Rajesh shook his head. “Man, behave yourself! If I see a woman move like that, I go bust I down the road in the opposite direction.”.0
Puncheon pulled his T-shirt over his head and his smile disappeared momentarily. He revealed a chest permanently scorched by the sun. Silver threads stretched against his pectorals with coconut oil. “How this looking, Raj?” He reached for his crab net, a long stick with a scrap of wire mesh fastened to the end. “Nice?”
Rajesh nodded. “Nice.” He lay back in the grass, enjoying the familiar prickle against his hardened heels and the backs of his calves. It was a cloudless day and the sun blazed in the sky. “I think is a woman like Gloria Ramnath you want,” Rajesh said, crossing one ankle over the other and lacing his fingers behind his head.
“Gloria?” Puncheon sucked his teeth as he settled onto his belly and propped his chin in his hands. “I tell you I like a woman with curves, man, not a lumpy pillow with two hand and two foot.”
“How about Leela, then?”
“That mosquito? She too skinny-minny for me. Nothing to pinch on that body except she big nose.” Puncheon twirled the net in his fingers, scanning the river bottom for crabs.
Rajesh raised his head and squinted at Puncheon with one eye. “I find you too picky, man. You go pick and pick until you pick shit.”
“Who said I picking? Nah, man. I go stay a bachelor for life. I just saying, I like a woman with broad hips and a big, fat, round bamsee. That is all.”
“But why you never marry? It have plenty gyul like that in Trinidad.”
“Marry?” Puncheon looked at Rajesh, incredulous. “It mark stupid on my forehead?” He leaned in close to Rajesh’s face, tapping the spot just between his eyebrows. “Marriage is only one set of problems.”
Rajesh palmed Puncheon’s gaunt face and pushed it away. “How you mean?”
“When I liming in the rum shop, ain’t you think my wife go get lonely? Ain’t you think she go look for a man-friend to keep she company?” Puncheon shook his finger in Rajesh’s face like a windshield wiper. “Uh-uh. No, sir. Marriage ain’t for me. If I find a next man with my woman, I go surely end up in jail. And, Raj”—Puncheon looked sombre—“jail ain’t have rum, so I go surely dead.” He deposited his chin back in his palm. “So you see, marriage go kill me.”
Rajesh grunted a laugh. “Rum go kill you first.”
“I rather dead from too much rum than none at all,” Puncheon said, his gaze trained on the rippling water again. And then: “Man, it look like all the crab hiding today. They must be see your ugly face and hole up in the mud, Raj.”
“Shut your ass and do fast. I ain’t have all day to lime by the river and catch crab. I have garden work to see about.”
Puncheon extended the net so that it hovered over the water, ready to dip it in at the first sight of a crab shell. “You have to hurry home to make sure nobody ain’t running Sangita down for a kiss!” He flashed a wicked smile.
Rajesh sucked his teeth, but a familiar uneasiness wormed its way into his brain.
“If you wasn’t so big like a bison, I would be waiting by she gates, too. Everybody need some Puncheon in they life—even Sangita Gopalsingh.”
Rajesh’s face was stony. “Puncheon, you is a real motherfu—”
“Relax, nuh, man. Is a joke,” Puncheon said. He plucked a blade of grass and tickled the bottom of Rajesh’s foot.
Rajesh delivered a swift kick to Puncheon’s hand, and Puncheon crowed with mischievous delight before turning back to his fishing.
Rajesh thought of Sangita. Was she lonely? It was true: he was away from her a lot, tending to his land, liming in the rum shop or by the river, playing cards. He scratched the scruff at his neck, itchy with sweat. Would Sangita seek out a “man-friend”? For a moment, the doubt dithered and he almost laughed at the absurdity of heeding Puncheon’s reservations about marriage. Puncheon, who had collapsed everywhere in Chance, from the ditch by his house to a stranger’s plate of curried duck. Puncheon, who for a time was banned from all weddings after he arrived at one intoxicated, dressed like a pundit, and tried to officiate a ceremony. Puncheon, who stole clean shorts from his neighbours’ clothesline when his were dirty. This was not a man you took seriously, and yet, the more Rajesh scorned his outrageous ideas about marriage, the louder Puncheon’s words rang true in his heart.
Sangita Gopalsingh was a busy woman, but she was not lonely. His wife—a tentative smile softened his expression—was a businesswoman, after all, too busy to seek companionship outside their marriage. In fact, Rajesh thought, Sangita was always bustling about the neighbourhood, taking measurements for someone, sewing this dress and that blouse. When would she find the time? The smile faltered on his lips as he realized he was working hard to convince himself.
He had heard whispers about Sangita. She was too showy, too forward, too free. But those were the words of envious women. Women like Gloria Ramnath and Chandani Narine, who had no beauty to speak of and no skill beyond the kitchen to set them apart from the other women in the district. Their words were nothing but idle gossip steeped in insecurity, Rajesh told himself.
He shielded his face from the pelting sun, as if to hide his growing suspicions behind his forearms. “Punch, who you think go be interested in Sangita?” He tried to sound casual, but Rajesh heard the insecurity in his own voice.
Puncheon abandoned his net and rolled onto his back, laughing and hugging his knees to his chest. He laughed until tears streamed down his face and fell into the parched grass. “Who?” He gazed, unbelieving, at Rajesh. “Me. Om. Lal. Pundit Anand. Krishna. Kapil. Bulldog. Dr. Mohan. Faizal Mohammed. Pudding.” He began to count on his toes. “The dreadlock vagrant. Headmaster—”
Rajesh growled. “I ain’t ask you to list all the damn men in the district, jackass.”
“Eh—you just now figure out you have a pretty wife and you calling me a jackass?”
Rajesh sat up and glared at Puncheon. His old friend just grinned back, drunken merriment dancing in his watery brown eyes.
Something rustled in the grass across the river. Rajesh saw a pair of orange ears twitch and heard a familiar purr. Flambeaux stalked into the open and sat on the other side of the riverbank, staring at Rajesh and Puncheon in his haughty way.
“Watch Flambeaux, Puncheon.”
“But how Sangita does let she cat run free all over the place?”
“Get home, Flambeaux,” Rajesh said.
Flambeaux squinted at Rajesh, flicked his tail and walked away.
Puncheon nudged Rajesh with the handle of his net. He had spotted the crimson shell of a crab through the shallow water. It glistened in the sunlight, a jewel free for the taking. “Eh, sweetie-sweetie,” Puncheon said as if cooing to an infant. He inched closer to the riverbank. “Come to Punch, my dahling.” In one quick motion, Puncheon scooped the crab and a blob of sludge from the river bottom and flung the crab through the air. It landed a foot from where Rajesh sat.
Puncheon began to leap and whoop.
“Catch the damn thing before it run away,” Rajesh said.
Puncheon dropped the net in the grass and fell to his hands and knees. “Don’t talk to me as if I never catch crab, Raj. I catching crab by this riverbank since I was two years old.” He called to the crab as it scuttled away. “When I was two years old, I used to say to myself, ‘Self, why you don’t go and catch a crab for your mother?’ And so I did, with my bare hand and my eyes close.” Puncheon pounced on the crab, his bony bottom thrust in the air. “Got you, dahling!”
As he stood, the crab twisted in Puncheon’s hand and fastened its claw around his thumb.
“You blasted motherfucking crab!” Puncheon held his hand away from his body and shook, but the crab held on.
Rajesh watched, amused, as Puncheon danced around in the grass with the crab dangling from his thumb. He didn’t notice the blood at first, mistaking it, in the whir of Puncheon’s movements, for the crab itself. But when Rajesh saw red trickle down the leng
th of Puncheon’s skinny arm and drip away at his elbow, he sighed and lumbered to his feet. Puncheon cussed and stomped while Rajesh pried the crab’s claw open and freed his thumb.
Rajesh tossed the crab. It went cartwheeling through the air, claws snapping in vain, until it landed with a splash in the pail of water sitting on the bank. “I thought you was catching crab by this riverbank since you was two years old?” he said, sauntering away. He plunged his feet into the water, stirring up swirls of brown and green sediment.
Puncheon examined his bloody thumb and scowled. “Who catch the damn thing—you or me?” He dunked his hand in the river and then wrapped it in the shirt he’d discarded earlier. “Next time go be better.”
“Next time? I ready to leave, man.”
“Raj, I can’t make a pot of callaloo with one crab, who look half sick at that. I need at least three crab.” He sighed, and his shoulders slumped. “I already pick the dasheen bhaji from Headmaster’s yard, and t’ief three coconut from Bulldog. Is only the crab I missing! This is your fault. If only you ask your greedy cousin Pudding to lend me two crab, you wouldn’t have to wait with me.”
Rajesh didn’t respond. His gaze was fixed on Krishna Govind, marching up the riverbank, trailing a bulging suitcase through the bush. “But wait, what the ass is this?” he muttered.
The Last Acre
Friday August 23, 1974
CHANCE, TRINIDAD
Krishna was on his way.
Vimla squared her shoulders, fixed her gaze forward and ducked between two rows of sugar cane. She parted a path through the leaves and vowed she would not allow her guilty conscience to drag her back home. She would not go all this way to be heartbroken. And this time, she would not be discovered by a ragtag search party. Vimla wanted a victory as much as she wanted Krishna and she would come home with both.
The leaves grazed the light cotton of her sleeves and brushed the top of her head as she went, welcoming her back and then closing in again behind her, possessive. Vimla was no stranger to this last acre of sugar cane.
She picked through the field and touched the ribbons of coloured cloth tied in a bow around every tenth cane stalk. Pink, orange, yellow, burgundy. This was the rainbow that marked her way. It had been Minty’s idea to use scraps from her mother’s sewing basket as markers, and she’d filched them herself, choosing the brightest and prettiest fabric available.
Vimla listened to the steady breath of the sugar cane. It inhaled and exhaled in the wind, as much alive as the creatures hiding in its green skirts. She heard the flap and rustle of wings against underbrush. The whir of birds landing and taking flight. The crunch of her footsteps, quick and light with anticipation, measured with deliberateness.
Vimla pumped her arms and strode with more vigour than she needed to. A trick to occupy her mind. Fifteen minutes into her walk and already her cotton blouse clung to her back with perspiration and her hair had gone rogue in the humidity. She lifted the locks off her neck and dropped them over her shoulder knowing it was useless to try to comb through the damp tangles now. She ignored the fine strands that remained twined in her fingers. Droplets pooled on her upper lip and glistened on her nose. Even her knees were wet. Still she pushed against the solid walls of heat so they didn’t close in around her.
Vimla reached into her pocket and retrieved Krishna’s folded note again. The message had blurred with her constant handling, Krishna’s confident pen strokes trailing off into indistinct smudges. But she knew the message as well as she knew his laugh. The paper, damp and wrinkled, was merely proof she wasn’t dreaming:
Red. 5 p.m.
With love,
K.G.
The red marker was twenty stalks away. Vimla knew it well. It was organza with two matching red sequins that hung precariously from loose threads of gold. Her heart quickened and she laboured on.
White. Green. Gold. She touched the markers as she passed, recalling the stories Minty had told her about each one. The white cotton came from a widow’s sari blouse. The green silk, from a Muslim bride’s lengha. The gold, from the false flowers in a bharatnatyam dancer’s hair. Vimla imagined the spirits of these women cheering her on her course. She fancied them women of passion and courage, women like her and Minty.
Minty. A smile loosened the hard line of Vimla’s mouth. At one time their mischief had been as harmless as stealing oranges from Headmaster Roop G. Kapil’s tree or playing tricks on Puncheon in the market; now they were plotting against the district, undoing a wedding, deceiving a pundit. Vimla knew she had entwined Minty in her mess. As she swatted away a blade reaching for her face, she wondered how far Minty would follow her before it became too much.
Vimla peeled her blouse off her chest and let air filter over the rivers of perspiration. She told herself that it didn’t matter anymore; this dangerous game they were planning was nearly over. After all, Krishna was trudging his way through the cane field from the opposite end and at five o’clock he would meet her at the red marker. Vimla imagined what Krishna would say: Chalisa Shankar might be beautiful, with her dimples and her grace and her spotless reputation, but that wasn’t enough for him. The farther she walked the surer she became of this. Why else would Krishna initiate a risky meeting with her when his wedding to Chalisa was less than two weeks away? Why else would he sign his note “with love”?
With love.
Buoyed by her reasoning, Vimla reached into her pocket and exchanged Krishna’s note for Faizal Mohammed’s gold watch. She laughed out loud, startling a family of roosting doves, startling herself. How he must have cursed when Minty blackmailed him for this! Vimla turned the heavy timepiece over in her hand so that the round face stared back at her. Four fifty-seven. Her stomach pitched like a tidal wave. Teal. Turquoise. Silver.
Twenty minutes later Vimla sat on the ground beneath the red marker, having discarded her misgivings about soiling her skirt. For a while she had watched the second hand tick around the clock, but that only made her cross-eyed and crazy. Now she huddled like a wounded animal in a state of numbed shock, hugging her knees to her chest and sniffling into the wrinkles in her skirt.
Krishna was not coming.
She forced air into her lungs.
Krishna was not coming.
How embarrassed her mother would be if she could see her now. Chandani, severe face, haunting eyes, would be furious at Vimla for sneaking away, for being the fool again. Vimla groaned and traded her mother’s face for her father’s in her mind’s eye. If this failed attempt at snagging Krishna became news—as most things in the district did—Om would not say much. He would endure Chandani’s tirades and fill his glass more frequently at Lal’s. He would have no harsh words for Vimla, only sad eyes that stung more than licks or a berating ever could.
Vimla gathered the ends of her skirt and wiped her face, leaving smears of dirt and sweat behind.
She wondered why Krishna had changed his mind about seeing her. The thought opened the floodgates for a dozen suppositions, each one more distressing than the one before. They darted like a school of smelt. She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her hands against her temples until the whirl slowed to a steady current of truths: Krishna Govind had sullied her reputation, deserted her for Tobago, detached himself from their disgrace by choosing Chalisa Shankar for a bride. Krishna Govind was a crook.
Vimla pressed her hands more firmly into the sides of her head as if she would squash the blasphemy within. A crook? No. She shook her head. Those were Chandani’s charges, not hers. But the more Vimla thought about it, the less she was sure what she believed of Krishna and what she didn’t.
Suddenly the heat was unbearable. Vimla dragged the back of her hand across her forehead. She needed water or she would faint. Already delirium skirted the edge of her mind, coaxing her to lay her head in the dirt and die. She had lost Krishna. She had lost her teaching post. She had lost her reputation. Failure licked her insides like flames on a funeral pyre.
And then it happened.
Vimla felt fangs sink into her left ankle and at once her lethargy was overpowered by raw terror. She cried out, tripping over herself as she scrambled to her feet. Pain exploded up her right leg, but she forced herself to leap from the rustling bush. When she dared to look over her shoulder, she found herself held in the opaque stare of a macajuel snake, its brown body stretching on forever across the earth. Vimla’s heart pounded. Panic sent her flying. She grit her teeth and clawed wildly at the leaves. They swung back at her, slashing her arms with their razor edges, marring her skin with crimson stripes. The heat grew thicker and she had to double her efforts to move, to breathe, to stay vertical. Sweat and tears stung her eyes and blurred her vision, but the snake’s cold stare remained tattooed to her mind.
Vimla ran for what seemed like an eternity, chasing her breath until her heart nearly burst. Finally, when she thought she could go no farther, the cane opened up into a field of savannah grass. Relief shuddered through her as she slowed to a stagger. She sapped the last of her energy in a heart-wrenching cry and collapsed in a heap, letting the wind rush over her.
Vimla didn’t hear the shuffle of slippers in the grass or see the shadow fall across her crumpled body, but as she lay panting, she knew instinctively that someone was there.
A Hero
Friday August 23, 1974
CHANCE, TRINIDAD
Faizal Mohammed took one look at Vimla crying in his field and cursed. Every time he thought he was finally through with Minty and Vimla, one of them showed up to spoil his day. It wasn’t enough that they had his gold chain, initial pendant and his watch; they wanted his sanity, too, it seemed. His lips twisted in disgust. Minty and Vimla couldn’t control him if Sangita would leave Rajesh and marry him once and for all. Then the blackmailing would stop. Then they would see who was the boss of who. Witches!
Nothing Like Love Page 19
