by Shani Mootoo
She hurried Dolly to finish the day’s work; rather than wait in the stifling four o’clock heat for a taxi, they might as well take a ride in the car. She called out to her neighbor from her bedroom window, asking that neighbor to call out to his neighbor, and that one to the next until eight houses down, contact was made with the chauffeur who worked on call for Narine Sangha.
Mrs. Sangha, and Dolly in a freshly pressed dress, sat in the backseat of the car. Between them sat the girl, nervous about making her first trip to an open-air fish market. She asked her mother and Dolly all kinds of questions, expressing her desire to do this and to do that, to go for a ride in a boat, to buy baby fish that they could keep in a bowl. Dolly’s son, in the low front seat with the chauffeur, could hardly have seen out the front window or even through the one at his side. This was, however, better than sitting on his mother’s lap, as he would have done had they taken their ride home as usual in Mr. Walter’s taxi. Tired from all the play of the day, rocked by the motion of the car, he nodded off to sleep even before they made it out of the town. He slept through the landscape he had been so eager to see earlier that morning. On that hot afternoon, the girl, too, leaning back against her mother, fell asleep, both children awakening only when the car halted at the fish market.
The chauffeur, who was of African descent, opened the door for Mrs. Sangha. The air was hot, salty, and rich with the stink of incinerating fish entrails. At one end of the market, a fire burned in a half barrel fueled by old newspaper, entrails, and the rubbish of the fishermen, sending a plume of dark gray smoke into the air. Flies hovered in the heat, flying so slowly that one saw each individual beat of their wings. Dressed in his white shirt, black tie, and black pants, the chauffeur looked at the fishermen and village people, mostly of the same race as he, with disdain. He kept his distance by the car.
Uncle Mako watched Dolly and her employer from his stall. Dolly waved to him. He nodded to her. The boy was ready to go off and play with his friends, but the girl, less brave than when her journey had begun, stayed close to her mother, watching these strange village men. “Mammy, let’s go back in the car,” she whispered. Her mother knew well enough what disturbed her. “Behave yourself. This is Dolly’s village. I want to buy fish, and is these people who catch and sell fish. You see those children over there? They his age. They his friends. Go and say hello. But don’t go far, eh, and don’t get yourself dirty.”
Closer to the car were a few tables with handicrafts. Behind one a man carved figurines out of teak. Flecks of the wood he chipped caught in the netting of his merino vest and were trapped in the tight curls of his hair. On the table he displayed pieces that were as small as a pendant and others that were a good two feet or so high. He had worked the same two faces, one a man’s, the other a woman’s, both in profile, several times. The lips of the figures were broad, the men’s puckered and the women’s pouting and fleshy. From the necks of some of the larger renditions of women hung rows of loose wood rings, and all the torsos bore the same long drooping breasts with protruding, ruffled nipples. Mrs. Sangha, brushing at stubborn apathetic flies that alighted on her lips and eyelashes, came nearer to admire the man’s work. How did he get the loose, seamless rings around the women’s necks? she wondered. Mrs. Sangha marveled at how he had managed to render the earlobes so pendulous that the wood looked as if it might swing any moment. She wondered aloud if she had any presents to give. The carver, who was sitting, watching, this woman who came in a car driven by a black-skinned chauffeur, and stroking layers of wood away from what would be a woman’s cheek, recognized the decision-making in her face. He knew better than to expect a sale, but still, he stopped his chip-chip-chipping and stood up. He consented to hold up one of the larger carvings of a woman. Lobes of dangling breasts with rippled nipples met Mrs. Sangha at eye level. She thanked him, quickly declined, and turned away. Why, if he was going to be so bold as to portray naked ladies, did he make their breasts so old-looking? she wondered, and consoled herself that at least these were not images of Indian women baring their breasts. He resumed his carving. A shell-jewelry vendor picked up his guava staff from which necklaces hung and began to follow Mrs. Sangha. “Madam, madam,” he called. The little girl was attracted by the colored strings threaded with the fanciful shells. Dolly’s face was set tight. She didn’t want to be embarrassed by these people. Dolly called the children to stay close to her. She walked ahead of Mrs. Sangha, toward Uncle Mako. “Madam, wear this, and Boss will see you anew. Take one home, na,” insisted the vendor. Uncle Mako, fanning the air with a dried leafy branch of a lime tree, told the jewelry vendor to leave madam alone. The man sucked his teeth but retreated.
When Dolly introduced Uncle Mako to Mrs. Sangha as “Madam,” he said, “I know. Everybody does call me Mako. Is time you come. So long we hear plenty about you from Dolly and mih boy. She is like my daughter, you know, and he, well, he is like my grandchild, too. Thank you for being so good to them.”
Dolly blushed, and the boy, still beside Mrs. Sangha and his mother, tiptoed and pointed with pride to a heap of brightly colored footballers. “Uncle Mako, you ketch footballers today. Give me one.” His mother snapped sharply that he was not to play with them, they would dirty his hands. Uncle Mako came around to their side of the table. Indicating that his shirt was too dirty, he instructed Dolly to lift up the little girl so that she could better see the table of fish. Dolly lifted her, but the child was clearly hesitant and kept herself pressed hard against Dolly’s body. Uncle Mako pulled two limp blue-and-yellow-striped footballers from the top of the pile and showed them to the girl. She was afraid of the black man’s closeness, yet he made her feel important. The boy watched with pride as Uncle Mako stroked the fish and told the girl those were for her. She raised her eyebrows and smiled in disbelief. She asked her mother if she could really have them. When Mrs. Sangha asked how much they were, Uncle Mako answered he didn’t charge people who couldn’t see above the table. He scaled and gutted the footballers and wrapped them in a sheet of newspaper, and told the child that when she returned home, she had to make sure to season them properly. He spoke to her as if she really could season the fish herself, and she nodded somberly, listening with all her strength as he said, “With a pinch of thyme, some slice onions, and plenty-plenty salt, for saltwater fish need a goodly amount of salt, and”—he rubbed his hands together—“then you drag them in a plate that have flour in it, and then, just so, you fry them up. Quick-quick, because you don’t want them to burn and get black-black like this skin on my body.” He laughed, and the girl, still lifted in Dolly’s arms, giggled. He was pleased with himself that he was able to make the child relax, so he added, “Them does eat good. I promise you that. Come back again, and I will keep more for you, because once you taste footballer, you can’t stop wanting more.”
While Dolly and Mrs. Sangha attended to their business, some of the young boys who spent their spare time milling about their heroes, the fishermen of the village, called out to Dolly’s son, “Ey! We catch plenty fish today, boy. If you had stayed with us, you would of catch some, too. Lil ones. Small so, like mih finger. You want to see them? They was trap in the nets. We free them; we put them in a pail of water. Bring the girl, na. She have a name? Look them in that pail.” The boy was in his world now, able to show it off to his friend from town. The girl, less hesitant, followed him behind the stalls. They treaded carefully around a mound of shucked oyster shells, over uneven cracked slabs of concrete laid haphazardly atop beach sand. The girl’s mother realized the most that might happen to her was fish-smelling water or fish blood might be splashed on her clothing. Both women kept their eyes on the children, though they could not hear what transpired between them and the others. As the two children stooped to look at five gasping baby fish, by this time flailing on their sides in the pail of murky salt water, one of the boys, hardly a year older than Dolly’s son, asked him conspiratorially if the girl would one day be his dulahin. He did not know what that was, but he decided
that if she was going to be someone’s dulahin, she would be his. Yes, she would one day be his dulahin.
Before answering, however, he looked to where Mrs. Sangha and his mother stood. He remembered the gardener referring to the girl, telling him, “You and she different, boy,” and the boy blurted out, braver than when he was in town. “She is Narine Sangha daughter.” The older boy, not satisfied, rephrased his question, asking if it was she whom he would marry. He had to wait to get married, he whispered back, he had to wait until he became a big man.
Heading back to the car, his mother was given a fish wrapped in a sheet of newspaper from the fishermen who regularly supplied her free of charge. One of the older men grabbed him from behind and threw him high in the air, catching and hugging him to his chest. The boy tried in vain to pull away from the man, who smelled of stale fish blood. Amid his struggling and screaming to be let down, the man said loudly enough for everyone to hear, “Ey, boy. So this is yuh girlfriend?”
Instantly Dolly spun around and snapped at the man who had asked the question. The boy noted that Mrs. Sangha had, the moment the question was asked, walked straight ahead to the car, silent.
His mother was quarreling. “Charlie! What wrong with you? Have some respect, na. Put mih child down and stop talking stupidness so. You ent got no sense, man?”
It was that word, “girlfriend,” he realized, that had caused this outburst. He wondered if to be a girlfriend and dulahin were alike and if these were bad things.
Uncle Mako called out to Charlie, shook his head at him, and Charlie, in a show of bravado, threw the boy once more into the air, then set him down as he play-argued with Uncle Mako, attempting to cover his blunder.
The boy, trying to brush the scent of fish off his clothing, thought hard. Yes, she was a girl. And yes, she was his friend. She must be a girlfriend. The word seemed to mean something bad. He did not want anyone to say unkind things about his friend. He wanted to cry. Aware that she was being discussed, the girl held her body stiffly, self-consciously, her eyes blank and wide. Protectively, he took her hand and walked quickly with her, following Mrs. Sangha to the car. When the men whistled and shouted out, “Eh-eh, eh-eh, but look at the big man, na, holding his madam hand, oui, papa!” he dropped her hand as if it had burned him. He bit his lower lip and attempted to get in the backseat with Mrs. Sangha, the girl, and his mother. The two women pushed him out of the backseat and told him to sit in front with the chauffeur. In the car, the girl asked her mother what the men had meant. When Mrs. Sangha answered curtly that it didn’t concern her, that it was big-people talk, the boy felt as if he himself had encouraged something dirty and very bad to take place.
Before that moment, the majority of the boy’s waking moments used to be full of imagined activities with his little friend, the girl at Mrs. Sangha’s house. In his day-and nighttime dreams, she and he were constant companions. Without any comprehension, from that moment on he had the discomfiture of being aware of something but not knowing exactly what that something was. Yes, she definitely was his girlfriend, he thought defiantly, even if he didn’t know what that meant, and even if this was a bad thing. He, too, was silent, wanting to cry, but too frightened to do so, and wondering what it meant to be a big man, words he had used earlier without understanding their meaning.
The chauffeur took them, the car leaden with silence, to the trail that led to the partially wallpapered house. As he and Dolly got out of the car, the girl announced she needed to do a peepee. She didn’t want to go on the side of the road, as her mother suggested, or behind the hibiscus shrub a few yards away. She needed a real toilet. Mrs. Sangha asked Dolly if she would let the child use the toilet. Dolly was about to explain that theirs was not what the child would consider a real toilet. Mrs. Sangha stopped her, laughed, said of course she knew that, but what to do? The drive back to Marion was too long for her to wait. Besides, it would be a new, interesting experience. Today was full of new experiences for all of them. Let her learn something else new, Mrs. Sangha said with conviction and determination.
They left the car and chauffeur on the side road: the sand trail directly to the house was too narrow and strewn with fallen coconut trees and had dips big enough to swallow a car whole. When the girl saw the house, she slowed down and pulled her mother’s arm, wanting to whisper in her mother’s ear. Her mother said to her aloud, “That is where Miss Dolly lives.”
The boy was uncomfortable. He walked far behind the other three, deep in thought.
Misangha’s house, he was thinking, had two toilets, both of which were on the inside of the house. The bowls were made of cold, shiny white porcelain. Each had a tank full of water situated high above its bowl. To clean out the bowl after using it, there was a shiny brass chain to pull. Water would rush out of the walls of the porcelain and rise high up the side of the bowl, then be sucked back, everything disappearing down the drain. The boy had discovered both rooms on the same day, and he paid them several visits, forcing himself to urinate each time so that there was reason to step up on the footstool, placed there for the girl, and pull the chain.
He had an urge to tell his mother that rather than taking the girl to the outhouse, she could bring her the enamel chamber pot stored under the dressing table. But he hesitated, unsure of the wisdom of that. Even though his mother washed it daily, its odor remained sharp, like newly turned worm-ridden dirt.
Dolly fetched a sheet of newspaper from the house. From the backyard where he waited anxiously, the boy heard the girl’s inquiring voice and her mother answering, but the content of their talk was inaudible. When they returned to the house, they washed their hands from a bucket of water kept for that purpose at the bottom of the flight of uneven stairs. The boy noticed with relief and pride the milk cans lining the steps, painted fire-truck red and full of lush bread-and-butter begonias.
Mrs. Sangha stood erect, her back to the house. Conducting sea air toward her nostrils with her hands, she lifted her chest to the sky and filled her lungs. She was in no hurry to leave.
Dolly asked, her hesitation registered in the dip of her voice, if Mrs. Sangha would take some tea before the trip back to Marion. Before Mrs. Sangha had a chance to respond, her daughter piped up that she would like a soft drink, please, and so they cautiously ascended the precarious stairs to the house, Mrs. Sangha gripping her daughter’s hand.
Mrs. Sangha sat on the bench at the table, both of which, like the house itself, had been crudely banged together, the table covered with a piece of medium-gauge plastic that had a design of bright red and yellow flowers. Dolly leaned, pushed open the lopsided window, and reached far out of it. From an enamel basin on a shelf outside the house, she ladled water onto her hands. She scrubbed her hands clean and returned to the table, which she busied herself rearranging. She pushed the pitch-oil lamp, a bowl, a bag of flour, and a bottle with brown sugar against the wall, out of the way. With a wet cloth and a wide arch, she wiped the plastic covering, swiftly scooping away two queues of ants, one heading toward the sugar bottle, the other away from it. Before long, she and Mrs. Sangha were engrossed in talk about people in Raleigh and about people in Marion. They did not mention the incident at the fish market.
The boy stood in the doorway at the top of the stairs and saw the interior of his house. He would have preferred if they were all outside in the sandy, breezy yard. He wanted to go, unnoticed, over to the stitched-together flour sack that hung on a rope dividing his house into two rooms, to pull it taut, so that the thin and torn coconut-fiber mattress that lay directly on the floor, and the dressing table—two orange crates side by side, covered with a printed cotton sheet—were hidden from view. He hoped the girl and her mother would not look upward; there was no fine ceiling over their heads, only the raw galvanized roof, parts of which billowed a little with each passing breeze.
His mother opened the two bottles of soft drinks kept especially in case of visitors and divided them between two enamel mugs and one of the two glasses she had taken from th
e single shelf in the room. She took out six biscuits from a tin on the shelf and put them on a saucer on the table. A fly immediately appeared and hovered above the plate. The child moved closer to the table.
His eye intently tracing the movements of the fly, he whispered, “Mammy, it have a fly.”
“So, brush it away, child,” she answered.
He lifted his hand and flogged the air once, but he did not want to bring attention to the fly in his house. He did not simply want to keep the fly away from the biscuits and the soft drinks. He wanted it to disappear altogether from his house.
Usually he enjoyed those biscuits. They stuck to the roof of his mouth. His mother bought them from the roadside shopkeeper by the half dozen especially because he often asked for them. But today he was aware that they did not have the flavored jamlike centers like the ones Misangha gave him sometimes when he was at her house. The girl took no more than a sip of her carbonated drink. She shook her head with surprise at the spitting bubbles and gaseousness bursting in her mouth. Her eyes watered, and she abandoned the room-temperature drink.
Dolly removed a plate covering a bucket that rested on a smaller table behind her. With the remaining glass, she scooped a drink of water for herself. Finally she slumped into the straight-back chair across the table from Mrs. Sangha.
The wind whistled noisily through the remaining spaces in the walls, a draft cut through the boards.
Suddenly Mrs. Sangha said to her daughter, “Darling, you want to go …” and his heart ceased beating when he thought they were about to leave. But she finished her sentence: “… outside and play a little bit? It have chickens outside. Son, take she outside and show she the yard. It good for her to see new things.”