Nothing Like Love (33 page)

Faizal slipped out of his front gate and disappeared into the darkness. He didn’t know how he would speak to Sangita once he got there, but he knew he had to go to the Govinds’. He couldn’t sleep with his brain swimming with all he’d witnessed tonight and Sangita would be vexed with him if she knew he’d kept it all from her. He smiled, remembering the hungry way she’d eyed him in his rear-view mirror on the way home from San Fernando General. As he neared the Govind residence, Faizal played her possible reactions over in his mind like a film.

Rajesh and Om stood outside the Govind gates, making small talk with the Hibiscus Tassa Group when Faizal arrived. “Hello. Good night.” Faizal was curt but not impolite. What were they doing here? He shuffled his feet, wondering if he should make some excuse and return home.

“Hello. Good night, Faizal,” Om said. He grinned like a child.

Rajesh regarded Faizal warily. He muttered a greeting that was lost in a half-grunt. “Where you coming from?”

The question sounded more like an accusation. Mind your damn business, Faizal thought. He pushed his irritation aside and tried to look natural. “Home. Going for a stroll,” he said.

One of the tassa men pulled his drum strap over his head and lowered the drum to the ground. “So late?” He threw Faizal a knowing smile. “Strolling home from some woman’s bed is more like it.” He fished a pack of Broadways from his pocket. “Any allyuh have a light?”

Faizal gave the customary chuckle, all the while wondering how he would see Sangita now with her big lout of a husband lingering outside the gates. Rajesh tossed his matchbook to the man. The members of the Hibiscus Tassa Group each slid a cigarette from the pack and leaned one by one into the flame held by the leader. Faizal watched their faces illuminate and fall dark again.

“Faizal, you miss a good show tonight, boy,” Om said, folding his arms across his chest and swaying.

Rajesh sighed and rubbed his head, looking to the Govind home behind the gates with dismay. His body leaned toward the home, as if he would swing the gates open and walk through, but his feet stayed planted where they were.

Faizal lowered his voice. “
Mastana Bahar
?” He saw the surprise on Rajesh’s face and was pleased. This was as good a time as any to let them know that Lal wasn’t the only man in the district with a television. “I was watching it home.” He made his face grim and shook his head, enjoying Rajesh’s irritation. “I wonder how Pundit Anand go react to the news.”

“I ain’t know, but I go have to tell him,” Rajesh said flatly.

The Hibiscus Tassa Group puffed silently by the ixora bush, the orange embers of their cigarettes the only indication that they were there.

“Now?” Faizal heard the urgency in his voice.

Rajesh shrugged. “When then? Next year? The wedding Sunday, Faizal.” Faizal resented the condescension in Rajesh’s tone. He was glad Rajesh felt burdened by the responsibility of telling Pundit Anand that he had been made a fool by the Shankars. He wished it would kill Rajesh dead.

“So what? You think Pundit Anand go cancel the wedding?” Om asked, rocking on his heels now.

A tassa player choked on his inhale. “The wedding
cancel
?” He coughed. “Then Pundit Anand better pay we tonight self.”

“No. No.” Rajesh sucked his teeth. “The wedding ain’t cancel.” He glared at Om, who glared back just for the sake of it.

Chatter circled from around the house and drifted to the front gates. A group of ladies filed toward them. “Everything wrap up now,” a tassa man said.

Rajesh opened the gates for the women. He nodded and smiled something terse. “Hello. Good night.”

“Sangita, look—your husband come to escort you home!” Leela announced to the trail of ladies. “Where Sangita gone now, Glory?”

Sangita appeared at the gates, anklets and bangles tinkling. “Rajesh?” She took his arm. “What happened?”

Faizal’s heart burned with envy. He craved that simple intimacy.

Rajesh clenched his jaw. “Nothing, nothing. I have to talk to Pundit Anand.”

The ladies paraded past them in twos and threes, waving goodbye. As they set out down the main road, Faizal heard someone say: “Glory, you don’t have shame? The pundit was watching how you roll your bamsee up to the tassa tonight.” Laughter ensued. Someone else said, “Allyuh notice how Krishna swell up he mouth whole night? Is like he ain’t want to marry.” And then: “Allyuh hush, nuh? You want Pundit Anand to hear we?”

Their voices grew smaller and smaller until they were swallowed by the cicadas and were gone. That’s when Sangita noticed Faizal. “Liming in the rum shop with these boys tonight?” she asked, inclining her head toward Rajesh and Om. Her tone was indifferent, but he caught the fire in her eyes and could almost feel the heat of her curiosity emanating from her core.

Rajesh didn’t wait for Faizal to answer. His voice was gruff. “Where Pundit Anand, Sangita? I need to talk to he.” He pushed past her, leaving Om, Sangita and Faizal staring after him.

Sangita’s eyes widened. “Oh gosh! Raj look vexed.” She fidgeted with her braid. “What happened?” Her magnetic gaze flicked to Om. “Please, Om, go with Raj. Don’t let him embarrass me here tonight! How much he drink?” She touched Om’s arm with her fingertips and Faizal could almost see the jolt of energy crackle through him.

Om stumbled through the gates after Rajesh, calling to his friend as he weaved a crooked path across the Govinds’ front yard.

Faizal wanted to gather Sangita up in his arms. Clever and beautiful. She made his blood rush. There was no time for
that, though, and the Hibiscus Tassa group was still lingering by the gates, pretending not to listen but listening all the same.

“What going on Faizal?” Sangita whispered, clipping her lower lip between her teeth.

Faizal pulled his eyes away from her mouth. “All of Trinidad and Tobago see Chalisa Shankar perform on
Mastana Bahar
tonight.”

Sangita looked let down. She dropped her braid, a fast pout settling on her mouth. He wanted to devour that mouth. “I hear she does sing sweet bhajans. She Nanny tell Maya so,” Sangita said.

“Bhajans?” Faizal gripped her elbow and pulled her an inch closer. “Sangita, that girl ain’t sing anything for God’s ears.”

Her eyes widened and glowed like Flambeaux’s.

“And never mind that—she can well work up she waist, too,” Faizal hissed.

Sangita gasped and exhaled. Her breath smelled of kurma. Sugary sweet.

“And Chandani—”

A yell fractured their exchange. Sangita jumped back. A startled tassa man cursed, his cigarette falling and creating diminutive orange fireworks at their feet.

“Who yelling so, Faizal?” Sangita asked. She shrank against the bush close to the tassa group and peered at the house from her cover.

“Pundit Anand for sure.”

Suddenly Om and Rajesh were walking back toward them. They hurried like chastised children who had just narrowly avoided licks. Pundit Anand gazed down on them from his veranda, his expression cloaked in darkness.

“V
imla!” Chandani shook her. “Wake up, nuh, gyul.”

Vimla’s thrashing grew wilder under Chandani’s grip. The back of her hand cracked against her mother’s nose as she tried to wrench the snake free from her heart.

“Vim-
la
!

Vimla felt someone pin her against the softening earth. She screamed herself into wakefulness and found Chandani straddling her, the palms of her hands pressing into Vimla’s shoulders.

“Ma?”

Tendrils of hair had come loose from Chandani’s bun. They fell in corkscrew curls about her sweaty face. She was panting. Blood dribbled from her right nostril. “Vimla. What the hell is wrong with you?” She climbed off her daughter, embarrassed, pulling out the handkerchief tucked in her bra strap to dab away the blood. “You nearly kill me.” Chandani released her slack bun, combed her hair through with her fingers and twisted it into a knot so tight her eyes lifted at the corners. “You know how long I trying to wake you?” She stabbed the knot with two pins and patted it twice with her fingers.

“Sorry,” Vimla mumbled, squirming into a seated position. She let her head fall back against the wall and her lids drop over her eyes. What day was it? Was he married now?

Chandani sighed and touched her cheek. “Fever.” The bed creaked as Chandani shifted her weight. “How your foot feeling?”

“Fine.” Vimla watched kaleidoscopic light dance behind her eyelids. “But I feeling weak and my head hurting.”
And my heart
. It seemed like an eternity since she’d been any place besides this bedroom. No matter how wide her mother opened the window, how often she knotted the drapes or swept them onto the chair, there was never enough air in the room. She longed to run, feel the wind playing in her hair. She missed sunlight on her skin. Vimla wanted freedom. And Krishna.

Chandani folded the coverlet over Vimla’s lap. “Your foot looking better,” she said, gathering Vimla’s hair to one side. “I wonder when this fever go break.”

Even through the fog, Vimla detected the undercurrent of concern in her mother’s admonishment. She thought about smiling to show she was all right, but she didn’t because she wasn’t.

Chandani reached for the Limacol sitting on Vimla’s desk. She tipped the yellow liquid directly onto Vimla’s scalp and knelt on the bed so that she could apply pressure with her hands. As Chandani massaged the lemony liquid into Vimla’s hair, coolness spread through Vimla and she felt the throbbing in her head ebb. She sighed a thank-you. Tears blurred the lights behind her eyelids.

“Vimla, how your hair get so scanty?” Chandani’s fingers threaded through Vimla’s damp waves.

Her hair had been the first part of her to come undone when Krishna left Trinidad. It tangled itself in her comb, remained on her pillow when she woke in the morning. The strands fell away with her faith, but lingered on her clothes and gathered in the corners of her room to remind her of her many losses, her inferior beauty since Chalisa Shankar came into her life.

Vimla shrugged a response. The room was quiet but for the creak of bedsprings beneath Chandani’s knees and the squelchy sound of her palms suctioning Vimla’s scalp. Vimla knew Chandani’s lips were pursed against an inventory of her faults that had caused her hair to shed. In that moment, she was grateful for the exhaustion that sealed her eyes shut.

“Dr. Mohan coming this afternoon,” Chandani finally said,
her hands falling away from Vimla’s hair. “Maybe he go give we something to break this fever.”

Vimla managed a nod. She wondered how much her father would have to pay Dr. Mohan to come to the house. Most people did without doctors if they could, relying on concoctions mixed with ingredients from the earth. When Vimla thought of doctors, she thought mostly of babies coming into the world or elders exiting it. Was she one of the unfortunate few in between? Maybe she was sicker than she thought.

“Minty coming to visit, too.” Chandani stood up, screwing the blue cap back on the Limacol bottle.

Vimla’s eyes opened halfway. “When?”

Chandani faltered and then shrouded her hurt in a scowl. “Soon,” she said, closing the bedroom door behind her. As she stomped down the stairs louder than should be possible for such a tiny woman, Vimla heard her say, “No matter what you do for your children, they does always cuff you in your nose in the end. Humph! One of these days, I go strike again—I go really strike again!” Vimla heard her scrape the coconut broom across the concrete. “And look at this jackass here, lying like lead in the hammock. Om!” she hollered. “Don’t go by Lal’s next time, boy. Stay home and I go bathe you in rum. You go like that, ain’t?”

Vimla rolled onto her side so that she could see out the window. The last time she’d spoken to Minty alone was just before she’d ducked into her father’s cane to meet Krishna. Minty had dropped Faizal Mohammed’s watch into her palm and closed her fingers over it. “So you know when he coming,” she’d said.

He never came. A familiar wave of grief rose in Vimla’s stomach, but this time it broke into a hundred furious wavelets.
Vimla darkened now when she remembered how she’d languished in the humidity, waiting for Krishna to follow through on his own design. She had gambled a great deal to meet him. She always had. Now, as she lay limp with fever, her snake-bitten ankle still propped on pillows, Vimla realized what her daring had cost her. Again. Suddenly it felt like Krishna always slipped free and she was left behind to detangle herself from the shame of her blunders. She had a dozen questions for him and it vexed her to know she would never have the opportunity to ask them now.