The Worlds Within Her (12 page)

Cyril sips his juice, sloshes it around, makes a face, swallows.

Penny, reaching for a sweet, says, “Yasmin, Shakti ever tell you about the time Ma throw her out o' the house?”

She has, Yasmin realizes, been forgiven. “No.” Her mother's stories were few, and distinctly undramatic. Of Yasmin's grandmother she had said little, had offered an impression of imperious remoteness, which is what Yasmin sees in the face of the young woman in the photograph Penny has fetched from the living room: a smooth-face blankness; dark, serious eyes staring into the camera, unexpectant of the life still to be lived.

Penny glances at Cyril, who says, “I remember. But to tell you the truth, Penny, I don't know if I remember the thing itself — or if I just remember the story. I saw bits, I heard bits. I have pictures in my head —”

“Same difference, then.”

“No. If I remember, is my memory. If I remember the story, is somebody else memory. I mean, you think you can remember something that never happen to you?”

But Penny shows no interest; such simple nuance, Yasmin sees, can only be exasperating to her essential practicality, or an unwelcome challenge to her version of events.

Penny looks away, her gaze reeling out towards the horizon. “Shakti always thought she was too good for us, you know. Too good for Vernon. It was clear from the beginning — she din't marry him for himself but for his prospects. This thing with Ma, for instance. If Shakti did only do what Ma wanted —”

“Look, Penny, Ma was being unreasonable.”

“So why you din't say so at the time?”

Cyril shuffles uneasily.

“You told Celia not to get involved, not so?”

“I told her this had to do with Ma and Shakti.”

“Meanin'?”

“Meanin', if it was anybody's place to get involved, it was Ram's.”

“He had other things on his mind.”

“Other things.” Cyril's face brightens slightly. “Fact is, Penny, Ram was scared o' Ma just like everybody else.”

“Nobody was ever scared o' Ma, Manager. Only you.” She gets to her feet, the abruptness of the movement belying the calm she maintains in face and voice. “So don't try to blame him for your failure.” Announcing she must see to lunch, her back already turned, she leaves the porch.

Cyril retreats for a brief moment into himself. Then he constructs a smile. “Is an old quarrel,” he says. “And pointless. But we can' seem to let it go, you know?” He peers at the glass in his hand and with a sudden movement tosses the juice over the porch railing. “I wish we could, sometimes.”

YES, WELL. WHO
would have thought daisies and daffodils would taste so —

Oh, all right. So I'm exaggerating a little. We aren't drinking daisies and daffodils. But still, who would have thought flowers would have such flavour? Thank you, my dear. Such a lovely gift. So … unanticipated.

Now, to get back to my mother-in-law, the truth is, I understood her game from the very beginning. And because I understood it, I knew it had to be played out.

Simply put, before I had moved into her house, my mother-in-law had made all the preparations for the perfect cup of tea. The water was boiled, and kept a-bubbling. The teapot was warmed, and kept warm. The tea leaves were measured and sprinkled into the teapot. Then she bided her time.

When she judged the moment to be right, she filled the teapot with boiling water. The leaves lashed up and about in a tempestuous swirl. The water darkened. Steam rose like spray. Eventually, of course, the leaves would settle back down to where they had begun, at the bottom of the teapot — but only when my mother-in-law ceased stirring things up.

Think of me, my dear, as the tea leaves …

Uhh! Oh, dear me, I've scalded my tongue. You see what thinking of my mother-in-law still does to me? Even though I tried — I still try — to be understanding. Still, down through the years and even today, I have been unable to forgive her for involving Celia in what amounted to our personal affair. In so doing, you see, she changed forever the nature of my friendship with Celia. I do not for a moment believe that that was her intention, nor do I believe that once it was done she regretted it even for a moment. Of the two messages she sent, the only one that mattered was the one aimed — and I used the word in its most brutal sense — directly at me.

I remember when she called me —
Beti! Beti!
— because it was so unusual, that she would call me, I mean. It was early morning still, wash day. My husband had just left the house, calling out good morning to Myra the washerwoman. She lived just down the street, in an old wooden house weathered grey and surrounded by an exuberance of banana trees and mango
trees and pomerac trees and orange trees and God knows what else. She would come once a week to wash the clothes, hand-washing each piece on a scrubbing board at a concrete sink out back and hanging them out to dry on clotheslines. She used to sing quietly to herself as she worked. By the time all the wash was done, around midday, the first batches would be dry. She would have a quick lunch and then begin the ironing. Everything had to be ironed, including bedsheets and pillowcases, and by the time she was done the evening would always be well advanced. She was not a young woman, Myra, perhaps in her late fifties, and by the time she was done she always appeared to me to have aged by a good ten years. She had wrinkles on her face that she hadn't had that morning; and her hands had endured so much — hours of immersion in soapy water; the endless rubbing and scrubbing; hours of gripping the hot and heavy iron — that they appeared mummified.

But I may have been the only one to notice her exhaustion. Or perhaps to the others, none of this was particularly striking. One evening, as we were all sitting in the porch after dinner, ships' lights sailing through the darkness, the men burping from time to time like miniature foghorns, I spoke of Myra's hardships. I was, I admit, rather pleased with myself, touched by my own observation of her suffering. Showing my sympathy for Myra to the family that evening was a way of patting myself on the back. I expected that others would share my news, and that plans would be made to ease her lot. Already I could feel myself growing modest before Myra's teary gratitude. All my talk about the wrinkles and the hands and the sweat I had seen running down her neck, the humming with which she, I imagined, comforted herself, met with silence. I remember the squeak of my husband's rocking chair, Cyril's unembarrassed burp. My mother-in-law sitting there, eyes shut, as impassive as Buddha.
And finally Celia soothing the silence I had disturbed with a gentle
Quite so, quite so.

In bed that night, I returned to the topic. Hardly had I mentioned Myra before my husband said curtly that she was his mother's employee. Thus ended my efforts at social reform.

And probably because Myra was her employee, my mother-in-law chose her as the instrument of her strategy.

I can still hear her voice calling me to the dining room that morning.
Beti! Beti!
…

Beti? It means “daughter” in Hindi, I think. That's what I was always told.

In any case, the maid had already sorted the wash into various piles for Myra. My mother-in-law was standing among them. She pointed to one pile and said, “That's yours.” A glance told me the clothes weren't mine but before I could react she explained that she had decided to lighten Myra's workload. From now on I was in charge of washing Cyril and Celia's clothes.

No, my dear, Myra would still do my husband's and mine. That was her little twist, you see. She turned my concern for Myra against me — turned it into a humiliation by making me into my sister-in-law's washerwoman.

I said no, I would not do it, and walked away.

Angry? No, that was not her way. Instead, she turned to steel.

PENNY, SLIGHTLY MOLLIFIED,
says, “It was that Myra's fault.”

Cyril puts his glass on the floor beside him. Yasmin balances her coffee mug on her knees.

“She was always complainin', that woman. The work was always too much, the money was always too little. But Ma — you know what Ma was like — Ma wanted to help her out anyway. She was no spring chicken, Myra. So Ma thought Shakti could give her a hand, make things a little easier. But — no offence, dear —” she places her fingertips on Yasmin's forearm “— but we all know what Shakti was like, she wasn' about to take kindly to helpin' out the washlady. Which is kind o' understandable, you know — but you remember what she go an' do, Manager? You remember? I mean, really! Ma had no choice, ehh? She had to put her out the house.”

Cyril nods: he remembers. But his acknowledgement goes no further than this.

Penny reaches for a
kurma,
pauses, reconsiders.

Cyril, leaning forward, helps himself to several.

Yasmin looks away, to the sky growing painful and the sunlit sea. Hold on, she wants to say, that's my mother you're talking about. But she does not know the facts, cannot know the facts. So she chooses to remain silent.

Penny says, “Fact is, if it hadn't been for that Myra —”

THE NEXT DAY
the clothes were still there, in the living room. And the day after that, and after that, the pile growing larger with each passing day as more of Cyril and Celia's clothes were added.

She had chosen her moment well, my dear. My husband was away at the time, visiting political people in Trinidad and
Guyana. I remember thinking, If only he were here …

Celia avoided me. Cyril told me later that she had gone to our mother-in-law and offered to do the clothes herself. My mother-in-law had said that if she and Cyril were running low on clothes, they should buy themselves some more. She even offered to pay for them — and Celia knew then to keep her distance. I remember those days as among the loneliest of my life, my world somehow reduced to that ever-growing pile of clothes.

And then one afternoon, I went to my bedroom for a nap and found the mountain of clothes sitting in the middle of my bed. Something within me went berserk. I stormed out of the bedroom and straight to my mother-in-law, who was sitting in the porch. I wanted to shout and scream at her, but the words would not come, no matter how hard I tried. It was as if my rage had eaten up speech. So I — and I am not proud of this, my dear — I spat at her. One gob, then another, and a third. Each finding a spot on her face.

At that point I stopped, horrified at the level to which she had reduced me. My vision went blurry with tears. I felt her brush past me, heard the door slam shut. I heard the key rasp in the lock.

Some time later, the maid brought me a message. I would not be allowed back inside until I had complied.

I spent the night in the porch. The maid brought me something to eat, Celia brought me a pillow and blanket. Neither stayed for very long. That night a thunderstorm hit — as if nature itself were conspiring with my mother-in-law.