Nothing Like Love

by Sabrina Ramnanan

  The Race Home

  Saturday August 17, 1974

  CHANCE, TRINIDAD

  It was eleven o’clock when Faizal arrived in Chance, more than enough time to rid himself of Minty and Vimla before their parents came home. “Praise Allah,” he muttered, thinking of the storm that had driven them from Maracas Bay. He glanced in the rear-view mirror at the girls; they were still nestled together like sleeping puppies. They looked innocent, cuddled up that way; hard to believe these girls had blackmailed him to take them to Maracas Bay in the first place. Faizal thought about his beloved Qur’an and prayer mat lying abandoned and sopped on the beach. He sighed tiredly, vowing to have nothing to do with Minty and Vimla once they returned his chain and he delivered them home.

  “Eh! Allyuh wake up. We almost reach.”

  The girls stirred, sleepy eyed, as Chance unfolded in the darkness before them. They squinted at the old homes, cloaked in shadows and foliage, sheltered behind iron gates. The eyes of scrawny vagabond dogs glowed in the headlights as they watched Faizal’s car putter by on the otherwise deserted dirt road.

  “I said wake up, not sit up. Allyuh want somebody to see you in the car?”

  Vimla and Minty looked at each other and then shrank against their seats, stealing glances out the window in their excitement.

  “Look at the mandir, Vimi. It packed. People overflowing onto the road!”

  Faizal gripped the steering wheel. “Duck!”

  The girls swooped down as they whizzed by the mandir.

  “I think we did it, Vimla. We really did it!” Minty’s eyes shone.

  Faizal smiled despite himself. “Allyuh ain’t do one blasted thing except play the fool at the beach and ride around in my car like the queen and duchess of Trinidad and Tobago. I did it. Thank me.”

  “Thank you, Faizal,” the girls chorused.

  “Now, give me back my damn chain and leave me the hell alone.”

  Minty nodded and was about to slip the chain off from around her neck, when Faizal yelled, “Mangoes! Duck!”

  Minty and Vimla dropped to the floor this time and lay as still as they could, their bodies overlapping like rag dolls.

  Faizal motored up the rolling main road slowly. He blinked, shook his head, blinked again. Sangita was sailing toward the car, twenty feet away, holding the delicate pleats of her sari out of the mud as she came. The material wrapped around her torso had slackened, revealing her skimpy bejewelled blouse and soft, flat belly, glowing luminous in his headlights. Faizal moaned. “Forgive me, Sangita.” He peeled off over the pitted road then lurched to a stop before his front gate. He scrambled from the car, unlocked the gate and pushed it open, so that it scraped and screeched against the asphalt of his front courtyard. He glided the car under the house.

  Vimla and Minty were frantically untangling themselves in the back of the car, preparing to scurry out of the vehicle and bolt to Faizal’s garden. From there they would go their separate ways, creeping through trees, around chicken coups and cow pens, until they could slip into their respective homes.

  “Allyuh stop moving.” Faizal’s voice betrayed his unease and the girls fell still again, their eyes wide in the blackness.

  He heard the jingle of her anklets as she drew nearer. “Sangita coming. Don’t move and don’t talk until I tell—”

  “Faizal? Fai-zal!” Her voice floated from the road.

  Faizal licked his lips and ran his hands through his hair, mumbling a combination of curse and prayer before stepping from the car. “Good night, Sangita.” He put his hands in his pockets and strolled toward her as if a visit after midnight from Sangita dressed in a luscious sari was a commonplace occurrence.

  Sangita flounced into the courtyard, her hands on her shapely hips. “Faizal Mohammed, you ain’t see me walking up the road?” She gave him a withering stare and then stopped short as he drew nearer. “Oh! What happened to you?”

  He stared back at her wearily. His hair was windswept, his shirt crushed and hanging loosely from his dirty trousers. “I had a rough night liming in Port of Spain with the boys.” He shrugged.

  She peered into his face and arched an eyebrow at him. “You think I born big so? You think I don’t know that you was out romping around with some misses?! Look at your ramfle-up shirt. Look at your condition, Faizal!”

  He grinned wickedly. “Look at yours.”

  Sangita cut her eye at him, pulling the silk over her visible cleavage with a huff, but not before Faizal had a chance to admire the plunging neckline of her blouse, noting with approval the subtle pearls and peacock-blue and silver sequins stitched in perfect rows across the seams at her neck, arms and midriff. They glinted, sketching a sparkling silhouette against the night.

  “I need your help. I need a drop.” Sangita raised her chin and bustled past him to the car, throwing her sari phaloo over her shoulder.

  Faizal snatched the jewelled fabric and gently reeled her toward him, a technique he’d learned from the popular love scenes of Indian cinema. “Why you always in a rush?” He leaned against his trunk and held Sangita, wrapped in her ornamental silk, to his chest, filling his lungs with her intoxicating scent.

  She wriggled away. “Don’t hold me up with your nasty hands. Move from me. I don’t know who you kiss with that mouth tonight.” She scrunched up her striking features to embellish her disgust. “I ain’t come here for you to feel me up with your dirty self. I come for help. Chandani send me!” Sangita narrowed her gaze at him. “Faizal, is that sand?” She jabbed a finger at his chest.

  Faizal’s hand flew to the black wires springing from his partly exposed chest, feeling the grit of sand sprinkled in the tangles. He buttoned his shirt up to the collar and folded his arms in front of him. “No.”

  Sangita bored her piercing eyes into his guilty ones. “Well, Faizal, I real sorry to trouble you at this hour for help, especially after you spend the evening rolling around in the sand with some jammette from Port of Spain, but Puncheon, Rajesh and Om find themselves in some trouble and they need you.”

  Faizal cleared his throat. “Me? What they need me for?”

  “Faizal Mohammed, you really acting strange tonight, you know that? Usually you is the first person on the scene when things go wrong, and the first person to broadcast it to the district the next day. Your mouth is like the Trinidad Express self!” She leaned closer to him, studying his face. “So tell me, what happened? You sick? Your jammette jam you too hard? What?”

  “Eh, you want to stand up here and make noise, or you want my help?” Faizal scowled. “Tell me what happened.”

  “Humph!” Sangita gave him a disapproving once-over. “Puncheon, Om and Rajesh decide to drink bhang tonight.”

  Faizal’s eyes widened. “Really?”

  “And they show up in the mandir tight … holding kittens!”

  “Oh mangoes!” He slapped his knee, doubling over with laughter. “Kittens!”

  “Yes, kittens. And so me and Chandani started to walk the boys home, but Puncheon get sick and Rajesh afraid a soucouyant go drink he blood, so they idling by the side of the road waiting for you to pick them up in your car.”

  “My car?” Faizal sobered. He remembered Vimla and Minty huddled in back, waiting for an opportune moment to escape. They had come so far—all three of them—to be found out now. He knew that if they were discovered, he would be implicated in the ruse, and he was not built to endure the inevitable thrashing from Rajesh or Om. Of course, if the girls were caught, then Minty might not return his chain, or worse, she might show her father. And if that happened—

  “Faizal!”

  Faizal looked up from his feet into Sangita’s suspicious face. “Yes?”

  “Let we go!” She made for the passenger side of his car again, but he barred her way with a lean arm.

  “We can’t take my car.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because is too small to fit everyone.” He thought quickly. “And what if the motion of the car make Puncheon more
sick?”

  Sangita bit her lip, considering this, and Faizal grew more confident. “They go feel better if they walk. Fresh air is the best thing.” He thought of burly Om standing with a kitten in the night, of Rajesh cowering like a child from vampires. “Let we fetch them together, nuh? I go help out the fellas if they need it.” Faizal straightened to his full six feet and took giant, purposeful strides toward his open gate, hoping Sangita would follow without a fuss.

  “Faiz—” she rushed after him “—if you going to get them, then I could go home.” She fluttered her thick fringe of lashes. “I already walk all the way from the mandir, boy, and my foot tired.”

  Faizal shifted his gaze to the car and then back to Sangita. “No, you go have to help Rajesh get into the house. You think he could operate a key and a lock in that state of stupidness right now? You go help Raj, I go help Puncheon, and Chandani go help Om … and the kittens!” His mouth split into a wide grin. “Oh mangoes, I can’t wait to see this!”

  Sangita pouted, fiddling with the drape of her sari.

  Faizal wrapped an arm around her slender shoulders in a reassuring squeeze. “Besides, you looking so radiant tonight I want to walk down the road with the prettiest woman in the district before she husband get back sober.” He winked at her.

  Sangita’s full lips turned up in a playful smile. She swished past Faizal through the gate and onto the road, rocking her hips and twinkling with all the modesty of a peacock.

  Mastana Bahar

  Sunday August 18, 1974

  ST. JOSEPH, TRINIDAD

  Early the next morning Chalisa Shankar smoothed creamy coral lipstick on her Cupid’s-bow lips and studied her reflection in the mirror. She turned her face to the left and then to the right, puckering and glancing sideways at herself. She tried a smile with all lips, a half-smile and a full-out beam that showed off her even white teeth and accentuated her prominent cheekbones. She gathered her lips in a pout, a pucker and frown. She bit her bottom lip as if contemplating something significant. She formed an O of surprise. And for the finale, she breathed in through her nose and exhaled slowly through her mouth to create a look of sensual breathlessness.

  Chalisa clapped her hands and spun around in front of her mother’s vanity, giggling.

  “Your face go look squingy like Nanny’s own one day.”

  She stopped short and glanced around the bedroom. Avinash stood in the doorway of the ensuite washroom. He fixed her with his serious black eyes, round and glowing with the wisdom of a worldly old man. His unusually small mouth was pursed and his hook nose twitched and flared in solemn thought. He blew a tuft of feathery hair from his eyes and folded his arms over his small chest. Chalisa smiled at him; he reminded her of a young spectacled owl.

  “Why you does always sneak up on me, Avi?”

  Avinash shrugged. He crossed the room and climbed onto the vanity chair, wriggling his bottom close enough to the edge so he could swing his legs.

  “Do you really think I go look like Nanny when I get old?” Chalisa thought of her grandmother’s papery skin, lined and weathered like an old road map to nowhere. She shuddered and sought the contours of her supple face with the tips of her fingers.

  Avinash blinked his earnest eyes and nodded. “Unless you press your face with the iron.”

  “Avi! You cannot press a person’s skin—it go burn!”

  Avinash gripped the sides of the chair and swung harder. “Oh.”

  Chalisa stood beside the vanity and trailed her fingers with tenderness over her mother’s lipsticks and blushes, the black eye kajal and fancy barrettes set on white crocheted doilies. She examined the perfume bottles one by one, spraying a mist of her favourite into the air and bounding through it.

  Avinash watched her, crinkling his beakish nose at the floral fragrance. “Nanny vexed with you.”

  Chalisa went back to the vanity and pinched the kajal in between two fingers. “I think Nanny vexed with the whole of Trinidad.” She wondered if Nanny knew she had snuck out again last night, but the worry floated through her mind like a cloud and drifted away. If Nanny knew then Avinash knew, and he would have blurted it out by now. She glanced at her brother, who looked back at her with his penetrating gaze. She smiled, and taking a slow, deep breath to summon concentration, Chalisa drew close to the mirror and began to outline her gold-brown eyes with a steady, practised hand.

  “I think you go get licks.”

  Chalisa looked at Avinash in the mirror. “I too old for licks, Avi.” She swung a rope of black curls over her shoulder and resumed her work on her eyes. She was careful to start at the inner corner just above her soft fringe of lashes with a precise fine line that gradually thickened across her eyelid and finished in an upward sweep. Every Indian film Chalisa had ever watched featured a doe-eyed beauty with the same dramatic eyes. She had spent months duplicating the effect and this morning she stepped back pleased with her efforts.

  Avinash strolled to the door and paused, wrapping his little hand around the knob. “You look like a manicou.” He pulled the door open and marched into the hallway. “It’s eight thirty, Chalisa. Breakfast ready.”

  Chalisa peeked at her reflection from beneath her lashes and smiled. “Manicou, my big toe,” she whispered, flying after Avinash.

  Chalisa hummed down the hall, twirling her wrists and swaying into the kitchen, but the song died on her lips and she hid her hands behind her back when she found herself staring into Nanny’s severe face. She groaned inwardly. Avinash hadn’t mentioned Nanny would be joining them for breakfast this morning. She looked at her brother, who lowered his gaze and climbed into his chair.

  “Have a seat, Miss Mastana Bahar.” Nanny glared at Chalisa through cataract eyes and pointed a veiny finger at the chair adjacent hers.

  Chalisa swallowed hard. Two weeks ago she had auditioned in secret for Mastana Bahar, Trinidad’s popular talent competition on televsion. It had been an incredible experience, a moment plucked from her dreams and made real. Every day she recalled the thrill of walking out in front of the judges and erupting into song and dance. She had felt so alive. Something inside her had awakened. Best of all, Chalisa had impressed the judges. They couldn’t believe she’d never had any formal training, that her voice was so sweet and her movements so graceful. She was more than just pretty—she was glamorous. She was meant for the stage. She was born for Indian cinema. They told Chalisa what she always knew in her heart: she was going to be a star. And of course she was invited back for rehearsals and a final taping for the show.

  Nanny brought her face close to Chalisa’s and scrutinized her granddaughter’s features. “Humph.” She swiped her wrinkly thumb across Chalisa’s full lips and smeared the coral glob to her own dry mouth. “How do I look, Avinash? Like Chalisa?” Nanny puckered at the boy and twirled her old, brittle wrists. Avinash stared back at her, stunned.

  Nanny leaned across the table and pricked Delores, the cooking lady, with her poisonous stare. “Is really no wonder Chalisa want to sing and fling up she self for all of Trinidad to see when you does let she eat breakfast with three pound of makeup on she face.”

  Delores’s red-rimmed eyes burned with years of unspoken retorts, but she kept her lips squeezed tight and withdrew to attend to the pot of Milo warming on the stove.

  “Is a shame she parents didn’t send she to live with me earlier. I would have beat this flim-star stupidness right out of she!”

  Under the table, Chalisa dug a fingernail into the palm of her hand and twisted. It was how she distracted herself from crying. She did this every time Nanny spoke of her parents like they were just in the other room instead of dead. Burned to ashes. Floating in a river somewhere.

  “But let we get on with the business here,” Nanny continued. “I ain’t have time to sit and blame this body and that body, when we all know who body fault this is.” She looked pointedly at Chalisa.

  Delores brought the pot of steaming Milo to the table and one by one filled the mugs to the rim. Nann
y placed her lined hand over the mouth of her mug. “Tea, Delores, with a splash of milk and two spoon of sugar.”

  Delores sniffed and retreated again.

  Nanny sat up straight and balanced her bony elbows on the table, so that the sleeves of her pale-green sateen dress slipped downward and revealed a dozen matching green veins rising from her translucent skin. “Now, let we talk business, nuh? Miss Mastana Bahar, I firing Gavin today. Did you know?”

  Chalisa’s eyes widened. She set her mug of Milo down and stared into the creases marking angry Xs all over Nanny’s face.

  “You think you could tell me why?” Nanny held her empty mug out to Delores, who filled it with tea.

  Chalisa shook her head no, but that was a lie; she could think of several reasons Nanny might want to fire Gavin.

  Nanny pivoted on her bony bottom and peered down at her grandson. “Avinash? You know why Nanny firing Gavin today?”

  Avinash opened his mouth to answer and then clamped it shut again, seeing Chalisa’s warning look across the table. He shrugged.

  “Is because Chalisa bat up she eyelash at poor Gavin and make him take she to the Mastana Bahar auditions.”

  Nanny filled her small chest with air and yelled, “Gavin, come and take your leave, boy!”

  Chalisa gasped.

  Gavin shuffled into the kitchen with his head down. He was dressed in a white-and-brown checked shirt and a pair of brown dress pants. His hair was coiffed in a black poof at the front, and the rest was plastered to his scalp with Brylcreem. Chalisa’s heart turned over in her chest.

  Nanny waved her bony hand at Gavin. “Goodbye to you, Gavin. I hope you could find a next job in a next family home with a less wayward girl who wouldn’t take advantage of you like my lovely and wonderful Miss Mastana Bahar.” She blew on her tea and then rattled her mug against the saucer without taking a sip.