Nothing Like Love (23 page)

Vimla took in the vast emptiness of the place again, trying to ignore the corbeau, which had her fixed in its black, glassy gaze now. “In
that
water?”

“How you mean? This is the clearest, cleanest water in Trinidad, girl.” Krishna crouched down and grazed the quiet pond with his fingertips then sat back on his haunches to watch the ripples. “People does say it have healing properties. Is good for your hair and your skin.” He rolled up his pant legs and stepped into the water, nudging the lily pads with his knees.

Vimla studied him for a moment. There was something about Krishna that made her trust him. It was in the way he stood with his hands in the pockets of his trousers and his head just tilted to the side when he looked at her, as if he was discovering her for the first time all over again. It was his smile, too. Each one seemed to start in his soul and make its way to his eyes before lighting up his face. His smiles were warm and sincere, and he lavished her with them. He dispelled the loneliness of the place with his presence, filled Vimla with a hope and devotion she’d never before known.

She gripped Krishna’s shoulders and skipped into the shallow water with a splash. The water was warm, and when she peered between the lily pads, she could see her toes overlapping his through the clear water. Vimla closed her eyes and lifted her face to the sky as Krishna fished a lily out of the water and threaded it into her hair. Droplets trickled down the back of her neck and the length of her spine. She quivered at the gentle thrill.

Vimla rolled over and squeezed her eyes closed, damming her tears behind wrinkled eyelids. Now, with Krishna
gone, her heart was a grey landscape of emptiness; nothing to discover except loss and maybe regret. She hadn’t decided yet.

“Fish make a nice dish! Fish make a sweet dish!”

Vimla sat up. A bedspring pierced her tailbone. It was Sookhoo, the fish man, and he was on Kiskadee Trace! Vimla shoved her feet in her slippers and dashed down the stairs just as Sookhoo’s white pickup truck rolled toward the house. The speakers mounted on the truck’s roof blared, “Want fresh kingfish, red snapper and cascadoo? Come to the truck and buy from Big Sookhoo!”

Sookhoo saw Vimla coming and put his truck into park. “Vimla, how you going?” He had faded brown eyes, purple smoker’s lips and weathered skin the colour of old coffee grounds. When he smiled at her, the scar on his cheek stretched into the salt-and-pepper stubble at his chin. His cropped hair was hidden behind a white cap worn backward.

“The red snapper fresh?”

“You ever know me not to have fresh fish, girl?” He sucked his teeth, but his question was good-natured. “See for yourself and tell me if I lie.”

Vimla followed him to the back of the pickup, where five large Styrofoam coolers were lined up. Sookhoo took the lid off the second cooler and Vimla rose on her tiptoes to peek inside at the dozens of bright-red fish lying on beds of ice. The smell of the sea filled her lungs.

“What I tell you, Vimla? Ain’t the fish looking fresh to you?” He scooped one up and held it in his palm for her to inspect. Fishy droplets seeped between his fingers and onto the road.

Vimla nodded. “Give me three red snapper.”

Sookhoo grabbed a clear bag. “Take four, nuh?”

“Three good. Thanks.”

Sookhoo turned his face away and busied himself with scooping the fish from the cooler and dropping them into the bag. “Take four and I go give you a message from Krishna.” His voice was low when he spoke. He wrapped a dark hand around the belly of a particularly big red snapper and waited.

“And how I know you ain’t lying to make a sale?”

Sookhoo frowned. “If you think I lying, don’t buy the fish.” He made to drop the red snapper. “And I wouldn’t tell you the message.”

Vimla studied his face. “How I know you ain’t going straight to the rum shop after you take my money and tell everybody that Krishna send a message for me?”

Sookhoo fitted the lid back on the cooler. “You see me? I is a big man. I don’t have time for this love-story shit, and I not in the business of selling gossip.” He pointed to the side of his truck. “What that say? B
IG SOOKHOO
’
S
F
ISH
.” He jabbed his broad chest with his thumb. “That’s me. Big Sookhoo. The fish man. I sell fish, and on the occasion, I deliver a message or two—if I like the message. If you ain’t want to know the message, that’s fine. And if you want to know, well, that’s finer.”

Vimla studied Sookhoo, who wore the look of a slighted child on his weathered face. His frown reduced his scar to the size of a baby smelt. “Okay, give me a next fish and tell me the message.”

Sookhoo removed the cooler lid and plucked the fish by the tail in one smooth motion, his spirits lifted again. “Your lovah-boy coming back Chance for the wedding. He want to see you before.”

Vimla felt sick. She put a hand over her face to block out
the fishy smell and hide her trembling chin. “When is the wedding?”

“September first.”

Vimla gasped. “When he coming to see me?”

“Tonight self.” Sookhoo placed the bag of four fish on his scale, which was nestled between two of the coolers.

She gave him the crumpled bills, moist from her hand. “When Krishna tell you that?”

Sookhoo climbed back into his truck and peered down at her through the open space that should have been a window. “I was liming in Tobago with my partner, Dutchie, yesterday. Krishna does work with he now.” Sookhoo shifted into drive and brought his megaphone to his lips again. “Get fresh fish from Big Sookhoo—shrimps, kingfish and tilapia, too!” The truck inched forward.

“Wait!” Vimla trotted alongside the window, her heart hammering. “Where to meet him? What time?”

Sookhoo winked at her. “Relax, nuh, girl! Tell your father I coming back this afternoon to buy two drake. I go give you the details then.”

Panic swept through her. What if he didn’t come back? “Tell me now, Sookhoo. Please.” Her voice cracked, but she was too frightened to be embarrassed.

Sookhoo shook his head. “Krishna write you a note with details and thing in it. I left it home, but I go bring it later.” He took up the megaphone again. “Tell your father is two fat drake I want. I coming back half two.”

He waved to Vimla and was gone.

V
imla stood at the kitchen sink washing wares for the third time that day. She rinsed the soapy suds off a pot with her gaze fixed out the window. A rooster darted by and she smiled despite herself. She had grown up with these fowls, seen them every day of her life, and still a running rooster amused her. She could appreciate their pompous strut around the backyard as if they owned it, the clamour of their talons on the rooftops and their incessant crowing throughout the day; it was the springiness of their run she found comical. Another, bigger, rooster took off after the first, green chest thrust forward, brown plumy tail dancing behind him as he skipped through the dirt. She heard the cry and she knew: a cockfight. But before Vimla could finish wiping her hands dry on a dishtowel, Chandani was zipping past the window with a stick in her hand. “Allyuh want to fight?”

Vimla giggled and she was startled by the foreignness of the sound.

The smaller rooster flapped its way onto the galvanized-steel roofing of the chicken coup and turned his back on his pursuer and Chandani as if they were no more significant than sandflies.

Chandani stood with her fists on her straight hips, looking around the backyard, daring one of the four roosters to pick a fight under her watch. The roosters scratched and pecked at the earth as if she wasn’t there, and she smiled a triumphant smile. “I thought so.”

A genuine smile! Vimla was relieved. She had suffered silently through the stages of her mother’s disappointment over the past weeks. There had been the days of withdrawal when Chandani spent hours on end in her bedroom mourning the loss of the Narines’ reputation. There had been the days of outrage when stinging reprisals spewed from her mouth and fell on Om’s and Vimla’s heads without mercy. And then there had been the quiet days, when Chandani had moved about the house in eerie silence, busying herself with the cooking and washing and tending to her fowl in deep thought. Now she was returning to her old self, Vimla thought: firm and dictatorial with a hint of humour. Vimla sighed. She had missed her mother.

As Chandani disappeared from view, Vimla noticed the two fat green barbadines dangling from a tree a few feet from the chicken coop. With a quick shuffle of her feet, she exchanged her below-the-house slippers for her outside-slippers and walked around to the rear of the house. She pulled the barbadines off their vine and cradled them in her arms back to the kitchen. She would make barbadine punch for her mother.
That would keep her busy until Sookhoo came with Krishna’s message.

Vimla felt her spirits lift higher than they had in a long time. Her mother was happier, and if all went well, Vimla would see Krishna tonight. Krishna, after three weeks! Krishna. She turned the name over in her head, saw his smile in her mind’s eye. Her stomach flipped in anticipation.

Vimla sliced open the barbadines and extracted the seeds from the soft white flesh.
Krishna would admit that he loved her
,
call off his wedding with Chalisa Shankar
.

She whisked and mashed the barbadine fruit and watched the pulp become a lumpy liquid.
Krishna would ask Om for Vimla’s hand in marriage
.

She strained the lumpy liquid into an empty jug.
Vimla and Krishna would have a grand wedding and all of Chance would be sorry for what they had said about her
.

She poured a full can of condensed milk into the jug and stirred.
Headmaster Roop G. Kapil would ask Vimla to teach at Saraswati Hindu School again
.

She spooned sugar into the jug and stirred.
Vimla’s reputation would be restored—improved, even—by her new teaching job
—she added more sugar to the mixture—
and marriage to Pundit Krishna Govind
.

Vimla poured herself a glass of the barbadine punch and tasted the sweetness of her future. The creamy rich drink left a white froth on her upper lip like a lingering kiss and sent her taste buds dancing.

Sunshine dripped in through the window. Vimla fitted the jug into the icebox and reclined against the counter in a pool of warmth. She saw that two roosters were on the chicken coup now, parading over the dozens of ducks and chickens pecking
their way through the dirt. Vimla closed her eyes and allowed one dangerous moment of peace to fill her soul.

The ducks sensed their peril the moment Om pulled on his tall rubber boots and began creeping toward them with long, deliberate strides. They flocked together, a sea of pure white, shuffling in one direction and then the next. At first their panic was quiet and contained, but as Om drew nearer and the dogs began to bark excitedly at his heels, the ducks’ anxiety increased. They honked and waddled faster, their wings brushing up against their neighbours’, until they found themselves driven straight into the duck pen. Om pulled the pen gate closed behind him, locking the ducks in and the dogs out. The dogs went wild, baying and leaping up on their hind legs, their hunting instincts roused. The ducks cowered in the farthest corner of the pen and watched Om with their terrified red eyes. Om reached his arms forward and lunged at one of the ducks that had the misfortune of being at the back of the flock going into the pen and was now at the front of the flock inside the pen. The duck darted away, chest first, white wings spanned wide. Then the other ducks began to break rank and shuffle in different directions. Om charged left and then right. He whirled then brought his hands down on a
whoosh
of air and a few lost feathers. He righted himself and tried again, cursing under his breath.

“Vimla!”

Vimla groaned inwardly from beneath the caimite tree where she stood beside Sookhoo, watching. She didn’t like helping her father catch ducks. She didn’t like the look in their
eyes just before they were plunged into the darkness of the empty feed bag. It was always a mixture of dread and blame. And it was too quiet. The ducks’ fight—if they even bothered—was pitiful. They would tussle in the bag for a second and then retreat into shock, quietly resigned to their deaths. There was that, and she needed a minute to talk to Sookhoo. “Yes, Pa?” she asked, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice.

“Hold the dogs!” Om yelled over the barking.

Vimla left the shade of the caimite tree and managed to pull Blackie, Brownie and Scratch away from the duck pen. She ushered them toward their kennel, stamping menacingly in the dirt to show she meant business. Blackie and Scratch slunk to the kennel with their tails between their legs, but Brownie got away. He bounded past Vimla around the other side of the pen, nipping the ducks’ tail feathers through a gap in the wood. Brownie howled, frustrated and excited at once.

Sookhoo leaned against the caimite tree. “Fishing doesn’t be frantic so,” he told Vimla when she returned from locking the kennel door.