by Shani Mootoo
“Two minutes. I can do this—I will—in two minutes, not a second more.” She activated her stopwatch, then slipped off the sill.
Pohpoh glided gracefully across the smooth teak floor. The door of the parents’ room was wide open. Her eyes followed the shaft of light to see a large bed, too large for the two adults asleep in it, facing apart and joined in deep sleep at their backs. She passed another bedroom. Her eyes now accustomed to the reddish light, she made out the figures of two children asleep in a large bed high off the ground. On a wide window sill sat stuffed toys and rag dolls.
The hallway led to a landing at the top of a wide, winding stairway. The banister was inviting, its wood warm red. She would have loved to mount it like a horse rider and slide down backward. She held fast to her determination to touch nothing. Pohpoh moved toward the panelled wall, pressing her back against it as she descended. At the bottom of the stairs she wiped fine sweat off her upper lip and forehead.
The downstairs room was lit only by the feeble, blue light of the night sky entering a pair of windows on the far wall. Another wall was lined with bookshelves. On another were framed pictures. One in particular caught her attention. It was larger by far than any of the others and sat in the centre of the wall. She could make out a full-length portrait of two adults and two girls. The mother had one hand on a girl’s shoulder and the father had one hand on the shorter child. Pohpoh had never been in the house before but she had seen the family passing on the road in front of her home.
She passed into a corridor. Pages of children’s drawings were tacked to both walls. The pages rustled as she passed. At the end of the passage was an archway. She knew the route that she had to take lay there. During these night-time adventures she had learned that the layouts of houses were predictable, depending on the social status of the dwellers. It thrilled her to have guessed correctly which room followed which.
Her eyes brightened with triumph as she stood at the entrance to the living room. Across it was her destination—the front entrance. She headed straight for the door. There was a long mirror, the largest she had ever seen, in a carved gold frame on the wall, and as she hurried by she saw a tiny, ragged girl.
Pohpoh stopped. She had never really thought of herself as tiny or mangy before. Her confidence slackened. She looked closely at sunken eyes. She had never noticed that they were so large and set so far back in her skull, shadowed in comparison to the rest of her features. Pohpoh wondered which was her true self—the timid, gaunt, unremarkable girl staring at her, or the one who dared to spend nights doing what no one else ever dared to do. The image of her father about to lower himself on her body charged at her suddenly, complete with smells and nauseating tastes. She gasped loud enough to startle herself and pinched her arm hard, an admonishment that she dare not lose her concentration. Pohpoh swiftly navigated around the ornate furniture to the entrance hall. She opened the door and faced the familiar darkness. Success so far was giddying but she knew the adventure was not over until she was once more back in her own bedroom. The air outside was comfortingly warm compared to the cool dampness of the house. She pulled the door softly behind her. There would be no hint of a stranger’s presence, no trace of entry.
She gave the yard a perfunctory survey before bolting across the lawn and into the background of a fat grapefruit tree. She felt triumphant. Avenged. The image of her face in the mirror was forgotten.
* * *
—
A smile of triumph lit up Mala’s face. She had relived this scenario so often that even she did not remember how much of it actually took place—whether it took place in the day or night, whether she was accompanied by Asha, whether she actually entered a house, whether she was ever caught. Her eyes stayed closed. She was not yet ready to enter the day with its cutting brightness.
Otoh had managed to get the gramophone out of its box, inserted a disk and wound it up without disturbing her. When he lifted the needle’s arm the turntable began to spin with a fine whir. Mala opened her eyes. When she saw the young man in front of her she gasped.
A Dixieland quartet began to scratch along. Otoh and Mala locked onto each other’s gaze. Otoh rose up from fiddling with the device. The music was too loud but he could not bring himself to stoop again to turn it down. He retreated a couple of paces.
Mala’s lips moved but the din of jazz drowned out her words. Holding the arms of her rocking chair she pushed herself up, then reached a hand out to the young man before her. As the music came to an end she breathed, “Ambrose.”
Otoh was awed that she recognized the resemblance to his father. The needle arm retreated with protesting squeaks to its rest position. In the stillness Mala mumbled his father’s name several times. It was then that Otoh realized she had mistaken him for his father. He was about to say, “I am Otoh. Ambrose is my father,” but stopped. She might not know that Ambrose had a child or even that he had married. Right then, he did not want to bear such news.
The arm of the needle automatically lifted up and moved once more into position and lowered itself on the record. Mala shuffled toward Otoh in time to the music. She laughed like a giddy child yet all at once her face contorted. Her gaunt eyes were large and glassy with expectation. Otoh’s first instinct was to flee but he was wary of making abrupt movements or of turning his back on this woman whose wiliness he had witnessed in the past. Besides, he wondered in which direction he would run to escape the yard. He was completely disoriented.
Mala approached, humming and dipping and sliding to the fast-paced melody. In a strong clear voice she sang not only the main tune but the buoyant wa-wa wa-wa of the clarinet. She closed her eyes, gave an exaggerated tremble of her head and mouthed two soulful wa-wa’s. Nearing him she became feverish with excitement, cast her arms rhythmically sideways and executed fast-paced dance steps in perfect time to the drum beat and banjos.
She reached a hand out to him again. He took it, an angular parcel of flesh and bones. The pale skin of her face and hands was finely wrinkled, as textured and colourless as a young albino lizard. He was mesmerized by her green-brown eyes and complied. She suddenly pulled him toward her grinning face and just as swiftly pushed him away at arm’s length. She spun them both around and around her yard to the accompaniment of her imitation clarinet solos. The music stopped again yet she continued to hum and sing out wa-wa and twirl him around. All the while she peered intently into his eyes.
Otoh stepped outside of himself and imagined he was watching the scene from the roadway. In light of what the townspeople had assumed about this woman over the decades, and of what he had known of her through his deliveries and his father’s yearnings, he was amazed. He was actually in her yard, holding her hand. They were whirling about. Unaware that her own voice had long been a stranger even to her, he was still awed that he should be privy to its sound, and a witness to her past.
They moved to the foot of the back stairs. Mala slowed and pulled Otoh close to her chest and whispered, this time pleadingly, “Ambrose?”
Otoh brought them both to an abrupt halt.
“It’s all right, Ambrose. It’s all right. He won’t hurt you,” Mala whispered in his ear.
“Who won’t hurt me?”
“He can’t hurt you now, Ambrose. Come, come.” And she took his hand and led him up the stairs. Mounting the weathered boards he imagined himself retracing his father’s footsteps from decades back. He reminded himself to observe every particularity so that on his return to Government Alley he could recount the minutest details as proof that he had indeed been a visitor in Mala’s house.
At the top of the stairs Otoh was startled by the sound of pigeons scurrying on the roof. Mala giggled at his timidity. She stood on the verandah, pleased to have him in her house again. One edge of the porch, he noticed, was lined with rows of small jars of what looked like pepper sauce. He recognized the jars. He had delivered them to her full of condiments and spices.
On the verandah the redolence of the yard had diminished and was replaced by another: the sea-like freshness of dark dirt, earthworms and, oddly, garden snails. The smell, this high up, baffled him. Mala stood next to him and clasped her hands behind her back, not wanting to disturb what she thought were his reveries. Humbled with appreciation for his return, she once again longed for him to be the king of her garden. Seeing him looking in the direction of a spider web she became very excited.
“Spiders. There are enough spiders nowadays, Ambrose,” she whispered. Getting no response, she looked up at him hopefully.
“More than enough spiders now, Ambrose.”
“Oh, that’s good. That’s good. Spiders. That’s good.”
His words encouraged her. She held his arm and led him into the kitchen. He opened his eyes wide trying to see in the dark interior. He realized that the kitchen window had been boarded up with scraps of wood, cardboard and galvanized iron. On the other side of the room was a mound of furniture piled into the shape of a dust-and-cobweb-packed wall. A mustiness tickled his throat. He coughed and his eyes filled up with tears. Mala began to disassemble the wall. Worried it would come crashing down but unsure what to do, he watched in resigned awe as she pulled items from the bottom. The structure didn’t cave in. She stopped only when an opening, large enough for them to both creep through, appeared. She tugged him through and they emerged into a vacant space Otoh thought might once have been a drawing room. There were three closed doors leading from the room. Two, judging from the thick layers of dust on the floor, had not been opened in years. Reaching the third, Mala took a key from the pocket of her dress. Before inserting it in the keyhole, she looked up at Otoh, placed a thin finger to her lip and said, “Shhhh.” She turned the key and opened the door.
An odour far more intense than that under the house burst out like a gaseous belch, knocking him back onto the carpet of dust. Mala helped him up. She was far stronger than she looked, Otoh realized. The foulness was suddenly recognizable. It was a combination of organic rot that has reached maturity and stale adult urine. He gasped, unable to breath. His stomach felt as though it were work-ing its way up to a somersault. He sputtered and coughed.
She ushered him into the darkness at the top of some stairs. When his body resisted she slipped behind him and pushed him forward. With one hand on his back for assurance, Mala held up a bundle of weeds.
“Jenghie, shandolay,” she explained, waving the weeds under Otoh’s nose, “baby bonnet and shado-beni. Keep it by yuh nose. It will help with the bad-feeling. I accustomed to it long time now.” The bouquet had lost its aroma. He gave it a harsh rub, hoping that some sliver of scent might have remained trapped in it but he only broke the brittle twigs. The leaves crumbled into dust. She locked the door behind them.
“Is better not to take chances, you know. We’ll keep it locked so he can’t come out.”
She took his hand and pulled him down the flight of stairs. His legs wobbled. The smell intensified as they descended. Halfway down the stairs Mala stopped, let go of his hand and lit a lamp. The glow revealed moths as large as a hand, fluttering about disoriented as though too abruptly awakened from a stupor. At the foot of the stairs was another door. Mala retrieved a skeleton key from a ledge above the doorway and opened the door only wide enough for them to slip in. She moved about the room swiftly, confidently. Otoh stayed close behind her, afraid to be left alone.
Farther into the room, through the haze of dust, Otoh made out a high platform the size of a single bed. A long, uneven bundle of clothes lay upon it. Something black protruded here and there. Mala walked right up to the bed frame and stared at the indecipherable mass. Otoh looked at her.
“He can’t hurt us now, Ambrose,” she smiled and whispered. “Look, come and see.” Otoh walked closer, sick to his stomach from the smell and terrified at what he was about to see. She held the light high above the bed frame so he could get a good look.
* * *
—
Opening his eyes Otoh realized he was collapsed over Mala’s shoulder, watching the back of her legs as she mounted the steps to the drawing room. He was too weak to demand to be put down. She pulled the door shut behind them and locked it again. She then carried him, still on her shoulder, through the space in the wall of furniture, out through the kitchen, and set him down to rest on the verandah floor. Kneeling over him, fretting, she chanted, “Shhh, don’t worry Ambrose, shhh, shhh, shhh.”
Her face was uncomfortably close to his. She tenderly kissed his forehead. His temples throbbed. He closed his eyes in terror only to be presented with the image of what he had just seen down below.
“You want water?” Her voice was soft and caring. She got up and disappeared through the kitchen door. When she was out of his sight he jumped up and bolted down the back stairs. Before he reached the bottom Mala was on the verandah again. So distraught was she to see him running off and leaving her again that her cries froze in her chest. Her face appeared fully composed yet tears ran down her cheeks as she watched Otoh navigate her yard.
He headed for the front fence, passing the wall of dead cereus blossoms that covered the room he had been in minutes before. His strides widened so he was able to leap over shrubs. By the time he reached the road he had lost his thongs. Both feet and his face were scratched with slashes from twigs, sharp grasses and fine thorns.
When he reached the other side of Mala’s tilted fence, Otoh felt overwhelmed. He shivered in the heat, entirely unsure of the reality of anything he had just witnessed. The farther he got from the house and yard the weaker his legs became. He felt faint, as though the frenetic spell on which he had been riding were falling away. He slowed down, swerving from side to side before unravelling in a heap in the middle of the narrow road. Within seconds people began to gather around him.
“But ent he is Ambrose son?”
“He name Otoh.”
“I thought he name Ambrosia.”
“Doh be stupid. That is a girl’s name.”
“But that is Ambrose son self. Look how he looking. He looking like Ambrose self. You can’t see a trace of he mother in he. But what he doing dress up so and lying in the hot sun in the middle of the road?”
“I see everything. The boy fall. He was running and he fall down. I see he fall myself.”
“He must be get heart attack and fall down?”
“A young boy so? Don’t be stupid. Young people doh get heart attack. But look how white he gone, na. Take off the ’kerchief from round he neck.”
“I see he running out Miss Mala yard, pelting down the road like if he just see ghost.”
“Miss Mala yard? You sure? But this boy crazy like he father or what?”
“What he was doing there, pray? Take off he jacket. What he doing wearing black jacket in the daytime for?”
“Ey, what wrong with all you? Stop talking so and call police.”
“He don’t need police, he need doctor.”
“Somebody call doctor.”
“He is a slight fella, eh!”
“Talap, run and get the doctor, na.”
“Somebody go with Talap and get doctor. Fast-fast. The boy trembling in this hot sun. Look how he shaking. Take off he shirt. Talap, you gone yet?”
“My daughter like this boy, too bad, yes. But I don’t want her with no weak man. Go and tell Mavis lover-boy fall down and hit he self. Mavis. Where Mavis? Talap, go and call Mavis. Tell she…”
“Talap, forget Mavis, boy. Go and call doctor.”
“Ah tell all you, call police. Doctor too, but police too.”
“Jojo, shut up your mouth about police, na, man. Why you need police for a fella who running and trip he self?”
“I agree with Jojo. I say call police too. And leave he shirt on, that boy trembling with cold.”
But they did not have to call the constable. He was inside
the house opposite, visiting a woman friend while her husband was out for the day, when he heard the commotion. Peeping from behind the edge of a heavy curtain he recognized the call of duty. Much to the woman’s annoyance he dropped her and scurried out the back of the house. He leapt over the backyard wall and made an ungraceful trek down the ditch at the back of the house and onto the road, confident that his arrival would be unnoticed. Everyone’s attention was on the boy on the ground.
Otoh opened his eyes. A halo of heads and countless eyes peered down at him. At the centre of the halo was a sliver of cold, sharp silver sky.
“A body, it have a body in she house…” he managed to say before he again fainted. He couldn’t stand another smell, and surrounding him was a collection of bodies that had melded into a choking odour. He closed his eyes and allowed himself to slip away.
“What is that he say?”
“He say he see a body.”
“Lord, oh, Lord! Look here, we have real trouble in the town now, yes.”
“What is that?”
“Police, call police, he say it have some body in Miss Mala yard.”
“Somebody gone in Miss Mala yard.”
“Eh-heh! So how he know that? What he was doing up there, inside the woman yard?”
“Well, he must be was in she yard trying to catch tief, na.”
“He say it had a tief in Mala yard.”
“He say tief gone in she yard.”
“It doh have nothing to tief in that house. The tief must be gone to murder she!”
The constable forced a clearing in the crowd and peeped down at Otoh. He arrived just in time to hear, “What is that? Some tief gone to murder Mala?”
“Mala? Mala Ramchandin?” he said to no one in particular.
“Yes, he say he see somebody trying to murder she,” he heard the nearest one say.
