Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab (27 page)

Dear Sid,

I was very surprised to get a response from you at all, and so quickly. Everyone is well, thanks. I can’t imagine leaving Aliya for another year or so, and even then it would be difficult, except that sometimes I think she thinks my mother is actually her mother, which I don’t really mind. I love how close she and Mum are with each other. Anyway, I will one of these days surely visit you.

Congratulations on the exhibition. Can you send photos of your paintings? I’ll have to buy one of them before you get so famous that they’d be out of my reach. We are building a new factory on the land in Central. We’re also acquiring a lot of new machinery. So it’s really busy here.

I see you took offence to me saying that it was natural to be a mother and a wife. Can I say that it is natural for me? And that I am totally fine—I make no judgement—if it isn’t something you want to do? I am a little surprised at how verbose you were about it. From this I realize that the subject means a great deal to you. So you got me thinking,
in truth, about the idea of what is natural and normal. I can think about it with a touch more clarity than I can write about it, but what I want to say is that I can see how these things—the value given to being a mother and a wife—might be cultural. (And it sure is a value in a lot of cultures. But maybe cultures change with time. And with the times.) But you and I are from the
same
culture, and since I trust your judgements about what you need for your own happiness, all I can come up with is that somehow our cultures might be a little different. We’re from the same country and same race—so maybe you being Hindu and me Muslim has something to do with it? But every Hindu girl/woman I know shares the same idea as mine about being a wife and a mother, so either I know only the ones who think like me, and not the ones—besides you—who don’t, or this difference might have something to do with how liberal your family is compared to mine. Or maybe it is just that you
are
different. You are unique, and there is nothing unnatural about your idea—it is just different, and you are just different. In any case, it was always your differences that made you so interesting. And I wouldn’t want you to be anything else, or anything you didn’t want to be, or are not. I don’t need to understand you, I realize; but come to think of it, I want to understand you. I just need you to be more like me so I can do that.

I hope you’re following me, as this is all very important to me. The one thing I don’t need to understand is my connection to/love for you. It’s just a fact.

Love always, and all ways,

Z

Sid, I’m sending this to you with much love. Aliya is six months old in this picture. She has Angus’s chin and my eyes. Mum spends a lot of time over here these days so that I can study (one more course to go and I am finished). It’s good to have Mum here with us—we’re eating well, for a change. You know I can’t cook roti to save my life. We usually buy it from Ali’s but Mum’s is so much better. And cheaper! I can’t believe I just wrote that. It’s not like we have worries about money at all. I’m not boasting, you understand; I just want to tell you all that is happening to me. Anyway, the other side of Mum’s presence here is that we’re all putting on a lot of weight. Aliya is such a good baby. She doesn’t cry—except when she is hungry or wet. Otherwise she smiles a lot, and makes the sweetest attempts to have conversation with us—and I find myself talking back in imitation, in baby talk. I never thought I’d do that, but she gets so excited, and looks really satisfied when I speak back to her like that. I wish you could see her before she grows up.

Z

Dear Sid,

I have been writing you in my head all day, and I still can’t find the right words. I don’t know if I ever will. I only know that the words I have are the wrong ones. I know this instinctively, but I don’t have others, no matter how hard I try, to talk with you about what you told me in your last letter.

First of all, I want you to know that ours is a ’til-death-do-us-part connection, just as I always knew it would be, even if you didn’t. So I think we just have to try to figure out how to talk to each other about this. I have to tell you that I am very very happy that you told me. It explains so much to me. I never understood why you didn’t have a boyfriend. And I always knew you were—I want to say strange, but I don’t mean it in a negative way. I suppose I could say different. It can’t be easy for you. This makes me wish I were close by, so that I could be there for you, and so that you could know how much you mean to me.

It is hard, if not sad, to think I have known you all these years, and thought of you as my best friend, only to realize that I didn’t really know who you were. On the one hand I wasn’t really surprised when I read your letter, but on the other hand I was
very
surprised. Both at the same time. I guess my surprise was more that you had been this way while I knew you, and I was oblivious to it. You must have
been going through agony and I didn’t know about it. I can understand that this was not an easy thing to tell me, but still, I am your best friend, and I can’t help but feel as if you weren’t truthful to me. Can I assume that I meant so much to you, that you didn’t want to lose me? I’ll accept that! But did you also think so little of me? That I am so small-minded? I don’t understand what it all means, and I want you to tell me. You’ll have to have patience with me. But I think this is only fair—payback for all the patience I have had with you.

I have questions to ask you. How long have you known this about yourself, and how did you know? And do you mind if I tell Angus? I talk to him about everything—but I don’t have to tell him this if you’d rather I didn’t.

One thing I wonder is if you knew about yourself since we were in high school—and if you did, how hard it must have been for you, having to make sure no one found out. I can’t help but think of Jenny Ginsun. Do you remember her? We used to say that she was—well, I don’t want to repeat those things. I feel so badly about how everyone used to bad talk Jenny, and I also remember you saying to me that people should just be allowed to be the way they are, and that we shouldn’t harass her so much because we don’t know anything about her life at home, or how our lives would turn out.
Do you remember saying these things? Did you actually know about her then, and did you know about yourself too? How you must have felt. I do know that she never really bothered me or, rather, I couldn’t really be bothered with her—because she never actually bothered anyone, did she. But I never tried to stop others from bad talking her, even if I myself didn’t. I feel so terrible about so many things right now, and wish you were here so that we could talk. It’s difficult to say everything in a letter, especially when you have to wait for a reply—and may never get one! I love you, Sid.

Take care of yourself, and be happy. You deserve to be. There is so much I admire about you. Your best friend forever,

Z

Zain, if you can hear me now, you will realize I am still waiting to hear how you could have gone first.
Your death is not something I had ever imagined, and so many years later it is still unimaginable. Do you know what I did before returning to Trinidad for your funeral? I went down to my storage locker to look for the two photographs, the only ones I have, of you. My locker was so crammed with stuff, Zain, I could hardly move through it. But that was good because, as it turned out, it was useful to see this snapshot of my life, starting with the wall of boxes and piled up furniture that greeted me. I had stored away everything I didn’t use on a daily basis to make room in my little apartment for my canvases, which I would spread out and paint on, on the floor. But now it was oddly calming, reassuring, to see this collection of clothes, kitchenware, tools and books.

I pulled out one of the boxes of books and opened it. On top was a manual on how to care for antiques. I was struck by the realization that I had bought this book imagining that in Canada I would live in a home full of priceless antiques and, like my mother, have to care for them. I pulled out a blond maple-wood coffee table, the surface of which, with a wood-burning pen in my first year at art school, I had etched with a mass of banana leaves and anthurium lilies. It had moved from India’s basement to this locker. On a shelf in the locker were sculptures in clay, wood, and metal. There were, naturally, the
rolls of canvases, work I’d done during the years I lived with India and Jonathan. There was camping gear I’d bought and used once, a fishing rod and vest that still had the sale tag hanging from it, a rack of dumbbells for weight training. You’d think I was a real jock. There was a filing cabinet crammed with papers—I couldn’t remember now why I’d kept them. I surveyed the collection, feeling that I didn’t know the person to whom these things belonged.

I thought of all that money you, Zain, had given me one week before. You, the only person who had ever accepted me as I was, were gone now, and very possibly because I could not stand up for myself, and could not protect you. There in my locker, your death gave me sudden clarity. I had intended to deposit the money, but the envelope was still on my dresser. I knew that with it you’d given me the means to rectify what had put you in jeopardy, even if it was too late. I knew, unequivocally, what I would do with the money. I would go to your funeral, and on my return I would begin to think about the lengthy process—which you in so many ways had set in motion—of altering my body.

I opened box after box until I came across the bundle of letters and notes that you wrote me when we were in high school. I have read them so many times since then that I know them by heart.

Sid,

Don’t pass any more notes through Singh-Johnstone. I don’t know what’s wrong with her today. She might tell on us. We didn’t get our marks back in Chemistry yet. I can’t wait. I bet I beat her ass again. She has brains but no sense of humour and no community spirit. Did you get any of your mid-term marks yet? What am I supposed to do for Assembly? I don’t want to talk about being a Muslim, don’t want to talk about God. I could hand out the recipe for seiwine, have everyone recite it along with me. Sid, Look at Augusta’s shoes. What do you think of them? Where on earth does she shop? She can’t dress to save her life. I hope she doesn’t keep us in late today. Dear Sid, Just close your eyes for one minute and think of the countless number of people besides you in this world. It’s frightening—you in the midst of them all, a non-entity. And then it’s warm, hot actually, as a blanketing cloud of brotherhood creeps over us.

Love, Zain

You used that word—“love”—sparingly, but whenever you did I tortured myself, parsing what you might truly have meant by it.

Finally, there at the back of the cold locker, were the boxes of photographs. In one of them were photos I’d taken when I had first arrived in Canada. I could see in them that my eyes, which had only
known one landscape before, had suddenly been bombarded by incomprehensible views, the unrecognizable shapes and colours of a far northern landscape. The photographs showed how, as I attempted to understand my surroundings, I would isolate some detail in the landscape, as if it were a trinket I could catch and examine. In a number of photos I had trained my camera on a coniferous tree from which icicles hung, the branches weighed down in glassy sweeping arcs.

Eventually, I found the two images I had come for. When you gave them to me you’d coyly refused to tell me who the photographer was. I still don’t know. I don’t need the photos in front of me now to recall them. I remember them by heart, just as I remember the notes you’d written. One of them was taken in your back yard. You are holding the hands of your two children just as one is about to jump into a little round concrete pool. Your long, shiny black hair is parted on one side, and pulled back. You seldom wore shorts because you thought your knees were “knobby”—your words—but in this photo you’re wearing red running shorts. And you have on a loose, pale yellow tank top that falls to your waist. Your hands are outstretched—Peter clutches one, pulling you to his side, and Aliya clings to the other, pulling you towards her. Aliya reaches you at your hips, and she wears only her baggy kid’s panty.
Peter’s free hand is in the air as he readies himself to jump into the pool. The three of you are perched on the edge of the concrete, which is painted the exact yellow of your tank top. Your toes, the nails painted the same red as your shorts, grip the lip of the pool and the three of you look as if you’re about to tip into it. The children are gazing into the pool, Aliya with a grin so wide you can hear her laughter, Peter serious, his face contorted with the concentration of an old man. Your head is slightly dipped, to keep the sun out of your eyes, perhaps, but you’re looking up at the camera. I know your smile. It’s as if you’re saying “yes” and “don’t” at once.

Who took that photo, Zain? I never saw you look at Angus like that. Did you, once? If so, when did you stop? Was that a look shared only with him, or was the photographer someone other than Angus? The wading pool is set in a lawn. There are no flowers or shrubs, just the pool, and behind it a chain-link fence. Beyond the fence, it’s all sky, pale indigo darkening the edges of the photo, with a faint smudge of loose white cloud at the top centre. Given the distance between the three of you and the photographer I shouldn’t have been able pick out the fine hairs, like the wisps on a newborn baby’s forehead, that ringed your hairline, hairs that were always a little damp, but I could see them, Zain, feel the wet of them on the tips of my fingers that
had time and again pushed them back. But it was your smile, the intense look at the camera, and by extension at the photographer, that made me tuck that photo away. Zain, when you gave that photo to me so many years ago, I felt as if I were being treated—as well as being subjected—to the gaze of that photographer. Were you trying to tell me something, Zain? Or were you trying to dare me too? I never showed that photo to anyone. It was a photo of my best friend holding the hands of her two children who adored her, but I wouldn’t show it to anyone. I hid it away in a box in my basement. That day before I returned for your funeral, though, I took it from the locker room up to my apartment.

The second photo had been cropped by hand into a ragged shape approximating a square, creating a bust portrait. I remember you handing this one to me. I had looked at it for a second, shy and a little confused, and glanced up to see you grinning mischievously. “I am wearing a maillot. You don’t see it, but I am,” you explained.

In the photo you are standing under an outdoor shower, the large lime-green leaves of a traveller’s palm fanning out to create the photo’s background. The showerhead can’t be seen, but it was opened full on you, your head directly in its spray. It is a full frontal shot and you are staring at the photographer, your eyes soft, your lipstick-reddened lips
shining and slightly parted so that glistening water seems to fall between them, and then off your lower lip. Your right arm is raised, bent at the elbow, your limbs so long that the point of your elbow is well above your head. Your hand is obscured at the back of your head, out of sight, resting on your neck. Your exposed underarm is shaved, pale, smooth as the palm of your hand. Your black hair in this photo is pulled back, but looks as if it has been freshly groomed, with deep grooves that could only have been caused by the teeth of a large comb. Because of all this, and because the water spraying out of the shower tap hasn’t disturbed your hair, and the mascara and the kohl that thickly outline your large bright eyes haven’t run, the photo seems staged. The water from the shower hits your hair and each drop, or rather each dash, each smart dash, shatters like fireworks. The dashes of water reflect the green of the traveller’s palm behind you, and the blue slash of light with a pin-point of red. Water runs down your arm and your face, and drips off your eye lashes, your nose, lip, and jaw line. A shiny bead hangs off your elbow, with another in formation, in quick pursuit. I was uncomfortable when I first saw the photograph, Zain, but I managed a trembling smile and said, “That’s a great photo, nice shoulders.”

I still wonder, so many years later, who was the photographer, Zain?

The upturned fanned-out lines of the palm branch and the downwards spray of water, the deep grooves in your hair, that raised arm, the paleness of your underarm and, above all, the hand-cropping of the photograph are dizzying. Why is it cropped? What didn’t you want me to see? I was glad to have that photograph. I wanted to keep it to myself, to protect it, so that no one else might be stirred by the same questions.