Nothing Like Love

by Sabrina Ramnanan

  “Shoo!” Sangita waved her hands at the cat.

  Flambeaux gave the three sleeping mutts sprawled across the floor a cursory glance and then fixed Sangita with his glowing hazel eyes, sweeping his bushy orange tail back and forth across the concrete like a coconut broom.

  Sangita frowned. “Don’t watch me so, Flambeaux. I does get lonely.” She floated to the flour sack that was Rajesh’s hammock and collapsed onto it, careful not to upset the cup of Ovaltine she’d placed on the ground earlier, now cold and unappetizing.

  Flambeaux narrowed his gaze.

  “Humph! You no better. You does have this Mrs. Cat and that Mrs. Cat coming to my house to make kittens with you. My house look like a cat motel, Flambeaux.”

  Flambeaux yawned and squinted.

  Sangita was just about to pull herself out of the hammock and make her way to her bedroom, where Rajesh was fast asleep, when she heard a rustle in the darkness. Flambeaux started, flicked his gaze from Sangita to somewhere beyond the gates. He took one tentative step forward, keeping low to the ground like a prowling tiger.

  Sangita shook her head. “Don’t go and scrap with a next cat, Flambeaux. Keep your tail home.” But as Sangita picked up her small oil lamp and made for the stairs, she heard it: the distinctive sound of a girlish giggle muffled by … a hand? A kiss? She pivoted on her heel and flew back to the gates like a frantic ghost moving through the night. Who was there? Was it Dr. Mohan with Shantie Ramdeen? She held the lamp high, flooding the dark road and the bushes beyond in pale yellow light. Flambeaux took off in a flash; he squeezed his sleek body through the bars of the gates and disappeared in the direction from which the sound had come.

  Sangita gasped when her eyes fell on the pair. They were darting toward the ravine, hand in hand, trying to escape the lamplight. They hovered low, covering their faces, but Sangita had got a good look and there was no mistaking who she’d seen. When finally their silhouettes—so close, they were almost one—disappeared into a forest of leafy mangrove trees, Sangita felt the injustice of her dull marriage rise and gorge itself on the last of her common sense.

  “Jammette!” she shrieked. “Jaaaammmeeettteee!”

  The sound of Sangita’s sharp insults roused the dogs from their slumber. They sat up, startled, and began to bark wildly, gnashing their teeth at the darkness and joining in a harmony of fearsome growls and distressed barks. They pawed at the gates to be let out, paced back and forth at the prospect of tackling an intruder. They made such a commotion that somewhere down the road a neighbour yelled, “Allyuh shut your dogs up, nuh? A man trying to catch some blasted sleep here!” Other neighbours began lighting lamps and peering out of their homes. “Sangita! Allyuh all right?” Faizal Mohammed hollered from next door. Sangita saw him push an empty Coca-Cola crate up against the window and perch on top to get a better look at the fuss below. She tried to hush the panicked dogs and hurry back to bed before Rajesh awoke, but he met her on the steps, shirtless, cutlass in hand.

  “What happened?” He pushed past her; the dogs barked at his heels.

  Sangita whisked her heavy hair out of her face and plaited it skilfully. She didn’t hesitate: “I see Vimla Narine go in the ravine.” She crossed her arms over her heaving bosom, hoping Rajesh wouldn’t notice her bare body trembling beneath the nightgown.

  “Vimla? What she gone there for at this hour?”

  “Rajesh, I look like a seer woman to you?” Sangita shoved the lamp at her husband and steered him toward his bike, which was leaning against a concrete post. “I ain’t know why she run away, but I know I see she and I know who I see she with.”

  Rajesh stopped wheeling his bike toward the gates and held the lamp up so that the glow of light fell directly on Sangita’s face. “What you mean? Who she with?”

  Sangita fixed her husband with a grave stare. “Krishna,” she said, “the pundit’s son!”

  “Krishna?” Confusion tugged at Rajesh’s square face. “The two of them alone?”

  Sangita nodded, a terse incline of her chin. She bit down on the tip of her tongue, waiting for her husband to process the severity of the situation. The seconds dragged on. Sangita tasted coppery blood in her mouth.

  “Shits, man!” Rajesh fitted the sharp cutlass into the elastic waist of his shorts so that it jutted out the bottom. Then he climbed on his bicycle and shifted the flat blade onto his thigh before pushing off the ground with his left foot. “Open the gates, Sangita, I going to fetch them.”

  When her husband had pedalled away, Sangita wrung the end of her braid in her hands and shuffled up the stairs to change into something more appropriate, grateful Vimla’s scandal had eclipsed her own unsavoury intentions. She mounted the steps and peeked into Minty’s room, where she found her daughter sitting upright in bed. Sangita moved closer, suddenly wanting to touch the youthful skin on Minty’s face, to climb into bed with her and be a good respectable mother; the sort of mother who soothes her child from the din of angry dogs, not the sort who steals from her husband’s bed in search of passion.

  Minty sat with her knees pulled up to her chest and Sangita could see she was shaking. “The dogs frighten you, beti?” She moved to the bed, stroked a tendril of damp hair from her daughter’s forehead. As Minty flinched, a cloud scudded past the moon, allowing a few beams of light to slice through the window and cut across her face. Reproach sparkled in her eyes.

  “Who you call a ‘jammette,’ Mammy?” Minty asked.

  Sangita pressed her full lips together in a firm line. She didn’t like her daughter using such crude language and she told her as much.

  Minty sprang from bed and dashed barefoot to the window. In the distance torchlights blazed bright against an inky sky and five figures trudged from the underbrush by the ravine. Sangita looked over her daughter’s shoulder. She recognized Rajesh’s stocky build, Om Narine’s protruding gut, Faizal Mohammed’s long-legged gait and the stooped shoulders of a disgraced young man—Krishna. The fifth figure was slighter than the rest. She walked at Om’s side, hugging herself as she went, a crumpled curtain of black wayward hair hiding her down-turned face.

  Minty wheeled on her mother, eyes flashing. “Mammy, look how you get Vimla in trouble!”

  Sangita faced her daughter. “Minty, Vimla is seventeen years old! What business she have rollicking with the pundit’s son in the bush? She is a loose little jammette!”

  Minty’s expression was stony. “As much business as you had rollicking with Dr. Mohan. And Faizal Mohammed. And—”

  Sangita cuffed Minty across her mouth before the rest of her paramours tumbled out into the night.

  Faizal Mohammed’s Barrel Bath

  Monday August 5, 1974

  CHANCE, TRINIDAD

  Faizal Mohammed swung his long legs to the floor and extended his arms in a luxurious diagonal stretch. “Praise Allah!” He leaped to his feet and peered out the window onto Kiskadee Trace. A mangy stray dog blotched with black patches trotted up the deserted road through the early-morning gloom, raising dust in his wake. He stopped abruptly in front of Faizal’s home and squatted in the dirt to nip at a family of fleas on his underbelly before carrying on. Faizal surveyed the road again, narrowing his eyes and straining at the shadows, peering into the front yards and windows of every home he could see from his bedroom. There was no movement, not even the kiskadees had stirred awake yet. He nodded with approval and set off to make ready for his morning prayers.

  After zipping into his second room, Faizal crouched before the large wire cage he’d built with his own hands. “Allahu Akbar,” he purred, lifting the white sheet that covered the cage and bringing his face close.

  Sam, Faizal’s blue-and-gold parrot, squinted back at him and then bobbed up and down on his perch. “Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar.”

  Faizal beamed as he unlocked the cage door and allowed Sam to step onto his extended index finger. He bounded down the stairs and set Sam on the floor then rounded the corner to his bathroom. The room, separate from the house,
was a chamber of three walls constructed from large sheets of silver galvanized steel. The open side faced the back of Faizal’s home, allowing two feet of space between the house and one wall for him to slip in and out of. The structure had no roof so that rainwater could fill his oversized rain barrel. A frangipani tree arched over the bathroom, creating a spectacular leafy awning with fragrant white blossoms.

  This morning, the barrel in Faizal’s bathroom was half filled with rainwater. He fished a soggy leaf and a sopped flower out of the water with his long fingers and tossed both over his shoulder, just missing Sam. Faizal felt a sharp pinch at his ankle and apologized profusely to his parrot, who squawked in return. Then, with magnificent agility, Faizal gripped the sides of the barrel and hoisted himself up so that his tucked knees hovered just above the barrel’s mouth. “Praise Allah,” he said, and plunged into the rainwater. Sam stomped about in the water that cascaded over the edge to puddles on the cracked concrete ground, spreading his wings wide and chuckling in the back of his throat.

  Inside Faizal’s rain barrel was a crescent moon bench fastened to the sides with brass hinges. Constructed with his own hands, this movable bench allowed Faizal to sit or bob around freely, depending on his mood. This morning Faizal pulled the bench down and sat quietly on its edge as the chilly water seeped over his shoulders to his chin.

  He wondered, not for the first time, what his neighbours would think if they knew he bathed in his rain barrel instead of using the standpipe like everyone else. The secret sent thrilling zings through his wiry body; he loved to know what others didn’t. And Faizal’s rain-barrel baths were a particularly safe secret, as he was the only Muslim in the district, the only one who rose before the cock’s first crow, before the sun peeked over the horizon, to wash, and to praise Allah.

  Faizal reached for his bar of blue soap in a dish cut from a scrap of galvanize screwed to the outside of his barrel. As he lathered his arms, he thought of last night’s curious melodrama with Krishna Govind and Vimla Narine. How fortunate to live nestled between the Narine and Gopalsingh residences, to be called upon at the climax of the crisis to search for the runaway lovers! “A pundit’s son and a village prize pupil—what a delicious disgrace, Sam!” Faizal hauled one leg out of the water and balanced his heel on the rim of the barrel so he could soap between his toes. “And I was there, Sam. I see everything.” He switched legs. “You know, is a damn shame a nice girl like Vimla go and shit up she reputation over a jackass like Krishna Govind.” Faizal rubbed the soap into his armpit hair until blue lather oozed through his fingers and dribbled down the side of his body. “I mean, I ain’t know he too good, but I hear he does knock about all over Chance instead of studying he scriptures like a pundit’s son should. But if you ask me, half the damn Hindus in this place is a bunch of crooks!” He swished back and forth in the water, watching blue and silver bubbles spread over the surface. “Except Sangita Gopalsingh.”

  “Praise Allah! Praise Allah!” Sam puffed his blue-and-gold body up. “Praise Allah!”

  Faizal glanced at his parrot over the side of the barrel and then up at the sky through the canopy of frangipani branches. The ashy grey heavens had turned a faint mauve. “Mangoes!” he exclaimed. His hands flew to his dry hair. After filling his small chest with air, Faizal pinched his nose and plunged into the barrel, soaking Sam. He stayed submerged for thirty seconds, drowning out Sam’s frenzied shrieks, and then burst into the balmy morning air with another splash. Sam scurried away, flapping his drenched wings and screeching.

  Once Faizal had dried himself and smoothed coconut oil into his puffy hair, he slipped into a fresh white kurtha pajama, grabbed one of seven prayer mats around his tiny house and darted to his garden. “Come, Sam!” he called over his shoulder.

  “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” Sam hollered back as he scurried after Faizal into the back garden.

  Faizal unrolled his prayer mat in the savannah grass between two young hibiscus trees, their peach and white blossoms still beaded with morning dew. He pressed the curling edges of the mat tenderly down. It was green, covered in specks of gold. For a split second he admired the thread work, and remembered the soft hands that had embroidered it.

  Sam scurried onto the prayer mat with the blue-green feathers on his head raised in angry spikes. When Faizal stooped to stroke his ruffled plumage, Sam tipped his head back and nipped Faizal’s finger hard with his black beak. Shrugging, Faizal turned to Mecca, opened his hands before him like a book and sped through his prayers. This morning Sam refused to join in, but as Faizal lowered his forehead to the mat reverently, Sam mirrored him. Then the bird strutted off, muttering.

  When Faizal Mohammed rose from his last prostration and opened his eyes, he found himself staring into a luscious bosom the colour of rich caramel.

  “Good morning, Faizal. I hope I ain’t interrupt your prayers.”

  “Sangita.” Faizal got to his feet, gathered his prayer mat off the ground and rolled it up. Just behind Sangita, ribbons of coral were stretching across the sky and a dazzling amber sun was casting its first rays onto Chance’s silver roofs. Faizal allowed himself a smile; she had timed her arrival carefully. He noticed a notebook tucked beneath her arm, and a piece of red thread clinging to a shapely hip. “Working early, I see.” He gestured to the kitchen, which backed onto his garden. “Come. Let we have some coffee.”

  Sangita glanced at the thin gold watch on her wrist and then over the fence at her house. She bit her lip and blinked her black slanted eyes at Faizal, letting her gaze trail quite obviously over his lean body. “A quick coffee while we discuss. Half a cup.” Her pink lips turned up at the corners. “Just a sip.” She sashayed past him to the kitchen. Her cream skirt swished at her calves.

  Faizal put a pot of water on the stove and set two blue enamel cups on the small counter, watching out of the corner of his eye as Sangita crossed and uncrossed her legs. He cleared his throat and she looked up at him.

  “Faizal,” she began, flipping open her notebook. She retrieved the pencil from her hair, letting it tumble like soft silk down her back. Faizal swallowed. “Did the money for the burgundy-and-red prayer mats come in as yet?”

  He poured the steamy coffee into the cups and brought them to the table, accidentally brushing Sangita’s ankle with his toe. “Sorry—and no, because I ain’t take them to my store as yet. The mats are scheduled to be picked up today. I go have your payment for the embroidery by tonight.”

  Sangita scribbled this information into her notebook as if Faizal hadn’t told her this a week ago.

  “Your designs was real nice, Sangita. They getting popular. Everybody who sees one of my mats with your needlework does put in an order.”

  Sangita puckered her lips and blew the steam from her coffee before taking a sip. Faizal noticed the top two buttons of her cream-and-powder-blue blouse were still undone. His eyes lingered there until she placed her cup down and shut her notebook abruptly, snapping his attention back to her exquisite face. A sheen of perspiration glowed on her skin and the hairs around her high cheekbones curled in the warm kitchen. Faizal sat back in his chair and waited.

  “Faiz-al”—she sang his name—“tell me what happened last night.”

  He knew she hadn’t really come about the prayer mats. “Last night?” He feigned confusion.

  Sangita swatted his hairy arm with her soft fingertips. “Faizal Mohammed, don’t play stupid!”

  He moved to throw open the tiny windows, distracting himself from the burn of her touch on his skin. Taking a deep breath as a rush of dewy airy blew into the kitchen, he said, “Didn’t Mr. Rajesh Gopalsingh share all the details with his pretty wife last night?”

  Sangita arched an eyebrow at him.

  Faizal knew he was being petty, but he couldn’t help it. She had been teasing him for years. They had been teasing each other for years.

  “I was sleeping when he come home.” She lowered her gaze and Faizal knew she was lying.

  “Hmm. Well, maybe la
ter, nuh?” He pretended to be interested in two birds flitting after each other in a tree outside the window. “When I get back from the shop tonight, I go tell you.”

  She stared at him. “I can’t come back here tonight!”

  Faizal pushed his chair back. “Come to the shop.”

  “In Port of Spain? How?” She rose, too, but still she had to look up to meet his eyes. “Just tell me if you see them kiss. What were Krishna and Vimla doing by the ravine?” She gathered her heavy hair on top of her head and slid the pencil from the table back in its place.

  Faizal grabbed Sangita’s narrow waist and pulled her close while she fiddled with her hair. She gasped, letting her hands fall to his chest but never pushing. “Faizal—”

  “I found them like this.” He lowered his face close to hers, deliberately, until he could feel her warm breath. She parted her lips and leaned into him as he drew her nearer, until their mouths were only half an inch apart. Then he released her, suddenly, and stepped away. “Just like that. That is what I see.”

  Pink crept into Sangita’s cheeks. She puffed at a tendril of hair that had fallen free of her careless upsweep and took a step back from Faizal. After buttoning her blouse hurriedly, Sangita snatched her notebook off the table and brushed past him. “You can leave the money with my husband when you get it,” she called over her shoulder. Faizal knew her words were meant to sting, but the breathlessness in her voice pleased him. He smiled after her, watching as she weaved through his frangipani trees with their great white-and-yellow blossoms and slipped, soundless, into her own yard.

  The Rude Awakening

  Monday August 5, 1974

  CHANCE, TRINIDAD

  Vimla opened her eyes and rolled onto her side. She listened to the kiskadee morning call and watched the flutters of black and yellow in the guava and tamarind trees at her bedroom window. They trilled and rustled in the treetops, cocking their heads at impossible angles and announcing their presence to the world: kis-kis-kiskadee!