by Shani Mootoo
Dolly knew what her son was thinking. She replied tersely, “No. Where I will see she?”
“Well, we could go and see them. Everybody telling us congratulations, so I was thinking we should go and tell them congratulations, too.”
“Who is everybody? Mrs. Sangha come to tell us congratulations?”
He sulked. It was true, he knew, but he hadn’t thought about it that way. It hadn’t occurred to him that Mrs. Sangha might have brought or sent a message of congratulations to him or to his mother. When, after weeks had passed, there was still no acknowledgment from Ashton Street that he and the girl he still considered to be the best friend he ever had were now to be in high school at the same time, he felt the sting in his face like a slap on his cheek, that old bitterness again. This time, however, he was deeply grateful his mother hadn’t gone to see them when he wanted her to.
AWAKENING TO DREAMS
Supposedly he was studying a biology assignment in his bedroom, the door to which was closed. His source of light was a bare bulb that swung with the slightest breeze by a cord from the center of the ceiling. He lay dressed in a thin, worn merino vest and equally thin and worn cotton short pants on his bed. One leg was propped at the ankle atop the knee of the other, which he had drawn up. His book rested open and facedown on his chest. He was daydreaming. Every few minutes a mosquito buzzed near his head. He would slap the area when he felt the prick of one feeding on his neck or arms, or the frantic wriggling of one trapped in the net of thick and curly hairs that had sprouted on his lower legs. He was thinking about a particular scene from a movie that he and three of his classmates had skipped school several times to see in a nearby cinema.
In the scene he was reliving, a man who has long been in love with a woman who scorns him finds himself alone for the first time with her. They are having a vibrant quarrel where, face-to-face, noses almost touching, he accuses her of being spoiled and childish, while she demands in a high-pitched voice that he not speak to a woman of her standing so insolently. “I shall not stand for this. Stop it at once,” she says, staring at him unflinchingly. He then grips her by both shoulders, so firmly that she gasps, but she makes no attempt to get away from him. He says she has a heart of stone and doesn’t know what it is to be loved or to love. She stares up into his face, and her eyes flicker as she looks at his lips. How tightly the man holds her, one arm around her waist, pulling her hard into him. The boy imagined he was the man on the screen. The woman’s back is arched as she keeps her head away with enough distance to be able to see his eyes and mouth. His other arm, splayed against her upper back, allows her to lean that far back. They are about to kiss. The boy and his friends had gone to see the movie so many times solely for that moment, the moment of their first kiss. The way the man grips her waist tighter, presses her upper back toward him in such a forceful, swift manner that her head whips back and then forward, her mouth perfectly hitting his, hard. With a forefinger, the boy stroked himself.
Suddenly there was a light tap on his door. He jumped up, breathless. His mother. Without entering, she called his name. He turned his back to the door, fixed his shorts, and began to pull on over them the pair of long pants that were thrown on the foot of the bed. She softly called out to him to come, to sit with them awhile. “He” wanted to talk to him, she said. He pulled on a shirt, pressed his hand against his penis, and waited for the blood flooding his brain to subside, his heart to still, before opening the door.
Mr. Persad sat at one end of the verandah on a bentwood and cane rocking chair, she at the other in a vinyl armchair, both shadowed in the soft edges of orange flare extending this far from a street lamp. The boy stood awkwardly in the doorway. The tip of a mosquito-repellent coil glowed in a corner of the verandah. A steady, slim stream of dense white smoke rose and swirled lazily in the air, spiraled in the space between the three of them, then dissipated into the hot, still night. The porch, though open, smelled heavily of it, yet Dolly and Mr. Persad still slapped at their arms, their faces, and waved their hands about their heads.
“You studying?”
“Mammy say you want me.”
“Sit down.” Mr. Persad gestured with an open palm to the only other chair on the verandah. The boy nodded and sat in the slatted folding wood chair, the kind sold by pavement vendors in the town center.
Mr. Persad looked out over the wood railing into the impenetrable blackness beyond the light of the street lamp. As he rocked, there was a rhythmic squeak of dry wood arching against dry wood. When his mother wasn’t swiping at the buzzing sounds about her ears, or brushing her skin, she would rest her arms on the shiny curl of metal and padded-vinyl arm of the chair. Her fingers made no sound as she tapped the metal in time to the beat of Mr. Persad’s rocking chair. The boy perched on the edge of his chair, waiting. The smoke stung his eyes. He leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees, and looked at the dark floor.
Finally Mr. Persad spoke. “So, son, next term you choosing subjects for your finals. Not so?”
The boy nodded.
“You have plans for your future, son?”
Plans? Future? Wasn’t it as simple as choosing whichever subjects he happened to get the highest grades in? Where could this conversation be headed? he wondered.
“Well, you decide to go into science or the classics?” When the boy was not forthcoming with a response, Mr. Persad asked, “Or you thinking about business?” and without waiting carried on, “Because, you know, I hoping you will take up business. Who else will run all of this?” He indicated with one hand the gas station on the other side of the house, but the gesture made “all of this” appear to be a vast empire, which it was not. The boy thought of the word “heir” and suppressed the urge to grin. The boy’s mind skipped to Bihar and Busby, two classmates who were inseparable. This was how the two of them went through their lives, their futures known, mapped out, and secure. They were born with paid passages on ships captained by their surname and headed unequivocally for success.
Perhaps if his own father were alive, he might have assumed that he would become a fisherman, too, or taken up boat building, and seeing that generation after generation moved townward, he might have followed suit and set up a fish market right there in Marion. But the way things had turned out, his mother coming to Marion and marrying this man who had no obligation to him, he had simply supposed he might finish school as best as he was able and get a job as an elementary school teacher, perhaps as a clerk in a store or in a government office, or even as manpower in a construction company.
Reaction from the boy was slow. From the way his mother looked at him, he knew that she was anxious for him to show some interest, to be grateful. Several times over the course of their life in Bhatt Persad’s house, he did get the impression his mother was with this man for his benefit. This was one of them.
Mr. Persad waited as long as he could and then unfurled his plans for his future and the boy’s.
“You know, it’s twenty-one years now I am living here. Twenty-one years, same house, same station. I see this town grow up around me.” He paused and rocked and seemed to be reflecting on this fact. “What brought me here was the motorcar, you know. Not many people had cars in those days, but of course those who had, needed petrol to run the cars. There were no petrol stations then. Well, not like we know them today, you know.” He said this, his eyes wide open, baring a grin as if he himself were responsible for the development of the gas station. “The car came from an American company. They had set up an office in Trinidad that was to serve the whole Caribbean. All that was here in Guanagaspar was a showroom in Gloria, nothing more than a shoe-box-size office with a picture of the car pin up behind the salesman’s desk, and a brochure about it. You signed up, you made your down payment there, and you waited. Then the vehicle arrived via ship three to six months later. But gasoline to run the car was hard to come by. Only one place sold it: you had to go all the way to the docks outside of Gloria. Sometimes the trip to buy gas was enough to c
ause you to run out of gas! You see, people were afraid that petrol stations right in town were an invitation to hooligans to burn down the entire town in one big”—he made a gesture of an explosion with his hands—“poof!” Dolly pursed her lips and nodded as if in agreement with the people. “And so you can see the problem. If you ran out of gas outside of Gloria, it was headache to find a way to send to the docks for just enough gas so that you could put a little in the tank and make your way back to fill up the rest later. Well, more and more people wanted cars, but it was only the people in the capital who could maintain one. The car company in America and a petrol company over there decided to set up some fellows in business on the outside of the towns. To make a long story short, at that time I was doing manual work in a sugar factory. Well, one day as I was leaving the factory compound, a stranger outside the gate approached me. He asked if he could talk to me a minute. He was a red-skinned man, but he had on nice clean clothes, and he was polite enough. So, I asked myself what harm could there be if I were to spare him a minute or two? He walked with me and we talked a little. He asked how long I worked in the factory, if I was married, and all kinds of other questions. He even asked if I had car. Well, by this time I could tell he was either a real salesman about to try and sell something, or he was a smart man. But I had no money for him to take advantage of me for, so I wasn’t too worried. Eventually he asked if I ever had a dream to be my own boss and to be free of money problems. Well, I burst out laughing, but that didn’t slow him down. He continued walking with me, telling me how easy that dream was to come true. He was, in fact, working for the very company that made dreams come true. The company was looking for people with ambition, and he said that I looked like a man with ambition. He told me that if I was interested and showed potential, the company would teach me everything. For free. Eventually I would have my own business that I could name after myself, and in no time I would be my own man. They would give me a crash course in keeping books and dealing with customers, all for free. He said they weren’t taking any and everybody, ordinarily you had to apply and you had to have certain qualifications. I told the man I had no qualifications, but he told me he had already summed me up and could see I was a very good candidate. So basically he sweet-talked me, and the impressionable young fellow I was, I decided to go to the short-term office that they had set up especially for recruiting, and to apply—without even knowing what exactly I was applying for, except that it was to be my own boss. I found out only then that it was to rent-to-own a gas station. You know, whenever I think back on it, I always realize that all that separates me from this life I living now and continuing on in the sugar factory—maybe one day rising to foreman or driving one of the trucks—was a chance meeting with that fellow outside the factory grounds. Well, I got the job and the station same day. They had to build the station, but in two weeks’ time, I was a businessman with a gas station. This same one. Look at that, eh? One day I was a hand in a factory, and next day I was operating a gas station on the way to owning it. You can never really know who somebody was; by that I mean what position they used to occupy, or who they are currently, or who that somebody may one day become, what clout he might one day have. Best, then, to treat everybody the same, not so? Anyhow, it was the first station this side, you know, and that year Marion had five cars. One year later, it had over two hundred motorcars in Marion.”
Dolly seemed familiar with the story. The boy had had no idea that this man in whose house he lived had once been an estate hand.
Mr. Persad continued, “So I see the town grow up to be what it is today. Now there are more cars in Marion than there are gas stations to supply gas. You see how this place have lineup Friday night and Sunday morning? Anyway, the thing is, businesses—be they gasoline or house construction or lumberyards or clothing stores—here in Marion and in the rest of the country, they getting bigger and broader, and I am wondering what is Bhatt Persad doing? Well, Bhatt Persad has been thinking. I have been thinking I need to begin to grow with the town. Expansion, that is what it is, you know. I am thinking about expanding, buying another gas station. It have need in this place for more. Need, in truth. Well, I want to purchase another two. One on the other side of Marion and the other along the highway.”
Dolly, as surprised as her son, gasped. She said unusually loudly, “Eh?” He looked at her, grinning, and then said that one happened to be for sale right now. She said, “But what you need more than one station for? One is a livelihood, two is headache, and three is … three is …” She wouldn’t finish her thought. She sucked her teeth.
He said right then, very quickly, that he was only thinking about it. She said, “Well, he will choose business, but one station is business enough.” Mr. Persad looked at the boy and nodded as if in agreement. His mother got up and went inside. Mr. Persad said to the boy in an excited but low voice, “Later. We’ll talk later. Man-to-man. You better go and hit those books hard, boy!”
Feeling taller than he was, the boy walked into the house, strangely aligned with his stepfather, dizzy from the ease with which he found he could betray his mother.
HOW TO GROW A FIRE
Mr. Persad did not miss any opportunity when he and the boy were alone. The once-reserved man walked urgently around his property with an arm around the boy’s shoulder, ushering him here and there to see and to learn. His attention and trust made the boy feel older than he was. Mr. Persad showed his books to the boy to prove that he had the money and collateral to buy at least the two stations he had his eyes on.
Mr. Persad had a little car that he seldom drove himself, hiring instead one of the younger attendants to take him or Dolly wherever it was they needed to be. One evening, citing the urge to eat blood pudding and fresh hops bread, he told the boy to accompany him. Uncharacteristically, he drove to the most reputable seller of blood pudding, whose business was housed a fair distance by car on the other side of Marion. But rather than returning home directly after purchasing the heavy steaming coils of aromatic pudding and a quart of yeasty rolls, he took the boy on a drive. He wanted to show him something, he said. They drove up a road that zigzagged across the face of a hill. It took them into a hillside residential area. The houses on the side of this terraced hill were large and extravagantly built, with gardens that had been landscaped and were enclosed by high fences. The stillness in the area was underlined only by the twitter of birds. Every house had an unobstructed view of the town far below and the ocean in the distance. They came to a piece of land that had yet to be built on. Here Mr. Persad stopped the car. They got out to admire the view. The houses were sprawling and were designed, it seemed, to hide away the interiors, unlike the houses of the town that had welcoming verandahs, and windows and doors that in the daytime were left wide open to the eyes of passersby. Unlike the wood houses of the town, these were constructed of steel, stone, and concrete. The fanciest house the boy had seen until these was that of the Sanghas. Mr. Persad clasped his hands behind his head and arched his back for a stretch. The boy was uneasy. He wondered if he was about to be told that Mr. Persad had purchased the property in front of which they stood. This was not an area where he would feel comfortable, would know how to carry himself. His mother would be angry, he thought. Mr. Persad put his arm around the boy’s shoulder.
The way things were going in Marion, he said, it was not good enough these days to simply make a living. A businessman, he said, must nowadays drive a nice car. He gestured to the car behind them and said, “Not that anything is wrong with this car, you know, it is good enough for me, but a real businessman should have a brighter, bigger one. A bigger engine, you understand?
“And he must live in a house in an area like this, with a view of the sea. The kind of house and home he can invite customers and fellow businessmen to. You know, a nice wife who can cook, make a nice party, and make people feel comfortable. Could fix up flowers in a vase nice and set a table pretty-pretty.”
Dolly Persad did not fit this image of the “nice”
wife. Her son wondered with dread if she was what this man who had married her really wanted for himself. But Mr. Persad soon clarified without prompting.
“But I self, I never wanted to be involved in all this, you know. This is not for me. I never had desire nor fire to mix in society and that sort of thing. But today things are different, and today a real businessman must be able to do these kinds of things. You see, my fire was small.
“But you, you must have the means to send your wife into town to buy nice things for herself and for yourself. Nice clothes, nice shoes, a little perfume from abroad once in a while. Not so, child? You must be able not only to afford but also to choose nice pretty jewelry, nice earrings and bangles, bring these things home for your wife and daughters without them having to ask you for them. You see? You have to have a little style, taste. That is the kind of thing you can learn if you want to, you know. Some people are born into circumstances where they grow up with these things and with opportunities in their midst. But I don’t believe anybody is born with style. Style, a person can learn, you learn best when you are young. So I would say, above all, son, to be a real businessman nowadays, you have to be able to go abroad and see how they do things abroad.”
The boy could wait no longer. He asked Mr. Persad if he was planning to leave where they lived. Mr. Persad said he was set in his ways, and the house they lived in was good enough for them. He wouldn’t be comfortable in a house that had a room for every occasion, but that he, the boy, was from a different generation, and when he took over the gas stations—as if he already had more than the one next to the house—he hoped that the boy would live in a place like this, with a big garden landscaped by a professional who had vision, and a house that was designed by a reputable architect with vision, too, and built by a big-time contractor who knew materials and could install modern plumbing and other conveniences.