Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab (8 page)

“There was a home invasion at her place yesterday. She was alone at the time.”

“What happened?” I asked, but before she could answer I spoke again. “What do you mean a home invasion?”

The house had been broken into, she said. Ransacked.

I knew that robberies were never what they appeared in Trinidad. The room was spinning and I started to shake. I couldn’t summon the words to ask if Zain was all right. A small voice somewhere within me asked, “What did they want?” Mum didn’t answer. I knew then that Zain was dead.

“Oh God. Don’t tell me. Please don’t tell me,” I cried.

I heard my mother saying, “I’m so sorry, Siddhi. I’m so sorry. I wish you weren’t alone.”

Between sobs, I had sense enough to ask for details. “Was it really a robbery?”

“It’s very strange, Sid. The house was trashed, apparently, but according to the reports in the news, the police are saying that nothing was taken.”

We were both quiet for a moment. I am sure that what was in my own mind was also in my mother’s: the only thing that really mattered had, in fact, been taken.

“When did this happen, Mum?” I finally asked.

“Last night,” she said.

“What day is today?”

“It’s Wednesday,” she said. “I think Zain had to convert to Christianity when she married Angus, so it will be a Catholic funeral. But I don’t know when it will be. As it’s a murder, I mean. The police will have to continue—”

I interrupted her. “Tuesday night. That’s when Angus plays cards in Port of Spain with his friends.”

My mother said simply, “Yes.”

Somehow we managed to end the call.

My mother had promised to call again as soon as she had all the details for the funeral, but when she reached me a day later she had other matters on her mind.

“Siddhani, I hope you won’t mind, but I have something to ask you. Just a minute, I want to shut the door.” There was a pause while she stepped away, then returned. “You there? I want to ask you something, but I don’t want you to get annoyed, you hear? I am not asking this to quarrel with you. I think I know the answer, but I want to hear it from you.”

My heart pounded. I thought I knew what was coming. I had already decided that Zain’s murder was the work of Eric or of someone hired by Eric. Perhaps Eric had been caught and had said something to the police, to the papers, to the world, about Zain and me lying in the bed in her guest room.

Had the police arrested anyone? I quickly asked my mother. She said no, and then, bluntly, “I want to ask about the two of you, Siddhani.”

I was relieved and panicked at once. She waited, and I remained quiet. She tried again.

“Well? Look, you’re really mashed up about this thing. You’re all alone up there. I don’t know what to do. Were she and you—you know what I mean? Did you like her? Well, not
like
. Come on, you know what I mean.”

My mother, I saw, was for the first time willing to talk to me—in an obtuse manner perhaps, but as best as she could—about this aspect of my life. But I dared not answer.

“Look, Siddhani, I am not asking to get annoyed,” she reiterated. “I’m just worried about you.”

Like the air released from a full, taut balloon, fear rushed out of me, and I was left oddly appreciative of this new interest and concern. I stumbled over my words, telling her that Zain “knew” about me. I trembled as I admitted that I’d always had strong feelings for Zain, but that she and I were never anything more than friends. And I hastened to add that, in any case, Zain hadn’t been “that way” herself. I told my mother that Angus “knew” about me too, but even so he hadn’t in the least minded Zain and me being friends. Even if Zain hadn’t been married, I said, she wouldn’t have been interested in me in that way.

Normally, I would not have liked to admit any of this; I would have preferred that anyone who wondered would never know the truth for sure. But on this occasion, still unable to fully process the fact of Zain’s death, I felt an overwhelming relief at being able to voice all this to my mother.

I went on to explain that it was because of my intense friendship with Zain that I had come to realize I wanted as
my partner in life someone who didn’t need an interpretation of my home-ways, my home-vocabulary, who would know what I meant if I said, “I feel like a good lime tonight,” or who understood without explanation what made a comforting homemade meal for a Saturday night, what food and rituals were fine for a Sunday lunch, for a picnic, for Christmas lunch. My mother remained silent throughout this rush of words, and I was emboldened to say that I wanted to be with someone who, no matter how this body of mine aged, would love me and continue to want to take care of me; I wanted to be with someone who would notice that the hem of my pants had come undone and, without asking or telling me, would have it mended; someone who would see that I had run out of toothpaste and would, without asking or making a fuss about it, pick some up on her way home. I told my mother that it was Zain, the woman, the Trinidadian, the wife, the mother, the friend, who had made me see the incongruity between what I was and what I wanted. And it was Zain who had made me realize that I would probably be alone for the rest of my life.

I stopped then, unable to go on, openly weeping. After a long silence, my mother replied simply that she would book the ticket for me to return for Zain’s funeral.

———

The flight back to Trinidad to attend Zain’s funeral seemed interminable, and yet it wasn’t nearly long enough. I would
arrive in a Trinidad where Zain no longer existed. We would not get in her car and drive off on adventures. I would never enter her guest room again. My face would not be touched by her long thin fingers. I remember thinking that it was useless to chastise myself and say,
If only I could have known the last time I was with you that I would never see you again
, because I couldn’t imagine how such a sentence might be finished.

Throughout the flight I repeated, under my breath: “I am going to your funeral; I am going to Trinidad to attend your funeral.” I recalled the dream I’d had during the previous night’s terrible sleep. It was one I had dreamed a thousand times before: Zain and I stand in a room full of people, quite far from each other. Yet I can feel her skin against mine. Then we’re in a bed. I know she’s my friend, but she’s lying in my arms. We’re in a constant state of moving towards each other, and we look at each other’s lips, but our lips never touch. A hollow plastic pipe, the kind used in plumbing, has replaced my backbone. It runs from my vagina to my chest. Its large hole makes a whooshing sound as air rushes through it unimpeded. I keep reaching behind my back to try to touch the hollow space, but it is as if I am backless. I want Zain to enter the pipe and fill me up so that I know I exist. When I wasn’t remembering the dream, I pretended that Zain sat next to me. There was an intense knowing between us. It was the same knowing I had felt the first day of high school when I met Zain and she pinched my arm.

The airplane landed in Trinidad at five thirty in the morning. I had been here only weeks ago, yet I felt as if
years had passed. Day broke as I stood waiting in front of the arrivals building at the airport. A heavy greyness, portending rain any minute, hung in the sky. But then the low clouds on the distant horizon took shape with the light and slowly transformed into the outline of the Northern Range. Ahead, the parking lot emerged. A wide umbrella of almond trees shaded the doubles vendors who had already stationed themselves beneath, and from the branches of the trees the sound of quarrelling parakeets crescendoed with the dawning day. I watched the light creep over the mountain ranges, incising deep vertical ridges and bringing out of the darkness the rich variety of trees. I shook my head hard, trying to make sense of the fact that all this before me was just as I had left it mere days before, but Zain was gone for good. Trinidad was still Trinidad. But Zain was not Zain. This was not as simple and obvious a thought as it may sound. No, it was a baffling, shameless, outrageous thought. How could Trinidad exist without my dearest Zain? As a result of this revelation, everything I experienced and thought on that particular journey to Trinidad, to Zain’s funeral, felt stark and transparent. I saw the country, and the tenuousness of my place in it, as I never had before. I stood apart and watched.

A line of cars idled in place. Their drivers stood outside, leaning on car doors, ready to jump back in and make the circle if some authority were to move them along.

As I waited for my ride, my eyes wandered away from watching the sunrise over the mountains for no more than five minutes, and when I looked again, recognizable forms
had emerged. My tongue danced inside my mouth:
banana
,
silk cotton
,
poui
,
immortelle
,
cannonball
,
breadfruit
,
mango
,
caimete
,
bois canot
,
nutmeg
—the words themselves becoming an umbilical cord. I picked out the roofs of houses, the silver of an unpainted galvanized roof, the fleck of a red one, one turquoise, and here and there light green patches of cultivated plots.

My father had insisted upon coming to meet me. I would have been happier if he had sent the driver to pick me up. Despite the reason for my trip this time, I couldn’t shake the usual discomfort that I would not be rewarding his effort with a son-in-law and grandchildren in my tow.

I had considered dressing more formally than usual for this journey home, out of respect for Zain. But Zain had once, quite a while before, met me at the airport when I was wearing a pair of baggy blue jeans, a golf shirt printed with horizontal stripes in red, yellow, white and green, navy socks and blue leather Campers. She commented in her usual teasing way that if I had clutched a large book or briefcase across my chest, I would have passed for an impossibly cute young boy in desperate need of sartorial guidance. I was, of course, pleased, and Zain thereafter became interested in trying to help me dress in that very manner. So, I had decided to wear this outfit, even though I had long outgrown the style. Against my chest I clutched a green all-weather knapsack from Mountain Equipment Co-op in which I had placed all the letters Zain had ever written me.

One might imagine that as I waited for my father I was
preoccupied with thoughts of my dear dead friend, but self-consciousness, born of the habit of self-preservation, got the better of grief. I observed my fellow passengers, but so as not to have it confirmed that they were indeed judging me I did not let my eyes catch theirs. I was not, however, beyond judging them myself. This was again a matter of survival. I decided that the majority of the women passengers had dressed to show off their big-city accomplishments to the families they had once left and were now returning to. I saw that some had not removed their fancy leather and jean jackets with heavy fur collars, despite arrival in the tropics, that others had décolletage bedecked with gaudy pendants dangling from chunky necklaces, that several had hair that shone as if wet, piled high on their heads, while others had hair cornrowed so elaborately that one could construe the wearer’s desire to make it known that it was possible in Canada to have one’s hair done better than in Trinidad. There were flashy sparkling handbags, some in faux alligator skin, some in ultra shiny brown leather, some in ceiling-white plastic. I had also noticed among the returning passengers two women who were, I was willing to bet, “like myself.” All three of us, I saw, took pains not to catch each other’s eyes. We looked at our luggage, our watches, the hills, the changing sky; we read our passports and checked our return tickets.

We were all, I thought, counting on the probability that, simply by living in a big North American city, we would be greeted as warriors on our arrival back home by those who knew us and those who didn’t alike. Greeted as champions.
I was a champ for giving up the perks of living with family, among friends whose families had known mine for generations, among people familiar to me from primary school days. I lived now without the deep comfort of neighbours who cooked more food than they needed for themselves so that they could parcel it up and bring you some. I had left behind strangers who, passing on the street, bid each other good day, and people who put off their own chores to lend you a hand. I had given up all of this in the hope that I would no longer have to live a lie, that I could, at last, come into my authentic self. So on this particular occasion I had dressed as I always did, to announce my individuality and assert that I had indeed found authenticity. No one here needed to know the truth or to question whether such authenticity was achievable. But, deep inside, I had a sudden burst of clarity as my thoughts turned to Zain: I understood that on my previous visits to Trinidad I had hoped that Mum, Dad, Gita, Jaan, and even Zain would admire me precisely because I had become yet a little more unrecognizable, a little more mysterious to them—but the price I paid for that illusion of mystery was steep.

At last Dad arrived, pulling his burgundy Jaguar carefully into a parking spot. The car had barely come to a stop before the trunk opened automatically, revealing an empty, immaculately clean, royal-blue carpeted area. Dad stepped out slowly and walked around the car to the sidewalk. Daylight had arrived in earnest by this time, the sky as blue as it would be, the glare strong.

With a lit cigarette between the fingers of his right hand, my father lightly gripped my shoulders, pulled me to him and patted my back. The greeting was over in a second. He dropped the cigarette on the asphalt, stepped on it and twisted his foot. The soles of his gleaming patent-leather shoes were thin, the warm weather here and the dependence on cars not warranting thick-soled protection. My father’s performance with his cigarette was deliberate, a sort of preparation to lift my suitcase into the trunk.

“It’s okay, Dad, I will get it,” I said. “It’s heavy.”

I reached for the handle but he was firm. “No, no. Don’t be silly.”

In my peripheral vision I could see waiting passengers, taxi drivers and porters watching. My gesture, I surmised, had likely insulted my father. I backed away. My father gripped the suitcase handle, heaved upwards, but then struggled with the final lift into the trunk. I reached under and lent a hand up. Once the luggage was in, he shoved and shoved to move it to the far end of the trunk. Without looking at me, he mustered all the congeniality his pursed lips would permit.