by Sheena Kamal
In her dreams or mine? Does it—
thirty-seven
It’s all coming back now.
It had been raining that whole day, with thunderstorms in the forecast for the evening. When your aunt who can’t keep her mouth shut showed up to sweep you off to dinner; she was late coming in from the airport because of the weather.
No amount of protesting could stop what was inevitable.
When your Ma who can’t keep her legs together gives you that look (you know, that one) it’s all over for you. You’re to be squeezed into a narrow table at the hakka place on the other side of town, listening to them gossip about people they used to know back home and the particulars of running a roti shop in this economy. There is complete disgust at the endless appetites of Trinidadians. You can’t get away with small roti, uh-uh. They must be large and filled to bursting or else the pot-bellied diaspora will turn on you in a second. There’s some discussion about the diabetes epidemic sweeping the island. You secretly agree that it’s not undeserved. You wish for a level of self-awareness about the connection to diabetes and the sodium/fat/sugar-laden food you’re about to eat, but the moment for that passes with the rumbling of your stomach.
You order hakka chow mein and vegetable balls in hot garlic sauce and hope there’s enough nutrition in the meal to feed your muscles, make them sturdier, stronger. The meal is strangely tense. Ma and Aunty K keep up the chatter, but their attention isn’t in the room with you, so you tune out and let your mind wander. They don’t say anything about your lack of participation, and don’t seem to mind in particular.
This is what you remember most about that night. It was meant to be a spontaneous gesture, a fun dinner with your kooky aunt, but everyone was acting strangely and you were feeling a bit ill. There’s some mild heartburn after dinner but you insist it’s nothing as the three of you duck under a single umbrella and sprint to the car.
Raindrops, yeah, but not on galvanized roofing. You’ll wonder at it much later, how the musical quality of rain deserted you on that night and you didn’t even notice. The chatter continues into the car, but it’s only Aunty K this time. There’s an attempt at the radio but Ma’s nerves can’t take it, so she switches it off and you’re left with the sound of heat whooshing through the air vents and a voice that’s easily drowned out.
Ma’s phone rings and because you’re next to her, you hear Pammy’s voice on the other end, shrill, as if in warning, before Ma gives you an annoyed look out of the corner of her eye and shifts her body so you can’t hear anymore. Whatever Pammy says upsets her. It has something to do with Dad. He’s not home yet, or something, and maybe that’s a problem. He’s late. Her hands shake before she pulls them away. Squeezes one in the other, a silent bid to stay calm, then returns them to her knee.
When you pull onto the road to your townhouse co-op, when you’re about to turn into the parking lot, one of those hands shoots out, grabs the steering wheel…
To what? Help you? Stop you?
You’re driving, but the both of you turn the wheel.
The both of you steer the car into the drunk man stumbling around the parking lot.
You both killed your father.
Both wanted him dead.
* * *
You walk now, through the university campus.
Your boyfriend, Jason, has his arm around you. The two of you are closer now, ever since he showed up at the hospital to help you get through what was happening with your Ma. He’s been so sweet, and you finally know what good dick is. You’ve also begun to hate that term and love reggaetón. He’s forgiven you for everything because of what you were going through at home. He’s a really good guy.
You think he loves you, even though you’re not a fighter anymore. You think he loves you because you’re not a fighter anymore.
Maybe you are, just a different kind.
After he leaves to go study, you walk alone.
You didn’t go to Ryerson like you thought you would. You decided on the University of Toronto, because you miraculously got in and you think it’s a better school. That’s what everyone says, anyway. And you like walking through this pretty downtown campus. You’re going to do business management regardless, so why not do it somewhere with nicer buildings and lots of green space. Somewhere so big you can be anonymous. Just a face in the crowd. Surrounded by throngs of students who look just like you.
No one will recognize you here.
You get to be a person without a past, and that’s for the best, isn’t it? Because what’s real about the past, anyway? You don’t know. Maybe you never will.
What you do know:
Your father’s face.
A story that ends with a thud.
A shadow slipping into the woods.
It was a dark, rainy night. Moonless, and thank God for that.
A slide out of a nightmare.
the end
acknowledgments
I acknowledge the indigenous territories upon which I live and work.
Thank you to Lynne Missen, Georgia Murray, Peter Phillips, Sam Wiebe, Sunni Westbrook and David Pledger for their feedback and hard work in helping me bring this book to life. Also to David Chariandy for his wonderful novel Soucouyant, which provided so much inspiration.
Some creative liberties regarding the sport of Muay Thai were taken to make the story work, and all errors belong to me and the voices in my head. I would like to extend special thanks to Sr. Kru Yai Michael Perez of Southside Muay Thai in Toronto for introducing me to Muay Thai some twenty years ago, and for training me for the past ten. No teacher deserves to be cursed with a willful and stubborn student such as myself, but he has done what he could with the little he’s been given.
I am grateful for the women of Trinidad, who have sustained me all these years with their love and, let’s be honest, their delicious cooking. I do not deserve even a fraction of the effort, but I’m going to eat their food anyway because the alternative (my cooking) is too sad to contemplate.
Finally, this book is dedicated to Darryl and Andre, who are the best brothers in the entire history of brothers. They make me want to be a better sister. Hypothetically.
XX Sheena