Cereus Blooms at Night

by Shani Mootoo

  The transformation was flawless. Hours of mind-dulling exercise streamlined Ambrosia into an angular, hard-bodied creature and tampered with the flow of whatever hormonal juices defined him. So flawless was the transformation that even the nurse and doctor who attended the birth, on seeing him later, marvelled at their carelessness in having declared him a girl.

  Ambrosia’s obviously vivid imagination gave him both the ability to imagine many sides of a dilemma (and if it weren’t already a dilemma, of turning it into one) and the vexing inability to make up his mind. Ever since the days of early high school, where he excelled in thinking but not in doing, this trait of weighing “on the one hand” with “but on the other” earned him a name change. He began, though through no choice of his own, to be called Otoh-boto, shortened in time to Otoh, a nickname to which he still answered.

  * * *

  —

  One rainy Saturday morning, Otoh lay shirtless on his back in his ground floor bedroom. A woman lay at his side. The woman was attempting to arouse him by drawing circles and figure eights with the tips of her fingers on his delightfully hairless chest. He was silently perplexed, examining the sensation as her hand made sly and furtive contact with the nipples atop his muscled breasts. The sensation of his body being played with was far more arresting and pleasurable to him than was the woman. In spite of himself Otoh was suddenly so overcome with yearning that he turned to face her and began a sensuous caress along the bare leg strewn provocatively across his half-naked body. She slid her hand around to the small of his back, nestling into the gully of his spine. She played in the gully, riding up the sides and dipping back down. Then she slipped her hand inside the waist band of his trousers. He was suddenly beside himself with desire. He was just about to extend his caress higher up, toward the back of her thigh, just about to start unzipping his trousers, readier than ever before to risk the wrath of Paradise, when he was launched out of bed by a dreadful commotion. Ambrose Mohanty, still groggy from the previous month’s sleep, carelessly hurried past his wife’s grumbling and went thumping on his backside down the flight of slippery back stairs. The sack of rice he carried in one arm and the bag of onions in the other broke apart before hitting the bottom stair. Rice was strewn about as though a wedding had just occurred. The ambulance men’s path proved quite treacherous.

  As Ambrose was locked into the emergency vehicle he made Otoh swear on his disassembled pelvis to immediately prepare and deliver a new package. This was the first time Otoh was dispatched with his father’s package to Mala Ramchandin. Ambrose’s slow-mending pelvis provided him with his most unarguable excuse to lie all day and all night in his bed. And Otoh, intrigued by his father’s devotion to a woman whom he had not seen in more than thirty years, accepted his inherited task.

  * * *

  —

  Back in the kitchen in Government Alley Ambrose told Otoh to wheel him out to the front porch. Out of his wife’s sight and hearing, he took Otoh’s hand and pulled him down.

  “If fortune sees fit to grant you the pleasure of an audience with her,” he whispered in Otoh’s ear, “may I impose upon you, my treasured son, the honour of conveying to her wishes for an incomparably good day from one Mr. Ambrose Mohanty, otherwise known to her as Boyie.”

  “Pappy, I take food up there so many times that I lose count now and to this day I never yet see she. I only know she up there because the food does disappear before I reach back down to the roadway.”

  His father, refusing to give up, kissed Otoh’s cheek. “If is all I can ask and hope for.”

  “Month after month you does ask me this same thing—if, if, if—but she never yet let me see she face. Nobody see she in years, Pappy, nobody. What does keep you thinking and hoping so, month after month, that I going to glimpse she? Is a long time now even the children in town give up waiting to see she plant snail shells in she front yard.”

  “If, son, simply if.”

  “Otoh!” Elsie called from the kitchen.

  Otoh knew what to expect. Unknown to Ambrose, Elsie had lately taken to adding one more package as her civic contribution. She slapped a pound of cold salted butter against his chest.

  “She don’t have no fat to cook with. That lunatic! How she will cook? Look, make sure and leave the things where she could see them, you hear? Is no point our good food going to waste. Lord! What I doing, tell me, na, child, in my old age looking after a old woman you father used to be romancing up? Tell me this, na.”

  “For better or for worse you said, Ma, and things could be plenty worse.”

  “But listen to you, na, child. Children really don’t understand the needs of they parents, na. For your information we gone past the stage of ‘plenty worse’ long time now. Things already plenty worse. That woman zap your father of all his passion, and what I end up with is a month-long corpse and a once-a-month man. The man ent got no passion. He like a chipped marble come to rest in a soup bowl. A marble that can’t pitch. In his mind and heart he just like all them other men. Even when you see him there, sleeping alone in that chair, he unfaithful-unfaithful. He does only wake up to think about her. Your father foolish, Otoh. If even she was to see him, she wouldn’t know him from Adam. The man is a chipped marble, in truth, yes.”

  “The thing is, Mammy, I can’t make sense of what you does stay in this house for when you could have a life somewhere else.”

  “Hmph! What you know about marriage to be advising me so?”

  He embraced her. Smelling the familiar mustiness of her hair he was overcome with soft-heartedness. He pressed her against his body and kissed the top of her head. She held on to him, cherishing the touch and smell of another human.

  “Well? What it is you waiting for? You don’t have enough to carry?”

  “But, Mammy, is you who call me back to give me the fat to take. This thing will melt in the heat before I make it up the hill.”

  * * *

  —

  Everyone in the village seemed to have finally forgotten about Mala. The generation of children who harassed her by calling names and pelting her with mango seeds had grown up. Their children preferred to chase each other within the confines of their own yards, playing games of cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians. They occasionally noted the ever-widening, ever-lengthening rows of bleached white snail shells planted along the inside of her fence. But they expressed no curiosity about this or about her rare, unpredictable appearances out of the impenetrable sea of brambles and stinging nettles that barred a view of her house. When they had to pass by, the children walked on the other side of the street, glancing through her fence—not to see her but to make sure she did not see them.

  According to their parents, she possessed the ability to leap her fence, track an offending child into its hiding place and tear out its mind. No one had experienced such a fate but the children feared it as if it were proven fact. Their parents used her legend to their advantage, as though she were a whipping cane. Should she suddenly appear while the children were walking along the road they would fall silent, conceal themselves behind the twelve-foot-high poinsettia shrubs, pray feverishly and make noble promises. They watched as the tall, upright, wire-thin woman with matted hair the colour of forgotten silver emerged from the bramble patches, carrying a silver bucket of snail shells. They saw her gather up her ankle-length dress, stoop and place the unusually white shells in a neat line, now three rows deep, pressing them hard into the earth and adjusting the ones dislodged by the rain. Without her eyes ever crossing the fence, she would turn and disappear again into the brambles. The children ran off, each willing to swear on the Bible that she or he had seen the woman, and their sightings became the substance of frenetic dreamings at night.

  THERE WAS NO need to kill a thing to relieve it of a drop of its own blood. A pin prick would do. Mala’s hands trembled yet she was swift with the pin. A tear-size bead of maroon, velvet blood fell on the ye
llow saucer. Before the pigeon could feel and respond she pressed it against her chest and swiftly rubbed the spot on its belly. The bird shivered with surprise, giving off a strong, sharp smell. She pursed her lips and touched the top of its head. Very softly, from the back of her throat came a cooing sound. When its heartbeat returned to normal she loosened her hand. The pigeon looked solemnly at her. Mala looked back with no judgement. The bird hopped off her hand and fluttered to the floor. She leaned back quietly, holding the saucer. The outside edge of blood had begun to dry. The enamel pot on the wood stove in the kitchen began a slow rattle, and a smelly cloud billowed through the porch. She returned to her kitchen with the saucer.

  The backyard was overrun with periwinkle snails, glossy mucous trails crisscrossing the milky brown clay as they crawled from one juicy plant to the next. At the rear of the house near the drain was a patch where they went to die. The cemetery was littered with upturned shells, each one empty except for any raw, fishy remnants of its inhabitant mixed with lumps of garden soil.

  Every few days, a smell of decay permeated the house. It was the smell of time itself passing but lest she was overcome by it, Mala brewed an odour of her own design. She collected and boiled six empty shells at a time. After an hour, the shells lost their pink and yellow. The house would fill with the aroma of a long-simmering ocean into which worm-rich, root-matted earthiness was constantly being poured and stirred. The aroma obliterated, reclaimed and gave the impression of reversing decay. Mala needed only a pinch of salt to start the waves of steam, and a pin prick of fresh blood to sharpen the snails’ scent and make it almost tangible. The odour hung, rejuvenating the air for days. It wove itself through Mala’s hair and penetrated her pores.

  * * *

  —

  Wobbling unevenly on the back porch in her bentwood rocking chair, Mala closed her eyes and lifted her face to the breeze. The trees in the yard purred and rippled. Iridescent purple and grey pigeons danced in the water trough where they nested. They hopped on and off, from the trough to the rusted eve that overhung the verandah, and back again. Mala opened her eyes. She couldn’t see the birds but she noticed that a grapefruit tree and several pepper plants had sprouted in the dirt and rust of the roof. The roof already squeaked and sagged under their weight. The edge would break away any day. She told herself that she must remember not to be under it when it fell.

  She looked at her yard. Fruit trees and hot pepper trees had sprung wherever birds and insects dropped their seeds. A patch of bright orange, sweet-smelling roses and a profusion of night-blooming cereus plants were the only ornamentals in the yard. The roots of the cereus, like desperate grasping fingers, had bored through the damp wood of the back wall of the house. It was no longer the wall that supported the succulent but rather the other way around. The yard was a jumble of different greens: the bright yellow of the lime trees, the silver of the eucalyptus, the dark blue of the mango.

  Under the bodice of her dress, inside her petticoat, was a handkerchief bundle. The knotted ’kerchief was limp with sweat. Inside was a crumpled sepia tint photograph, also sticky and damp. She carefully opened the photograph, carefully studied every detail as though seeing it for the first time. The wide expanse of sea behind the two women. The white crests on the small waves that lapped the beach. The cloudless sky. The pelican soaring overhead. She stared at the women. The shorter one partially obscured the dress of the one standing close behind. They wore ankle-length skirts and long-sleeved white blouses. The woman at the back was larger. Her skin was white and her hair, which appeared to be white also, was neatly tied atop her head. She smiled broadly but her eyes were cast downward as though looking at the woman in front of her. Her hands were not visible. On her feet were heavy black shoes laced past the hem of her skirt. The woman in front was shorter by a good head. Her hair, a curly mass of the darkest tint possible in such a photograph, was tied in a single braid that hung in front of her, reaching well down the middle of her long skirt. Her skin was barely a shade lighter than her hair. Her hands were clasped in front at waist level. She stared at the camera, perhaps at the photographer. Her pupils were the most commanding detail of the picture. They were as dark as her hair and seemed to stand out from the whites of her large eyes. Whatever other detail one might notice, her eyes pulled the viewer like a magnet. Mala looked at the women’s shoes, at the closeness of their feet. She rubbed the spot where their shoes met, the ball of her index finger tenderly covering them. She raised the photograph to her nose. She smelled only her own sweat and the earthiness of her fingers. She carefully refolded it and replaced it in the handkerchief.

  Rocking harder in the chair, she shoved the bundle back inside her petticoat. A cooling breeze passed and coconut tree branches dipped and scratched against the galvanized roof. The pigeons took off in a frenzied flutter, flying outward in a tight, parallel formation. When the breeze and the scratching subsided, they swerved sharply one after the other and returned to the gutter.

  IT WAS BARELY midmorning yet already the sun offered no mercy. The air above the paved road quivered in the heat. Otoh fanned himself with the package of cod and butter as he scuffed up the road. Few people dared brave such heat but Otoh had pledged to carry out his father’s mission.

  In all his deliveries to the house on Hill Side, not once had Otoh seen the woman who so obsessed his father. As he neared her house he became anxious, wanting desperately to see her yet hoping she would not show herself. He had grown up hearing all the rumours, even the ridiculous one that claimed she turned into a ball of fire and whipped across the sky at night. His skin tingled as he approached the gravel path leading up to her chicken-wire fence. The path was strewn with discarded oil drums, old machine parts, tires and other debris. He set the parcels in a cool spot near the fence, then walked away slowly, his head to the side to catch any movement.

  “All right, Mala Ramchandin, show yourself,” he shouted. “If you don’t come and fetch my parcels fast, my mother’s butter will surely be nothing but a useless sludge.” He hid behind the deteriorating tractor parts, propped up on his elbows with his face in the cup of one hand. He peered through a chink in a large piece of garbage. Otoh had decided that this was the day he would get a glimpse of Mala Ramchandin.

  The sun pelted down and the package of butter began to shrink. Pebbles under his elbow bored into his skin but Otoh was determined. An hour passed. Finally an ache in his back forced him to readjust his cramping knees. The movement took no more than a few seconds but when he looked back, the parcel was gone. Otoh jumped up. Not even a bush shook. She had obviously been observing him all the while. He barely moved, afraid now that he might find her standing behind him, ready to scold him for his prying ways.

  Eventually Otoh gathered up the courage to scramble up and bolt from the property. Back on the road, he sat on a shaded curb trembling with fear and excitement. For a moment he was deliriously happy and anxious to tell his father that Mala had made her presence known to him. It was almost as good as seeing her! But why had Mala “introduced” herself to him in this way? Why to him and no one else? Why today and not before or later? He stood up, shook his limbs loose and calmed his breathing.

  He walked slowly home. He wished he could take his shirt off but there were some risks he preferred to avoid. Several ideas pawed at him, each one contradicting the other. On the one hand was his desire to make a more substantial bond with Mala before reporting to his father. On the other was a passionate desire that raced across his mind like a shooting star, imploring him to imagine how much happiness and hope he could give his father if he were to break this auspicious news today. Imagine Ambrose being able to stay awake for days and his mother to sleep at last—or to rage decisively! These last thoughts, however, brought a sobering fear, a sudden resistance to the tremendous change in the order of his family’s affairs that a sighting of Mala might cause.

  He decided to hold off giving his father the news. True to his na
ture, however, Otoh began to deliberate not the decision itself but the origin of the decision, and the authenticity of its birth. A memory soon fixed itself on his retina.

  * * *

  —

  He was no more than eleven years old, dressed in a long-sleeved white shirt, blue-and-black striped schoolboy’s tie and long, white trousers. Spotting the silver-haired recluse in her yard, he and some school friends had darted behind a shrub across the street from the Ramchandin house. They watched the woman, whom they knew from sources as reliable as their Sunday school teachers to be madder than a naked chicken at midnight and wilder than a leatherback in laying season. She stooped by her fence and dipped her long, twig-like fingers into a rusted, enamel bucket. She retrieved snail shells, white as chalk and as large as cricket balls, and wedged them, one by one, into the earth along her fence. The following day he walked again on the far side of the road, curious about the neatly placed decoration that lined her fence. Otoh waited the month for his father to awaken. Then he blurted out what he had seen, the strange ritual of the woman to whom his father delivered food.