Nothing Like Love

by Sabrina Ramnanan

  “Anand, Krishna and Chalisa won’t last,” Auntie Kay said flatly. She got up, too, and folded her arms over her wild printed dress.

  “Eh!” Anand pointed directly in her face. “You is not an expert in relationships.”

  Auntie Kay flinched, a subtle flutter of her black lashes. “Bas was a mistake.” She brushed Anand’s hand away and stood bravely before him.

  “And who you think paying for that mistake, Kaywattie?” Anand turned his finger on himself, jabbing his chest again and again. “Me! I paying for it. Every damn day that pass, I paying for it!”

  Krishna sensed his father had waited a long time to utter those words.

  Maya tried to take Anand’s arm, but he twisted from her hold with a growl.

  Auntie Kay’s eyes flashed. “Yes, Anand, I know your precious reputation damage because of my divorce.” Her voice trembled. “I know I am a blight on the family name.”

  “An expensive blight!”

  Krishna stepped around Anand and squeezed his way between the two. Dutchie threw Krishna a warning look, a look that urged him to intervene. Did Dutchie know what he did? Had he known it all along?

  “An expensive blight?” The fire in Auntie Kay ebbed to a mere glow. She tipped her head to the side and searched Anand’s face.

  Maya averted her gaze and strummed her fingers against her mouth as if to keep the truth locked in.

  “Oh, Kaywattie, you real naïve, girl,” Anand said. He trailed his fingers over his mala. “Don’t you know I have been sending money to Bas for years now, trying to buy back that kiss-me-ass piece of land you living on in Tobago?”

  Auntie Kay opened her mouth and closed it again. Her hands found her belly, where her belt was tied in a looping bow. She swayed on her feet. Krishna imagined her thoughts: had she lived a lie these past years; was the independence she had so delighted in non-existent?

  Anand, blinded by his own vexation and the burden of his sister’s debt, seemed not to notice Auntie Kay’s effervescence fading into something frighteningly tragic. He blustered on. “But when Krishna marry Chalisa—”

  Krishna laid a firm grip on his father’s shoulder. “Pa, there is no need for all of this. Auntie Kay only come here today because she want to see me happy.”

  Auntie Kay leaned into Dutchie. “When Krishna marry Chalisa …?” she prompted Anand.

  Anand shook Krishna off like a fly. “I go finally have enough money to pay off Bas the Ass and retire.”

  Dutchie draped a protective arm around Auntie Kay and for the first time Krishna saw a single line of worry etch itself across his shining forehead.

  Auntie Kay stared at her slippers. The veranda fell quiet and the gaiety below swelled around them like some cruel joke. “Allyuh open a next bottle of Puncheon!” Roop G. Kapil hollered from behind the ixora bush. “We pundit marrieding he son today!”

  A cheer rose.

  Auntie Kay met Krishna’s eyes, took his large hands in her small ones. “Did you know?”

  Krishna lowered his gaze. “Yes.”

  The Wedding Barat

  Sunday September 1, 1974

  CHANCE, TRINIDAD

  The loudspeakers hummed and crackled to life. Mohammed Rafi’s voice blared over Kiskadee Trace and a cheer flew up from the procession of cars winding bumper to bumper from the Govinds’ home to Mahadeo’s shop. People honked their horns, broke into song at random, knocked back their first drink of the day. Sangita Gopalsingh shimmied into the road and gave the district a dance they would remember for years. The sun glittered off rooftops and car tops, and rings and bangles on hands that draped out of windows to strum car doors. The air was so thick with merrymaking Vimla could barely breathe.

  “That woman really have no shame,” Chandani muttered, fixing the hem of her skirt over her ankles. “And what the hell she have that shitting periwinkle pin up all over she head for? She feel this is Carnival?”

  Vimla saw Faizal Mohammed lean out of his window and drink Sangita in with insatiable thirst. Vimla knew that look well—she had seen it on Krishna’s face just hours ago; only then it had been muted in pre-dawn shadows and nerves.

  She had left him at the gates without looking back. A stolen glance over her shoulder could have shattered Vimla’s resolve and hurled her back into limbo where other people—bigger, more influential people—manipulated her destiny. But Vimla wouldn’t throw away her last shot at freedom for a glimpse of Krishna’s tumble of black curls. Not this time. So she fixed her eyes forward, marched past Chandani and Om on the veranda stairs and lowered herself into a chair.

  Chandani and Om stared at Vimla in what Vimla imagined was awe.

  “We wasn’t going to same way,” Vimla said, gazing at the sky, where the stars were receding like memories. “Let we go to the wedding.”

  “We ain’t—”

  “Ma, nobody know about Anand and the deed except we and the Shankars. According to the district Chalisa and Krishna was marrieding all along. How it go look if you ain’t go? You go have to live nice with Pundit Anand after the wedding. You might as well start by seeing he son marry.”

  Vimla knew she’d been right. No matter how Anand and Maya had shamed her family, they could not avoid Krishna’s wedding. In attending they would show they supported Krishna’s union to Chalisa Shankar; that there were no hard feelings about Vimla being passed up; that Vimla and Krishna’s tryst had been innocent puppy love—something to laugh at and forget about. All lies, of course, but essential to Chandani’s and Om’s peace of mind and restoring Vimla’s own reputation.

  Chandani had watched the way Vimla’s eyes drifted from one star to the next like she was charting her course around the world. “And tell me, Vimla, why you want to see Krishna marry that girl?” she’d asked.

  “I always wanted to be at Krishna’s wedding,” Vimla had said, wryly. “Is the last thing for me to do before I go.”

  Chandani looked at Om. He reached out and patted her back—awkward thumps that rattled her small frame. They both knew that Vimla would find her way to Canada with or without their permission. They knew now how she hitched her heart on perilous dreams and held on until the end.

  Chandani snorted. “Miss Lady, you think your father does fly plane for BWI?” She nudged Om in the gut. “How we daughter come out so wayward?”

  This is how Chandani gave Vimla her blessings.

  “Watch Puncheon,” Om said, looking in his rear-view mirror.

  Chandani and Vimla twisted around as Puncheon on his bike weaved in front of the car behind them. The car screeched. The driver cursed.

  Puncheon held up a hand. “You brakes working nice, Boss!” he said, bicycling on until he reached Om’s car. “Hello. Hi!” He slapped the hood.

  Chandani leaned forward so she could see Puncheon around Om. “Is like you looking for someone to bounce you down.”

  Puncheon dismounted and transferred the two Guinness Extra Stouts from his basket into his pockets with a grin. “You have place?” He abandoned the bike at the side of the road, opened the car door and climbed in next to Vimla before Chandani could object. The heady mixture of Vaseline, sweat and beer wafted through the car.

  “People charging five dollars a man for a ride to the wedding,” Chandani said. But she didn’t reach back to accept the payment—she didn’t even turn to look at Puncheon getting himself comfortable in the back. She was merely making a point, communicating the rules.

  Puncheon whispered to Vimla behind his hand. “Going to see your lovah-boy get married?” He showed his yellowing teeth in a grin and opened a beer.

  Vimla turned her face to the road as if Puncheon didn’t exist, as if his boozy breath hadn’t assaulted her cheek. If she stretched her neck far enough and squinted just so, she could make out the car with the pulsating loudspeakers secured to the roof, leading the procession to the bride’s home. The tassa group followed close behind them. They stuffed themselves into one car with their drums wedged beneath their armpits and up against their bellie
s, tapping the rhythm from the loudspeaker on their knees. And in the third car, the one festooned with garlands of red and white dahlias, plastic pompoms, and streamers, the one floating like a white phantasm before Vimla’s eyes, sat Krishna and his family. She imagined him sunk against the back seat, the embroidery on his jamajura digging into his flesh, his lovely curls flattened under a jewelled turban. How many times would he knock it askew in an attempt to rake his fingers through his hair, she wondered with a small smile.

  “Excuse me!” a voice shrilled, interrupting her thoughts. “Good morning! Excuse me!” Gloria Ramnath zigzagged through the cars, her bottom swishing. “Allyuh see Dr. Mohan?” She pushed herself through Om’s open window so that her fleshy bosom hung perilously close to his face. Chandani recoiled, although she was far enough away not to come in contact with the perspiration rolling into the abyss of Gloria’s cleavage. “Fatty-Om, Dr. Mohan say he have place for me in he car, but I can’t find he.” She shoved her hand down the front of her dress and withdrew a handkerchief that already looked moist. Six rings glittered on four fingers.

  Om shrugged. “I ain’t see Dr. Mohan, but he must be here somewhere. It have plenty car behind me.”

  Gloria heaved a sigh and looked pleadingly at Om instead of the trail of cars.

  Vimla thought of riding two hours in a car, jammed between Puncheon and Gloria Ramnath. She could almost feel their sticky skin pasted to hers, the sickening sensation of peeling free when they arrived in St. Joseph.

  “You see that Austin Cambridge?” Chandani pointed to the Gopalsinghs’ car ahead of them. “Them have plenty place. You could sit in the back with Minty.”

  Gloria squinted against the flashing metal. “Oh gosh. With Sangita? I go have to watch she wave and skin she teeth at everyone from here to St. Joseph and back!”

  Chandani blinked stoically at her. She would not be dragged into gossip about her neighbour, however much she agreed.

  Gloria peered into the back seat. “Go around, nuh?” she said to Vimla. “I could ride in the back with you and Puncheon. He could fold up small and sit in the middle. He hand and foot like bamboo stalk, anyway.” She laughed. Her bosom bounced toward Om’s eye.

  Puncheon cuffed the back of Om’s seat. “Tell she walk, nuh? Maybe she go loss some weight and get small like me.”

  Gloria scowled.

  A cacophony of staccato car horns worked its way from the head of the convoy down the line. Om shifted into drive. “The barat leaving. You going with we or them?” he asked Gloria.

  Puncheon flung his legs and arms out to show there was no room. Vimla glowered at her to show she had not forgotten Gloria’s nastiness in the market.

  “Humph!” Gloria huffed, and bustled away. She scrambled into the back seat of Rajesh’s car just as it rolled forward.

  They arrived in St. Joseph in great fanfare: music blaring, cars honking, people cheering and almost everyone—apart from the Govinds and Narines—blissfully tipsy. The people of Chance district poured out of their cars a block away from the Shankars’ estate and fell in behind the tassa players and Pundit Anand and Maya on the road. Patang! The first strike against the drum resounded through the air. A charged lull ensued. Vimla saw a few people nudge each other and exchange knowing smiles. Someone whistled. The woman in front of Vimla bent her knees, thrust her bottom out, hiked up her skirt and waited. And then it happened: an explosion of rhythm rolled off the drums and the pound of heavy bass fell in sync with their hearts. The barat broke into a joyous frenzy of swivelling hips and swept Vimla forward down the road.

  In the distance Chalisa’s tassa group answered back. They came over the incline in the road with red tassels dangling from their drums, and behind them, a barat that shimmered in their movements. All the young women could have been brides, all the young men grooms. Vimla gasped. What must Chalisa look like? She pictured her tucked away in the big house, swathed in raw silk and diamonds, listening to her wedding celebrations with a sense of impending doom. Vimla pushed her guilt away and leaned into Chandani, who poked her arm and said, “Them people could really show off.” She walked stiffly, her mouth pulled into a disapproving frown as the people from Chance district revelled around her. “You see how they trying to make style on we? All that glitters isn’t gold, Vimla.”

  And yet everything that glittered was indeed gold. Drum tassels, sari borders, jewels, even the dainty bindis suspended between the women’s eyebrows. Gold. Everything was gold and everything glittered. Vimla caught a glimpse of Pundit Anand’s face as he turned his head. He didn’t look slighted at all; in fact, he positively glowed.

  The tassa groups met in the middle and engaged in a rhythm clash that excited the wedding guests to no end. This is when the most eccentric or obscene dancers pushed their way into the centre and exhibited their talents. Puncheon stuck his tongue out to the side, clasped his hands behind his head and thrust his pelvis back and forth as if he had a motor in his pants. The people went crazy for this, whistling and cheering him on. A young man from the bride’s side challenged Puncheon’s display. He pulled up his pant legs, spread his legs wide and squatted low to the ground. When the tassa switched tempo, he gyrated his waist in a circle an inch at a time the way a second hand goes round a clock. Both sides were joyfully scandalized.

  The crowd churned and carried Minty, Sangita and Rajesh ahead. Vimla followed Sangita’s bright-blue sari in the sea. The gossamer material revealed the dizzying spiral of her waist, which Rajesh admired as he orbited around her. A few feet away Faizal Mohammed stood in a yellow checked shirt with the collar turned up, and gazed, bewildered, after the couple. And Minty lingered just behind Faizal Mohammed; her glossy ponytail swung from side to side as she scoured the crowd for Vimla.

  “Ma!” Vimla yelled in Chandani’s ear. “I going by Minty. I go meet you in the tent.” She slipped away before Chandani could object.

  As she wriggled through the crowd, Vimla snatched at conversations partly drowned out by the tassa:

  “Whey! Watch how coconut man’s head shining like crystal ball in this heat!”

  “Wait, nuh, man. Let the pundit and them settle up by the mandap and we go knock a few drinks by the car.”

  “I glad we pundit find a nice girl for he son to marry.”

  “Nice? You ain’t hear about Mastana Bahar!”

  “Allyuh see Sangita sari? She couldn’t put on a dress like the rest of we? She dress up like the bride self!”

  “I think Bulldog have sugar. I fine he looking old and dry up these days. Watch, nuh?”

  “Haul your ass! You think this road pave for you alone to dance?”

  “I hear the Shankars does fan fly with money. Pundit Anand must be get rich now.”

  “Allyuh see Kay? I hear she married a creole captain.”

  Vimla passed Headmaster Roop G. Kapil. He held his head high, pinching the lapels of his jacket between two fingers as he danced off-beat. His salt-and-pepper bangs flapped over his left lens in his merriment. Headmaster looked confident, pleased with himself even. Much different, Vimla thought, from the sputtering fool Chandani had reduced him to at the school weeks ago. He caught Vimla’s eye and smiled. She looked away, embarrassed by the freeness of his movements.

  A man careered through the crowd, barrelling into Vimla on his way to the front for a dance. “Sorry, darling!” he yelled. Vimla pitched sideways and saw the asphalt rising to meet her, when a wiry arm caught her around the waist and steadied her on her feet. She glanced up. Faizal Mohammed shook his head and folded his arms.

  “How you going?” he asked.

  Vimla straightened her dress and mumbled a thank you. “You have my money?” she asked.

  The top two buttons of his shirt were undone; his fat chain gleamed. “I find you real boldface.”

  Vimla shrugged. “And you not?”

  “What you going over for?” His eyes were bright with curiosity.

  “To study.”

  “And you plan to come back?”

&
nbsp; “Yes.”

  “That is a shame.” He stroked his long neck, scratched just at his bulging Adam’s apple. “And wouldn’t your mother wonder where you get money for passage to Canada?”

  “I done tell she is scholarship money.”

  Faizal raised his eyebrows. “Eh, gyul, you does ever tired lie?”

  “You does?” She twisted through the labyrinth of people away from him.

  Minty and Vimla stood still with their shoulders touching and the crowd swirling around them. Something had shifted between them since they’d last spoken; Vimla sensed it in the prolonged moments they allowed tassa to fill the place of conversation, in the way they leaned into each other but each avoided the other’s eyes. It was Vimla’s fault, of course, flying away and leaving Minty behind after all she had done for Vimla, after all she would yet do to send her off. The more Vimla thought of Minty’s inevitable hurt, the sharper her guilt gouged the pit of her stomach. She considered saying thank you, but then realized how insufficient, how flimsy, it would sound in the cacophony of Krishna’s wedding.

  Vimla finally said, “He come for me last night, you know.”

  “I know. I hear the car pull up by your gates.”

  Vimla laughed despite herself. “You come just like Faizal Mohammed, studying people’s business all hours of the night.”

  Minty looked sheepish.

  The tassa groups drew to the side of the road and allowed Nanny, Anand and Maya to embrace and exchange malas of jasmines and marigolds. When Nanny went, with Pundit Panday and her closest companions, to fetch Krishna from the confines of his air-conditioned car, Vimla’s stomach somersaulted. Minty’s fingers closed around hers and squeezed.