Of Marriageable Age

by Sharon Maas

  The moment school's last bell rang Saroj was out on the road with Trixie. At last she was doing the things normal girls did. Hanging around at Booker's snack bar, guzzling ice cream sodas, hanging out at Geddes Grant record store, huddling into a booth with Trixie, clicking their fingers and singing along to the latest hit booming at them through the earphones. Wandering through Fogarty's Dry Goods fingering the bales of cloth, discussing styles and dress lengths. Saroj was, for the first time in her life, having fun.

  But Ma knew. Ma behaved as if it were the most normal thing in the world for Saroj to come home, tear off her school uniform, yell, 'I'm off, Ma!' and disappear on her bike, with or without Ganesh, tearing around the corner after Trixie, hair flying out behind her in long black strips, laughing in abandonment, swerving in and out between the donkey carts drifting up and down the Georgetown streets loaded with coconuts or palm leaves or wooden planks or bricks.

  Saroj learned to ride a bicycle and play ping-pong. She and Trixie stacked records on Trixie's record-player and turned the volume up to deafening and opened the windows wide to share their joy with the whole street, and danced like wild things let loose. They went to Brown Betty's and ate Fudgicles, Popsickles and Chicken-in-the-Rough. They saw Cliff Richard in Summer Holiday, and the Beatles in A Hard Day's Night. Saroj rode Vitane. Betty Grant invited them to her swimming pool and Julie Sue-a-Quan and Ramona Goveia joined them there, and that's where Saroj went every Thursday for two months, and by the end of that time she could swim. She grew daring. She stayed out later and later, going to night parties and returning on the stroke of nine, since Baba now rarely came home before ten.

  See, Baba, no hands! See, feet up on the handlebars! See, my skirt tucked into my panties, my legs are bare! See, that old chequered dress lying on the floor and I'm in Trixie's shorts, I'm running in the surf, I'm dancing to the Beatles! See, Baba, just see! I'm riding Vitane!

  She learned to joke and banter and tease and laugh, and to listen when they talked of the most marvellous of earthly delights, the one thing that was still ahead, that one most forbidden thing: boys. Falling in love. All the girls were in love. It was expected of them. It was expected of her.

  I'm at the Van Sertimas' swimming pool, Baba, and I'm wearing Trixie's other swimsuit, my skin is showing! And there are BOYS here, living boys! Boys, boys seeing me half-naked, seeing my golden-brown glistening wet skin, watching me with a roguish gleam in their eyes, stealing touches, smiling at me, offering to teach me to swim, their hands holding my belly under water, laughing in affection at my helpless splashing... boys whispering into my ear, passing me secret notes, appearing out of nowhere from round a corner and riding their bikes alongside mine, chattering and grinning and showing off, Derek and Leo and Steve and Sandy, riding past our house, Baba, and waving secretly, blowing kisses up to me in the tower. Black boys, even!

  Trixie fell madly, irrevocably in love with Ganesh. The first time she met him was the day that he came to pick up Saroj at her home. Trixie, up till then so garrulous, did not speak a word but just stared at him with moist puppy-dog eyes, and ever since then she was consistently struck dumb by his presence. It was a thing they giggled at when alone; but once Trixie cried: 'I love him, Saroj, I really do. But he never even sees me. I'm just a little girl to him. He'll never marry me.'

  'Trixie, for goodness' sake. You're fourteen. There are hundreds of things to do before you marry.'

  'No there aren't. All I want is to love and be loved back and marry and have children. I'll never be happy otherwise.'

  Saroj could only shake her head in exasperation.

  Trixie was not the only one obsessed with marriage. They all were. The girls had but one topic of conversation: catching a boy. All they did centred on the primping of their bodies to this end. They made themselves into boy-bait; they learned to bat their eyes, to walk, to talk, to dance, to smile, to live and move and have their beings all with that one central goal, the catching of a good boy. All their dreams ended with Saroj's worst nightmare: marriage. Everything they did, what they wore, how they spoke, where they went, all had that one aim: to catch a husband.

  Observing these girls Saroj learned several lessons. The fishing rules in the search for prospective husbands were almost exactly the same as those among the Indians. The girls looked at family and social standing and family's income first, and then at looks: lightness of skin and straightness of hair and thickness of lips and nose.

  They assessed the boy, and then they fell in love.

  There was no way you'd find one of these girls falling in love with a black roadworker's son. Not even if he won the Guiana Scholarship. Not even if he wrote poetry to match Wordsworth or played a Mozart symphony backwards or discovered a new planet. Background and blood was everything.

  Wasn't that the way Baba had chosen this Ghosh boy? The goal was the same: to make a good catch, to separate good from bad quality, the salmon from the minnows. There was only one difference between Saroj and her girlfriends: they had to catch their salmon themselves. Baba had caught Saroj's for her.

  Saroj already had that one prize they all coveted: a husband, signed, sealed and awaiting delivery. And she lacked the guts to say, when the time came: Return to Sender.

  If the girls were fishing for salmon the boys were out to pick orchids, and it was Saroj's hard luck to be one. Once the initial euphoria of knowing she was desirable wore off she wished it gone. They wouldn't leave her alone. She could ride her Hercules down the street minding her own business and there they'd be, sailing round the corner on their own bikes and riding up beside her, grinning inanely. They'd show off by riding their bikes without hands, zig-zaging through the traffic, turning and grinning to see if she was goggle-eyed with amazement. They boasted about the motorbike their daddy was buying them for their sixteenth birthday.

  All of them were going to get the biggest, fastest, loudest motorbike available. They dreamed of motorbike racing, while others had already begun to dream of the cars awaiting them in the not too distant future. They all wanted to be pilots when they grew up. If they ever did grow up. At parties their eyes gleamed with greed and they were all hands.

  When Saroj danced with them their fingers dropped from her waist to her bottom and she had to reach behind and slap their wrists to get them to behave. They put their hands into her hair and sighed in ecstasy. They maneuvered their lips near to hers and nibbled the air. When she turned her head away they followed with theirs. They reeked; they plastered themselves with hair-oil, deodorant and cologne. Old Spice was out; shirts were soaked through with Brut and perspiration.

  Saroj had wrestled freedom from Baba; but for this? She began to question the very concept of freedom.

  She had to admit it to herself: after a few months, it was growing boring. It was all very well to grab fun by the forelock, but once you had it… well, so what? Fun seemed to exhaust itself in fizzle. She looked closely at the fizzle and it was empty, nothing but hot air.

  In fact, freedom and fun were leading nowhere. Marriage still loomed on the near horizon, no matter how often she pushed the thought away. Freedom and fun would not postpone the date. Her fourteenth birthday waited around the corner.

  Before now, Saroj had always known what she didn't want: marriage. What she wanted had been vague, diffuse, unformulated, because impossible. Yet slowly, stealthily, a desire, and a goal, took form, gained profile. She grew in the knowledge of what she really, desperately wanted but could never have, trapped as she was by Baba's plans. Trixie had provided but a temporary escape. But what could she do?

  Running away was out of the question: Baba would bring her back. And anyway, where would she go? Lucy Quentin, once a potential saviour, was but a distant goddess. Saroj had met her a few times at Trixie's, always rushing off to a meeting. There was as yet no law to protect Saroj. Lucy Quentin had lost interest in the cause of Indian girls and was now up to her neck in Abortion Rights and the Control of Women over their own Bodies.

  And Trix
ie — did she really care? And the slobbering pack of boys were moving in, even ringing her up at home.

  It was only a matter of time before Baba would pick up the phone and some boy would ask for Saroj and the shit would hit the fan. But it didn't happen that way at all.

  Baba came home early one evening. Saroj was out.

  It was a Tuesday, Car-Load Nite at the Starlight Drive-in, and Saroj and Trixie were the only girls in a car packed with fifteen- and sixteen-year-old boys. Saroj was the first to be dropped home after the show and Baba, standing back from the window in the gloom of the unlit drawing room, was presented with the spectacle of three boys piling out of the back seat to allow his daughter to descend; grinning, pimple-faced boys of a variety of races patting her on the back as she walked past them to open the gate.

  He caned her till her legs bled. He attacked Trixie's old bicycle with a cutlass, slashed off the tyres and threw it outside the gate and into the gutter, where it was picked up and carried off by some passing African youths. Baba raged all night, lambasting Ma and Ganesh for allowing her to run wild. He called her a dirty whore. He removed her from school. He locked her into her room, or rather, into a tract of rooms: hers, the master bedroom, the puja room, and her parents' bathroom. All of these had to be kept locked from the outside, he ordained, so Saroj could walk all the way through to the bathroom, and visit the puja room to pray. He imprisoned her with Ma's sewing machine, embroidery, and whatever he felt would be a chaste occupation till the time came for her to be married. Only when Saroj was safely secured did he go off to his political meetings. Her only visitor was Ganesh, who came every evening bringing her books and kind words and gossip. Every day, at four after school, Trixie rode past, stopped and wave up at her at the window, and she’d wave back. One day, Trixie would tire of these useless visits. And then what? Marriage.

  It was one month before her fourteenth birthday. Her freedom had lasted for not even a year.

  She lay on her bed, gazing up into the vault of the roof. Thinking, as she had ceaselessly every afternoon for the last week. Baba was stupid. Escape was easy. All she had to do was climb up onto her wardrobe when nobody was home and jump over the wall into the upstairs gallery, a mere eight feet. Then down the stairs and out the door. To Lucy Quentin. But escape, as she had already concluded, would be also senseless. Baba would only have her brought back. The law allowed him to do so. She could refuse. Make a scene, kick and scream, spit into her bridegroom's face at the crucial moment. Then what? Baba would commit her to a lunatic asylum. Or something just as drastic. There was only one escape. The tower.

  From the widow's walk outside the tower the people on Waterloo Street looked like little toy dolls. Saroj looked once, quickly, and closed her eyes.

  It had been so easy, up to now. She had looked for a long, flat, strong tool to wrench open the flimsy double doors into the tower, which had been latched from the outside. Ma's sword had been perfect. She had slid the blade into the slit between the flaps of the door, and pressed against the sword's hilt. The nails holding the latch in place had not resisted much. The door flew open with a bang, and she'd been free, free to run downstairs, to a questionable and temporary freedom, or up, to the tower. She had chosen up. Up was final.

  And now here she was, perched on the railing of the widow's walk, clinging for dear life to the cast-iron pillar supporting the roof, bare feet hooked into the bars below her, not daring to look down, not daring to look anywhere, eyes tightly shut. A hysterical laugh of pure terror bubbled up from within her and she had to swallow hard to suppress it; at the same time unshed tears stung her eyes and she sobbed and tightened her grip on the pillar. The rail dug into the flesh of her bottom. Her hands turned cold as her grip pressed out the blood.

  Pull yourself together, she told herself sternly. Calm down and just do it.

  Just let yourself fall. Just let go. Lean forward. Close your eyes and drop. Suicide is easy. Nothing can go wrong. Look, it's all gravel down there on the drive. Nothing to soften the fall, no trees, no bushes. Death will come so quickly you won't have time to think. Just do it.

  She squeezed her eyes together and imagined it all. She planned to fall when Trixie came, at around four. She saw herself falling, Trixie staring, dropping her bicycle and rushing to the gate screaming. She saw herself lying in the yard at the foot of the tower like a broken little rag doll. Passers-by would scream and all come running. They'd ring the doorbell in a frenzy and then Ma would come rushing out and her serene expression would give way to one of horror; she'd run to Saroj's prostrate body and shake her, turn her over, slap her cheeks, call Saroj! Saroj! Bystanders would gather, Trixie among them. Call an ambulance! Trixie would scream. It's too late, someone else would say, shaking his head, her neck is broken. Ma would sob and hold Saroj in her arms and talk to her through her tears, say all the things she'd never said during her lifetime, I love you Saroj, please come back, don't die, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, and then the crowds would part and Baba would stride through, his face as white as ash; he'd bend over and in a choking voice say, it's not true! Not my Saroj! Saroj, come back! And Trixie would stand up to her full imposing height and stare him in the eye and her voice would be like thunder when she said: See, see what you did! It's all your fault! Saroj is dead and it's all your fault! You killed Saroj! And Baba would look down at her poor limp form like a creeper in the dust and his shoulders would shake and he'd say, Saroj, oh Saroj, I'm sorry! Please come back!

  Come back, Saroj! They'd all sob, come back, we love you, we'll be so good to you, come back and give us another chance! You needn't marry! And then the wake and the women in white saris of mourning, weeping and wailing, their eyes bleeding tears, arms around Ma, Baba dumb with grief!

  She came to with a jerk and realised she was smiling. This won't do. It must be nearly time. Time to go. Time to die. She wished she could look at her watch, but she couldn't because if she let go of the pillar she'd fall. Well, so what. You want to fall, don't you? Yes, but . . . not just yet . . . just a little while longer. She needed to practise in her mind. Go through the steps of falling and of dying. Prepare herself. Think of not being any more. Ever again.

  I'll lean forward and just let go and let myself drop. It'll be like flying. What thoughts will I have, those moments before I hit the ground?

  Deliverance. The end. Think of dying. Think of the moments after death. When you won't be here any more. There'll be no more me. Just nothing. How can it be! How can there be no me? How can it come to an end? Oh God, how can I end? Oh God, I don't want to end! I can't! No, No!

  In the distance the clock of the Sacred Heart church began to chime four. At the same moment Trixie rounded the corner on her bicycle and at the same moment she screamed with all the power in her lungs, 'NO! I don't want to die! Trixie!'

  In a trice Trixie's bike was clattering to the ground and she was at the front door and the bell screamed through the house. Then there was Trixie, miles below, looking up. Through the distance Saroj could almost see her eyes, like jewels in her dark face, the sheer terror in them. Her hands were cupped around her mouth and she was screaming, and, just as she'd imagined it a few moments earlier people, came running from the street, clusters of faces looking up, people's hands gesturing as if pushing her back, cars braking, people standing beside their bicycles, staring. She saw it all as in a panorama picture far away, having nothing to do with herself, detached from herself because having screamed her 'NO!' everything in her was paralysed, thoughts immobile as in a still life picture, feelings struck into a pose as in a stalled film. She was a statue of a girl with long blue-black hair floating loosely around and about her whipped by the breeze, sitting on a railing in a wide open sky, willing to drop but her will numbed to silence by a No.

  In the tableau below Ma appeared, looking up. She walked slowly. Where others waved their hands wildly above their hands, Ma's hands were down. She patted the air gently, walked slowly, always looking upwards, up at Saroj. Dizziness overcame Saroj. Thr
ough a long naked space she heard Ma's voice, 'Saroj, be still, I'm coming.' Not a shout but a whisper. She squinted through eyelashes laced with tears and saw a space where Ma had been below, and seconds later heard her feet on the wooden steps to the tower. Ma was behind her now, her arms around her, her lips in her hair; she was whispering. Then Saroj was falling; falling backwards, though, not forwards, and there was nothing. Only Ma and blackness.

  When there was light again there was only light, sunlight all around her. She was bathed in light. I'm dead, she thought, and in heaven, but then she saw the mosquito net curled into itself above her and she knew she wasn't dead.

  Ma's fingers stroked her cheek.

  'Saroj,' said her soft voice, and she turned her head to face her. She leaned forwards, her eyes moist with something more than love, smiling gently, her lips moving through the smile as she spoke. 'I'm here, Saroj, don't worry. Would you like some water?'

  Saroj nodded, her eyes locked into Ma's. Ma helped her into a sitting position, fluffed up the pillows behind her, and held out a glass of water. As Saroj took it she let her eyes leave Ma's and look around. She was in her own room, and all but one of the windows were open. The shutters too, letting in the sunlight and the cool breeze. A softness, a gentleness, was in the air; she breathed it in and it rocked her almost physically like a lullaby within. Sleep, she thought, delicious sleep. Sleep, and never wake up. She felt Ma's finger brushing a wisp of hair from her forehead and opened her eyes.

  'The water,' Ma whispered. She took the glass. Inside it the water caught a ray of sunlight. It sparkled with rainbow colours. A glass of sunlight. A glass of rainbow. A glass of grace.

  She raised the glass to parched lips and drained it. 'Would you like some more?' Ma asked, and she shook her head and pushed herself down under the sheet and closed her eyes.