At once she whirled back and grasped Chandani’s sharp elbow in her soft hands. “Let we go, Chand,” she whispered, her back to the congregation.
Chandani tried to wrench free. “Sangita, wait your turn! I ain’t finish here yet.”
Sangita tightened her grip and brought her mouth close to Chandani’s ear. “Your husband is holding a kitten at the rear of the mandir.”
Chandani screwed her face up and her thick eyebrows joined at the centre of her forehead.
“He’s with Puncheon, Chandani.”
Chandani darkened. Squaring her shoulders, she turned and marched away from the altar without so much as a cursory glance at Pundit Anand Govind.
Sangita coaxed her pretty mouth into an innocent smile for the priest, bowed deeply to the palana and flew after Chandani. She kicked the pearl-encrusted pleats of her sari in staccato steps as she swept by the line, conscious—even in her haste—of enchanting the world around her.
Chandani sneered at the men as she barrelled down the aisle. They watched her like frightened children, holding their wriggling kittens to their chests and bunching close. “Outside.” Her voice was so steady it sent shivers rippling up Sangita’s spine. The men shuffled around, bumping into one another, until finally Chandani and Sangita herded them like daft sheep into the darkness.
The Stormy Alliance
Saturday August 17, 1974
MARACAS, TRINIDAD
Thunder rolled through the churning, nebulous clouds. Sea surf surged skyward and broke furiously on the bay as the coastline pitched itself farther and farther across the beach. On either side of the cove, the mountains loomed against the black sky like the shadows of beasts, and sheets of silver rain pelted downward, threatening to plunge the island into the sea.
Faizal gripped Minty and Vimla by the wrists and dragged them from the shore. They hurtled toward the headlights with their heads down. Faizal flung open the rear car door and Minty and Vimla clambered in. “Mangoes! This is a real paranormal rain,” he yelled, sliding into the driver’s seat and slamming the door shut. He spun round to glare at Minty and Vimla. “Allyuh listen: when we get back to Chance, I ain’t want to have anything to do with you little witches.” He pointed into the darkness, “Especially that one there!”
Vimla looked out her window. Through the rills of rain streaming down her glass, she saw Chalisa spinning with her arms outstretched; a whorl of white twisting across a menacing bay. Vimla felt dizzy watching her; she felt dizzy thinking about her, too. Just before the rain, Chalisa had said that she didn’t love Krishna. How could that be? Vimla ached for him; her spirit was withering away in his absence, and Chalisa Shankar couldn’t even bring herself to like him. And how does he feel about you? Vimla had wanted to ask. But her puffed-up pride had lodged itself in her throat, so that she could only stare dumbly at the gypsy who was to marry Krishna. Her Krishna.
Minty slithered across the back seat and leaned against Vimla, shivering. “What she doing?”
Chalisa breezed through the rain toward Faizal’s car and rapped the window with her knuckles. Faizal spun around in his seat. “Keep she out of my car. I have my hands full with allyuh as it is.”
Vimla felt for the handle in the dark and rolled the glass down a few inches, inviting the storm inside.
Faizal sucked his teeth. “These harden children go kill me.” He ran his hands through his wet hair and let his head fall against the headrest.
“I wouldn’t marry Krishna!” Chalisa shouted. She snaked a hand into the car and gripped Vimla’s shoulder. “We go have to work together, Vimla!”
Chalisa’s driver came up behind her and cupped her elbow in his hand. His face, Vimla noticed, was that of a young man who had only recently bidden his boyhood goodbye. There was a devotion in his eyes that deepened the aching in Vimla’s heart, and yet, as he stood guarding Chalisa with the storm at his back, Vimla knew he was the type of man who hid his intensity in silence. “Gavin?” Chalisa said, as if surprised to find him there at all. Gavin said something that was lost in the wind and then gathered Chalisa under his arm and guided her to the car. They sickened Vimla for reasons she only partly understood, but still she couldn’t look away, no matter how she tried.
Faizal cranked the key in the ignition and the car purred to life. “You know why you does get into so much trouble, Vimla?” Vimla winced at his surly frown reflected in the rear-view mirror. “Is because you real stupid. Don’t you mix yourself up with she, you hear? If the two allyuh is trouble”—he looked from Minty to Vimla—“then Chalisa Shankar is the devil self.”
Vimla watched silently as the wipers lashed against the downpour and the car trundled onto the road, not because she was too drained to argue but because she thought Faizal might be right. The car coiled slowly down the precarious mountain and she gripped the door handle. They swung around sharp bends, just skimming the edge of plummeting cliffs, climbing uphill and sailing down slopes, constantly juddering against the backs of their seats. It went on like this for ten minutes, until the hail of rain tapered into a drizzle and grey mist settled in the rustling trees lining either side of the dark road. Vimla shivered in her damp clothes.
“I think Chalisa Shankar does do witchcrafts,” Faizal muttered.
Minty peeled her sodden skirt off her thighs, straightened it and let it fall back again. “Chalisa ain’t a witch, Faizal. She just …”
“Dotish? Wayward?”
“Free.”
“Ha!” Faizal slapped his steering wheel. “I never see a girl behave so wild in my life. Chance people think Vimla hot? Whey, sir! Wait till they see this one! Chalisa Shankar ain’t free—she slack too bad!” He laughed. “Is no wonder she Nanny coming quite Chance to find she a husband.” He swerved around a tight corner. “I want to know how she manage to come and frolic at the beach on Krishna Janamashtami. Ain’t she should be in the temple?”
Vimla let her head loll against Minty’s shoulder. She had wondered the same thing, but then, Minty and Vimla had found a way to escape. Minty had said she needed to review her calculus, and Vimla had said she was too embarrassed to go to the mandir and see Pundit Anand Govind. It had worked. Sangita and Rajesh wanted Minty to be the top student in Chance come September, and Om and Chandani were happy to leave Vimla hidden away from the entire village for the night. As long as their parents stayed in the mandir until at least midnight, Vimla and Minty were safe.
Faizal rolled his window down and a burst of crisp air rushed into the car. He was quiet for a moment and then a groan so mournful escaped his lips that Vimla sat up and leaned forward to see. “Oh mangoes!” he wailed, shaking his head. “We turning back.” He slowed the car; it swerved over a blanket of slick leaves.
“What you mean? You can’t stop here!” Vimla looked behind them; Gavin and Chalisa were twenty feet away, their headlights two unblinking eyes in the night.
Faizal pulled his car to the side of the road, alongside a mesh of dishevelled branches and dripping leaves. “I left my Qur’an on the beach … and my prayer mat!”
“But, Faizal, your Qur’an will be soaked and ruined. You go have to get a next one.”
“A next one?” His eyes bulged in horror. “You Hindus have 10,001 different scriptures. Allyuh don’t understand the significance or sacred-ity of the Qur’an.” He gripped the steering wheel. “And that mat is special!”
“But you does sell prayer mats in your store, Faizal. You have plenty to choose from!”
Faizal held the girls’ gazes in the rear-view mirror again. “Sangita embroidered that mat for me. I does say my best, most holiest, most religious prayers on that mat.”
The car fell silent. Vimla felt Minty tense at her side.
Gavin pulled up beside Faizal then. “Everything all right?”
“I going back to get my Qur’an and mat!” Faizal yelled.
The rear driver’s-side door flung open and Chalisa spilled out like a wave. She had swept her wet ringlets into a bun on top of her head. She
looked neat and regal; Vimla felt like a bedraggled dog, watching her. Chalisa’s eyes flashed as she rounded Faizal’s car and banged her fist on the hood.
“What wrong with you, girl?” Faizal demanded.
“You want to dead?”
“What?” Faizal turned to Gavin for an explanation, but Gavin was already striding after Chalisa and laying a hand on her shoulder. His fingers could have been raindrops; she showed no indication of feeling them.
“Allyuh go dead driving on this road so,” Chalisa said. Vimla thought she saw terror in Chalisa’s face, but everything was muted beneath layers of shadow, and she couldn’t be sure. “The weather bad. The road narrow. And that drop there—” she pointed to the cliff’s edge “—is a drop to allyuh death.”
Faizal Mohammed sucked his teeth. “Eh, Miss Lady. If it wasn’t for me, the three allyuh would still be playing fairymaid in the water.” He scowled deeply. “And allyuh would have drown, too! You wasn’t thinking about death then!” He twisted his neck out of the car and glared at her. “Ain’t it was you who wanted to come here in the night?”
Chalisa scowled.
“Now, move. I turning back.”
Gavin lowered to Faizal’s eye level. “If you turning back, I could drop the girls home.” Vimla heard his voice this time; it was husky, barely used.
She held her breath. She didn’t want to ride with Chalisa all the way home. She was uncomfortable enough sitting in wet clothes in the back of Faizal’s car, trying to decipher Chalisa’s intentions, and hoping she and Minty would be in bed before their parents. She didn’t need the additional anxiety of sitting next to Chalisa Shankar when she was busy wilting and worrying in the darkness.
“Oh for fuck sakes. Never mind.” Faizal rolled the window up and peeled away, leaving Chalisa and her driver staring after them by the side of the road.
For a few moments nobody said a word. Faizal jerked the car left and right and pressed his foot heavier on the gas. The car slewed over muddy puddles. Twigs and vines slapped the windshield. The tires trembled over ruts in the road.
“Faizal … Faizal!” Minty grasped his shoulder with her pudgy hand.
“Blasted mangoes! What you want from me?”
“Slow down!”
Faizal sucked his teeth, but he pumped the brakes.
“Why you ain’t make we go back to the beach? Or ride with Chalisa?”
“Is one thing if I loss Sangita’s prayer mat—is another thing if I loss she daughter.” Faizal turned the radio on, signalling the end of the conversation.
Minty and Vimla snuggled against each other for warmth as the sweet voice of Indian superstar songstress Lata Mangeshkar filled the car. Vimla closed her eyes and curled her legs under her. She felt empty, like someone had scooped all the hope out of her soul. The more Lata sang of love, the more Vimla understood that it had slipped away.
Bhang! II
Saturday August 17, 1974
CHANCE, TRINIDAD
Chandani looked over her shoulder at the mandir in the distance. It was only a minute glimmer of light now, but the devotional bhajans and rhythmic drumming seemed to dance up the dark road behind her, beckoning her back. She grew increasingly bitter with every step she took toward home, tightening her claw-like grip on Om’s arm. “Oh Lawd, what I do to deserve this sufferation in my life?”
Puncheon zigzagged in between the couple and fell flat on the ground, ripping Chandani’s fingernails from Om’s flesh. “Om, I dizzy, man. I real dizzy. Just leave me here and let me dead by the side of the road.” He lay on his belly with his arms splayed on either side of him, the side of his face pressed into the mud.
Om stared down at Puncheon, dazed, stroking the tiny orange-and-white head of his kitten with a fat thumb.
Chandani shook him. “Pick him up, Om!” Om blinked back at her. Chandani looked around for Rajesh and found him crouched in a sprawl of wild bushes, whimpering, a black kitten nestled in the crook of his arm. Sangita stood by his side, rubbing his back and warning him not to soil her sari.
Chandani grimaced. They were at least a fifteen-minute walk from home. She could go back to the mandir and ask for help, but what would she say? That her husband and his friends were high and stranded in the dark on Krishna Janamashtami? She knew neighbours would be eager to help and they would mean well, too, but tomorrow those very same neighbours would peddle Chandani’s misfortune to anyone willing to listen. She couldn’t have that. Everyone was willing to listen in Chance and Chandani had already endured a lifetime of embarrassment in the past weeks.
She thought of Vimla then, with her big bold eyes and the mischievous twist of her shapely lips. She used to plait Vimla’s long, unruly mane with such care, making a wish for her daughter every time she folded one black lock over the next; it was like weaving dreams into her hair. But by the end of each day, stray, rebellious curls always managed to fly free, and Chandani would sigh, soak Vimla’s hair in coconut oil and do it all over again before bed. This is what she remembered when Om brought Vimla home from the ravine that night and Vimla’s hair was loose and flowing wildly over her shoulders. The sight made Chandani feel like her daughter had unravelled every wish she’d ever made for her and flung it away for a boy. That’s what had hurt Chandani most—that it was all for a boy.
Sangita shimmied over, smelling of sweet sandalwood. “Raj think a soucouyant go suck he blood.” She looked down at Puncheon and then up into Om’s black, glassy eyes. “What we go do?”
Chandani’s gaze swished over Sangita. She frowned at her sensual mouth and skintight sari blouse, wondering why of all the women in Chance she had to get tangled up in this predicament with Sangita Gopalsingh. “We have to walk.”
“Walk?” Sangita’s slanted eyes glowed like a cat’s. “Look at them, Chandani!” She gestured to Puncheon, who had rolled onto his side and pulled his knees up to his chest as he sang Trinidad’s national anthem. “Maybe I should get Faizal. He could pick we up in his car.”
Chandani narrowed her gaze at Sangita. She had seen Sangita and Faizal Mohammed interacting in the market; they bantered with a familiarity that was almost intimate. Chandani had always wondered whether there was more to their neighbourly friendship than Rajesh knew. “Sangita, you can’t walk home alone dressed like that.” She circled her index finger around Sangita’s exposed cleavage. “And you can’t leave me alone with these fools neither. We have to walk. All of we. Together. Now!”
Sangita pouted, and Chandani was unsure if the woman was insulted about her blouse or disappointed about Faizal. She didn’t care either way. “Get Rajesh. Let we go.”
Rajesh moaned and Sangita, Chandani and Om turned to look. He was staring at the mandir in the distance, shaking his head slowly, his eyes bulging from their sockets like twin moons as he backed away. Sangita touched his broad shoulder. He jumped, dropping his kitten, which bolted into the underbrush. He shielded his face with his hands.
Chandani stomped her foot, sending sludge splattering into Puncheon’s hair. “Lawd Father, give me strength not to kill this fool on Shri Krishna’s birthday.” She stalked up to Rajesh and wrenched his flesh in a painful pinch. “Cut this nonsense, you hear me?”
Rajesh whelped. “The soucouyant is coming for me.” He pointed a shaky finger at the lights of the mandir. “Look, she flying in the air like a fireball to suck my blood!”
Chandani rose on her tiptoes, grabbed Rajesh’s big square face in her hands and forced him to look down at her. “Rajesh, it ain’t have no vampire living in Chance, but it have me, and I worse!” she said through clenched teeth. “If you don’t haul your ass home, I go do worse to you than a shitting soucouyant!”
Rajesh winced, then he reached for Sangita’s hand and lumbered with leaden feet to stand beside Om, who still hadn’t moved.
Chandani sighed. “Good.” She placed her balled-up hands on her narrow waist and leaned over so she could shriek directly into Puncheon’s ear. “Stop singing!”
“Oh gosh, Chandan
i, leave me in peace, nuh? I don’t know why Om didn’t beat you when I tell him to.”
Chandani sucked her teeth and nudged him with her sandal. “Puncheon, you look like a half-dead manicou bounced down by a car. Get up! Let we go!”
Puncheon pinched his features together so that he really did resemble a wild opossum. Grumbling, he pulled himself up on all fours and teetered to his feet, bracing on Om’s solid shoulder for balance.
Chandani nodded, pleased, although it was impossible to tell by the severe line of her mouth or the dark swoop of her angry eyebrows. “March!”
The men shuffled at an excruciatingly slow pace; Om concentrated hard to place one foot in front of the other; Rajesh trod with caution, constantly looking over his massive shoulder; and Puncheon staggered, griping with each step. Chandani and Sangita walked behind them in silence, making sure they didn’t wander into the middle of the road or the dark undergrowth. They trekked on like this for seven minutes, until Puncheon began to gag.
“Oh God, Puncheon, please don’t.” Sangita reached for her sari phaloo and held it over her nose and mouth, turning away and then looking, turning away and then looking.
Puncheon sank to his knees. “Oh gosh, I go dead. I go dead here tonight.”
Rajesh glanced around wildly. “Is the soucouyant,” he whispered.
Chandani glared at him. “Is not the soucouyant. Is the blasted marijuana all you stupidies drink!”
Om’s red, glazed eyes fixated on Chandani, but he couldn’t bring himself to articulate any of the thoughts streaming through his mind. He gave her a placid smile and nuzzled the head of his kitten. She scowled back at him.
Puncheon crawled away from the group and hung his head in the bushes, where dozens of mosquitoes could devour his face. He groaned and gagged again, his entire body convulsing.
“I fed up, Chandani. I going to fetch Faizal.” Sangita released Rajesh’s arm and whisked away before Chandani could protest, half walking and half running up the road with her glittering phaloo fluttering behind her.
Nothing Like Love Page 11