Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab

by Shani Mootoo

  As I told all of this to Catherine I was reminded of the sea that night and without warning my eyes filled with tears. It had shimmered like liquid mercury, and a salty sea breeze had picked up. I remembered the commotion of the foamy waves crashing and rushing up the shore, and the coconut tree branches rustling wildly, and the sound of the twelve of us laughing and screaming and shouting gentle abuses to one another. But I did not tell any of this to Catherine. I might have described it all, but she would only have thought she understood. How could I have imparted the odour of the wet churned-up shore that was quickly being overtaken by the sea, of the fresh crabs and their strange manner of advancing sideways, of the sweat of eight excited young men with the sweetness of alcohol and pelau on their breaths? I carried on, careful not to let my voice betray the emotions that welled in me alongside the memory. You ran them down, I said to her, and just between your thumb and index finger you grabbed the backs of the little buggers from behind, and of course if you hadn’t done it just right you ended up with a crab dangling off one of your fingers by the gundy, and you dared not scream as it closed its toothy vise because you’d already become the brunt of everyone’s teasing, and they teased mercilessly, which meant that they considered you one of them.

  Catherine said not a word. Are you there? I asked.

  Yeah, yeah, she answered, her voice noticeably, oddly, distant.

  We caught about forty crabs, I concluded. But we both knew that my story had not been about crab hunting.

  After a pause, she asked when Gita and Jaan were expected to arrive. I knew exactly who she meant, yet I responded with a question: Do you mean Sydney’s sister and her husband?

  Catherine answered with another question: When are you coming home?

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  It was time for her to end the call, she said; it was late. After another uncomfortably long pause, I told her I missed her. The silence that followed exploded messily when I uttered, I love you.

  Catherine did not reply. And I suddenly felt like a child, wanting to run behind her, to tell her that I was sorry.

  11

  Rosita was shaking my shoulder. I had been dreaming that I was a pirogue on open water. There was no one captaining me. The sky behind the weightless ball of silver moon was like marbled tissue paper. I was surrounded by three hundred and sixty degrees of ocean stretching clear to a distant encircling horizon. There was nothing else but me on the surface of the water. There were no waves, and not a breeze. I palpitated evenly in the undulating, shimmering sea. Salt water lightly lashed my skin, and I heard a mumble of foreign languages lapping at my sides. I didn’t understand their words, but I knew their meaning and felt an urgency to remember the wisdom imparted in them.

  It was not, to my surprise, nighttime, but evening. A violent red light streamed in through the window. Rosita had brought me a glass of lime juice on ice. Three people had arrived, she told me, and the pundit’s daughter had returned.

  The pundit’s daughter—“Anta, her name is Anta,” I informed Rosita as I sat up too fast—was outside waiting to see me! My head was like a weight on a string. I tried to remember the wisdom that I had heard in the water’s foreign language, but it had already retreated into its other realm. There was no time for a shower. I had to dress quickly.

  Rosita hesitated at the door, and it dawned on me that there was something different about her manner. She seemed less confident than usual. I asked if there was something she wanted to say.

  Yes, she said. She wanted to know if, after the funeral, she would still be employed at the house.

  I hadn’t anticipated that the staff would be wondering about this. “Yes, of course,” I answered. “You will all be kept on.”

  In the time it had taken me to rinse my face, brush my teeth and pull on a shirt and trousers, several more people had arrived, more than there were chairs on the veranda. They milled about expectantly. A rather tall woman of Indian descent in a long and shiny black dress, a mantilla of black lace clipping the back of her head and falling about her shoulders, stepped ahead and proclaimed, “You are the boy from Toronto.”

  That this woman knew of me was for a second flattering, but then no longer, for I was alarmed by her voice. She, in her theatrical black ankle-length dress, had what can only be described as a man’s voice, not a deep or husky voice, but a male voice. I immediately saw that several people on the veranda were, to put it delicately, not entirely what they appeared to be. There were a number who at a first glance appeared to be women. But by the time the glance had been completed I saw that they were men who had dressed themselves so that they would be taken for women. There were, too, some who expected, it seemed, to be taken for men but who were clearly women. Two women with heavily kohl-lined eyes came towards me and greeted me as if we were acquaintances, but I was unable to reciprocate even a feigned familiarity. Lancelot and Rosita were in the periphery of my vision. They were busy serving drinks and food. I did not look at them directly, but I could tell that they were going about this gathering rather easily. I had not yet seen Anta, but knowing that she was there, that she was probably watching all of these people and me, was enough to cause my face to burn. Trying to come to terms with Sydney’s many changes inside the privacy of the house was one thing, but I felt as if these people were being disrespectful by their public unmasking of him. They were exposing me, too, as being closely connected to such a person.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss. He was a very special man, a hero to all of us.” The words came from a deep voice. I turned to see someone who expected to be taken for a woman. She blocked the breeze from the Gulf, and the flowery scent she wore permeated the air. Her compassion, the bowed head, the lowered deep voice, the clasped hands at her chest, were as theatrical as the application of lipstick and eyeliner, as exaggerated as her large hoop earrings, and yet I felt the genuineness in what she said. I was, however, not comforted. I looked for Anta. She was nowhere to be seen, and the only relief I had at that moment was in the thought that she had already left.

  I became preoccupied with the thought that these people must once not have been what they now appeared to be. How long ago was this once? I wondered. As recently as an hour before, when they’d dressed as they had, especially to come here? As long ago as since they cut off, or had reconfigured, or built up, some part of their bodies? Did they think this was a circus for all to come as they pleased? Was this an occasion for mockery? In my view, Sydney was not a man. There was no getting away from the fact that he had altered his body. But to maintain the facade displayed by his clothing, the facial hair, the balding, the thickened muscles of his arms and back and legs, the oddly thickened torso, he had to take injections once a month. These altered his appearance, but they did not make him a man. Yes, I now used the masculine pronouns for Sydney—him, his, he. These concessions, I argued in my head, were in a sense forced on me. One could almost say that I had used them against my will, at least at first, and then they’d become habit, for regardless of the new pronoun, I never failed to see Sid in Sydney. I saw Sid first. In Sydney’s voice I heard Sid. In Sydney’s memories and motives I recognized Sid’s. And in his heart I recognized Sid.

  All I had learned about women and about men, including what I had learned as a child parented by two women, seemed now to be a lie. A wave of nausea crashed through me. I felt myself falling, and the tungsten lighting on the veranda dimmed.

  I was being carried like a baby, cradled in the arms of the tall woman. I breathed in as deeply as I could, for the scent of her cologne entered my lungs and assured me that I was awake, alive. She set me down on my bed. Rosita bent over me. The tall woman began to undo the buttons on my shirt, her voice deeper now, yet cooing, “Everything is okay, son. Everything is okay. This must be all so strange for you. It’s hot in here.” It was as if I were a cloud, unanchored and floating in an unbearable heat, yet as long as I was able to breathe in her cologne I was safe. The woman somehow knew this, for she stayed close
. Her voice was now oddly familiar. She sat on the edge of the bed, one of her arms over me. She asked if there was a fan, then instructed someone to go and get it, and I remembered all at once where I had heard that voice. She was one of the two men who had been Sydney’s only visitors at the hospital; she was the one with the kohl-lined eyes and the painted pinkie.

  Rosita left the room. The woman’s hand was close to mine. I moved the tips of my fingers so that they brushed against her. She responded by taking my hand in hers. It was a large hand. It was not the hand of a woman. I tightened mine around it.

  What is your name? I asked.

  “Kareen,” she answered.

  I knew that name, too, from Sydney’s will. Kareen Akal Sharma. I saw Lancelot at the bedroom door, keeping the crowd from entering the room. Then, as if executing some intuitive choreography, the woman rose and stepped away to allow me to sit up. Anta had entered the room and perched lightly on the bed’s edge.

  I rose and swung my feet off the bed. I leaned forward, rested my elbows on my knees and put my head in my hands, for I was still light-headed. Soon an electric fan was brought in, placed on the dresser and switched on. People moved out of the room and the door closed, and I was left alone with Anta. She sat next to me, and I turned to face her. Her eyes were a drink of cool water. She lowered me to the bed, my head resting in the cup of one of her hands.

  She brought her face to mine and we kissed as if this, our first kiss, might be the last.

  ———

  Later, I sat on the veranda and thought about all that had happened that evening. The sliding door had been pushed in, only one of its two high-security locks engaged. One veranda light had been left on. The drinking glasses had been cleared away and the chairs pulled back into their usual places. Yellow tungsten light pooled softly in the middle of the veranda, but beyond that circle the garden was in blackness. Cicadas whistled and frogs, near enough by, grunted raucously. Against their din, even the sea could not be heard. Flames from the rigs in the Gulf here and there pulsed upward. A cool breeze whipped about me, salty and smelling of the sea.

  In Anta’s presence a short while ago I had found myself thinking of Zain. Lying next to Anta on the bed, I had wanted to tell her about Sid and me, about Sid and Zain. I hadn’t done so, but I suspected that one day soon I would. She wouldn’t stay the night, naturally, but when we kissed against the door of her car I felt as if I had already, long ago and numerous times, made love to her.

  I thought about Rosita and Lancelot and the tall woman, Kareen Akal Sharma, and how when they’d left the room and closed the door, they had done so knowing full well that Anta was in there with me. The conservatism that supposedly pervaded Trinidad seemed to have momentarily dissipated. It had indeed been a strange night. I had come face to face with women and men who presented themselves in ways that did not match their voices and their bodies—and yet, at the end of the night I was left with no sense that lies had been told. No secrets had been imposed on anyone. Everything was out in the open. And this house had clearly been, to these people, a safe place. This, one of the nights of Sydney’s wake, had in an odd way been one of the best I had ever spent in Trinidad.

  I found myself wondering if Zain had been anything like Anta. As strange as it might seem, I felt an impossible desire now to know who Zain really was.

  I went inside and undressed and planted myself at my desk. I retrieved my own notebook and began again—this time taking Zain’s voice, hesitantly at first, but then in comfortable stride.

  Dear Sid,

  I haven’t heard from you in months now. Angus and I just celebrated our second anniversary.

  Life is changing for me. It seems as if I will do some business courses now. Not “it seems.” I’m doing one as it is. So, I guess I will be going into the business with Angus. He thinks studying medicine will take so long that we will be putting off having a family, and that our relationship will also be put on hold. He says that when he graduates he wants to have a wife, not to be living with a student still. I don’t really mind, after all. Medicine, business, it’s all just work, and in the end I want my life not to be about the work itself, but about contributing to society and building a family, and you can do that no matter what your job is.

  Are you still liking doing art? Do you still think you will be an artist? I sort of envy you. But you might have to teach to make a living. Unless you marry a very rich man. Have you met one yet? Is that the new friend you mentioned ever so briefly in your last letter? I want to ask you so many questions, but what’s the use if I don’t get replies in a timely fashion?

  Well, just to tell you: I am very interested in what is happening with you, and I really miss hearing from you. As time goes by, I realize that you are the truest friend I ever had.

  Take care of yourself, whatever you are doing, and know that you have a friend here, if ever you need one. Yours always,

  Zain

  I wasn’t entirely satisfied with that passage, so I worked on another, trying again to capture Zain—her voice and cadences as they’d been in the letters I’d read.

  Sid, just a short note—my busyness has multiplied tenfold, naturally. The feeling, after the baby has left your body, of her still being, not an appendage, but almost an organ—a real physical part of you, that is—hasn’t gone. I am suspecting that this will not happen EVER. And I feel like a queen of sorts because of it. Mum comes over every day, and even Dad is treating Angus with much more respect now. And Angus—do you know that for three months now, every week, ever since Aliya was born, he has sent me flowers? I am actually waiting for the flowers on Thursdays, and when they come, even though I am expecting them, it is such a wonderful surprise! I think it’s a surprise because I can’t imagine it will go on forever, and I am wondering when it’ll come to an end. You know me, forever cynical. Or is it realistic? He is working hard as usual, and the business has really taken off. He comes home every day smelling like heaven—jeera, and ilaichi, and achar masala. Do you know we are in talks with a company in India that wants us to make up a range of spice mixes for them? It’s very odd how these things work. We will be sending a curry mix to India! But it’s a very big account, and we will no doubt have to make changes here to accommodate such a client. I am hoping there is a trip to India in this soon. We are in the process of buying some land in the Central Range, to cultivate with jeera, bhandania and chadon beni. So, of course, the mix we will make for the Indian account will be a Trinidad blend, which is exotic in India.

  So, I feel like a queen, and if giving birth is what it takes I think I can do it a few more times. I’m already thinking about playmates for this sweet little child. She needs a brother to take care of her, and she needs a sister to confide in—not siblings to look after—so it’ll have to be sooner than later. I have totally become used to this family life—this mothering life, this wife thing. I think it is the most natural thing on earth. Are you getting ready for it? It would be great if we could have kids that are around the same age. Wouldn’t it?

  ———

  Anta telephoned the next morning during breakfast, and I had to take the call in the kitchen, where there was no privacy. However much I had marvelled last night at the atmosphere of openness and truth-telling, I was unable to carry that higher state of mind, that ennobled life-condition, into the new day, and I felt unusually self-conscious knowing that Carmen, Lancelot and Rosita—who had answered the phone—were all in earshot. They would surely be able to tell from the sound of my voice that I had cherished the feel of Anta’s steady hand beneath my head, the smell of her skin, the taste of her mouth.

  But I needn’t have worried. As if nothing had passed between us, Anta said that she called to make sure that the kurta and pants fitted. I had not yet tried on the suit, and she reminded me, although I needed no such prodding, that the funeral was the following morning. I ended the call easily, knowing that I would speak with her again after trying on the clothing.

  Two flower arrangement
s soon arrived. No one knew the names on the cards that accompanied them. Rosita hovered about the dining room as I finished eating, and I imagined she wanted to reassure me about my falling apart last night. She followed me when I went out onto the veranda. Before I could turn to her, she began to deliver a lecture: “Those people. They all go to Baphomet where Mr. Sydney used to have to go to. He was the oldest one, and the first to do it. Those people were his friends. They were his family. People might be uncomfortable with how they are, but they were his family too.”

  I felt the heat of blood rising in my face.

  “Just some months ago,” she continued, “they wanted to pay him a tribute, and they say they was going to name a fund at the clinic, Sydney Mahale Priority Fund. Why Mr. Sydney go and tell Miss Gita, I don’t know. I suppose it was because he was so proud. But she did vex-vex, too-bad-too-bad, for when she hear the family name was going to be used like that she say, No! Not over she dead body. So, just like that he back down. He didn’t even bother to fight she. He just go back to them and he tell them, quiet so, thanks, but no thanks, not to do it.”

  I should perhaps have been gentler in my response, for Rosita had not been privy to my process throughout the evening before of opening my eyes and mind; she had only seen my intense discomfort. In any case, had she so accepted Sydney—she who washed his clothing, and she and Lancelot who bathed him and changed his clothes, and administered his medications and injections when he himself no longer could, and surely knew who and what he was then, and what he had been in the past—had she so accepted him that she hadn’t seen my struggle to do so? Moreover, I was startled by the presumption of the kind of relationship between her and me that would allow her to speak with me, or rather to me, in such a manner. “I appreciate you clarifying that,” I said, perhaps too tersely, and headed towards the garden wall that overlooked the Gulf. As I walked, I wondered if she had ever had cause to speak with Sydney in such a manner. Perhaps it ought to be permitted at times?