The Worlds Within Her (40 page)

I was young. I had no stories to tell. But I listened. And from the stories I learnt that the world was as populated with ghosts as with people. They roamed everywhere, malevolent souls who had been improperly dispatched after death, so that they were condemned to wander aimlessly, terrorizing the living. It was said that the cocoa estate was the kingdom of the dead. We children were warned not to venture into it, for we would not return. We were told that only dogs could see them, that dogs could sense the presence of death, and that they would howl when they did. We had dogs, of course, and they howled every night. I was so terrified I would not peek out the window as some of the older children did in hopes of seeing a ghost for themselves. Is it any wonder that I developed a fear of death as paralysing as the fear some people have of cats or airplanes?

I remember, vaguely, the death of some relative. A man who had been run over while bicycling home from work. We were all obliged to attend the funeral. I remember the stifling heaviness of the atmosphere, men standing around smoking and talking in hushed tones, women sniffling and dabbing at their eyes. And I remember when the body was brought to the house. How the men lifted the coffin with gentle, holy effort. How the women began to wail and sob. How the man's wife, or perhaps his daughter, I am not clear on this, how she lunged for
the casket and attempted to throw herself on it. Oh, my dear Mrs. Livingston, my heart speeds up even now, as I tell you of these things, the fear I felt as a child returns to me like hot and cold rivulets shuddering through my body …

Yes, yes, some tea. My mouth has gone dry, as it did that day so many decades ago …

It was at this point that I buried my face in my mother's dress and would not be budged. I wanted to see no more, hear no more. I would not be calmed, and so was taken away to a quieter place. Shielded.

I acquired the reputation of being a nervous child, and so was shielded further from anything that might upset me. No one told ghost stories anymore.

And yet I wonder …

I wonder whether it might not have been better for my parents to shield me a little less. To help me, you see, get used to the idea of death. But this was not the way of parents at that time, and the urge to shield remains part of the parental condition. I do not blame them. I eventually outgrew the outrageousness of my fear. I learnt how to deal with death through dealing with it in life.

Then my granddaughter died and this question returned to me. The child's room had to be emptied, you see. I was fearful that it would become a shrine of sorts, her things undisturbed, a home for a ghost. And so, two months later, I insisted the room be emptied. I insisted it be Yasmin's job, and I agreed to be there to help her. My son-in-law could not remain in the house. He went to his office where, I suspect, he did nothing.

Yasmin's knees buckled when we entered the room, and she leaned on me for support. I opened up the windows, ripped the sheets from the bed. I forced myself to be vigorous. Yasmin made
the effort, bundling the sheets, readying garbage bags. Then she opened the child's closet. Her dresses were still hanging there. Yasmin gave a little moan, and fell to the floor. I helped her up, led her to the living room and brought her something to drink.

Then …

Well, to be brief, Mrs. Livingston, I finished the job. I emptied the room. I put the clothes and toys and books into garbage bags for donation to a charity. Her more personal effects — her drawings, her play jewellery, the modelling clay which I imagined would still bear her fingerprints — I threw out.

And I wonder still, my dear Mrs. Livingston, did I do the right thing? Might I, in sparing Yasmin, have left a wound unhealed that might have closed more successfully through the execution of the painful duty? Or, to put it another way, have I left ghosts in my daughter's head?

ASH THRUSTS THE
tabloid before her without warning and she accepts it automatically, noticing as she does so that his fingers are dark with ink, as if he has recently had his fingerprints taken. The paper is cheap, fibres fat and so damp Yasmin feels that, if she squeezes, it will drip.

Her eyes find the words just ahead of his pointing finger:

ASHES RETURN

THE CREMATED ASHES OF MRS. SHAKTI RAMESSAR HAVE BEEN RETURNED TO HER BIRTHPLACE. RAMESSAR,
WIFE OF ONE-TIME LOCAL POLITICO VERNON “RAM” RAMESSAR, MOVED TO CANADA AFTER HER HUSBAND WAS KILLED UNDER MYSTERIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES BY

Yasmin turns the page, looking for the rest of the text.

Ash says, “Don't bother looking. It end there.”

Cyril, sitting across the table from her, studying her, says, “Page five. Imagine.”

Yes. Page five. Interposed between a story of rural incest and another of urban decapitation. Her father's place in history?

Cyril says, “The hacks moved on a long time ago. And we have no historians.”

Ash says, “We like the tree falling in the forest. If nobody hear it falling …”

Yasmin frowns through the quickening of her heart. She folds the paper in two, hands it back to Ash.

Cyril rises, hands flattening on the tabletop, pressing himself up — as if he is tired or drained, somehow enfeebled. He wavers briefly, then steadies himself. “Come, Yasmin,” he says with a sudden decisiveness. “Let's go for a drive.”

THE CYNICS WERE
the ones who said of Celia, Couldn't she see it coming? And the critics were the ones who asked, Did her own leaves hide truths from her? The cynics were the ones with the smirk, and it was from the critics that one sensed a measure of anguish. Critics are optimists, don't you think? As for the
cynics, I've always believed them to be people who have given up. There is something airless about them.

It was a way of laughing at her, you see, of mocking her. I hold it to be disrespectful. Yes, I admit she may have brought it on herself to a certain extent. This reading of the leaves was a parlour game, but its unspoken arrogance aroused resentment. What, after all, is more arrogant than purporting to see into the future of others?

People liked Celia, they had no wish to wound her. But she had another arrogance, you see, my dear Mrs. Livingston, although she did not see it as such. I may have mentioned before that she was extraordinarily proud of her swimming. She was not a large woman, but her shoulders were wide and muscular, her arms long. She once told me that when her strokes had found their rhythm, there was no effort and no pain. She felt she could go on forever. Her strokes were powerful enough that both my husband and Cyril, after repeated failures, declined to race her anymore. And she was courageous too, going far out, beyond the breakers. I remember Cyril standing at the shore following her progress through binoculars, her arms like white wings flashing, creating hardly a splash as they cut through the green water.

Many thought that she was showing off, but the truth is that Celia believed she was being like us — being an islander, that is. Islanders, she assumed, were swimmers, we had to be, you see. She somehow, or perhaps conveniently, forgot that England too was an island, and that swimming has never been among the qualities for which Englishmen were admired.

And this was why people chose to belittle her afterwards, I've always believed. It was not so much because of the leaves. It was, rather, because of her inability to see …

Excuse me for a moment, my dear, I seem to have something in my eye. Now where have I put my purse? Ahh, here it is …

Yes, Yasmin says the same thing. She too thinks me old-fashioned, but I do prefer my hanky. You cannot perfume a paper napkin, after all. Now if you'll excuse me for just a moment …

THE ROUTE TAKES
them along the coast for a while, the road rising and dipping — glimpses of cliff walls, the sea mottled in a zebra pattern of blue and bottle green — until it bends inland and begins a steady rise into the hills.

In the silence, Yasmin becomes aware of the sounds of movement: the wind whispering in through the open windows; the murmuring engine, the tires searing along the asphalt. Since entering the car Cyril has said nothing beyond, “We going to the north coast.”

Knowing this, though, is of no help to Yasmin. Her sense of direction, usually dependable, is scrambled. Every corner, every twist and turn serves only to confuse her more. She has no idea where they are going — but she is with Cyril, and so she knows she is safe.

Presently the road narrows, no longer following the contour of the land, but cutting its way through walls of rocky, reddish earth that enclose it on either side.

Soon the banks of earth give way to vegetation that is thicker, less delicate, with eruptions of dense bamboo and formidable trees, thick-leaved and braided with
lianas.
The forest floor is an unkempt embroidery of twigs, trunks and branches, the earth
dark and wet — and, beyond a few feet, mysterious with darkness. Yasmin sees giant ferns, and shades of green defiant in their subtlety.

Cyril points out a poinsettia, a splash of red in the emerald gloom. The flower changes colour every six months, he says. Then, with a light laugh: “Women says it's got the character of a man. Inconstant, nuh.”

Branches overhead reach across the road, blocking out the sun. The air turns cool, and a rain so fine it is like thick mist forces them to turn the windows up.

A tropical land — but Yasmin shivers.

Cyril turns on the windshield wipers, and Yasmin's heart begins to pound when she sees, in the gloom not far ahead, that the road comes to an end — not petering out, but an abrupt termination. She sees a rigidity of blackened tree trunks, and a shower of heart-shaped leaves as large as broadsheets. “What is this?” she says, her throat tight with tension.

“We almost out,” Cyril says. “This is the summit. Not much of a view, I know, but that going to improve. We'll be heading down to the coast in a minute or so.”

Her tension swiftly recedes. The road does not end — it was an illusion of the forest and the light. She regrets her fear and the rush of distrust — wants to apologize, but restrains herself. Cyril has apparently not noticed. An apology would require an explanation — and that would cause him unnecessary pain.

She is still making an effort to force her body to relax when, as they round the unseen corner that has betrayed her to herself, the forest falls away and she is momentarily blinded by the sunlight.

The descent to the coast is swift, the road less winding, the vegetation less thick.

It must have something to do with the breeze off the sea, Cyril says — a breeze which, with the windows rolled down again, is constant and warm and thick with salt.

And with the sun too, he adds. The sun which scorches the earth, drying it out and turning the forest friendly.

Yasmin says, “It's like a different world.”

Cyril nods. “We're a small place, but the land reaches very high. And you never know what you going to find around any corner.”