Nothing Like Love (8 page)

A weak smile wavered on the headmaster’s lips. He shifted in his chair and sighed. “Mrs. Narine, at the time of the offer—”

Chandani clapped her hands to her chest and gasped as though she’d just remembered something. “Headmaster, you see Vimla name in the paper?” She beamed across the desk at him, her eyes twinkling. “I sorry I forget to bring it for you.”

Headmaster Roop G. Kapil removed his glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.

Chandani stroked Vimla’s hair and her fingers snagged in a tangle of curls. “We so proud of she. So, so proud.”

Vimla clasped and unclasped her damp hands, wondering if there was a shred of truth to anything her mother said. Tentative seeds of hope stirred in her belly. She wrapped her arms around them to keep them safe.

Headmaster Roop G. Kapil swallowed and tugged at his collar with a ringed finger. Sweat beaded at his sideburns. He was melting in his blazer.

“And you know, Headmaster,” Chandani began again, widening her smile.

Headmaster Roop G. Kapil held his hand up and dropped his gaze to his notebook. “Mrs. Narine …” Resolve and weariness tightened his voice. “After some deliberation, we have decided to withdraw our offer for the teaching vacancy in September due to Vimla’s recent indiscretions.”

Vimla watched the headmaster exhale slowly, forgetting to breathe herself. For a moment, no one spoke. Vimla saw Chandani’s eyes narrow, her face darken, and she knew that all her mother’s false sweetness had fallen away.

“Roopy, who is
we
?” Chandani’s voice was clipped.

Vimla’s stomach lurched. Had her mother just addressed Headmaster Roop G. Kapil as
Roopy
? She looked at the man whose very presence frightened the school children into obedience. As his face turned red, a droplet of sweat trickled the length of his sideburn and down his chin. “When I said ‘we,’ I meant the school.” He removed his blue handkerchief and mopped his face.

Chandani sprang to her feet. “Who is ‘the school,’ Roopy? Cut the bullshit, nuh, man!” She leaned over the desk so that her face was inches from the headmaster’s. “Ain’t you mean Pundit Anand decide to withdraw the offer?”

Headmaster pushed his gold-rimmed glasses up on his nose and looked away. “Chand,” he said, rolling his chair back a few inches.

Vimla’s eyes grew wide.
Chand
?

“People talking about Vimla all over the district. How can we—the school—let she teach here? The parents go get vexed. Think of Saraswati Hindu School’s reputation.”

Vimla was startled by the imploring quake in Headmaster Roop G. Kapil’s voice. Chandani pointed a finger at Vimla. “Is people talking about she alone?”

Headmaster lowered his eyes and fiddled with the pen lying across his notebook.

“Ain’t people saying that Vimla get catch with Krishna, Pundit Anand Govind’s son? And Pundit Anand Govind have plenty influence at Saraswati Hindu School, ain’t so?”

Headmaster started to stammer a response, but Chandani wouldn’t hear it. “How a man like you become a headmaster?” she demanded.

Vimla gasped. “Ma!” She grabbed her mother’s reedy arm.

Chandani shook Vimla’s grasp off. “You could never make up your own mind, Roopy,” she said. The veins in her neck throbbed. “You did always rely on the opinions in books, the advice of other people and that damn, stupid notebook of yours for everything.” She picked up the notebook and hurled it at the lattice windows.

Vimla covered her mouth, horrified. She felt faint in the suffocating office.

Headmaster whisked his notebook off the floor and buttoned his blazer over the perspiration seeping through his shirt in patches. “Mrs. Narine, I am sorry you are upset. Perhaps Vimla could find a next opportunity elsewhere. Plenty universities go want she. Perhaps something abroad? Canada? England? We wish you luck, Vimla.” He looked directly into her eyes for the first time and she saw sadness not unlike her own flicker behind his gold-rimmed glasses.

O
m trundled up the side of the road with his head lowered and his fleshy arms swinging through the humidity. He puffed as he went, mopping the perspiration from his sideburns with his hands. He had been walking only a few minutes and already the off-white T-shirt he wore was damp and turning ochre under his armpits. Om could see, out of the corners of his eyes, people watching him as he went. He pretended he didn’t notice his neighbours, resisted the natural urge to raise his hand and call out to them. Instead he thought of Chandani sprawled in resolute defeat across their bed, and Vimla attending to her numerous chores with forlorn eyes. He couldn’t take it anymore; he’d had to leave. They had driven him away with their misery and their scandal, and it was their fault he was here. Om turned off the road and lumbered into Lal’s Rum Shop.

It was a small bar, with seating for no more than twelve men at a time. Plastered against the Caribbean-blue walls were Carib and Stag Lager posters, and just behind the bar Lal had tacked dozens of bikini-clad beauties and a miniature photo of Lord Shiva offering blessings to Lal’s drinkers. A silver radio—Lal’s most prized possession—played the latest chutney song and drowned out the incessant drone of circling flies.

“Om!” Puncheon slid off his rickety brown stool and wobbled to his friend. “
Hari Om!
Fatty-Om!” he sang. His shirt was crumpled and buttoned askew, the front tucked neatly in his pants and the back hanging, pathetic pink coattails, over his rear.

Om offered Puncheon a weak smile and heaved himself onto a stool. “A bottle of Old Oak and two glasses, Lal.”

Lal nodded, wiping his hands on a dishtowel. He plucked a bottle of rum off a shelf and slid it across the bar toward Om. “Enjoy, Boss,” he said.

“Eh, Om, that extra glass for me, boy?” Puncheon slapped his hand on Om’s back, climbing up next to him. He reeked of a lifetime of drink.

Om poured a shot and a half of rum into each glass and handed one to Puncheon, who grasped it, red faced. He downed his drink in a single gulp and held out the glass for a refill. “You is a good friend, Hari-Om-Fatty-Om. So what happened to you, boy? Why you ain’t picking ochroe today?”

Om snorted, his shoulders slumped. “You mean, you ain’t hear?”

Puncheon twirled his coaster and it spun off the bar onto the floor. “Hear what? About Vims and Krish? Yeah, man! Of course I hear. But what that have to do with picking ochroe?”

Om finished off his drink. “Who you hear from, Punch? Is only eleven o’clock in the morning.”

“Lal tell me.”

Om glanced at Lal, who had the courtesy to look shamefaced. “Where you hear, Lal?”

Lal began wiping down his bar. “I hear from Bulldog, who hear from Kapil, who hear from Dr. Mohan, who hear from Sangita Gopalsingh.”

Om nodded. “Sangita Gopalsingh,” he muttered.

“Eh, man, that woman real beautiful, ain’t?” Puncheon grinned. “Every time I see she, I does want to hug she up and kiss she up and rub she up and love she up. But she always looking so sour-sour like she suck a pound of lime. She need some good Puncheon in she life. That is what she need.”

Lal shook his head. “One of these days, Punch, Rajesh go carve you up with he cutlass and scatter you across Trinidad.”

Puncheon shrugged. “One of these days, I go get sober. One of these days, Om go get thin.”

Om and Lal laughed.

“So what you going to do, Boss?” Lal leaned on the counter, his eyes sincere. “Talk to the Govinds? Ask them for Krishna to marry Vimla?”

Om shrugged his heavy shoulders. “Chandani don’t think they go take Vimla.”

Lal poured Puncheon and Om another drink and added a splash of Coke this time. “How you mean? Vimla real smart, I hear. She real pretty, too. You and Chand is good people. Why the Govinds wouldn’t consider a match?”

Puncheon jumped to his feet and threw his hands in the air. “Hold up! Hold up! You say Vimla smart, Lal?”

“You ain’t see the paper?” Lal had saved himself a copy. He slid it across the bar to Puncheon.

“If Vimla so smart, why she sneak right in front she mother house to meet she boyfriend? She sound like a real stupidee to me.”

Om shot Puncheon a warning look and Puncheon climbed back onto his stool.

Om decided to change the subject. “Boy, Chandani ain’t cooking.”

Puncheon gasped. “What happened to Chand—she two hand break?” He glanced upward. “Lawd, Father!” Then he tapped his empty glass on the bar. “Pour me a next drink, Lal. This is real tragic news I hearing!”

“No, Puncheon, she hand ain’t break.”

“Then how come she ain’t in the kitchen? She two foot break?”

“No, she gone on strike, you jackass!”

“On strike?” Puncheon dropped his head into his hands. “Man, what I hearing? You let your wife go on strike? What the ass kind of thing is that?” He whacked the bar with his hand. “I getting stressed out, man. You driving me to drink.”

Lal laughed at Puncheon’s theatrics. “You full of shit, Punch.”

“But really,” Puncheon continued, turning to Om, “you need to go home and beat some sense into Chandani, and when you done that, beat some shame into Vimla, and when you done that, come back here and buy a next bottle of rum for we to celebrate with.”

Om gulped his drink. His limbs felt loose and light now, and suddenly the chaos unravelling in his life seemed less important. He looked at Puncheon, who was dancing in his
chair to a song on the radio, arms in the air, eyes closed. It was in moments like these that Om understood why Puncheon went through life intoxicated. He thought fleetingly about his ochroe drying in the sun; he thought about his daughter, who had betrayed his trust; he thought about his wife, who had abandoned him for her grief. “Bullshit,” he slurred.

Puncheon opened his eyes. “Yes, man, real bullshit. Fatty-Om, you want me to go and beat Chandani for you?” He slipped off his stool and staggered to the door. “But allyuh don’t wait for me.” He looked over his shoulder with a wicked grin. “Because when I done deal with Chandani, I going to visit my sweet little Julie mango, Sangita.” Puncheon laced his fingers behind his head and thrust his pelvis back and forth.

He made it to the main road before he collapsed in the heat and had to be carried back into the shop.

C
handani’s strike stretched on for days. She stopped greeting the sun in the mornings; she no longer offered flowers to her little brass murtis. She refused to wash the wares or tend to her fowl, neglected the laundry and her coconut broom. She spoke to no one except herself, and even then her words were mumbled and indecipherable to Om, who eavesdropped from the other side of the bedroom door.

Om coped with Chandani’s neglect the only way he knew how: he delegated her tasks to Vimla. But on the third evening Chandani shut herself up in their bedroom, Om roused her gently from beneath the coverlet. “Chand, I working real hard all day, and three days I come home to Vimla’s burn-up roti. Get up, nuh, Chand, and cook something nice for me.” He rubbed his massive belly with a callused hand.

Chandani had drawn the curtains, but the relentless tropical
sun shone through in faint beams of watercolour yellow, a spotlight for dancing dust particles and buzzing flies. She lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, her hands folded neatly over her stomach. Her long hair, usually oiled and shining, spread across Om’s pillow in dry, lifeless tangles. She looked like she was waiting to be lowered into the earth and this worried Om. He hovered over her, waiting for a response, pressing the weight of his belly into her small frame. Her gaze remained fixed on the ceiling beams until Om retreated down the stairs, miserably massaging his rumbling belly.

The following day Om found Chandani sitting on the only chair in their bedroom, staring out the window onto their acres of cane. He moved beside her and laid his large hand on a sagging shoulder. “Chand, you cooking today? I tired eating doubles. I wasting away here.”