Valmiki's Daughter (36 page)

Viveka had been holding the platter with one hand. She wanted to drop it and fall to the ground, taking Anick with her. She felt a force inside of her that was entirely unfamiliar, frightening, and exhilarating. This was what she had not felt before, she marvelled, what had been missing between her and Elliot. It wasn't simply that it was missing from her.

The tray tilted and the mushrooms slid to one side.

“Anick!” Nayan's voice broke into the silence in the kitchen. The two women started and stepped away from each other. He was calling from the veranda.

Anick's response was swift and sharp. “Yes!” To Viveka she whispered, “I hate it when he call me like that.”

“Bring another beer for me. What are you all doing?”

Anick answered only, “Okay.” And then to Viveka, she spoke hurriedly. “You in my mind all the time. Do you understand, Viveka, what I am saying? Is like you steal my brain. I cannot stop thinking about you. Please, come again. Come for a longer time. Please.”

IT WASN'T UNTIL THE SUN HAD COME UP, THE BIRDS BRIGHTLY RAU
cous outside her window, and she could hear her parents just rising, that Viveka finally drifted off to sleep. She had spent the night reliving and reimagining the past evening. She repeated
Anick's words to herself, interpreted them again and again to mean everything from
I love you
to
I am bored and think you would be an interesting friend to have
. Anick's finger was imprinted on the tip of her tongue, the feel of it brushing her lip. She imagined being at Chayu when Nayan was there, and when he was not. She wondered what would happen if this thing she was feeling in every atom of her being were to stay and never go away, if it were to grow and take over her good sense. If her parents were to find out that she had such feeling for a woman. If Nayan were to know that his wife made her dizzy like this.

But most of all, she imagined Anick and herself in the house in Rio Claro, with the doors and windows closed and no prying eyes around. They would lower themselves onto the floor of the kitchen, and she would lie there with Anick, holding her face, stroking her hair, and kissing her mouth. No words would be spoken between them. They would be hungry only for each other, the aromas of cacao and Anick's perfume dizzying her. Their legs would entwine, and she would lie on Anick, lightly, and when Viveka imagined this she gasped aloud into the silent night. She imagined so well the feel and slide of fabric on Anick's hips and thighs that she wondered if she had accidentally brushed Anick in those places, and in the vertiginous events of the past evening hadn't remembered doing so. She touched herself and felt her body and mind explode as she imagined the heat of their breath, close, the wetness of their tongues touching. And she wondered if perhaps she had misread Anick's intentions. If she had, what on earth would she do with her own feelings?

She would have to wait and see if Anick suggested anything more. Or perhaps she would telephone Anick to say thank you for a lovely evening, and she would linger on that phone call and
hope. Hope for more words from Anick that would tell her unequivocally of Anick's intentions. But clarity was also what she did not want. When the day began to break, not wanting to be torn away from these crazy longings and imaginings, Viveka let sleep in to comfort and protect her.

PINKY, THE MAID, WAS TOUCHING HER SHOULDER. “MISS VIKKI, IS HALF
past twelve. You Mom say to wake you up. Lunch on the table.”

Viveka turned reluctantly. “Half past twelve? Mom told you to wake me?” She was, in an instant, drowning in guilt. “Why didn't she just come and wake me herself.”

“I don't know. Your mom look like she vex. She quiet this morning.”

“She and Dad quarrelled?”

“No, it don't look so. They eat nice this morning. I don't know what happen. You know how your mom is sometimes.”

Viveka tried to smile, the muscles of her face still in the grip of sleep.

In the kitchen, Devika hustled and bustled, making a display of her business.

“Did you eat already, Mom?”

But Devika did not answer Viveka directly, speaking instead to Pinky. “There is food for her in the oven. Let her help herself, Pinky. I have a hair appointment that I am late for.”

Viveka realized she had not heard the phone ring that morning. She was not a heavy sleeper. Not usually. The phone would have awakened her. “Did anyone phone for me?” she asked. When her mother didn't answer, Pinky replied that the phone hadn't even rung once for the morning. In the quiet that followed, Pinky said, “So, you like the countryside, Miss Vikki?”

Viveka answered, but for her mother's ears. “I don't know how anyone can live so far from the town. Anick will get tired of it I am sure. She asked me to come and visit again. I'd like to.”

At this, her mother looked directly at her and said, “I don't know if your father will let you go there again so soon. What do you have in common with her, anyway? She is married, and has a house and a husband to look after.”

The room bristled. Pinky discreetly made her way to the laundry room, where she busied herself.

“What do you mean
if
Dad will
let
me? Is it you or is it Dad who has a problem with me going there? I am not a child anymore. Anick is interested in a lot of things I am interested in, Mom. And she could tell me things about the village. It would be good for my paper on cacao Indians and . . .”

But her mother cut in. “How many times do I have to say it? As long as you live in my house, you are my child and will live by my rules. I am not a fool, you know. I don't know why you and your father get so bamboozled by whiteness.”

“But, Mom, I was just talking about the cacao Indians!”

“Cacao Indians, my foot! You want a white foreigner to teach you about cacao Indians. I might not have gone to university, but I am
not
ignorant. Look, I don't want you bothering Ram and Minty to go out there with them again, you hear.”

Viveka wondered if her mother could really see right through her, if with motherhood came a seventh sense, the ability to know the mind and heart of one's children. She took the plate of food from the oven and turned her back on her mother as she headed down to the den to have her lunch in front of the television.

“I don't have a plan to go again. I want to. But not right away,” she muttered over her shoulder.

The phone rang just as Viveka passed it. She flew around, almost slipping on the terrazzo floor in her rush to grab it, her food sliding to the edge of the plate.

Her mother watched.

Viveka belted out an urgent and serious
hello!
In an instant her body both rose like a helium-filled balloon and tensed, and her voice lowered to an inaudible whisper.

“Who is it?” Devika asked in a tone that suggested she already knew.

“It's for me. It's Anick. Mom, can you hang up for me? I will take it in the den. I want to watch the news.”

Her mother bristled again.

In the den, Viveka waited until she heard the click of the phone before she spoke. Her breath seemed to have been snatched away and she could hardly talk. Neither could Anick, save to deliver, in a voice full of trepidation, an invitation to spend that very evening and night in Rio Claro. She had already planned everything out. Nayan would come for Viveka after his work. He had, she said, initiated the idea himself. He had plans of his own — to spend the evening with friends. He and some of his workers spent an evening a week “liming” and drinking. She was normally left alone, and it was a sore spot between them. He would come for Viveka and they would all eat together, and after that he would leave and be gone for most of the evening.

Viveka knew in a burning instant that, regardless of what her parents might say to such an invitation, she was going to keep Anick's company that night.

When she hung up, she thought for a minute. It was better, she decided, to speak with her father first. She dialled his number at work.

“But you were just there last night,” Valmiki protested. “You don't want to make a nuisance of yourself, do you?”

“But
she
called and asked me. I can do some research there and . . .”

Her father interrupted. “Sorry, Vik, I can't talk now, I have a patient waiting. Are you asking if you can go? I can't come up with any reason why not.”

“Well, I'm sure Mom will.”

“God, why do you do this to me?” He paused long before saying, “I'll speak with her. I want to tell you to behave yourself. But you're a bit old for that, aren't you?”

Viveka's heart thumped. She was indeed, that very night, going to keep Anick's company.

“Just remember whose daughter you are. Whose daughter are you?”

“Well, I know I am Mom's.” Viveka's voice quavered, and she felt sure it had given away her immense gratitude.

“So, I won't see you when I get home, then,” Valmiki said at last. “Don't do anything foolish, you hear, darling?”

“THE WAY SHE DRESSES, IN BED OR OUT OF BED, IT DOESN'T MAKE A
difference. You see the kind of clothes she wears? Nothing ordinary. I pay through my nose, but I see people — they don't know if to watch her face, her shoulders, her ass, or her clothes. Men and women. And it's worth every penny of my hard-earned money to see the admiration, the desire, the envy.”

It was already past rush hour. Traffic on the Naparima-Mayaro Road was light. A yellow evening light cast itself over the cane fields. It had not been a hot day and there was no need for the air-conditioning to be on in the car, but Nayan had it on high. A scent of flowery perfume seemed caught in the cooling unit.

“Even inside the house or in the garden my wife doesn't wear ‘old clothes,' you know. And Vik, ey man, that woman doesn't wear a stich of clothing, not one stitch, whether you could see it or not, that isn't just plain beautiful. She really has taste and she knows how to keep even her husband — who sees her every single day — salivating.”

Nayan irritated Viveka on the one hand, but on the other his words brought to mind the few times long ago when she had stolen into the drawer in her father's cupboard. The centrefold photos. They were all more or less alike: a single pale woman
sprawled across the two pages, her matching underwear in colours that accentuated the flawless paleness of her skin. The impossible length of her torso and limbs, the heft of breasts so translucent that Viveka could see greenish-blue veins in them — and knowing even then that images in magazines were airbrushed, she determined that the veins were intended to be left there. The women filled the two pages, edge to edge, and Viveka had had to hold the magazines at arm's length to get the full effect of each woman's pose.

She thought of her mother readying herself for parties: she would rush back and forth, dressed only in bra and panties, between the bedroom and the dressing room she shared with Valmiki as she one minute chose accessories from the jewellery box, the next made her face, plucked a hair or two from her eyebrows or chin, pulled on pantyhose. Save for her shoes, her dress was the very last item she would put on. Viveka's father, who never presented himself in front of his daughters without wearing at least full trousers, would be calmer as he dressed there, too, seemingly oblivious to his wife's half nudity. Both daughters were often in the room during this routine, Vashti helping her mother choose and fasten this or that, Viveka looking on uncomfortably, making suggestions that were most often unhelpful and so ignored. Vashti would help their mother dress, but Viveka would sit in the plush armchair and busy herself with one of her father's hunting magazines, somewhat embarrassed, feelings of guilt gnawing at her for having seen the photos she thought her mother tried poorly to emulate. She stayed in the bedroom during these times to watch her mother — in her peripheral vision, of course — taking mental notes of how she was herself supposed one day to be. She would leave the room conflicted, drawn to the strange womanliness she had seen in
the magazines and nauseated by the fact that it was supposed to be desirable and attractive, while on her mother, she thought, it clearly was not.

Coming back to the present, Viveka leaned her head back on her seat's headrest. They were farther into the countryside now. The light had faded and twilight gathered at the foot of the forested land. But twilight lingered long here. She closed her eyes.

“The road is too winding for you, eh? Only another fifteen minutes. You want to stop for a few minutes?”

“No, let's just drive on. I'll be okay.” She was sharper than she had meant to be, but Nayan didn't seem to notice. He continued talking, now saying something about the differences between Canadian girls, and Trinidadian girls, and French girls, who were not girls but women-in-the-making from the time they were born.

She couldn't get her father's old magazine centrefolds out of her mind, and now more images came to her, as if her memory had suddenly come alive. An unsolicited image of Merle Bedi interrupted the glossy images and her heart seemed, just as suddenly, to stop beating.

Viveka sat up. In an effort to rid herself of these unpleasant thoughts, she strained to keep her attention on Nayan.

“You can't play around with a Trinidadian girl, you know,” he was saying. “Her family would expect you to marry her just because you looked at her. Man, let me tell you! They are not as innocent as their parents think, you know. I could tell you the names of three different girls right here that I had before I was even finished high school.”

Viveka felt herself redden, even as she knew that this was how men talked of women. Did a tongue-kiss mean she had been “had”? He wasn't so rude or stupid, she wondered, as to
include her among those three, was he? She could hear her mother or Vashti, her aunts, or even women at the university who called themselves feminists. They would say:
He thinks he is God's gift to woman or what? Why men so full of themselves? Anyway, in the end they don't mean anything by it, you know, they only full of mouth. Poor things.
And these women would begin a defense of the men. Perhaps she should fall in line, lest she ended up on the Promenade, too, Viveka thought. But she had had enough, and before she could stop herself she was saying, as gently as she could, the gentleness delivered through her uncharacteristic use of colloquialisms, “Nayan, like you eat a parrot and a lion for lunch today, boy. How you talking about your wife and other women so? You making me shy with all these details.”