Avinash considered this. “Will they?”
“Yes.” Anand raised a finger and his expression grew serious. “But then I have to select a favourable day for them to marry. The trouble is that there is only a few of these to choose from based on their dates, times and places of birth. If Krishna and Chalisa marry on an ominous date, they marriage go be cursed with mother-in-law quarrels and burn-up roti.” Anand winked at Avinash.
Avinash blinked back at him. His mother was dead.
Nanny pinched her grandson. “That’s enough, Avi. Let the pundit do his work.” She watched as Maya returned and placed the time-worn text in Anand’s outstretched arms.
Anand mumbled a prayer over the holy book before opening the cover. The loose spine crackled then splayed easily across Anand’s lap. He turned the pages with care, tracing a finger beneath the Sanskrit script with a gradualness he was sure would exasperate Nanny. He furrowed his brow and murmured to himself. He stroked his moustache and sighed. He shook his head and looked pensive, doubtful.
Nanny reached across the table and touched Maya’s knee. “Maya, would you believe last night I dream Krishna run away with someone else before the wedding and left my Chalisa heartbroken?”
Maya gasped and pressed her fingertips to her mouth.
“I wake up sweating and crying and poor Delores had to squeeze my head with Limacol in the middle of the night.” Nanny shrugged. “Dream’s real strange, ain’t?”
Maya nodded. Delores looked down at her hands.
“You know, I does only sleep restless these days, Maya. Is all the worries I have dancing up like jumbies in my head.” Nanny sighed and hunched over so that she appeared smaller and more frail than she actually was. “Ever since my son and he wife dead, is me alone who does have to look after the Shankar orange estate. Every man I hire is a cheat and crook who only trying to take advantage of a old lady and she money. Would you believe only this morning I had to fire and terminate a next man for he trickery and treachery?”
Chalisa looked away from Nanny’s theatrics. Avinash’s serious eyes grew rounder and glowed.
“Oh!” Maya reached across the table and grasped Nanny’s veiny hands in hers. “Is such a shame, Nanny, I real sorry for—”
Nanny raised her voice over Maya’s fussing. “But I ain’t have long to worry and fret again because I know Krishna go manage my affairs when he marry Chalisa.” She snatched up another sugar cake and deposited it in her mouth. “In fact,” she said between chews, “I go just sign the whole thing over to Krishna when the wedding done. What a old lady like me worrying about money for? Let the young people see to it. Just think, Krishna go be known as The Great Orange Pundit!”
Maya’s glass of mauby stopped inches from her lips. She gazed at Anand, whose focus remained on his scriptures but whose head—or ear, rather—was tilted toward the conversation. He sat perfectly still.
“So, Baba?” Nanny looked at Anand, too, as she crossed her ankles casually. “How the dates looking? September first good?”
Pundit Anand smiled and closed the book. “Very auspicious.”
Sunday School
Sunday August 18, 1974
BUCCOO, TOBAGO
Krishna reclined in Auntie Kay’s netted rainbow hammock, one leg flung over the side. A text lay open on his belly, its gilded pages turning themselves in the breeze as he scratched a swelling mosquito bite shaped like a banana leaf on his forearm. The itch became a burn. He abandoned it for a luxurious stretch and nestled deeper into his cocoon, watching wisps of almost-clouds drift across the sky.
“Studying hard?”
A dreadlock fell into view, slicing the perfect sky in two. It swung above Krishna’s nose like a pendulum. Dutchie’s grinning upside-down face appeared next. His eyes danced with their usual mirth.
“Auntie Kay!” Dutchie’s voice boomed across the small courtyard. “Every time I come here your nephew does be dreaming. You see him read a page in that book yet?”
Krishna shut the book and shoved it aside before pulling himself into a seated position. He watched, amused, as Auntie Kay set her laundry down and was enveloped in Dutchie’s embrace. Already petite, Auntie Kay appeared like a doll in Dutchie’s arms with her black bob and yellow headband. She wore a polka dot dress this morning, pink and white with a sash she’d sewn herself, and slippers she could have shared with a child if she’d had any.
“Dutchie-boy, what I go tell you? He does lie in that hammock with a book on he belly, but is only the birds and sky and flowers and trees he studying.” Auntie Kay tried an admonishing look, but it dissolved into a beam as quickly as it began.
Dutchie picked up a pair of Krishna’s wet shorts and clipped them to the clothesline. “You think he lazy, Auntie?”
Auntie Kay considered this, shaking out a yellow sundress and hanging it next to the shorts. “Lazy? No.”
“Stupid, then. Only a stupid man would have plenty-plenty books and never read one.” Dutchie two-stepped around Auntie Kay, light on his feet, adding a T-shirt to the line.
“Stupid? No.”
“Well, then the boy must have real tabanca, Auntie.” Dutchie swept a few locks from his face and secured them behind his head with two clothespins. “It ain’t have no other explanation for that.” He tipped his chin at Krishna.
“Yes! Heartache!” Auntie Kay giggled, fastening a skirt to the line.
Krishna collapsed back into the hammock. “Allyuh laugh! Laugh, nuh! My life is one big joke.” He hid his smile behind the hammock’s edge and kicked off the ground with one foot until he was rocking.
Dutchie sauntered back to his friend. He gripped the hammock ropes and swung Krishna high. The ropes slackened as the hammock soared to the house beams and grew taut again as it descended. Krishna’s stomach followed a millisecond behind. The wind whistled in his ears.
“So what we doing today, Boss?” Dutchie asked.
Krishna splayed his arms and legs out as he flew. Auntie Kay’s pink and orange bougainvillea eddied with the sky and the palms, the concrete and the clothes hanging on the line.
“Before allyuh go knock about Tobago, do your Auntie Kay a favour, nuh?”
Krishna slowed the hammock, using his feet as brakes. “Anything.” And he meant it. Auntie Kay had doted on him from the moment he’d arrived in Tobago. She’d taken one look at his suitcases bulging with Hinduism and pulled him into her home, defiance flickering in her black eyes. She wanted to know just why her brother had sent Krishna away; what Hindu law forbade love? She pitied Vimla even more than she did Krishna, often wishing she could send for her. She made Krishna tell her their story again and again until she grew morose or furious, or a peculiar combination of both. And when she’d heard enough, she curled up in her rainbow hammock and woke with the sunny disposition of a child without a care in the world. After that Auntie Kay only spoke of Krishna’s plight when he brought it up. She never pried; she never asked questions; she never passed judgment.
Dutchie and Auntie Kay were fast friends, too. He came by one morning to take Krishna to the wharf, a bushel of fresh dasheen bhajee in his arms. Auntie Kay was tickled by his thoughtfulness and couldn’t be more pleased that someone like Dutchie—“a free spirit,” she called him—had taken Krishna under his wing while he was in Tobago. When the neighbour inquired about the “tall dark fella with the long dreadlocks to he backside” hanging around the place, Auntie Kay told him that was her nephew, Dutchie.
“I feeling to eat a caimite.” Auntie Kay squinted up at one of her trees laden with the purple fruit. “Allyuh mind?”
A boyish grin lit Krishna’s face. “Say no more.” In an instant he was out of the hammock and around the back of the house in search of something long enough to prize the ripe fruit from its branches. He returned with a piece of bamboo.
Dutchie nodded his approval. “That is the correct thing to chook a caimite.”
Without a word, Dutchie and Krishna positioned themselves under the great tree with all the seriou
sness of two professional cricketers. Krishna prodded the branches with the bamboo and Dutchie caught the falling fruit, somersaulting and diving in the grass when he didn’t need to.
Auntie Kay giggled. “Is like I have two young children for the first time,” she said.
Krishna waited while Dutchie deposited the fruit in his pocket. “You try, Auntie Kay!” he said.
She didn’t need to be asked twice. Auntie Kay kicked off her slippers and bounded onto the grass. Krishna skipped around the tree, shaking the branches with more force and with greater speed so that Dutchie and Auntie Kay had to dart this way and that to catch the raining caimites. Auntie Kay squealed with delight, whirling around with outstretched arms. Most of the caimites ended up on the ground, always a few inches shy of her grasp.
In the end the trio scored nine. They gathered below the house to cool off while Dutchie halved the fruit. The caimites yielded easily to the knife. They fell open, revealing soft purple flesh glistening with juice.
“When last you sit and eat a caimite like this?” Dutchie asked, propping his feet up on a footstool and sinking into his fruit. Droplets dribbled over his chin and sprinkled his tank top.
Krishna spat three slippery seeds into his palm and shrugged. Over the last couple years, he had done little in the way of relaxing in Trinidad. He spent most of his time shadowing his father during pujas. Every time a baby was born or a couple was married, Krishna was there. Every time someone fell sick or was plagued by bad luck, Krishna was there. He sat through puja after puja, muttering mantras in unison with his father, handing him flowers or incense or lit diyas, eating bag after bag of prasad. His days began early and ended late and he always came home miserable with soot in his nostrils. It was only recently, when he and Vimla began meeting in secret, that Krishna remembered what joy felt like, and strangely, all the wonderful things Trinidad had to offer.
A frown settled on his brow. He had only ever told this to Vimla. It seemed immoral for a pundit’s son—for a pundit-in-training—to loathe his work the way he did. His father said it was his dharma, his duty, to become a spiritual leader, but Krishna felt like a pretender. Worse, a pretender to God.
“What happened, Krish?” Auntie Kay smoothed his brow with her finger, sticky with caimite juice.
Dutchie slapped Krishna on the back. “I tell you the man have tabanca. He thinking of Miss Vimla Narine steady.” Dutchie’s smile was wicked.
Krishna dropped the skin of his caimite on the table, having cleaned the flesh right out. “I was just thinking how nice it is to have a day to do nothing. To just lime under the house with good people, with no one waiting on you and no particular place to be.”
Dutchie wiped his mouth with his hand. “But we do have a particular place to be tonight, my friend,” he said, winking.
Auntie Kay, always curious about their adventures, inclined her head in Dutchie’s direction. “What allyuh boys up to tonight?”
“We going to Sunday School in Buccoo Reef.” He got up and dropped a kiss on Auntie Kay’s head. “And you going, too, Auntie.”
Auntie Kay waved her hand. “Oh no. You boys have your fun. I too old for late-night liming.”
Dutchie produced an unconvincing sulk. “You ain’t want to go fishing. You ain’t want to go snorkelling.” He gestured in the air, feigning exasperation. “You does twist up your mouth every time I ask you to play cricket. Like you vexed with me or what?”
Auntie Kay swatted Dutchie’s arm. “You expect me to fish and snorkel? What wrong with you, boy?” She smoothed her polka dot dress over her knees, embarrassed by the thought of it.
Dutchie and Krishna chuckled. “Well, tonight we dancing, Auntie Kay, and I know you could do that.” He turned to Krishna and ruffled his hair. “I coming by at ten. Fix yourself up a little, nuh? You looking like a vagrant.”
Krishna glanced down at his old shorts and his rumpled T-shirt and decided not to argue.
Krishna knew Tobago’s Sunday School had nothing to do with Bible studies, but he wasn’t expecting an open street party. The Buccoo Beach he’d seen was quiet but for tourists getting on and off tour boats and the odd vendor who sold Tobago bottle openers and magnets, sunhats and sarongs.
Dutchie nudged Krishna. “You recognize this place?”
“Hardly.”
The quiet bars with the unhurried wait staff were draped in Christmas lights that twinkled white against the cobalt sky; patrons overflowed onto the street now. There were people everywhere, holding drinks or hands or waists. They moved in waves past each other, clinking their drinks against friends’ and strangers’ drinks, saying “Good night, good night” and smiling the breeziest smiles Krishna had ever seen.
The harmony of a steel pan band played in the background. Dutchie led Krishna and Auntie Kay through the crowd until they could see the panmen in their matching red shirts, managing two or three steelpans each and hitting every perfect note in time. The pannists danced as they played, like the rhythm of their song started in their feet instead of the other way around. There was an easiness about them that reminded Krishna of Dutchie.
The street was lined with food vendors and their Caribbean fare wafted in the night. Krishna saw enormous pots of corn soup and fish broth bubbling on firecrackers. An older woman sat beside her pot and cut chunks of sweet potato into the corn soup, tapping her foot to the music. There was barbecue, too. Chicken sizzled on the grill and drew crowds of people, who waited patiently in line for a fat thigh or a breast. Krishna’s stomach turned at the sight of the meat lying on the plate. On the other side of the street there was a doubles stand. He smiled to himself, remembering Vimla and Minty in the market.
“You want a doubles?” Dutchie asked above the music.
“Nah. Let we get some roast corn.”
Dutchie wrapped an arm around Auntie Kay’s shoulders as she bobbed at his side to the music. “So how you going, Miss Auntie?” he said. “What you think about Sunday School?”
“Your Auntie Kay could get used to this kind of church!” she said, allowing Dutchie to guide her in the direction of a corn stand.
Dutchie hailed a man sitting with four coolers while Krishna purchased the roasted corn. “What you have tonight, Ernest?” Dutchie asked.
Ernest made a production of rolling his white linen sleeves to his elbows before lifting all four lids. “Rum. Rum. Beer. Sweet drink. What you want?”
Auntie Kay danced over with her corn in hand. “I go take a Carib, please, mister.” Krishna’s eyes bulged. “But put it in a cup for me, nuh? A lady doesn’t drink from beer bottle so.”
Dutchie laughed. “I go have the same.”
“And a cup for you, too, sweetheart?” Ernest asked Dutchie.
Dutchie grabbed the beer from Ernest’s outstretched hand. “Don’t play the ass, nuh, man.”
“And you.” Ernest nodded his chin at Krishna. “You go take one, Boss?
Krishna shoved his hands in his pocket. “Nothing for me, thanks.”
Ernest shrugged, unrolled his sleeves and dropped the lids of his coolers one by one. Krishna wondered how many times he would do that tonight.
Auntie Kay took a sip of her beer. Her hips rocked as she drank.
“Auntie Kay, since when you does drink? Does my father know?”
“Why he have to know? I’s a big woman. I living in my own house and paying my own bills.” She nibbled at her corn. “Your father doesn’t mind me—I does mind myself.”
“Lucky you,” Krishna said. He pictured Anand then, trembling in rage, blaming Auntie Kay for costing him a fortune, as he’d stuffed Krishna’s belongings into a bag. Krishna was about to ask Auntie Kay what his father had meant by that, when she flashed him a disarming smile and he decided he didn’t care. An impromptu dance floor was opening up in the middle of the street. Somewhere, a speaker was blaring The Mighty Sparrow’s latest hit, “We Pass That Stage.” Waists swivelled and bumped up against neighbours’. Krishna watched the revellers with interest. Some were youth
ful; some were bent and creased with age; there were even some pink-faced tourists with cameras around their necks, making merry with the locals.
“This is how Carnival in Trinidad does be?” Krishna asked.
Dutchie looked at Krishna, disbelieving. “This? You mad or what? Man, Tobago’s Sunday School is really like Sunday School compared to Trinidad’s Carnival. Where you from?”
“How you mean?” Krishna felt foolish not knowing, especially since he had lived his entire life in Trinidad. He almost explained that Chance was just a small town nestled in the southernmost tip of the island, far way from Port of Spain. He almost mentioned that he was Pundit Anand Govind’s only son and that there was no place for carnival in his life.
Dutchie inched closer to his friend. “You see that pretty girl watching you? The one in the corner with she two friends? Not that one!” Dutchie turned Krishna’s head to the right. “She.”
Krishna swallowed and nodded.
“Now, imagine that sugar plum with sequins and feathers covering all she goodies and nothing else. Imagine she prancing in Port of Spain with a glittery headdress and face paint to match. That’s Carnival.”
“Oh.”
“Now, look over there. You see that young couple dancing with each other? Tasteful, ain’t?”
His father might not have thought so, but Krishna did. “Yeah.”
“Well, imagine that couple grinding up on each other, unbridled wickedness on display for everyone to see. That’s Carnival.”
Krishna blushed in the darkness.
Dutchie gestured to the panmen who were taking a break at a bar. “They good, right? Yeah, I think so, too. But them is only half the party. Carnival must have pan and a handful of good calypsonians to keep the fete alive. No calypsonians here tonight. Just the speaker box playing they hits.”
Nothing Like Love Page 14