The Worlds Within Her (31 page)

“A DOCTOR,” HER
daughter said. “I want to be a doctor when I grow up.”

Yasmin was disappointed. She had hoped for a child with greater imagination. She comforted herself with the thought that at this young age everything was the product of a phase; that this too would pass, like the colic or the piercing of a new tooth.

“You can be anything you want to be, honey,” she said. “You can be a dancer or a painter or a writer. You can be a pilot or a lawyer or an architect like Daddy.”

“I can be anything I want to be?”

“Anything.”

“I want to be a man.”

“Well, maybe not quite anything, dear.”

“Oh, okay.”

Yasmin glanced over at Jim. He had taken refuge behind his open newspaper, and she saw the pages tremble from his silent laughter. Biting at the insides of her cheeks, she mumbled, “Can I borrow the sports section?”

PENNY SAYS, “AH
, the beach.”

PHOTO: VARIOUS TONES OF GREY DISTINGUISH SEA, SAND AND SKY. VERNON, SHAKTI AND PENNY POSE IN SWIMSUITS FOR THE CAMERA. VERNON IS CLOWNING, FACE DISTORTED IN A SCOWL, FINGERS CLAWING AT THE AIR. SHAKTI APPEARS THOUGHTFUL AND PENNY SLIGHTLY REMOVED, AS IF SHE HAS JUST REMEMBERED SOMETHING THAT SHE NEEDS TO ATTEND TO. IN THE FAR BACKGROUND, SITTING ON THE SAND AND STARING OFF TO THE HORIZON IS AMIE, YOUNG. SHE IS INCIDENTAL, NOT A MEMBER OF THE PARTY. SHE IS WEARING A LONG DRESS. A THICK BRAID HANGS DOWN TO HER LOWER BACK.

Penny pauses — and then, bizarrely, giggles. Her fingertips brush the sleeve of Yasmin's blouse. “Girl, you wouldn' believe how Amie use to snore. You wouldn' believe how air going in an' out o' that little body could roar so much, like water tumblin' over Niagara Falls. She drown out the sea, she make the walls tremble, nobody could sleep.”

That little body: legs drawn up, arms reaching around the knees in a clasp of self-comfort: a gaze that couldn't be read, that couldn't see through the decades — or could it? — to the immutability of the moment. The dress has a pattern, now just a suggestion of grey, but the braid is intricate.

And there's Vernon, Penny continues: playing the fool, acting up. As usual. One evening at the dinner table, she says, as Amie cleared away the dishes, Vernon's mischievousness led him to
imitate her snoring: a monstrous gurgling sizzle, a liquid hacking, the squelching slap of wet tongue.

“It was the funniest thing, girl. We laugh! We laugh so hard. Even Amie. She laugh so hard she break two, three plates if I not mistaken.” She wipes her eyes. “Remember that, Manager?”

“I remember.”

Her laughter subsides. “If it have one thing nobody can take away from Vernon, is his sense of humour. He was wild!”

THE SOUNDS FROM
downstairs — muffled music, the occasional clank of heavy iron — cushion the silence in the living room.

The shuffling of photos, Penny and Cyril each clutching a handful, acquires a dry edge. Together the sounds suggest isolation, as if no world exists beyond them.

Suddenly there is a shout. Then an exchange of shouts. Amie, high-pitched and angry. Ash, at a lower register, suggestive of greater control.

A door bangs, a stream of chattering laughter emerging from its brief echo.

Penny, tossing the photographs back onto the pile in front of her says, “But what biting Amie so these days? She going around looking as if she working in a funeral home — and listen to her now, shouting like a fishwife.”

“What you blaming Amie for?” Cyril says without looking up. “You know the boy always up to some
jhunjut.
He always provoking her, man, Penny.”

Penny sucks her teeth and shuffles through the photos with the tips of her fingers, making a mess of them.

PHOTO: A PLAYFUL PHOTOGRAPH, SLIGHTLY ILL-FOCUSED BECAUSE THE LENS IS TOO NEAR THE SUBJECT. A CLOSE-UP OF HER FATHER IN A HAT, BRIM PULLED LOW OVER HIS RIGHT EYE, THE LEFT SQUINTING FROM THE SMOKE RISING FROM A CIGARETTE PLANTED BETWEEN PURSED LIPS. BOGEY.

Penny says with excitement, “Remember the hat, Cyril? He pull it off one of the journalist fellas and start joking around? Remember that day?”

Cyril nods: If he shares Penny's memory of the day it is with tempered excitement.

Penny says, “What a joker. Always teasing people. And the more he loved you, the worse he tease you.” She pats Cyril on the knee. “Remember the day he make you shine his shoes? That was so funny.”

Cyril does not reveal whether he found it funny or not — but Yasmin sees his jaws shudder and lock. Quickly she says, “He smoked. I didn't know that.”

“Smoking was still all right back then,” Penny says, her tone defensive. “Everybody did it. Even the old ladies.”

“Take it easy, Penny,” Cyril says. “Yasmin was just —”

“He start smoking when he was young. Like everybody, nuh. Drinking, that came later. In fact, there's a story —”

“You not going to tell that old tale, ehh, Penny?”

Penny pointedly ignores him. “Vernon was in high school and one lunchtime he was puffing on a cigarette when a teacher see him. But Vernon see the teacher at the same time and in two-twos the cigarette was gone. You know what he do? He
suck it into his mouth, chew it up and swallow it. Jus' like that. Teacher couldn' do nothing. No proof, no punishment. He went around telling the story, though, thinking to make Vernon look foolish. Instead, he turn him into a hero for the other boys. He was so popular, the next year the school make him head prefect. I always believe that is eating the cigarette that turn Vernon into a politician.”

Cyril claps his palms on his thighs, turns a wistful gaze on Yasmin. “Is as good an explanation as any, I suppose.”

Shoes clattering on the floor, Ash comes in. He is sweaty, and emits a strident energy.

Penny says, “What that was all about, Ash?”

He gives her a look of defensive ignorance.

“With Amie. The shouting.”

“Oh, that.” He smiles mischievously, scratches at his temple. “She treatin' me like a child again. I liftin' some iron, with the radio on, nuh. Out of the blue she come and tell me to turn it down. It too loud. It hurting her ears. Well, I tell her no —” his voice rises, as if his reaction was self-evident “— and just like that she start to shout at me. So I shout back. Is just music, Amie, you acting like a wet blanket. And you know what she say? Wet blanket? What wet blanket? Who wet the blanket? Who goin' to wash it now? I have enough work, you know!” He breaks into a roar of laughter.

Penny clamps her teeth together, but a laugh breaks in Cyril's throat. Penny's determination falters.

Yasmin, restraining herself by biting at the insides of her cheeks, feels her lower lip begin to tremble.

Penny glances at Cyril. His eyes are closed, his cheeks jiggling.

Penny's eyes focus on the betrayal of Yasmin's lower lip and as her body begins to rock in silent laughter, in the seconds
before she must bury her face in her hands, she manages to tell Ash that he must apologize to Amie.

Yasmin, suddenly moved, thinks: Dear Amie. Dear, dear lady …

THE AFTERNOON SUN
slanted into the garden. Sam the yardman had mowed the lawn that morning and the fragrance of fresh-cut grass still hung faintly in the warm air, the silence given gentle rhythm by the sputtering of a neighbour's sprinkler.

They sat across from each other, Yasmin and Ariana, glasses of lemonade on the metal table between them. Each held a book, her daughter's concentration intense on the page. Yasmin pretended to read in order not to break the spell.

At six years of age she was not a precocious child, but she was bright. She had inherited her grandmother's eyes, ink black and intelligent, jealous of their intimacies. Yasmin could see a reassuring strength, a self-sufficiency, glinting hard and brilliant between the ever-diminishing layers of helplessness and dependence. She had an interest in music, was reasonably athletic, and had adjusted well to the rigours of school. Yasmin took pride in her daughter's every accomplishment, as did, she knew, all parents in their children, at least those children who were loved.

After a while, her daughter shut her book and said, “Mummy, when can we go see the ponies?”

“Which ponies, dear?”

“The ponies in the park.”

“I don't think there are any ponies in the park, honey.”

“Yes there are. They live in the woods in the park. It's their home.”

“And who told you that? Somebody at school?”

“No. A man.”

“What man?”

“Just a man. He was in a car.”

The world fell away from Yasmin's perception: the sunlight dimmed, the sprinkler fell silent, the smell of grass gave way to a sudden airlessness. “Where?”

“At school.”

“I thought you said he was in a car.”

“Yes, in a car, just outside the playground.”

“And what did he say?”

“He told me about the ponies.”

“Did he want to take you to see them?”

“Yes, but I told him I can't go, I have to go back to class.”

“And what did he do?”

“He said it won't take long in the car, but I wanted to play with my friends some more so I said no thank you.” Her daughter's voice had fallen to a whisper.

“When did you talk to him?”

“I don't know. Maybe … two days ago?”

Two days — but her daughter had not yet developed a sense of time. It might have been a week.

“Had you ever seen him before?”

“No.”

“Has he been back?”

“No.”

Yasmin put her book down, reached across the table and took her daughter's hands in hers. “I want you to promise me something.”

Her daughter waited, her eyes disquieted.

“Promise me that you will never, ever, speak to strangers, men or women.”

And Yasmin was saddened to see fear crowding her daughter's eyes, the indispensable fear, the fear that only men could safely discard with the years. She felt she was doing her daughter violence, crushing her innocence with the weight of centuries: male weight, female centuries.

Her daughter slid off the chair, came to her, sat on her lap. “Mom,” she whispered, sliding her arms around Yasmin's lap. “Can we go see the ponies sometime?”

Yasmin hugged her close. “There aren't any, honey. There aren't any ponies.” Young or old, she thought, it was painful knowledge.

Her daughter said nothing. She burrowed her head into her embrace.

Yasmin closed her eyes, felt the world simplify into warmth and softness and the brush of her daughter's breath.

This love of her daughter: it was immeasurable. It was, she knew, her only knowledge of the infinite.