The Worlds Within Her (8 page)

My mother-in-law turned to me and said, “Shakti?” She was not offering me tea, she was ordering me to make it. I was glad to have something to do, but as I stood to go to the kitchen, Celia said, “May I give you a hand?” She didn't wait for an answer.

In the kitchen, I put a pot of water to boil on the gas range, then measured the tea leaves. Celia looked on without saying anything, but as I was about to pour the leaves into the water, she stopped me and asked if we had a teapot. She explained that she preferred her tea steeped rather than boiled. I fetched the teapot from the cupboard and watched as she prepared her tea. I offered sugar and milk, but she took neither. Not good for the figure, she explained. The figure, Mrs. Livingston! Imagine! This was not something we worried about. I was, I admit, dazzled. And when she said, “Would you join me in a cuppa?” I heard myself saying, “Yes, please. A
cuppa.”
The word feeling wonderfully strange on my lips. And to hear my own voice … It sounded wonderfully strange to my ears too. I put sugar and milk into mine after the first sip, though.

Celia and I regularly took tea together after that, sitting in the porch and watching the sea, watching the ships come and go. It was not that I developed a passion for tea. No, rather, I had a passion for the style of the thing: the preparation of the teapot and the cups, the settling into the chairs in the porch at mid-morning. It was new, it was alien, and Celia had made me part of it. We didn't speak much, but we didn't need to. The fellowship we found in each other didn't require words. It was as if each of us was reassured by the mere presence of the other alien in the house.

Penny joined us occasionally but she wasn't much of a tea drinker. She and I still spent our afternoons together while Celia read or napped. As for my mother-in-law, she stayed away for the most part. She never knew what to say to her new daughter-in-law beyond offering sweets and asking after her health.

So you see, my dear Mrs. Livingston, I began drinking tea the way some people begin smoking cigarettes: for the style. To be able to say to Celia, Feel like a cuppa? Or to myself: I feel like a cuppa. It was like offering myself a little luxury. And I've been offering myself that little luxury ever since.

THEY LEAVE THE
city behind, climbing into gentle foothills, the land falling away from the edge of the road now to the sea, bluer and more placid from here. In the distance, almost more cleanly etched at the horizon, she sees a cruise ship gleaming white and, far behind it, an oil tanker as low and fat and dark as a slug.

Penny says, “You seem … upset?”

“Why?”

“You're not saying much.”

“I haven't got anything to say.” Yasmin feels herself bridling, as she often does at the suggestion — always vaguely insulting, intimating inadequacy — that she
should
have something to say.

“He was like that too, you know,” Penny says. “Always keeping his own counsel.”

“Funny, isn't it?” Yasmin blurts, with effort, the edge in her voice. “There was a time when we thought discretion was a
good quality. Today it's a sign of emotional repression. I'm not sure that's progress. There's a lot to be said for the unsaid.”

Penny considers this for a moment, then says, “You look like him too, you know.”

“People always say I look like my mom.” She is, once more, vaguely offended.

Penny does not notice, or pays no attention. “I knew them both. You look like him.”

Yasmin has never heard this before, and she sits back in the seat wondering what it means, if anything. Wondering why it should disconcert her so.

Penny says, “I not doing too well, am I?”

“Let's just drop it.”

“You do like the unsaid, eh? Strange for a journalist.”

“I'm not a journalist.”

Small houses of greyed wood hug the roadside. An occasional sign advertises Coca-Cola or Pepsi.

“Shakti said —”

“Proud mothers don't always get things right. Journalist is Mom's word for what I do.”

In certain lights — harsh light subtly diffused, like the dusk that reigns beneath the anchor desk — her skin assumes hues of grey. She has had moments, waiting for the seconds to tick by, waiting for technicalities to be sorted out, that were not good: hand resting on hand in that false dusk, flesh as if unnourished by blood, tremors known only to herself.

They are not morbid moments, but they are sad ones. Sad for all the
necessary
things left unsaid, all the
necessary
things left undone.

Every life, she has often thought, is incomplete.

Yasmin has a certain reputation as a media personality. She is the regular replacement for the anchor on the local newscasts, but has never been asked to fill in for the national anchor. She has at times been allowed to interview municipal politicians and minor celebrities, but she will never be asked to conduct the year-end interview with the prime minister.

She is instead frequently invited to host public appearances by soap-opera actors at shopping malls. She is not familiar with these people or with their shows, but she will sometimes accept. The money is good, her role small enough that it will do no damage to her serious work; and as an organizer once made clear, she brings to such occasions the maturity of her forty-odd years, a glamour that does not detract from that of the stars, and sufficient legitimacy to impart a certain newsworthiness. Hers is a familiar face; she is recognized in the streets and in stores. At the supermarket she has become known, to her amusement, as the
TV
lady who tips the bag boys well. Receptionists and cashiers tend to be friendly.

The job is not difficult. It entails timing, some simple acting, basic literacy. She is good at it, is at the age where experience has honed her abilities, but she's not yet deemed to be due for “face work.” She holds that day off by anticipating the betrayal of the harsh studio lights, by conniving with June the cosmetician to camouflage the blemishes that cause anxiety in executive offices.

But Yasmin is lucky. She has been told that her face is trustworthy, that she projects sincerity. She is good at the theatre, at the trickery of adapting tone and features from news story to news story. Good at projecting compassion one moment, gravity the next, then amusement, disapproval, regret, all muted by an illusory impartiality. Her rule is simple: I am moved because I
am human, but only briefly, because I am professional. She disarms viewers, Jim says, offering them the comforts of a benign seduction.

Penny says, “Shakti was proud, you know.”

“I know. She had this thing about her dignity.”

“No,” Penny says, changing gears. “Of you, I mean. She tell me once, Yasmin is not the kind to sit back and do nothing. She going to make her way in this world. She was very proud o' that. I think she was seein' your father in you, and it was a relief to her.”

YOU ARE PERSPIRING
, my dear. Are you hot? It is rather stuffy in here, isn't it. I'll open a window. Or perhaps it's the tea? Just lie back, my dear. Lie back and do nothing.”

What?
Like you lazy Caribbean people!
You are teasing me, aren't you? Of course you are, I knew that. Still, my dear, let me set you right on that score. Like everybody else in this world, we had times of lying back and doing nothing —

No, my dear, not under a palm tree, or a coconut tree as we called it. I never was one for lying about watching the waves roll in or building sandcastles. Like cooking — I've never seen the pleasure. The beach, all that fine sand — it got into uncomfortable places, if you see what I mean.

Mine was the minority view, though. The others were more enthusiastic. The men often enjoyed a game of cricket on the beach, or cards and whisky in the porch of the house. As for
Celia, she spent hours lying on the sand willing her skin to brownness — a most bizarre ritual that, Mrs. Livingston! Often she would pose for Cyril's camera. She wore a bikini, you see, modest by today's standards but back then, especially on our island, most daring. I have this mental picture, and the actual pictures must exist somewhere, of her on the stump of a coconut tree, sitting back on her folded legs, hands on her hips, thrusting her smile and her breasts towards the camera lens — a kind of Rita Hayworth glamour. She also had a habit of swimming out beyond the breakers. She was proud of her swimming, you see, she had powerful arms.

I will admit that I did rather enjoy the salt water. I enjoyed taking a dip. But I was never one to romanticize. After all, even the sea — that beautiful Caribbean the tourist people would have us revere — even that sea holds its hazards. Sharks, barracuda. Jellyfish floating about with their tentacles doing nasty things to people's skin. And once — once, Mrs. Livingston — I saw what that sea could do to the unwary, or the unlucky. A drowning victim had drifted onto the shore. The body was not — How shall I put this? Not complete. Fish had feasted on him, you see …

My dear, are you in need of something? A cold compress perhaps? You are so wet. Is it the story? I do apologize. I shall spare you the details. It is rather gruesome, I admit.

We were all affected except my husband. He did not hide his fascination. He even crouched down for a closer look. This was the kind of man he was, you see. He could dissimulate when he needed to, but he didn't believe in blinking.

I was chilled to the bone, as they say. Cyril took my arm and said he was going to be sick. We headed back to the house together. My mother-in-law, a woman susceptible to distress, took to her bed. Celia busied herself preparing a pot of tea. She
looked whiter than usual, especially in the lips and around the mouth — rather like you now, my dear. She offered some tea to Cyril and me, and we sat together sipping, talking little. And it was the tea that banished the chill from my flesh. Not that it made everything all right, never since then have I been able to eat fish. But it revived my centre, if you know what I mean. It even put some colour back into Celia's cheeks.

I see from your face, my dear, that this is not what you had in mind when you brought up this question of lazing about. But this is what you get for making such cracks. Now then, shall I continue in a more pleasant vein?

On the whole, such long and lazy days of doing nothing as we had took place not at the beach but in the middle of the city, on a hard metal chair in a covered pavilion overlooking the island's premier cricket field.

Yes, my dear, I said cricket …

No, it's not in the least like baseball. Oh, I do get tired of saying that! The similarities are superficial. That's like saying the moon's like the sun because they both shine in the sky. Or a bird's like an airplane because they both fly. You hit a ball with a bat and you score runs. That's about it. Any resemblance to any other sport, living or dead, is purely … ignorant.

Now, where was I? Ah, yes. Long and lazy days watching cricket. Friends and family around. Celia, and sometimes Penny. Do you know — following my marriage, it was at cricket that I most saw my family? My parents were modern-minded, but still my marriage meant that I was no longer quite theirs. Not that I had become a stranger. More like a good acquaintance who now belonged to another family. A certain distance grew up between us — a distance that solidified, following the death of my parents. I have not known most of my family for decades.

My father was often there, drinking rum from teacups with
his cronies, except when my mother was around. She only came occasionally, and just for the morning session. She didn't care for cricket. I think she came just to bring lunch. She'd arrive with two bags heavy with food. Dhalpuris, chicken and aloo roti — a kind of sandwich, my dear, stuffed with chicken and potatoes — tins of sweets. Funny thing about lunch. Celia and I always took white-bread sandwiches. Egg. Tuna. It would never have occurred to us to ask Amina to pack the food we usually ate at home. As soon as lunch was over, my mother would return to see to her household duties.