinny neck to see how Om was faring. “Vimla, why you don’t go and help your father.” It was a statement rather than a question.

Vimla hesitated. She glanced at the bag behind her, imagining the bird suffocating in its own feathers and fear. “Brownie go throw down this duck as soon as I leave it.”

Chandani sucked her teeth. “Brownie!” she said to the dog pacing back and forth at Vimla’s feet. “Get and go on! Move your tail from there!” The dog watched her, panting. Chandani slapped Brownie’s rump. “In the kennel,” she said. Brownie took off toward Om, who whistled for their attention: he was holding the second drake. Vimla wasn’t sure why it mattered, but it pleased her to see the drake flail in her father’s grip for a moment. She hoped that its courage would endure the dark unknowing of the feed bag and the glint of the cutlass before the weapon came swinging toward its neck later.

Chandani scooped the first bagged duck off the table and carried it like a fat baby in her arms to the scale. Reluctantly Vimla held another feed bag open for her father and conjured gladness. She thought of her sweet barbadine punch cooling in the icebox, of Krishna coming to profess his love. She thought of laughing with Minty in the cane fields, of Chalisa Shankar’s face disfigured and covered in pock marks. Vimla didn’t even realize when the drake sank to the bottom of the bag and her father took it from her hands. She watched, relieved, as Om clomped toward the scale in his rubber boots, now marred with duck excrement and mud.

Brownie trotted after Om, his tail wagging. Vimla was about to call him back when an idea came to her. As Om and Chandani busied themselves weighing the first duck, Vimla slunk away and released the latch on the kennel door. In an instant Blackie and Scratch hurtled toward the scale and pounced on the drake in the bag.

Om and Chandani pushed the dogs away, but the animals could smell blood and longed to sink their teeth into warm flesh. The hullabaloo interrupted the weighing and caused enough distraction for Vimla and Sookhoo to exchange a few hurried words unheard. Vimla grabbed a coconut broom and dragged the bristles across the concrete at Sookhoo’s feet.

He smiled and the scar in his cheek stretched and shone across his dark skin. Then, instead of muttering the message, Sookhoo fished into his pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper, which he let fall from his fingers in front of Vimla’s broom before moving to join her parents. Vimla fell to her knees and plucked the note from the dust. Quickly she folded the scrap and tucked it into the breast pocket of her brown dress. She
imagined she could feel the weight of Krishna’s words, like a captured drake in a jute bag, against her heart.

Sookhoo slapped some bills into Om’s palm in a handshake and swung the two bags over his shoulder and out of the dogs’ reaches. Chandani and Om walked Sookhoo to the front gate with the dogs at their heels.

“I going back Tobago for a week, but I go see allyuh for the wedding,” Sookhoo said.

Vimla drew near, turning the paper round and round in her pocket with her fingers. She waited for her parents to make some excuse for not attending the wedding, or to brush the comment away. Instead Om said, “We go lash out a bottle of Puncheon that day, boy! Tell the old lady I say hello.”

And then Sookhoo was gone.

The barbadine punch was cool now. Chandani sat with her back erect and the sharp points of her elbows digging into the table, her hand wrapped around a tall glass. “What you swell up for now? Every time I turn around, your mouth swell up for something else. What happen? I starving you here? Your father does give you licks?” She sipped the punch. “Children these days too blasted ungrateful. Nothing good enough. Sometimes I does feel to just slap that look out your face, Vimla,” Chandani said. A stiff smile appeared and vanished again.

Vimla ignored her mother’s attempt at humour. “Allyuh get invitation to the wedding?” Her voice trembled; the tilapia convulsed.

“How you mean? Of course we get invitation, Vimla!” Chandani exclaimed, as if there had ever been a doubt. “The
Govinds live over the road! How they wouldn’t invite we?”

“Ma!” She glared at her mother, recalling Chandani’s recent temper over the matter. “So allyuh going to the wedding?”

Chandani straightened the straight tablecloth. “How it go look if we ain’t go?”

Vimla clenched her hands. “How it go look if allyuh
go
?”

“If people ain’t see we, they go wonder why. Then they go remember my daughter decide to take up man. Then they go remember which man she decide to take up. Then they go remember Krishna. And they go see how Krishna marrying a nice girl and left you in Chance to milk cow. And then you know what go happen?”

Vimla sighed.

“They go laugh. Everybody go laugh at we again.” Chandani took a swallow of her punch. “You think I keep a clean house and cook for my husband and mind child to the best of my abilities for people to laugh at me?”

For a moment, Vimla regarded Chandani, with the ring of white froth around her mouth. Then she pushed her chair back and headed for the door.

“Vimla, it only have one woman and one man living in this house and that is me and your father,” Chandani said to her back. “If you feel you too big for we, pack your bags and go, nuh?”

Vimla had heard this line all her life, but this time, as she stomped up the stairs to her bedroom with the sickening feeling of betrayal in her stomach, she considered the suggestion.

S
angita leaned on the windowpane in her sewing room and stared out at the cricketers gathering across the road. There was not a better view in Chance, she thought with a secret smile. Joe, the young man Om hired to cut his cane in cane season, stood to the side working on his batting form. Sangita imagined his back muscles contracting and releasing beneath his shirt. She knew every sinew and ripple, had committed them to memory during last cane season as Joe swung his cutlass bareback in the fields.

Often she had thought how nice it would be to bring him a cup of water, but she didn’t dare, not while he toiled in the neighbours’ field. She shook her head and laughed, her earrings springing against her neck. What silliness! Joe was but a child. No more than twenty, surely. She was lonely; that was all.

Sangita spotted the giant of a man Rajesh had hired to work in their fields, as the fellow was strapping on shin pads. He was ridiculously powerful and always remained a quarter of an acre ahead of Joe, but his gut was generous and hair sprang from the dark recesses of his ears. Sangita found him appalling, even more so when he bared his rotting teeth to smile. She wished Rajesh had hired Joe instead. At least then she would have had something—someone—to please her during the day, even if from afar.

Faizal Mohammed strode onto the field then, as if to remind her who really owned her heart. He balanced a new bat on his shoulder, looking sharp in startling white clothes, while the other men wore grungy shirts and shorts meant for the mud. Sangita tapped her lips with her fingers. Faizal was a superb batsman and was delicious in his success. Her stomach fluttered whenever he hit a six and it took all her self-control not to cheer him on from the window. That would be dangerous, especially since Rajesh played with the men, too.

Sangita found Rajesh. He was setting up the wickets, bawling orders to the others, picking men for his team. He wouldn’t choose Faizal Mohammed, no matter how strong a batsman he was. He never did. Sangita wondered just how deep Rajesh’s suspicions ran.

“Mammy?”

Sangita jumped, drew the curtains across the window.

“What you watching?” Minty eyed her as she picked across the fabric-strewn floor.

“Your father. He playing cricket.”

It was partially true, but Minty’s eyes filled with doubt anyway. Sangita brushed past her and returned to the unfinished
pillowcase pinned beneath her sewing machine’s needle. She tapped the pedal under the table and the machine whirred to life. “You studying or you looking for something to do?” Sangita eased the fabric away from her, the bangles at her wrists tinkling, and watched the needle bob. She never lifted her eyes from her work.

Minty sighed the sigh of a woman fatigued. She cleared the wooden bench of fabrics and sat. “I tired studying calculus.”

Sangita lifted her foot off the pedal and let her hands fall into her lap. “Well, pick up the geography book then!” she said.

Minty pouted, and the dimple in her chin deepened. She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. Sangita saw the shadows, like crescent moons turned on their bellies, beneath her daughter’s eyes. Her milky skin was splotched with red, a sure sign that she was worried.

“If you tired, Mints, go and take a rest. I go wake you in a hour.”

Minty picked up the roll of white lace Sangita used for Gloria Ramnath’s curtains. She draped it over her blue dress and glimpsed her reflection in the mirror. “Mammy,” she began, “I go try my best, but I wouldn’t make as high as Vimla.”

Sangita examined her stitch—although she knew it was flawless—so she wouldn’t glimpse the defeat in Minty’s face. “How you mean? You have one more year again, Minty! It ain’t have a girl brighter than you.” She held up the pillowcase cover. It was the vibrant shade of a scarlet ibis. “You like this?”

Minty dropped the lace. “Vimla brighter than me, Mammy.” It was a simple statement, untarnished by even the faintest hint of jealousy. “I wouldn’t score as high as she.”

Sangita wished Minty had more fire in her soul. Competition was healthy—necessary these days. “Vimla Narine?” She rose from her seat and moved to the iron she’d heated with coals earlier. “Minty, it seem to me Miss Vimla have she head everywhere except on she future these days. Maybe she pass all she subjects, but she’s a duncy-head in my books. Better she stay home and learn to cook a proper roti. A soft roti that swells. Not that burn-up thing she feed she father when Chandani gone on strike.” Sangita laughed.

Minty looked hurt on her friend’s behalf. Sangita shook out the pillowcase and smoothed it on the table with her hand. “Mints, don’t study Vimla. You have your own future to make.”

Minty looked away. She discovered a scrap of pink satin and brushed it against her cheek. “I could sew like you.”

Pride lit Sangita’s face for a moment. She cleaned the iron of soot with an old rag, turned the pillowcase inside out and pressed it with the iron. “Yes, but what about university?”

Minty looked doubtful and Sangita knew what she was thinking. It was almost impossible to get into university. It took brilliance and good fortune. Was Vimla even going? Sangita flipped the pillowcase over and pressed the crinkles out on that side. “You know, in the meantime, after you sit for the A Levels, you could teach at Saraswati Hindu School.” She was pleased with how casual she sounded.

Minty gasped. “Vimla’s position?”

Sangita huffed. “No.” She set the iron down with a
clunk
and forced patience into her voice. “Pundit Anand and Headmaster Roop G. Kapil done take that job away from Vimla, Mints. You know that. Vimla ain’t right for the school. It does take more than a little smarts to teach primary school.”

Minty’s face crumpled in worry and Sangita felt herself flinch. “Ma, I don’t want to teach at that school. I don’t want to teach anywhere. I want to sew,” Minty said.

Sangita flicked her wrist at her daughter. “Humph! Minty, is an honour to teach—especially for Saraswati Hindu School! Teachers well respected. Is the right thing for you to do.”

“Seamstresses important, too,” Minty said.

Sangita looked across her tiny sewing room at the fabrics and ribbons, the spools of coloured thread. Bulldog’s pants hung on a wire hanger, waiting to be hemmed. Gloria Ramnath’s sari needed to be stitched into a skirt and blouse. Maya’s dress had to be taken in—she had lost so much weight since Sangita had discovered Krishna’s escapade with Vimla. Scraps from drapes and pillowcases cascaded over chairs and littered the floor. Yes, she was important in this district, indeed. She had sewn for nearly every family in Chance. A smile bloomed on her face as she reversed the pillowcase once more and gave it a shake.