by Shani Mootoo
The comfort of life as lived in her parents’ home bred in Viveka certain aspirations, aspirations she was beginning to suspect were naïve and unrealistic, among them to be an internationally heralded literary critic whose emphasis was on Caribbean writing. As a student majoring in English literature, she was making her way through aspects of the usual canon, but she was barely able to satisfy an elephantine thirst for Caribbean literature. The writings of Jamaica Kincaid, Dionne Brand, Jean Rhys, Derek Walcott, and Earl Lovelace provoked her to want to experience a Caribbean-ness, and a Trinidadian-ness more specifically, that was antithetical to her mother’s tie to all things Indian and Hindu. At times Viveka felt like an alien presence in her parents’ house. Her mother was not impressed that she was attending university. Devika, in typical old-fashioned Indian manner, found Viveka ambitious — not too ambitious, but ambitious — a quality that was not to be cultivated, and was not generally admired by people of Devika’s generation. Viveka’s aspiration to be a literary critic, tantamount to pompousness and arrogance, fell under her suspicion. She asked Viveka again and again what made her think that she had the ability to be such a critic. Her refrain — levelled at Valmiki as well — was “Ambition will be your downfall.”
Valmiki, on the other hand, encouraged Viveka’s interests — even though his encouragement often felt misguided. Viveka knew he didn’t understand how or why one would study subjects based on what he saw as opinion rather than proven fact. But Viveka also knew she had a special place in his heart, and that he would support her. He had said to her more than once “Get a degree — law, medicine, whatever you want.” (He never mentioned what she was actually doing.) “Because if anything happens at least you have something to fall back on.” Devika had once interrupted his benevolent speechifying and answered back, “Something? What you mean something? And in any case, she doesn’t even have the subjects for medicine. You really do talk foolishness sometimes, Valmiki. And what on earth could she do with a law degree? I don’t want my daughters practising law. Standing up like that in front of a bunch of men, making spectacles of themselves.”
Valmiki knew to ignore Devika. “A pretty girl like you, you’re bound to get married, but suppose something happened to your husband and you were left to fend for yourself. In any case, even if you don’t get married — because you’re too smart for most men — having a good degree is a good thing for a girl. We won’t be around to look after you forever. Get your degree, and no one will be able to take advantage of you.”
Devika’s family’s financial comfort, and that provided since marriage by Valmiki, afforded Devika the choice to work or not to work, but she had no use for the choice: she had no imagination for work outside of the house, nor for study, and thought little of educated women. Educated women, she said, were aggressive, unladylike. The only professions she could imagine for either of her daughters in an age, she conceded, when women were demanding to spend time outside of the home, were catering, flower arranging (both of which, incidentally, could be done in the home), and teaching. The latter for Devika meant at a primary school or high school moulding young minds, not at a university. To her mind, even outside of the lecture hall female professors carried themselves like lawyers. They were grim and lacked social graces and didn’t pay attention to fashions, and were a threat to the comfort of men with all their serious thinking and interruptions to correct and beggings to differ. What she understood was preparing oneself for marriage. But marriage had never interested Viveka.
Looking around the taxi, Viveka mused how her friend Elliot, who was at university with her and studying English too, was a bit like these people she travelled with. Well, not exactly like them. A bit, though. She watched the passengers, listened a little more to their conversation, and tried to think how Elliot was different from them. He might come from a similar class, she decided, but he was a university student. His concerns and aspirations were different than these peoples’. He was already living a marginally different kind of life from them, and in time that margin would widen. But at least, she thought, he would have a hands-on experience of this more real world.
What if she were to marry Elliot? Their children would be part Indian, that part from her, and from him they would inherit his black, white, and Carib ancestry. That would teach her parents a thing or two. She snorted, imagining her mother bouncing a little mixed-race boy on her knee, having naturally fallen in love with him despite herself. But this was merely one of her many subversive fantasies. She wasn’t that interested in Elliot.
Of course, if her parents were to meet Elliot, they would not approve. Her mother would come straight out and voice her disapproval in the most unequivocal way. Her father, on the other hand, would not want to offend or upset Viveka. He would not commit to an opinion one way or the other, but he would joke, cajole, placate, tell her how terrific she was, mention that her friend, that Elliot-young-man, seemed like a nice-enough fellow, and as if the conversation were unrelated, state that no one, absolutely no one she had yet met was her match. He would say that he had his eye out for a nice Indian boy who could give a dowry of at least one cow, et cetera. Vashti would jump in then and correct her father and say, “It’s the girl’s family who gives the dowry, Dad.” And her father would be only too pleased to be handed the opportunity to retort, “Not in this family. Anybody who wants one of my girls has to pay me handsomely . . .”
Viveka would have loved to have this battle with her parents, for their true colours would show then, and could only shame them. But she really felt so little for Elliot that she was not prepared to take on this battle and risk winning it. Her parents, therefore, were unaware of his existence.
Elliot had seemed recently to have only one goal in mind. Given the slightest opportunity, his hands found their way underneath Viveka’s shirt. He would inch them this way, then that, his fingertips circling the small of her back in non-threatening playfulness. In time, and that time could be as long as it took for him to feel that Viveka had relaxed and would not resist him, his fingertips would dance along the waistband of her pants.
Viveka wasn’t as unaware as Elliot imagined. She knew that if she allowed him too many inches in the vicinity surely he would expect (and what if he were to demand?) the whole mile. The instant those fingers entered her waistband, she would start talking of something she felt might arrest his attention. She would take hold of his arms and in a casual, non-confrontational manner, move them. On one occasion recently, he had waited for her to do this, and then locked his arms around her, pinning hers to her sides. He walked her — a graceless, almost frightening backward stumble — to the wall. There, he pressed his body to hers, trapping her against the cool wall, and he brought his lips to her ear. She giggled nervously and tried to push him back, but he was intent, and did not laugh with her. She tried to raise her arms, but he had them well caught. She said, “Oh Elliot, come on.” And he said back seriously, “No, you come on. What’s this? I mean, what are we to each other? I spend all my time with you. You spend all your free time here in my apartment with me. What do you expect? Isn’t this what you want, too? Tell me it isn’t. Go on, tell me.”
Elliot’s unusual seriousness and sudden focus on this matter had surprised her. She did not want to offend or disappoint him, and did not quite know how to answer without doing either. He carried on, “This is what I want.” More quietly, more gently, he added, “Come on, I need this from you.” That he needed this disheartened her, but that he needed this from her tamed her resistance. He lowered his crotch to hers. Hard as a stump of guava wood there, he pressed into her pubic area. She felt a tingle in her lower back, and her pelvis, as if it suddenly had a mind and agenda quite apart from her, lurched forward to meet him. It felt horribly good. An uncontrollable desire and the dregs of her reserve co-mingled. She shifted her weight from one leg to the other, intending to brace herself and engage her brain in decision-making, but he took advantage of that split second to spread her legs with his knee. He was
saying something in her ear, but she was unable to make out the guttural sounds. The weight of his whole body against her, and the insistence of him between her legs, was stifling. She placed her hands on his waist intending to push him away, to quell the rising quake of his body against hers, to put an end to an unintentional desire swelling in her and betraying her, but the moment she touched his waist he began to breathe more heavily, gasping hot wet air into her ear. Her ear was unpleasantly drenched in heat and spittle, and the desire between her legs instantly numbed. Suddenly, his body convulsed, he was rigid for a few seconds, and then he slumped slowly down onto her, heat rising from his body as if from asphalt at midday. He stayed there for some moments like a wholesale-size sack of flour on her chest. Her body tensed against the weight. She breathed shallowly. She wanted to push him off, but was pinned not just by his weight, but also by a confusion of emotions. She had experienced in her breasts and pubic area an awakening that in moments made her want to lose her mind in pleasure, yet now it was as if a bulldozer had run over and crushed a part of her.
When Elliot released her, Viveka fixed herself and left without any words. But in class the next day Elliot sat next to her, and they resumed their friendship as if nothing had come between them. His advances had left her cool, and now she had drawn an imaginary line that she would not let him cross: She decided that as long as he didn’t try to remove her clothing, she would not try to stop him.
THE NEXT TIME THEY WERE ALONE TOGETHER, ELLIOT LEANED AGAINST the counter of his student apartment, again strapping her arms against her body. She was nervous and rambled on about one of the Trinidadian authors she’d been reading. He slipped one hand under her shirt. That hand was splayed, and she leaned back on it as if it were a wall. “He makes Indians out to be ugly, stupid, concerned only with their narrow knife-edged slice of life. He’s criticizing his ancestors, but these are my ancestors too, and by implication he is criticizing me. And yet, I keep wanting to read on. He gets it right, but so what? Does he have to write it at all? I don’t think he really hates us so much as he is gravely disappointed in what we have not become.”
“And what is that?” Elliot’s voice was distant.
“I don’t know. White? Brighter, whiter than the conqueror himself?”
“Conqueror?” asked Elliot distractedly.
“Well, the British, who else? Oh, come on, Elliot. Stop it. Pay attention to me.”
“But I am. See?” Elliot unfastened her bra with one hand. She pushed him hard. He laughed, but the laughter was chalky, choppy. His eyes had narrowed and his pale skin had turned a drunk-man’s red. He walked some paces away from her, and in the midst of her rambling on about this author he cut her short and said he was tired and still had a paper to work on. The simultaneous feelings of relief and of being rejected left her dazed. All the feminist rhetoric she was able to spew easily and brightly in discussions or could write for A-grade papers burrowed into the farthest recesses of her mind. It was her father who came to her mind — the sense that while Valmiki might have disapproved of Elliot, her lack of desire would have disappointed him. It was as if she had just betrayed her father, and it was that feeling, rather than whatever it was that had gone on between her and Elliot, that distressed her. She must try to do better next time, be more like her affair-crazy father, she scolded herself.
Next time, she let Elliot pull the top of her bra down far enough to reach the nipple of her breast. Something like a small animal taking refuge in her underwear suddenly bolted up. Elliot felt this excitement in her too, and he took the opportunity to lift off her shirt before she had time to stop him. He pushed her still-clasped bra upwards to release her breasts. He held one breast with one hand, and put his mouth to it. He put his other hand between her legs. She gasped with the suddenness of the whole thing, at his strength, and with unexpected pleasure. He began to undress her, not everything, he said to her hesitation, just her shirt and bra. He said in a light tone, No penetration, I promise, and she knew instantly that she didn’t want him this close to her. He pointed out that Helen and Wayne were doing it, and nothing had happened to them. No one even knew they were doing it, he said. But that was not what she was worried about. Hard as she tried, she really didn’t feel connected to Elliot. She wished it were different, but it simply wasn’t.
Later that same week, Viveka and Helen had studied late at the library. As they drove home afterwards, an accident on the highway had created a traffic jam that moved a car length every ten to fifteen minutes. When they reached the entrance to the mall at Valsayn, they decided to stop there to eat dinner and wait until the traffic had cleared somewhat. At the Indian restaurant she and Helen talked about books, authors, volleyball, and family affairs, but neither of them brought up Wayne, Elliot, or boyfriends or marriage or their futures. On the drive home, they were quiet. Every so often Helen hummed a tune that was unrecognizable, perhaps made up. She was driving and in a world of her own.
Viveka had leaned her head on her seat’s headrest and kept her eyes on the darkness ahead. She thought of Elliot wanting her and him to be naked, and of how she had felt when he had touched her nipple and put his hands between her legs. She shifted her eyes, but not her head, and glanced at Helen’s legs. Helen had pulled the flounce of her long Indian-style skirt up above her knees, and her legs were pale in the darkness of the car. She imagined Helen was her, and she was Elliot watching Helen’s bare legs — or her own legs as she saw them in her imagination — and she felt that same heat, that same jostle inside her underwear and the rush of wetness there. When they arrived at Viveka’s house, Viveka turned away from Helen as she opened the door to get out, but Helen put her hand on Viveka’s back and stopped her. As Viveka turned to face Helen, Helen moved forward to give her the usual goodbye peck on a cheek but in a confused moment, their lips met. It was quick, the barest brush, but they were both startled. They laughed, and in their laughter was a show of indignation. Viveka blew air out of her pursed lips and hurriedly mumbled, “Oh my god. That was weird. Too weird.” And they laughed again, soft rattled laughs.
The next time, they were more careful. And for a time Viveka was more tolerant of Elliot’s desires. He was able to touch her breasts again, and knead her nipples with twirling fingers and with a tongue that flicked with the speed of a hummingbird’s wings. No matter how painful her nipples became under his kneading, she would say nothing, and Elliot’s quiet, his fatigue and spaciness after, was almost worth it. In turn, Elliot grew more patient with her. No doubt he thought that since he had come this far, if he continued to be a little more patient, in time she would consent to touching him.
When Viveka was on her own at nights with the lights off, Vashti’s breathing telling her that she had the privacy she needed, she would try to re-create that feeling she had experienced the first time she had had an orgasm with Elliot. She had had others with him since, but none were as surprising, as delightfully confusing as that first one. She tried imagining him touching her, but that left her more sore than excited. So she would imagine herself driving a car, but she would also imagine that she was Elliot sitting in the passenger seat, and that she, Elliot, was riding his hands up her bare legs, inching up to her crotch, finally slipping her/his fingers inside the elastic of her panties, and that feeling, like the first time, would come to her again. It was a tingle that crept up her arms, down her legs, circled her hips, gripped her feet, her toes, and shook her with numerous explosive convulsions. She got to this place every time on her own, but never again with Elliot. Rather than let this worry her, she decided that since she was perfectly capable of arriving at this delight on her own, her reluctance with Elliot was because he was not the right man, and she was waiting for that man to come along. In magazines she browsed through at the hair salon, she had read that when the right man came along you knew it, you simply knew it. She was nagged, however, by an irrational conviction that the right man would never come along. Her father had a saying that all men were bastards, that he should
know. She hated when he said that, but didn’t doubt that he should know. Deep in her the memory was some long-ago family unpleasantness involving her father and a former neighbour, Pia Moretti. Viveka had an actual memory of the situation with Pia Moretti, but that memory was so bizarre she had often wondered if she had built pictures around bits of overheard fighting between her parents, and these imagined scenes had worked themselves into what she experienced as a memory.
Viveka suddenly realized that in the public space of the taxi she had been thinking about sex, and that if she were to call up that bizarre memory there would be even more sex sifting into the psychic space of the taxi. She wondered if any of the passengers was a mind-reader. Her face, she feared, might have given her away, for she had felt a burn in her cheeks thinking of Elliot and of Helen. She would stop all of this crazy-making thinking; Elliot often said that she thought too much. By way of relaxing her brain, she tried to focus on the landscape through which the taxi travelled.
They were well past the swamp now, red-breasted blackbirds replaced by opportunistic corbeaux flying low overhead, their heavy heads angled downward as they ploughed the land with their red-ringed eyes for the swollen carcasses of animals that had drowned in the flood. The road here was raised, and the land on either side sat below. Although the roads were now dry, the water had still not drained from the low-lying fields. On the left were plots of coconut. There would normally be a delightful spread of crocuses at the foot of the tall trees, lime green fronds studded with brilliant orange tulip-like flowers, but the ground was completely submerged. In clearings were people’s homes, one-room structures no bigger than Viveka’s bedroom, made of mismatched planks of wood with roofs thatched from palm branches. Although these houses were on stilts, the water had risen up to the doorway of several of them. A man stood in the open doorway of one. The brown water was up to his ankles and Viveka imagined that the floor of his house was underwater. The driver of the car could be heard, “You woulda think they’da build up they house off the ground by now. Flooding in this area is not a new thing. Some people don’t learn, I tell you.”