Om filled his lungs and let the air whistle softly through his nostrils. They flared and he sneezed. “I try, but she watch me like she go dead if I take it.”
Chandani sucked her teeth, but she had made no attempt to do the deed herself. In the darkest recess of her mind—the place where she dared to glance inward—Chandani wondered why she was afraid to yank the suitcase from Vimla’s grasp. She had no problem forbidding her going to Canada, criticizing the very absurdity of the idea, but the suitcase she could not take from Vimla. Tears slid from her half-shut eyes into the pillow as she realized that a part of her—a small, yet significant part—hoped Vimla found some way to disobey her.
An hour before dawn, when faint stars were still visible against the colourless sky, Chandani heard Vimla creep from her room. She sat up and nudged Om. “Wake up.” But she knew he wasn’t sleeping—he hadn’t snored all night.
Om caught Chandani’s hand. “Don’t quarrel with she,” he said. His voice was flat, as if he’d already resigned himself to letting his daughter go.
Chandani tugged her hand away. “Ge up, nuh? I ain’t make Vimla by myself.” As she bustled to the door, she realized her heart was pounding.
Vimla was not upstairs. Chandani and Om dashed out to the veranda. It was empty. Chandani was about to scream when she saw Vimla downstairs, standing at the open gates, the suitcase at her feet. Her hair was twisted into a neat plait that dangled down her straight back. She wore a dress that once belonged to Chandani, only it looked different on Vimla somehow, more elegant, less like a flour sack. From this distance Vimla could have been any woman with a plan. But she wasn’t; she was their daughter.
A car rolled through the gloom and idled outside the Narine gates with the headlights off. Chandani gasped and flew down the stairs just as Krishna stepped out and gathered Vimla in an embrace that warmed Chandani’s heart in spite of herself. She opened her mouth to question Krishna’s intentions, but something in the way Vimla said “So you reach at last” made her hang back in the shadows and watch.
Krishna’s gallant smile faltered. His hands slid down Vimla’s arms, lingered at her fingertips and fell away at his sides. He stumbled through an apology that grew so long-winded and pleading in Vimla’s silence even Chandani pitied him. But more than that, Chandani took secret delight in the way Vimla stood with her shoulders pushed back and her chin tilted just so, listening to Krishna promise himself to her yet again. When he finished—or rather, exhausted—all the ways he could convince Vimla of his loyalty, Krishna said, “Let we go now,” and held out his hand to her.
Om made to charge toward them, but Chandani grabbed his bicep and clung there.
Vimla inclined her head to the side as if she were seeing Krishna for the first time. “To?”
“Tobago.” He gestured to the suitcase sitting at her feet. “I send a message with Minty!”
Vimla’s smile was wistful. “Yes. And you send a message with Sookhoo to meet you in the cane field, too.”
Chandani scowled in the darkness. So Sookhoo was a fishmonger and a news carrier. She would fix him the next time she saw him.
“Here.” Vimla knelt beside the suitcase. The silver latches gleamed in the moonlight. They clicked under the gentle pressure of her fingers and the suitcase fell open like a yawning mouth.
A conch shell of pearl and pink shimmered against the beige lining. Vimla took it in her hands and cradled it like an object long treasured before offering it to Krishna. “Take it back.”
Something shifted in the twilight. The cicadas held their breath. The palm fronds arcing over the pair rose and fell in a sigh. Flambeaux, who sat watching them from the fence, flicked his tail and stalked away.
“You ain’t coming with me?” Krishna dragged his fingers through his hair and sank to his knees.
“No.”
Chandani closed her eyes. Om wrapped an arm around her spindly shoulders and drew her near.
“But Dutchie and Auntie Kay waiting.”
Vimla shook her head. “Who?”
Krishna took the conch from her outstretched hand and held it to her ear. “Listen. Hear that freedom? Hear that energy?” He had a far-off look in his eyes. “I have a friend called Dutchie …”
The Sweetness of Tobago
Saturday, August 31, 1974
BACOLET BAY, TOBAGO
Dutchie and Krishna looped their way over the narrow road on old bicycles that click-clacked as they pedalled. Branches studded with leaves still wet from last night’s rain slapped the bare chests of the cyclists in greeting. Krishna turned his face to the sky and caught sight of a blue-crowned motmot high in the trees, swinging its long tail feathers like a pendulum.
Dutchie glanced over his shoulder. “You good, Mr. Pundit? We going up a small hill just now.”
“I good, I good,” Krishna said. Sweat streamed down the sides of his body and soaked the elastic waistband of his shorts.
“You sure? I know you does spend whole day praying in Trinidad. Pundit work is real laziness,” Dutchie said.
A driver popped his horn and Dutchie and Krishna veered to the side of the road to let him pass. “Good morning, boys!” Auntie Kay called, waving a yellow handkerchief out the window.
“I could ask that man to give you a drop by my parents’ house, too, you know,” Dutchie said, just as the car coughed around a bend in a haze of exhaust fumes. “Don’t feel shame to ride with the lady.”
Krishna pedalled past Dutchie. “I find you have all kind of big talks this morning, Captain. You must be forget how I bowl you out yesterday. Like allyuh doesn’t know how to play cricket in Tobago, or what?”
Dutchie sailed past Krishna, steering with his knees as he styled his dreadlocks into an elaborate knot.
“Very Parisian,” Krishna said.
“Hush your ass.”
Krishna knew the house as soon as he saw it. The bungalow, painted sunset orange with a white wraparound veranda, sat tucked among a riot of blooming poui, flaming immortelle and bougainvillea trees. Pink climbing roses and vines of purple clematis wrapped the home in an embrace. And just outside the front door, throwing its bumpy leaves skyward in a perpetual expression of celebration, grew four fat aloe vera plants.
“We reach,” Dutchie said, dropping his bicycle in the grass. “This is home.” He jaunted across the lawn and ducked under a trellis of meandering vines and yellow roses. “Well, don’t just stand up there like you lost. Come, Pundit!” And then he vanished around the back of the house.
Krishna’s heart pinched with a strange mixture of wonderment and envy. Even as a boy, he couldn’t ever remember feeling this eager to be in his parents’ company. He lingered before the wooden signs standing proudly by the roadside: THE ICE CREAM MAN AND SOUP LADY LIVE HERE. WELCOME! A tortoise planter squatted at the foot of the sign, blue hydrangeas spilling out of its shell; seashell wind chimes tinkled on the porch; a baby goat curled up on the cushioned bench, dozing in the shade.
And certainly, Krishna thought, his home never held this much magic.
“Pundit!”
Krishna strode across the lawn and ducked under the trellis, where he found Dutchie stirring an enormous pot of soup. The soup bubbled and sent up the warm, rich aroma of broth that had cooked slowly, purposefully, for hours. “What kind of soup is it?”
“Provisions soup, my love.”
Krishna glanced up and there stood Dutchie’s mother in the doorway, holding a knife in one hand and a bowl of whole plantains in the other. She smiled at him and her eyes crinkled at the corners the way Dutchie’s did. Krishna looked for dreadlocks hidden somewhere beneath the green bandana tied around her head, but he found hair like soft silver wool instead.
“My name is Iris, my love, but everybody does call me The Soup Lady, or Auntie Soup Lady, or Mama.” She smiled, as if this last name was a particular favourite. “Welcome to my little Tobago haven.” Iris sat on a chair before the pot and began to cut fat chunks of plantain directly into the soup. Her hands w
orked quickly, but her gaze remained trained on Krishna’s face. “Do you like soup, son?”
He didn’t really, but she glowed with such enthusiasm Krishna knew he’d be a fool to refuse anything Iris had to offer. “Yes.”
Iris reached for another plantain and held it for a moment over the soup. “Not as much as my little Dutchie, I gather.” The plantain tumbled into the soup and sank beneath the surface. “He does show up here every Sunday morning with the sun for the first bowl of the day.” She tugged a dreadlock loose from his knot. “Nothing does cure a hangover like my soup, ain’t, Dutchie?”
Dutchie threw his head back and laughed. “What you put in the soup so far, Mama? It nearly done cook?”
Iris took the long-handled spoon from Dutchie’s hand and stirred. Her whole body swayed with the movement. A soft breeze lifted and dropped the green triangle of her bandana. “Cassava, eddoes, green fig, carrots, ochroe, sweet potato—”
“Hello. Good morning, Ms. Soup Lady!”
Iris stopped mid-stir and glanced over her shoulder. There stood a man and his daughter in their Sunday church clothes, grinning at her.
Iris placed a hand on her doughy hip. “Well, good morning, Clyde, and good morning, Jillian.”
“The soup ready?” Clyde asked, craning his neck to peek into the pot.
“Almost. I ain’t make the dumplings as yet, Clyde. Pass by on your way back from church, nuh?”
Clyde averted his gaze. “We ain’t going to church today, Auntie Ms. Soup Lady!” Jillian exclaimed. The pink baubles in her hair bounced with her. “Daddy say God go forgive we if we miss a day of church to eat ice cream.”
Iris smothered her laugh with a hand.
“And what your mommy say, Jillian?” Dutchie asked.
“Mommy ain’t say anything because Mommy in Trinidad visiting Auntie Pat.”
Clyde looked embarrassed. He lifted his daughter into his arms. “Jones in the back, Iris?”
“As usual,” Iris said with a wink. She inclined her head to Krishna then. “Your sweet Auntie Kay has been taste-testing for the past twenty minutes.”
Auntie Kay drifted back and forth on a swing suspended from a guava tree, a plastic spoon clamped in her mouth.
“What you think of my classic coconut, Kay?” Dutchie’s father, Jones, asked. He poured a milky mixture into the metal drum of his ice cream maker. “People from all over the island does come just for that.”
“Delicious, Jones,” Auntie Kay said, licking the spoon clean. “Better than the guava, not as good as the soursop, equal to the star fruit.”
Jones was packing the space between the drum and the outer barrel with ice. He stopped, brow furrowed. “True? The soursop better?” He poured salt overtop the ice to keep it from melting, deposited the cover and turned the ice cream maker’s handle round.
“And the mango?”
Kay looked at him wide eyed. “I forget how the mango taste!”
Jones chuckled. “Well, better taste it again, then.” He nodded to the barrels lined up on a table covered with wet cloths. “Is the one in the centre.”
Kay slipped off the swing and hummed her way to the ice creams. She helped herself to an extra spoonful of each.
Jillian skipped through the grass with the goat, mimicking his bleating sounds and squealing with delight. “Mr. Uncle Jones, you have any chocolate ice cream for me and the goat?”
Jones stopped his cranking. “Chocolate ice cream?” He crouched in the grass. “Ms. Jillian, you ever know me to make chocolate ice cream?”
The girl shrugged. “You could start.”
“What about sapodilla?”
Krishna made a face behind Jones and Jillian copied it. Jones stood up and brushed the grass off his knees. “Dutchie!” He snapped his fingers at his son, who lay sprawled in the grass, staring at the sky. “Turn that ice cream there. I going to introduce the wonders of sapodilla ice cream to little Jillian.”
It turned out Dutchie could churn a pale of ice cream as well as his father did. He wound the handle round and round, until sweat gathered at his temples. Jones nodded approvingly and then took Jillian by the hand and led her to a tree laden with sapodillas. “Look here.” Jones plucked the brown fruit from a branch and turned it in his hands. “This ain’t good. It half ripe.” He pelted it at Dutchie, who ducked just in time, and Jillian laughed. “But you see this one?” Jones twisted another from the same branch. “This one get nice and full on the tree. This is a sweet sapodilla good enough for Uncle Jones’s ice cream.”
Jillian looked at Jones askance.
“Dutchie, scoop out some ice cream from that pail for me, boy.”
Dutchie lifted the cover off the barrel and shovelled a generous serving of ice cream into an enamel cup for Jillian. She flicked her tongue over the ice cream, pensive. “This is sapodilla?” she asked.
Jones nodded, his brow furrowed again. “What you think?”
“I think you pick force-ripe sapodillas for this batch, Uncle Jones.” The goat nosed her belly and she let him gobble her ice cream up. “Why you don’t try and make barbadine ice cream instead?”
Jones scratched his head. “Barbadine?” A far-off look crept into his eyes and Krishna knew he was tasting barbadine ice cream in his mind for the first time. “Now, there’s an idea, Jillian!” he said, and gathered her into his arms.
Vimla listened intently to Krishna’s account of his stay in Tobago. He heard the enthusiasm in his own voice, became aware of his gesturing to help give shape to this other life he’d lived with Dutchie and Auntie Kay. Vimla laughed and grew pensive in all the right places—she even looked like she might be imagining herself in Tobago with Krishna. But when he was finished, Vimla swung the end of her plait back and forth and asked, “But what Tobago have for me?”
Krishna stared, dumbfounded, as if Vimla hadn’t heard him at all. He thought of telling her another story—there were so many to tell. Perhaps he hadn’t described his experience in enough colour, or maybe he’d told the jokes wrong. Even if that were true, certainly Vimla could see how much joy Tobago had brought him. Couldn’t she? “Me,” Krishna said. “You will be in Tobago with me.”
The silence that followed said everything. Vimla brushed a tear away, climbed to her feet and lifted the empty suitcase off the ground.
“I ain’t going without you,” Krishna said.
Vimla gave him a half-smile as if maybe she didn’t believe him. “Well, then I guess I go see you at the wedding in a few hours.” She backed away and pushed her weight against one of the gates and Krishna had no choice but to edge onto the road alone. They stared through the diamond pattern at one another—an eternity in a minute—until Vimla broke the spell, slipping a piece of paper to him without touching his fingers. Only after she’d turned away did Krishna read the note, climb back into his car and disappear.
Eye for an Eye
Sunday September 1, 1974
CHANCE, TRINIDAD
Faizal Mohammed threw a towel over one shoulder and set Sam on the other. “Allahu Akbar,” they exclaimed in unison. On his way to his rain barrel, Faizal whistled and tossed a new bar of soap in his hands. Sam whistled back, bobbing his head. “The wedding today, Sam,” Faizal said. “I telling you from now: you go have to stay home. Don’t let me come home in the evening and find you vexed.”
Sam whistled.
“Good parrot. Nice parrot.”
Faizal sauntered into his bathroom and checked the rain barrel for floating blossoms. A frown creased his brow. “Not one, Sam” he said gravely. “Something bad does always happen when the barrel have nothing.” He mumbled a prayer as he shuffled out of his slippers and flung his towel over the slab of corrugated iron that served as a wall. That’s when he heard the crash next door.
“Mangoes! Sam—you hear that?” Sam cocked his head in the direction of the Gopalsinghs’ residence. Faizal crept around the wall and squinted into the gloom.
“Who the hell put this bicycle here?” a voice growled.
Faizal darkened. Rajesh Gopalsingh. He felt cheated that Rajesh should sully his sacred bathing time with his wakefulness. Why was he up so early? This was Faizal’s hour!
Faizal heard the distinct twist of a pipe and the fall of water in a bucket. His ears burned.
“Sam, what the hell Rajesh think he doing?” He folded his arms and stood for the duration of Rajesh’s shamelessly short bath, relishing his groans of displeasure under the cascade of chilly water. When he was sure Rajesh had gone, Faizal stomped barefoot into his washroom and let Sam waddle off his finger onto the floor. He muttered while he stripped off his shorts and hoisted himself into the massive rain barrel. As the water rose to his chest and then his chin, Faizal let some of his irascible mood dissolve. But only some.
He vigorously lathered until clouds of silver-blue bubbles shimmered and rolled over the barrel’s edge, all the while hating Rajesh for stealing Sangita Gopalsingh and his bath hour, too. Sam strutted about with importance, catching lathers on his outstretched wings.
“Hello. Good morning, Faizal Mohammed.”
Faizal froze with the bar of soap in his armpit hair as Minty Gopalsingh rounded the corner into his bathroom. “Mangoes!” He dropped the soap into the water with a plunk and sank as low as he could into his barrel.
Minty took in the corrugated-iron walls, the large rain barrel, the soap holder, the frangipani awning, Sam waddling in the wet. And when her eyes fell on Faizal’s shorts and towel, she took them down one at a time. Faizal folded his arms in the bubbles and scowled so deeply his face hurt with the effort. “What the ass you doing here?”
Minty raised an eyebrow, not unlike Sangita. “Visiting.”
Faizal’s eyes bulged at her flippant air. “You are not welcome here. At this hour. In my bathroom!” he hissed.
“Is my mother?” Minty draped the towel over her shoulder and folded Faizal’s shorts into a neat rectangle, then again, into a square.
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