Nothing Like Love (30 page)

C
handani knelt at her humble altar with her hands clasped, mumbling a mantra she’d learned as a girl. The mantra came out hurried, so she started again from the beginning, trying to take breaths at the end of each line. She did this nine times before it felt right, nine times, until her hands stopped shaking and her heart fell into its regular rhythm.

Chandani sat back on her heels and dropped her hands into her lap. The floorboards beneath her knees creaked. Her gaze flitted from the blazing diya sitting at Lakshmi Devi’s feet to Vimla’s closed bedroom door. Chandani hoped she hadn’t woken Vimla. It was a silly fear, she knew. Vimla had slept through Om’s snoring and the cocks’ crowing for years. A creaky floorboard wouldn’t disturb her now, not when she was fighting a fever hotter than Om’s peppers. But Chandani worried about it anyway. She couldn’t help herself. Her
daughter had been bitten by a snake; what else was a mother to do?

Before she began her prayers, Chandani had deliberated over which of Bhagwan’s incarnations she should appeal to. Lord Shiva had come to mind first. After all, unlike the other deities, who wore flowers around their necks, Lord Shiva’s garland was a snake. Chandani had lit the diya in front of her picture of Lord Shiva and begun to pray. The prayers went well until she snuck a glimpse of the snake coiled around his neck. It seemed to glare back at her, a hint of wicked mocking in its eyes. Startled, Chandani slid the diya with her finger across the floor in front of Lakshmi Devi’s picture, feeling safer under the soft gaze of the ever-smiling goddess. Now that she was finished, she hoped she had made the right decision.

Chandani rose from the altar, leaving the diya burning. She turned the handle to Vimla’s door and pushed it open just wide enough for her to slip through. A splotch of grey and mauve drifted on the horizon, casting the room in early-morning shadows. The air was stale; the place felt muggy and smelled of suffering. Chandani tied the ends of both drapes into knots to allow more air to circulate through the room then sank into the worn chair by Vimla’s bedside.

Vimla was lying on her back, the coverlet tangled in her limbs like she’d fought it through the night. Her bandaged ankle lay propped on a pillow, her other leg bent at a forty-five-degree angle. As always, Vimla’s hair was a mess of waves. It splayed across the pillow and clung to the sides of her face, damp from a night of sweating. She moaned. Chandani froze, held her breath. Vimla flung her arm to the side, just missing Chandani’s knee, and then settled into the mattress again. Exhaling,
Chandani reached over to brush the hair from her daughter’s face, then stopped herself. She knew the next few days would be wretched for Vimla; better not to disturb her sleep, however fitful.

Chandani picked an old copybook off Vimla’s desk and fanned herself. As the air blew across her sticky skin, she let last night’s ruminations drag themselves to the forefront of her mind. After Vimla had fallen asleep, Chandani had spent the quiet hours considering the implications of the snake bite. Everyone would have a prediction after hearing of it, and nobody would be shy about sharing it. Chandani sighed, already wary of the expert analyses that would come her way. She only hoped the wedding would overshadow Vimla’s incident. Certainly Faizal Mohammed had made it clear he thought Vimla was cursed; he prayed Allah would protect him from any residual misfortune he might experience through proximity alone. Chandani had wanted to stand on a footstool and slap him, but then, that would have been ungrateful, considering he’d taken Vimla to the hospital. She knew Faizal wouldn’t be the only one in the district to think Vimla’s encounter with the macajuel was portentous. Hadn’t she lost her reputation and her teaching post in a day and a night? Vimla was like a star that kept falling. But Chandani clung—as any mother would—to the hope that Vimla’s snake bite was some deranged signal from Lord Shiva that she was under his care, a suggestion maybe of a turning of events. Chandani nodded, as if to congratulate herself on the theory. She settled into her chair and shut her eyes, chanting the name of Lord Shiva under her breath until eventually her fanning slowed, her recitation trailed off and she was pulled into a deep sleep.

Two hours later Chandani rattled around in her kitchen, trying to expend some of her nervous energy. Vimla was awake now, but she was still weak with fever.

“Chand.” Om lumbered through the door, setting a basket of bird peppers on the kitchen counter. “What you doing?”

Chandani hated being jerked from her thoughts. “Why I always have to be
doing
something?” she asked, removing the grater from the cupboard.

Om’s eyebrows flew skyward. “You don’t, but I can see that you doing something,” he said, sitting down. “I only asking what it is.” He shrugged and swatted at a fly buzzing around his head.

“Om, what I could possibly be doing in the kitchen?” She grasped the grater in one hand and a cassava in the other. “I partying!” she said, awkwardly twisting her narrow torso, a scowl on her lips.

Om made a face. “You need practice. You go can’t dance at the wedding like
that
.”

Chandani sucked her teeth. “It have any ripe pumpkin in the vine? Go and cut one for me, nuh? I making pone.”

Om brightened. “Anything for you, my sweet sapodilla.” He whistled as he lumbered out of the kitchen and around the back of the house. “Chand,” he called to her through the open window. “How you think Vimla get bite by that snake?”

Chandani froze mid-grate with the cassava in her hand. She pursed her lips tightly over her answer.

Om appeared in the window, holding a pumpkin in the palm of one hand and his cutlass in the other. “Is strange for a macajuel to come into the open savannah grass, ain’t?” He blinked at Chandani, waiting for her to agree.

Chandani grated faster, saying nothing.

Om shrugged. He spread a piece of newsprint on the ground and set the pumpkin down. Grunting as he squatted, Om raised the cutlass high. Chandani saw the blade flash in the sunlight and slice through the thick air. It struck the pumpkin with a crack and the gourd fell open and displayed its guts. “Chand, you want me grate this up outside?”

“Well, it wouldn’t grate itself, Om.” As soon as Chandani said it she was sorry; she didn’t want him to come back in the kitchen and talk to her of Vimla. Chandani handed Om her grater through the window and turned her back on him to search for another.

“A plate, too,” Om said.

“You think you marry a coolie labourer here? I busy. Come and get what you need.”

“If that’s the case, I could have just grate the pumpkin inside,” he said.

Chandani bit back the sharp remark ready on her tongue and handed him a plate. She resumed her grating—head down.

“So, Chand, Faizal said he find Vimla in the savannah grass. He said the snake bite she as she was bringing home the bull and the cow.”

Chandani ground the cassava, now small, against the grater until she nearly cut her finger. “But you know, I remember I bring the cow and the bull in before I leave yesterday,” Om said.

Chandani realized she was groaning. She cleared her throat and tried for impassivity.

“And the bull and the cow was tie up exactly how I leave them. The rope was not loose and in a halfway knot how Vimla does tie it.” Om looked up at Chandani now, having finished grating half the pumpkin. He passed the plate to her through the window, fanning it with his other hand to keep the flies off.

Chandani regarded him warily. “So what you saying, Om?” She turned her back, making ceremony out of placing the grated pumpkin on the countertop and covering it with a dishtowel. She knew what he was saying. It had taken him all this time to realize what she had gathered the moment she’d laid eyes on the scratches on Vimla’s arms and face, on her soiled clothes and muddy slippers.

Om folded his arms over his chest and shrugged. “I think Vimla get bite by the macajuel in the cane. But what she gone there for?” He was talking to himself now, trying to unravel the mystery aloud.

Chandani rolled her eyes. She emptied the grated cassava and pumpkin into a mixing bowl.

Om popped his head through the window. “You want some coconut for that, Chand? Gloria Ramnath does make she pone with grate coconut and that thing does taste sweet and nice.” He smacked his lips.

Chandani bristled. “Why you don’t go and live by Gloria Ramnath and eat she coconut pone whole day and night?”

Om reached his hand through the window and grabbed his wife’s chin playfully. “Don’t jealous, Chand!” he said.

Chandani slapped his hand away and reached for the sugar.

The crash of glass against concrete distracted Om. “Blackie! Scratch!” he yelled, turning away from the window. Chandani was grateful when he took off after his dogs. She knew they had barrelled into his pepper sauce jars sitting in the sun again. “You mother’s ass!” she heard Om holler, his slippers slapping across the ground. The dogs howled.

“Om!” she yelled. “Light the coals in the barrel for me, nuh!” She waited for him to grunt a response and then let her thoughts travel back to Vimla—they always came back to Vimla. Of course she hadn’t been bitten when she was seeing about the cow and bull. There were so many gaping holes in that story even Om had figured that out.

Chandani added a lump of butter, evaporated milk, cinnamon and vanilla extract to the cassava and pumpkin. She folded them all together until they were a sweet mess.

There was only one explanation for Vimla sneaking through the cane field alone and it sent a muddle of pain and fury bubbling in Chandani’s blood.

She tilted her mixing bowl over a baking pan and used the back of her spoon to evenly spread the batter.

Chandani had wanted to scream when she figured it out, to shake Vimla and demand why she would even attempt such a thing. But Vimla was barely lucid and Chandani found her rage quickly quelled by her daughter’s suffering. This only added to Chandani’s exasperation. She did not like having to control her anger. It meant that she had to go about her chores with all her curses and questions stuffed inside her soul. They couldn’t stay there long. It was only a matter of time.

Chandani took her pan outside to the metal barrel. She used the dishtowel slung over her shoulder to remove the hot
lid. A haze of heat and coal smoke rose up to greet her from the bottom. Chandani lowered the pan onto a rack balanced in the middle of the barrel on two pipes. Then she returned the cover and lit the coals on the bottom with the book of matches Om had left her on the ground. She stepped away from the barrel, feeling uncomfortable now that her hands were idle, and sighed.

As the pone baked, Chandani cast her gaze across Om’s cane fields. The cane was tall, profuse with leaves. Someone who didn’t know the land could easily get lost in the heart of it all. Someone who did know the land could use it to shroud all sorts of clandestine adventures from the rest of the world. Chandani looked farther, squinting against the sun. Om’s last acre bordered Faizal Mohammed’s land, and just at the edge of their plots, a private road opened up and led right out of the district. She was sure the macajuel had bitten Vimla somewhere there and that she had headed in the direction of home immediately after. That explained how Faizal had discovered her.

What Chandani couldn’t fathom was why Vimla wanted to run away from home and where the ass she was planning to go.

C
halisa tiptoed outside, away from the bedee where the puja had taken place, leaving the smells of dahlias, incense and ghee behind. Nanny had told her to wait inside until they returned, but the house was stifling and lonesome without Avinash and Delores. She crept into the tent erected for her maticoor and took long, luxurious breaths. The tent trembled and snapped in the night air. She looked up and squinted at the dazzling lights one of Nanny’s minions had wired throughout the tent. Enormous moths fluttered under the canopy, their gossamer wings like windows. The sheets spread across the floorboards lay askew now, upset by the shifting of bottoms and traffic of excited feet as they’d hurried away. It occurred to her that she would never be alone again before the wedding. Now was the time to run.