by Shani Mootoo
He says, “I wasn’t being flippant when I mentioned Yasmin, you know. I have thought of her because an Ismaili woman has come into my life.”
There’s such a jolt inside of me, I feel he must surely have felt it. I turn quickly to face him and ask, “Aren’t you and Aruna still together?” as if that is what has surprised me.
“Well, that is one of the things I wanted to tell you. She and I parted ways four years ago. She went back to her parents in India. We have not divorced yet, though that will come eventually. Hence the new car. Do you like it? I could not have made such a purchase with her here. She would have had a fit. Not because of money. There’s plenty of that these days — business is booming. And you know, I’ve always wanted a Beemer. But she doesn’t like flair or, as she calls it, ostentation. Yes, her word. It’s the kids, they made her learn to speak English perfectly.”
“What about the kids?” I ask, trying to take in this major change in his life. It amuses and horrifies me at once that I feel a twinge of what I cannot but call jealousy that he has met someone he wants to tell me about. “Are they permanently with her?”
“No, they had a choice and wanted to stay in Canada, but they’re with her for the holidays. They left for India a week ago and will stay until the first week of the New Year.”
He’s free, he’d said. Free for what?
“So did I ever tell you,” he says, “about my Ismaili babysitter?”
“Tell me about the Ismaili woman you’ve recently met,” I say.
“That’s what I’m trying to do. In Uganda she lived in the house opposite ours. Her parents and mine got along. She began babysitting me when I was about ten and she was sixteen. She was very beautiful. Like Yasmin.” When he says “Yasmin” he looks at me. “I’ve been in touch with her — the babysitter, I mean.”
I pull the neck of my sweater up over my mouth and blow air through my pursed lips, trying to cool myself. I drink again from the bottle of water.
“She’s married and lives in Vancouver. But we’ve been in touch and — ”
“Am I going to have to hear about her body, too?” I ask, one third smiling, one third chiding, one third worried about where this, too, is headed.
He doesn’t answer, but says, “It’s one of the things I want to tell you. She and her husband are returning to Uganda. His family had cacao and cashew land there and they’re trying to reclaim it. She and I reconnected on Facebook, and they’ve asked me to return and help set up a central commercial production for the country.”
“So you’re going?” I ask.
“For a while. I’m going because of her. She used to love having her breasts fondled.”
It takes a few seconds, and then I realize what he’s telling me. I exclaim, “What? When you were ten? Do I want to hear this? I’d rather not.”
I am not sure if the twist of his mouth is a smirk or a grin. “It started when I was ten. And luckily my parents thought I needed babysitting right up until we left Uganda, when I was fourteen. Oh, don’t look at me like that. I’m joking — by the time I became a teenager they stopped calling her my babysitter. But she’d still come over and keep me company the moment she saw them leave the house in the evening. Sometimes I’d suggest to them that they go out, to a movie or to dinner, or for a drive, and when they left I’d go into the yard and kick my football against the chain-link fence at the front of our house so she’d hear the noise and look out. Of course, I’d be glancing over at her house waiting for her. I’d signal to her and she’d come over. We were almost caught a few times. But how she loved having them — her breasts, I mean — how she loved having them fondled. Can you imagine?” Is he boasting? Is he relating this detail to seduce me? “I can remember it as if it were happening right this moment. She would tuck her hands under them, under her breasts, and offer them to me — me, six years younger than her — to lick and suck.”
That image, the fact of us being alone in his car, the windows up enough so not even the wind can hear us, of Alex’s absence, sends my mind and my body tumbling. I feel fear, but the direction this conversation is taking is tantalizing, too. I should know better. I should know better. But I want to know where this will take us. Should I let it play itself out, or should I stop it right away? No one need ever know of this conversation. But after this, then what? Wouldn’t he expect more? Would he want to come down regularly? Would I have to dodge Alex to speak with him on the phone? Can what happens, if I let this go on, stay here and go no further? Or will I be courting future trouble? The blood that has rushed to my brain makes me dizzy.
“But there was one thing that was very interesting,” he continues. “I could never kiss her on her mouth. I suppose she thought she’d catch my Brahmin germs. I wanted to, but she wouldn’t let me. I could touch her breasts, I could put them in my mouth, but I couldn’t kiss her on her mouth.”
He laughs uncontrollably. Is he attempting, I wonder, to draw some parallel between her and me, between how far she would allow him to go with her, and how far I let him into my life before I pushed him out? The spell that was being cast on me is broken. I need to be firm and strong.
“That would all be called abuse over here, wouldn’t it?” I say soberly.
He doesn’t answer but gets right back on his horse. “I used to stand at the front windows and look for her. I got very excited when I knew my parents were going out. Anyway, I’ve been to Vancouver to meet with her husband and, well, she and I met again. He knows she used to babysit me, but nothing else. I haven’t been able to get her out of my mind ever since. We write to each other.”
I try to calm myself. I can’t get it out of my head that he was ten. I am horrified, and at the same time there is something titillating about this. He knows it and that’s why he told me. He wants me to be turned on. He wants to wreck what I have with Alex.
But perhaps there was nothing wrong with what happened between him and that babysitter. Perhaps because today he remembers it fondly — so to speak — there’s nothing wrong with what happened then. But isn’t his talk of it to me problematic? It is meant to be provocative. Sexually provocative. He was ten years old. Why does he still carry a torch for her? What does that say about him, and her carrying on with him now? And, really, why tell me these details?
“You know, when we were thrown out,” he says, seeming to segue, “people who didn’t have British nationality, those without British passports, had nowhere to go. I was serious when I said no country would take us in. Including India. Do you know why Canada has the most Ugandan Ismailis?”
I shrug my shoulders. I am pleased he’s stopped the nonsense about breasts.
“When Uganda got independence,” he explains, “their leader, the Aga Khan, told his followers that they should be citizens of the country in which they lived. It’s exactly as my own father thought when he took Ugandan citizenship. So the Ismailis in Uganda became citizens of that country. And when Amin took away citizenship status from Asian Ugandans, they, too, ended up stateless. The Aga Khan and our new prime minister Justin’s father were apparently good friends, and the Aga Khan called up Pierre and pleaded with him and he agreed to take the Ismailis in. That was how the conversation regarding Ugandan refugees in Canada was begun. They had their leader, the Aga Khan, looking out for them. There was no one to help the rest of us. To Ismaili Ugandans the rest of us are beholden. They look down on us.”
“So if this Ismaili woman kissed you, would you forget about her?” Why I say this, why I refer to his babysitting adventure, surprises me. But I’ve done it purposefully. I’ve fallen for his talk. I do want him to tell me more. If he reaches his hand to my knee again, I will place mine on it. But then what? I must remain still. I must stop this pull toward him.
“Well, apparently she isn’t afraid of Brahmin germs anymore, and here’s one non-Ismaili Ugandan she doesn’t look down on. And so, no, I can’t forget her.” He chuckles at his c
leverness. But again my mind burns with the idea that he was ten and therefore this babysitting gig allowed her to abuse him, even if he had enjoyed the activity then.
“But you were ten,” I insist. “Do you feel what she did was wrong?”
“She was so beautiful, and she wasn’t supposed to be doing this to me, and I knew it, and it felt as if I had all the power over her. It wasn’t abuse. At least, not for me. I have not suffered because of it. And, apparently, neither has she.”
I’ve known him for so many years, and, in some ways, we’d been so intimate. But clearly, I don’t know much about him. It has begun to seem to me that no matter how long you know someone, or how intimately, you can’t really fully know them. What then does intimate mean?
* * *
When we get to the terminal, I want to ask him to turn back, but we’ve arrived precisely at the boarding time and ours is the only car. We are waved on by the ferryman and, without stopping, Prakash complies. The boat pulls out of the dock and we get out of the car into the cold wind. My hair is whipped in every direction. I clutch the railing and watch the water like black oil slide fast behind the ferry. Last year this time, the ferry had to traverse a straight path that had been cut through deep ice. Dead ducks and gulls lay on the frozen edges of the path. It was a strange, sad sight. Looking over the edge of the ferry, you could see how thick the ice was then. There were layers of it, like shelves, in varying shades of turquoise. The vast sheet that covered the rest of the lake was as smooth as glass, parts of it cloudy like menthol candy, with hairline cracks weaving across the surface. It was eerie moving through that narrow channel of black water. Every few metres lay an upturned dead bird, its wings splayed and stuck to the ice, the rest of its body rigid, facing the sky. Brilliant red blood had smeared the ice around most of the birds. And overhead, a few seagulls followed our path. In some places you saw birds frozen just below the surface. They’d likely used the passage cut for the boats to dive below the water to fish, but were killed by the boats themselves, and eventually washed up onto the ice in the boats’ wakes. There had been swans in the channel, too, hugging the edges of the ice shelf. It seemed dangerous. Cruel. There was nothing you could do. It’s different today. Now, gulls sail overhead, ducks bob on the water at a safe distance. The water, billowing like taut plastic, is so densely black it appears nothing could exist beneath its surface.
Prakash walks about the deck, from side to side, taking photos with his phone. He hands it to me and I take a picture of him, behind him the Mill House on the shore from which we just sailed. I expect him to suggest we take one of us together, but he takes the phone from me and pockets it.
Back in the car, as we cross the bay, he says to me, “Do you ever think about the times you and I slept together?”
Slept together? Is he mad, I wonder. Times — plural? Perhaps he is simply confirming my supposition that if you dream of someone, they too surely have dreamt in the same manner of you. I’ve never told him I dream of him — him and me about to have sex. I wouldn’t talk with him about such a thing. Imagine if I were to tell him that this very morning I’d had such a dream — it would be an invitation. So why is he asking me this now? It’s an opening, of course. But to what? This is not a conversation we should be having.
“The first time. Do you remember the first time?” He turns to face me. He is not smiling, but for some odd reason, it is a smile, a nervous smile, that breaks on my face. I fidget in the seat and grab the seat belt across my chest. I hold on to it tightly.
“Slept together. It’s a euphemism, right?” I ask. Is he trying engage in some kind of seduction?
“You don’t remember, do you?”
But he is not flirting, he seems serious. Stern. There’s an edge to his voice. I’ve been caught off guard. My smile dissolves.
“I’ll remind you from the beginning,” he says. “Fiona had gone away for the weekend with that guy she was seeing, Stan.”
That was decades ago. My breath catches at the mention of Stan’s name. Why has he remembered Stan? Did he know Stan? What does he know about him?
“She and you suddenly weren’t as close as you thought. I had a suspicion about you, but I didn’t even know the language to use back then. And I also, somehow, didn’t really want to know. Anyway, you were down, very depressed. I called and asked you out, but you declined. You told me to leave you alone. I wanted to help you, but you wouldn’t let me. By midweek you were not answering your phone. I was desperately worried about you and I asked the superintendent of your building to let me into your apartment. She’d seen me often enough so she agreed.”
Yes, I remember this, but we didn’t sleep together. What is he talking about?
“You had lost weight, and acne had broken out all over your face. I sat with you all that afternoon, until you made me leave. How much I wanted to hold you through that night. But I left, as you asked.”
Exactly. So what is he getting at?
“I’d already told my mother all about you, so I called and asked her what to do. She said to bring you home to her in New Brunswick.”
Oh God. New Brunswick. I want him to stop the car. I feel ill, but I can’t bring myself to ask him.
“You didn’t agree to go, but neither did you protest, so I bought us tickets and presented them to you. You asked me, in that weak voice I remember well, ‘What will I need to take with me?’ Do you remember?” He looks ahead and doesn’t wait for an answer. “I told you I’d take you to see lighthouses and we’d go for a hike on the coast, and you cheered up. It was what I wanted, and it worked. So we went to Salt Island for a few days.”
He’d rented a car at the airport. I remember us pulling up in front of the house, yellow clapboard with green trim. The memory of the smell of curry in the house comes to mind. I say nothing. “How can you not remember?” he asks, frustration in his voice. “That first night, the Boses and the Gokools had come for dinner. We chatted until late with them and my parents. After the guests left, my parents eventually went to bed and left us alone in the living room. We stayed there for a while and then you helped me turn off the lights in the house. Then you came into my bedroom with me. Shall I remind you of it all?”
He’s replayed this, perhaps many times, I realize. And he’s reciting it to me as if he has intended all along to do so. But now, yes, I do recall. I had sifted the incident, put most of it out of my mind, but I am remembering. Just stay with me for a while. Don’t worry. They’re sleeping. Just lie here with me, he’d said, patting the bed. I half-alighted on the twin bed that was pushed against the wall. He made room for me, but I propped myself sitting against the headboard, my legs on the bed, yes, but my slippered feet hung off the edge.
He’s watching me, and as if he reads my mind, he says, as if he’s just won a prize, “So you remember. Of course you do.” The smell of him here in the car reminds me. Yes, I remember. Of course I do. I close my eyes and wish away that memory — and this moment. I wish away not just the memory, but the truth of it.
I don’t answer him. It was such a long time ago. Why is he bringing this up now? I can recall in enough detail the dinner party with those two couples, driving with him along the coast, the white-and-red lighthouses — beacons themselves for land dwellers, reddish-brown cliffs, pillars of red rock filed by the relentless pounding of the wild ocean into angular shapes towering out of the sea, their tops crowned by sudden bursts of evergreens. But I’d put — what can I call it, the incident? — I’d put the specific details of the night he wants to talk about in a box and tucked it out of sight, recalling of the incident my own brief moments of courage rather than why that courage was needed. And yet here it is playing out in my mind, with him sitting beside me, as if it had happened just the other day. He was lying on his side, his head propped in his hand and his back against the wall. I do remember. The pale yellow flowers on the thin, balled flannel sheet, and his bare feet. His toes were long an
d finger-like, his toenails pink and shiny.
He lay like that, and I was half sitting up for some moments, an awkwardness that hadn’t been between us before, silencing us. I remember he put his hand on my leg, barely touching me. When he got no protest, he let his hand down and rested it there. What came immediately to mind, then, was Fiona. Stan’s hand on her thigh, just like that. I had felt like crying. I slid down and moved toward Prakash, and he lay back to allow me to stretch out and lie next to him. I put my head on his shoulder. Fiona, I was thinking, was probably with Stan right at that moment, and the thought of this made me weak. I adjusted myself and buried my face in his shoulder. I don’t think he knew I was crying, or perhaps he did because he drew me closer and angled himself to hug me tight with both arms.
Yes, I do remember. Perhaps it’s possible to successfully shelve the full memory of such a situation, but not to erase it. He began to kiss my hair, and after some moments he slid down so his face met mine. He held my face by my chin, and when I looked at him, he began to kiss my temple, and I remember I held my breath and he kissed my cheeks. He brought his lips to my mouth, but I turned away and pressed my face into his neck, and at once he moved back and asked me if he could remove his clothing. I remember saying, feebly, Yeah. He watched my face as he undressed. The tears had ceased. I remained clothed, and watched, and I remember wondering, At what point is harm done? Be calm, I told myself, this is what women do. This is what women at the university are doing right now. This is normal. His skin was pale, his chest flat, caved in slightly. His nipples were dark purplish brown, like Thomson raisins. A sparse bank of curled black hairs accentuated the paleness of his skin and ran from just below his neck down his breastbone. He continued watching me, but his eyes seemed glazed, and I felt he no longer saw me. He undid the button of his trousers and pulled the zipper down. He lifted his buttocks off the bed enough to slide off his pants and at once revealed his high-waisted underpants, white as if they were brand new, stretching to contain the rise of an arrow-like penis. The muscles in his thighs and lower legs were long, like a runner’s, and every fibre of his pale body seemed as if it were concentrating. My only knowledge of sex had been with a woman. She had moved on. She wanted to move on. And here I was, with my opportunity, too, to metamorphize. This is your chance, I urged myself. Life could be simple. Family. Children. A normal life. You can love him. You will learn. I thought these things, but it was as if there were two of me. One was aware, watching, trying to work out what was happening, what to do, while the other was across the room, frozen, and neither moved because of the other. He knelt on the bed beside me and began to undress me. I let him, helping only when it had become awkward not to do so. From the distance to which my mind had gone, I watched him touch my stomach, bend, and hesitantly put his lips to my hip bone. He pulled down his underpants and, I remember, yes I do remember, I looked with fear. I was looking at the body part Fiona must have desired. I felt confused. I wanted in that moment to know what it was she felt when she lay like this with a man, with Stan, what it was she knew that I didn’t. Prakash stretched out on his side beside me. His penis touched my skin and he at once lifted himself to lie on me — I watched him — again, from across the room — as he lowered himself, and the instant his penis made contact with my pelvis, he convulsed, and I felt a warm wetness on my thigh, and it was all over. He jumped out of the bed, grabbed his shirt, and went over to his desk. I could not look at him. I wiped my leg repeatedly with the top sheet, the wetness to my horror smearing along me further rather than being easily absorbed by the sheet. I was overwhelmed by the bleachlike smell and by its stickiness.