Up until the first two weeks of her senior year, Pinky’s routine was the same.
“Gita! Get up, my daughter. Gi-ta!” She was the only child and much was made of her. Her mother would tug on her toes until Gita pulled her feet away and bolted upright. She would go to the shower which was her shower alone. As she got older her showers became longer, and by the second week of being a senior in high school, she was taking forty-five minutes—something of a crime on an island where rain water was often stored under the house like treasure. She liked the water scalding, despite the heat of the island. Her mother would come and knock on the door: “Too much heat! You’re going to wrinkle young!” Then Gita would blast on the cold water and squeal, turning circles under the shower so that she could erase the wrinkling. For many years she stepped out of the shower and reached for her towel without even glancing at herself in the bathroom mirror that covered an entire wall. But since becoming a senior and since Leslie had lost her virginity last year, Gita had become more interested in her own body, and more brave with it.
Now she would step out of the shower and dry herself off with the delicate pats her mother had taught her would not dry out the skin. When the steam evaporated, Gita would hang the towel up and walk slowly to the mirror. She would look at herself as she brushed her teeth and arranged her hair. Sometimes, if she was thinking of Mateo Diaz, she would look serious and sexy like she imagined Leslie might when doing it with Benjamin Jamison. Then she would blow a kiss to her reflection, but this would be too much and she would collapse into giggles. Her uniform would be laid out on the newly made bed when she emerged.
Every morning, Gita and her father ate an elaborate breakfast together. Mrs. Manachandi stayed in the kitchen doling out her experimental dishes, like steak dosa, for the class she taught on Indian/Americana fusion. Gita was always her father’s daughter. He imagined that she would marry the son of one of his fellow managers at the Alcoa Aluminum dock. As each son returned from the U.S. or U.K. with his business or architectural or mechanical engineering degree, Mr. Manachandi would scrutinize him. But often the young men didn’t return at all. And when they did, there was often a scandal with some unknown girl met during the ringing nights of Carnival. The young man would marry hurriedly or be ruined for Gita by the burden of a bastard child. Still, Mr. Manachandi knew that Gita would have to be witty and up on national, regional, and global politics to win the best mate. He thought it would also serve her well to know the value of aluminum. How when the smelter plant was built it would be like gold to the island. Like bauxite had been to Jamaica. He would read all the protest articles in the paper to her. Father and daughter would take turns arguing the side of the softhearted environmental activists or the tough-minded board members at Alcoa. Pinky was good at both. She could argue against the carbon dioxide poisoning with passion. She could argue the side of industry and jobs with coolness. Mr. Manachandi was proud of raising a daughter who could see all sides. Secretly, he wished that she would come work with him at the aluminum dock like a son.
But this had changed in the second week of Gita’s senior year of high school. She and Leslie hung about in the school courtyard and talked about college. Leslie would go over to UWI—despite the ISPS education. So would Gita. Leslie, because it was cheaper than leaving the island and her grades weren’t good enough to get her an international scholarship to a stateside college. Gita, because—though she was a sure thing for a full Barnard grant and even had Spelman as a backup—her mother didn’t want her to go away to college. Too many girls came back with African-American fiancés or with ideas about never getting married.
“There’s Benji,” said Pinky, pointing with her chin across the school pitch where a pickup game of football was in progress.
“Screw Benji.”
“Why?”
“He horned out on me over the summer.”
“How do you know? He was in Atlanta all summer.”
“Grapevine, Pinky.”
“Why you ent tell me, girl. We need to get you a next man.”
“I ent tell nobody. We need to get you a man, period.”
“Good luck.”
“I telling you. Fine-ass Mateo is all over you.”
“Mateo’s a idiot.”
“But he’s fine and he can dance and you’re smart enough for the both of you.”
“And what I going to do with him? He can’t even drive his car without crashing it. Good luck getting a black guy to pass my parents’ husband meter.”
“He’s half-black. Just tell them he’s a dark-skinned Spaniard. A Moor or something.”
“They’ll think of Othello and worry he’ll kill me when we’re married.”
“Pinky, really. Stop thinking stupidness. You practice first with boyfriends. Don’t even think about husband. Boyfriends are more fun anyway. Husbands are sooo boring. You ent noticed?”
Pinky nodded. “Do you think you’d ever do it, like, on the kitchen table?”
“Do what?”
“You know.”
“Oh, you slut.” Leslie paused and looked out at the boys across the schoolyard. “Yeah. I think I would. Would you?”
“I guess if my husband wanted to.”
They nodded together. Leslie had only done it three times with Benji before school let out and he went to Atlanta to spend the summer with his mother. She said it hurt every time but she expected that if they’d kept doing it all summer, by now it would feel good. Pinky had shrugged. She didn’t like the idea of waiting for it to feel good. Why can’t it feel good right away? It feels good to him. She imagined that when she became an obstetrician-gynecologist, she would make sure it felt good for all women all the time.
Leslie picked up her school bag. “You want a drop to the institute?”
“Sure.”
“Hey, we gone,” called Leslie to the guys playing on the green.
Mateo dribbled the ball between his ankles until he was a few feet away from them. “Hey, I going see you ladies at Anchorage tonight?” His voice had become deep over the summer and to Pinky it sounded rich and matched the musky way he smelled.
“Maybe,” said Leslie.
Mateo was looking at Pinky. “You too, Pinky?”
“No. I’m bagged up.”
“Sneak out,” said Mateo, rolling the ball back and forth under his foot in a smooth movement. Pinky laughed at his suggestion. She flipped her hair and then felt stupid for doing so. Someone on the pitch shouted at Mateo to get back in the game or send the ball.
In the car, Leslie didn’t look at her friend as she maneuvered out of the tight space. “Really, Pinky. I sick of giving you the business secondhand. I mean, I go with you to all the Divali stuff but you never come to the club. ’Bout time. You’s seventeen, woman.”
“Screw you. Divali is a religious thing. The club is not.”
“It could be.”
“Whatever.” But she wanted to go. Maybe tonight she would have that fight. She would cry and ask her mother why she’d brought her here to this island only to tell her she couldn’t be a part of it. Or maybe she would ask to stay over at Leslie’s in Glencoe. The last time she’d asked, her mother had said she was too old for sleepovers.
At the gate they kissed on the cheek before Leslie drove off. Pinky walked past the guard, who stared at her instead of nodding as he normally would. The campus at the hospitality institute seemed more beautiful today, the yellow bougainvillea blooming out extra, and so Pinky did not notice the difference in the air until she walked into her mother’s culinary classroom. There was one student sitting quietly at the long teaching table; another was leaning into the sink as though washing her hair. Gita stood in the doorway and felt the lightness drain out of her. The girl from the sink straightened as though in pain, walked over to Gita, and touched her face with the palm of her hand.
“Gita, girl. You need to call home.”
Gita went to the front desk to make the call. No one answered. When she hung up, the phone rang and
the receptionist picked it up. The woman nodded into the receiver without looking at Gita.
A half an hour later, Gita watched as a man who worked with her father at the loading dock drove up in her dad’s sedan. The man didn’t come out to get her but leaned over and opened the door to the passenger side for her to get in.
“What’s going on, Uncle?”
But he just shook his head quietly and drove toward Port-of-Spain. When they turned into the hospital parking lot, Gita could feel her bowels growing tight. Not Dada, she thought. She held her belly as they walked through the lobby and back toward the emergency room. Her father was sitting in a solitary plastic chair. When he saw her, he turned away as though she had insulted him. She went to him anyway.
“Dada?” She put out her hand. He moved from it. Gita turned and walked past her father’s friend, who was just standing there dumb, and went to the nurse’s station. They called for a doctor. The one who came was young and Indian, and she wore her hair in a ponytail like a student.
“Are you Gita?” the doctor asked.
Gita nodded.
“Come, let’s sit over here.”
Gita followed her to a far end of the room.
“Did you know that your mother was ill?”
“Just tell me.”
The young doctor narrowed her eyes. She seemed to be either scrutinizing Gita or fighting back her own tears.
“Your mother died this afternoon. Your father is very upset and wanted me to talk to you. I want you to know . . .”
As the doctor talked, Gita heard her father let out a loud wail. She turned to look at him. He was watching her and weeping. At that moment Gita decided that no, she would never become a doctor.
Gita’s mother had not been buried in a coffin. She had been cremated. Her ashes were sent to Mumbai to her family, as was the custom. Mr. Manachandi didn’t mind this. The presence of the urn would only make him think his wife was dead.
Mr. Manachandi talked to his wife at night. Gita would walk past the door and hear his side of the conversation. The first time, she thought he was on the phone, but then he said, “Ey, Leela?” and there was no audible response. He seemed quite normal otherwise. His did not miss work at the dock. He did not crash the car. He did not become edgy or volatile. He simply talked to his dead wife at night. He simply slept on only one side of the bed.
But at breakfast Mr. Manachandi had stopped asking his daughter about aluminum and smelter. One morning, he looked past her shoulder and into the kitchen where his wife should have been cutting lakatan bananas into bowls of maple syrup. “The hospitality institute used to be a navy hospital. A hospital, and they couldn’t even save Leela.”
Gita stared at her father but did not know how to tell him that he wasn’t making any sense.
He focused his eyes and looked now at his daughter. “Are you going to college?” he asked.
And Pinky realized that she had only had that conversation with her mother. She was aware of the betrayal when she answered, “I’ve been thinking of Barnard.”
He nodded. “That would be a good school for you.” She lowered her head and felt that pain in her bowels again. Her mother was dead and now she would get to go to Barnard.
“What will you do, Dada?”
“I will stay here,” he said softly. And if he had been talking more loudly, he might have finished his thought as well. I will stay here because I am waiting for your mother to come back.
Gita’s mourning was different. Her mother died and suddenly her own life began. Suddenly she could spend the night at Leslie’s. Suddenly no one scrutinized her clothes when she went out . . . didn’t check the length of her skirts or the transparency of her blouses. Suddenly she could go to Barnard or Spellman. But she was no longer sure if she wanted to go anywhere at all.
Gita mourned her mother by going to the coffin shop in Diego Martin. She had watched the shop from across the street. She noticed that mostly women went in. That many of them were older women, perhaps burying parents. She would stand across the street and watch them and her stomach would hurt. Perhaps she was getting an ulcer. On the fourth day she’d invited Leslie.
“That place is creepy, Pinky.”
“Come on, Les. I just want to see inside.”
“Why?”
“Because.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“Come on. I’ll go with you to Anchorage tonight. I just want to see. You ent curious?”
“Tonight is Base night. And no, Pinky. Not at all curious. And you’re never coming, anyhow. Even with Mateo begging you. It’s nearly the end of the semester, but I swear, if you go he’ll ask you to be his woman.”
“I’ll go. Now come on.”
“Fine. But I still don’t think it’s a good idea.” Leslie brought her friend’s face to hers. “You okay?”
“I’m good,” Pinky said, pushing Leslie’s hand from her face. “Just curious.”
She and Leslie went to the coffin shop. They pretended they were there for an assignment. “And this one?” she’d asked Corban. “The airplane with one wing?”
And she would have stayed there among the funeral things for hours, forever, if Leslie hadn’t said, “I’m leaving you here if you don’t come now.”
Pinky bought some fresh marigolds from the nice older man on the way out and put one behind her ear. In the car, Leslie moved the rearview mirror so Pinky could see herself. “Tonight, you get Mateo Diaz.” Pinky nodded. Yes. She would.
As she was getting dressed, and her father was reading his first installment of the New Yorker, Gita shouted through the door that she would be staying at Leslie’s for the weekend. “Will you be okay, Dada?”
“Yes, my love,” he called back. He turned a page. Smiled at a cartoon.
“I’ll call tonight and tomorrow.”
“You don’t have to,” he said.
Pinky pursed her lips and walked out into the living room. “But you’ll be alone.”
Without looking up from his magazine, Mr. Manachandi waved his hand dismissively in the air. “Not really, you know,” he said. “Not really.”
That night, Pinky wore a dress to match her name. A magenta dress that wasn’t even hers. “The sluttiest thing I own,” said Leslie, laughing. But Pinky didn’t laugh. She looked at herself in the mirror and thought of her mother in her red wedding sari. In the picture, her father wore a European suit and had thick sideburns. Her father looked like a child of an era, her mother looked era-less. She was not sure which was better. Now she looked at herself in the mirror and puckered. Her dress was spandex and it stuck and stretched. It was open at the back and ended above the knees. There was a slit at the left thigh. Pinky thought that she would never look like this again. But in the next instant she said out loud, “This is what I always want to look like.”
The club was not the hot smoky place she had expected. It was cool with AC inside and there was a big balcony out by the water. “Scope the place out first!” shouted Leslie, as the entry bands were fastened around their wrists. “Stay away from the nasty old men.”
They walked in. They kept their backs straight. They flipped their hair. Leslie had taught her the screw face. This club was about attitude. Don’t smile unless you see someone you know, and then hug and air kiss, and if it’s a guy, wait for him to offer a drink. Never say no to a free drink. And never buy your own drink. It was a masquerade. They were pretty. They were desirable. Everyone was supposed to know it. When you dance, make sure you’re not next to a girl who can dance better than you. Make sure to establish eye contact with a good-looking guy, but let him come over to you. Dance even when you’re tired. Dance even if you’re sweaty and tired. Take off your shoes if you need to, you can keep them behind the deejay booth. Only stop dancing if a guy offers you a drink. And then ask for something good. What’s good? Get, like, a Sex on the Beach. Or a Fuzzy Navel. Or a Blow Job. No, don’t get that. That’s taking it too far. Never get what he’s having. Man drinks t
aste nasty. Like Long Island Iced Tea. Disgusting. That’s a get-drunk drink. You just want to look good when you’re holding the glass. In fact, stick to Sex on the Beach. It matches your dress. And me. I’ll get Blue Lagoons all night.
The old men against the walls watched them like a movie.
Outside on the deck, Pinky and Leslie drank their colorful drinks bought by forgettable boys and cooled off with the sea breeze. Pinky’s hair was plastered onto her face. It wasn’t so hot inside but they had been dancing and sweating. The deejay had played hip-hop and rock but not calypso yet. Pinky didn’t really know how to move to hip-hop or rock. She was waiting for soca. “They play it last,” explained Leslie.
“No Mateo,” Gita said aloud and felt relieved, and then disappointed by her own relief.
“No Mateo yet. You wait.” Leslie lit a tiny black cigar with a plastic tip. She blew out over the balcony. When the bells and knocking of calypso came on, Leslie flicked her cigarillo over the side of the balcony. They left their drinks.
Inside, the dance floor was crowded. Women had their skirts hoisted and men had their hands in the air. People were dancing in the corner by the tables and on top of the couches. Women leaned on the backs of chairs to steady themselves. Leslie and Pinky didn’t look for an empty space, they simply walked in and danced where they ended up. Pinky felt good now. She didn’t need Mateo after all. She swung her hips and her heavy wet hair. And then, just like that, Mateo came up behind her, as though it was something he did often.
He had that rich musky smell and he held her hips in his hands as he pulled her body closer to his. Her first thought was that this was not right. Her next thought was this was very right. Everyone in the club was screaming the words to the song. Everyone was knocking hips into one another. The bass beat twice and people stomped their feet twice. Pinky put her hands over Mateo’s so she could follow his rhythm.
She looked around, realizing that Leslie was not beside her. But then there she was. A white girl was hard to miss in the dark club. Leslie had her palms flat on the wall, her arms straight and stiff, and her backside was rolling on the crotch of a man who was old enough to act cool about the friction. It seemed so odd, all of this. All this display. All this. And after Christmas break they’d be back in class in their uniforms, and perhaps that was its own kind of pretend.
Trinidad Noir Page 28