Dream Girl
Sunday September 1, 1974
ST. JOSEPH, TRINIDAD
Chalisa was spent from a night of crying and now she stood like a mannequin in the middle of her parents’ bedroom while Delores fussed around her with an assortment of safety pins and hairpins clamped between her lips. Avinash lay on his belly on the bed, knocking his ankles together, his chin tucked in his palm.
“She pleats crooked, Delores,” Nanny said, whisking into the room. She brought with her the scent of incense, perspiration and the faintest hint of rum.
Delores froze, pins protruding from her mouth like teeth. She had just finished dressing Chalisa and it had taken her well over an hour. She watched, horrified, as Nanny unpinned the phaloo from Chalisa’s shoulder and yanked the pleats from the front of Chalisa’s petticoat. Chalisa should have felt sorry for Delores as she spat the pins into her palm and sank onto the bed next to Avinash, but her heart was too full with pity for herself.
Two weeks ago Chalisa could not have imagined her decision to audition for Mastana Bahar would inevitably yoke her to an aspiring pundit. Now she understood that Nanny’s pride was as brittle as her bones, that her own flirtatious performance had erased some smugness from Nanny’s face. But Nanny’s reprisal was excessive. Just as Chalisa stretched a toe in the vast realm of stardom, Nanny yanked her away. What Nanny didn’t see was that Chalisa needed to sing and dance; it was the one thing that dispelled her loneliness and made her feel that her mother was nearer somehow.
Nanny crouched; her knees cracked. She wove the crimson silk between her gnarled fingers until a dozen perfect pleats swept from Chalisa’s navel to the tips of her toes. “Like that, Delores,” she said, her face contorting in discomfort as she straightened. She took a step back to admire her work. “Make sure my pleats look so before you light the funeral pyre. If my pleats look twist-up for Bhagwan, I go come back and haunt allyuh.”
Delores was frightened already. She nodded and studied the folds and drapes of Chalisa’s sari as if she were stamping the image in her mind.
“How you feeling, Chalisa?” Nanny asked. Her smile seemed distant, like she was seeing someone else.
Yesterday Chalisa had pleaded with Nanny to undo this scheme. Her cries had echoed through the house and spilled into the yard, until Nanny ordered Delores to shut the windows up and draw the curtains. The house grew hot and more oppressive than ever. It was only when Chalisa’s tears had run dry and her throat had gone hoarse that Delores threw open the windows again. In the morning Chalisa woke with eyes so swollen she looked like she’d been devoured by mosquitoes. And here was Nanny, after Chalisa had held a cold compress to her eyelids for two hours, asking her how she was. The very sight of Nanny made Chalisa sick. She turned her face away and said nothing.
Nanny huffed; rum vapours wafted into the air. “Is some good licks you want, Chalisa!” she said. “Don’t think I wouldn’t beat you one last time before you get married.” She shook her finger in Chalisa’s face.
Chalisa rolled her tawny eyes boldly. Nanny hadn’t laid a hand on her since her parents had died—not even after her sultry performance on Mastana Bahar.
“Bring the jewellery, Avinash,” Nanny said.
Delores guided Chalisa to the vanity. Her blouse dug into her ribs when she moved.
Avinash brought the velvet cases one by one. He lined them up on the vanity in a neat row and stood like a soldier by Nanny’s side waiting for his next duty. Delores and Nanny unlatched the cases and opened the lids as if they’d done this together once before.
“Switch on the lights, Avinash.”
The jewels sparkled. Chalisa couldn’t help herself; she fingered a necklace, lingering on the emerald paisleys skirting a ruby the size of Avinash’s fist. Chalisa noticed Nanny’s lips twitch and she dropped her hands back into her lap.
Without a word, Nanny and Delores fell into a dance, circling Chalisa with pieces of jewellery in their hands. Nanny lifted her right hand and Delores her left, simultaneously sliding identical sets of gold and opal bangles over her wrists. Nanny disappeared behind her and Chalisa saw a bejewelled choker hover at her eye level before it closed around her slender neck. This was followed by two longer necklaces that draped across the red silk of her sari like ropes. Delores clipped a flower nose ring with a delicate diamond in the centre to Chalisa’s nose and hooked the filigree chain attached to one of Chalisa’s enormous earrings. The nose ring pinched her nostril and the earrings stretched her earlobes.
“Lift your foot,” Delores instructed. She crouched and placed Chalisa’s heels in her lap so that she could fasten the payals around her ankles. When Chalisa lowered her feet back to the ground the gold anklets tinkled a joyful sound that seemed out of place.
Avinash’s mouth made an O. “Pretty,” he breathed.
The last thing they did was pin the phaloo over Chalisa’s intricately twisted hair, cutting into her peripheral vision. She wondered then if Indian brides were so tightly wrapped and heavily ornamented to prevent them from running—and seeing.
“Nice,” Delores said.
Nanny folded her arms and nodded. Chalisa thought she glimpsed melancholy in her cataract eyes, but it dissolved before she could be sure.
Delores pulled Chalisa to her feet and motioned for her to look in the full-length mirror leaning against the wall. Chalisa refused. She let the weight of her bridal trappings pull her back into the chair, clinking in a dozen places. She didn’t need a mirror to see what was plainly written on Nanny’s and Delores’s faces: Chalisa looked precisely like the film star she’d always dreamed of becoming.
Her heart felt black.
When they came for her, Chalisa was sitting alone, a picture of her parents lying idly in her lap.
Delores kissed the picture and set it on the vanity. “Ready?” she asked.
Panic exploded behind Chalisa’s thick lashes. She gripped the sides of the chair and wondered if the women would drag her to the mandap. She clenched her jaw and resolved to stay until she was certain Vimla would not save her.
Avinash placed his hand over Chalisa’s. Her breath quickened at the scratch of paper against her skin. His eyes were the roundest she’d ever seen them, frightened and excited at once. She extracted the paper from his fingers. Delores busied herself with sliding yet more pins into Chalisa’s hair. Chalisa thought she heard her whisper, “Do fast before Nanny come.” But the thudding in her ears made it impossible to know for sure.
Chalisa’s hands trembled. She unfolded the scrap, tearing the edge in her haste.
Chalisa,
Do what you must. I am leaving Trinidad.
Vimla
Chalisa released the breath she was holding and for a moment felt nothing. She watched her fingers curl around the scrap, her knuckles turn white.
Somewhere tassa was rolling and growing louder. A woman cursed the heat. A baby cooed. A child exclaimed, “I see the bride, Mammy! Why she face vexy-vexy so?”
Chalisa fixed her gaze on her fist. “Avinash. Did Gavin reach?”
Avinash drew his solemn face close to Chalisa’s and murmured, “He say you still his Dream Girl.”
Nanny appeared in the doorway. Additional Xs around her mouth marked her impatience. “What going on here? The people waiting!”
Chalisa squared her shoulders, inhaled deeply and prepared for the greatest performance of her life. “Let we go.”
A Bacchanal Wedding
Sunday September 1, 1974
ST. JOSEPH, TRINIDAD
Krishna looked like the god his father had named him for, sitting beneath the wedding mandap, a pergola, in fabrics finer than anything Sangita had ever worn. His ornamented turban, jammed tightly over the tips of his ears, flashed in the guttering diya light. As he waited with his forearms just resting on his thighs, Krishna’s gaze skipped from face to face like a pebble over water until it fell on Vimla and drowned in her unblinking, bottomless eyes.
While Pundit Panday twiddled his thumb
s in his lap and beamed at the wedding guests seated in rows beneath the adjoining white tent, Pundit Anand admired the grand columns, where sprays of hibiscus, coxcombs and fragrant jasmines wilted in the heat and fire smoke. He wiggled his toes in the swaths of Indian textile cascading to the mandap floor in pools all around him. He caressed a gold braid tied round a drape of orange organza and his eyes twinkled.
“Watch how we pundit making a ass out of he self,” Chandani muttered to Vimla. Chandani had insisted they sit in the very first row, where the Govinds could see them and be reminded of their vacillating loyalty, of their base greed. Chandani pressed her spine into the back of the chair and knotted her fingers into a brown labyrinth.
Behind them Faizal Mohammed whistled. “Whey, sir! Watch style!” he exclaimed.
A collective gasp swept over the guests as Chalisa stepped from her home with Nanny, Delores and Avinash crowding about her like security. Nanny wound her veiny arm around Chalisa’s waist and Delores gripped her hand. It looked to Vimla like they were preventing Chalisa from running.
“Let we stand for the bride,” Pundit Panday said into the microphone. It crackled back at him.
The tassa group came around the house then, drumming and clashing their cymbals, eyes glassier and smiles broader than when they’d first arrived, and everyone knew Nanny’s best rum was rushing through their blood.
Avinash waited for the sea of people to rise, then he thrust his chest out and led the way to the mandap, marching and blowing wisps of hair from his face. He reminded Vimla of the roosters at home, but she was too wrought with nerves to smile. Avinash nodded at Krishna as he clambered up the three steps to the mandap and plunked himself down even before the bride. The familiarity of the look that passed between Krishna and Avinash somehow widened the gulf separating her from Krishna.
Chalisa flounced after Avinash and Vimla noticed Nanny’s grip tighten around her waist.” Oh gosh! Look how Chalisa running down she dulha!” someone laughed.
“You ain’t see how the boy good-looking? I don’t blame she.”
Chalisa glided by Vimla, the silk of her sari just brushing Vimla’s toes. Vimla couldn’t imagine why she was hastening to her fate this way. She wondered if Chalisa had received her note and knew that Vimla was leaving Trinidad. She crossed her feet at her ankles and tucked them beneath her chair.
Chandani followed Chalisa’s movements and sucked her teeth. “No behaviour.”
Chalisa made her way past Pundit Panday and Pundit Anand, but instead of sinking onto the peerha next to Krishna and hiding her eyes behind her lashes as all brides do, Chalisa Shankar disentangled herself from Nanny and Delores, stared directly at the crowd and flashed a smile so brazen even Sangita Gopalsingh dropped her fan into her lap with a gasp.
Krishna stared, bewildered.
The crowd murmured.
Nanny gripped Chalisa’s elbow and tried to push her down. Delores inched away like she would slip between the cascading textiles and vanish altogether. But Chalisa payed them no attention. Instead she lifted her arms in the air, sending her bangles clinking at her elbows, and twirled to show off her exquisite sari. Her payals tinked with each step. She was radiant and nefarious at once.
“Watch, nuh. She feel this Mastana Bahar!” Vimla recognized Gloria Ramnath’s voice.
Pundit Anand’s grey eyebrows gathered on his crinkled forehead like storm clouds. He threw Maya a troubled look; his jowls quivered. Maya pressed her fingers into her lips and shook her head in response.
Chalisa came full circle and winked an eye at the crowd, but Vimla suspected it was meant expressly for her. She found herself nodding back, silently urging Chalisa to do what she must—however outrageous—to see her through this day. It was the least she could do.
“I never see more.” Chandani pursed her lips, although Vimla sensed her mother was enjoying some secret thrill at the audacity of Chalisa’s actions.
Finally Chalisa sank to her peerha and Nanny made grand ceremony of straightening her phaloo, fanning her pleats and adjusting her jewellery. It was as if she would distract the crowd from Chalisa’s sass by emphasizing the richness of her attire. But Chalisa worked against her: she watched the guests watching her and let her red lips curl into a slow, flippant smile.
Pundit Panday closed his eyes against Chalisa’s pageantry and gushed forth a warble of Sanskrit. Suddenly the ceremony was underway again. Pundit Anand glowered across the bedee at Pundit Panday, raising his voice a decibel higher and jabbing the air as he rolled his tongue over the tricky bits. But Pundit Panday was oblivious to the showmanship.
Krishna did as he was told. Vimla felt her chest constrict and her palms grow clammy as he placed flowers here and circled incense there like a beautiful marionette in a theatre. For a moment Vimla’s resolve faltered. She tore her gaze from Krishna and reminded herself that it was her choice to watch him wed Chalisa. She could have stayed home. She could have fled with him to Tobago and struck this moment from history altogether. Chandani reached over and stilled her bobbing knee with a firm hand. The strength in that touch made Vimla’s vision of springing onto the mandap and intercepting the spurious union waver then fade away. She had chosen her path. It was up to Krishna to choose his. But even as she thought this, her heart leaped up against her ribcage and shattered.
Pundit Panday called for the dowry. Nanny bustled forward.
“On behalf of my late son,” she said, handing a woven basket lined with red cloth to Pundit Anand. The ragged corner of the deed peeked over the edge of the basket. Nanny stole a glance at Chandani, whose face was pinched in a black scowl, and Vimla felt yesterday’s shame boil hot in her veins all over again.
Pundit Panday chanted a mantra as he dipped the tip of a mango leaf into a lotah of water and flicked droplets onto the deed to bless it, and Vimla thought that no amount of prayer could undo the evil of this exchange.
Chalisa wet her lips and held Vimla’s gaze. The gold flecks in her eyes glowed luminous against the outline of black kajal. Vimla leaned into Minty. “Watch how she looking so pleased with she self, Mints.”
“I see she look like that before. That is how we end up at Maracas Bay,” Minty said.
Pundit Anand drew the basket to his heart and bowed his head in a show of humility.
Chandani rustled at Vimla’s side, unclasped her fingers, fixed her skirt, folded her arms. “God go punish he,” she said.
Suddenly a young man carrying a picture frame sprang nimbly onto the mandap. Even before she saw his face, Vimla knew who it was. She thought, not for the first time, there was something gallant about him.
Avinash hopped up. “Gavin!” he exclaimed. He flung his arms around Gavin’s waist, and Nanny face became a shrivelled prune of disapproval.
“Who is this now? Chandani wondered aloud.
Faizal brought his head in close to Vimla and Minty. “That witch there,” he said, nodding to Chalisa, a smirk on his lips, “have more tricks than two allyuh put together.”
Pundit Panday froze with his mango leaf arced in the air. “Yes, son?” he said to Gavin.
“Excuse me, Baba.” Gavin knelt beside Pundit Panday so that his words fell into the microphone and carried to the back of the sprawling tent. “Sorry I late, Nanny,” he said. “Here is the deed for the Shankar estate on Orange Field Road. I frame it and thing like you ask.” He bowed, showing off the big poof of his hair.
Chalisa’s smile was as red and sweet as sorrel.
The colour from Nanny’s face drained away; her skin appeared more translucent than ever. She grabbed the frame from Gavin’s hands and pressed it against her small body. A bark of a laugh escaped her. “Never mind he, Baba.” She gestured for Pundit Panday to carry on. “The deed done bless. It there in the basket!”
Chandani sat forward in her chair. Her small eyes darted from Gavin to Nanny to Pundit Anand and back. “Lawd Father!” she breathed. “What it is really going on here?”
Pundit Anand frowned. “Wait, nuh! Ain’t
the deed for the estate on Orange Field Road in the basket?” He beckoned to Maya, who lifted her sari pleats and climbed the stairs to the mandap. Her silver fly-aways curled in the heat. Anand plucked the paper from the basket and brought it close to his face. “This deed for a orchard in Quinam!” He passed it to Maya for her scrutiny. “Ain’t you tell we you was giving we the biggest orchard allyuh have? It have more orange in Headmaster’s tree than all of Quinam orchard!”
Headmaster, seated across the aisle, pushed his glasses up on his nose and nodded at the compliment.
The crowd’s murmuring rose to outright chatter.
“That Chance pundit real greedy, boy.”
“But Nanny real fooling he. The man right to ask for he correct dowry.”
“I want to know how that young man get that next deed.”
“What happen? You blind? You ain’t see how Chalisa skinning she teeth all over the place? Is she self who give that boy the deed.”
“What the ass is this?” Someone sucked their teeth. “Big man and woman shitting up the children wedding for greediness!”
Nanny hunched and placed her wrinkled hand over her heart. “Baba,” she said to Pundit Anand, “you expect a old and elder lady like me to keep track of every piece of land, orange and deed I own? It must be slip my mind.” She held her head with her arthritic fingers.
Pundit Anand darkened. “I find thing slipping your mind steady these days. You also forget to tell we Chalisa was performing on Mastana Bahar.” He whipped the deed from Maya’s fingers, dropped it back into the basket like a piece of debris and wiped his hands on his dhoti.
Maya nodded. Her fly-aways framed her face like smoke.
The people gasped.
Chandani sprang to her feet. “It good for you, Anand! Allyuh is like family already—crooked same way!” She pointed at him and he recoiled.
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