Nothing Like Love

by Sabrina Ramnanan

  Sangita looked across her tiny sewing room at the fabrics and ribbons, the spools of coloured thread. Bulldog’s pants hung on a wire hanger, waiting to be hemmed. Gloria Ramnath’s sari needed to be stitched into a skirt and blouse. Maya’s dress had to be taken in—she had lost so much weight since Sangita had discovered Krishna’s escapade with Vimla. Scraps from drapes and pillowcases cascaded over chairs and littered the floor. Yes, she was important in this district, indeed. She had sewn for nearly every family in Chance. A smile bloomed on her face as she reversed the pillowcase once more and gave it a shake.

  “Chance done have a seamstress, sweetie,” Sangita said. “And anyhow”—she placed the pillowcase on an identical one lying on her sewing table—“everything done fix up. Once you pass the A Levels, you go teach at Saraswati Hindu School.”

  Minty stood from the bench. It creaked again. Sangita caught a spark of anger in her daughter’s eyes. “Who say?” Minty asked.

  “I say.” Sangita turned her back to Minty. She slid Bulldog’s pants from the hanger. “And Pundit Anand say, too.”

  She flipped open her case of threads and selected the brown. She snipped a generous piece and wet the end in her mouth. The room went quiet. Minty’s hands were still; there was no rustling of fabric now. Sangita wondered how long Minty could stifle her reaction in silence. She extracted a needle from the spool of red thread and waited. She would have to speak sometime. Sangita squinted one eye and, with careful precision, threaded the needle on her first attempt. She got partway through hemming Bulldog’s pants, when she could bare the silence no longer. “Minty? Say something, nuh, girl.”

  No answer.

  Sangita looked over her shoulder and found the bench empty.

  “Minty!” she called, setting Bulldog’s pants down.

  She started to the door, a lesson on good manners poised at the tip of her tongue, and that’s when she saw it: a gold chain, unclasped, snaking across the bench in a very purposeful F.M.

  Sangita gasped, swiping the chain off the bench. Her heart somersaulted in her chest and plummeted into her belly. She had turned the rooms upside down looking for this. Where had Minty found it, and more important, where were the gold initials that had been attached?

  Lal’s Surprise

  Thursday August 22, 1974

  CHANCE, TRINIDAD

  Faizal Mohammed strolled toward Lal’s Rum Shop snapping his fingers and whistling the theme song from Bonanza. Sam skittered back and forth across his shoulder, bobbing his head and falling in tune with Faizal when the moment seized him. They were a dashing pair that evening, Faizal in his new red, flared trousers, yellow disco shirt and two-inch brown platform shoes, and Sam with his blue and yellow feathers fresh and fluffy with afternoon rain.

  Faizal glanced down Kiskadee Trace, lined on either side by tall mangrove trees and shallow drains of murky green sludge. It had been a stifling day and he was grateful for the shadows cast by the retreating sun. He smiled into the breeze created by the briskness of his movements. As dusk descended on Chance, Faizal recalled his latest sweet encounter with Sangita Gopalsingh. “Man, just the other night me and Sangita was walking up this road together. That woman light up the whole district for we to see—is so much sequin and thing she had all over she bosom.” The memory delighted him; it also sent a feeling he could not define rippling through him. “You think she go be at Lal’s tonight, Sam?”

  Sam adjusted the feathers on his back and took up Bonanza’s theme song on his own.

  Faizal undid a button and loosened his collar as he walked toward the rum shop’s open entrance. “Nah, you right. She wouldn’t be there. She probably sewing she clothes for the big wedding coming up.” He stroked Sam’s head with his finger. “Now, that is a woman who know she fashion.” Faizal turned up Lal’s driveway and paused in the doorway for a moment, squinting against the fluorescent lighting. “Good night, everyone,” he said, when he could see clearly again. The rum shop fell silent as Faizal coaxed Sam onto his index finger and strutted across the room on his brown platform shoes. Om, Gloria, Lal and Puncheon followed his jaunty, long strides, a blend of bemusement and hilarity tugging at their features.

  Faizal ignored them, hooking the toe of his shoe around a chair leg and sliding the chair out from beneath the round table in one easy motion. He placed his finger at the table’s edge and allowed Sam to march across it before lowering himself into his seat and drawing his left ankle onto his right knee, as blasé as could be. He looked up at his gaping neighbours and said, “What happened? Allyuh never see a man with style before?”

  Gloria gave Faizal a lingering once-over, pulling idly at her earlobe with her ringed fingers. “You is a real star-boy, Faizal.”

  Faizal patted his hair with a smile, careful not to flatten the puff he’d coiffed at the front.

  Puncheon leaned over a round table and rested his chin on his stacked fists. His eyes were bloodshot and heavy lidded, his cheeks sunken and splotched with premature age spots. Faizal thought even his lopsided smile looked drunk. “Eh, Boss, mind your crotch burn up in them fire pants,” Puncheon said.

  Om’s hearty laughter filled the bar. Gloria’s body shook in quiet amusement, a tear trapping itself in the crinkle of one eye.

  Faizal jiggled his ankle, miffed, but the weight of his new shoes pleased him and he quickly recovered. As he relaxed, he took in his surroundings, thinking it had been a long time since he’d visited the rum shop. He noted the posters of scantily clad women gazing back at him from the Caribbean-blue walls, the Carib and Stag Lager Beer banners hanging from the bar and tacked on the washroom door. He noted the familiar picture of Lord Shiva high up on the wall behind the bar, forever smiling his dreamy smile; the same splintery chairs and stools tucked beneath the tables that wobbled. He counted the regular customers who filled Lal’s Rum Shop and noted Lal himself, who looked as he always did, with his crisp white shirt rolled neatly to his elbows and his placid smile turned to the world.

  Faizal pulled in a breath and his lungs filled with a fusion of liquor and spicy curry, sweat and sweet Vaseline. Outside, from a house hidden in the thick of vegetation, a woman sang a Hindi film song and then forgot the words to the chorus. A mosquito danced across the cracked plaster of the wall. A string of ants snaked over the concrete floor and disappeared under the drapes of Gloria’s dress. Faizal sighed, feeling the pandemonium of the other night slip from his mind. He nodded to Lal.

  Lal leaned back on the counter behind the bar and folded his arms. His kind eyes twinkled with mirth. “Faizal, don’t let that parrot shit up my bar again. Keep it right there on your shoulder.” He reached for a glass. “You drinking tonight?”

  Faizal waved his hand at Lal. “Nah, Boss. Allyuh heathens drink up, nuh? I go take a ginger beer.”

  Rajesh lumbered out of the washroom then, a closet-sized rectangle with a dingy urinal, toilet and standpipe. He shook the water from his hands as he made his way to the bar. “Eh, Faizal, take a real drink, nuh, man. Allah done know about all your debauchery already.”

  Faizal sucked his teeth and reached for the ginger beer that Lal had brought to his table on a Carib coaster. “You talking to me about debauchery?” Faizal grinned. “You forget about Krishna Janamashtami when you get high and stupid and I had to leave my bed in the middle of the night to save you from the soucouyant?”

  Gloria slapped the table. “Allyuh men real dotish.” A tear spilled down her plump cheek, which was pink from the heat.

  Om, who was shovelling pieces of spicy curried goat into his mouth, spun around on his bar stool. “We dotish? You is the one who announce Pundit Anand’s death the same afternoon I see him taking a stroll to Headmaster’s house. You calling Pundit Anand the living dead?”

  Gloria’s grin dissolved. She puffed herself up and folded her arms over her ample chest. “Well, who could blame me for thinking the man just lie down and dead in the temple after what your daughter and Krishna do?” She raised her three chins. “Ever since she gi
ve me talks in the market, I know Vimla was trouble,” Gloria told the room.

  Faizal’s jaw fell. Gloria’s comment didn’t qualify as good-natured rum-shop shit-talk. If she had been a man, if Om had had enough to drink, that remark could have earned Gloria a cuff in the mouth. Instead Om stared back at her, stony faced, and said, “Krishna and Vimla ain’t do nothing you didn’t used to do yourself when you was less fat and less ugly.”

  Puncheon sidled up to Gloria. “Is that so, Ms. Glory!” He planted a wet kiss on her cheek. She scowled and jabbed him with her dimpled elbow. Puncheon fell back into a chair, holding a hand to his ribs, his loose tongue stumbling through a sequence of curses.

  “Pundit Anand far from dead—the man planning big wedding for Krishna,” Rajesh said. “Is a nice girl he find for he son. Chalisa Shankar she name.”

  Faizal sat up tall, his interest pricked. “You meet she?” Out of the corner of his eye he saw hurt flit across Om’s face, and remembered seeing the same expression reflected in his rear-view mirror a few nights ago.

  Rajesh nodded. “Yeah, man. When she come with she Nanny to meet Anand and Maya on Sunday, Sangita insist we drop by to see if Maya need she help with the wedding.”

  Gloria snorted. “Sangita is one frontish woman.”

  Rajesh shot Gloria a warning look and she clamped her mouth shut, fearful of inviting another biting insult. “Chalisa timid,” Rajesh continued. “The girl sit with she hands fold up in she lap and she eyes watching down whole time.”

  Faizal sprayed a mouthful of ginger beer across the table, which Sam dodged just in time. “You say she timid? Chalisa Shankar?” He caught the rag Lal threw at him and began wiping up his mess. Chalisa Shankar? Timid? He thought of the girl who strode, fully clothed, into the chilly sea and lolled across the water like it was a bed of down; of the girl who had twirled with abandon through a storm like a flash of lightning. He remembered how she’d demanded he drive slower down the mountain, her eyes sparkling like hot flints. She must not want to get married, he thought.

  Rajesh gave Faizal a curious look. “Yeah. Why? What you hear?”

  Faizal shoved the bottle against his lips again and began to chug his ginger beer. The fizz burned his throat. He couldn’t tell them she was a witch without implicating himself somehow. They would want to know how he knew Chalisa, and his secrets would inevitably unravel with hers. When Faizal had drained the last drop from the bottle, he shrugged and set it down with a belch. “I ain’t hear nothing.”

  “Krishna wasn’t there?” Gloria asked. “I haven’t seen that handsome boy around since he get into trouble with Vimla. How Pundit Anand and Maya arrange the marriage without Krishna meeting Chalisa?”

  “I hear Krishna gone Tobago,” Lal said.

  “Tobago!” Gloria swatted the table with her pudgy hand, sending it rocking. “Lawd Father, what he doing in Tobago?” she exclaimed.

  Nobody could say. They sat in silent speculation for a moment until Headmaster Roop G. Kapil walked through the door with a pen tucked behind his ear and a small notebook shoved in his back pocket. He stopped in his tracks and looked around. “How this place so quiet? Allyuh think Pundit Anand dead again?” He chuckled, finding a spot next to Om. “Scotch on the rocks, Lal. Thanks.”

  “Headmaster, what you know about the big wedding coming up?” Gloria asked.

  Headmaster brushed his salt-and-pepper hair out of his face and shoved his glasses up on his nose with an ink-stained finger. “I ain’t know nothing allyuh ain’t know,” he said, swirling the ice in his glass.

  Om turned to him and sat up tall so as to show the width of his chest and the bulk of his arms. “Who getting the teaching job at Saraswati Hindu School next year? You know that at least?”

  Headmaster glanced away and shrugged his lean shoulders. “Not yet.”

  Om sucked his teeth. “This headmaster ain’t know he ass from he elbow, if you ask me. Lal, bring me a next beer, man.”

  Headmaster looked appalled, but he had neither the wit nor vulgarity to sling jibes with this group. He cupped his hands around his cold scotch and stared mutely into the amber liquid as if the answer to Om’s question lay somewhere among the ice cubes.

  Lal waved his arms in the air. “Allyuh take a break from gossiping and troubling one another for a minute, nuh.” The rum shop fell quiet and all eyes turned to Lal. “I have a surprise for allyuh.” Nervous excitement played on his face.

  Faizal jiggled his ankle again and sighed. A surprise? Lal’s last surprise was Daisy, the dark-skinned beauty holding a sweating Carib to her red lips, pinned up behind Gloria’s head. Faizal was not interested in another racy poster, or a new packet of coasters, or even one of Lal’s pots of fresh curry, however good. He wanted to know the details of Krishna and Chalisa’s wedding. He was also curious about this new tension between Om and Headmaster. Surely it had something to do with Vimla. Suddenly he laughed at himself, shaking the puff on his head. How had the affairs of silly children come to consume him this way?

  Rajesh cast Faizal a sidelong glance that said he was crazy and then turned back to the bar, strumming his fingers on the table, waiting for Lal to return with his surprise.

  Faizal scowled at the back of Rajesh’s head. He asked himself for the umpteenth time what Sangita had ever seen in Rajesh, with his loud mouth and oxen-like features. Yes, Rajesh was an esteemed member of the district, he owned more acres of land than most, he treated Sangita with respect. But there was so much more that Rajesh was not. He was not funny or fashionable; he was not curious or daring. He was not worthy of Sangita because he was not Faizal Mohammed. And that was that.

  A vision of Sangita pouty and bejewelled, clinging to his arm as they walked up Kiskadee Trace, materialized in Faizal’s mind. He wet his lips and smiled to himself.

  Sam nipped at Faizal’s finger, and Faizal reached idly into his shirt pocket and retrieved a handful of unshelled peanuts. When he scattered them on the table, Sam grasped a shell in his black claw. He brought the shell to his beak and worked away at it until the nut was free. Faizal stroked Sam’s head with his finger. “Nice boy,” he murmured absent-mindedly.

  Lal returned then, hugging a box draped in an old pink curtain to his chest. He set the box down on the bar and, checking to make sure all eyes were on him, whipped the curtain off like a magician.

  Puncheon shoved his chair back and stood, upsetting his drink and wobbling dangerously close to Gloria’s lap. Rajesh manoeuvred around Faizal and Gloria and took a seat closer to the bar. Om and Headmaster pivoted on their bar stools in unison to face the unveiled object.

  Faizal gasped quietly. His face fell ashen.

  “Eh, boy.” Om whistled. “That television nice. It working?”

  Lal ran his hand over the twelve-inch television, beaming like a child with a new toy. When he plugged it in and turned it on, the screen crackled to life in a whirr of silver static.

  “Adjust the antenna!” Gloria cried.

  “To the left,” Headmaster said.

  “Move it one inch so,” Rajesh said, gesturing to the right with his hand.

  “Bring the right one down and leave the left one up,” Om said.

  “Hold up! Hold up!” Puncheon exclaimed as Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz appeared on the screen.

  Gloria clapped, and then pressed her hands to her chest, beaming. “I Love Lucy! I does watch this show when I visit my son in Port of Spain,” she told the room. “He have two television. My son own a jewellery store, you know.”

  Nobody answered her. They all leaned in and admired what they thought was the first black-and-white television in the district.

  “Where you get this, Lal?” Om asked.

  “Port of Spain.” Lal dusted an invisible speck of dust off the television.

  “How much channels you could catch?” Rajesh asked.

  “Two.”

  “What you could see?” Om asked.

  “Panorama News. I Love Lucy. Bonanza. Teen Dance Party. Mastana Bahar—�
�

  “Mastana Bahar! Eh, boy, I does always hear about that talent show on the radio, but I never see it yet,” Rajesh said.

  “Shh! I can’t hear!” Gloria waved her hand with impatience.

  Puncheon and Om signalled silently for another round of drinks and propped their chins in their hands at the bar. Gloria lifted her swollen ankles onto a stool and arranged her floral dress over her knees before settling against the hard back of her chair. Rajesh slouched in his seat and interlaced his fingers behind his head, so that his brawny arms were partially flexed and jutted out to the side like wings. Headmaster glanced back and forth from the television screen to his notebook, scribbling with haste. There would be no more gossiping tonight. No more digs.

  Faizal looked away from his neighbours. He seethed with jealousy. It was too late now to tell them that he had purchased a television a month ago. If they believed him, they would want to know why he hadn’t told anyone, why he had kept it all to himself. They would accuse him of selfishness. But selfishness had never been his motive for secrecy. Sangita had. He had wanted to show her his new television first. Except the opportunity hadn’t presented itself and now Lal had ruined everything.

  Faizal’s face twisted into a profound sulk. He pushed Sam’s empty peanut shells around the table with a finger. He was thinking how unfair life could be, when something occurred to him and he froze: Rajesh wouldn’t be home for hours now. Faizal grinned. Suddenly he was scraping the unshelled peanuts off the table and depositing them back in his pocket. He held out his finger for Sam, who stepped nimbly on and crept up to Faizal’s shoulder again. In an instant Faizal Mohammed was tiptoeing behind the turned backs of his neighbours and slipping out the door. As he disappeared into the night, Sam began to whistle.

  Black Water River

  Friday August 23, 1974

  CHANCE, TRINIDAD

  “I like a woman with broad hips and a big, fat, round bamsee. When she dance, she bamsee must roll.” Puncheon gyrated his narrow hips, puckering his lips at Raj. “When she walk, she bamsee must swing.” He sashayed along the riverbank, wagging his scrawny bottom from right to left.