The Worlds Within Her (32 page)

MANY A TIME
, my dear, you have remarked on the peculiarity of my speech, as has Yasmin, as has, I am certain, my son-in-law. I am enamoured of linguistic precision. Do you know that my husband is the one responsible for making language precious to me? All those years of living with a man to whom words were weightless have made me picky. This is why I grow impatient whenever you say absurdities such as “It's raining out,” as if it
could ever rain elsewhere. Or “I thought to myself” — who else would you think to, unless you're psychic?

My husband, you see, believed firmly that nothing said in the heat of an election campaign should be taken seriously. And so he felt free to promise the world — independence, he said once, would be like a magic potion, it would solve all our problems — and he was genuinely surprised and offended when he saw that people expected him to deliver the world. He was astounded that there were those who truly expected independence to provide perfection, astounded even though he was the first to say it. It was as if part of him believed that people should be swayed by politicians, but without taking them seriously.

So, my dear, I have grown picky over the years. One learns, as you well know, how to survive.

There was a kind of genius, you know, in the way he managed through language and theatre to reverse his fortunes after we returned to the island. It was simple, but daring. He broke with the government on what he claimed to be a point of principle. Dramatically, of course — a press conference, a show of suppressed outrage. Anything else would have been useless. The first minister, he said, was manoeuvring to marginalize our people in the post-independence world. Realizing this had made it impossible for him to continue at the London delegation. It was a matter of consequence.

The hacks latched on to this. The next morning every headline read “A Matter of Conscience.” And within twenty-four hours my husband was a hero among our people. The cable was forgotten, the bribery accusation was forgotten, and my husband assumed, with relish, the mantle of protector of his people.

The other side called him a traitor, of course. They said he had betrayed the first minister —

What do you expect me to say, my dear? That my husband was a crook? I cannot say that. I will say this. He managed his money prudently, and it is undeniable that we returned to the island with a great deal more money than when we left. But he had mentioned his investments to me, you see, so I was hardly surprised. He was a shrewd man. I have never seen any reason to doubt his word.

It is how I live today, you know. His investments continue to ensure I want for nothing. There are people, you see, professionals, who look after things. Every month a substantial amount of money is credited to my account. I am occasionally asked to sign documents, which I am happy to do. They may be robbing me blind for all I know, these gentlemen in their well-tailored suits, but at least they aren't robbing me into the poorhouse.

My husband was a clever man, you know, he was shrewd, and he was prudent. A man of vision, as they used to say. God alone knows where I would be today were it not for his vision.

But it was that vision, too, that took us back to the island, and to the games and intrigues that would eventually lead to the events that brought Yasmin and me to this country.

ASH, A TALL
glass of ice water in his hand, pulls up a chair and slouches into it in a manner that suggests utter self-possession. The tendons in his neck stir and palpitate as he takes a long draught from the glass. Yasmin thinks him a young man absorbed by physicality.

“Holdin' on to yourself must be hard up there,” he says, his conversational tone belying the sharpness of the gaze he levels at her.

“Pardon?”

He rubs his eyes. “I mean, you don't find it a little bit unnatural?”

“What are you talking about?” Yasmin makes no attempt to hide her irritation. She wishes now for silence: Penny and Cyril have presented her with so many images to sort through, so many visions to sift. Neither of them, though, appears to mind the interruption, reminding her of something her mother had once said: that back there, on the island, silence belonged to no one; it was communal property, to be sliced into at will.

“I ain't know if I could do it.”

“What?”

“You know. Livin' in a white man's country.”

She weighs his words, wondering from which vision they have issued. “From the sound of it, you aren't exactly thrilled about living in a black man's country either.”

Penny laughs, but the nature of her laugh — which side she comes down on — remains enigmatic.

Yasmin watches his features freeze, his eyes deaden; sees him struggle with her remark.

“Look here, Ash, I belong to where I live —”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Citizen o' Canada, the world, the whole fockin' universe.”

Cyril says, “Ash, watch the adjectives.”

His vehemence startles her — and she understands that what she perceives to be the narrowness of his world is to him the core of his essence: the core that comforts him and makes him radical in its definition and its defence, the core that would
suffocate her with its airlessness. She feels like patting him on the head.

“You foolin' yourself, you know,” he continues. “Nobody makin' place for you, maybe they let you sit at the table a little bit, maybe they smile sugary-sugary and toss you a few scraps. But you better behave. You act up, and is strap to your ass and out the door.”

“You've been to Canada?”

“No. But almos' every plane that land here bringing back somebody they deport. Besides, is not the point. Point is, I know where I belong, I know my people, I know my history. Our history. All the years of oppression.”

“The oppression. You feel oppressed, Ash.”

She has merely reflected his words back at him — an old trick — but he takes the reflection for understanding. His features hint at a softening.

“By … “ Her palms flutter open in interrogation.

“You know who by. They always tryin', you know.” His lips hint at a smile. “But is not jus' today. Is yesterday, too. All that humiliatin' history. We have to get rid of it, you know. We still in chains” — his fingers jab at his chest — “even if we ain't know it. Even if we think we made it big somehow. Here” — his gaze sharpens at her — “or in other people land.”

“But as I understand it Indians were never slaves.” She glances at Cyril — her knowledge is patchy and superficial — and he nods in confirmation.

“Slaves. Indentured labourers. Is jus' a name, man. Our people had contracts, eh, but that contract was jus' a form o' ball an' chain, to take us away from the homeland and keep us there. That contract make all of us weaker. It steal the lifeblood from Mother India, and it turn us into little people.” His vehemence
thins his voice into that of an angry boy. “Little people.”

Cyril says, “Cool your blood, Ash. You not going to convert nobody here.”

“No, go on,” Yasmin says. “I want to understand what you're saying.”

“I sayin' that you ain't know it, but you ain't as special as you think. Maybe you're some kind o'
TV
star up there in Canada but it really have no big difference between you, me and all them people breakin' their back in the cane fields jus' like our great-great-grandparents did.”

“No, Ash,” she says after a moment. “Listen to yourself. What you're really saying is, if I'm not with you, I'm against you.”

“Exactly,” he replies, pouring a little of the cold water into his palm and spreading it on his face. “Is a battle for survival. Is black, is white, there ain't no room for grey.”

If he is lucky, she thinks, the look in his eyes — that sparkle of youthful aggression — will turn baleful with age. If he is unlucky, this manner that appears only partially cultivated will remain untempered, and he will risk being consumed by his anger. Which is all right, she reflects, except that anger aflame is unselfish, and indiscriminate in its hunger. “That's simplistic,” she says. And sad, too, she wants to add, but does not. She senses him to be a young man who will easily dismiss being dismissed — he will fall back on his dreams of an ultimate revenge — but who will not take kindly to pity, against which she suspects he has no defence.

His gaze moves away from her to the glass in his hand: back into the trees and the shadows. “Suit yourself. This ain't your home anyway.”

“Is it yours?”

When he leaves a few minutes later, his presence remains behind, a force felt but unseen, and it seems a very long time before Cyril, speaking into the chaotic silence, says, “Is best to let him go on. Let him have his say. Sometimes is the only way to deal with lonely people.”

“MUMMY, WHAT AM
I?” The question was posed with great seriousness.

“What do you mean, honey?”

“I mean, where am I from?”

“You mean what place?”

“Well, Gino's Italian, and Eduardo's from South America, and Nadia's from Egypt.”

“Who are Gino and Eduardo and Nadia?”

“They're friends in my class.”

“I see. Well, you were born in Canada, so you're from Canada.”

“Mo-om, they were born here too. That's not what I mean.”

“Okay. What do you mean?”

“I mean, what am I
really?”

Yasmin gathered her daughter's hair into her palm. It was long and thick, as lustrous as a clear midnight sky. And the words that came to her as she pondered her daughter's question were the inadequate words of a mother: You are yourself, she wanted to say, a child unique to this world, born to parents united by history and geography and myriad migrations. You
are a child whose existence could not be predicted, a child whose future waits to be discovered. Let no one limit you with imposed notions of the self.

But all this, she knew, was too grand. Its complexity would defeat the directness of the question. Gino was Italian, Nadia was Egyptian: such were the simplicities her daughter was seeking. But she could not bring herself to offer the comfort of a facile answer. And yet when the response came to her it sounded plaintive and evasive: “Isn't it enough to be Canadian?” she said.

Her daughter shrugged. “I guess.”

Yasmin released the spray of hair, watched it fan across her daughter's slender back — watched the light shimmer as if alive through its darkness.

PENNY EXCUSES HERSELF
. Cyril, seizing on her absence, says, “You know that story about when Ram imitate Amie's snoring? Well, is Amie's eyes I remember. Tired eyes that turn hard-hard when he put on his little performance. And I don't remember her laughing, not for a second. Oh, she break two, three plates, all right, but not from an excess of joy, I tell you.”

“Are you saying he was a cruel man, Cyril?”