Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab

by Shani Mootoo

  His daughter was watching me. Her face was relaxed, yet I felt a pressure to be profoundly reflective. “You’ve just described the motives in all the great stories ever told,” I said. The words might as well have been written by someone else and presented to me on a piece of paper to be read aloud. The daughter glanced down at her lap, stifling a smile. Sweat broke on my neck.

  Sydney is on a journey. Pundit continued, as if this naturally followed our train of conversation. Death is a temporary cessation of physical activity so that the soul can step back, rejuvenate itself, take a look at its progress, reassess its policies, before returning again to life on this earth so that it can learn to free itself of earthly desires. Liberation from this cycle is the goal of all earthly beings, he said. Not so? he asked, and his daughter glanced up, the smile well restrained, but in her eyes I detected a mischievous invitation for another brilliant response from me. I feared a trap had been laid for me to display the arrogance of laity, of writers, of foreigners to this country, of young men, of white men, of westerners. Rather than voice an opinion, I nodded to suggest that I was listening with an open heart and mind to the wisdom of a priest.

  He closed his eyes and said, When a person dies, his soul and a small amount of consciousness leave his body through a hole in his head, and they go to reside in another world before returning to this one to continue on its cycle, which it is attempting throughout to break. I couldn’t help but wonder now if he was pulling my leg, and, if not, if he really believed this. I looked at his daughter, who I thought had been hinting to me her amusement, but she had become sombre, her eyes downcast and her hands loosely clasped on the table’s edge. She even nodded, perhaps in agreement. Perhaps she, too, actually believed this. If this was not some sort of hocus-pocus that Sydney had forced me into, then I must take it, I thought, as tradition and ritual, and simply play along for the sake of simplicity. For Sydney’s sake.

  Pundit said that Sydney had told him all about me. A heat rushed up my body into my face. I wanted to ask what exactly it was that Sydney had told him, but the presence of his daughter stopped me. What exactly does he know of Sydney? I wondered. Sydney told me about you, and about your mother, he clarified, as if he had read my mind. He considered you to be his son. He added, Love is all that matters, and love can come in a variety of ways. Regardless, it is love. Had he said the latter because he saw my discomfort, or because he was assuaging his own? There was no hint that he knew that Sydney was once Siddhani. I wanted to know, and at the same time didn’t want to know, if he was aware of the nature of my mother’s relationship with Sydney, and if he knew the circumstances of my birth. I feared that he could read my mind. But the pundit carried on with the business at hand.

  Because I am Sydney’s closest male family member, he said, I must carry out all the major functions of the funeral. “You are the karta,” he said, “the chief mourner. It is Hindu custom that an open casket is used, as there are rites and rituals that are performed directly on the body, right to the end.” I asked if the service was to be conducted at a funeral home or at a church. Pundit smiled wryly, and said, “He”—meaning Sydney—“didn’t bring you up as a Hindu, eh? Everything will happen at the house,” he announced. Which house? I asked. His daughter looked up at me, her bemusement replaced now by what seemed to me to be puzzlement, or perhaps concern. Right here, he said. Everything will happen right here. Sydney had to be dressed in white, and I was to get Sydney’s clothing and take it to the funeral home, he said. He asked if I was prepared to do my part in the ceremony—to look after the body, that is. Unable to hide my indignation and incredulity, I asked if I was supposed to dress Sydney. His daughter jumped in. The funeral home will do that, she said, and they will bring the casket with “the body” in it to the house. It was from then on, until “the body” was cremated, that I, the karta, was to perform the rites as instructed by her father. She was direct, her voice firmer than I had anticipated. Her hair was blue black, like a crow’s wing.

  Pundit looked at me then, and asked if I was prepared to light the fire, and after the cremation, to be responsible for the disposal of the remains, for these were my primary responsibilities in my relationship to this person who had been a parent to me. I had a vague understanding, mostly from movies, of this. I imagined myself in a dark grey suit, a white shirt, a black tie with grey stripes and gleaming black shoes. I was standing in a room by myself, paying my last respects, telling Sydney, who was in a furnace somewhere on the other side of a wall, of my love and appreciation for him, my hand palming the button I must eventually press. I imagined being presented a box later, all of Sydney in a package the size and weight of a clay brick. I recalled hearing once that the weight of an adult human’s ashes was astounding. A tide of nausea rose inside me. To my embarrassment, my eyes filled with tears. Pundit’s daughter looked down into her lap. In an involuntarily and embarrassingly softened voice I told Pundit that, sure, I was prepared to fulfill whatever was expected of me. His voice was softer now too, and he spoke slowly, as if in a hospital room speaking to a dying man. A shopping list of items that would be needed in the ceremony had been prepared for me, he said. Rice, ghee, marigolds, sandalwood, sesame oil, a lotah—a brass vase, his daughter translated—and water jugs. Don’t worry, he assured me, Rosita would understand. She knew what to do, and where to get everything. He himself would bring other necessary things, such as the twigs and leaves of a peepal tree. A bedi would be needed too, he said, and his daughter again interpreted: a shallow wood box. It would be used in the ceremony at the house, she added and reminded her father that there was one in the trunk of the car. She stood up to go to the car and I stood too and asked if I could help. She would manage, Pundit answered, it wasn’t heavy. The bedi, he explained, was to be filled to the brim with dirt, which was then to be patted flat, smoothed completely, and the surface decorated. He carried on describing how it was to be decorated, but I found my mind wandering, wondering if his daughter was truly able to manage carrying the altar, the bedi, by herself. I was brought back when I heard Pundit say, “We must have a photograph of Sydney to be placed on the bedi, next to the vase. You must find a good colour photograph of him and put it in a frame.” He gestured with his hands as he added, “Not too small, but not big-big.” His daughter returned with the box. We both stood. She put the box on the table.

  I would be required by custom to wear a white kurta and white pants, Pundit continued. He followed this with the assurance that I did not need to worry about the details of where to get such a suit; he himself would go to the puja store that very day, and an assortment of styles and sizes would be prepared for me, and he would have them delivered to the house here. You’re about a medium or so, no? he said. Before I could answer, his daughter replied for me, Yes, you will take a medium. He and his daughter conferred in some sort of shorthand, and he told me that Anta would return that very evening with the clothing. Anta, whose hair was black and shiny like a crow’s wing. There are no crows in Trinidad, I recall thinking then. There are anis. I corrected my thought: Anta’s hair is as black as the wings of an ani. Meanwhile Pundit carried on: after the ceremony, the son usually shaves his head.

  I raised my eyebrows, and was already passing my hand through my thick red-brown hair before I could censure myself. Father and daughter looked pensively at me, both smiling now. Anta told her father, “He doesn’t have to shave it, he can just have it cut short.”

  “Don’t worry,” Pundit reassured me again. He would guide me through it all.

  At these words, I felt relief. It was as if a massive storm cloud had been hovering over my head, but now a slip of the dreadful grey had thinned a little, and behind it was a hint of blue. It seemed that everything would be looked after. Very little—only the larger gestures, the symbolic—would be required of me.

  In Sydney’s armoire there were, to my surprise, two dresses, and a skirt on hangers. There was a dark blue linen suit. There were several pairs of pants and several shirts with co
llars. Men’s shirts. Shirts themselves had no bias, no prejudice, I thought as I ran my palm over the clothing. They could one day be men’s shirts, and on another day women’s shirts. There were simply people’s shirts. A person’s shirt. A slimmer drawer contained several pairs of socks to one side, a few pairs of boxer shorts neatly folded and, to the other side, a stack of panties opened flat. At the sight of them I covered my mouth so as not to be heard, but I couldn’t stop crying. The panties were plain, the kind I and my friends might have derisively assumed older women, matrons really, would wear. Questions I had dared not ask when Sydney was alive were suddenly answered.

  Just before I left the house to go into the town to find an appropriate white suit for Sydney and take it to the funeral home, the tailor arrived. He had, of his own accord, decided to make Sydney’s suit and had stayed up all night working on it.

  The funeral director took the suit from me and asked if I wanted to see the body. He responded to my surprise and unguarded disdain by informing me that I, if not someone else, would have to “check it” just before the funeral. When I looked at him in confusion he explained that someone had to come to the funeral home early on the morning of the funeral to make sure that the makeup looked good. Remember, he said, this is an open-coffin ceremony. I found the voice to ask what he meant, exactly, by “makeup.” It is an open coffin, he repeated, so they would make up the face. Don’t worry, he added, his funeral home had the best reputation for doing open coffins. Still I insisted—what makeup would the mortician be using? Don’t worry, he told me: there would be no fashion lipstick or eye makeup; Mr. Mahale had left full written instructions. He asked me to return before then, as soon as possible, and bring Sydney’s toiletries, the shampoo and soap he liked using, his hairbrush and a handkerchief—for the mortician preferred to use on the bodies what the people had themselves used in life. I wondered about the handkerchief but did not bother to ask what it would be used for.

  In the car back to the house I reclined my seat and closed my eyes. Sankar assumed that I wanted to sleep and he turned off the radio that seemed always to be playing. What I wanted was for everything to stop. Not just the sound of the radio or the moving car, but everything. I wanted to disappear into the calm and quiet blackness. But not a minute after I managed a shallow state of relaxation, words and phrases that Sydney had spoken came to me, in his voice, as if from a far-off corner in a padded room: The question that keeps arising as I think of that day when I walked to the gender centre is … And the voice faded. But the words pulsed in my mind.

  I bolted upright, fixed my seat, and from the pocket of my shirt I pulled out pen and paper.

  The question that keeps arising as I think of that day when I walked to the gender centre is not why any human would choose to live in such a climate when there was ample space in the warm tropical band around the earth for all the people of the world to live without need for heating and shovel-ling of sidewalks and seasonal clothing and car tire changes. No, what I wanted to know was why one would live in a city of so many people, for such a long time—almost thirty years—and not know a soul to ask for accompaniment and support on such a mission.

  Back at my desk, I transposed into my notebook what I’d written in the car, and continued.

  In Canada after my life with India and Jonathan, I was unable to accept and settle down with any of my lovers—for there were other lovers, but none with whom I could form a life.

  I wanted to be with a woman who knew very ordinary and unimportant things such as the difference in look and taste and usage between coconut water from a coconut that has just been prodded off the tree with a long bamboo pole, and cut open right in front of you with a cutlass, and one that has been husked and imported in its hard, dry, brown shell. I wanted to be with a woman who knew that the white meat lining that shell was once soft like a baby’s spit, and fragrant like the air over a coral reef. I wanted to spend my life with someone who knew when a mango or a banana or a plantain was picked too young, and forced, no matter how picture-brilliant and rosy it looked on the outside, to ripen.

  I wanted to be with a woman who would know, should the knowledge ever become necessary, what a karta is and does, what a bedi is, and when I needed her to act on my behalf. And I wanted her to be ready to act.

  When I looked up from my words, I could hear that Carmen was once again in the kitchen. Despite the shameful showing the previous night, she had returned, and she and all the house staff insisted we prepare again for a houseful.

  Soon it was late afternoon and the house was suddenly quiet. When I roused myself and investigated, I found that the kitchen was empty. Two large basins sat on the counter, and they were covered with a tea cloth. In them were the pholouries and sahinas Rosita and Carmen had made. The two of them had retreated to their rooms for the usual afternoon rest, and, I supposed, to prepare themselves for the people they imagined would show up. I could hear the faint sounds of the radio coming from Lancelot’s room.

  I wandered through the quiet house and my thoughts turned to Canada. Catherine would have just arrived home. Perhaps she was heading to the gym, or to the grocery. I felt a pang: I owed her some kind of contact. It was time that I called.

  I said nothing to Catherine about the pundit’s visit, about the visit to the funeral home or about the details, as I understood them, of the funeral ceremony. I did not mention that the pundit had a daughter, Anta, a woman with blue-black hair. I did not tell her that the pundit’s daughter would return that evening to bring me special clothing that I was to wear at the funeral. I babbled on about the food Rosita cooked even as there was no one to eat it. I told her that it was customary that meat was not eaten in the house of the deceased until after the funeral. She said, “Oh dear, what are you going to do, then?” and I hoped she didn’t catch the faint glimmer of disdain that crept into my voice without me fully intending it, as I replied that one could do without meat if one had to. To soften my response I added quickly that this was easy to accomplish because Rosita made things like sahinas and pholouries, and that for dinner she had already prepared melongene and pumpkin, and that she had cooked tomato choka and roti for my breakfast.

  I knew Catherine did not know what any of these dishes were and could feel the distance between us when she didn’t bother to inquire. It was as if I had embarked on a mission to confirm her ignorance of my life down here. I heard myself say that if I missed anything it was the crabs, and I began to tell her about the crabs that were caught in the swamps and sold roadside in neatly tied-up bundles. Their backs are smaller than my fist, I told her, as if she were begging me for details. The facts of the funeral and of my role in it were like a human presence sitting in a chair watching me as I talked, but I mentioned none of this.

  Catherine finally spoke: Were they soft-shell crabs? Were they eaten deep-fried? By way of answering I told her of my first experience with the small crabs, but underneath the regaling was some sort of accusation. I felt it, but from where it came and why I was doing this, I didn’t know. Rosita curries them, I answered. I said that after my first time eating the crabs like this, Rosita suggested that on a moonlit night I go with her and her family to a beach village on the Atlantic side of the island, where her brothers would take me crab catching.

  My voice as I said this to Catherine was flatter than I intended it to be.

  Catherine interrupted. “At night? With people you didn’t know?”

  I was silent and she asked again, “Well, was it safe?”

  It was true that I had some time before mentioned how unsafe Trinidad was said to be. I had told her about the murders during bungled robberies, about the spate of kidnappings. But I wished now I hadn’t, for she used the opportunity to show grave concern for my safety even though I was telling her about an outing that took place about three years ago, before she and I knew each other, and about which I’d clearly lived to tell. Before I could stop myself I said just that: “I’m still around, aren’t I?”

  Cather
ine said nothing, but in my words how could she have not heard the suggestion that one day I might not be around, and my absence would likely not be because I had fallen prey to an unsafe situation? In any case, I carried on against her silence, it had been a large group of us. We had gone down, two cars crammed full. We’d arrived towards evening. We swam, and ate—Rosita’s family had brought a large iron pot of chicken pelau, and there was a cole slaw salad, and plantains. And there was mango chow. At this, Catherine pensively muttered, Hmm. I feared that she might follow that utterance with some inane question, so I quickly added, “Mango pickled in a spiced brine,” and left it at that. We arrived at the beach, I said, the twelve of us, with three bottles of rum punch, and there wasn’t a drop left in any of the bottles by the time we left.

  At this last mention of our debauchery she said not a word, and I had the sense that I had won something, although I was not sure what. The tide was low by nightfall, I continued, the moon like a searchlight trained on us, and rather suddenly, just as Rosita and her family had said would happen, the sand came alive. It vibrated, and I saw that crabs were pouring down—like an unruly army—from the land at our backs, and were moving swiftly, in their sideways canter, towards the water’s edge. We ran behind the largest ones—the crabs would freeze their movement, crouch tight to the sand, their knotty beads of eyes flicking outwards like stunted calcified antennae, their pincers that people here—I saw the word “here” as I spoke it, garlanded with a string of white lights, for I was on the telephone in that very here, and Catherine was over there—their pincers, which people here call gundies, waving, but in vain, for they can’t actually reach behind to defend themselves from us with these gundies.