by Shani Mootoo
* * *
—
Close to midnight the buds had opened fully. They intensified their scent, steadily pumping it into the air, an urgent call to insects and bats to find and pollinate the flowers. One by one the moths came. They slid from cracks in the walls of Mala’s house. They bored through and wriggled out from every moth-ridden enclave in the neighbourhood. They unbound themselves from sticky webs nestled in dents of rocks and from cocoons that dangled from leaves. They migrated in swarms from the lime tree in her yard to the wall of expectant cereus. The arrival of thousands of moths, already drunk from the smell alone, held Mala spellbound. The sound of a thousand pairs of flapping wings drowned out the screaming crickets and created a draft. Mala rubbed her arms for warmth. Crazed bats swooped by, crisscrossing each other’s flight en route to suckle the blossoms. They disturbed the swarms of frantic moths. They brushed their hairy bodies against the blossoms to sample the syrupy, perfumed juices. Then, thirst and curiosity satisfied, they darted off. By two o’clock in the morning, every moth was thirstily lapping sweet nectar, bruising and yellowing its body against the large stamens that waved from the flowers.
The smell in Mala’s yard drenched the air and flowed across town. Neighbours in deep sleep stirred, suddenly restless. Some were pried wide awake but were soon pleasantly besotted by the perfume and swept back into deep sleep.
The moon lifted higher. Mala herself felt intoxicated and finally, deliriously tired. She must have dozed off because suddenly there was only a handful of moths lilting heavily and precariously in flight. She hadn’t noticed the swarm leaving. She slumped in her chair. The scent was indeed more pleasant than the stink that usually rose from behind the wall.
FROM THE MOMENT his companion admitted she had tormented Mala, Otoh found himself awkwardly distanced from her. Not wanting to upset her, he allowed her to return to his bedroom in Government Alley. Mavis immediately lay on the bed. She might as well have been alone, though, because he seemed oblivious to her. Throughout the night she cooed at him. She tried tossing and turning with much drama, hoping he would hold her to calm her. It was futile. When he did not respond she became more direct. Mavis reached for him, caressing his belly, chest and shoulders, and, through his shirt, his nipples. They hardened and she coaxed off his shirt. When she began to work on the belt of his trousers, he became aware of her in his bed again, and he rolled over and feigned deathly exhaustion. She sulked long and loud and then, resigned, dozed off. When he heard her steady breathing, Otoh turned over and lay on his back wide awake.
He was still full of the night’s perfume. What was it about Mala, he wanted to know, that his father so utterly adored? Had she rejected his father and if so, why? He suddenly wondered if Mala would reject him if they were to meet. Perhaps he might be able to hold her attention in a way his father had been unable to. It was still dark. Above him in the kitchen his mother, fully awake, paced with a studied shuffle that by now had become an integral sound in his family’s house. Cocks in the distance were just beginning their hesitant pre-dawn crowing. Otoh drifted in and out of sleep.
* * *
—
Mala faced her wall of faded cereus blossoms. She was content. Oblivious to the dew that drizzled from the mudra, she rocked and dozed lightly. Scent, as though too shy for light, no longer trickled from the blossoms but Mala was not yet ready to leave the yard. Her eyes would flicker open and catch a glimpse of the day that was beginning to split the black sky apart. In that first orange light the flowers hung limp, battered and bruised, each one worn out from the frenzied carnival of moths.
Mala refused to sleep.
* * *
—
Otoh awakened to a stillness in his sun-heated room. His companion was no longer with him. In the unanchored moments between sleeping and awakening, ideas came with unshakable conviction. One such idea was an image of how his father might have appeared as a dapper, young man on his way to court his lady.
Several years earlier Otoh’s mother had packed up two boxes of clothing and other miscellany, including a damaged gramophone and some recording disks—things that a man who was awake for only one day a month would hardly require. She was reluctant to do away with the boxes. This would have been akin to giving up hope that her husband would resume a day-to-day existence, so she stored them for safe-keeping in Otoh’s room.
Otoh had the gramophone repaired and for a while he played the recordings constantly. Since then he had paid only scant attention to the dust-covered boxes, the tops of which were resting places for his shoes.
He got up now and opened the boxes, pulling out a few items of clothing, the gramophone and records.
Otoh A. Mohanty dressed himself in front of the mirror on the door of his armoire. There was no question in his mind this morning that he would not be wearing one of his mother’s dresses to make the monthly delivery. He dressed instead in the heavy, black, pleated dress pants of his father. They fit him as though they had been custom tailored. He angled himself in front of the mirror and, with both hands in the pockets of the slacks, widened his stance, rhythmically rocking back and forth. He looked at his slender three-quarter profile, tilted his head downward, squinted and thrust his jaw forward to give a sculpted line to his soft face. He puffed his chest and lowered his shoulders to turn his torso into plates of muscle. He ran his palms across his two tight, little nipples. He held the nipples between his fingers, squeezed and rubbed them until they puckered into little squares, trying to imagine what Mavis might have felt when she lay next to him and touched his shirtless body. He was grateful for such small breasts. As long as his tightly belted trousers were never removed he had nothing to worry about.
He pulled on a dress shirt made of fine Irish linen. From years of storage the shirt was no longer white but unevenly cream-coloured. Fastening the long row of pearly buttons he wondered on what occasion his father might have worn such a shirt. Buttoned all the way up to his neck it hugged his body and showed off his leanness. He took a red, white and black-striped silk tie and knotted it loosely around his neck. Next, a black jacket and fedora. He posed. In all this black he might have passed for a pallbearer if it weren’t for his colourful necktie and elegant posture. In his father’s get-up, Otoh looked more like a dancer.
Closing his eyes and tucking in his lips Otoh shook a few drops of sweet-lime 3333 after-shave cologne from its bottle. Having nothing on his face to shave, he used the cologne entirely for its smell. The toiletry reminded him of the compelling perfume of blossoms that had filled the air around Mala’s yard the previous night. This morning he would find out what flower turned the air so sweet and take a clipping of that plant, even if it meant entering her yard.
Anxious to meet the woman who controlled the lives of both his parents, he forgot to match his footwear to his clothing. Otoh still wore his red rubber thongs, which exposed the pink edges of his soles.
LONG INTO THE morning Mala remained in the yard. The sun had warmed her arms and legs, chilled through the night. Every so often a breeze nudged her rocking chair. She kept her eyes closed. Fortified by the night’s display she wove memories. She remembered a little and imagined a great deal…
* * *
—
Pohpoh’s shivering was not a response to the cool night air. No blanket of any thickness could have warmed or calmed her. Any weight, even that of a thin sheet on her body, would have stifled her. She stared wide eyed in the direction of the pomerac branches swaying in the night wind outside the window at the foot of her bed. She had to fight the temptation to indulge in yearning—yearning to have her mother back next to her, to feel her mother hugging her against her breasts with one hand resting on wet cheeks, absorbing Pohpoh’s tears. But if she did not stay strong, if she succumbed to her longings, she would not be able to look after Asha. It had become Pohpoh’s mission from the first day her father put his mouth on her little body to prevent Asha from expe
riencing the pain of his touch. For the most part she had succeeded. Her stone-blank eyes concentrated on the blackness of the night outside her window.
* * *
—
Mala wished that she could go back in time and be a friend to this Pohpoh. She would storm into the house and, with one flick of her wrist, banish the father into a pit of pain and suffering from which there would be no escape. With piercing eyes she would pull the walls of that house down, down, down, and she would gather the two children to her breast and hug them tightly, rock and quiet them, and kiss their faces until they giggled wildly.
* * *
—
Except for a silver-edged harshness there was not the slightest suggestion of emotion on Pohpoh’s face. In the corners of her eyes, however, a saline spring slowly welled up and bubbled out. The tears fell in spite of her stoniness.
She lay still, waiting for anything that might be a cue. It arrived after some moments of prickly silence. The pomerac tree swayed and rocked in the wind, washing like the ocean across her body, a roar so encompassing it seemed to absorb every other sound. Commanded by the tree’s creaking in the wind she mechanically rose from her bed. Her body had so stiffened she had to make a conscious effort to loosen it with long, slow breaths.
On relaxing she was overcome by the rage that seeped into her veins. At times like these she felt inflamed to the point of wanting to tear and scream into her father’s room, of screeching so piercingly that she disabled him, of punching him in his stomach over and over until he cried like a baby, admitted how loathesome he had been and begged hers and Asha’s forgiveness. But at such times her rage was usually muffled by a sudden injection of good sense. The success of an adventure like the one she was embarking upon depended on the control of all her faculties. Anger, hatred and even fear could very easily trip her up. Pohpoh worked on finding that perfect balance between being rigidly alert and dangerously relaxed.
She covered herself with her darkest clothing, olive-green trousers and a dark brown vest. She glanced over at Asha, who slept on her back with her arms stiffly at her sides. She looked like a corpse. Mala listened and heard her father’s snoring. Asha was safe. She pocketed her silver stopwatch and after a farewell glance back at Asha, exited barefoot through the window as effortlessly as a moth.
WHAT IS IT about you today that seems so familiar, my son?”
“What exactly you mean, Pappy? As far as Mammy is concerned, I am your son. And unless your memory is on its way out, you are right, we have seen each other before.”
Ambrose E. Mohanty chuckled. “No, no, no! One might call you impertinent but charming is more apt a description I am sure. I mean that you seem to be a reincarnation of a past familiarity.”
Elsie Mohanty shook her head and snapped, “For the love of Jesus Christ in heaven, speak plain words, na, man!” She too was taken aback by her son’s choice of attire on this once-a-month morning but she sensed that, as usual, she should probably not ask too many questions in case she received answers she didn’t want. “Look here! Even with red ’kerchief tie up round his neck he look like he going to funeral,” she muttered.
Otoh rested a sack of rice, a bottle of coconut oil and two bottles of sweet drink by the door. Wheeling his father out to the porch he had a sensation of being both mother and father to his own pappy. He patted Ambrose’s head affectionately, rubbed his cheek and ran a hand under his chin. He almost wanted to say out loud the thought that played in his head like a mantra: “I’ll win her back for you, Pappy. You just have to know how to do it.” But he stopped himself because deeper than this thought was one less benevolent that said, “How could you not have looked after her?”
Before Otoh turned to go his father whispered, “I remember now, son. You are indeed a reincarnation but not of a person per se, merely of a forgotten memory. You are a perfect replica of me in my prime. I have never seen you look so stunningly like myself before.” Then he pulled Otoh close and lowered his voice further. “If I am not mistaken, you are wearing my clothing.”
Otoh began to apologize.
“Shhh. I am only too pleased,” Ambrose interrupted, “for by appearing in front of me like this you have given me the gift of remembering. I am sure I cannot thank you enough. You are wearing the very same clothing I wore whenever I visited my dearest Mala. We used to dance together. She and I. Did I ever tell you? I used to be a very good dancer, you know. Are you a dancer, son? My clothing looks very good on you, but I must say you are so much younger looking and rather more tender than I was in those days.”
Otoh blushed.
“If fortune sees fit to grant you the pleasure of an audience with her,” Ambrose continued, “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, also known to her as Boyie?”
Otoh smiled. His father said the same thing every month.
“Mr. Ambrose Mohanty, also known to her as Boyie.”
Otoh nodded and smiled again. His father reached up and touched his face, rubbing it more intently than his usual perfunctory father-to-son pat. “Son, perhaps if you were to use a razor on your face, you might encourage the growth of some hair. It is unusual, and not very nice I might add, for a grown man to have such soft and smooth skin.” After a heavy pause, he whispered, “Have you a Mala of your own?” Without waiting for an answer he continued. “She was quite a dancer too, you know, and she dressed so beautifully, always in the same simple dress, but, oh, so beautifully. We used to dance together.” His voice trailed off.
Otoh squeezed his shoulders, remaining quietly with him for a while longer and then left. On his way out his mother shoved a biscuit tin full of coconut drops against his stomach. She had baked them yesterday along with other savory and sweet dishes in preparation for her husband’s awakening.
“Your father think I don’t know. I hear how he used to dress up and go and visit she when he was young. And that he and she used to be dancing up, dancing wild-wild in the house up there. I even hear he and she used to go to a dance club in town. He ever take me anywhere? How many years now we married and I ent leave the house? That woman loose too bad, yes! I should be so wild and loose! If I had wild blood in me and I was loose, he wouldn’t now be sleeping-sleeping so.
“And you self! Listen to me, Otoh, it is morning. It don’t have no dance happening this morning. What you dress up so for? You go and make death restless dress like that today, and it will be on your head for you to deal with, you hear!”
Otoh made his way down the stairs quickly. Before heading out he stopped in his room to pick up the portable gramophone and one of the recording disks.
HER ROUTE HAD been calculated long before Pohpoh jumped out the window, an effortless leap to the moist grass below. She had never yet hurt herself, perhaps because on such nights she tended not to feel much of anything.
With catlike sure-footedness she made her way to the edge of the garden. A small wind rustled the neighbourhood’s shrubs and trees, masking her sounds. She parted a break in the hibiscus and the wire fence and crawled out to the grassy sidewalk. Dew from the shrub hedge drizzled over her clothing and hair but she was so tense she was unaware of the wetness or the cold night air that crept under her vest and clung to her skin.
Pohpoh paused. The ditch running down the side of the fence provided enough of a gurgling to cover the sound of her steps. Up above, dark clouds raced each other and were soon blown far away, leaving the sky crisply cold and clean. There was no moon, making for a perfectly pitch-black night, the kind that permitted Pohpoh to roam without concealing herself in shadows. On the outermost edges of the sky was a display of suspended stars that made the heavens twinkle and shimmer.
Like a crane pondering flight Pohpoh stooped low on one leg, the other bent at the knee. In gracefully flowing motion she lifted her arms, ready to shield her chest should it need protectin
g. She spun around, her eyes searchlights surveying the quiet street and the neighbours’ yards. She did not look back at her own. Only a sharp breeze here and there stirred. Occasionally a dog’s whimper sliced through the background pulsing of crickets and hiccuping of frogs. Pohpoh thrust her jaw forward and, like a cautious night animal, bounded across the road.
A lantern always glowed in the front hall of the house opposite her father’s. She knew the yard well. The guard dog, a plump boxer named Tail, knew her too. Tail heard Pohpoh scuffling in the ditch and, curious, sniffed his way over to the fence. He began jumping against the wire, growling, scratching up the garden soil and barking, igniting the other dogs in the neighbourhood. Every dog for miles around seemed to have been awakened and Pohpoh’s disappointment changed to fear. She knew better than to try to calm Tail. She leapt up the ditch, slipped on the mossy side and landed face down in a tall grass bush. This would be a good place for her to burrow for safekeeping. She squeezed her eyes shut and prayed that if she were perfectly still Tail would lose interest. She tightened the muscles between her thighs against an urge to pee. She heard people swearing at their dogs to be quiet, and then front doors slamming shut. The pulse in her temples thumped with an exhilaration she loved, and she grinned in triumph. Pohpoh waited another few minutes until she was confident the neighbours had gone back to bed.
Her eyes had learned to see so well in this outdoor darkness that she picked out a dead and perfectly intact harlequin bug lying in the grass. She lifted, sniffed and pocketed it.
When she was again able to hear the crickets and frogs, she pulled her trousers down, avoiding crushing her little find, and relieved herself in the cold air.
