Nothing Like Love (19 page)

Soon Anand saw a glint of white sunlight flash off the roof of the Skyline as it wrapped around the sharp bend and accelerated onto Kiskadee Trace. “Maya, they reach.” Maya darted to Anand’s side, but neither of them spoke as the Shankars glided through the open gates and made their entrance at the Govind residence.

Nanny pushed the car door open and swung her legs around so that her dangling feet created two egg-shaped shadows in the dirt. She hopped to the ground, grunting, “
Jai
Shiva Shankar!” Glory to Lord Shiva, and then adjusted her mango-coloured sari pleats with her green-veined hands.

The new driver toddled on his squat legs around the front of the car, puffing and sweating. “Careful, Nanny.” He mopped his fat neck with an already damp handkerchief. “I coming to help you.” He took hold of Nanny’s reedy arm and guided her away from the car, air whistling through his flaring nostrils.

Nanny wrenched her arm free. “You looking like you need more help than me, Driver.” She shook her grey bun and jabbed his belly with her finger. “Less roti, less rice, just dhal, you hear me? Drink it like soup. Dhal soup.” She cupped her lined hands to her mouth and made slurping noises. The driver looked away, embarrassed. “Eh! Look at me. Watch my figure!” Nanny placed her balled-up hands on her bony hips and wiggled them
side to side like a dancing skeleton. “Would you believe I am sixty-six? Is dhal soup have me looking so sexy at sixty-six, Driver.” She raised a finger just between his beady eyes. “But expect gas, Driver. Expect it day and night.”

Anand cleared his throat loudly and pressed his palms together. “Sita-Ram! Welcome.”

Nanny stopped short, and the driver scuttled away and stuffed himself back behind the steering wheel. Delores, Chalisa and Avinash filed from the car and stood behind their tiny leader like tin soldiers.

When they were all seated on the veranda, Anand folded his hands in his lap and began to twiddle his thumbs again. He was unsure how to start this spontaneous meeting without sounding harassed or leery, although he certainly felt both. He hadn’t mentioned it to Maya, but suspicions like fat leeches had slithered into his gut the moment he learned the Shankars wanted the wedding date moved forward, and now they were feeding on his confidence in this wedding. It seemed hasty, desperate almost.

Anand stole a glance at his daughter-in-law-to-be. Chalisa was sitting in between Delores and Nanny, staring down at her hands. Her profuse inky hair was wrung into a single spiral that she had swept forward over her right shoulder and let cascade into her lap. Anand thought it looked like a sleeping serpent, but still she was lovely—there was no denying that.

Nanny tapped her foot against the white and burgundy veranda tiles, so that her petite frame vibrated with impatience. “Thank you for having us at such late notice.” She smiled, but there was nothing tender in it. “I really ain’t want to take up too much of allyuh time.” She looked at Anand. “I know
it have plenty wedding preparations to see about. Hmm?” She reached for a piece of pink sugar cake, still warm from the oven.

Anand stopped twiddling. He had hoped for more formalities to help ease him into the wedding talk. He shifted under Nanny’s incisive stare, trying to coax a smile from behind his moustache while he thought of something fitting to say.

Nanny licked the pink sugar crystals from her chapped lips. She eyed Maya. “And where is our Krishna?”

Anand felt Maya bristle at his side. “Visiting with relatives to concentrate on his studies,” she said quickly. Too quickly.

Nanny arched a sparse eyebrow.

“But he go be real heartbroken when he know he miss Chalisa,” Anand added.

Chalisa looked up at the sound of her name. She tilted her head to the side and held Anand in her gaze. Her striking eyes were filled with disappointment so profound they were almost sorrowful. Anand wondered if she had truly taken a liking to his son.

“Well, no matter, they have the rest of they lives to see each other.” Nanny slid to the edge of her chair. It was the closest she could come to Anand and Maya without knocking over the table that divided them. “I come to request the wedding be moved to September first.”

Anand nodded. He began processing the idea all over again. For a few long moments he let the request hang between them as he brought a glass of cold mauby to his lips and took a big swallow. “Like the mauby, son?” He smiled at Avinash, lowering his glass.

Avinash shook his head. “Bitter, Pundit-ji.”

“Pundit?” Nanny eyed him.

“Yes, yes, the wedding date. September first.” Anand set the sweating glass down on the table. “We go have to check the book, Nanny. The wedding must take place on a auspicious day.” Anand heard the authority creep into his voice and he sat up taller. “September seventeenth at 4:40 p.m. is the absolute best time for Krishna and Chalisa to marry.” He shrugged.

Nanny frowned. “But it must have another
better
best day, Pundit. Look at my Chalisa.” Anand and Maya looked. “You know why she pretty face long so? Is because she pining away for Krishna.”

Chalisa raised her gaze halfway. Tears glistened like crystals on her dark lashes.

Nanny stroked Chalisa’s arm with her arthritic fingers. “It possible to check the book again, Baba?” she asked.

Anand smiled his favourite priestly smile. “Of course, of course, Nanny.” It suddenly dawned on him that he could proclaim September first the most ill-fated day of the year for Chalisa and Krishna to marry if that was his desire, and Nanny wouldn’t know the difference. “Maya, fetch my book.” Anand, buoyed by his power, rocked back and forth and sang a bhajan while he waited.

“Excuse me, Baba.” Avinash fixed him with his owl stare.

The chorus died on Anand’s lips. “Hmm?”

“What you looking for in the book?”

“Good question!” Anand’s eyes brightened. He fancied himself a superb teacher. “First I take Chalisa’s and Krishna’s dates of birth, times of birth and places of birth and draw up their astrological charts.” He made big sweeping gestures in the air. “Then I match these charts together to see if Chalisa
and Krishna go have a long, loving marriage.” He brought his palms together at his heart.

Avinash considered this. “Will they?”

“Yes.” Anand raised a finger and his expression grew serious. “But then I have to select a favourable day for them to marry. The trouble is that there is only a few of these to choose from based on their dates, times and places of birth. If Krishna and Chalisa marry on an ominous date, they marriage go be cursed with mother-in-law quarrels and burn-up roti.” Anand winked at Avinash.

Avinash blinked back at him. His mother was dead.

Nanny pinched her grandson. “That’s enough, Avi. Let the pundit do his work.” She watched as Maya returned and placed the time-worn text in Anand’s outstretched arms.

Anand mumbled a prayer over the holy book before opening the cover. The loose spine crackled then splayed easily across Anand’s lap. He turned the pages with care, tracing a finger beneath the Sanskrit script with a gradualness he was sure would exasperate Nanny. He furrowed his brow and murmured to himself. He stroked his moustache and sighed. He shook his head and looked pensive, doubtful.

Nanny reached across the table and touched Maya’s knee. “Maya, would you believe last night I dream Krishna run away with someone else before the wedding and left my Chalisa heartbroken?”

Maya gasped and pressed her fingertips to her mouth.

“I wake up sweating and crying and poor Delores had to squeeze my head with Limacol in the middle of the night.” Nanny shrugged. “Dream’s real strange, ain’t?”

Maya nodded. Delores looked down at her hands.

“You know, I does only sleep restless these days, Maya. Is all the worries I have dancing up like jumbies in my head.” Nanny sighed and hunched over so that she appeared smaller and more frail than she actually was. “Ever since my son and he wife dead, is me alone who does have to look after the Shankar orange estate. Every man I hire is a cheat and crook who only trying to take advantage of a old lady and she money. Would you believe only this morning I had to fire and terminate a next man for he trickery and treachery?”

Chalisa looked away from Nanny’s theatrics. Avinash’s serious eyes grew rounder and glowed.

“Oh!” Maya reached across the table and grasped Nanny’s veiny hands in hers. “Is such a shame, Nanny, I real sorry for—”

Nanny raised her voice over Maya’s fussing. “But I ain’t have long to worry and fret again because I know Krishna go manage my affairs when he marry Chalisa.” She snatched up another sugar cake and deposited it in her mouth. “In fact,” she said between chews, “I go just sign the whole thing over to Krishna when the wedding done. What a old lady like me worrying about money for? Let the young people see to it. Just think, Krishna go be known as The Great Orange Pundit!”

Maya’s glass of mauby stopped inches from her lips. She gazed at Anand, whose focus remained on his scriptures but whose head—or ear, rather—was tilted toward the conversation. He sat perfectly still.

“So, Baba?” Nanny looked at Anand, too, as she crossed her ankles casually. “How the dates looking? September first good?”

Pundit Anand smiled and closed the book. “Very auspicious.”

K
rishna reclined in Auntie Kay’s netted rainbow hammock, one leg flung over the side. A text lay open on his belly, its gilded pages turning themselves in the breeze as he scratched a swelling mosquito bite shaped like a banana leaf on his forearm. The itch became a burn. He abandoned it for a luxurious stretch and nestled deeper into his cocoon, watching wisps of almost-clouds drift across the sky.

“Studying hard?”

A dreadlock fell into view, slicing the perfect sky in two. It swung above Krishna’s nose like a pendulum. Dutchie’s grinning upside-down face appeared next. His eyes danced with their usual mirth.

“Auntie Kay!” Dutchie’s voice boomed across the small courtyard. “Every time I come here your nephew does be dreaming. You see him read a page in that book yet?”

Krishna shut the book and shoved it aside before pulling himself into a seated position. He watched, amused, as Auntie Kay set her laundry down and was enveloped in Dutchie’s embrace. Already petite, Auntie Kay appeared like a doll in Dutchie’s arms with her black bob and yellow headband. She wore a polka dot dress this morning, pink and white with a sash she’d sewn herself, and slippers she could have shared with a child if she’d had any.

“Dutchie-boy, what I go tell you? He does lie in that hammock with a book on he belly, but is only the birds and sky and flowers and trees he studying.” Auntie Kay tried an admonishing look, but it dissolved into a beam as quickly as it began.

Dutchie picked up a pair of Krishna’s wet shorts and clipped them to the clothesline. “You think he lazy, Auntie?”

Auntie Kay considered this, shaking out a yellow sundress and hanging it next to the shorts. “Lazy? No.”

“Stupid, then. Only a stupid man would have plenty-plenty books and never read one.” Dutchie two-stepped around Auntie Kay, light on his feet, adding a T-shirt to the line.

“Stupid? No.”

“Well, then the boy must have real
tabanca
, Auntie.” Dutchie swept a few locks from his face and secured them behind his head with two clothespins. “It ain’t have no other explanation for that.” He tipped his chin at Krishna.

“Yes! Heartache!” Auntie Kay giggled, fastening a skirt to the line.

Krishna collapsed back into the hammock. “Allyuh laugh! Laugh, nuh! My life is one big joke.” He hid his smile behind the hammock’s edge and kicked off the ground with one foot until he was rocking.

Dutchie sauntered back to his friend. He gripped the hammock ropes and swung Krishna high. The ropes slackened as the hammock soared to the house beams and grew taut again as it descended. Krishna’s stomach followed a millisecond behind. The wind whistled in his ears.

“So what we doing today, Boss?” Dutchie asked.

Krishna splayed his arms and legs out as he flew. Auntie Kay’s pink and orange bougainvillea eddied with the sky and the palms, the concrete and the clothes hanging on the line.

“Before allyuh go knock about Tobago, do your Auntie Kay a favour, nuh?”

Krishna slowed the hammock, using his feet as brakes. “Anything.” And he meant it. Auntie Kay had doted on him from the moment he’d arrived in Tobago. She’d taken one look at his suitcases bulging with Hinduism and pulled him into her home, defiance flickering in her black eyes. She wanted to know just why her brother had sent Krishna away; what Hindu law forbade love? She pitied Vimla even more than she did Krishna, often wishing she could send for her. She made Krishna tell her their story again and again until she grew morose or furious, or a peculiar combination of both. And when she’d heard enough, she curled up in her rainbow hammock and woke with the sunny disposition of a child without a care in the world. After that Auntie Kay only spoke of Krishna’s plight when he brought it up. She never pried; she never asked questions; she never passed judgment.