Lisa Allen-Agostini - Trinidad Noir

We arrived at his house. And the preceding months gave way to a deep and eloquent exhaustion. I slept at once. Whenever I awoke he was there, teasing and playful. My love, I thought hazily, through our meandering bouts of lovemaking and sleeping. Home. I was lying deep in a mountain crevasse, in a pitch-black night, no moon, no stars, only smooth touches from his hands, the air thick as velvet, cool as velvet, wet and dry in turn, the nightbirds’ great wings holding the darkness intact, pedaling the night air into an early dawn, a dawn full of rosy promise, promises as vast as the distant savannah rolling out from the edges of these northern hills. Dawns and sunsets merged into the steady rhythm of insects, birds, and frogs — cigales and flying crapauds, cocks crowing and dogs barking — old noises that settled me back into that time when the world began.

Then I awoke. I discovered that it was three days after my arrival. The house was washed over with the last late gold of daylight, that hour just before a sinking feeling of tasks left undone overpowers you and night flattens the land. On the bank at the top of the hill, adjacent to the driveway, Micah had planted an herb garden and the fragrance of thyme, chives, parsley, and tulsi bushes rounded out the evening air. I was touched by this; it had been my suggestion on a flying visit two years ago when I first saw the house with its unused stretch of paragrass running wild, a clean sweep from top to bottom.

I walked slowly back into the vast room with the bed, a great flat throne, in the middle of it. Night was falling now, and fast; I had forgotten how rapidly twilight turned into darkness here. The bed floated serenely in space, the undefined room lapping at its vulnerable edges. A wide veranda surrounded the room, forming an L-shape, ornamented with intricately carved wrought-iron fretwork. The sliding glass doors on both angles of the “L” were open but protected from mosquitoes by screen doors and barricaded against the night with burglar bars. I sat on the bed staring through these bars. The night had turned again, whispering and sighing and heaving great petticoats to hide or show women’s wares, shifting itself onto the flattened marriage pallet. I had no responsibilities, nothing to live up to. Yet the ominous sense of things left undone weighed heavily on me, that and the unrelieved darkness of the outside.

I got up, moving further inside the vastness of the room. Off the main area there lay an open dressing room leading into a bathroom, both immensely spacious. In the bathroom the toilet and bath faced each other squarely. The dressing room was lavish. Cupboards everywhere, mirrors, folding doors, sock drawers, shoe racks, suit closets, shorter blouse-hanging areas. An elaborately crafted his-and-hers affair. His into hers, his everywhere, hers intertwined into his.

The next morning I struggled through the open doorway to the bathroom. He was already there and called cheerfully to me from the shower. The smell of my offal mixed unhappily with the steam from his bath. The steam was oppressive, and anyhow, I didn’t like sharing my bowels so early in the morning. No coffee yet or anything. He remained cheerful, not the least bit bothered by the smell. He soaped and sang, loud and off-key, and came out toweling himself, his workmanlike attitude readying his body for the day.

I left the bathroom in his wake. In the large his-and-hers, he was now dressing. I had flung my makeup case and moisturizer on the dressing table the night before. In the few minutes between the end of his bath and my lingering moments in the toilet, alone, he had given it its appointed place on the left side, cutting the surface into two uneven divisions. His joke was lame. “One-third for female paraphernalia, two-thirds for male needs.” My hurried flight to the kitchen on the other side of the house, groping for coffee, did not miss the reality behind the joke nor the inexplicable sense of desperation that descended upon me.

Stumbled upon by the merest of chances, my connection with Micah had moved from astonishingly large bedroom antics during our occasional trysts, into this more domestic visit. Until now, I had let it drift, no problem, but my coming here for a longer stay meant that maybe I too was wondering about the possibility of permanence. He, I was beginning to understand, had always had it in mind, partly because of a mad desire to hold onto passion, to go to sleep with it and wake up with it, but also, his needs ran to more careful arrangements which included assets, earning power, social status, and housewifery. What he called desire also held the underpinnings of marriage, all of the parts finding their appropriate places. I knew the signs; I had run out of an earlier life that contained all of these expectations. But my discomfort was hard to explain, even to myself, and muddled was what I ended up feeling.

Micah was a mixture of several different races, too many to count, he would say. He was hard to pin down, and easy in his careless nowarian identity. In Canada, where these mixings are now being taken so seriously and theorized upon at length, he would be indisputably mixed-race, biracial, or simply black . He cared nothing for these labels, though, he moved through a world unimpeded by these divides, embodying all of them, as it were. Micah — a man to long for, coppery skin, greenish-brown eyes, curling hair and eyelashes, his body taut, his step light, his voice constantly teasing.

In Canada I am South Asian , the name Geeta signaling my arrival long before I appear, circumscribed by every element of that detail. I marveled at Micah’s indifference to race. I also wondered if I really liked him so much mostly because he was not part of my fixed prescription for existence. But I shrugged off these prying questions and relaxed with him over the extravagant dinner of home-grown blackstick cassava and stewed red fish, shrimp, and pumpkin that he had cooked, becoming more mellow after the old-fashioned rum cocktails, the c’est quittes he made with such finesse.

That first week after I awoke, I tried to find my space inside his big, quaintly designed house. Micah had made himself a cozy office in an antechamber just outside the bedroom. He had thought too about my needs. In one corner of the bedroom he had placed a small desk for me, where it was open and airy. But alas, from every direction my back was exposed — to a door, a doorless doorway, and the open grillwork of the burglar bars with the veranda running alongside the entire perimeter of the bedroom. There was no clutter on the desk, only a small lamp and a small bookshelf above it. No computers, printers, faxes, no buzz. A clean space, well-intentioned but so exposed.

The first night that I sat at the desk with my notebook, though, I was in heaven. I had found ways of blocking myself off from the elements by draping a shawl over the chair, and another over my shoulders. Tropical nights get cool in the later months of the year, especially up in the Santa Cruz hills. I put my hands under my chin and stared at the wall, happy, quiet at last, simple.

He came in, stole up to my chair, pulled back the shawl, and kissed, then licked the nape of my neck, “Geeta,” he murmured, “Geeta, my love.” I closed my eyes, enjoying the hardness of his body, his smell of musk and a promise of sex. Then, unexpectedly, he said, “Oh God, I really like it when we work together like this.” He slipped into his office, left the door open, and began to work noisily, shuffling papers and announcing his activity: “Right! Now this one is for tomorrow, ay ay, how Sonnylal file get left back here, hmm... Tomorrow ah should try and meet him, and Sheila de day after, uh hmm... They need the appointment with the Housing Authority soon, the development in Matura filling up fast fast...”