Nothing Like Love

by Sabrina Ramnanan

  “What going on Faizal?” Sangita whispered, clipping her lower lip between her teeth.

  Faizal pulled his eyes away from her mouth. “All of Trinidad and Tobago see Chalisa Shankar perform on Mastana Bahar tonight.”

  Sangita looked let down. She dropped her braid, a fast pout settling on her mouth. He wanted to devour that mouth. “I hear she does sing sweet bhajans. She Nanny tell Maya so,” Sangita said.

  “Bhajans?” Faizal gripped her elbow and pulled her an inch closer. “Sangita, that girl ain’t sing anything for God’s ears.”

  Her eyes widened and glowed like Flambeaux’s.

  “And never mind that—she can well work up she waist, too,” Faizal hissed.

  Sangita gasped and exhaled. Her breath smelled of kurma. Sugary sweet.

  “And Chandani—”

  A yell fractured their exchange. Sangita jumped back. A startled tassa man cursed, his cigarette falling and creating diminutive orange fireworks at their feet.

  “Who yelling so, Faizal?” Sangita asked. She shrank against the bush close to the tassa group and peered at the house from her cover.

  “Pundit Anand for sure.”

  Suddenly Om and Rajesh were walking back toward them. They hurried like chastised children who had just narrowly avoided licks. Pundit Anand gazed down on them from his veranda, his expression cloaked in darkness.

  Vimla’s Recovery

  Saturday August 31, 1974

  CHANCE, TRINIDAD

  The snake coils on a rock. Vimla knows it is dangerous, but she draws near anyway. There is something about it, the way its rainbow scales glisten under the noon-hour sun like it has polished itself for her. There are bangles around its body, bands of gold with gems that flash white in the sunlight. She reaches out to touch one and the snake springs up, its bangles clinking against one another. Vimla jumps back, her scream trapped in her throat. The snake hisses and fans its hood, displaying an intricate mehndi pattern. Vimla freezes in its icy gaze. The snake lunges at her heart—

  “Vimla!” Chandani shook her. “Wake up, nuh, gyul.”

  Vimla’s thrashing grew wilder under Chandani’s grip. The back of her hand cracked against her mother’s nose as she tried to wrench the snake free from her heart.

  “Vim-la!

  Vimla felt someone pin her against the softening earth. She screamed herself into wakefulness and found Chandani straddling her, the palms of her hands pressing into Vimla’s shoulders.

  “Ma?”

  Tendrils of hair had come loose from Chandani’s bun. They fell in corkscrew curls about her sweaty face. She was panting. Blood dribbled from her right nostril. “Vimla. What the hell is wrong with you?” She climbed off her daughter, embarrassed, pulling out the handkerchief tucked in her bra strap to dab away the blood. “You nearly kill me.” Chandani released her slack bun, combed her hair through with her fingers and twisted it into a knot so tight her eyes lifted at the corners. “You know how long I trying to wake you?” She stabbed the knot with two pins and patted it twice with her fingers.

  “Sorry,” Vimla mumbled, squirming into a seated position. She let her head fall back against the wall and her lids drop over her eyes. What day was it? Was he married now?

  Chandani sighed and touched her cheek. “Fever.” The bed creaked as Chandani shifted her weight. “How your foot feeling?”

  “Fine.” Vimla watched kaleidoscopic light dance behind her eyelids. “But I feeling weak and my head hurting.” And my heart. It seemed like an eternity since she’d been any place besides this bedroom. No matter how wide her mother opened the window, how often she knotted the drapes or swept them onto the chair, there was never enough air in the room. She longed to run, feel the wind playing in her hair. She missed sunlight on her skin. Vimla wanted freedom. And Krishna.

  Chandani folded the coverlet over Vimla’s lap. “Your foot looking better,” she said, gathering Vimla’s hair to one side. “I wonder when this fever go break.”

  Even through the fog, Vimla detected the undercurrent of concern in her mother’s admonishment. She thought about smiling to show she was all right, but she didn’t because she wasn’t.

  Chandani reached for the Limacol sitting on Vimla’s desk. She tipped the yellow liquid directly onto Vimla’s scalp and knelt on the bed so that she could apply pressure with her hands. As Chandani massaged the lemony liquid into Vimla’s hair, coolness spread through Vimla and she felt the throbbing in her head ebb. She sighed a thank-you. Tears blurred the lights behind her eyelids.

  “Vimla, how your hair get so scanty?” Chandani’s fingers threaded through Vimla’s damp waves.

  Her hair had been the first part of her to come undone when Krishna left Trinidad. It tangled itself in her comb, remained on her pillow when she woke in the morning. The strands fell away with her faith, but lingered on her clothes and gathered in the corners of her room to remind her of her many losses, her inferior beauty since Chalisa Shankar came into her life.

  Vimla shrugged a response. The room was quiet but for the creak of bedsprings beneath Chandani’s knees and the squelchy sound of her palms suctioning Vimla’s scalp. Vimla knew Chandani’s lips were pursed against an inventory of her faults that had caused her hair to shed. In that moment, she was grateful for the exhaustion that sealed her eyes shut.

  “Dr. Mohan coming this afternoon,” Chandani finally said, her hands falling away from Vimla’s hair. “Maybe he go give we something to break this fever.”

  Vimla managed a nod. She wondered how much her father would have to pay Dr. Mohan to come to the house. Most people did without doctors if they could, relying on concoctions mixed with ingredients from the earth. When Vimla thought of doctors, she thought mostly of babies coming into the world or elders exiting it. Was she one of the unfortunate few in between? Maybe she was sicker than she thought.

  “Minty coming to visit, too.” Chandani stood up, screwing the blue cap back on the Limacol bottle.

  Vimla’s eyes opened halfway. “When?”

  Chandani faltered and then shrouded her hurt in a scowl. “Soon,” she said, closing the bedroom door behind her. As she stomped down the stairs louder than should be possible for such a tiny woman, Vimla heard her say, “No matter what you do for your children, they does always cuff you in your nose in the end. Humph! One of these days, I go strike again—I go really strike again!” Vimla heard her scrape the coconut broom across the concrete. “And look at this jackass here, lying like lead in the hammock. Om!” she hollered. “Don’t go by Lal’s next time, boy. Stay home and I go bathe you in rum. You go like that, ain’t?”

  Vimla rolled onto her side so that she could see out the window. The last time she’d spoken to Minty alone was just before she’d ducked into her father’s cane to meet Krishna. Minty had dropped Faizal Mohammed’s watch into her palm and closed her fingers over it. “So you know when he coming,” she’d said.

  He never came. A familiar wave of grief rose in Vimla’s stomach, but this time it broke into a hundred furious wavelets. Vimla darkened now when she remembered how she’d languished in the humidity, waiting for Krishna to follow through on his own design. She had gambled a great deal to meet him. She always had. Now, as she lay limp with fever, her snake-bitten ankle still propped on pillows, Vimla realized what her daring had cost her. Again. Suddenly it felt like Krishna always slipped free and she was left behind to detangle herself from the shame of her blunders. She had a dozen questions for him and it vexed her to know she would never have the opportunity to ask them now.

  The door whined open. Vimla turned her head as Minty crept gingerly over the floorboards. “I waking, Mints,” Vimla said.

  Minty looked up and brightened. She flung her arms around Vimla’s neck and squeezed too hard. “You bathe in Limacol today?” she asked, pulling away, her nose crinkling.

  “My head hurting me steady, Mints. Limacol the only thing that works.” Vimla curled into a ball, watching her friend.

  Minty frowned and floppe
d into Vimla’s desk chair. “Vims, my mother here, too. We go have to talk fast.”

  Vimla rolled her eyes. Of course Sangita was here. How else would the status of Vimla’s snake bite reach the village? “Quickly, then,” she said.

  Minty nodded. She didn’t need prompting. “He sorry, Vims.”

  Vimla wasn’t sure how she had expected the conversation to begin, but it wasn’t like this. She had just finished stoking her ire. She wasn’t ready for Minty to douse it with news of Krishna’s regret. “He say so?” she asked, despite herself.

  Minty nodded. “Up, Vimla. Let we exercise while we talk.”

  Vimla groaned, but Minty threw off the coverlet and draped Vimla’s arm over her shoulder. There was no sense arguing—there was no time anyway. “Yeah, he was upset at he maticoor. I think is guilt had him so, Vimi. He tell me he feel real bad he couldn’t reach you in the cane.”

  Vimla dropped her good foot over the side of the bed and lowered the other with care until her toes just touched the floorboards. “So what happen? He know how long I wait for he? He hear about the snake?” Her voice rose with each question. She was riling herself up again and she was glad. Better anger than grief.

  Minty wrapped her arm around Vimla’s waist, pinching her flesh through her shirt. “Shh! The window open, Vimla.” She hoisted Vimla to a standing position. “Shift your weight on me.” Vimla did as she was told, filled her lungs with air and took a cautious step forward. “Good,” Minty said. “It wasn’t he fault, really,” she continued. “My father and Puncheon see he walking along the river and they stop Krishna to catch crab with them. They wanted to hear about Tobago. You know none of we ever see Tobago before, Vimi.”

  Vimla frowned. While she was flying from the macajuel, Krishna had been fishing for crab. Minty read the expression on her face. “Well, he couldn’t tell them he was coming to see you, Vims,” she said. She tightened her grip and pulled Vimla along. “Another step. Come on.”

  Vimla hobbled forward, feeling blood rush into her legs. “So what he wanted to meet me for when everything done fix up for he to marry Chalisa Shankar?”

  “To tell you he sorry—”

  Vimla sucked her teeth long and hard. “How much things Krishna sorry for?” she said, resisting the thawing in her heart.

  “I nearly dead in the cane for him to tell me he sorry?” She grunted with the effort of her next step, but she was building momentum now.

  “You ain’t nearly dead, Vimla,” Minty said, although they both knew that if she’d encountered a venomous snake, they might not be having this conversation now. “Let me finish what I have to tell you, nuh?”

  Vimla clamped her mouth shut. They reached the window and she leaned on the sill to rest. Downstairs Sangita was making small talk with Chandani and Chandani was eyeing Sangita’s flimsy white blouse with disapproval.

  “He wanted to tell you is only you he was studying in Tobago. He cannot stand Chalisa Shankar. Not at all.”

  “Why?” she murmured. The room tilted on an angle.

  Minty giggled. “ ‘Too much style in she backside for me.’ ”

  Vimla raised an eyebrow. A smile tugged at her lips. “Krishna say that?”

  “And he love you, Vims.”

  “He say that, too?”

  Minty nodded. “And he ain’t marrieding Chalisa again. He go come for you tonight and allyuh go sail to Tobago to live. His partner, Dutchie, have a boat. He say his Auntie Kay cannot wait to meet you.”

  Vimla’s knees went weak and Minty had to tighten her grip so she didn’t fall.

  “Let we go back to the bed,” Minty said.

  Vimla shook her head. “Let go. I want to try for myself.” Vimla uncurled her arm from around Minty’s neck and limped to the bed on her own. She fell across it and rolled onto her back. “Krishna really coming for me?” she asked Minty, breathless.

  “Yes! What I go lie for, Vimi?” Minty smiled and collapsed on the bed beside Vimla. Together they stared at the silver galvanized roof. “Vimla.”

  “Mmm?” Vimla’s mind was far away now. She was falling into Krishna’s arms, sailing on a boat, running along a beach, feeling freer than she ever had.

  “It have more to the story.”

  Vimla turned her head so she was staring at Minty’s milky face. What more could there be?

  “Remember I tell you about Mastana Bahar? Chalisa Shankar sing on the show last night.”

  Vimla raised her head. “You story.”

  “Is true.”

  “So?”

  “So Pundit Anand vex like you wouldn’t believe. We hear him bawling in the mandir this morning.”

  Vimla propped herself up on her elbows. “Why? Ain’t he happy to have a daughter-in-law who could sing in the mandir when he son saying prayers? Pundit Anand like nothing better than to put on a good show.” She giggled. He would be livid when he discovered Krishna gone on the morning of the wedding.

  “But it was a film song, Vims, and Chalisa’s performance was … sexy.” Minty’s fair complexion coloured.

  “Who say?”

  “My father.”

  “Who know?”

  “Nearly everybody.”

  Vimla’s head fell against the bed again. She chewed her lip, trying to ignore the fluttering in her belly. Vimla knew what Minty was thinking; she herself was thinking the same thing. But what were the chances that after all this preparation to marry Chalisa and Krishna, Pundit Anand would call off the wedding?

  Headmaster’s Appeal

  Saturday August 31, 1974

  CHANCE, TRINIDAD

  Krishna retreated to the veranda to drink his morning Ovaltine in peace. He swung his feet onto the railing and crossed one ankle over the other, ignoring the angry incantations rising from the prayer room. His father’s madness swung like a pendulum, one minute petitioning God to curse the Shankars, the other cursing the Shankars and their money-making oranges of his own volition. It had gone on in this way through the night and Krishna couldn’t bear to listen any longer.

  The plan had gone awry and he could think of nothing else. Dutchie had warned him not to deviate from their design in any way, but how could Krishna have known that Om and Puncheon would be liming by the river, that he would be intercepted, held back for an hour while Vimla waited for him in the cane field? Krishna sighed. A niggling voice told him Dutchie would have known how to fend off their questions and carry on his way without arousing suspicion. Krishna cursed himself. He wondered if Vimla could ever forgive him.

  Vimla flounced into his mind, fire in her eyes, and vehemently shook her head no.

  Krishna stared into his Ovaltine. He wished he could talk to her now. She was a mere seven minutes away—three if he ran—but the distance made no difference: she was just as inaccessible now as she had been from Tobago. Still, it was worse here somehow. At least in Tobago, Dutchie and Auntie Kay had bolstered his black moods with their laughter and antics. Here, at home, he was subject to constant orders: Read this. Study that. Sit here. Marry she. Smile—Bhagwan is watching. Pray—Bhagwan is listening. Now his father was delirious, his mother weepy, and Vimla had probably tumbled so far out of love with him there was no point in even hoping anymore.

  And yet he did. He hoped that Minty would deliver his regrets, his adoration, his proposal to Vimla in time. If she managed this, maybe they would end up together after all.

  “Sita-Ram and good morning, Pundit!”

  Krishna started. Good morning? Who would be so foolish as to bid his father good morning today of all days? He swung his legs from the railing and peered down at the road. Headmaster Roop G. Kapil stood before the house, admiring the profuse orange ixora stuffing themselves through the gates. He looked up and caught Krishna’s eye. “Sita-Ram, son.” His blazer lifted and winged to the side when he waved, exposing, nestled beneath his armpit, a sweat stain the shape of a hummingbird’s wing.

  Krishna set his Ovaltine on the wicker table and trotted down the stairs to unlatch the gates. �
��Sita-Ram, Headmaster.” He didn’t know how to tell the headmaster he had chosen the worst time to call, that his father was busy imploding in the prayer room. “Come in.”

  Headmaster strolled in. He looked taller than Krishna remembered. And there was a spring in his step that was new. “Nice to have you back from Tobago, son. I hope your Auntie Kay is well.” He patted him on the back as they made their way to a table and four chairs below the house. Headmaster took a seat and rested his elbows on the table. “Where the old man this morning?” He glanced at his watch. “I wouldn’t keep he long. I know he have a little wrinkle to iron out.” Headmaster tried an apologetic look, but it was lost in his unusual cheerfulness.

  Krishna hesitated. His father would have little patience for Headmaster Roop G. Kapil in this state of joy, especially when it was clear he’d already heard of Chalisa’s indiscretions. “You go take some coffee? Tea?”

  Headmaster waved the offer away just as Anand yelled, “Chalisa Shankar gone on Mastana Bahar and make a ass out of we family! Does that old Nanny think I is a fool? Does she think she can dump she slack granddaughter on my family and we go open we arms like stupidies for she?”

  “Anand, shh. Somebody downstairs,” Maya said.

  “You think the neighbours ain’t already know?” Anand asked, but he lowered his voice anyway because even in crisis his reputation was to be swathed in piety. “It only have one television in Chance, but somehow every man, woman and child done hear about Chalisa Shankar’s”—there was a pause and Krishna imagined his father grasping at the air for the right word—“spectacle! The people in this district does spend too much time talking to each other and not enough time talking to Bhagwan, Maya.”

  Maya murmured for him to breathe deeply, to mind his heart, to attend to the visitor who was waiting.