He Drown She in the Sea

by Shani Mootoo

  Much public attention was paid to Rose as well. She was written about often in the women’s section of the paper as the prime example for all women of the Caribbean. The food and leisure editor interviewed her about housekeeping. The article included recipes of dishes it was said she cooked herself, even though the family employed a cook. It said that in spite of her money and her position as the A.G.’s wife, she was down-to-earth and wore no airs, traits most noticeable in her casual and gentle manner of speaking. On the occasion of being named woman of the year, it was written that other women should strive to be like her: a mother whose children came first and who stood behind her husband, no matter what. That article joked that Caribbean husbands were not the easiest men for wives to put up with, even when that husband was the attorney general, yet Rose Bihar had never been heard to contradict, even in jest, her husband. The paper said that there were two arenas where she upstaged him: those of beauty and charm, and that if she were to run for the symbolic office of president, she would win solely on those two counts.

  Harry, on a visit to her, mentioned the articles. She said she didn’t care for the publicity and everybody knowing her every move, but Shem liked that kind of thing, and he liked it when the papers paid her all that attention. She said, “When you are in the public eye, you can’t stop people from writing all kinds of things. Even when they say it is about you, you don’t recognize yourself in their stories.”

  Over the course of the time during which Harry visited Shem Bihar’s outstanding wife, improvements noticeable from the outside had been done to the house. When Rose got a car of her own, the garage was widened to include it. The hedge around the house was pulled up, and a high stone fence that blocked the view of the house was erected. Then a section of the fence came down to make way for the construction of a swimming pool, Shem’s birthday present to her—an extravagance, she said to Harry, apologetically, for she was the only one in the family who would make use of it. The mere mention of her birthday had Harry wondering if she had ever found out about his attempt to get invited to her sixteenth birthday party.

  Each time he visited, he was announced by the servant or one or both of the children, who seemed to grow in huge spurts, as the Eggman. Each time but the last, Rose and he stood, like that first time, at the gate. Her strange combination of distance and warmth remained the same. Sometimes they were out there for half an hour, and once for almost an hour. Although he never asked, she told him each time about her father. He had been moved to an apartment in a costly private-care facility for older infirm people. It had become fashionable, if not altogether acceptable, for society Indians to leave the care of their infirm parents to strangers in private-care homes. Rose told Harry that “they” had sold the house on the corner of Beau Moreau and Ashton streets. The family had recently started going to the Bihar beach house on the east coast regularly. She still enjoyed swimming, enjoyed that more than anything, and as neither Shem nor the children much liked being in the water, it was time she had to herself. She showed surprise and even disappointment, Harry liked to think, that he, born by the sea, had never learned to swim. She told him inconsequential things about the children, things they did that made her laugh, things about them that caused her worry. How the boy was not as bright as she would have hoped. That he didn’t show an interest in anything worthwhile as far as they could see. Not science or reading or even sports. That the girl was just like her father, strong-willed and bright, maybe even too much so for a girl. There were, too, many long silences between them out by the gate. At first they were awkward, but soon enough the quiet was full and calming.

  On his last visit, several years since Mrs. Sangha had died, he did make it beyond the gate. It was just past the lunch hour, and her children, now in the final stages of secondary schooling, were at school. Shem was at his office in Gloria. Her live-in servant had the day off. Harry called at the gate, cradling in his hands a brown bag of eggs. Rose opened the back door a crack. Seeing him, she went out and drew open the heavy gate, inviting him into the kitchen. Although she had not been expecting any visitor that day, her lips were colored with shiny burnt-orange lipstick, and her eyes were outlined in black kohl. Harry sat at the table and watched her bustle about the kitchen. He had, come to think of it, never seen her, as an adult, without lipstick or eyeliner, even when he arrived unexpectedly and she came to meet him outside at the gate. At the stove, she set the kettle on a burner, turned on the ignition switch, and bent to see if the flame had come up. She took a round coconut bake out of the oven, where it was stored in a bright yellow kitchen cloth, cut a wedge from the bake, sliced it, and, using her fingers, packed it with layers of already cut cheese. She did all of this quietly. She knew he was watching. He could tell from the way she moved—everything she did, she angled herself so that he saw her face. He was not shy to watch keenly, for each minuscule motion she made seemed considered and significant. He relished being in this interior world of hers.

  She set a place mat before him, stopped close enough and long enough beside him to arrange the knife and fork on the mat. He had to stop himself from reaching around her waist, standing up, and holding her against him. Such closeness and attention on that single and particular occasion when, inviting him into her privacy, no one else around—surely she, too, had hoped that he would hold her. But he did not. In that moment of possibility, he had glimpsed his own dignity and was satisfied to have been finally afforded a recognition.

  They sat across from each other. She poured them both cups of tea, and they sat in silence, except for when he told her the bake was delicious. She didn’t respond. He sipped his tea slowly, and when it was finished, with more confidence than he had previously known, he slid his chair back. It grazed, a screeching sound against the terrazzo floor that underscored the complicity of their time together. She remained seated, her eyes set on the plate from which he had just eaten. He wiped his mouth on the napkin and got up. He moved toward the door that led to the garage. She did not get up or look at him. He turned sharply to face her, a question brimming in his mouth. He opened his mouth, ready to demand an answer of her, and just as urgently as it came, it evaporated. It began with “why,” but no words would follow. The question burned like a fire in his chest. Even if he could have framed it, there would have been, and he knew it well, no answer to the question. He wanted to beg it of her, but in truth, it was a question for Narine Sangha. For Mrs. Sangha. For his mother. None of whom, in any case, would have had the answer. He uttered with a marked note of uncertainty that he’d come again, and he left.

  Compelled by the same urgency as the question that would not form, he did return, three days later, at the same time. But the servant came to the door. She said, “Oh, you is the Eggman! Just now.” She went back into the house and returned to say that Madam was sleeping. She held her hands out for the eggs, but he had brought none.

  THE HARDEST GOOD-BYE

  Dolly Persad passed away during the early days of a period dubbed in a calypso by the Mighty Engineer “The Days of Guanagasping.” Long-standing racial tensions between blacks and whites, and blacks and Indians, were erupting on a daily basis across the island. Backyard grumblings gave way to organized mobilization when the son of the minister of housing and works, driving in a drunken state after a party, hit and killed a black woman in an impoverished neighborhood at the heart of the capital city. Although his car was witnessed flying recklessly down the middle of a narrow unlit road, the young man (whose prominent family of white English descent had fingers deep in the sugar and sea-urchin industries, and in towel manufacturing) was charged only with driving a vehicle while intoxicated, and with public mischief. The judge (a man of Indian origin) reprimanded the dead woman for being out in the middle of the road late at night in clothing that did not make her more visible, and the minister’s son’s license was suspended for a month. The black population of Guanagaspar had endured enough. For them the incident was bigger than itself. It was about the history of their force
d displacement. It was about racial, social, and economic injustices. It was, for many in the country, an ending and also a beginning.

  Crowds of protesters, the vast majority of whom were of African origin, gathered daily in front of the government house, bearing placards and banners, banging insistently on tin cans and discarded hubcaps. On the streets in downtown Marion, Indians and blacks no longer blocked the pavement while standing to chat and joke with each other. There was such apprehension in the air that in general, people, regardless of race or other background, did not have the inclination to linger amicably.

  During those endless days and nights of simmering discontent, Harry thought often of Uncle Mako. Uncle Mako was not, after all, a mere dreamer.

  Harry had gotten in the habit of remaining upstairs during the night, in case his mother needed anything, not going down to his room until she herself had slept. She seemed to manage sleep later and later with each passing night.

  It was almost ten o’clock. The animated sounds of demonstrators chanting antigovernment slogans in the square outside of the town hall wafted in and out of the neighborhood on the crest of the night breezes. Harry sat at the kitchen table, the newspaper spread on it. He had become accustomed to the noise of the late-night meetings. He struggled to remain awake. Surely his mother would be asleep by this time, he thought, and he tiptoed to the door of her bedroom. She was awake. She said she had been calling him, but her voice was too weak to compete with that of the protestors, so he had not heard her. With the frail gesture of wriggled fingers, she offered him her hand. She was tired, she whispered. Her breathing seemed labored. When he said he would quickly go down to the station to call the doctor, she shook her head and asked him not to leave her side. A finality in her voice, her knowing nod, he understood. Although he had anticipated this moment, he was unprepared. His neck tightened. He kissed her forehead. His tears wet her face. He heard her weakening voice utter, “Don’t cry, my baby. You are a good boy. I was lucky.” He gripped her hand tightly. He pressed his lips against the back of her hand and hoped that in the fierceness of that gesture, she would know all that he was incapable of verbalizing. She pulled him closer to whisper in his ear that he should turn off the lights now and leave her, let her try and sleep. He let go of her slowly, backing away from her with the unfathomable awareness that he was already alone.

  When he looked in on her again, her eyes were closed. He went slowly to her and touched her hand. It was cold, as he had feared.

  MAKO THE AFRICAN

  The country was indeed gasping. Unionized sugar workers and elementary, primary, and high school teachers, most of whom were of African origin, were regularly on the march. Every few months there was a union-organized nationwide strike. Kidnappings had become commonplace. Murders, as asides to robberies, too. The white-skinned people were terrified to show their faces and seemed to have disappeared from the streets. They were, in fact, departing the country in droves.

  Unlike the Africans, who had been brought to the islands against their will and enslaved, the Indians had come as indentured laborers, armed with the promise, the guarantee even, of a return trip to India, or, if they chose, after the completion of their indentureship, a parcel of land, gratis. Still, a century and more later, they bowed before the white-skinned British, yet lorded superiority over those of African descent. Suddenly the Indian population was terrified. Younger nationalistic Guanagasparian Indians, infuriated by the divide of Africans and Indians and therefore of the country they knew as their one and only home, fanned the fires of protest. Pandemonium threatened to drown the little island.

  Harry sensed that it was as dangerous not to take a side as it was to take one. The very day the rumor of an army-led coup spread, grocery shops emptied of food and fuel. Harry hurried, along with almost everyone who owned an unprotected yard, to the hardware store to buy wire fencing. With his workers, he frantically fenced off the station at the foot of the house, then boarded the windows and the glass-paned front door of the house. They then hopped in the truck with the remaining fencing, intending to reach the station on the other side. The town was jammed with car and truck traffic. Nothing budged for hours. Tempers began to flare. Harry and the workers abandoned the truck with all the goods on it and made their way back between vehicles amid the honking of horns and pounding of fists on car roofs. Nothing happened that night, but there was a frightening stillness about the town. Occasionally a dog howled, and one waited fearing that it might have been at a band of arsonists entering the town. In one day, four businesses owned by Indians in downtown Marion went up in flames. Harry, although anxious about being an Indian and a businessman, risked the drive into the capital. He passed by the American embassy first and then by the Canadian High Commission. Fingering in his pocket the ten-dollar note needed to pay for a visa, he joined the shorter queue at the gates of the Canadian High Commission.

  Harry took a loss on the value of the house, and one could say, for what pittance he sold them, he gave the two gas stations away.

  Before leaving, Harry took his mother’s cremated ashes to the banks of the sea just around the bend from Muldoon Bridge. He beat his way through the tall rozay bush until he found a high point from which he cast her ashes into the tumultuous waters where the sea and river met. He sat on the bank for almost an hour, recalling much that his mother had done. In this moment of letting go of her, it seemed to him that everything she had ever done was indeed for him.

  From there he continued his journey to the village of Raleigh. He took with him his immigration papers and the stamp of his visa to show to Uncle Mako and Tante Eugenie, as if he held in his hand a school report card. Tante Eugenie held his hand and would barely let go of it. Uncle Mako seemed stronger, happier, too. Tante Eugenie put Uncle Mako’s unusual smiling and good-naturedness down to all the noise in the country about Africa, about what was being called black power, and about black beauty. He had started calling her “my beauty,” she told Harry. It was clear that this pleased her deeply. She sucked her teeth, talking about all the noise in the country, but she, too, stood taller than he had ever seen her. With their renewed lease on life, he left with the hope of perhaps one day seeing them again.

  The day before his departure, he went after a long absence, eggs in hand, to see Rose. The area in which she and her family lived was heavily patrolled by private security outfits. His car that spat and sputtered clearly did not belong in that neighborhood. He was stopped and the vehicle searched by guards who carried guns on their hips. After they found only a flat of eggs on the backseat, he was allowed to continue into the neighborhood. On his arrival at the back gate of the house, a sleepy policeman guarding the house and family of the attorney general stopped him. The man asked Harry what business he had there. Harry told him he was there to see Mrs. Bihar. The man looked at Harry’s car. He looked at the flat of eggs. He asked if Harry owned chickens. Harry said yes, but fearing the policeman might take the eggs to deliver them inside himself, he added quickly that he was a friend of Mrs. Bihar. The man looked up at Harry sharply and then grinned as if he understood something. Annoyed with the assumption, Harry sidestepped him and pressed the doorbell.

  Rose’s daughter, Cassie, untouched by the dramas unfolding in the city below, came to the gate. She said her mother was taking a nap. What different worlds they lived in, mused Harry. She could afford to nap, while he was on the verge of fleeing the island for fear of losing all he owned, including his life.

  He handed the girl the eggs and a note on which he had scribbled that he’d gotten his papers and was leaving for Canada the following day. He included his home phone number.

  That night Rose telephoned. Shem was in the capital briefing the prime minister and his cabinet, but still she couldn’t speak long, as it was well past the children’s dinnertime and Jeevan, still with homework unfinished, needed her help. But, she said, she wanted to call before it was too late, to wish him all the best. She said when he found the time that he should send a note w
ith his address, adding that if she were ever to come up to Canada, she would try and look him up. She repeated “if,” clarifying further that it was unlikely, since Shem—like her father, if Harry remembered—preferred taking his holidays in the U.K.

  If he had been unsure before, he knew now, in his blood, that he was doing the right thing: he was, after all, about to step out from under the cloud of circumstance that seemed to have ruled his heart and mind for far too long.

  III

  RETURNING ARRIVAL

  Guanagaspar. Present day.

  Heroman, Piyari’s brother, leads Harry from the airport terminal to the white Austin in the taxis-only zone. It is not yet ten o’clock in the morning, but the sun blasts its heat, reproachful to those who have stayed away from their homeland too long. On reaching the car, Harry is damp with perspiration.

  Heroman throws the luggage on the backseat and hands his charge an envelope, a letter from Cassie Bihar. He leans back against the car and cleans his teeth with a reed pulled from a grass just off the road and watches Harry.

  Dear Harry,

  I hope you made the connection in Toronto smoothly and that both flights were tolerable. Heroman will take you to his house in Central to meet his sister Piyari right away. He will let me know where you are staying, and I will ring you. Please wait for me to ring. I will call you at eight o’clock tonight.

  Sincerely,

  CB

  Harry is perplexed. Why has she not written word of her mother?