by Shani Mootoo
Viveka did so, and Vashti followed with, “Now, tuck your arms closer to your sides.”
Viveka didn’t dare say it, but it flattered her that Vashti thought she looked like a body builder. She sucked her teeth and relaxed her body; her chest rose and her arms sprung out again. “Vashti, what does this have to do with anything? It doesn’t feel natural for me.”
“Okay, you do look kind of tough for a female.”
“Christ! Say girl or woman, but not female. That makes it sound as if you’re talking about a cat or some other animal.”
“Whatever. I am trying to say that you have a tendency to be muscular. I mean, really: do you want big calves and harder arms — which you will get if you play sports? That’s so ugly on a . . . whatever. It makes us look mannish. Mom says you’re sort of mannish.”
That was enough. The word mannish was unacceptable. Not wanting her parents to hear them, Viveka kept her outburst as low as she could. “Well, I just don’t want to have someone carry two bags of groceries from the cashier to my car, like every other woman we know does. It’s not just about strength. It’s about exploiting others. And about not realizing one’s full potential. It’s not like we’re incapable, you know. Do you see those women walking on the side of the highway with bundles on their heads and heavy bags in either hand? They can’t pay others to do it for them, but they are women, and have no choice but to be strong. Tell me they are mannish! All this dependence we are taught is not natural, it is class related. I don’t know why it is admirable in our little claustrophobic world to be pretty, weak and so dependent.”
Vashti looked perplexed. She said, “Vik, sometimes you sound like you’re not really talking to anyone in particular, just lecturing.”
Viveka said nothing, but she was still chewing over the word mannish.
“Look, it’s getting late, I have to hurry. Please let me dress now,” Vashti pleaded. “Should I wear these earrings or these?”
Viveka pointed to one pair and said, “In my day”— at which they both smiled —“we couldn’t wear any jewellery to school. Now look at you, with eyeliner. I hope you study as well as you look.”
But just as Viveka got to the door, Vashti said, “I saw Merle Bedi yesterday.” Viveka stopped. This information, immediately following a conversation about mannishness, made her feel ill.
“So?”
“She asked me for money.”
Viveka yearned to know more, for the state of her old friend distressed her. But she couldn’t bear the thought of being judged unfairly through association. “Where did you see her?” she asked casually, as if barely interested.
“On the promenade. At lunchtime.”
“What were you doing on the promenade?” asked Viveka harshly. She tried to suppress the memory of Merle confiding her love for their science teacher, Miss Seukeran. When they were in fourth form, Viveka had had a long conversation with Merle, trying to make her understand that what she felt was admiration, the desire to be whatever Miss Seukeran was. But Merle had eventually told Viveka that sometimes she felt like she wanted to hold Miss Seukeran in her arms, and kiss her lips, and that these thoughts made her whole body tingle and shake. Viveka’s heart had pounded. She didn’t know if this was from anger and embarrassment at being party to the knowledge of such a thing or from the fear that she knew something of what Merle felt.
For Viveka, it was Miss Russell. Miss Sally Russell. But the feeling hadn’t lasted. Miss Russell had been her and Merle’s physical education teacher two years earlier. She had just arrived from England. She was tall, very thin, and angular for a woman. She had longish hair that was parted on one side. It was mostly kept back in a bun, but strands would hang down over her face and cover one eye, and she was always having to push them back behind her ear. Sometimes when she was lost in thought she would take some hair between her fingers and, as if she had made a paint brush, she would swipe, softly, back and forth along her lips. Viveka had studiously tried to make a habit of that very action, but for one thing, her hair wasn’t long enough. The other students used to try to describe the colour of Miss Russell’s hair to each other. It was auburn; no, it was blonde; no, it was honey-coloured. It was more like hay. As if they knew the colour of hay. Actually, it was golden. Rays of sunshine itself. And Miss Russell, her face was the sun. Everyone was taken aback by her eyes, which were a kind of blue, a shimmer to them like the iridescent blue side of the wings of a morpho butterfly. Her leanness was envied, yet no one would really have wanted to be so thin for fear of being called meagre or sick. It looked good on Miss Russell, though. And the way she moved about — swiftly, mannishly, they said, quickly adding that, regardless, she was more feminine than most of the other teachers on the staff. The other teachers in comparison were motherly and grandmotherly. Girls came to school with their hair piled on their heads just like Miss Russell’s, and wearing long dangling earrings like hers, and even Miss Russell was obliged to tell them to remove those earrings as jewellery was not part of the school uniform. Girls brought a salad to school for their lunch and ate that instead of doubles and rotis, hoping that they might lose a little of their roundness. But emulation peaked there. Miss Russell confused everyone. They all agreed that she was unusually glamorous for a teacher, but in the next breath she was criticized for being too strong, too serious, for walking the grounds too fast, even during lunchtime and recess when everyone slowed right down. And there were days when her leanness was questioned. “What it have on her for a man to hold?” they asked.
Miss Russell gave tennis lessons and coached netball and throwing the javelin and discus. She had a boyfriend, a local white man who the students, through their mysterious and sometimes questionable methods, found out was an oilfield worker. He would come and pick her up after school on his big growling motor bike, and the instant she saw him, it was abundantly noted, Miss Russell lost all of her physical-education teacher ways and became like any of the other women on the staff — save for the nuns. Suddenly her gait changed and she was all smiles. She would loosen the bun on her head, pull on the helmet, and hop on the bike with more grace than when she was walking the school grounds. She would slide in tight behind her boyfriend, throwing her long sharp arms around him to hug him first and then sliding her hands to his sides, where they came to rest as he took off with such a jolt forward that the sixth-form girls knew he was aware of their eyes on him. With that helmet on, leaning tight against her boyfriend, Miss Russell was everything most other girls wanted to be. Not Viveka, though. She found herself angry with Miss Russell for being so intimate with her boyfriend in public, in front of her students, and knew even as she felt this that she was being silly. Still, she felt what she felt. She and her friend Merle Bedi thought the other students shallow for gawking at Miss Russell’s boyfriend the way they did. Viveka also watched him intently, but she knew that her watching was different. She wondered what it was that Miss Russell found alluring about him. She compulsively imagined the motorcycle rider, the oilfield worker, and Miss Russell in a hot bedroom, a red and blue afghan rug on the floor, these two lying on top of the rug, he on top of her — perched was the word that always came to her — his mouth on hers, his body pecking away at hers mercilessly.
There were two Miss Russells. The teacher who paid Viveka every attention, who laughed with her and showed her how to do things right; and then that other one — an entirely different person as far as Viveka was concerned — who, once she exited the gates of the school, became as common as everyone else. Viveka wished she could save that Miss Russell from the fate of ordinariness. Miss Russell coached one of the older students who, outside of school life, took part in track competitions and won them. Viveka wanted to be coached in track, too, but Miss Russell, after putting Viveka through certain trials, had dissuaded her, saying that her body type suggested she would not be a good candidate for track but would do better in field — at throwing the discus and the javelin. This was certainly one way of saying that she was chunky, boxy, Viv
eka had thought, but no one else had been picked for the discus and javelin, and so she also felt special. She imagined the discus in her clutch, spinning it-spinning it-spinning it until she was giddy with untold power and strength, then releasing and launching it far out across the field with an enormous force, all of this with Miss Russell’s eyes on her. Viveka’s eyes were almost always on Miss Russell.
For a time, Viveka’s life revolved around a measly eighty minutes per week of physical training. During school hours she found herself looking out of the classroom window to see if Miss Russell was anywhere in sight. If she did see Miss Russell, she would suddenly be overcome by a tickling feeling throughout her body and dizziness, and she would want to burst into a run, longer and much faster than she was capable of in reality. She knew then, in spite of what Miss Russell had told her, that such power was pent up inside of her. When Miss Russell put together a school team to compete in intra-school sports, Viveka tried out for the discus and javelin to see if she was ready for competition. She did strength, endurance, power, and jump tests. Viveka was weak in the endurance tests, yet she could jump higher than most of the students, and this surprised Viveka herself because of her boxiness. And she tested better than anyone else in power and strength. She went home and boasted to her parents and sister. Her mother showed no interest, but Vashti said, “You would jump to the moon for Miss Russell. If Miss Hollis or Sister Veronica were our PE teacher you would be sick for every class.”
In the end, Viveka was chosen to be on the school’s sports team, but her parents absolutely refused to allow her to take the time after school and on weekends to train. And Miss Russell lost interest in Viveka after meeting with Devika and Valmiki to try to persuade them to let Viveka train and compete. Viveka’s parents had informed Miss Russell that there was no future in that sort of thing, and that Viveka, being weak in math and in French, would be taking after-class lessons in those subjects, starting immediately. Soon after that, Viveka heard that Miss Russell and her boyfriend were getting married, and a terrible acne broke out on Viveka’s face.
It was two years later when Merle Bedi told Viveka about wanting to kiss Miss Seukeran. Saying these words out loud was craziness. But Viveka understood something of it. That kind of talk, she felt, could get them both in trouble. A clash of thoughts, incomplete ones, incomplete-able ones, resounded in her head. She would be implicated in Merle’s craziness: there was Viveka’s very public and close association with Merle, Viveka’s well-known affinity for sports and things mannish. And there was Miss Russell — Miss Russell leaving, Miss Russell engaged, Viveka’s coinciding acne problem, and in the instant of Merle Bedi saying she wanted to kiss Miss Seukeran, Viveka knew that she, too, had wanted to throw the discus and javelin because it was her way of kissing Miss Russell.
She stood up, looked down at Merle, and snapped, “I wouldn’t go around announcing that if I were you.”
Merle’s eyes were bright, as if she was seeing some kind of saving truth. “I want to tell her. I need to tell her. It’s so real and so good. I feel like a kite, Vik. It’s unbelievable. I can’t study or think of anything else. She makes me feel that way. She does it. She must feel it. Come on, Viveka, can’t you see how she pays attention to me, more than to anyone else?”
“Merle, I really think you should keep those feelings and all of that kind of thinking to yourself. I don’t want to carry on this conversation. Don’t say those kinds of things. Not even to me.”
But Merle was beside herself, composing music for Miss Seukeran, writing Miss Seukeran cards in flowery language expressing her admiration. Even if she had not actually expressed her dirty thinking, Viveka thought, it would have been obvious to a moron. Saying those words out loud was a kind of suicide. And indeed, there had been some camaraderie between the teacher and Merle, but it was shortlived. Suddenly Miss Seukeran stopped noticing Merle, no longer stopped on her walks down the hallways to say hello to her, and seemed almost to shun her. Viveka wondered if Merle had told Miss Seukeran how she wished to kiss her.
THAT MORNING, VIVEKA RECALLED, VASHTI HAD SULKED AT VIVEKA’S unwelcome authoritarian manner, a manner oddly prompted by the mention of Merle Bedi.
“I got a doubles for lunch. What does it matter to you?”
“But why are you eating doubles for lunch?” Viveka persisted. “You should know better than that. They are so greasy. You’ll get pimples. Why don’t you take a proper lunch to school? You don’t even have to make it. Get Pinky to make you a sandwich and a salad.”
“I am trying to tell you about Merle Bedi, and you’re going on about my lunch. In any case, you used to buy doubles too. How come you can eat it but I can’t? Why do you have to disagree with everything and make others feel like they’re wrong or stupid? You are so contrary.”
“Contrary!” That was not a word that Vashti would use on her own, Viveka reflected. Her suspicion was confirmed when Vashti sheepishly responded: “Mom says you’re contrary and I just happen to agree.”
Merle had clearly suffered from Miss Seukeran’s rejection more than from the hush-hush gossip that eventually ensued. By the last year of high school, she withdrew even from Viveka. From the time she had begun high school, Merle had been the top student in her particular stream. Suddenly she was failing every subject, and grinning about it as if that was an achievement. By the time Viveka had entered university, Merle had started living on the street. It was said by some people that her parents put her out, and by others that she left home, on her own, this act being part of the same craziness that had her loving within her own sex.
“Christ, Vashti. You’re like a clone of Mom. Why can’t you just think for yourself? Well, perhaps you do think I am contrary, you just have to have the vocabulary fed to you.”
With that, Viveka slammed shut Vashti’s door. The loudness of it brought her father from his bedroom. He glared at her, but said nothing. She glared back at him, thinking, “You’re such a coward, Dad.” Instead of trying to bribe and cajole her with the offer of the chauffeur, why couldn’t he have spoken his true mind to her mother, or to her, or to both of them. How could the two of them be her parents, she their child? She felt betrayed in myriad ways.
If the altercation with her parents had made Viveka wish she were not part of her own family, this one with Vashti had left her feeling a little frightened, but she wasn’t sure of what, exactly. As she was dressing for her trip to the campus she had tried on a skirt her mother had long ago bought for her, but which she had not yet worn, and a pair of black low-heeled, open-toed shoes. In the mirror she saw a stranger. The waist of the skirt, and the way her shirt fell over it, brought notice, she felt, to her already shapeless torso. She considered the thick, naturally muscled legs before her. Her legs were dry and needed shaving. All she had to do was to pull on a pair of flesh-tone stockings and, despite her age, she would have passed for a dowdy high school teacher. She flinched.
She left the house feeling more comfortable, but a little graceless, in her uniform of button-down collared shirt, blue jeans, and Indian-style leather slippers.
SCABBY LOOKING STUMPS OF BRUSH STUCK OUT OF THE WATER IN THE swamp fields closest to the road. Red-breasted blackbirds, their black feathers bright and shiny as if polished by the rain, did their mating dance, hopping directly into the air as if bounding up from a trampoline and floating down again to land on the same few inches of visible, bare scrub top. They looked to Viveka as if they had alighted on something that either burned them or pricked them and so they flew up in utter surprise and a-flutter, only to alight on the same spot again and to have the same effect occur. Over and over. Such pretty birds and so silly, she would normally think, but today her mind was elsewhere, and the dance of the birds was nothing more than that, an animal dance.
With such slow progress along the highway Viveka was thankful that she didn’t have a class to attend this morning. She hadn’t really wanted to go to the university campus, but it was better than staying at home in the presence of h
er mother. This way, she didn’t have to make the choice of prolonging their disagreement or giving it up, either out of wariness or real defeat. By travelling to the university in this public manner, without the aid of the family’s chauffeur, she hoped her mother would in her absence have the time and chance to come to the understanding that she was wrong and Viveka right. Besides, travelling like this she felt apart from her family, able to take part in the ordinary life of her country, something her mother knew nothing of, and something her father liked to think he understood because he had patients from all walks of life. Yes, it was true that he hunted with a few black men who were skilled labourers. If any of the other passengers had been watching Viveka they would have seen her shake her head, and curl her lips as she thought scornfully, “But if we were to have a party at our house there is no way he would invite them, his so-called buddies. What did I do to be born into this hypocritical mess? I can’t, I just can’t allow myself to become them.”
Sometimes Viveka had the sensation that her arms were tightly bound to her body with yards and yards of clear Scotch tape. When she felt this, as she did now, she imagined trying to locate with her eyes one of the ends, her eyes darting, blurring, concentrating on the silvery-clear mess that bound her, and on locating a faint line that indicated an edge of the tape, tilting her head and attempting to reach it with her mouth, stretching her lower jaw until the sides of her mouth ached, down to her shoulder, and raising her shoulder up to it as much as she could, and using her teeth to pry up a tiny piece. Then, she imagined, she would hook it and yank it up without tearing it off. There in the taxi, her neck taut and her temples aching with the mere thought of this exercise, she could taste and feel uneven bits of tape. She almost gagged, imagining spitting out those stubborn flecks of tape on her tongue.
