Nothing Like Love (40 page)

“That’s not what Pa tell me,” Vimla said. Something clicked and the latches on the suitcase flew open.

Chandani pulled the coverlet over her legs and busied herself with creating a perfect fold. “Humph! Your father could well carry news!” This morning’s events trolled through the fog to the forefront of her brain. “And anyhow, I earn my drink after Pundit Anand …” Her outburst trailed off and disappeared. A lump formed in her throat. She traced the rose pattern on the coverlet again and again with her finger until the urge to cry subsided.

Vimla walked around the suitcase and sat cross-legged on the bed at Chandani’s feet. She felt Chandani’s toes through the coverlet and gave them a wiggle. “Ma, forget he, nuh? He too money hungry for we and he does lie too bad
for one pundit. I ain’t want to teach in he school and I ain’t want to marry he son neither.”

For once Chandani let Vimla’s impertinence pass. “You mean to tell me you ain’t like that boy again?” She snorted. “Ain’t just the other day you meet Krishna in the cane field?”

Vimla froze.

Chandani smiled a mother’s knowing smile. “Ain’t that where your foot got bit-up?”

“Today is the first time I see Krishna since Pundit Anand send he Tobago.”

Chandani shrugged as if it didn’t matter. She watched relief soften the furrow on her daughter’s brow. “So how come you ain’t bawling down the place like I expect? Instead
I
gone and play the ass and drink till my head get bad.” She laughed, but it sounded more like she was clearing her throat.

“Ma? You all right?”

Chandani forced herself to sit up straighter. “What you think—is the first time I ever take a drink?” She longed for another glass of water and the luxury of uninterrupted sleep.

Vimla laughed. “I think is the first time you ever drink the whole bottle.”

Chandani scowled and lay down again. “I wish I could have rip that moustache out Pundit Anand’s mouth,” she said. “He make we lose everything.” She banged her tiny fist into the spring of the bed. “Imagine how shame your father feel now.”

Vimla swung her legs over the side of the bed. “Ma, Saraswati Hindu School and Krishna Govind ain’t everything.” She knelt in front of the suitcase again and this time flung it open.

Chandani knew she couldn’t really feel that way, but still, Vimla’s resilience was admirable. “Girl, what you doing with that old thing?”

A musty smell filled the room. Chandani sneezed three times, coughed once and glared at Vimla.

“I taking it with me when I go Canada.”

The resolve in Vimla’s voice sent a jolt of dread through Chandani’s chest. “Canada?” She pulled the coverlet over her nose so only her eyes were visible. “Who say you going Canada? Put away that suitcase and go and boil some rice for dinner.”

Vimla stared, unmoving, into the belly of the suitcase as if she were filling it with things in her mind.

“Vimla! You hear me? Put it away. That thing smelling stink!”

The curtains at the window fluttered and a wash of sunlight filled the suitcase. Chandani saw the way Vimla looked longingly at it, and wished she had thrown it out long ago. They had no use for a suitcase. They weren’t going anywhere.

Vimla’s fingers whispered over the beige lining, still pristine. “I could leave Chance and go over to study. Then it wouldn’t matter to we who marry Krishna and who teach in the stupid school.”

Chandani blinked at her daughter like she was speaking some unknown tongue.

“I go study to become a teacher or a nurse. And when I done school, I go come back.”

She looked up at Chandani and Chandani looked away. Vimla was right, of course. She would rise above her disgrace the moment she left for a place people in Chance only dreamed
of. The elusiveness of life in Canada, where snow fell in the winter and apples blossomed in the spring, would garner their respect, their adoration and secret envy all over again.

But she was only a girl. What did Vimla know about a place as vast and remote as Canada? What did Chandani and Om know? A thousand misfortunes could befall Vimla in Canada and Chandani and Om would be powerless to help. Chandani let her imagination conjure the worst of them: Vimla lost in a big city; Vimla frozen into an ice block; Vimla forced to dine on beef and pork; Vimla romanced and impregnated by a man of indistinct race and questionable intentions; Vimla deciding never to come home.

“Ma! You hearing me?” Vimla asked.

Chandani regarded her in silence. Suddenly Vimla was not a naughty girl or a prize pupil; she was a young woman who from the nadirs of her grief had found fresh optimism and greater ambition than Chandani had ever imagined for her.

Chandani faked a cough and pulled the coverlet over her head to hide her grown daughter from her eyes. If she said yes, if she allowed Vimla to leap beyond this small village, she would lose her, send away the person she loved more than anyone else in the world.

“Ma! What you think?”

From beneath the coverlet she said, “I think you should put away that damn suitcase and air out the room before you kill me. And boil the rice like I ask you.”

“And?”

“And bring me a next glass of water. My throat get scratchy from all the dust that suitcase let go.” She sucked her teeth for good measure.

“And what about Canada?”

Chandani pressed her fingers to her temples. Her headache was worsening. “Vimla, is no wonder you does always end up in trouble—you does look for it steady! Krishna and Chalisa ain’t even marry yet, school ain’t even open back yet, and you already looking for some next shit to land up in.” She worked saliva into her mouth and let it sit for a second on her dry tongue before swallowing. “And how you could ask me so boldface to go and knock about in Canada after I see how wild you behave right here at home? Humph! You must be mad!” Chandani listened for an answer, and when there was none, she said, “Bring a tablet with the water when you coming.” She held her breath and waited. When the door slammed, it rattled the door frame and her aching head. Chandani buried her face in her pillow and cursed until she needed air.

That night, Om and Chandani listened to the constant click and snap of the suitcase latches and the sporadic creak of floorboards as Vimla paced in her room across the hall. Chandani stretched like a pipe over the bed, inflexible and silvered by the moon. “I thought I tell you to bust up that suitcase and throw it away?” she said.

Om filled his lungs and let the air whistle softly through his nostrils. They flared and he sneezed. “I try, but she watch me like she go dead if I take it.”

Chandani sucked her teeth, but she had made no attempt to do the deed herself. In the darkest recess of her mind—the place where she dared to glance inward—Chandani wondered why she was afraid to yank the suitcase from Vimla’s grasp.
She had no problem forbidding her going to Canada, criticizing the very absurdity of the idea, but the suitcase she could not take from Vimla. Tears slid from her half-shut eyes into the pillow as she realized that a part of her—a small, yet significant part—hoped Vimla found some way to disobey her.

An hour before dawn, when faint stars were still visible against the colourless sky, Chandani heard Vimla creep from her room. She sat up and nudged Om. “Wake up.” But she knew he wasn’t sleeping—he hadn’t snored all night.

Om caught Chandani’s hand. “Don’t quarrel with she,” he said. His voice was flat, as if he’d already resigned himself to letting his daughter go.

Chandani tugged her hand away. “Ge up, nuh? I ain’t make Vimla by myself.” As she bustled to the door, she realized her heart was pounding.

Vimla was not upstairs. Chandani and Om dashed out to the veranda. It was empty. Chandani was about to scream when she saw Vimla downstairs, standing at the open gates, the suitcase at her feet. Her hair was twisted into a neat plait that dangled down her straight back. She wore a dress that once belonged to Chandani, only it looked different on Vimla somehow, more elegant, less like a flour sack. From this distance Vimla could have been any woman with a plan. But she wasn’t; she was their daughter.

A car rolled through the gloom and idled outside the Narine gates with the headlights off. Chandani gasped and flew down the stairs just as Krishna stepped out and gathered Vimla in an embrace that warmed Chandani’s heart in spite of herself.
She opened her mouth to question Krishna’s intentions, but something in the way Vimla said “So you reach at last” made her hang back in the shadows and watch.

Krishna’s gallant smile faltered. His hands slid down Vimla’s arms, lingered at her fingertips and fell away at his sides. He stumbled through an apology that grew so long-winded and pleading in Vimla’s silence even Chandani pitied him. But more than that, Chandani took secret delight in the way Vimla stood with her shoulders pushed back and her chin tilted just so, listening to Krishna promise himself to her yet again. When he finished—or rather, exhausted—all the ways he could convince Vimla of his loyalty, Krishna said, “Let we go now,” and held out his hand to her.

Om made to charge toward them, but Chandani grabbed his bicep and clung there.

Vimla inclined her head to the side as if she were seeing Krishna for the first time. “To?”

“Tobago.” He gestured to the suitcase sitting at her feet. “I send a message with Minty!”

Vimla’s smile was wistful. “Yes. And you send a message with Sookhoo to meet you in the cane field, too.”

Chandani scowled in the darkness. So Sookhoo was a fishmonger and a news carrier. She would fix him the next time she saw him.

“Here.” Vimla knelt beside the suitcase. The silver latches gleamed in the moonlight. They clicked under the gentle pressure of her fingers and the suitcase fell open like a yawning mouth.

A conch shell of pearl and pink shimmered against the beige lining. Vimla took it in her hands and cradled it like an
object long treasured before offering it to Krishna. “Take it back.”

Something shifted in the twilight. The cicadas held their breath. The palm fronds arcing over the pair rose and fell in a sigh. Flambeaux, who sat watching them from the fence, flicked his tail and stalked away.

“You ain’t coming with me?” Krishna dragged his fingers through his hair and sank to his knees.

“No.”

Chandani closed her eyes. Om wrapped an arm around her spindly shoulders and drew her near.

“But Dutchie and Auntie Kay waiting.”

Vimla shook her head. “Who?”

Krishna took the conch from her outstretched hand and held it to her ear. “Listen. Hear that freedom? Hear that energy?” He had a far-off look in his eyes. “I have a friend called Dutchie …”

D
utchie and Krishna looped their way over the narrow road on old bicycles that
click-clacked
as they pedalled. Branches studded with leaves still wet from last night’s rain slapped the bare chests of the cyclists in greeting. Krishna turned his face to the sky and caught sight of a blue-crowned motmot high in the trees, swinging its long tail feathers like a pendulum.

Dutchie glanced over his shoulder. “You good, Mr. Pundit? We going up a small hill just now.”

“I good, I good,” Krishna said. Sweat streamed down the sides of his body and soaked the elastic waistband of his shorts.

“You sure? I know you does spend whole day praying in Trinidad. Pundit work is real laziness,” Dutchie said.

A driver popped his horn and Dutchie and Krishna veered to the side of the road to let him pass. “Good morning, boys!” Auntie Kay called, waving a yellow handkerchief out the window.

“I could ask that man to give you a drop by my parents’ house, too, you know,” Dutchie said, just as the car coughed around a bend in a haze of exhaust fumes. “Don’t feel shame to ride with the lady.”

Krishna pedalled past Dutchie. “I find you have all kind of big talks this morning, Captain. You must be forget how I bowl you out yesterday. Like allyuh doesn’t know how to play cricket in Tobago, or what?”

Dutchie sailed past Krishna, steering with his knees as he styled his dreadlocks into an elaborate knot.

“Very Parisian,” Krishna said.

“Hush your ass.”

Krishna knew the house as soon as he saw it. The bungalow, painted sunset orange with a white wraparound veranda, sat tucked among a riot of blooming poui, flaming immortelle and bougainvillea trees. Pink climbing roses and vines of purple clematis wrapped the home in an embrace. And just outside the front door, throwing its bumpy leaves skyward in a perpetual expression of celebration, grew four fat aloe vera plants.

“We reach,” Dutchie said, dropping his bicycle in the grass. “This is home.” He jaunted across the lawn and ducked under a trellis of meandering vines and yellow roses. “Well, don’t just stand up there like you lost. Come, Pundit!” And then he vanished around the back of the house.

Krishna’s heart pinched with a strange mixture of wonderment and envy. Even as a boy, he couldn’t ever remember feeling this eager to be in his parents’ company. He lingered before the wooden signs standing proudly by the roadside: T
HE ICE CREAM MAN AND SOUP LADY LIVE HERE. WELCOME!
A tortoise planter squatted at the foot of the sign, blue hydrangeas spilling out of its shell; seashell wind chimes tinkled on the porch; a baby goat curled up on the cushioned bench, dozing in the shade.