Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab (15 page)
She did not take her eyes off mine, and I could feel mine tickling with discomfort. She raised her hand to touch my arm, and I felt triumph wash over me. But instead of a friendly touch Zain pinched my skin. I surprised myself when I instantly flipped up that same arm and gripped her wrist hard. I said, in a soft voice, “Don’t do that.” There was no smile on my face now.
But that was when her facade broke, and she was suddenly grinning. I felt her body relax. My grip relaxed then, too, but I did not let go of her hand. I remained unsmiling, suddenly frightened, but not of her.
All this Sydney had related to me in bewildering detail, and his words flooded back to me now. I read the letters as if parched, eager for any bit of new insight into Sydney, unable to let him go. I cut the stack of letters and removed another.
How can you not think Mrs. Rodriguez’s son is not THE most handsome boy you’ve ever, ever, ever seen? I think I am totally in love. I am feeling wild and giddy. Why on earth didn’t I take Rodriguez’s Commerce class? I could have gotten to him through her, don’t you think? His name is Paul, but they call him Dizzy. Dizzy?! Hmm, I wonder if that is because of what he is, or what he makes others.
Zain
The one immediately following read:
I don’t care, I will convert. Do you think I have a chance? His mother knows I have brains. He can find out for himself what else I have to offer. Which is a lot.
Zain
I read several more consecutive notes.
But, Sid, you are such a prude. Have you never been in love with a single fellow? How can you not think Paul is a total catch?
Z
I know I have a lot to offer because I have a very fertile imagination, which can’t be said of you.
Z
You are not the first to say I am self-centred. And you are not only a prude, you are very stuck-up. I don’t know why I give you so much of my time. I don’t understand you. You spend all your free time with me, but you don’t let me know you. You don’t open up at all. What are you hiding?
Z
Well, it feels like you’re hiding something. I tell you everything that is going on with me, and you hardly ever tell me a thing. I think about you all the time,
Sid, but you don’t consider me ever, do you? What does it mean to be a best friend? You have to share yourself. Not just your damn sandwiches and your homework, but YOURSELF. Should I be reconsidering this friendship?
Do you like the flower? I left it for you. But don’t just leave it sitting on your desk, you moron. Put it in some water. There are jars by the sink in the art room. It’s from Mum’s garden. Do you like it?
Z
I put these back and cut the stack again, this time farther along. I neatly arranged the two parts on the bed, so that the letters could be positioned again in their proper order.
Dear Sid,
It’s been three days since you left, and I know it takes longer than that for a letter to arrive, but I can’t wait to hear from you. What is Canada like? It’s cold, of course, but how cold? Have you seen snow yet? Have you met any other Trinidadians? I am so worried that you are going to replace me overnight. I can’t believe you’re starting university, and I will now be a year behind you. I wish I didn’t have to work this year.
Angus comes over almost every day after his work. Mum has dinner ready for him now when he arrives. I don’t know how I feel about that.
Sometimes proud, sometimes like she’s pushing my family on him. Dad still doesn’t talk to him much, but he doesn’t take his eyes off him either. They still won’t let me go out with him, except to buy corn up the hill, or for coconuts in town, and then we have to be right back. Angus said he will convert to the Muslim faith if that is what it takes (you might remember that he is R.C.). Sometimes I am so in love with him, and then there are strange moments when I don’t have a clue what love is. Sometimes it’s like something in an advertisement, and if you have it, or if you give it, then you’re very cool and have a lot of prestige. If you don’t have it, or if you don’t give it, you’re a failure. Everybody is supposed to get married, so I suppose I will one day too, and Angus isn’t a bad fellow. He is applying to go to university next year. Mum knows this, but not Dad.
OK, I want to tell you something—I don’t have anything to compare this to, but I love it when he kisses me. His kisses have become what I would call a little more urgent lately, and they’ve become open-mouthed. That I like a lot. I can’t go into detail about how I feel, because I am shy—yes, me, I am shy, and yes, with you—but I am sure you will find out very soon what I am talking about, if you haven’t already. Have you? I can’t believe you didn’t let Bindra kiss you before you left. You don’t know what you’re missing. You are so cold-hearted
sometimes. That fellow would give his life for you. But if you’re not interested, then you’re not interested, I suppose. Who are you waiting for, anyway? Don’t go and fall in love with some crazy white Canadian, just because you might be lonely. You have to come back here and marry someone from here. I wonder if Bindra will wait for you. Perhaps distance will make your heart grow fonder. A lot of people would want their son to marry into your family. You’re lucky. But Angus is the one for me. It is only a matter of time before Angus and I get on with it, I imagine. If we get married, you will have to come back for the wedding, OK? I can’t believe the things I tell you. I hope you don’t show my letters to anyone.
OK, write me as soon as you can. I hope you have already, and that this letter and yours to me are crossing paths.
Your best friend ever, and forever,
Zain
My heart quickened. The irony was not lost on me—how could Zain have known when she wrote these notes and letters that they would, long after her passing, mean so much to someone she had never met? I was learning now
from her
about Sid. It hadn’t occurred to me before that there might have been a time when Zain did not know that kissing this fellow, Bindra, would not have brought Sid any
pleasure. It could only have been painful for Sid, traumatic, to have to hide, especially from her closest friend, the fact that she was aware even then that she wouldn’t marry or live a traditional life. But I also knew that, in the end, Zain did not abandon Sid.
I reflected on the words before me and on what Sydney himself had told me of his adventures with Zain, and I felt, for the first time, gratitude and a kinship with her. We were, I saw, the warp and weft of his life, and as incongruous as it might have been, I felt something akin to excitement begin to creep over me.
I read the letter that followed, hungry for more about both of them.
Dearest Sid,
Dad still isn’t talking to us, and that is causing hard times at home. He refuses to accept that I have taken an apartment up here in Curepe, near the University. Angus still lives with his parents and he drives up for his classes. Of course, he stays over often. Mum knows that Angus stays over, but she hasn’t told Dad. She doesn’t have to. He has it in his head that Angus and I are living together and that I am a fallen woman. Ha! I wish! Well, I am, sort of, aren’t I! I am worried about Mum. Poor thing. She and Dad hardly talk to each other, and I am the cause of it. But, thank God for telephone service coming to the cane field; I talk to Mum every
day, two and three times some days. She still (“still”? This will never change!) makes all Dad’s meals and sits at the table with him while he eats, even if they don’t speak a word to each other. I can’t imagine being with anyone like that for an entire lifetime.
Anyway, enough crying. I am sad you didn’t come for the wedding, which just shows that you are strange, and will probably never change, and I guess I have no choice but to accept you as you are. And if you’re trying to get rid of me, I won’t give you the satisfaction. That is just the kind of person I am. Anyway, we love the bedspread you so kindly sent. It is on the bed right now, and already all kinds of wonderful things have happened beneath it and on top of it! Use your imagination. Angus wants to be a different kind of man, he says, so he makes breakfast on Sunday mornings. Eggs. He can’t cook roti, or
choka
or anything like that, but he can boil an egg, and do toast. And he actually ties up the garbage and takes it downstairs every night. I can’t believe how lucky I am. (I am half joking, of course.) (But half serious too.) (Men really are a different species. I think they need us more than we need them, which is to acknowledge that we do need them, or at least their bodies! Yes, I am enjoying that part a lot. An awful lot!)
School is going well. I am still planning to do medicine, but that is one area where Angus and I
have disagreements. It’s really the only thing we ever have disagreements about. I don’t think it’s such a big deal, but it’s the only thing we fight about. I really don’t understand. His father talked him into taking over the business, and he talks about me working in the business, regardless of what degree I get or what I say. I will have to show him who is the boss, but there is time for that. I am enjoying being bossed (just a little bit bossed) at the moment.
So, I hope one day you will tell me what you are learning about yourself. It isn’t very fair to just say, “I am finding out so many things about myself, and my ways in the world are beginning to make sense to me, where they haven’t, either to myself or to others, before.” Just what the heck are you talking about? I am interested—I know sometimes I give—or rather gave—the impression that I wasn’t really interested in what you had to say, only in telling you about myself, but I have to admit I wonder all the time what you’re doing, what you’re seeing, what you’re feeling and thinking, who you’re becoming, and if we’ll always be friends when you come back here, after being in such a big strange place. Just don’t get strange (or should I say strangER?), OK?
I have to go study now, and then get dinner, but please write me back and tell me something very specific and detailed.
I love Angus, of course, and deeply too. So, now that that is out of the way, I can tell you I love you, and you won’t think I am strange (I think there are some people like that at the University, but each to his own, her own, whatever!). So:
I love you,
Zain
P.S. Angus sends his love too. He is so sweet.
———
At the bank that day, Mrs. Morgan expressed her sympathy, as if I were Sydney’s closest relative. How much did she know about Sydney? I wondered.
In the safety deposit box I found another copy of Sydney’s will, the deed to the house, bank share certificates, and share certificates for National Golden Flour Mill and for Tabor Cacao Industry. In a small cream-coloured envelope pocked with what looked like age spots was a tiny yellowed black-and-white photograph with scalloped edges. It showed a little girl in a short frilly dress, a tall, young and rather dashing man and a plump, very well-dressed and good-looking woman. The man, suited, stood on a step holding the child, who sat atop the broad platform of the staircase pillar, while the woman stood at ground level, one hand on one of the child’s plump legs. The child, who could not have been more than two years of age, had long black hair pulled back in a ponytail and bangs. Her hands
were clasped and she grinned as if she were the happiest person on earth. On the back, written in a faded turquoise ink and a hand that took pride in penmanship, were the words
Siddhani with Dad and Mum. Mum is pregnant here with Gita
. Looking closer I could see that Mrs. Mahale was more than simply plump. I couldn’t for the longest while take my eyes off Sid. I could see nothing in the face of the child in that photo that might have suggested she would one day want to change her gender. Beside the photo in the deposit box was a royal-blue velvet pouch held closed by a gold cord. Inside were delicate pieces of gold jewellery—part, I thought, of Sid’s inheritance from her mother, but nothing I could imagine Sydney ever to have worn, save perhaps for when he was that rather pretty little girl.
And there were a few newspaper clippings. Quickly scanning them, I recognized the story. How could I not? Ninety-six hours before, Sydney had laid bare what had weighed so heavily on his mind for twenty-five years, and here was the story in my hand, as it had appeared in the news: “Spice Baron’s Wife Murdered in Home Invasion.” I confess I had often thought—without malice, I must add in my defence—that Sydney was an old person doing what old people did: he was reminiscing, stuck on a single story, perhaps even a single point of view, and I was his trapped audience. But as he finally laid out the full story for me in the hours before we took him to the hospital, I had seen why he’d insisted on telling it to me, and why he hadn’t brought
it to a close earlier. Now, in my hands, were the news reports of Zain’s murder.
And last, there were the three notebooks. They were all of the same size, held together with a thin leather cord. I undid the cord and opened one of the books. I knew the handwriting well. I read the first sentence, savouring the familiar neat calligraphy that slanted backwards like men straining on the rope in a game of tug-of-war. But a little farther on I tumbled in a riptide of emotion, surfing one moment with elation that in my hand were words Sydney had written himself, and in the next dragged under that I could not ask him what he had meant by this or by that. In a sense, these, and not the ones he spoke during those last days, were now his final words. I braced myself and read:
When we were in high school, Zain was so much brighter than us all. I could never understand why she didn’t use her scholarship and study medicine as she had always wanted to do. And I have never been able to understand her father not wanting his daughter “doing that kind of work, man’s work, showing off with her brains.” I couldn’t understand at the time how she let him dictate what she should do. It is only now, after experiencing what it is like to live in a foreign country on one’s own, without family, that I understand. God, Zain, the choices we made. Both of us. Would we have been happier with other choices? Or are hardships just part of any choice?
Are hardships simply more difficult to accommodate while advantages are more difficult to see?
And then, how to explain Zain becoming a Catholic, getting married? Did you really go to church, Zain? I can’t imagine Zain, of all people, genuflecting, crossing herself, taking communion with her hands pressed in prayer. Zain, I bet, was more like a Muslim forced to convert during the Spanish Inquisition: Catholic in public, but Muslim at home and in her heart.
I was thrilled she invited me to the wedding. But I hadn’t told her about myself, and in Canada I had become used to dressing as I pleased, used to wearing slacks and jackets and flat shoes with socks. Can you imagine a woman in Trinidad going to a wedding dressed like that? I was so much more at ease not having to cater my looks and voice and mannerisms to back-home expectations of how women “ought” to be. I no longer knew how to flatter men. No, I would have been out of my depth, out of place at Zain’s wedding.
Whenever I returned to Trinidad to visit Mum and Dad and Gita, Zain would invite me to her house, and I would be the centre of attention with her two children. They were intrigued that I, who had no husband or children of my own, who lived in another country while my own parents and sister lived in Trinidad, was their mother’s close friend.