Valmiki's Daughter (43 page)

Finally Viveka spoke. “I don't understand why you didn't
tell me.”

“I only found out yesterday, and I couldn't tell you on the
phone or here today. I wanted to tell you first.”

The pregnancy was an answer to all the questions welling in Viveka's
head. There was no need to ask them. She was too stunned to feel anything more than
confusion. She stared in the direction of the house as she spoke. “I guess I am
really stupid. I hadn't realized that you two still slept together. I am an
absolute idiot.”

Anick was silent.

“How come you still sleep with him, Anick?” As soon as the
words were out of her mouth, she regretted them.

“Oh, Viveka, he is my husband. I cannot tell him no every
time.”

“Do you want to — are you —” She didn't
know, really, what she wanted to ask.

Anick hazarded an answer. “I don't know what to do. I cannot
stay with Nayan any longer. I am not in love with him anymore. I love only you. We can
wait until this child is born and then you and me and the baby, we can go away
together.”

Viveka glared at Anick in disbelief. “You think you can take
Nayan's child, Ram Prakash's grandchild, and go your own way?”

“We can go away together,” Anick repeated desperately.
“You and me, we can be a family.” It was as if the particulars of her
situation, the reality of Nayan, the Prakashs, of Viveka's own family, of their
position in Trinidad society, had vanished from
Anick's
comprehension. Viveka glanced again at the house. Then se gripped the steering wheel and
readied herself to drive away.

She wanted to tell Anick to get inside the car with her right away. What
would she do then? she wondered. There was no hideaway on a small island. Drive to the
airport, abandon her father's car there and get on the first plane going anywhere?
The outside world, which had always seemed unfathomably grand, suddenly felt too, too
small. At the same time she knew she had to get away. But no, not with Anick. In a way
she had, minutes ago, already left Anick.

“Say something, Vik. I am so sorry. I didn't want this to
happen. But, please, say something. Say you will wait and you will go away with
me.”

Viveka looked at Anick. She wanted to get out of the car and hold her,
wrap her arms around her. “Do you love Nayan, Anick? Tell me. I need to
know.”

“I told you already. But is not that I love him or don't love
him.”

“Do you love him?”

“I don't hate him, Viveka. Is just that —”

Viveka cut her off. “I don't understand you. I don't
understand this push and pull. You seem to have done that to him from the beginning.
Don't do that to me.”

Anick reached a hand into the car, to the back of Viveka's head. She
grabbed a handful of hair and gently closed her fist on it. “Vikki, I have no life
without you. Do you understand this? I love you. Only you.”

Viveka thought,
I have no life here
. She started the engine of
the car. Anick let go of her hair and stepped back into a clump of flowering
cock's comb. She remained there until Viveka had backed out, driven off, and
disappeared.

THE AIR-CONDITIONING IN THE
CAR WAS SWITCHED ON, THE WINDOWS
rolled up.

We have good news . . . the baby will be born in April . . . Oh
Viveka, he is my husband. I can not tell him
no
every time . . . you better
watch yourself . . .

The words formed an endless loop in Viveka's mind. Her limbs felt
limp. Thoughts of Anick came to her, and each time she felt a gripping sensation deep
inside, as if pleasure and pain entwined there. As she neared San Fernando, a thousand
realizations buzzed in her brain: all that she and Anick had felt between them had been
real; she had felt more open and authentic than she had ever felt before. Big. Full.
Full of purpose. How could any of this be wrong? She had to find a way to be all that
she was, regardless of how society would view her. She could not live clandestinely. She
would not. Nor would she let her present sadness devour her. She had to train herself to
remain above it, otherwise she would become like Merle. There simply had to be a place
where she would fit in, and she would find that place.

She thought of her and Anick's first kiss, of her fingers sliding
inside Anick, of Anick gasping and thrusting against her, and she determined not to go
mad. Of the tip of her tongue encountering Anick's heat and wetness, of how good
that had been, and she promised herself that she would find a way out. She thought of
lying on Anick, Anick gripping her tight, whispering into her mouth, against her cheek,
and tears welled in her eyes. She thought of her parents holding her back from
participating in sports, trying to break who she was and redesign her so that she
didn't bring notice to herself and shame to them, and she wept uncontrollably. She
recalled hovering, moving her body against Anick, and the strange, absolutely true
feeling in those
moments that between her legs there was an
appendage, a phantom one that swelled with all her desire and something baser, too,
something more bestial and demanding, something that could enter and penetrate Anick,
empty itself into her. How many times had she wished that she could cause Anick to
become pregnant, and how often had the futility of the wish made her feel
inconsequential and invisible? Tears poured down her cheeks and she made sincere
bargains with a God she hadn't really believed in before. In exchange for honesty,
integrity, a lifetime of service, she prayed that she and all people like her be granted
the freedom, so long as it did not hurt anyone, to love whomever they chose, to love
well, and have that love returned without judgment. She implored, and her thoughts
rambled on, and she made promise after promise and apology after apology for anything
she had done to put big and small obstacles in the path of her way of loving. She
thought of Nayan and the hurt he might have been caused, and apologized to him —
then quickly decided that Anick and Nayan had been hurting each other so much, it was
their love that should have been brought to an end, not her love with Anick.

She had to leave. That was clear. But leave how, and go where? What if she
were to find a haven in the Trinidad Anick had told her about, in the north of the
island? But in her heart she knew that there was nowhere on her small island far away
and safe enough. After all, it was not only her security but that of her family, her
mother and her father and Vashti, that would be affected.

By the time she arrived home in Luminada, Viveka was drenched in sweat,
her face and neck tear-stained. She had no map of her future, but she knew who she was.
She would not be diminished because of it.

YOUR JOURNEY BEGAN IN SAN FERNANDO. YOU VISITED LUMINADA
Heights with its magnificent views, and continued inland, east to Rio Claro. Now, you'll circle back to San Fernando, where your journey abruptly ends. All that has changed along the way is landscape. Implicit in an ending is a beginning — destination rendered futile. In any case, as the saying goes, wherever you go, there you are. There you are.

THE LARGE PICTURE WINDOW LET IN THE EVENING'S HARSH
LIGHT
but not its heat. Without a wind, everything except for two blue-grey
tanagers hopping erratically up and down the length of a yellowing coconut tree branch
appeared still. The two birds slapped each other with their wings and pecked at each
other's beaks in elaborate gestures of quarrelling, or perhaps courting. Viveka
could imagine the ruckus they made, but nothing that went on outside was audible inside
the cool, air-conditioned room. The garden sloped away on this side of the house. The
lawn, lushly green, had been cut the day before, edged tightly where it met beds that
had been plumped with fresh black manure. This, and the precise, trimmed clumps of
flowering hybrid hibiscus shrubs that were her mother's pride, amounted to a
picture framed on two sides by heavy damask curtains.

The bed in the guest room where Viveka sat was a mountain of colourful
boxes, presents wrapped in iridescent foils with wedding bells and brides and grooms
printed on them. Her mother sat on the edge of a chair, a shawl wrapped around her
against the cold from the air-conditioner. Vashti hovered about excitedly and Trevor
leaned against a wall, watching, as Viveka untied the ribbons and tore the wrappers off.
Viveka called out what the gifts
were: a wand blender, a punch
bowl, ladle and glasses, a Waterford water jug, a crystal ship's decanter, and so
on; and who its sender was: Molly and Angus Ramsumair, Auntie Joan and Uncle Peter,
Allan and June, Auntie Sylvia and cousin Mohan, and so forth. Her mother jotted these
down in a notepad. The cards ranged from the simplest tag exclaiming
Congratulations
On Your Marriage
to epistles that went on and on for pages — thoughts on
Two Hearts, Two Souls, Pledges, Pathways, and pronouncements that Love Stirs The Heart,
wishes that included Hopes And Dreams and Growing Deeper Day by Day. Many of them were
flecked with sparkle dust, points of which stayed on Viveka's fingers and made
their way to her face. Some of the gifts were so beautifully and craftily packaged that
her mother would rise, pull the shawl tighter and come to the bed, take the package from
her, examine it, and then go back to her armchair.

Trevor nodded acknowledgement every once in a while, and Vashti took the
unwrapped, recorded presents and passed judgment on each: “Oh my God, this is so
heavy, how can you fill this and then lift it and pour from it?” “They got
this from Bisessar's Furniture and Rug Emporium — I saw these there, and
this was, by far, the nicest one.” “You see, if we had gone and chosen gifts
from Landry's, instead of letting people just buy whatever they wanted to, you
wouldn't have gotten three of this and two of that, and none of these dreadful
patterned glasses. Why did we invite them anyway?”

The cards and tags Viveka collected in a shoebox, and the bows she shoved
into a clear plastic bag for recycling. To the side, an extra-large black garbage bag
overflowed with scrunched-up paper, and a deep cardboard box held smaller boxes that she
broke down and made flat and placed on top of a variety of protective packing
material.

After a while, Devika told Vashti to take the full
bag of papers out to the garage and to fetch a new one. Vashti opened the door and the
sizzling crescendo of moist ingredients dropped into hot oil screeched in the air, then
subsided quickly with the clatter of a metal spoon urgently stirring it all. In an
instant, the guest room was flooded with the aroma of anchar masala and its signature
note of roasted cumin. The family looked at one another and made noises of appreciation
and anticipation. Pinky was currying mangoes.

These days, every day was festive for Pinky. It was as if her own daughter
was marrying. Viveka worried that four days from now, the day of the wedding, she would
have gained so much weight that the outfit being made for her would fit poorly or not at
all.

Vashti shouted out to Pinky to come bring a new bag, but Devika shook her
head. “She is doing her work.
You
go and do it,” she said.

For two days in a row Viveka had worn a sun dress, a flimsy thing with
spaghetti straps, close-fitting at the waist and falling to mid-thigh. With
encouragement from her mother, Vashti, and Helen, she had had three of these little
dresses made by a seamstress who used patterns found in a
Vogue
sewing book she
showed to her customers. As Viveka smoothed the dress and tried to fix an image in her
mind of each gift with that of its sender, Trevor was saying, for the second time since
they had begun opening the gifts, that they could buy this item, or that one, for much
less than it would cost to ship them.

Valmiki, home from work now, entered the room just in time to hear Trevor
ask how Viveka was planning to trek all of this to Canada. His heart lurched at the
umpteenth realization that this daughter was marching onward, past them all, past him.
He put
on his best face and answered, “Oui, papa! Trev, boy,
this is a lot of loot, in truth. Let's open up a little shop, you and me, and make
a little money, man. This could be the start of an empire!”

Valmiki stooped down to look at the unwrapped gifts. “Who is this
from?” he wanted to know of an eighteen-inch giraffe ornament, the fire of its
crystal flickering in its belly when he picked it up. He fingered an Indian-silk
bedspread with a glass-beaded border and embroidered elephants that hung on the back of
a chair and wanted to know who had sent that, too. Winking at Devika, he said, “I
didn't know the Williamses have such good taste! You don't think this would
look good on our bed?” If no one else heard the tremble in his voice, Devika
did.