My mother interrupted, Wait wait wait, yuh tellin me she nevah meet dese people and gone makin business deal wid dem? She leh money pass han and ting?
Dah is de point, Arya, my father said.
Well who een dey right min goh do dat? My mother took her time on a long, sweet steups here. Yuh eh see de oman dotish?
Ah was on de case. My father raised his voice. And when we show up toh de address nohboddy dey. De oman was right and if we din pull up wid police cah and everyting we wuddah find she body somewhey out dey een de foress oh not atall.
Colette! my mother yelled at my sister. Eat yuh food, chile, and stop playin before ah hit yuh one slap in yuh backside.
So now is ah ongoing investigation we hah on we hands and ah is lead on it.
That was how Mrs. Khan of Toco was officially introduced to our home, and it was only after this that she responded when my mother answered the phone. What my mother didn’t piece together for a long time was that my father had been on many cases before, but she was the only one who contacted him at home.
MONTHS LATER I FOUND MY MOTHER in my bathroom retching and bawling over the sink. Weak sunlight filtered into the room. The elongated faucet curved like the delicate neck of a swan. The silver glinted eerily. Water gushed out of the faucet. She dipped her face into its stream and cried out. My mother often told my sister and me the story of our births and of her guttural screams, like ah cow givin birt toh dead young one. She would know, having watched cows give birth her entire life.
I didn’t know what to do. The veins in her neck pulsated; her cries were loud enough for our neighbors to hear. I’d left my six-year-old sister in our bedroom down the hall. She’d never heard our mother like this before and was too scared to come.
I can’t help wondering now if my grandmother cried the way my mother did. Did her children see her? What did they feel?
My mother grabbed the sink with both hands. She shook it, pressed down on it, rocked back and forth, as though wanting to crack the porcelain with her bare hands.
My father was not home. He’d been sent to America on an assignment, surely now with Mrs. Khan, but I didn’t know this and all I could wonder was when he’d call to talk to us. For the past week, my mother’d been on the phone with my grandmother and her sisters who were already living in America. Each time it rang, I thought it was my father, but she never passed the phone for us to say hello. Her sisters had news of my father’s doings, and they whispered vicious words in her head.
There were few laws that protected women on our islands. Being married to a policeman who could bend, twist, and break them all was not something my mother had thought about before; her only concern had been how it could benefit her. Once a woman was married and pregnant, a career became nothing more than a memory. Dharmendra couldn’t have his wife working on the island; it was an unsavory look for his family. We—my sister, my father, and I—became her life. By the time I was born, she cooked three meals a day; raised chickens and ducks that she killed, plucked, and roasted right downstairs in our house; cultivated the land we lived on, tending to plum, mango, coconut, pineapple, pommerac, pommecythere, orange, grapefruit, cherry, mandarin, and pomegranate trees. Though my parents owned crops, land, an unfinished big house, and a car, they didn’t have enough money. Even if she had wanted to work, with no one to help them take care of me, my mother had no choice but to stay home.
My mother strove to escape my grandmother’s life, but seemed to follow it closely—with a man she hoped to one day love, no job, pregnant, working the land. The mantra of house, lan, and motohcah that echoed from one generation to the next was achieved, but at what cost? Fighting against everything my grandmother was, my mother stepped neatly into her place, serving my father food at the same time every day, packing him hot lunches every morning, prepping his clothes for work, catering to his every desire in the same way Rebecca did for Shiva. My father, like all men on the islands, had a temper and could lash out at my mother whenever he pleased. As a police officer, we all knew, he didn’t have to deal with any consequences.
By the time my sister was born in 1991, we didn’t even have money for bread. My mother had asked the old man who owned the nearby shop for credit so many times, her name was pages deep in his book. She decided the best thing to do was scrounge up whatever money she could and follow her siblings to America. There she found temporary, live-in babysitting jobs in six-to-ten-month increments. My father’s mother took care of us during these absences. The first time my mother left us, my sister was only six months old, and when she returned, Colette was over one. I barely recognized our mother sashaying up our back steps in black pants that slinked to the rhythm of her legs, and my sister refused to even let her touch her.
—Ah use toh be lock up een a room wid some ah dese families, Krys, my mother tells me, takin care ah uddah people chilren while meh own cryin foh me. Boh ah had toh do it oh we wouldn’tah sahvive.
One US dollar was equivalent to six TTs. My mother kept only enough of what she made to get by in America and sent the rest for our food and clothes. Eventually we could start fixing the unfinished house we were living in.
After working along with her husband to keep and maintain their home, sacrificing the tender years of her children, Arya never thought she’d be one of these women of our islands whose husbands cheated on them, leaving them to weep on the floor before their daughters.
In these moments, did my mother think I was destined to the same and felt powerless to prevent it?
WHEN I WALKED IN ON MY MOTHER crying in the bathroom that day, parts of our cordless phone were at my feet in the doorway. The battery was against the wall; the back plate I would later find beneath a cabinet. My mother splashed water on her face when she saw me. She stopped howling and blew her nose. She splashed more water on her face, washing washing washing as though the cold water could alleviate the pain I saw twisting itself in her. Come, she beckoned me with a wave of her hand, water droplets flecking the tiled floor. I handed her a towel, but it hung as limp as her hand at her side. With her back against the wall, she slid down to the floor. Her shirt rolled up, uncovering her back, sides, and a lip of her belly hanging over her shorts. She reached out for me.
I stepped into her arms, and she hugged me, burrowed her face in my hair, bawling in my ears, Yuh eh know wah e do, Krys, yuh eh know wah yuh faddah do, oh Gawd Krystal, meh kyant believe wah e do, how he goh do dis toh meh, toh we. She rocked us back and forth, side to side, holding me so tight I almost couldn’t breathe. I slid my hands down her back and rubbed in small circles, this motion she’d done countless times for my sister and me when we were unwell or sad.
—Krys, my mother tells me later, meh was holdin on toh yuh, chile, meh was holdin on toh yuh foh meh sanity.
I didn’t know that as I sat in her lap, our legs folded the same. The hairs on her skin prickled and scratched me. My mother’s tears fell on top of my head and down my face. These tears fell until my hair no long repelled but absorbed them.
Her agitated state made it difficult for her to stay in one position for very long. Soon, she stood up. She wrung her hands, paced back and forth in the narrow bathroom, twisted and turned the doorknob. When she left the room, I followed her to the entertainment center in the living room. She pulled out a photo book. It was their wedding album. She flipped and flipped until she got to the center where there was a large portrait of each of them—my mother on the right, my father on the left. Though separate pictures on their own pages, it appeared that younger Arya and Dharmendra were gazing at one another and smiling. The photographs had been taken at different times, but the photographer captured a moment amid their tedious Indian ceremony where they were each looking at one another. My father was wearing the traditional kurta. A feather protruded from his hat and was caught in mid-flutter. His mustache was trimmed and brushed above his wide smile.
My mother ripped it from its binding. The severed paper curled like a piece of parchment in her hands.
She grabbed a lighter.
In the backyard she dropped the picture on the stone cesspit cover and with trembling hands tried to call the flame. She cracked and snapped the picture until it unrolled and she could see his face. I didn’t want her to burn my father’s picture; even though I was ten, I still didn’t fully grasp what was going on. I ran to her and snatched it from among the potted thyme leaves.
Ma, doh do it. Doh do someting yuh might regret, I said.
I wanted to do something that would help her in these moments but felt powerless. Capturing memories on file within albums or to hang on one’s walls was an indulgence we couldn’t normally afford, even in 1997, and she was about to destroy one of the few photographs we had of them from eleven years before. Never having owned a camera, my mother took us to a studio not far from our home and paid for one picture at a time when she could, and those amounted to only a handful. Whatever tangible memories we owned had been given to us by those who’d been gracious enough to take our pictures, print them, and pass them along. My parents’ wedding album was precious, if not to her, then to me, for whatever was lost could never be recovered.
I knew my father loved this picture too. He often held me in his lap as we flipped through the album and always lingered on those particular photos of them, something I couldn’t quite reach holding him there a moment longer than any other photograph ever could, and he’d say, Is de only picture we hah like dis, Krys. Yuh could see de appiness een we face.
It was evident by his actions that my father loved my mother, and I have never been able to understand why he cheated on her. Akin to my grandfather, he left no room for me to ask, bristling at the mere mention of infidelity. These island men clamped down and resisted being questioned, walking away, shutting me out if I even skirted the subject.
When the lighter failed to flicker, my mother turned to matches; nothing could ever deter her. She struck the head and the flame ignited. It licked a corner of the picture. Slow and purposeful. As though the flame itself was in sync with my mother’s emotions. She held it while the fire engulfed the only portrait taken of him on their wedding day. I stood next to her and watched my father’s face reduced to cinder, black specks floating in the air and settling in our hair and on our skin. The fire reached her fingertips; she turned it upside down, wanting to hold on to it for as long as she could. My father’s forehead fell to the cesspit cover, and the remainder of the print dissolved to gray ash.
Only a week ago my mother had just stepped off the plane after a six-month stay in America. She came back all bouncy-haired, perfumed, and carting suitcases of presents for us and our entire extended family. My father left only a day later, off on another one of his business trips, insisting, as odd as it was, that we didn’t need to accompany him to the airport. This was the first time he’d done that. Was it planned this way? In the whirl of excitement of having arrived home after being separated from us, my mother thought nothing of it.
My mother stopped crying. She scattered the ashes with a sweep of a leafy branch, dusted herself off, and took my hand. I slipped my arm around her waist, and she ran her fingers through my long hair. There was a heavy feeling in my stomach and a sadness hovering around us.
We goin toh America now, she said, and I was surprised at how hoarse her voice sounded. We goan ketch im.
I became her witness.
REALM
WHENEVER WE HAD TRAVELED between Trinidad and America to visit family, my father would take charge of our documents and arrangements. This was the first time I saw my mother handling our passports, checking and rechecking dates and times, meeting with travel agents to haggle over prices, extracting money from the bank. Everything was done so fast, the whole trip paid for and planned within a couple of days. She did it nervously, chewing at the skin around her nails when no one was looking or winding a lock of hair around her index finger.
Most of the Singh family had immigrated to the states a decade ago. My great-grandmother Jacinta became a citizen shortly after her daughter sponsored her, and in turn she sponsored Rebecca. But when that took too long, my Aunt Reeya reapplied for my grandparents. Once the paperwork was final, my grandmother forsook the islands immediately, leaving my grandfather behind to tie up loose ends with the farms.
Renting out the farms along with the house proved difficult. Unable to drive, my grandfather stayed with us on and off, my father chauffeuring him around every second he wasn’t at work. On planning his move to America, Shiva trusted my father to help him orchestrate his rather complicated departure from the island, enlisting his help to lease and rent his properties and even to draw up contracts and agreements. Once it was done, my father even deposited and withdrew money from Shiva’s account when he needed him to, the only other person to ever have access to his personal accounts.
Rebecca had been living in America less than two years when we told her the reason we’d be coming. I talked to her on the phone, and she was excited to see us but said, Undah dese circumstances dahlin is not ah good ting eh love. The day before our flight, my mother asked one of her sisters to pick us up at the airport. Our flight touched down on American soil around five in the morning. We traveled from JFK Airport in New York to the urban streets of Jersey City, where my grandmother was living in a two-bedroom apartment with a few of my aunts, uncles, and cousins. My grandfather would not permanently relocate to the United States for another year or two.
—Krys, my mother says, we di leave so fass ah din even hah time toh tell Pappy we was goin. If e come lookin foh we, we nowhey toh be found.
When we arrived at my grandmother’s, it was only to toss our one suitcase into her hallway and head up the block to my uncle’s. Somehow my father had found out we were on a flight to America and asked his brother if he could stay with him.
My father’s younger brother Ram was married to my mother’s older sister Reeya. They lived only houses away from my grandmother, and we often had parties there when we visited. My sister and I spent lots of time there with our twin cousins Olivia and Sophia.
We found my father in the basement with Carly, Olivia and Sophia’s baby sister, asleep on his bare chest. My mother filled the floor with her quiet anger, but my father refused to give up the baby, wielding her like a shield between them. Soon, almost all of my mother’s family was present. They kept talking about my father; my mother said nothing. Protective, I took my sister upstairs to play with Olivia and Sophia, then returned downstairs.
Dharmendra, gimmeh de chile now, my mother said. But he only shook his head, shushed her, and whispered, Arya, de child sleepin, wah wrong wid yuh? He was so calm resting there on their basement bed as my mother’s sisters pressed into her back as reinforcement. Then I noticed his face was unshaven and his long hair disheveled.
Everyone gathered in the den. They whispered more things in my mother’s ear, and her curls shivered as she shook her head. Divorce, and the end of the word echoed in my head like the hissing of a snake. Divorce, I thought, was for the people in America, not Trinidad. I told myself that no matter what happened, my parents would stay together.
How much more did I have to see and hear before I understood that these men on our islands would never change?
The more my aunts and uncles talked, the angrier I became. It eh allyuh business, I wanted to scream. Dis eh yuh family. But they whispered and my mother listened, her upper body collapsing into her lap.
I hung on to every word my mother told her siblings, and it was only then I understood the entire story. My father had lied to my mother, telling her he was on a case and had to travel abroad to America; he even garnished his lie with the appeasement that his department would pay for it, knowing my mother wouldn’t check their finances. She was excited because my father had only been sent to neighboring islands before, never to America, and this was perhaps a promotion for him. My father and this woman planned a trip to America together for a few weeks, and the money came out of our account, money that hadn’t been there until my mot
her left her children to work abroad.
Details my mother shared, of packing his suitcase with his favorite items and organizing his papers, pained her. When she realized why he had asked her not to drive him to the airport, her voice cracked, and she tried to rush through the rest of the story. When my mother entered the realm of conjecture, no one stopped her. She thought of my father sitting on the plane with this woman’s hand in his, both of them talking about how their spouses had no idea.
We found out that while in America, my father had run into one of his brothers-in-law, and they planned a night of drunken debauchery. In an alcoholic haze, Dharmendra foolishly entrusted his deception to Matthew, Chandini’s husband.
My mother found out from the lips of her youngest sister.
—When Chandini di cahl meh toh tell meh dat back den, eh Krys, my mother says, is wit glee een she voice, yuh know. Een dem eyes ah was too happy livin een house and ting wid chilren, nah wokin oudside. Dey di wantah see meh crumple, and e gih dem all dey needed foh dat.
Eventually my father gave up Carly, and she ended up in my arms. I rocked her back and forth. It took him some time, but he came up from the basement. Silence. No one left the room. There was my mother’s side of the room with all her family, and then there was my father standing straight and tall. Everyone glared at him. He did not look down. He did not look away. Uncle Ram, his brother, was upstairs with my sister and the girls. I wondered if my father wished he were here with him, just one single ally. When my father’s eyes fell on me, he faltered for a second, his shoulders slumping forward, but he pulled them taut again. I held on to baby Carly like my mother held on to me while she sobbed. I was afraid if I let go of her I would break down and they would crowd around me, using me as a weapon against my own father.
For the same reason my mother took care of the man who brutalized her mother, I now felt sympathy for my father: I was his daughter. That connection was forged deep into my soul, but I also saw regret swimming in the murky depths of his eyes. The realization that he wouldn’t do anything to show it unsettled me. After I became an adult, I examined those moments where my aunts and uncles pledged their loyalty to one side, and only then did I begin to understand my mother’s predicament with her parents. She didn’t choose to take care of her father, who had provided for her, and she didn’t ignore her mother’s pain and suffering when she did; filial obligation ripped through my mother like a current.
Secrets We Kept Page 24