Cereus Blooms at Night

by Shani Mootoo

  “Thank you for asking, Mr. Hector. She is well, all things considered.”

  “You know, since I growing up I hearing ’bout she. When I was a young fellow my Pappy used to threaten that if I didn’t behave myself he would take me and drop me in she yard and leave me there. And now look at this, na! Is she who get drop and left in my yard!”

  I quickly marched over to him, leaving Miss Ramchandin to amble in her world, hoping more than ever that it occupied her well enough to block out his conversation. I planted myself between him and her view of him, intending to block her view of the broken plant.

  “Serious though,” he continued, “plenty people used to go and harass the lady, but, you know, is strange, I was never one, myself, to torment anybody. Children used to go and pelt she and pelt she mango and come back frighten-frighten but still excited that they break a window or sling-shot a bird. You know how children could be, na. It was the thing to do, and though I didn’t take part in it I didn’t question it either. Hmmm. I never question them. Somehow you don’t question things until you come face to face with the person and suddenly—suddenly you realize that behind all them stories it have a flesh-and-blood, breathing, feeling person who capable of hurting, yes! Well, ask her, na. Ask her if she want to garden. I thinking about starting a plot for the old people to have something to do. Some people say that gardening good for old people. I am proof of that!” he laughed.

  I hesitated, still blocking his approach. Seeing that my focus was his cut gerbera, Mr. Hector clutched it possessively.

  “Is for she. I pick it to give to she. What? You want it?”

  “No, no, Mr. Hector. It’s just that, well, I don’t really know how to explain, but Miss Ramchandin might not react well to it. I think it is a very generous thing, that you want to give it to her. It’s very touching, actually. No one here has really been kind to her.”

  His eyes roamed my face. I felt as though he was looking for an angularity to my jaw line and cheekbone, inspecting my moustache and other facial hair to help confirm a notion. The muscles of my cheeks became devilishly ticklish. I was afraid my eyes would begin to flicker on their own, as they were given to doing whenever I became shy.

  “You see,” I said, “I am beginning to understand some things about her and I think that she does not like things in nature to be hurt. To her, the flower and the plant would be both suffering because they were separated from each other. You know what I mean? It would be as if its arm had been cut off or something. I think it would upset her greatly and set her back.”

  He thought a while. “That make some sense, if you look at it in a particular way. Well, you want it? Take it, na. It pick already. No sense it go to waste.”

  It was an awkward moment, for no sooner had he offered it than he became uncomfortable. His eyes, whose aqueous tranquillity I was noticing for the first time, now glanced across the yard.

  “I don’t mean nothing by that, you know! I mean, don’t take it the wrong way. I married and thing. I not funny, you know. Is just that the thing picked already—” He was so nervous that the flower fell out of his hand and we both reached to pick it up. I got to it first, he jumped back and I handed it to him. The loose, thin flesh on his arms and on his belly had previously hinted to me of his greater age, yet suddenly, instead of age I saw the sun-darkened skin and rugged muscles of a man accustomed to hard labour.

  “Thank you very much, Mr. Hector. I understand. It’s a very beautiful gerbera but, you know, if I take it I will have the same problem. It will be in my possession as I walk the grounds and Miss Ramchandin might well be upset. I would really love to have it, but it would be better if you gave it to one of the other nurses or residents.”

  “Yes, yes! Good idea.” He turned away so fast I felt a shrinking inside.

  “About the gardening idea,” I called out quickly. “I will suggest it. I think it will be a very good idea, myself.” He turned and, without stopping, continued to walk backwards. “But give me a little time. She has hardly said any words and it’s a struggle to know what she wants.”

  “You real sensitive to her, eh!” Again he became shy, calling out, “I will keep a place for her. When she ready, it will be there for her.”

  He could easily have been my father’s age—I barely knew my father—and his past kindnesses had struck me as fatherly. But suddenly, Mr. Hector seemed ageless.

  I walked the few paces back to Miss Ramchandin. She had come to a complete standstill, waiting for me. I had then yet another feeling toward Mr. Hector. I felt breathless from the excitement of his attentions, but at the same time more than a little nauseous from his discomfort and polite disdain. Discomfort or disdain, they amounted to the same: he recoiled from me and it was his recoiling that stung, made me feel as though my back were exposed, or more pointedly, as though I had been caught with my trousers off, awaiting a whipping with a guava cane. I felt that the entire staff, including Sister and the residents and Toby, had seen our push-and-pull with the gerbera, had seen him walk away, leaving me standing there, humiliated. I took a quick glance at the flower bed he had been tending. He was stooped again, his back to me. I felt dizzy and sick. Why did I want to come face to face with him in some dark room, some dark night? Why did I want to put my arms around him and be in turn embraced by him, engulfing and protecting me? Why did I so desperately want to offer myself up to him and make promises that would cause him to swoon with desire?

  At my side Miss Ramchandin cooed like a young bird and took no notice of me. I was a roller coaster of emotions and thoughts, reasoning one minute that if he returned my caresses, he would be as bad, as depraved, as perverse as I, that a man of his age and respect would be complicit, an accomplice—Mr. Hector, whom the staff quite liked, would be just like me—and then reasoning the next that if I did not so loathe my unusual femininity, his rejection of me would not be so devastating. Trying to change him or his reaction might well bring only grief. I decided there and then that I would change my own feelings about myself. I would, I must, cast him out of my thoughts and stand tall.

  In moments of despair, thoughts of Cigarette Smoking Nana always reassured me. I remembered the sly smiles, comforting complicity and camaraderie that she and I had shared. But thoughts of Nana were a temporary bandage. I didn’t know how to cast Mr. Hector and the incident from my mind. Nana had accepted me and my girlish ways but she was the only person who had ever truly done so. Thoughts of her suddenly lost their power. Try as I might, I was unable to stand tall. I wondered for the umpteenth time if Nana would have been able to accept and love the adult Tyler, who was neither properly man nor woman but some in-between, unnamed thing.

  Just then Miss Ramchandin started mumbling. Jumbled, mumbled words came from her mouth. Her voice was low, hardly louder than a whisper, and hoarse. Slowly I made out individual words and then sentences. She was reciting over and over, a ditty that children sing and play games to:

  Ole lady walk, ole lady fall.

  Hit she belly. “Lord!” she bawl.

  Crick crack, all say oops!

  Brick brack, break she back,

  Le we go tief pom-er-ac.

  I decided to do battle against the sinking feeling, and joined in softly. She grew excited, watched my face and laughed wildly, the way children do. I walked lighter and clapped my hands to her chant. I felt like an explorer charting her life in murky, unmapped waters. I was not sure what I was discovering beyond her voice but I felt it would not be long before I would have the privilege, and honour, of entering her world. Across the way another resident was on the path brushing himself frantically. Mr. Phu was often sure that red ants were crawling on him or in his food and was known to dash his plate of food to the floor believing that it was riddled with vermin.

  Suddenly Mr. Hector was coming toward us, speaking loudly. He was carrying a full gerbera plant, flowers, leaves and roots protruding from a large ball of soi
l in one hand, a spade in the other. He focused on Miss Ramchandin.

  “Follow me. She will be the first one to put down a plant. Come. Bring her.”

  The turnaround was faster than I could have dreamed. I grinned. An idea came to me and I excitedly told him to wait right there, not to leave her for a single moment. I ran to her room only yards away and fetched the cereus plant sprouting in the milk can. Then I followed the sinewy, sun-darkened gardener and Miss Ramchandin, who continued singing the ditty.

  At the flower bed Mr. Hector held the succulent cereus up to the sky and examined it curiously. “Why you want to plant this? But it is ugly!” I explained its promise while Miss Ramchandin stood nearby uninterested, distracted by her own mumbling and singing. Mr. Hector shrugged, dug two holes and inserted the plants. He paused, rested his arm on the handle of the spade and began to talk.

  “Look. You know every time I see you, my heart does break. I does watch you and, sudden-so, it does feel like something heavy sit on my chest. Is like I recognize you but is a sad feeling. I realize now what it is.”

  He grabbed the spade and took a few erratic digs at the soft earth. He stopped again. He squinted at the purple hills on the far side of the valley, and his aqueous eyes grew sad.

  “I had a brother. He was older than me. Is about—what?—forty years now? More than that since I last see him. He was a young boy. Eleven or twelve, something so. Mammy send him away. Is he you remind me of. Randolph was his name. Randolph Joseph Hector. Randy, we call him. I did love him too bad! And so many years pass and I don’t even know if he made it through life.”

  “Why did your mammy send him away?” My voice was heavy. I wanted to hear the reason and at the same time hoped he would not have the brazenness to say it.

  “He was kind of funny. He was like you. The fellas in the village used to threaten to beat he up. People used to heckle he and mock his walk and the way he used to do his hands when he was talking.”

  That he was brave enough to say it suddenly lifted a veil between us. Unexpectedly, I felt relief it was voiced and out in the open. I had never before known such a feeling of ordinariness.

  “Randy couldn’t open his mouth in front of Pappy, na. His voice was soft-soft, just like yours, and the way he used to talk, quiet and sing-song sing-song used to make Pappy crazy. You know I can’t remember Randy face too good, but I still carry his voice with me. I could hear it plain-plain, like if I had just talk with he this morning. Pappy used to beat him bad-bad, just for talking so. That is why Mama pack him up one day. She leave me by the neighbour while she went away with him. Same day she come back but she come back alone. When I ask where he was, she say, ‘Where yuh father can’t reach him,’ and she tell me not to bring up his name again. I remember Pappy asking where Randy was and Mammy saying she take him to live in a church mission down south, and Pappy never ask for him again. I miss him too bad, but if I talk about him Mammy used to cry, so I stop and as time pass it was like he didn’t ever exist. Is like you bring Randy back to me, boy.”

  Mr. Hector massaged his cheeks with a dirt-covered hand. When he looked directly at my face, his eyes were even wetter and darker.

  “I watching you and I want to ask you so many questions but I don’t even know what it is I want to know. I want to know something but I don’t know what.”

  My attraction to Mr. Hector, the gardener, subsided like a flame that fell down and died out. I still wanted to gather him up and hug him but only to comfort. He too was tamed, and I felt from and toward him the caring of a brother.

  * * *

  —

  The significance of the previous episode was not to dwell on issues about myself or to relate the bond forming between Mr. Hector and me. He and I had been carrying on as if we alone were privy to our conversation. Yet Miss Ramchandin, in her quiet, invisible way, had heard most of what was said.

  After our conversation Mr. Hector departed and I stood quietly for several moments. For how long I can’t say but when I looked up and saw Miss Ramchandin approaching, I realized she had wandered off. I thought I had been constantly aware of her in the periphery of my vision. My inattentiveness—irresponsibility Sister would surely have called it—startled me.

  She carried something bundled under her arm. Clearly she was hiding it and would not show it until we were back in her room with the door closed. She walked ahead of me excitedly. I turned to wave to my new friend but he just kept tilling the soil. She began to sing in a whisper:

  Ole lady walk, ole lady fall.

  Hit she belly. “Lord!” she bawl.

  Crick crack, all say oops!

  Brick brack, break she back,

  Le we go tief pom-er-ac.

  Ole lady walk, ole lady fall.

  Hit she belly. “Lord!” she bawl.

  A bird flew overhead. She laughed and waved. “Poh poh pohpoh,” she called softly and then carried on.

  Crick crack, all say oops!

  Brick brack, break she back,

  Le we go tief pom-er-ac.

  Once the door was shut she spun around to face me, her bundle now hidden behind her back. I was so buoyed by my conversation with Mr. Hector I did not want to be distracted. But Miss Ramchandin knew how to catch one’s attention. I heard something but was unsure what it was, and then I realized she was whispering.

  “What? Did you say something, Miss Ramchandin?”

  “Asha? You know Asha?” she whispered. Her voice was cracked but she had spoken.

  “Yes, yes. I know Asha. I mean I know of her. I heard of her. But I don’t know her.” She was mentioned in the rumours. No more was said of her than that she was the other Ramchandin child, of no consequence because she had disappeared long, long ago.

  “Where Asha?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. Do you know?” What a shame, I thought, that her first real communication was to be thwarted by me.

  Her question had nothing to do with what happened next. She whipped the bundle from behind her and revealed a nurse’s white uniform and a pair of nylon stockings the colour of black tea. She offered me the dress. My first thought was that we would surely get into trouble. Clearly she had taken them from the clothesline in the yard while Mr. Hector and I were talking.

  “Miss Ramchandin,” I whispered, “what are you doing with that uniform?” She clutched it to her chest. “That belongs to one of the nurses. What do you want that for? I better go and take them back.”

  She slowly bundled the dress into a ball again and put it behind her back with a look of disappointment and defiance. I dreaded a conflict with her.

  “Do you want that uniform?”

  She said nothing but now I knew there was more in her head than bird and cricket and frog imitations and childhood chants.

  “Well, do you want to wear it?” I asked, using a tone of gentle defiance to match hers. There was no harm in a little indulgence as long as we could get the uniform back on the clothesline before morning.

  “You.” She looked at the ground.

  “Me? Me what?”

  “You. You want to wear it.” She produced it from behind her back again, shook it out and held it toward me. “You want to wear it.”

  I stared speechlessly at the calf-length dress and the stockings. I could only guess that she had heard my conversation with Mr. Hector. I felt she had been watching me and seeing the same things that everyone else saw. But she had stolen a dress for me. No one had ever done anything like that before. She knows what I am, was all I could think. She knows my nature.

  I reached for the dress. My body felt as if it were metamorphosing. It was as though I had suddenly become plump and less rigid. My behind felt fleshy and rounded. I had thighs, a small mound of belly, rounded full breasts and a cavernous tunnel singing between my legs. I felt more weak than excited but I was certainly excited by the possibilit
ies trembling inside me. I hugged the dress.

  “Thank you. Thank you so much, Miss Ramchandin. Yes, I will wear it. I will put it on here so you can see it. Before you go to sleep. Let’s eat and get ready for bed and then I will slip it on. All right?”

  By the light of one lamp, with the window and door closed, Miss Ramchandin waited patiently for me to keep my promise. I had returned to my room and retrieved a scarf, a little powder and the remains of a rouge cake that had been left in my dresser drawer by the previous occupant. Back with Miss Ramchandin I drew the room divider and stepped behind it. I unbuttoned my shirt and felt an odd shame that my mammary glands were flat. I dropped my pants. My man’s member mocked me yet was a delight to do battle with when pulling the stockings up against my thighs. I had no corset to hold them up, but it was enough to see the swirl of hairs on my calves and thighs trapped under the nylon. There was something delicious about such confinement. I held up the dress and slowly stepped into it, savouring every action, noting every feeling. I powdered my nose, daubed rouge on my cheeks and carefully smeared a dollop across my lips. I looked down at my stockinged feet and the dress, pressed it with my flat palms against my body and worried that I might look disappointingly ridiculous to my benefactress. I took a deep breath.

  “Ready?” I called out in a loud whisper.

  When I stepped out from behind the curtain, I saw that Miss Ramchandin had made herself busy. She was piling furniture in front of the window. She glanced at me, made no remark and kept right on building the tower. I walked over to her and stood where I was bound to be in her vision. At first I felt horribly silly, like a man who had put on women’s clothing for sheer sport and had forgotten to remove the outfit after the allotted period of fun. I felt flat-footed and clumsy. Not a man and not ever able to be a woman, suspended nameless in the limbo state between existence and nonexistence. She had already set a straight-back chair on the table in front of the window. On top of that she placed a stool and was now preparing to stand on her bed and place an empty drawer on the pinnacle.