Nothing Like Love (43 page)

Auntie Kay capered through the churn of activity as if life were like this every day. She nodded to the Hummingbird Tassa Group heating their drums by the fireside and the men stirring enormous, bubbling pots on firecrackers. Carefully she picked her way around the guests bent over fresh, green sohari leaves brimming with mounds of food, and the revellers who rolled their waists to music booming from a speaker box in the kitchen. As she mounted the first step to the veranda, Bulldog, drinking respectfully outside the Govind gates on Kiskadee Trace, called, “Kay, you coming back Trinidad to live?”

She waved at him. “Not likely, dahlin.”

He raised his cup to her. “We miss you, that is all.”

“You too sweet, Bulldog,” Auntie Kay said, but she didn’t say she missed them back. “And where is the good pundit?” Her eyes twinkled with mischief.

Bulldog nodded at the second storey and Auntie Kay trotted up the staircase, with Dutchie taking two steps at a time by her side.

Anand was already abusing the air with angry gestures when Auntie Kay planted her small, slippered feet on the veranda. “Of all the days, Kaywattie!” he exclaimed.

Auntie Kay rolled her eyes, one hand resting on her slender hip.

“Sita-Ram, Pundit-ji. The name is Captain Dutchie.” Dutchie clasped his hands and bowed.

Anand stopped waving and winced. “A Hindu creole?” he mumbled.

Dutchie tossed his dreadlocks back and laughed from deep in his belly. “Not really. My church is in my heart.”

Anand scowled at him. “Stupidness.”

Krishna sighed. “Dutchie is a good friend, Pa.”

Anand glanced at Krishna, who was standing behind him in no shirt and a pair of old pants. “I didn’t send you Tobago to make friends,” he shot back. “Go and dress for the wedding.”

But Krishna lingered. Auntie Kay had perched on the edge of a chair adjacent to Anand and now she said, “I hear you marrieding your son to a stranger.”

The very frankness of her remark made Anand’s eyes bulge red and veiny from his face. Like a mean fish, Krishna thought.

“And so you come Trinidad to see?” Anand spat. “Well, if I knew a wedding would bring you home, I would have find Krishna a bride sooner! How long I ain’t see you?” He stroked his moustache. “Ten, twelve years?”

Auntie Kay folded her arms and narrowed her eyes at her brother. “Four,” she said.

Anand shrugged. “Four. Excuse me. I miscount.”

She laughed in his brooding face. “Anand, you never miscount a thing in your life. Counting is your expertise.” She turned to Krishna. “Did you know your father had his own currency using rocks when he was a child?” She giggled despite herself. “He would collect he dollar rocks, count them throughout the day and then bury them under the guava tree in the back every evening.”

Anand stood up, the lovely silk drapes of his cream dhoti billowing in the breeze. “Excuse me, Kaywattie …”

The smile vanished from her face.

“I have guests to greet, Krishna have to dress and we leaving for St. Joseph very soon. Is there something I can do for you and your
friend
?”

Krishna found himself wondering the same thing. He hadn’t expected to see Auntie Kay and Dutchie again for some time, let alone on the morning of his wedding in the presence of his deeply indignant father. But still, he was glad to share this small square of space with them, if only for a few minutes before Anand sent them away. Auntie Kay and Dutchie radiated the very qualities Krishna did not have, hope and courage, and most of all the two of them were vivacious in all they did. While he did not believe that Auntie Kay and Dutchie could sail into the Govind residence and successfully reason his wedding to Chalisa away, he admired their moxie and the very romance of their endeavour.

“Anand, Krishna and Chalisa won’t last,” Auntie Kay said flatly. She got up, too, and folded her arms over her wild printed dress.

“Eh!” Anand pointed directly in her face. “You is not an expert in relationships.”

Auntie Kay flinched, a subtle flutter of her black lashes. “Bas was a mistake.” She brushed Anand’s hand away and stood bravely before him.

“And who you think paying for that mistake, Kaywattie?” Anand turned his finger on himself, jabbing his chest again and again. “Me! I paying for it. Every damn day that pass, I paying for it!”

Krishna sensed his father had waited a long time to utter those words.

Maya tried to take Anand’s arm, but he twisted from her hold with a growl.

Auntie Kay’s eyes flashed. “Yes, Anand, I know your precious reputation damage because of my divorce.” Her voice trembled. “I know I am a blight on the family name.”

“An expensive blight!”

Krishna stepped around Anand and squeezed his way between the two. Dutchie threw Krishna a warning look, a look that urged him to intervene. Did Dutchie know what he did? Had he known it all along?

“An expensive blight?” The fire in Auntie Kay ebbed to a mere glow. She tipped her head to the side and searched Anand’s face.

Maya averted her gaze and strummed her fingers against her mouth as if to keep the truth locked in.

“Oh, Kaywattie, you real naïve, girl,” Anand said. He trailed his fingers over his mala. “Don’t you know I have been sending money to Bas for years now, trying to buy back that kiss-me-ass piece of land you living on in Tobago?”

Auntie Kay opened her mouth and closed it again. Her hands found her belly, where her belt was tied in a looping bow. She swayed on her feet. Krishna imagined her thoughts: had she lived a lie these past years; was the independence she had so delighted in non-existent?

Anand, blinded by his own vexation and the burden of his sister’s debt, seemed not to notice Auntie Kay’s effervescence fading into something frighteningly tragic. He blustered on. “But when Krishna marry Chalisa—”

Krishna laid a firm grip on his father’s shoulder. “Pa, there is no need for all of this. Auntie Kay only come here today because she want to see me happy.”

Auntie Kay leaned into Dutchie. “When Krishna marry Chalisa …?” she prompted Anand.

Anand shook Krishna off like a fly. “I go finally have enough money to pay off Bas the Ass and retire.”

Dutchie draped a protective arm around Auntie Kay and for the first time Krishna saw a single line of worry etch itself across his shining forehead.

Auntie Kay stared at her slippers. The veranda fell quiet and the gaiety below swelled around them like some cruel joke. “Allyuh open a next bottle of Puncheon!” Roop G. Kapil hollered from behind the ixora bush. “We pundit marrieding he son today!”

A cheer rose.

Auntie Kay met Krishna’s eyes, took his large hands in her small ones. “Did you know?”

Krishna lowered his gaze. “Yes.”

T
he loudspeakers hummed and crackled to life. Mohammed Rafi’s voice blared over Kiskadee Trace and a cheer flew up from the procession of cars winding bumper to bumper from the Govinds’ home to Mahadeo’s shop. People honked their horns, broke into song at random, knocked back their first drink of the day. Sangita Gopalsingh shimmied into the road and gave the district a dance they would remember for years. The sun glittered off rooftops and car tops, and rings and bangles on hands that draped out of windows to strum car doors. The air was so thick with merrymaking Vimla could barely breathe.

“That woman really have no shame,” Chandani muttered, fixing the hem of her skirt over her ankles. “And what the hell she have that shitting periwinkle pin up all over she head for? She feel this is Carnival?”

Vimla saw Faizal Mohammed lean out of his window and drink Sangita in with insatiable thirst. Vimla knew that look well—she had seen it on Krishna’s face just hours ago; only then it had been muted in pre-dawn shadows and nerves.

She had left him at the gates without looking back. A stolen glance over her shoulder could have shattered Vimla’s resolve and hurled her back into limbo where other people—bigger, more influential people—manipulated her destiny. But Vimla wouldn’t throw away her last shot at freedom for a glimpse of Krishna’s tumble of black curls. Not this time. So she fixed her eyes forward, marched past Chandani and Om on the veranda stairs and lowered herself into a chair.

Chandani and Om stared at Vimla in what Vimla imagined was awe.

“We wasn’t going to same way,” Vimla said, gazing at the sky, where the stars were receding like memories. “Let we go to the wedding.”

“We ain’t—”

“Ma, nobody know about Anand and the deed except we and the Shankars. According to the district Chalisa and Krishna was marrieding all along. How it go look if you ain’t go? You go have to live nice with Pundit Anand after the wedding. You might as well start by seeing he son marry.”

Vimla knew she’d been right. No matter how Anand and Maya had shamed her family, they could not avoid Krishna’s wedding. In attending they would show they supported Krishna’s union to Chalisa Shankar; that there were no hard feelings about Vimla being passed up; that Vimla and Krishna’s tryst had been innocent puppy love—something to laugh at and forget about. All lies, of course, but essential to Chandani’s and
Om’s peace of mind and restoring Vimla’s own reputation.

Chandani had watched the way Vimla’s eyes drifted from one star to the next like she was charting her course around the world. “And tell me, Vimla, why you want to see Krishna marry that girl?” she’d asked.

“I always wanted to be at Krishna’s wedding,” Vimla had said, wryly. “Is the last thing for me to do before I go.”

Chandani looked at Om. He reached out and patted her back—awkward thumps that rattled her small frame. They both knew that Vimla would find her way to Canada with or without their permission. They knew now how she hitched her heart on perilous dreams and held on until the end.

Chandani snorted. “Miss Lady, you think your father does fly plane for BWI?” She nudged Om in the gut. “How we daughter come out so wayward?”

This is how Chandani gave Vimla her blessings.

“Watch Puncheon,” Om said, looking in his rear-view mirror.

Chandani and Vimla twisted around as Puncheon on his bike weaved in front of the car behind them. The car screeched. The driver cursed.

Puncheon held up a hand. “You brakes working nice, Boss!” he said, bicycling on until he reached Om’s car. “Hello. Hi!” He slapped the hood.

Chandani leaned forward so she could see Puncheon around Om. “Is like you looking for someone to bounce you down.”

Puncheon dismounted and transferred the two Guinness Extra Stouts from his basket into his pockets with a grin. “You have place?” He abandoned the bike at the side of the
road, opened the car door and climbed in next to Vimla before Chandani could object. The heady mixture of Vaseline, sweat and beer wafted through the car.

“People charging five dollars a man for a ride to the wedding,” Chandani said. But she didn’t reach back to accept the payment—she didn’t even turn to look at Puncheon getting himself comfortable in the back. She was merely making a point, communicating the rules.

Puncheon whispered to Vimla behind his hand. “Going to see your lovah-boy get married?” He showed his yellowing teeth in a grin and opened a beer.

Vimla turned her face to the road as if Puncheon didn’t exist, as if his boozy breath hadn’t assaulted her cheek. If she stretched her neck far enough and squinted just so, she could make out the car with the pulsating loudspeakers secured to the roof, leading the procession to the bride’s home. The tassa group followed close behind them. They stuffed themselves into one car with their drums wedged beneath their armpits and up against their bellies, tapping the rhythm from the loudspeaker on their knees. And in the third car, the one festooned with garlands of red and white dahlias, plastic pompoms, and streamers, the one floating like a white phantasm before Vimla’s eyes, sat Krishna and his family. She imagined him sunk against the back seat, the embroidery on his
jamajura
digging into his flesh, his lovely curls flattened under a jewelled turban. How many times would he knock it askew in an attempt to rake his fingers through his hair, she wondered with a small smile.

“Excuse me!” a voice shrilled, interrupting her thoughts. “Good morning! Excuse me!” Gloria Ramnath zigzagged
through the cars, her bottom swishing. “Allyuh see Dr. Mohan?” She pushed herself through Om’s open window so that her fleshy bosom hung perilously close to his face. Chandani recoiled, although she was far enough away not to come in contact with the perspiration rolling into the abyss of Gloria’s cleavage. “Fatty-Om, Dr. Mohan say he have place for me in he car, but I can’t find he.” She shoved her hand down the front of her dress and withdrew a handkerchief that already looked moist. Six rings glittered on four fingers.

Om shrugged. “I ain’t see Dr. Mohan, but he must be here somewhere. It have plenty car behind me.”

Gloria heaved a sigh and looked pleadingly at Om instead of the trail of cars.

Vimla thought of riding two hours in a car, jammed between Puncheon and Gloria Ramnath. She could almost feel their sticky skin pasted to hers, the sickening sensation of peeling free when they arrived in St. Joseph.