Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab

by Shani Mootoo

  With one of the notebooks tucked under my arm, I went out to the wall at the edge of the garden where Sydney and I used to sit, and under a luminescent sky in the heat of the day I again read Sydney’s tilting scrawl.

  I would dream often that I was a little piece of thread. I, the thread that is, hardened into a filament of wire so fine I was practically invisible. I had existed for a long time inside of a blurry bump that was on the surface of something so big that I was unable to see its edges. Somehow, I punctured the bump. I, the filament, emerged out of the bump and a crust of dried birth fluids clung along my short length. As I, this filament, lengthened—and this lengthening was happening rather swiftly—those dried bits dredged and trapped new bits along the way, and I, the filament, took on some width now. Suddenly I was longer than a tape measure, and was covered over and weighed down by the accumulating crust.

  Soon, in less than twenty-four hours, this encrusted filament will arrive at what I think of as the eye of a needle through which it—the unrealized strand of me—will pass, and forty-two years of accumulated crud will be scraped off—or so I hope—and on the other side of the needle a person will emerge. I am on the brink of personhood. It is strange, and not entirely believable, that a journey that has taken a lifetime could so suddenly reach its culmination, twenty-four hours from now, simply by me arriving at the door of a hospital. It is strange, and not entirely believable, and, I fear, a little foolish to expect.

  As I read, my emotions, urges, desires, beliefs surged one way and then the other, and I seemed to have little control over them. My interest in writing seemed at some moments to be a much-needed anchor, and at others to be almost unsavoury.

  I looked out beyond the silver sea towards the area of the island that had beautiful names and reflected on the fact that for nine years I had been coming to Trinidad for no other reason than to spend time with Sydney. A full day and several hours had now passed with no Sydney present. And yet, I was tied here.

  I remembered how, when I was a child and had visited this island for the first time with India and Sid, Sid’s mother had the cook prepare us a dinner one evening of small greyish-green freshwater fish. I remembered the tough skeletal covering, armour really, of the little fish whose name I would never forget, the cascadoo. The cascadoo had whiskers and was unlike any fish I had ever seen, not more than twenty centimetres in length, and rather frightful looking. The cook had curried about a dozen and a half of them. They remained whole in the dish, from head to tail, and we were to eat them with rice. I watched Sid push the scales up one of them, sliding her knife from tail up to head, and was appalled by the thick yellow flesh that was revealed. She encouraged me to try it, but as I was about to follow her lead, Mrs. Mahale recited a local saying: “Those who eat the cascadoo, the native legend says, will, wheresoever they may wander, end in Trinidad their days.” I was immediately terrified that if I ate even a morsel of the curry sauce in which the fish lay, I would die before the end of the trip. I refused it. India picked at one, declared it prohibitively bony and left most of it. Now I wondered, if I had indeed, however accidently, ingested the feared morsel of cascadoo that had been served to us that night, and was bound to stay here on this island. Sid had so enjoyed the ugly fish, sucking on the scales that were wide and long like toenail clippings, and on the fine threadlike bones to which the flesh clung in lumps. I remember the mound of scales, tails, fine bones and cartilage from the heads piled high on Sid’s plate, not a speck of flesh left behind. Had she been destined, then, to return to Trinidad and remain there until the end of his days?

  And now Sydney’s house seemed claustrophobic like a wood and concrete cascadoo. I knew nothing of the island, I told myself. Yes, yes, I had been to various parts of it, and I had seen the supposed drug lord across the road numerous times and met Mrs. Allen and her son a few times. But still I felt I knew nothing. I had no meaningful friendships here, and now that Sydney was gone, no further attachments. My connection to the island would soon loosen. I would do everything I could, as swiftly as possible, to wrap up all Sydney’s business here and leave sooner rather than later. This was not a holiday house, and for me Trinidad was not a holiday destination. I had no need for a place here. I thought of India the day we left Marrakesh to return to Toronto, waving wistfully to the wet-eyed staff as they waved back. As the taxi pulled away, India said to me, “Do you think, Joji, that they’re saying, ‘Au revoir, Madame, au revoir, Master Jonathan,’ or ‘Go on now, off you go. Quickly’?”

  Of course, the staff here at the house in Scenery Hills were unlikely to have said to me, “Go on now, off you go. Quickly.” To point to a mundane example: on one occasion during those first days after Sid’s death I was making my way to the stove when Rosita intercepted my path and reached ahead of me for the kettle. She prepared the coffee I wanted but had not yet asked for, and certainly had not expected her to make. At a different time, this might not have been worth noting. It would have been the natural order of things. But we were in that state where every action seemed to have greater intensity than usual, and to take on special meaning. I felt that Rosita was, in that instance, taking care of me rather than performing her usual duties. It is certainly possible that I am misguided in thinking that there was now a nuance in our relationship that meant, having become the inheritor of Sydney’s role, I was not simply the employer nor she simply the worker. I can only swear that the act was done with the kind of caring I had only known, before then, from Sydney.

  In moments like these, I felt with unwavering certainty that I had to keep the house, had to keep Rosita and Lancelot on. But such moments were still only fleeting.

  Quite suddenly, as I was facing the Gulf—my back to the house—I had one of my now-frequent revelations: I must immediately call Catherine. I was struck, as if by lightning, with the thought that after Sydney’s passing there was nothing to come between her and me any longer. (And I was instantly presented with further evidence that my presence was not being wished away by the staff: I had thumped my forehead with the palm of my hand by way of exclamation, saying aloud, “Of course!”—and not a second later Lancelot was behind me, his hands on my shoulders, guiding me to sit as if I were weak and infirm, and cooing that I needed to take it easy. I protested—perhaps too brusquely—that I was fine, I was fine; I’d simply had a revelation and hadn’t realized he was right behind me. He stayed at my side, thoughtful, and then said, “Is so when people you love dead and leave you. You does stand up just so, and realization coming at you fast-fast, like bullets from a gun.” That was yet another instant when I felt keenly how one has no privacy in this place, and doubted my ability to live among people who were so aware of my every move and need.)

  Once I was free of Lancelot’s hovering, I parsed my thoughts. I had always been so preoccupied with Sydney that I had never really attended to any of my relationships—not with my mother, friends or lovers, and, most recently, not with Catherine. Catherine was a good person. She was loyal. She was fair. She had a job she enjoyed, and interests of her own. She was the kind of person with whom one could reliably build a life.

  It was quite clear to me that she had to come to Trinidad. She had to stay here at the house with me while I sorted out details and made arrangements for these people who had worked here. It would allow her a glimpse into this side of my life. It would be a way of reconnecting with her, of showing her the closeness I shared with these people—the kind of closeness that I yearned for, at least most of the time—and, once we were back in Canada, she and I could begin our life together. And I would begin to write again.

  The longing to write was the only thing I was not having second thoughts about. I reminded myself that in one of the letters Sydney had left me he made special mention not of the furniture in his house, not of his paintings nor his boxes upon boxes of photographs and not of his trinkets, but of the notebooks he had used as diaries. He explicitly stated in the letter that I should do with them as I chose. Sydney knew I was a writer and
he knew I was having difficulty writing. Surely, then, with this particular mention, with this bequest, there was more than a suggestion, there was an outright invitation—a request, even—that I use the material of his life to create my next work. Was this not so? And wasn’t his story integral to mine? Wasn’t his love of Zain and sorrow over the tragedy that befell her also my story now? Yes, back in Canada, Catherine would do whatever it was she usually did, and I, finally able to write, would bury myself in this new body of work.

  But in short order my enthusiasm for reconnection dissipated. I imagined us in our little corners: I in mine, writing with measured contentment, but not knowing, and not needing to know, what she was doing in hers. When my book was finished, what would we do then? Catherine, the woman I lived with, would read my book, and she would learn about her lover—about me—from the book he had written while they were living together in the same house. Where could we go from there?

  7

  Too soon, I was obliged to put aside the notebooks and attend to my new household reponsibilities. I kept the books locked in my suitcase, which in turn was locked and stored inside the closet in my bedroom. Such caution was necessary, I felt, because of Sydney’s alarming speculation about Zain’s death, but it was an inconvenience, too, as I thought of the notebooks often and was drawn to reading them—to indulging myself in Sydney’s words, which, naturally, were delivered to me in his voice—at all hours throughout those first days when nothing was as usual. They were my only constant. I began my days with them, and ended with them. In between, I took refuge and sought answers in them.

  I began to feel unfairly put upon when my attention was needed, it seemed, for every little matter. Although the keys for the linen cupboard were in Rosita’s care—everything is stored in locked cupboards here—she wanted permission from me to remove guest towels and a tablecloth that had never been used. I wondered why she wanted them at such a time, but felt that I—who had previously never been more than a visitor in this house—had no right to ask. Sankar wanted to know if he could drive the car since it was registered in Sydney’s name, and Lancelot needed me to make a decision about whether or not the landscaping firm that usually came on that particular day of the week ought to carry on as usual. I was to telephone the company and speak with the manager. I did so reluctantly; I was not settling easily into my new role.

  All the while I ruminated on what I had learned about Sydney from reading the notebooks. I thought of Sid and India, and how Sid had so easily and lovingly done for my mother and me what she herself had been wanting from a partner. I know my mother would not have dreamed of reciprocating. But if she and Sid were so ill-suited to each other, why then had they remained together for so long?

  At the next opportunity I retreated to my room to ponder this, and in the notebook came across an entry that made me realize there was more to Sydney’s stories than he’d related to me himself. I was moved by the nuances in the words he’d written, nuances he’d chosen to omit when he’d spoken to me. I got up to lock the bedroom door, sat on the edge of the bed and read.

  Zain, what made you so brash and bold? Why did you have to challenge convention? You were always making people face the worst aspects of themselves.

  I have often wondered if you introduced me to Eric on that fateful visit because in Trinidad I had no real ties, other than to my parents and my sister, and it was unlikely that I would share your secrets with anyone. Did you think my presence in Trinidad afforded you an excellent alibi, a way to spend time more easily with Eric? Angus wouldn’t have thought twice about us coming and going, and so, once you were with me, you could carry on seeing Eric with ease. Sometimes even now, so many years later, I feel betrayed by you, Zain. I haven’t written this down before now because the implication has been too difficult for me to face. To think that you consciously used me is to put a tarnish on this friendship that meant so much to me. Perhaps you felt that since I had a secret of my own, one that you kept for me, I would be fine with knowing about and keeping yours. There is a shade of bribery about this—on both sides, I suppose.

  When you first told me you’d met someone, you were so coy about it that I thought for a moment you meant you’d met someone who would be a good match for me. This person, you carried on saying in your wistful voice, was “utterly amazing, just wonderful, really very special, unbelievably interesting, unusually smart.” I realized you were using the kind of superlatives one does when describing the object of one’s infatuation, and suddenly I knew that you were talking about someone for yourself. You referred to your friend as “this person”—and for a confusing time I thought that you might be having an affair with a woman. I was almost blind with jealousy. Perversely, my jealousy was only heightened when you told me that “this person” was a man named Eric.

  You told me how you had met, and since then I have so often imagined the meeting that I feel as if I might have been there in the grocery store, watching you: You are awaiting your turn in line, browsing through a magazine, and the man behind you draws close and begins to comment on the photos of the celebrities in the magazine. I can see from the way you turn and look at him that you think him rather bold to be peering at and commenting on your reading material. But on the surface you are perfectly nonchalant, and chat back as if it were the most natural thing in the world. You walk out of the grocery without a glance backwards; but you wait for the man outside in the parking lot, and he walks towards you as if this meeting has been planned. He is tall and lean, not a spare ounce of fat on him, but muscled, and his skin is a reddish bronze. You can see that he spends most of his time in the sun. He puts his bag of groceries into your cart and pushes it towards your car. Somehow he already knows which one it is. He takes the keys from you and opens your trunk, lifts your grocery bags in, shuts the trunk and hands back the keys. You say, So, I have to tip you, I suppose. I only have a dollar bill on me. I don’t suppose you take credit cards? And he says, What about lunch, then? You follow in your car as he drives his own to the restaurant at the yacht club. There, he tells you that he is in the boat repair and maintenance business. After lunch, you follow him to his office in a trailer on the yacht club grounds.

  Zain, how is it that we were in touch for a year, by letters and by phone, and yet in that time you never told me that you were seeing this man? You had been seeing Eric for more than a year by the time I learned about him.

  It is impossible for me to forget that dreadful lunch the three of us had at the yacht club. For the second time, you used me to meet Eric—at least, this is how it feels to me. The staff at the restaurant knew Eric and they paid him a great deal of friendly attention, and he revelled in it. He also knew several of the customers, engaging in small exchanges with them while he sat at our table.

  The conversation between us plagues me still. Eric leaned in and remarked that he’d heard I worked out routinely. I said, Yes, as does Zain. He said, “Yes, like Zain. But you have a lot more muscle than she does. Women here work out not to gain muscle, but to lose fat.” He reached out and wrapped his hand around one of my biceps, and squeezed it. He said, with a grin, “So, what’s this all about? What do you expect to achieve?”

  I felt as if I had been punched in my stomach by this question, but I smiled, shrugged and said nothing. I saw you turn and look at Eric warningly, but he didn’t look back at you. He lifted his empty beer glass to the waiter as he said to me, “Well, I’m listening. Tell me about yourself.”

  “What can I tell you?” I responded, my guard up.

  He said that he knew some things about me, that he had always wondered about people like me. You started, and said, “Eric, what’s going on with you? Come on, you’re going to embarrass her.” But he brushed you off, saying that it wasn’t often one had the chance to find out real answers to real questions such as these. “If you’re really okay with yourself as you are,” he said to me, “then you shouldn’t be afraid to answer some questions.”

  I said nothing. He said, “So,
what is it that women might see in someone like you?”

  You snapped then, telling Eric that he had crossed the line, but I said, “No, it’s okay. He can ask what he wants.” I turned to him. “You first,” I said. “What do they see in someone like you?”

  Your eyes lit up. “Yes,” you said, “tell us: what do women see in you?”

  He said, “Well, first of all, I am a man.” He paused. “And you, Zain—you above all know what that means. Am I not a man!”

  You became still. I was speechless; blood had rushed to my head. But Eric was not finished. He addressed me again. “I was wondering. Were you molested as a child?”

  I didn’t answer, and he said, “I mean, is that why you want to be a man? I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt here, you see. I mean, what has caused you to be the way you are? I’m just wondering.” His calm quiet voice and smile could not mask his hostility.

  And then, Zain, you began to laugh. You shook your head and laughed. I shrank in my seat, and rather suddenly your laughter ceased, and you became serious. You pushed your chair back and rose. You snatched up your bag and turned to me. “Let’s go. I’ve had enough of this; this is ridiculous. What on earth was I thinking?”

  I followed you out while Eric remained sitting at the table.