by Sheena Kamal
“Keep pushing it, Trisha, and see if you get to go to New York at all.”
“But it’s my papers in there, too, right? What if something happens to you and I need to get something from the box?”
“What’s going to happen to me?” she says, suddenly fierce.
“I dunno. An accident, maybe. Like Dad…”
She ignores me and goes into the room first. The door slams in my face.
When she comes out about a minute later, grinning, I know she did it on purpose, closing me out like that. I take the passport and walk off ahead of her. I wait at the car for a good ten minutes before she leaves the bank, still sporting that stupid grin on her face. “Oh, fix your face,” she says, when we’re both in the car. “I put your name on the box, so if you need to get your birth papers and all that, all you need is the key.”
I’m still mad, even though I got exactly what I asked for. “Can I have the key?”
“No.” But that settles it, according to her.
I’m happy, too.
I’ve just seen her put the key in the leopard-print makeup bag she keeps in the glove compartment.
The next day Aunty K shows up and says she’ll be here for just the weekend. I don’t know why. I was supposed to go and see her for March Break, which is in just a few weeks. That’s what the big deal about the passport was for. She said she got someone to run the shop while she’s away. I get the sense that something’s happening with her and Ma. Pammy seems to know about it, too, which makes sense since the three of them have been disappearing together for a good couple years—even before Dad died. But I see it differently now.
It’s all about the way they look at Ravi.
I notice the tension in them right away during Sunday lunch because the whispers stop when me and Columbus come into the room. It’s always like that with Ma, Pammy and Aunty K. They’re usually really chatty when they’re together, but they don’t like to include anyone else. Behind us is Ravi, who doesn’t seem to realize how weird this is for everyone but him. Even Columbus notices and he’s usually unaware of anything but the food on the table at times like this.
Let’s get out of here, he texts. They’re freaking me out.
And get my ass whooped? I reply.
He makes some excuse about homework and bails before lunch. I don’t think Pammy even notices. I should have gone with him, but there’s something about Ma that scares me. There’s silence around the table as we eat macaroni pie and callaloo with crab. Ravi’s oblivious. Nobody says anything about how he’s sitting in my dad’s chair. Maybe it’s not much of a difference to them, but it’s huge for me.
Now I get it.
It’s not the quiet, so much. It’s not even that they all look completely burnt out. Dark circles under every set of eyes and grey hair showing on everyone’s roots. It’s the looks directed toward Ravi when he’s not looking. He talks to Ma, but Pammy and Aunty K are staring only at him. He turns to ask me to pass the pepper sauce and all three of them zero in with their eerie looks, saying things to each other with them that Ravi and I aren’t a part of.
Difference is, I know it’s happening.
I’ve never met anyone more oblivious than Ravi, and I train at a Muay Thai gym where fighters can lose a brain cell or three hundred after a while.
Ravi squeezes Ma’s ass while she clears the dishes from the table. I think I throw up in my mouth a little. Wait, a lot.
Her smile has a hard edge to it, which he also doesn’t notice. He’s only eaten half of what’s on his plate and seems weaker for it. He’s lost weight and not in any of the good areas. The muscles in his arms are withering and I bet I can lift more than him now. He wanders into the living room and changes the channel on the TV to cricket, which is barely a sport.
Ma takes his plate away. The three of them, Ma, Pammy, Aunty K, seem satisfied somehow.
I can’t stand it. The looks!
Like they know things, secret things. Female things. And I’m back to the day of Dad’s funeral, when they were all in this kitchen, looking at each other. Something passing between them. I’m frightened but I can’t seem to move either. I want some of what Columbus has, that boy obliviousness I’ve never had the luxury of losing myself to.
I want the gym, too, but it’s closed. The last time I was there, I took Dad’s phone from the locker and put it back into my bag. Now I wish I’d just left it there. I don’t even know what to do with it, to be honest.
I go upstairs and strip down to my underwear and start to shadowbox in the mirror. The food I just ate threatens to come back up, but I will it to settle because I need my strength. After twenty minutes, I’m covered in sweat and bored of moving around this tiny rectangular room, so I drop and do push-ups until I see stars.
Somewhere after the stars, there’s a face.
At first, I think it’s the girl, whoever it is, that I’m going to fight in Florida my first round. Her hair is cut short to her scalp…then I realize it isn’t a girl at all.
The face that comes into focus is male, tired, drawn. Shocked. It’s Dad, split lip visible as he turns. Lit up by a dim streetlight in the middle of a rainy night, his body half toward us, stumbling back, like he’d been propelled forward somehow, pushed even, and was just realizing that we were almost upon him.
His eyes that won’t close, until they do.
For the last time.
My scream.
Pammy throwing her arms around me, sobbing that he’s with the angels now, that it’s not my fault. Not my fault. A shadow sliding along the parking lot, and into the trees.
Ma wrapping her arm around me, sobbing now too: “She didn’t murder him. He came out at us. He was drunk! It was raining!”
Is raining, I remember thinking. It is raining, still.
But she’d already made the story up in her head and that’s how she was going to tell it. The night was dark, he was drunk and it was raining. Ma couldn’t have known he was drunk at the time, except she knew that he drank a lot and that he probably was. And she was right, in the end. That’s why they didn’t take away my learner’s permit. There’d been so much booze in his system and I didn’t mean to murder my own father. Why would I?
But I can’t stop thinking about the lock that Ravi said he broke, and the fact that Dad had a bloody lip even before the accident. Was Ravi there that night? Did something happen between him and Dad?
I’m hoping a hot shower will help me forget, and as I stand under the stream of water, I stop thinking. After the water turns cold, I go downstairs for a drink and see that, within an hour and a half of leaving the table, Ravi is asleep on the couch.
In the middle of the afternoon.
Ma’s purse is on the table. There’s money in it—there’s always money in it these days, but I reach for her car keys. The glove compartment in the car was the last place I saw the key to the safe deposit box. Nobody notices as I slip downstairs to her car. It’s freezing outside, so I don’t linger. They don’t notice, either, when I come in again.
twenty
At the bank, Columbus is impatient. “What are we doing here?”
“Just wait.” I leave him in the car, and I show the key to the woman at reception. She leads me down the hall to the room with all the safe deposit boxes. I’m sweating in my giant yellow parka, even though it’s cold in here and cold outside.
The woman notices. “You alright, honey?”
“I’m eighteen,” I say, again. I wipe my hands on my jeans, but she doesn’t notice.
“I know. You showed me your passport.”
“Right. Yeah.”
We both put our keys into the double lock of Box 4242, and she slides the box out for me. It’s smaller than I expected. She puts it on a desk in the corner and turns away to give me some privacy. But she doesn’t leave the room. Everything from the lockbox is in there, plus some p
apers I’ve never seen before. I slip the papers into my bag. The woman leads me back out, all calm like, and I’m acting so wrong, so suspicious, that I figure she must be bored with her job or something to let all this slide. My eyes are darting everywhere and I can’t even get a sentence out. I think she’s going to give a signal to the security guard to snatch me when I’m about to leave, but I walk out the door just fine. Like nothing ever happened. When I do look back, though, she’s watching me. In no time at all I’m back in the car.
“Let’s get out of here,” I say to Columbus.
We go to the beaches by Woodbine Avenue. He’s not happy because I said we’d go for KFC, and I flat out lied about that. We park, but don’t get out of the car. The grass, the sand, the walkways are covered in snow and ice. The wind by the lake is something fierce, kicking up the water. It’s too cold to go outside so we sit in the car with the engine turned on for heat while we go through the papers. I don’t want to do it alone. If Ma can pull Pammy into whatever storm she’s got brewing, then I can have Columbus. He’s not much, but he’s the best I’ve got.
He says something dumb about how bushy my hair is, but I just ignore it. He’s in a mood due to the lack of KFC, and I wonder for the first time in ages how things are going with his mall retail worker.
All his lame jokes disappear as he reads over my shoulder.
“Three years ago,” he says, frowning, “your mom took out life insurance on your dad for a hundred thousand dollars?” He looks at me. “You guys have a hundred thousand dollars?”
He can hardly believe it, and neither can I. Three years. She got an insurance policy three years ago.
Maybe it’s nothing, but if it’s so nothing then why did she hide it from me but tell Pammy? “I don’t know. Maybe it takes them a while to pay the money or something. Maybe they have to investigate to make sure you didn’t murder the guy.”
Columbus is on his phone now. “Okay, says here that if you have the policy for two years, you just get the dough. Almost no questions asked. It’s not even worth the effort for the insurance company to pursue it unless it’s millions of dollars.”
“What are you looking at?”
“Online forum. Hey,” he says, “didn’t your dad have an accident in Trinidad last year? Someone attacked him?”
Columbus is a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them. I wasn’t going to bring it up, because it looks so bad and I’ve never been this confused in my life. “Kidnapping.”
“What? Sorry, I didn’t hear you.”
I clear my throat and try again. “He thought someone tried to kidnap him. At his garage.”
“He thought or someone did?”
I shake my head. It’s anyone’s guess.
“But that’s weird, right? At the two-year mark, he’s attacked?”
“It’s Trinidad,” I say. “Shit like that happens all the time.”
He reads some more on his phone. “Says here that if someone is murdered then you can’t get the money. Maybe your mom had a feeling something bad was going to happen or—”
I see the exact moment he gets it. That it could have been more than a bad feeling or some kind of mystical premonition crap. That she could have wanted something bad to happen.
Made it happen.
“Shit,” he says, looking pale and scared.
“Don’t tell anyone about this, okay? About this insurance stuff. Please?”
“Who would I tell?”
“Just don’t mention it to Pammy.”
He’s confused. “Why? What does my mom have to do with any of this?”
“Just promise me. Please, Christopher?”
Two pleases in a row and his real name. This is unheard of for me. I never ask him for anything and I haven’t called him Christopher since the first day I met him, ten years ago, when he and Pammy moved next door to us.
“Okay,” he says. He must think he has something on me now, because he leans over and kisses me. His lips are dry, but it’s not a bad kiss. I let him for a minute, until it becomes almost clear I’m not kissing him back. Maybe on a different day, I would have but I’m too shook by what I’ve just read.
Plus, it’s not like kissing Jason at all.
It reminds me of how much I actually liked kissing Jason, who I don’t really want to be thinking about right now because he hasn’t called in a while. Hasn’t even come to the gym. We texted a few times, but he only says he’s busy with school and first year is even tougher than he thought it was going to be. I feel stupid, but I push it aside. Everyone knows this is why you don’t date college guys when you’re still in high school.
Columbus is the one to pull away. I guess he must feel how distracted I am. “Sorry.” He gives me a too-bright smile.
We share a joint because we need something to help us get over that moment and it works because, after a minute, I can tell he really is sorry he kissed me. I make him drive me to a copy centre and then back to the bank. We go slow and the both of us grow increasingly paranoid, but for different reasons. There’s someone else at reception, a man this time. He checks something on the computer and says, “You were just here.”
“Yeah, I forgot something.”
He takes a long look at me and I can tell he’s thinking, This is weird and she’s maybe high, but there’s nothing he can do because it’s my box. I put the insurance papers back where I found them and get out of there as quickly as I can. The man watches me the whole time.
* * *
That night, Ma comes into my room and wakes me. “I got a message from the bank today, checking to see if we’re happy with their services. You went into the safe deposit box? Why? Where’s the key?”
“Ma, I’m sleeping,” I say, pulling the covers back over my head.
But it’s like she knows. I know that she knows that I know about the insurance papers. I feel her looking at me in the dark. Her eyes, when I see them just for a second, are like flint, like ancient pieces of stone all sharp and hard. Her hair smells like coconuts, like the oil she uses to condition it, but there’s an odd, musty scent underneath it. Like an old skin that she’s just pulled back onto herself. Her hands, when they pause on my bare arm, are rough. There’s a bruise just above my elbow. Her fingers linger on it, for just a second. Somehow she must sense the skin there is fragile. I think she’s going to press on it, and my whole body tenses in anticipation of a pain that never comes.
There’s a pause that seems to go on forever and I’m about to tell her everything, but then I feel her move away. “We’ll talk about this tomorrow.”
I hear her walking about afterwards, hear her in the shower, washing her old skin. I hear muttering.
A voice that comes out at me in the darkness.
Just when the house quiets, a blast of steel pan blares out. I tumble to the floor and reach into my gym bag to turn the phone off. It trembles in my hand, falls onto the carpet, and I hear footsteps coming down the hall toward me. The song stops just a split second before the footsteps pause outside of my door. I lay there on the ground, not daring to move or breathe, not even to shove the phone back into the bag or under the bed. If she comes in now, I’m dead.
In the dark, on the floor, I press my hands over my mouth and think: I’m dead I’m dead I’m dead I’m dead I’m dead I’m dead I’m dead I’m dead…
Not yet, says a voice in my head, clear and sharp. But you can be.
The footsteps move away—
What was it she always said to me? I brought you into this world, and I can take you out of it.
—but for now, she’s gone.
Hands shaking, I pick up the phone and dial the last number that called. “Hello?” says a quiet male voice on the other side.
“It’s me. Trisha. Can we talk?”
“That’s why I’m calling,” says Junior. My brother. It doesn’t seem so strange, a
fter all, to think that I have a brother out there in the world.
twenty-one
When Ma was younger, she went to work as a domestic for a young family in Trinidad. There are photos in Aunty K’s album of what she looked like back then. In case you’re wondering, she was a dime. Seventeen years old, just a year younger than me.
The affair with the man of the house was no surprise to anybody. He was just married, and his pregnant bride was the size of a planet. He was no good, had never been any good, and didn’t plan on absorbing any goodness around him anytime soon. Of course he was going to stay with his wife because that shit still matters in Trinidad, no mind that he knocked up the maid. That’s just the kind of dude he was, my father. Sent her to Canada to live with some of her relatives. Gave her some money for school. By the time her sister, who was living in New York, heard about the whole thing, Ma was already six months preggers with me and enrolled in nursing courses.
Ma used all her stupidity up on one thing: my dad. And she let it use her up for over eighteen years. Let him come and go as he pleased. He paid for her schooling, which she hid from Aunty K. She thought he’d leave his wife for her, and fat chance of that.
The baby his wife had? Was a boy.
And the maid’s baby isn’t any reason for someone to leave their son and their wife they married in a proper(ish) Hindu ceremony, the one where the woman dresses in a red sari and walks with her groom around the fire. But a pretty, poor servant like Ma and a daughter like me? He didn’t even come up to meet me when I was born. In the baby photos it’s just Aunty K, Ma and me. And later, Pammy and Columbus. That’s my family.
This brother, now. Junior. I’ve never met him before, but I know he’s around my age. We’ve been talking. I’ve known about him my whole life, but Dad always kept us apart. I think Ma wanted him to. I’m trying to work up the courage to ask what I really want to ask about Dad in Trinidad. But I’m distracted. It’s all so new. We talk every night for a week. About school, mostly. I tell him about Muay Thai, but he can’t get it straight from MMA. “So there’s no cage?” he says, sounding kind of disappointed. He’s not even a year older than me.