by Shani Mootoo
There is no point trying to explain a phenomenon that took place in another part of Paradise, a good half mile away from the Ramchandin kitchen. Suffice it to say that these things do happen. Sitting in a rum shop Chandin Ramchandin felt a sudden tightness in his chest at the precise moment his daughter embraced her gentleman suitor. He winced and swallowed another mouthful of prickly babash. The pain in his chest did not lessen. On the contrary, he felt as though he were being stifled.
* * *
—
Mala was troubled. Was this the day when she would either put an end to their trysts or tell Ambrose about the heavy hand with which her father ruled her life? Ambrose breathed in the sugary aroma of her sweat. Her scalp had a faint scent of coconut oil. Even though he wore a concoction of clove oil, bay leaves and cardamom, the natural fragrance of his sweet-and-tangy skin rose from his shirt. She knew now the taste of his skin by its smell. She pressed her face against his chest. He didn’t smell like her father, of rum and stale genitals, the shrill severity of soured secretions. Ambrose brought his lips down to her temples and she closed her eyes and lifted her head.
The pain gripping Chandin was like a thick metal chain being yanked around his torso. He finished his drink in one mouthful and, to his fellow drinkers’ surprise, made his way out of the rum shop. He walked slowly at first. The pain eased and Chandin carried on as a seasoned drunk would: he swayed a little and mumbled to himself but because of the years and quantity of his consumption, he was in control of his faculties. The pain lessened further but Chandin continued to hold his chest, worried it might creep up on him again. For safety’s sake he headed home.
Mala smelled Ambrose’s lips close to hers and felt his breath. She pulled away, a little startled, feeling both the repulsion she knew when her father forced his tongue into her throat and also an unfathomable desire to take Ambrose’s deep into her mouth and explore its taste and temperature and texture. Ambrose, startled by the sudden shift, responded to her shiver of discomfort.
He was, in truth, relieved at the interruption. Not since he was a child had he felt such a shimmering on the edges of his extremities. He remembered Mala lying on his cattiya with nothing on but her underwear. He could feel her warm skin. There had been no shortage of women in the Shivering Northern Wetlands who offered to keep the handsome, unusual black man company through long winter evenings. Ambrose had no trouble resisting their temptations and he remained untouched, except in his thoughts of Mala. He had waited for the moment when he might do what he had dreamed of since he was a child: of putting that part of his anatomy that stiffened, making him dizzy with its trembling, so very close to…touching even…the place of mystery between Mala’s legs, a place he imagined would exhale a hot mustiness with two very different scents—balsa wood from the silk cotton tree that he used to make spinners with, and the ripened fruit of the cannonball tree, a fearfully strong but very compelling odour. Lying in his bed in the Shivering Northern Wetlands he would close his eyes and lock onto an image of Mala. His blood would race around his body as he squeezed and rubbed himself, and he imagined placing his swollen self close enough to Mala to cause that mysterious mouth of hers to open in a wide yawn and pull him in.
Mala’s abrupt withdrawal was welcome. It was as though, as time passed, Ambrose had fallen in love with desire itself and the act of desiring was its own fulfillment. Certainly, he craved the pleasures that would come from seeing Mala undressed, of delicately holding the nipple of her breast between his teeth and most of all, of his man’s appendage moistened and caressed and drawn up into her body. But when Mala pushed him gently away, he was forced to acknowledge the companion that desiring had become for him over the years. He was, he realized, unwilling to jeopardize his relationship with desire. If he succumbed to Mala’s treasures, desire could change, would disappear even.
Mala watched his face. She was so moved by his generous hesitation that she grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled his face toward hers. She closed her eyes and repeated to herself, Enjoy him, he is not my enemy, he loves me. She smelled his cheeks and felt the stubble on his face against her soft cheek. Little kisses from his voluptuous lips alighted on her cheek, skipping toward her mouth and then shyly away toward her ear again. She cupped his face tightly in both hands, opened her mouth and covered his with her strong, wet lips. Her lapping tongue slid across his lips. Ambrose felt completely weakened. He had never experienced a dizziness so pleasant. He opened his mouth to gasp for air and Mala reached in with her tongue and licked his. He pulled back from her and gasped for air. He had never seen her face so close before. His eyes roamed over her face, followed by the light touch of his fingers. His other hand hovered near her buttocks. Mala pressed her body against him, knowing he would be quite hard. The hovering hand found her buttocks, and the shape of her body—a woman’s body—so disarmed him that he thought he would faint. Mala’s movements were different from the day at his mother’s house when they were children. This time she had no goal in mind. This time she let him touch her for his pleasure too. She met, mirrored and embraced his passion. She moved against his hardness. He began to pull her dress up in little increments.
It was his first time, and her first time with someone of her own choice. In the kitchen, on the wood floor that smelled of the onions and garlic ground over the years into its grooves, Ambrose experienced what it was like to empty his semen into a woman, into his childhood love, rather than onto the pages of a magazine. For the first time Mala felt no pain. It was the first time she felt what it was like to be touched and to have her nipples licked and tasted as though they were a delicacy. And though she had been forced to touch her father countless times, it was the first time she explored and felt on the tips of her fingers and the palm of her hand what a penis was really like.
They lay on the kitchen floor. Ambrose was propped on an elbow, his other hand caressing her pubic hair and delicately slipping a finger between her lips, amazed at her wetness. Suddenly Mala realized how late it had become. Her father would soon be home. She jumped up and started pulling her clothes on. It took Ambrose longer to dress, to tuck in his shirt, do up all the buttons and pull on his suspenders and socks. In less time than they liked, the day was coming to an end.
“We haven’t danced today,” Ambrose said. “But I must admit that loving you”—these words weakened her again—“quite rivals dancing. I do however promise you three extra sets to make up for today’s missed one. It will be the pleasure of my life to hold you and to dance with you holding me.”
“And I will practise and surprise you. Will you come tomorrow, Ambrose?”
How could he possibly stay away? He kissed her again and again to seal his response. It was the longest day Ambrose had spent with Mala since his return to Lantanacamara.
Chandin reached the gate at his front yard just as Ambrose took up his hat to leave the kitchen. Pressing the hat against his lower stomach he walked backwards out of the kitchen, not wanting to take his eyes off Mala as she lifted her hands to breathe in the traces of his body. He sniffed his own fingers and touched them to his lips. She closed her eyes. Ambrose slowly made his way down the back stairs.
Chandin grappled with the twisted front gate. It had been bent for years but he refused to fix it, convinced it contorted itself only to get the better of him after he had had a few drinks. He was determined not to be manipulated by its craftiness. He caught a glimpse of movement at the back of his house. Chandin stopped fiddling and focused his blurry eyes past the shrubs, past the underneath of the house with its high stilts, through to the back stairs. He saw a man slowly descending backwards, black coat, white shirt and hat in hand. He hid behind a shrub and peered out.
Looking around to make sure Mala’s father was nowhere in sight, Ambrose made a quick detour under the house to check on the spiders in the aquarium. Chandin, anger rising, could not see what the man was up to under his house. He stayed hidden.
Ambrose was stunned to find that although all the flies remained alive only four spiders were moving. The others were headless, their torsos strewn on the floor of the glass cage. He quickly understood the evidence of natural selection. Overcrowded, the spiders had waged war. Only the fittest had survived and not a fragment of web had been spun.
The unfamiliarity of pessimism deflated him. Abrose turned his back on the spiders and pressing the hat against his chest again, reluctantly left the yard.
Chandin could hardly maintain his balance. He stumbled, holding on precariously to a handful of leaves from the shrub.
“What the ass…?” he mumbled. “A man tiefing my baby? He brave to even try. I ent go let nobody tief my woman again. No man, no woman, no damn body go tief my property again. I go kill he. I go kill she too, if it come to that. I go kill meself too. I sharpenin’ cutlass tonight.”
Chandin crept up the front stairs and onto the verandah. He peered through the glass pane of the front door. His daughter still leaned against the kitchen sink, smiling to herself and smelling her hands. The plate and the cup that his wife once used for visitors were in full view on the table, and a chair was pulled out from the table.
Chandin’s face was already flushed from alcohol, and anger caused the veins along his temples and neck to puff out a hard blue. He clutched his chest. His heart hurt with heaviness. He noisily pulled out a key ring from his pocket.
Hearing the keys and commotion on the front porch, Mala was shocked that her father had returned home so soon after Ambrose’s departure. She whisked the cup and plate off the table and pushed the chair in. She shoved her mother’s good dishes in the rubbish pan and pushed it out of sight. There was nothing unusual about her father’s silence on entering. She glanced at his face for any sign that he might be suspicious but saw nothing. Mala took up a cloth and wiped the counter, pretending to be carrying on her regular chores. She watched him look at the table. He straightened the chair, then went over to her and spun her. He held her hands up to his face and pressed his lips to them. It was unmistakable that his intention was to smell her hands. She glanced over to the front porch to see from where he might have been watching. How much had he seen? Mala bent her neck in fear and began to sob.
Her father, silent since he entered the house, began to laugh. Then his face flared with anger, he jerked his body away from her and pulled out the chair. He held it by its back and lifted it high above his head and slammed it down on the kitchen floor. The chair shattered. Mala put her face in her hands and wailed, doubling over in fright. The memory of her father when he discovered her mother gone came flooding back. Chandin moved through the small kitchen like a hurricane. He stormed over to his cowering daughter and lifted his hand, splayed wide like a tennis paddle. When she cried out he slowly brought his hand back to his side, tears streaming down his face. Instead of hitting her he unbuckled his belt and unzipped his trousers. Mala ducked down and tried to slide past him. This infuriated him further. It was the first time she had ever tried to defy him. He caught her by her hair and pulled until she straightened up. He pressed his menacing face against hers and screamed.
“Mother ass! Don’t try to make a fool out a me! I go kill you right here. I ent fraid.”
“Please, Papa, please don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me. I beg forgiveness. Have mercy, Papa.”
“I ever hurt you? I never before hurt you. You want to know what hurt is? Eh? Forgiveness? Mercy? I’ll show you what hurt is.”
He pushed her to the sink and shoved her face down into the basin, pressing his chin into her back as he used both hands to pull up her dress. He yanked out his penis, hardened weapon-like by anger. He used his knees to pry her legs open and his feet to kick and keep them apart. With his large fat fingers he parted her buttocks as she sobbed and whispered, “Have mercy, Lord, I beg, I beg.” He rammed himself in and out of her. He reached around and squeezed her breasts, frantically pumping them to mimic the violent thrusting of his penis.
Then he pulled out of her and flung her around. Standing with his pants around his knees, his still erect penis pointing at her, Chandin slapped her back and forth with the palm and the back of his hand. Her lower lip split and the outer edge of her left eye tore. She tried to stop crying but her chest heaved. He slapped her so hard that she stumbled and fell onto the ground. He lowered his huge frame astride her, pulled her up by her hair and shoved his penis into her mouth. She choked and gagged as he rammed it down her throat. When she went limp, he took the weapon out of her mouth and spurted all over her face.
He began to throw the chairs around, to tear down the curtains. He flung ornaments at the walls and used a frying pan to smash glasses and plates and pictures hanging in the drawing room. Mala covered her ears and shut her eyes tight.
Chandin roared into her room and tore down the old, heavy cotton curtains her mother had sewn twenty years before. He ripped them to shreds. He turned around and saw himself in the full-length mirror on the armoire door. With the heel of his foot he attacked it with one lightning blow. The mirror shattered and fell in a hundred brilliant shards. Still unsatisfied, he wrenched the door from its top hinge, snatched a few dresses off their hangers and ripped them to pieces.
Chandin grabbed the edges of her bed and flipped it over. He saw the new box. Opening it and seeing the gramophone, he put his face in both hands and cried. For several minutes he contemplated the gramophone and what it seemed to signify. He lifted the needle arm and pulled it backwards. It snapped as easily as a crab’s leg. Then he tried to do the same with the horn but it was more resistant. He stood up and thundered his bare foot onto the horn. His anger made him oblivious to the pain in his foot. He straightened himself up and marched back to the kitchen and kicked Mala where she lay sobbing on the ground. He pulled open a drawer and took up a cleaver. He dragged her into her bedroom.
“What is this, you whore? He give this to you? You taking presents from a man? What other presents you get? How long you doing this kind of thing? Everybody but Ramchandin know his daughter is the town whore?”
Mala turned her face to the ground and cried. He kicked her in the thighs.
“Answer me, you little whore. That man who was here give you this?” He flung the cleaver into the floor next to the gramophone. Mala looked up.
“Yes, Pappy. It was a gift for you and me.”
“For me? What you think I is? don’t give me that shit. And what you give him? Come give me what you give him.”
Still carrying the cleaver, he pulled her up by the front of her dress and pushed her toward his bedroom. He threw her on the mattress of his sagging bed and ripped her dress off. She shut her eyes and cried out loudly. It was the first time since that very first time when she was a child that she felt so much pain.
Chandin locked the bedroom door. He set the cleaver down by the bed. He raped her three more times that night. He made her stay in his bed. Next morning he got up as usual. He left the bedroom door wide open, carried the cleaver into the kitchen, stepped over the broken furniture and glass and made his way out to the verandah.
Mala got up slowly. To her astonishment he did not hurry her. He did not utter a word. Every inch of her body pained. She licked her lip. She could tell it was swollen. She could feel that her eye was also swollen. Her pelvis and thighs hurt so much the slightest motion made her dizzy. As she made her way slowly to her room she noticed the cleaver was no longer by his bed.
The box was still on the floor, open. The gramophone lay inside, useless. It saddened her more than her bruises but she dared not touch it or be caught looking at it. She picked a dress off the floor and put it on.
Her father, to her embarrassment and fear, had boiled water and put the previous day’s bread on the table. He was already eating. He did not look at her or say a word.
On the back porch, as she gently slapped water on her face, she heard the front door open and shut. She looked around
the backyard hoping Ambrose would be nowhere in sight. She had no appetite to even think of him just then but she knew he would come as soon as her father had left. He would see her bruised face, he would see she was in pain. She would not tell him, she insisted to herself, what her father had done. After all, Mala berated herself, she should have known better than to cheat on her father. In the end she was to blame. She prayed that Ambrose had better things to do that morning.
She heard the front gate scrape shut. She hobbled in agony to the front door and looked out through the wooden jalousies that flanked the door. Her father was already out of sight yet she felt him in every nook of the house, in every corner of the yard, watching her every move. She hobbled back into the kitchen and looked around for the cleaver. It was nowhere to be seen. Mala latched the back door. She hoped Ambrose would assume she had gone to market or to run errands, and would leave.
Ambrose waited by the corner until he saw Chandin Ramchandin head up the road. He took off toward the backyard gate so eagerly that he did not see Chandin turn and duck behind a neighbour’s cart. Chandin saw the ends of the tails of his daughter’s suitor’s black coat.
From the yard Ambrose noticed the bedroom curtains had been taken down. He thought nothing of it. When he got to the back door and found it latched he became curious. He knocked and called several times. He looked around to see if the curtains had been washed and were hanging on the clothesline. Seeing no signs of early morning activity and finding Mala’s door shut on him only one day after the most glorious day of his life confused him. He juggled a fear of rejection with panic. Something ominous seemed to be hanging in the air.
