Nothing Like Love (44 page)

“You see that Austin Cambridge?” Chandani pointed to the Gopalsinghs’ car ahead of them. “Them have plenty place. You could sit in the back with Minty.”

Gloria squinted against the flashing metal. “Oh gosh. With Sangita? I go have to watch she wave and skin she teeth at everyone from here to St. Joseph and back!”

Chandani blinked stoically at her. She would not be dragged into gossip about her neighbour, however much she agreed.

Gloria peered into the back seat. “Go around, nuh?” she said to Vimla. “I could ride in the back with you and Puncheon. He could fold up small and sit in the middle. He hand and foot like bamboo stalk, anyway.” She laughed. Her bosom bounced toward Om’s eye.

Puncheon cuffed the back of Om’s seat. “Tell she walk, nuh? Maybe she go loss some weight and get small like me.”

Gloria scowled.

A cacophony of staccato car horns worked its way from the head of the convoy down the line. Om shifted into drive. “The barat leaving. You going with we or them?” he asked Gloria.

Puncheon flung his legs and arms out to show there was no room. Vimla glowered at her to show she had not forgotten Gloria’s nastiness in the market.

“Humph!” Gloria huffed, and bustled away. She scrambled into the back seat of Rajesh’s car just as it rolled forward.

They arrived in St. Joseph in great fanfare: music blaring, cars honking, people cheering and almost everyone—apart from the Govinds and Narines—blissfully tipsy. The people of Chance district poured out of their cars a block away from the Shankars’ estate and fell in behind the tassa players and Pundit Anand and Maya on the road.
Patang!
The first strike against the drum resounded through the air. A charged lull ensued. Vimla saw a few people nudge each other and exchange knowing smiles. Someone whistled. The woman in front of Vimla bent her knees, thrust her bottom out, hiked up her skirt and waited. And then it happened: an explosion of rhythm rolled off the drums and the pound of heavy bass fell in sync with their hearts. The barat broke into a joyous frenzy of swivelling hips and swept Vimla forward down the road.

In the distance Chalisa’s tassa group answered back. They came over the incline in the road with red tassels dangling from their drums, and behind them, a barat that shimmered in
their movements. All the young women could have been brides, all the young men grooms. Vimla gasped. What must Chalisa look like? She pictured her tucked away in the big house, swathed in raw silk and diamonds, listening to her wedding celebrations with a sense of impending doom. Vimla pushed her guilt away and leaned into Chandani, who poked her arm and said, “Them people could really show off.” She walked stiffly, her mouth pulled into a disapproving frown as the people from Chance district revelled around her. “You see how they trying to make style on we? All that glitters isn’t gold, Vimla.”

And yet everything that glittered was indeed gold. Drum tassels, sari borders, jewels, even the dainty bindis suspended between the women’s eyebrows. Gold. Everything was gold and everything glittered. Vimla caught a glimpse of Pundit Anand’s face as he turned his head. He didn’t look slighted at all; in fact, he positively glowed.

The tassa groups met in the middle and engaged in a rhythm clash that excited the wedding guests to no end. This is when the most eccentric or obscene dancers pushed their way into the centre and exhibited their talents. Puncheon stuck his tongue out to the side, clasped his hands behind his head and thrust his pelvis back and forth as if he had a motor in his pants. The people went crazy for this, whistling and cheering him on. A young man from the bride’s side challenged Puncheon’s display. He pulled up his pant legs, spread his legs wide and squatted low to the ground. When the tassa switched tempo, he gyrated his waist in a circle an inch at a time the way a second hand goes round a clock. Both sides were joyfully scandalized.

The crowd churned and carried Minty, Sangita and Rajesh
ahead. Vimla followed Sangita’s bright-blue sari in the sea. The gossamer material revealed the dizzying spiral of her waist, which Rajesh admired as he orbited around her. A few feet away Faizal Mohammed stood in a yellow checked shirt with the collar turned up, and gazed, bewildered, after the couple. And Minty lingered just behind Faizal Mohammed; her glossy ponytail swung from side to side as she scoured the crowd for Vimla.

“Ma!” Vimla yelled in Chandani’s ear. “I going by Minty. I go meet you in the tent.” She slipped away before Chandani could object.

As she wriggled through the crowd, Vimla snatched at conversations partly drowned out by the tassa:

“Whey! Watch how coconut man’s head shining like crystal ball in this heat!”

“Wait, nuh, man. Let the pundit and them settle up by the mandap and we go knock a few drinks by the car.”

“I glad we pundit find a nice girl for he son to marry.”

“Nice? You ain’t hear about
Mastana Bahar!
”

“Allyuh see Sangita sari? She couldn’t put on a dress like the rest of we? She dress up like the bride self!”

“I think Bulldog have sugar. I fine he looking old and dry up these days. Watch, nuh?”

“Haul your ass! You think this road pave for you alone to dance?”

“I hear the Shankars does fan fly with money. Pundit Anand must be get rich now.”

“Allyuh see Kay? I hear she married a creole captain.”

Vimla passed Headmaster Roop G. Kapil. He held his head high, pinching the lapels of his jacket between two fingers as
he danced off-beat. His salt-and-pepper bangs flapped over his left lens in his merriment. Headmaster looked confident, pleased with himself even. Much different, Vimla thought, from the sputtering fool Chandani had reduced him to at the school weeks ago. He caught Vimla’s eye and smiled. She looked away, embarrassed by the freeness of his movements.

A man careered through the crowd, barrelling into Vimla on his way to the front for a dance. “Sorry, darling!” he yelled. Vimla pitched sideways and saw the asphalt rising to meet her, when a wiry arm caught her around the waist and steadied her on her feet. She glanced up. Faizal Mohammed shook his head and folded his arms.

“How you going?” he asked.

Vimla straightened her dress and mumbled a thank you. “You have my money?” she asked.

The top two buttons of his shirt were undone; his fat chain gleamed. “I find you real boldface.”

Vimla shrugged. “And you not?”

“What you going over for?” His eyes were bright with curiosity.

“To study.”

“And you plan to come back?”

“Yes.”

“That is a shame.” He stroked his long neck, scratched just at his bulging Adam’s apple. “And wouldn’t your mother wonder where you get money for passage to Canada?”

“I done tell she is scholarship money.”

Faizal raised his eyebrows. “Eh, gyul, you does ever tired lie?”

“You does?” She twisted through the labyrinth of people away from him.

Minty and Vimla stood still with their shoulders touching and the crowd swirling around them. Something had shifted between them since they’d last spoken; Vimla sensed it in the prolonged moments they allowed tassa to fill the place of conversation, in the way they leaned into each other but each avoided the other’s eyes. It was Vimla’s fault, of course, flying away and leaving Minty behind after all she had done for Vimla, after all she would yet do to send her off. The more Vimla thought of Minty’s inevitable hurt, the sharper her guilt gouged the pit of her stomach. She considered saying thank you, but then realized how insufficient, how flimsy, it would sound in the cacophony of Krishna’s wedding.

Vimla finally said, “He come for me last night, you know.”

“I know. I hear the car pull up by your gates.”

Vimla laughed despite herself. “You come just like Faizal Mohammed, studying people’s business all hours of the night.”

Minty looked sheepish.

The tassa groups drew to the side of the road and allowed Nanny, Anand and Maya to embrace and exchange malas of jasmines and marigolds. When Nanny went, with Pundit Panday and her closest companions, to fetch Krishna from the confines of his air-conditioned car, Vimla’s stomach somersaulted. Minty’s fingers closed around hers and squeezed.

C
halisa was spent from a night of crying and now she stood like a mannequin in the middle of her parents’ bedroom while Delores fussed around her with an assortment of safety pins and hairpins clamped between her lips. Avinash lay on his belly on the bed, knocking his ankles together, his chin tucked in his palm.

“She pleats crooked, Delores,” Nanny said, whisking into the room. She brought with her the scent of incense, perspiration and the faintest hint of rum.

Delores froze, pins protruding from her mouth like teeth. She had just finished dressing Chalisa and it had taken her well over an hour. She watched, horrified, as Nanny unpinned the phaloo from Chalisa’s shoulder and yanked the pleats from the front of Chalisa’s petticoat. Chalisa should have felt sorry for Delores as she spat the pins into her palm and sank
onto the bed next to Avinash, but her heart was too full with pity for herself.

Two weeks ago Chalisa could not have imagined her decision to audition for
Mastana Bahar
would inevitably yoke her to an aspiring pundit. Now she understood that Nanny’s pride was as brittle as her bones, that her own flirtatious performance had erased some smugness from Nanny’s face. But Nanny’s reprisal was excessive. Just as Chalisa stretched a toe in the vast realm of stardom, Nanny yanked her away. What Nanny didn’t see was that Chalisa needed to sing and dance; it was the one thing that dispelled her loneliness and made her feel that her mother was nearer somehow.

Nanny crouched; her knees cracked. She wove the crimson silk between her gnarled fingers until a dozen perfect pleats swept from Chalisa’s navel to the tips of her toes. “Like that, Delores,” she said, her face contorting in discomfort as she straightened. She took a step back to admire her work. “Make sure my pleats look so before you light the funeral pyre. If my pleats look twist-up for Bhagwan, I go come back and haunt allyuh.”

Delores was frightened already. She nodded and studied the folds and drapes of Chalisa’s sari as if she were stamping the image in her mind.

“How you feeling, Chalisa?” Nanny asked. Her smile seemed distant, like she was seeing someone else.

Yesterday Chalisa had pleaded with Nanny to undo this scheme. Her cries had echoed through the house and spilled into the yard, until Nanny ordered Delores to shut the windows up and draw the curtains. The house grew hot and more oppressive than ever. It was only when Chalisa’s tears had run
dry and her throat had gone hoarse that Delores threw open the windows again. In the morning Chalisa woke with eyes so swollen she looked like she’d been devoured by mosquitoes. And here was Nanny, after Chalisa had held a cold compress to her eyelids for two hours, asking her how she was. The very sight of Nanny made Chalisa sick. She turned her face away and said nothing.

Nanny huffed; rum vapours wafted into the air. “Is some good licks you want, Chalisa!” she said. “Don’t think I wouldn’t beat you one last time before you get married.” She shook her finger in Chalisa’s face.

Chalisa rolled her tawny eyes boldly. Nanny hadn’t laid a hand on her since her parents had died—not even after her sultry performance on
Mastana Bahar
.

“Bring the jewellery, Avinash,” Nanny said.

Delores guided Chalisa to the vanity. Her blouse dug into her ribs when she moved.

Avinash brought the velvet cases one by one. He lined them up on the vanity in a neat row and stood like a soldier by Nanny’s side waiting for his next duty. Delores and Nanny unlatched the cases and opened the lids as if they’d done this together once before.

“Switch on the lights, Avinash.”

The jewels sparkled. Chalisa couldn’t help herself; she fingered a necklace, lingering on the emerald paisleys skirting a ruby the size of Avinash’s fist. Chalisa noticed Nanny’s lips twitch and she dropped her hands back into her lap.