Arya momentarily crumpled to the floor before flying down the back steps and around the house. Her mother took the lone, winding path leading off the property; already she was a dot in the distance. Arya pursued a different route, plunging through snarls of bushes and branches. She raced the mile and a half to her brothers and sisters in school. Her pleated uniform filled and fell with billowing bursts of breezes. Urine dried on her legs. She didn’t stop or slow down until she saw the sign for Cunaripo Presbyterian School.
Teachers protested when she disrupted their class. They threatened her with guava whips freshly cut for the day’s disciplining. Arya bypassed them. When they smelled the stench of urine and fowl feces clinging to her, they were startled, and she saw her siblings turn to face her. Wheezing, she told them, Mammy gone again cau Pappy beat she so bhad. Their faces transformed from embarrassment at the filthy appearance of their sister to defeated acceptance.
From eldest to youngest—Gita, Rahul, Reeya, Arya, Amrit, Pooja, Chandini—they walked in a conquered line, feet caked with dust, gravel wedged between their toes. At home they would prepare the meal their mother had abandoned.
BETRAYAL
—ON ONE HAND e use toh rheal take care ah we, and on de nex e use toh rheally mistreat Mammy, my mother tells me as she simmers coconut milk, garlic, and taro leaves for callaloo on the stovetop. Not juss de beatin and ting. Mentally too, yuh know? It was juss confusin foh meh, Krys, how toh feel bout him. And look at im now movin from hospital toh hospital so we could try and fix im up. E goh nevah be de same again. E like a vegetable now.
Arya was beginning to see the many forms betrayal could take, how it complicates relationships and reduces people to an animal viciousness. Arya sometimes yearned to be numb to the images of her mother being thrashed, left behind for dead, but then, she didn’t want to forget. Was she destined for the same fate as her mother? Like the many other women on the island who did everything the “right” way—who acted demure, obeyed their parents, wed when they were deemed ready to whoever was chosen for them—and were still routinely beaten by their husbands? Or worse, those who got pregnant out of wedlock and were shunned? For Arya, accepting either would be defeat, and there was so much fight left in her. Yet when she realized that even her father, a man who stood for honor and tradition, could break what he believed, then rules began to crumble.
—E was a man who was well respected, eh Krys, my mother tells me, because e was de owna ah dis big estate and could gih people jobs—to cutlass and clear rung de bottom ah de orange and cocoa tree an dem. An e use toh make sure all ah we fass foh Divali every year, and every year we havin we lil puja, we Indian prayers an everyting een Hindi, de pundit tawkin een Hindi and e playin music een Hindi while me eh undahstand ah damn ting.
Shiva was a devout Hindu and often went to the temple to pray. Every year for Divali he had his entire family abstain from meat for one month before inviting a pundit into his home to perform a prayer service where the fine strains of the sitar and the delicate drumming of the tabla crescendoed over the calling of the kisskadee birds.
Shiva also thought the most important thing was for his children to attend school and get an education. Unlike their parents, his children would be literate.
—Ah propah education is wah e use toh say toh we, Krys, my mother tells me. Allyuh children goan toh school and geh yuhself ah propah education. Nah like me.
Since there were no Hindu schools in Cunaripo where they lived, the Singh children all attended the only establishment in their village—Cunaripo Presbyterian School. Every morning they recited the Lord’s Prayer and Psalm 23 before starting school.
—Here is whey ah was confuse, eh Krys, says my mother to me. We was Hindus goin toh Presbyterian school, so when Divali time roll ahrung and time come toh pray een Hindi meh eh know a werd, so while some ah dem prayin een de Hindi hwome, I secretly prayin toh Jesus Christ, sayin our faddah who art een heaven and de lord is our shepherd.
One day after school Arya heard Jagger calling out to her, Avinash at his side, Aye gyul. Jagger, ten, was one year older than Arya, and his brother Avinash one year younger, so together they were in three successive standard levels in school. Their primary school was small—just one room stretching like a train car from one end to the other—so they were familiar with one another, Arya more so with Avinash, who visited their house every couple of weeks.
Aye gyul, Jagger said again, dah is yuh bruddah, yuh eh know dat awah?
Arya didn’t know what to do or how to act. She had never thought about why Avinash came to their house every other weekend or why he spent the day with them. Jagger wanted her to realize who they were to one another, and also what her father had done. Now everyone else knew too, teachers and students alike.
—It was a stigma, Krys, my mother tells me, yuh faddah cheat and hah ah outside chile. Now people know tings bout yuh family. On top ah dat e is dis mahn dat command respek from everybody, who does do e prayers an follow e religion, leh e chilren go to school to lun bettah, and is dese kinda low tings like beatin e wife, chilren, sista, and now fadderin ah nex oman chile dat gettin to be known by de public?
Arya ran home, where she found Rebecca toting a cluster of bananas at the base of her neck from down by the well.
Yuh know all dem bleddy orange and them roll dung de hill, Arya, her mother said to her, wastin all dis time runnin up and dung. Whey de ress ah dem chilren? Goan an clean up dat mess.
Reaching for the sack tied around her mother’s waist, she asked her mother about Avinash. The darkness that rose from her mother was one she associated with her father only. Her mother’s face fell, and she told her what she had already told her elder siblings many times before. Dah is e son, not mine. E eh nutten toh yuh. Hit im when e come. Bite im. Beat im up.
When Avinash came to them that weekend, Arya observed her siblings’ reactions to him, and for the first time seemed to register what they did. Arya would usually be in the kitchen, helping their mother or strolling through the forest for a half an hour while their father was gone, but now she watched them until they heard their father’s truck pull up to the house. They scattered until Avinash was deposited on the front stoop. Shiva walked off to check on some of the animals, and the siblings scooped handfuls of gravel into the front of their T-shirts or dresses. The stones weighed the cotton down into the curve of a bowl. Avinash stood with his hands stuffed into his pockets, and as his oversized pants sank lower on his waist, he tugged them at the belt loops to readjust. A trio of her elder brothers and sisters made their way around the wall and flung gravel into his face. Avinash rubbed at his eyes, beat at his face, spluttered; they laughed and did it again. When they heard their father coming, they scattered.
When Shiva came back and patted his son on his head, he didn’t notice the settled dust that plumed upward from his touch. Her older brothers and sisters only saw what their mother felt; they had sworn loyalty to their mother and couldn’t turn away now. Arya saw something that prevented her from kicking and spitting at him the way the others did: the way Avinash adhered to Shiva’s side when he was around them, casting his gaze downward so Arya couldn’t even recall what his eyes looked like; the way his body was always tense as though he needed to protect himself from everyone at all times and at all costs. The paralyzing fear that enshrouded him like a stench kept others coming back to taunt him, and it was this same shawl Arya walked with, the very same fear she saw in Avinash’s eyes when he recoiled at the lightest touch of her fingers grazing the dip in his back. Arya and Avinash were the same.
Soon he began to trust her, able to see she was never the one to cause him harm. The kindness she extended to him—applying a warm washcloth to his wounds after they’d beaten him up and warning him of their plans for him when he came to visit them—drew them closer together.
One day Arya was in the kitchen helping Rebecca concoct remedies for her older sister Gita, who was sick from diarrhea and fever. Arya was busy rinsing the freshly plucked l
emongrass to boil and make into a tea to help break Gita’s fever while her mother wrung juice from the salmon-colored bulb of the cashew fruit to mix with warm water to help with binding. As Arya turned to drop the stalks into the pot, she caught sight of her brother Amrit standing just inside the kitchen door, a grin plastered on his face, sweat from hacking and sawing at a tree trunk dripping off his forehead.
Am—she started to say, but he cut her off with a furrow of his brows and an index finger shoved into his lips.
Amrit, muscles dancing in a frenzy beneath the tautness of his black skin, kicked and punched the kitchen door open with all his might. There was the unforgettable sound of human skin and bone meeting with the force of that door.
Mammy, is Avinash, Amrit said, ah get im rheal good.
Son awaited mother’s approval and received it in the form of a smile. Once it was given he opened the door to reveal Avinash covering his bloodied and broken face just outside the kitchen. Amrit shoved past him, stomping down on his feet with the heel of his boot. Avinash doubled over, blood dripping from his hands.
Despite her mother’s hatred for Avinash and her desire to pass that on to her children, Arya ran out to help him through that day and many more. Amrit did not stop, couldn’t seem to stop hurting Avinash whenever he came around the chicken pens or fields, dropping wooden buckets on his head or burying him with bags of feed, always backing off, palms up, saying, Is ah mistake, meh din see yuh dey.
—Ah tink Amrit feel Avinash mighta geh someting from Pappy, my mother says to me, take someting from we toh gih im. Ah juss kyant believe e was juss bein cruel. And Avinash was fraid foh e own self. When dem accident and dem staht to excalate so, is rheal damage Amrit doin im.
Even though they all carried fear in their eyes, Arya’s brothers and sisters did not pause to truly look at Avinash, but she did, and the terror she found lurking there each time was all too familiar to her.
This gnarled coupling of fright and friendship followed them both well into their adult lives. As they grew from little boys and girls racing through savannahs to get home on time to tend to their chores, the Singh clan’s behavior toward Avinash became less cruel, more muted. Avinash, no longer a little boy, chose when to visit the house, so there were fewer opportunities to antagonize him.
—E use toh still come eh Krys, my mother tells me, boh it was rheally only toh tawk to me and nobody else.
One year, sitting in class with his half-siblings and other local kids, Avinash fell for a certain Indian girl. Avinash told Arya about this girl he liked, described to her the black hair laced with satin ribbons and how she twisted those colorful ribbons into a bow just at the curve of her buttocks. Arya listened to him and began to spin her own dreams during the day, wondering if she could ever find someone to feel this way about her. Avinash also told his half-sister Pooja since she was more outspoken than Arya and knew the girl. Together, the three of them hatched a plan to help him win her.
But Pooja was deceptive. She walked out with them one day, pointing at the girl beneath the dazzling sunlight. Dat one? And Avinash nodded just ever so slightly as his straight hair, the same onyx color and texture as Shiva’s, fell across his face. Arya thought she was pretty too, with two braids falling past her shoulders and white ribbons entwined in the blue-black strands of her hair. She was prancing around a friend, and they were sharing a laugh. Her teeth flashed bright and even; her nose was petite, her lips the color of coral set into the deep brown of her smooth skin.
Both Arya and Pooja could see why Avinash liked her, but there was a cutting look to Pooja’s gaze that surprised Arya. It was the same look that nagged her later that night when Pooja laughed in their communal bedroom to the remaining audience of the Singh clan about the girl Avinash was smitten with. Allyuh eh know how Avinash tabanka for a gyul, she rheal tie up e head, mahn, and she doh even know e exist. Then she went on, spluttering with laughter, about how she told the girl, We know im rheal good and e hah rheal stink mout. Like ah latrine gyul. Kyant go anywhey near im. Bess yuh stay ahwey.
When Arya told Avinash he shouldn’t trust Pooja, his trust in Arya deepened and his attachment to her became fiercer than ever. But though they were close, Arya harbored her secrets from him, never telling him she’d seen his mother.
—Ah know who she was, my mother tells me. E muddah was somebuddy rheal close, and we din even realize.
She found out exactly who Avinash’s mother was one day, in the most peculiar way, at the market, as she frolicked around shoppers, stealing a mango, chennet, or pommerac here and there to suck while she waited out the boredom of her mother’s ritual grocery run. Caught in the throng of people surging forward to haggle for mounds of mangoes or globes of breadfruit, Arya drifted to and fro, keeping an eye on her mother, who selected a block of burfi unsure of whether or not she should buy it. Arya had rarely had such an Indian sweet treat, but her mouth watered from having once tasted the richness of the milk mingled with the comforting flavors of ginger and cardamom.
Suddenly Rebecca went rigid, staring at something far off in the distance. With people swaying and weaving among and around them, Arya couldn’t make out what her mother was looking at. Rebecca yanked her daughter’s arm, and they began cleaving their way out of the market. Thyme and dasheen leaves grazed her on their way out, leaving the familiar smells of a kitchen caught mid-cook gliding over her torso. Avinash’s mother had a stall, but Rebecca had never run into her before.
—She wanted toh tell meh everyting, Krys, my mother says. All ah di hah toh do was ax.
In the middle of the marketplace, people spilling around them, shoving them this way and that, calling for a pound of sugar or flour, eyeing the scale with eyes pointed like diamonds, Arya found out the woman her father had slept with was there at that very moment.
—It geh woss, Krys, my mother says to me. De betrayal run deep.
Avinash’s mother wasn’t only a marketplace seller, she was a regular picker at their farm. She worked Shiva’s estates day in and day out filling baskets of cocoa and coffee, the same work Rebecca did once upon a time when she met Shiva. Arya began to understand her mother’s anger better—that woman having his child, seeing her husband, a man Rebecca had fought to obtain and keep.
Go and see she, Rebecca said to Arya. She does sell breadfruit and yam and dasheen on ah stall. When yuh pass whey make sure yuh kick and trow down she provision and ting.
Arya went in search of this woman, but not to follow her mother’s orders. She wanted to see Avinash’s mother, to see this woman who lured her father away from their family, this woman who helped disgrace their family in the eyes of the Trinidadian people. As much as she didn’t want to, Arya did resent Avinash a little that day, because his existence proved to people they were not what they appeared to be. Try as she might, Arya was a product of Trinidad, and upholding a family’s honor and image was of the utmost importance to her then.
When she found this woman standing at her stall, rags tucked into the string around the apron at her waist, a kerchief tied around her head, Arya froze. Her hair pruned close to her head, her nutty complexion, the shapeliness of her breasts and hips through heavy market clothes, everything . . .
—Krys, ah coulda drop dead, my mother says. She was de spittin image ah Rebecca. E leff Rebecca foh Rebecca. De mahn hah ah type. E know wah kinda oman e like boh is shame e shame foh likin mix up oman who nah Indian.
BEATEN
—AVINASH . . . my mother says his name with profound sadness as her hands are elbow deep in marinating chicken feet in cold water, onions, cucumbers, salt, habaneros, garlic, limes, watercress, culantro, and onions for a pickled dish we call souse. It eh make no sense tellin im anyting bout wah appenin wid Pappy now nah. Foh wah? E kyant do nutten. Ah does tink about im often eh. Juss growin up sometimes e was meh only friend, Krys, de only one. My grandfather is still in the hospital. We are unsure of his future. The only thing that seems to calm my mother’s mind is cooking.
Mo
st days, Avinash and Arya parted ways on the way home from school. Arya’s younger siblings—Amrit, Pooja, and Chandini—would either be not far behind or just in front of her along the curves of the road home. Every so often Arya checked to see if she’d have company on her walk back, but once she was halfway home she gave up on that, assuming they’d all trespassed onto someone’s property to suck the meaty inside of a sapodilla freshly purloined on a new route home. Her brother Amrit loved to scale trees and pluck fruit for them, often bouncing fruits into the skirts of their uniforms while they sat at the bottom of the trees. But Arya, who despised stealing and was terrified of getting caught, stopped joining them when they walked through different farms and forests, and so eventually they stopped inviting her.
Arya bounded up the curving gravel pathway, a verdant hillside lush with banana and fig trees plunging into valleys on either side. Elongated leaves slapped and flapped like freshly laundered clothes hung out to dry. She heard traces of magic being whispered from the depths of the valley. The trees spoke a language only she could understand, spun her dreams and promised her a reality. They told her she would leave this place someday, abandon this forested world for the city and dwell within the stone walls of a house of her choosing; she’d never have to look back; scorpions, snakes, alligators would be of the past, memory obliterated, replaced by the faces of a handsome man and chubby brown children. Maybe she could even leave the islands, travel the world. Oh, how she dreamed as she walked that snaking pathway to her board house each day, chain-link fence squeaking in the wind, hunting dogs howling on the ground floor.
Secrets We Kept Page 4
