Viveka

HAVING PLAYED VOLLEYBALL THE NIGHT BEFORE, HAVING GOT HER way, even if it was on the sly, Viveka awoke the next morning feeling generous toward her family. Even if her mother had not got past their altercation, Viveka had. She left her room ready to enter the heart of the house, sprite and congenial. She was ravenous.

As she approached the kitchen she heard her mother on the telephone, devising a menu with the caterer. On the kitchen table she saw a guest list: there were more than twenty couples on it. It took no time at all for a series of gripes to ripple through her gut. These were soon accompanied by a general feeling of weakness and nausea.

Perhaps, she thought, this was the effect of eating doubles purchased the day before from one of the vendors stationed outside the university gates. Elliot had eaten them, too. She should call and see how he was.

In spite of the queasiness in her gut, out of habit she opened the fridge. Numerous plastic containers of this and that sat atop one another. Saucers with slices of chicken, papaya, sardines, plastic wrap stretched tight over each. Paratha wrapped in foil. Cheese. Guava jam, peanut butter, marmite. She stared blankly for a long time, listening to her mother trying to decide between a North Indian-themed meal and a Chinese one: No, no, definitely no pork or beef, and the Chinese food would have to be done without a hint of pork, as there would be Hindus and Muslims at the party. Fish, chicken, duck — all three. Shrimp is fine, but you know how quickly it can turn in the heat. Nothing but the best, everything done with, with, with a European flair, if you know what I mean. Authentic Indian, authentic Chinese, whichever, but arranged and served with European — well, not just any European — more like French class and flair.

Viveka opened the oven door to see if anything left over from breakfast was being kept warm for her. A tea cloth draped a dish in which lay a wedge of coconut bake. There seemed to be no air in her chest. She shut the door and went back to the fridge. Her indecision caught her mother’s eye. Devika glanced over at Viveka, and while remaining engaged in her conversation, she snapped her fingers. When she had caught Viveka’s attention she pointed sharply to the oven, her forefinger wagging in insistence that Viveka take the bake there. Viveka hid behind the open door of the fridge and poured herself a tumbler of orange juice. Then she sat down at the kitchen table, her back to her mother and both hands wrapped around the cold and sweating glass. She felt badly about how she had left Elliot last night.

After she had refused to accommodate his desires a few weeks ago, he had withdrawn from her and they hadn’t seen each other for a while. Then, yesterday, they had seen each other at the doubles stand, and after an awkward few minutes of catching up they were walking hand in hand. She didn’t mind. In fact, she realized how much she missed him. They had spent the entire afternoon together at the library, and then Elliot invited himself to Viveka’s and Helen’s practice game. He kept his eyes on her and on Helen as they pranced about the court like colts. The coach had left the team to play without instruction, as he sometimes did. They played harder on such days, knowing well that the coach was noting the strong and weak points of each player, making the kinds of decisions that coaches make. One of Viveka’s teammates, Franka, of whom Viveka felt somewhat scornful for no reason she could identify, grabbed every opportunity to make contact with her — touching Viveka on her arm, her back, her waist. It was uncomfortable, in particular on an evening when Elliot was watching them play.

After the game Viveka and Helen went with the other players, as usual, to the pub. Helen’s boyfriend, Wayne, was meeting them there, and Elliot decided he would tag along. Wayne and Helen had been sweethearts since high school. Wayne was comfortable with the other women, and they with him. Of course, he and Helen sat next to each other. At times he seemed to envelope Helen, and she would disappear into his large warmth willingly. But she would never disappear for long, and when she reappeared, her dominance in that group of fighting players dwarfed him, and he accepted this easily. He and she were like waves and weeds, each taking a turn at nipping and tickling the other.

Viveka had tried to work out in her head the consequences of reconnecting with Elliot, of so quickly getting close again. Should she sit next to him? Or should she make it so that he ended up sitting between others, perhaps across from her but not next to her? Elliot, however, decided the matter. He pushed his way in through the throng of women, ushered Viveka along the bench, and slid in beside her. She angled her body away from him, but made sure to turn back to laugh a comment to him once in a while so as not to be accused of slighting him. But when Franka, on the way to the bar to buy a drink, came around to Viveka and stooped to whisper in her ear, asking if she could get her something from the bar, Viveka instinctively leaned against Elliot. She turned to face Elliot, and then looked up and smiled her decline to Franka. She made a fist and rested it on Elliot’s knee, thumping it occasionally.

Later, the four of them walked to Helen’s car, Wayne and Helen with an arm around each other’s waist, and Elliot clutching Viveka’s limp hand. Wayne and Helen were doing their long-goodbye thing, some feet away from the car. Viveka led Elliot directly to the passenger-side door. She opened it and turned to give Elliot what she intended to be a warm and friendly hug. Their conversation in the library earlier that day rang in her ears. She had enjoyed hearing all that he had been doing during their little hiatus. He had been working with an art gallery, helping them to locate the works of James Boodoo, Hing Wan, Kenneth Critchlow, Ralph and Vera Bainey, and Samuel Walrond that were in private collections; a public exhibition of these works was planned. He clearly wanted her to know that he was busy and doing big things with himself. She was impressed. She missed his conversations about painting and art, missed talking with him about the books she was reading. She really did want a close friendship with him, she decided, but nothing more — something like what she had with Helen.

Beside the car, Elliot held Viveka’s face in his hands. She became confused, then annoyed. She weighed what she should say and how she should act. She didn’t want to lose him again, but she didn’t want this either. He was too insistent. When he put his mouth to hers, she extricated herself by asking what his plans were for the following day. Elliot bit his lower lip, breathed in hard, and then said sharply, “I already told you. You know very well what I am doing.” He put his lips to hers again. Despite the discomfort of his tongue inside of her mouth, she garbled, “Yes, but I can’t keep your schedule in my head. Tell me again.” He withdrew long enough to say, “Just kiss me, Vik,” and so she did. Or rather, she let him kiss her. He had his hands on her back, and now he moved them in slow circles, each time dropping his hands a little lower. She stiffened her back. Just as she feared he would, he slipped his fingers under her shirt. Fatigued by the same old feeling of not wanting to seem rude or unfriendly to him and wondering if there was something wrong with her, she jerked her face away and put her hand to Elliot’s face, the gesture on his cheek a cross between a gentle slap and a stroke. There was a heavy silence between them, which Viveka broke by asking him if he had finished reading Mr. Biswas. Elliot sighed. Resignation in his voice, he breathed out the words, “No, Viveka. I have not finished it.”

Noting his tone, she carried on. “He is like a painter, Elliot, but with words. He uses landscape as metaphor.” She intended to continue with, “For the oppression of communal family living. The Indian, the Hindu family style of living, covertly incestuous. I know you’d find it interesting.” But she stopped herself, for she knew it sounded hollow.

Elliot continued to hold her, but she felt as if she were a folded-up shirt he was barely pressing against his chest. “God, Vik, nothing has changed, has it? I was hoping the time apart would have made things different between us. Art and literature are not all there is in life, you know. I like to talk with you about these things, to go to shows with you and that kind of thing, and I want to read all your favourite books, all one thousand and one of them, but I want to do other things with you, too.”

“I know, I know, but it’s not what I want. I want other things, different things.” She was pleading, apologizing, and sympathizing with him all at the same time.

Elliot let go of her suddenly. Viveka imagined herself, the folded-up shirt, slide down his chest and fall, crumpled, to the floor. She hadn’t expected to feel so dropped by him. She reached out a hand, intending to lay it against his cheek in a decidedly softer gesture, but he caught her wrist in mid-air, held it there and stared at her hard. She pulled her hand free and clutched that wrist with her other hand to suggest that he had hurt her. Perturbed, she got into the car and shut the door. The window was rolled up. Elliot stood where he was. Slowly, she rolled the window down. He walked away, looking back only to signal to Wayne that he would catch up with him later.

This morning, though, Viveka had an excuse to phone him to see how he was feeling — to see if the doubles had upset his stomach. Still, she hesitated. She slapped at mosquitoes that lived in the relative dark beneath the table, and scratched at old and new bites. Her mother got off the phone and greeted her with, “Is that all you’re having? There is coconut bake in the oven.” She was obviously not over her terseness with Viveka. Viveka reached to scratch a bite on her ankle. She muttered, “This is enough for now,” and in an even lower voice added, “Thanks.” Then she tapped the guest list with her forefinger. “What’s this?”

“We’re having a party.”

Viveka picked up the list and rolled it into a loose tube shape. She pressed it to her lips and blew into it.

He mother snapped, “Don’t do that. I need that list. Put it down.”

The admonishment was at least an engagement, and Viveka felt relief.

“You’d never guess who came to visit last night.” Devika had suddenly brightened.

Viveka wasn’t in the mood for guessing. “Who?”

Her mother adopted a playful tune. “Well, don’t you want to guess?”

“I don’t know. Who?”

“Nayan. We were sitting on the patio and he just came in. He brought his wife.”

Viveka pushed her chair back, ready to get up. “Yeah? Did he come with his hands swinging or did he bring chocolates?”

“Why do you have to be like that? But you’re right: he didn’t bring any chocolates. They had gone for a walk, and he saw us on the patio, and took the opportunity to drop in.”

“Gone for a walk! Nobody walks around here. Was he showing off his wife to the neighbours or the other way around?”

Devika chuckled. If only Viveka could be more like this more often.

“Well, is she all they say she is? Does she speak English?” Viveka persisted.

“Not one word is a lie, when I tell you! She is gorgeous. White, but you can tell she is not a local white. You should have seen how she was dressed, and all they were going for was a walk. Minty and Ram said she doesn’t come from money herself, but it doesn’t show. Not with that kind of beauty. She has a lot of class, the way she carries herself. I don’t know where she would have got that from. But you know French people. All of them have that flair.”

“Flair is the same as class?” asked Viveka, in a tone that suggested her question was not to be answered but was supposed to be instructional.

Her mother was not interested in being educated.

“Well, she has landed herself a good catch. I am sure a lot of families here are disappointed.”

“Does she speak English?”

“A little. And Nayan doesn’t speak a word of French.”

“Oh, I bet he knows a word or two by now.”

“I only hope there is enough love between them. He better behave himself, and not become like men here. It will be very difficult for her here. I am willing to bet she won’t put up with any nonsense whatsoever.”

“Where are they living?”

“Right here. Not in their own home, but with Minty and Ram, I mean.”

“Oh my God. In the same house with Uncle Ram!”

Devika pursed her lips and nodded. “Minty and Ram don’t like her at all. They are not pleased one bit! Yet, if you see the gold chain she was wearing around her neck. That was no eighteen-karat chain. It was one heavy twenty-two-karat thing. I could tell by just watching it. A rope design. They must have given it to her as the wedding present. He is their only son. She is the only daughter-in-law they will ever have. It doesn’t matter if they don’t like her. She will still get everything.”

Viveka knew better than to voice her thought that these days marriage wasn’t a guarantee, that modern women didn’t necessarily put up with all the things that women of her mother’s generation did. “What’s her name?” she said instead.

“It’s a different name. Anki, or something like that.”

“Are they coming to your party?”

“Yes, they’re on the list. Aunty Minty and Uncle Ram, and the two of them. I hope you will make an appearance and not hide yourself away as usual.”

“What are we having for lunch?” Viveka asked while contemplating an image of Nayan. Or, not an image of him so much as the feeling of his tongue in her mouth a few years ago. She must have been about fifteen and he nineteen. Several of the young people in the neighbourhood had gathered at a house to while away a long August day. They decided to play spin the bottle. On one of Nayan’s spins the bottle pointed to Viveka, and his task was to arm wrestle the person if that person were male, or to go behind the wall for one minute and kiss if the person were female. Viveka and Nayan had both rolled their eyes, and Viveka had never thought for a moment that this longtime friend, family friend, would execute the task. But he had, and she was shy to push him away, felt it would have been childish to have done so, and at the same time she was confused by his initiation. Afterwards, she learned that every girl in the neighbourhood had at one time or another been kissed by Nayan in that manner. She had never been able to look at him squarely after that. And now she had little interest in seeing him or his new wife. It was beginning to irk her, in fact, that this woman’s beauty seemed to be the only attribute people talked about.

Viveka told her mother about her stomach gripes.

“When did they start?” The question was like an accusation.

Viveka defensively answered, “Just minutes ago. I was fine when I woke up.”

“Do you realize, Viveka”— and there was that terseness again — “that every time we even suggest having a party here, you get sick? If it’s not one thing it’s another. Your head. Your eyes. Your stomach. Look, don’t start with this now. I am asking Helen’s parents. Why don’t you ask her? And I want to ask Anne and Pat Samlal to bring their son, the older one, Steve. He is such a nice young man. It is time for you to be meeting some nice men. Don’t roll your eyes like that. I am not asking him here for anything in particular. It is just time you learned to chat about things other than books and ideas. What do you think?”

“Helen is going away that weekend. She is going to Matura to see the leatherbacks. They’re laying their eggs now. She asked me to go with her.”

“Who is she going with?”

Viveka hesitated to say that Wayne was going, but the alertness in her mother’s tone, the question itself, suggested that Devika had guessed. Viveka’s response was to curl her lips while looking at her mother as if to say, You very well know, so why are you asking?

“Well, I can tell you right now. Don’t even bother to ask your father. I mean, you don’t really expect your father to let you go, do you?”

“Oh, Mom, why do you have to leap so far ahead? Did I even ask? I just told you that she invited me. I don’t want to go.”

Helen had asked Viveka to come and bring Elliot. Viveka had never seen the turtles coming ashore en masse to lay their eggs and would have liked to, but she didn’t want to — couldn’t — ask Elliot to go away with her for a weekend, and she had no desire to be a third wheel. Trudging through damp sand, buffeted on all sides by the east coast’s cold night breezes at two in the morning, or three, or however late it was that the turtles ambled out of the sea, did seem somewhat adventurous, but in effect she would be alone. No doubt Wayne and Helen would be locked together, fording the wind in unison while she trudged along hugging only herself, conversation futile because the wind would whip their voices in various directions. Never mind that she knew her parents wouldn’t consent to her going — she had no desire to be the one to make a crowd.

She picked up the thread of the original conversation. “I know Steve. He is nice enough. Sure, whatever. Go ahead, ask him if you want. It’s just that I don’t feel comfortable with so many people here, Mom.”

“When are you going to stop this? Listen, Viveka. I know you still carry in your head what happened so many years ago. None of us have ever forgotten. That entire year was a nightmare.”

Viveka could have imploded with shock at these words. Hardly a day went by without her wishing that someone in the family would bring up what had happened in the past and get it all out in the open, once and for all. And now, suddenly, she didn’t know how to react.

“But why is it that you have to act as if you are the only one who it affected?” continued Devika, oblivious. “We don’t talk about it, not because we don’t care but because we have to move on. I am going to try to explain some things to you. I don’t even know where to begin. I’ll start with your brother. Anand was sick from the time he was a baby.”

Viveka looked down into the cup of orange juice in front of her. Anand. Her mother had said his name aloud. In doing so she had pulled Anand from Viveka’s grip. To steady herself she concentrated on a partial ring of bright white light reflected on the surface of the juice. She was grateful, and yet she wanted to run away or to begin a fight with her mother again. That would be so much more comfortable for them both.

“Your father and I knew he wouldn’t survive. But you and Vashti, you were too small to understand that he was not going to make it.”

Viveka wanted to ask her mother when, exactly, the party had happened — the party she could never erase from her memory. It always seemed strange — no, not strange but horrible — that her parents had held a party in the same month as Anand’s death. Now, suddenly, it dawned on her that the party might have been held just before he died, or even long after. She was about to ask her mother but she hesitated, unsure of what it would mean to have everything on which she had based her understanding of her family turned inside out.

Her mother opened the oven and pulled out the covered dish. She set the dish on the table and peeled back the cloth. From a drawer she extracted the cloth placemat and spread it before Viveka. Viveka sat back and let her mother set before her a plate, a knife, and a fork taken from the draining board by the sink. As she reached in the fridge for butter and a slab of cheese, Devika said, “His death changed things between us all.”

Viveka wanted to shout out, No, it wasn’t Anand’s death, it was Dad’s involvement with the woman up the hill. But she had already learned her lesson regarding that one. So she gathered her courage and asked about the party, when it had been held.

“I was planning a party before Anand died,” Devika said. “Then, when that happened we, of course, shelved the idea. We didn’t entertain until a good year later.”

A year later. What had happened between her brother’s passing away and that party? Nothing came to Viveka’s mind. An entire year of her life, a blank of time.

“That is the party that caused us all so much trouble, and you,” continued Devika, “I think you saw too much for your age. I don’t know what got into your father at the party. But that was a long time ago, and he has changed. Besides, if I have forgiven him, why haven’t you?”

Viveka slit the bake and buttered both sides. How was she now to separate the image of her father lying on Pia Moretti, and of the memories that quickly followed: playing the game of fish in the car with Anand, and of Vashti slapping Anand’s hand during the game and then him crying, crying, crying, — the last memory she had of him — and of Mani Moretti in his painter overalls, and of the party? They had always collided in her memory, playing out as if they had all occurred on one long and jumbled day.

Viveka cut slices of cheese and packed them inside of the bake. She bit off the tip of her sandwich. At that her mother pursed her lips, pleased.

VIVEKA WAS GOOD AT DETAILS. HER MEMORIES WERE FULL OF THEM. But whether they were real details, or the results of an admittedly fertile imagination coupled with the need for all the dots to line up sensibly, she no longer knew.

She sat playing with the bake and cheese sandwich, staring at it as if there was knowledge to be had from it. And she watched her mother, already busy again with her list of this and that regarding the party. In this rare moment of truth-telling, of openness, should she ask another question? Dare she? She would have to admit to prying:

She had been about twelve. It was a Saturday. Her father had gone to Maraval with his friend Saul and her mother was at the hairdresser’s. The house was quiet. Vashti was lying in bed reading a novel. The maid was in her room with the door closed. Viveka stole into her parents’ bedroom. She looked at their bed, made up with a bedspread that had peacocks embroidered in a hundred shades of iridescent turquoise on it. She had tried to imagine her father lying on top of her mother there. But she could not. Whenever she tried, she would see instead her father and the Moretti woman. He would be relaxed and easy, even as he worked himself into a sweat. She couldn’t imagine him like that with her mother. The ceiling of the house, lined in highly polished hardwood, squeaked and creaked as it expanded and contracted in the heat. Through the window of her parents’ bedroom came a strong ocean breeze, the melodious sounds of blue jay tanagers and semps in the coconut and Julie mango trees, and once in a while a car lumbering up the hill or descending carefully outside.

She stole in farther, into her parents’ bathroom. The doors of the cupboards were always locked when Valmiki and Devika weren’t at home — locked against the prying eyes and idle hands of their hired help. Viveka went to her mother’s dressing table and in a bone china dish found a hairpin. She straightened the pin and stuck it in the lock of her father’s cupboard door. She had done this many times before, to no avail, but this one time there was a surprising click and the door popped open. Her heart thumped. She hadn’t really meant for it to unlock. How would she lock it back, she wondered, trying to hold the door shut and manipulate the key in its lock again. When she couldn’t get it to relock she tiptoed hastily out of both rooms, taking the hairpin with her. Vashti had fallen asleep with her novel on her chest. The maid was now mopping the kitchen floor. Viveka slipped past her into the garden. She looked about to make sure no one saw what she was doing, and threw the pin over the fence at the back of their yard, into a section of the neighbour’s yard that was overgrown with philodendrons. Then she ran back into the house, all the while hoping, imagining, trying to transmit brainwashing messages to her mother, that her mother would simply assume she had in her haste left her father’s cupboard doors unlocked.

The phone was ringing as Viveka entered the house. The maid answered and Viveka heard her say, “I don’t know, Madam. They was in they room, reading. The house quiet-quiet. I mopping the floor. What time you coming back home, Madam? I have to call and tell my son when to come and meet me.” Viveka stayed still. “So, I could tell him come for me by three o’clock so?” Viveka could see a clock from where she crouched. It was 1:25. Her mother would obviously be away for some time yet. Even if she were to immediately leave the salon on the far side of downtown she would not make it back for at least half an hour. Viveka’s heart beat harder with a new idea. She had time, now that the cupboard was unlocked, and now that she had convinced herself that her mother would think she herself had left it unlocked, to have a look inside.

She listened for the mop’s handle hitting the metal of the pail, the swish of water in which it was washed. She eased open the top drawer in her father’s cupboard. It was full of white socks and underwear. She waited and listened again. The drag of the mop along the floor could be heard by one intent on hearing it. She was afraid to touch her father’s underpants but slipped her fingers under the socks. She felt the smooth cool bottom of the drawer. She shut that one and opened another: black and brown socks, and white vests. She reached into its back corners. In one corner there was an oily-feeling bottle and an almost empty tube of ointment. She tried to read the tube’s label, but it was too mangled from use. Under the clothing she found a folded-up piece of paper. She pried under the clothing to see exactly where and how that paper was angled and she removed it. She opened it carefully. It was lined, and torn on one of its sides. It held four numbers written in fading blue ink. They were underlined in a swift, off-hand manner, the line slightly arched. Nothing more. The writing was not her father’s. It could have been her mother’s, for the letters slanted in the way her mother’s writing did. But there was a boldness to them that made Viveka think otherwise. The numbers meant nothing to her. She smelled the paper. It smelled of the wood of the cupboard. She folded it back and placed it as she had found it. There was something remarkably empowering about knowing that in her father’s drawer was a piece of paper on which four underlined numbers were written, and that her father did not know that she knew of it.

She opened another drawer. Leaning against one wall of it, hemmed in by neatly folded pyjama tops and bottoms, was an envelope containing about a dozen black and white photographs, all so old that they were more in shades of yellows than blacks and whites. They were photos of her father’s family. Her mother had once shown them to her and Vashti. It didn’t matter to Viveka why they were now in his drawer. Next to that envelope was another with a receipt from a company called Rahamut’s Co. Ltd. What it was for had been filled in by an illegible hand. She could only make out the price of the item, $1,178.

Although she was looking for nothing in particular Viveka was disappointed. She closed that drawer and with some difficulty opened the last one. It was crammed tight with T-shirts, and underneath the piles were magazines. She withdrew one. It had colourful photos on the cover of women with their breasts bared. The breasts were strangely bulbous and the way the women sat made their chests protrude. They wore panties that looked like triangular patches on strings. She turned the pages carefully, her body perspiring, her heart racing. She felt odd sensations, like those one had swinging high up, or plunging fast down on a garden swing. There were men in the photos in what must have been a man’s version of a panty, skimpy and black. The bulges inside of the men’s underpants were large and there were little points in them. She opened the sock drawer and took out a sock. She rolled it tight and shoved it in her pants, then looked at the outcome in the mirror of the nearby dressing table. She compared it to one of the photos of the men, rearranged it a bit and compared again. She pulled out the sock, wiped it on her pant leg, and replaced it.

There was also in the final drawer a calendar, an old one, from about four years ago. It was of naked men. She looked at two of the pages, and although she did find the men’s private parts curious, in general she found the calendar of little interest. The magazine had been much more interesting, the one with the women, showing how the men held the women, where their hands rested on the women’s bodies and the women’s hands rested on theirs. It occurred to Viveka that she would have to pay another visit to this cupboard. She would not linger too much longer, only see what else was there for the future.

Under the magazines was a large manila envelope. Perhaps, she thought, full of boring bills or photos, or — and this thought made her ticklish again — perhaps another magazine of women with men. She pulled it out. But there were only documents in it: her parents’ passports, old passport photos, her and Vashti’s birth certificates. She had seen these before. But there was another paper she had not seen before. It was her parents’ marriage certificate. Her parents’ friends held wedding anniversary celebrations, but her parents never did. The children, peeved, wanting to celebrate their parents’ anniversary too, had asked more than once about the date. They were always given the same hesitant and faltering answers, each parent giving a different date, even. Now here was the certificate, with the date — the day, the month, and the year. Her heart pounded, for how would she be able to tell her parents that she knew the exact date, inform them of it, remind them of it, when this was how she had found out — by snooping? Then, suddenly, it was as if she had been hit in her stomach. The year on the certificate was the same one in which she had been born. She tapped out months on her fingers, in almost the exact way her mother had whenever Viveka and Vashti had asked about the marriage date. She counted it out again, taking their marriage and her birth date into consideration. She did it a third time. And she concluded that her mother must have been pregnant for four months before the date on the certificate. No wonder.

Trembling, Viveka could barely hold the document in her hand to replace it. She had no recollection whatsoever of the order in which she had found it, nor could she remember how the envelope had lain on the drawer bottom. There was pounding in her ears, in her brain. Her eyes brimmed fast with tears. She fumbled the drawer shut and the cupboard closed, and ran to the washroom. She had instantly tried to think of herself as special, as the vital cause from which a family flowed, but she sensed the meaning of the forgotten and fumbled date. She shut herself in the bathroom for a good hour, her tears endless, and she pinched the soft flesh of her inner forearm until cherry-like spots blossomed there. After that she never brought up the question of her parents’ anniversary again.

Viveka glanced over at her mother. Devika was on the telephone to the caterer again, still making changes to the menu.

Although Viveka understood her own talent for filling in blanks in her memory, making sense of what didn’t easily add up in her mind, she was sure, too, that she had made up none of that memory. Every detail was real. It was the one memory she could recall in perfect sequence: the sound of the birds through the bathroom window, the ping of the mop against the pail, the water splashing on to the floor, the maid’s journey from the far part of the terrazzo floor to the part nearest the carpeted bedroom section. She remembered the moment of discovering the marriage certificate and then the moment of understanding, of wanting it to mean that she was special, and how her body had trembled after.

No, she would not ask her mother about any of that. Theirs was a house of secrets, and she would keep it like that. Her mother was finally sounding content; the decision about the menu had been made. There would be mini pastels, crab-backs, sweet-and-sour shrimp on toothpicks for starters. At least, thought Viveka, her mother knew how to pull together a menu. Devika now spoke to the caterer with a new excited authority. The colour of the napkins, the pattern of the cutlery, were the current issues.

Her mother safely occupied, Viveka continued to think about her memories, about the time just before and after Anand’s death. She certainly had not forgotten asking her father why he had been lying on top of the groaning Mrs. Moretti. She thought of that moment at the dinner table with embarrassment, not for her father and what he had done (or whatever it was she imagined him doing), but at herself for asking a question she instinctively knew, even then, would cause a stir. It was the events that had followed upon that question that her fertile mind seemed entirely incapable of arranging satisfactorily.

After Viveka had posed her unfortunate question, her mother had become anxious and watchful. She seemed to cry incessantly. Perhaps, Viveka thought now, it had to do with Anand’s death, and she had confused the chronology of events. But she remembered asking her mother at the time why she was crying so much. In a burst of sobbing her mother replied that she was suffering with a cold. Yet, Viveka noted, her father didn’t rub her mother’s head, or bring her a cup of tea or aspirin, and he slept in the guest room. The two girls were told that this was because Valmiki didn’t want to catch that cold. Sometimes Viveka’s mother and father spoke, but it was as if they didn’t know each other. How Viveka wished to become a big strong boy who took care of his mother, made her happy. Perhaps, she used to think, if she were a boy, a brave blond-haired boy who could walk on rocks barefoot and shoot an arrow straight and far, her mother would have been kinder to her.

She remembered a day when there was some calm. They had all got into the car and her father took them for a drive to the San Fernando Wharf. On that trip he spoke to her mother tenderly. He parked against the retaining wall that acted also as a long bench on which people sat to watch the oil tankers in the Gulf, to see the sun set, and to eat corn from the vendors who set up their bike-carts there.

The entire family got out of the car and made their way to a vendor. Her father bought three steaming corns in their husks, one for him, one for her mother, and one that was broken into thirds, to be shared among the three children. They had found themselves a place on the sea wall that was free of seagull droppings, but not minutes later they were driven back into the car by the sandflies and there they ate their corn. Her parents turned around, one at a time, to make sure that they weren’t getting corn kernels or juice on the seat of the car. They both smiled, wearily, at the children. Anand, seated between Viveka and Vashti, stood up at one point, and reached his little hand out to his mother in the front seat, and when she turned to face him he brushed her hair off her forehead, and even though his hand had flecks of sticky corn on it and they had gotten on her hair, everyone said to him that it was such a sweet thing to do. Viveka saw her father’s arm move then; it seemed as if he were sliding it toward her mother’s arm, but she couldn’t tell from where she sat, low in the back seat. But then she saw her mother’s hand move toward his, and Viveka grinned so hard that Vashti asked her what was so funny, and her father glanced at her in the mirror. Then her father asked if her mother still wanted to have the party. They discussed it, and who would be on the guest list, and Viveka listened.

In those days, she loved how busy the house was just before a party, and all the food smells, and the smell of floor polish, and on the day of the party itself she enjoyed the commotion of servers milling about and the very serious bartender wiping glasses, making them squeak with his big white towel, and closer to the hour of the party the musicians trying out their different microphone levels and saying, “Testing, testing, one two three.” Her parents talked of the party, Viveka tried to listen, and Vashti and Anand played fish. Anand hit Vashti’s prayer-hands too hard, and before she could cry he began to wail as if he had broken a bone or something, and it seemed to Viveka that he never stopped crying after that, and not long after (was it the next day, or the day after that?), he disappeared.

But before that fish-slap — or was it after, while Anand was wailing? — Viveka heard her mother say, “I can’t believe you want to invite them. Why should I have that woman in my house?” Her father put his hand to his head, closed his eyes, and asked her mother to please not make such a big thing out of nothing. She heard her mother again: “Don’t you have any respect for me or for your children? I refuse to invite them. I can’t believe you would even ask me to do that.” Anand continued to scream but her parents didn’t seem to hear him. They just carried on a conversation that had turned once more to hisses.

And was it that same day, or was it a different day, that they were in the car, the five of them — she, Anand, and Vashti in the back seat, her parents in the front — and Viveka turned her window down and head-first launched herself, to waist height, through it? She scanned the ocean, looking for oil tankers waiting to dock at the refinery’s pier, which in the dusky evening was beginning to shimmer with its pinpoints of lights outlining every detail of the little city that it was. She re-entered the car — Anand was not screaming, he was whimpering — just as her mother turned to face the back seat. Tears were streaming down her mother’s crumpled face. Viveka remembered one minute having the urge to hold her mother’s face in her hands and stare into her eyes, and the next to open the car door and extricate herself from the claustrophobia of this bubble she felt would burst at any moment. Instead she made her way across the back seat, past the whimpering Anand, past Vashti who was busy pulling at the cuticle of one of her fingers, to the other window, to search for scarlet ibis or hanging snakes in the mangrove trees on the far side of the roadway.

It was then that Viveka spotted a man in white painter’s overalls, fast and purposefully approaching the car. The man brandished a scythe and his white overalls were soaked in dark burgundy, the colour of wet blood. Viveka frantically drew back inside and wound up that window, and then shoved her way swiftly across the seat to close the other. “Go! Go, Dad,” she shrieked. “That man, look! Look! He has a knife. There is blood on his clothes. Drive, Dad. Hurry, please.”

But her parents continued their throaty bickering, and even though Viveka was shouting and pounding on the backrest of her father’s seat, neither he nor her mother heard nor seemed to see what so appalled her. The man in the painter’s overalls circled the car, and Valmiki and Devika paid no attention when he hopped on the bonnet and crawled up to the windshield and splayed himself across it, smearing a thick blood-red colour. Even though he bared his teeth and banged the handle of his scythe on the windshield, Viveka’s parents did not see him. In time, the man in the once-white, now-red painter’s overalls slid off the windshield and seemed to fall in front of the car, and disappeared. No one in the car, not even Viveka, had noticed that the tide was now at its highest and the highway, which ran for a picturesque half mile directly alongside the sea, had flooded. Waves were rolling in, slapping and shattering against the concrete wall. There was a stream of traffic, the cars slowed by the flooding road. The hissing inside the car ceased. Viveka’s father turned the car, very carefully. Once headed back, he flashed his lights to alert approaching drivers that the creek had flooded.

Although she had done nothing that required great exertion, Viveka slept soundly through the night that followed. She awoke to find Jess the maid sitting on the edge of her bed, staring at her with what looked like pity. Her parents had already gone out, and they had taken Anand with them. She and Vashti didn’t know whether to be upset that they hadn’t been taken too or to be pleased that they had been left home, as if they were old enough to take care of themselves.

Her parents returned late that day — or was it night, or was it another day? — without Anand. And when hour after hour, meal after meal, day after day, Viveka and Vashti asked where he was, both parents took turns attempting an answer. One would try, while the other would suddenly begin to weep. And whenever they were about to answer the query, Viveka would suddenly become so distracted that she could never hear what they eventually said. Soon, everyone seemed to accept that Anand would no longer — not ever — be in the house with them again. Some days Viveka felt that it had something to do with the painter in the blood-covered once-white overalls who had been attacking their car with a scythe; on the other days she felt it was because of the fish-slap; and then sometimes she wondered if it was because her father had been lying on top of a woman other than her mother. The nagging sense Viveka carried with her was that it was her fault. She hadn’t been able to save or to protect anyone when it had been necessary.

Once, several months later, Viveka asked her mother why the man had blood on his overalls, why he carried a scythe, and why he had thrown himself on the bonnet of the car. Her mother looked at her as if she had gone mad. The more Viveka tried to give details, the more she confused her mother, who asked her what on earth she was talking about and if she was unwell. But it had all been so real to Viveka, and so many years later, it still was.

VIVEKA HAD NEVER BEEN ABLE TO LINE UP CORRECTLY THE CHRONOL-ogy that included the time she saw her father on top of Pia Moretti, Anand’s crying in the car, the painter crawling on the car’s bonnet, Anand’s sudden disappearance, and the party that followed. That goddamned party. And, now, finally, her mother had for the first time told her when Anand had died in relation to when the party had taken place. And already she had mixed up the chronology again.

She remembered clearly, though, that she and Vashti had worn to the party white, frilly, cotton dresses studded with red velvet polkadots, and underneath the skirt part they had to wear crinolines. Vashti enjoyed the full, flared look of her skirt, but the crinoline’s stiff fabric scratched Viveka’s skin and she tugged at and twisted it. She hated how she looked and wanted to cry, but the blond-haired boy, ever-present just on the other side of her skin, would not let her. Her scalp hurt, too, her midnight-black waist-length hair having been brushed smooth into a ponytail, bound with a red velvet-covered elastic band. She raised her eyebrows and wiggled her ears in an attempt to weaken the grip.

Seven o’clock promptly the guests had begun arriving. Viveka and Vashti had been brought out onto the patio and into the garden at a quarter after seven to meet the guests. Out of the tops of bamboo poles set along the fence danced fat tall flames of fire. Some of the neighbours were there, aunts and uncles all. Actual relatives were there, too. And her father’s banker and his wife. Uncle Ram and Aunty Minty. And other doctors Viveka recognized from going with her mother to meet her father at the hospital. She and Vashti stayed out long enough for their growth to be remarked upon, their likenesses assigned to their mother or father, and the cute divulging of what they wanted to be when they grew up. Viveka had answered “a magician,” but quickly changed her mind in the face of raised eyebrows — no, no, she meant she really wanted to be a doctor. Vashti said, “I don’t know. A teacher?” They were quickly taken back inside.

They had been permitted that night to lie on their parents’ bed to watch television until a much later hour than usual.

Vashti had fallen asleep in front of a program, but Viveka was restless. She crept into Anand’s room. Although she knew better, she slid open a drawer in his dresser. His clothing was freshly, neatly arranged. She lifted out what had been his favourite pyjamas. She buried her face in them. She slipped off her blue-and-white pyjamas and forced herself into Anand’s. The pants had an opening in the front. She stuck one finger out of the opening and was satisfied that she did indeed look like her little brother. She held it with her other hand and pointed it as if into a toilet. She tiptoed and arched her back for proper aim. That felt real enough and good. The shirt was short for her, and the thin cotton strained against her body. Dressed like this, she made her way in the shadows of the house’s interior down to the front and into the noisy living room. The three-tiered crystal chandelier that hung from the high ceiling cast prisms of colour that danced in time to the music on the wood floor. The air was heavy with a festive confusion of food, alcohol, perfumes, colognes, after-shave lotions, deodorants, and sweat. The room had been vacated of almost all furniture except for some chairs pulled up against a wall. Helped by the dim lighting, Viveka slid behind a monstera delisiosa philodendron that had dwarfed its tall blue and white ceramic pot. She crouched and was well hidden.

Dinner had already been served, the food and dishes cleared, and the dancing and drinking in earnest were just beginning. Her mother was moving about the room, chatting a minute here and another there, all the while catching the eyes of servers who seemed to need only a nod from her to know what it was that she wanted. Men congregated near the bar, each trying to outdo the other with humour. Her father stood with a group of men there, and beside him was one woman. She was tall and slim and had white skin. She wore a black dress that was strapless. Her father had his arm around this woman’s waist and she had her hand on his back. Her hair was dark brown and long and wavy. Her father was hugging her, it seemed. His fingertips rested on her hip bone.

Viveka imagined her father perched on this woman. She looked away immediately, toward her mother who was outside on the patio, chatting with three women. But her mother was looking from the patio, across the almost empty living room (straight past the philodendron plant) to the spot where her father and most of the men had gathered. Viveka’s mother glanced a few times at Viveka’s father, always with a smile on her face, then back again to laugh at something someone in her little group had said, and then over at Viveka’s father again. Viveka fixed herself so that she was taller in her hiding place, and could see better. She wanted to run out and to get her mother to play catch with her, but she knew this wouldn’t happen, that she would more likely be sharply pulled inside and scolded.

She watched her father again. His fingers were still on the slim woman’s hip bone. He was tapping her hip with his fingers, in time to the music. He suddenly moved away from the woman and went to speak to the deejay. In response the deejay turned in his swivel chair to reach a pile of record albums. He showed them to her father and her father nodded. The music changed from “You Keep Me Hanging On” to the most popular calypso, “When ah call yuh, answer fast.” In an instant, all the guests, recognizing the tune, began to move their bodies to the beat. In sudden haste, the men and women from both sides came together into the centre of the room. Viveka’s mother crossed the room, passed just in front of the philodendron, and went farther inside the house, to the kitchen, Viveka presumed. The room had filled up so fast and with so many people that it darkened. Still, her father danced his way to the light switch on the wall and dimmed the chandelier so much that Viveka could have stood up yet not have been spotted. The men were beginning, one by one, to loosen their ties and to undo the top buttons of their shirts.

Viveka watched Valmiki step onto the dance floor, bringing the woman with the strapless black dress and the long wavy hair. He kept his tie fastened and did not dance like the other men in a “break-away,” but with one hand he held one of the woman’s, while the other hovered at her waist. He seemed to push and pull her with that hand. Her father and the woman grinned at each other. Viveka’s mother suddenly appeared, walking past her father and this woman. Her father let go of the woman, of her hand and her waist, and pulled her mother to dance with them. Her mother seemed to be smiling yet she was biting her lower lip. She pointed to something on the patio, and Viveka’s father shook his head and seemed to insist that she stay and dance. Her mother turned away and Viveka couldn’t see what was happening without herself being seen. A second later, her mother turned and with some haste headed back into the house. Her father grabbed the woman’s waist and pulled her close to him. One of the other men shimmied up to Viveka’s father and the woman, and the man thrust his arms in the air and his pelvis toward the woman’s pelvis. Viveka’s father grinned, stepped back to allow the man his turn, and spun around on one heel to arrive again next to the woman. The man said something to Viveka’s father, and her father lifted his face to the chandelier and had a full laugh. He shook his head as if to say, “You know!” Her father and the woman put their arms around each other, and they danced side by side. The woman put her lips to Viveka’s father’s ear and said something. He did not look at her but nodded. He let go of her, slipped away from her, and spun around again. Viveka’s mother did not return.

The next morning there was shouting from Viveka’s parents’ room. She opened their door, holding it not an inch ajar, and watched. Her mother was holding the white shirt her father’s had worn the night before, gripping it by the collar and showing it to him. He wouldn’t touch the shirt but stood very straight, speaking to her mother in a voice that, despite the smile on his face, had no laughter in it. In between his sentences he made sounds like guffaws of laughter, but there was no laughter. He was saying that there had been thirty-two women at the party, including Viveka’s mother, and that the lipstick could have been from any one of them — including her, he added. He was, after all, the host and every woman there had hugged and kissed him at one time or another. Viveka’s mother lurched at her father, hit him on his chest with both hands balled into fists. She pounded and pounded, and he, laughing now, but it was a strange laughter, tried to block her punches. Finally he gripped her wrists and held them tight, and her mother screamed at him, saying, You’re hurting me, let me go, you’re hurting me! Viveka opened the door wider and her father saw her and let go of her mother’s hands. By this time he was no longer laughing oddly, but had become darkly serious. He walked quickly past Viveka, touched her head with his hand lightly, and went out toward the kitchen. Viveka and her mother listened to his car start up, and then they didn’t see him again for three whole days.

Those three days her mother had spent in bed, with her door locked most of the time. When the door was locked Viveka would press the mouth of a drinking glass to the door and her ear to the bottom of the glass — a trick she had learned from a children’s spy thriller — and she would listen to her mother speak on the phone.

Now, although her mother was filling in details about Anand’s death, had even said something about the timing of the party and something about her father and other women, the words remained indistinct. Viveka tried in vain to hear them against the necessary and unyielding confusion in her head.