Oonya Kempadoo - All Decent Animals

They passed the mosque, then the Hindu temple, the homes with jhandi flags and Moonan Hardware & Lumber, slowed down with the traffic lining up to go through Chaguanas City. Sammy could never participate in this racism thing. All these roads and fields is home to him. Black people live in Central too, side by side with Indians in some places, and is no big deal. That always been so, as far as Sam know. Don’t mind them fellas in town tease him and say he have a weakness for coolie t’ing — they just kicksing. But Pappee serious as if he still living in Bagvad Gita day. He wife cool and nice, though, just like she sweet daughter. And anyway, is love that is the crux of the matter. One day he will get through with the rest. Sammy could see that wedding day ahead, decent fella that he is, courting all the way, carrying Future Mamee home. Life short, yes. But you have to have patience.

* * *

The glimpse of her partner’s fragility stuck snapshot-clear in Ata’s heart. Pierre bears his pain so different, she thought. More tortured and knotted than the source of pain. Fraser lay calm on the hospital bed between them.

“I think he can hear us, people can hear when they’re in a coma … subconsciously,” Ata said as her eyes traced the saline lines, blood, oxygen, monitoring machines.

Pierre scrunched up his shoulders even more and hugged himself, cringing. He literally crumpled in on himself.

She felt cruel because she wasn’t about to cry then — that she could notice these details about Pierre while faced with her best friend’s brush with death. She had cried. They cried together late last night when they got back home from Saint Lucia. They cried for their friend and maybe for all that was gone, sensing that nothing could be perfect again.

Fraser couldn’t be frightening, he seemed at peace, and the doctors said his signs were stabilizing. As his blood detoxified with the transfusions and saline, he would come out of shock. But his kidneys would never recover. That took its time to sink in.

* * *

Ata looked again at Pierre and, for a second, he almost seemed a stranger in the hospital room. His hunching, worried form, a nuisance to her. She held Fraser’s warm, dry hand, long beautiful fingers heavy and already, his skin relaxed to inactivity. His feet. She touched. How could skin betray its body and look so starved for feeling so quickly? Hospital feet. Even the little bit of soil under a nail, the crack of a heel, no longer seemed dirty. Everything suspended from the function and senses of life, isolated in white sheets and antiseptic air.

She picked up the lotion from the stand and poured some into her hand, rubbing palms together. “You look peaceful,” she said.

“What are you doing?” Pierre asked.

She ignored him and began creaming Fraser’s feet, massaging the slippery lubricant into his soles. He would never have asked her to cream his feet but she thought she would have if he did. They are lovely feet. Toes without corns. Clean, clipped toenails. She had always admired them in his Birkenstock sandals, the ones he was so proud of because they were comfortable, well engineered, German, and expensive. She pulled each toe out, her fingers slipping over knobbly joints, rubbing more cream into the slightly creased sides of his feet, where dark skin meets light sole. Fish-belly camouflage. She smoothed cream on his ankles, calves, rubbed harder on the hairy, rougher skin, and stopped at his knees. The hem of his gown and a private gap between his thighs made her pull the sheet back down a little.

She was still holding Fraser’s feet in her hands when the door opened and his parents entered.

“Oh, it’s … Ata and Pierre, right?” A tall, skinny woman, in front of her squat husband, who was holding a plastic bag. He handed it to his wife, sidestepped in, and shook Ata’s hand, Pierre’s. Ata turned to Fraser’s mother, not knowing if to hug or shake hands with the lady who seemed occupied with the plastic bag.

“We, we’re late ’cause we had to prepare, we brought sandwiches and a flask with some tea ’cause yesterday we were starving. You can’t get anything around here when the cafeteria closes. I’ll just rest it here…”

Dorothy Goodman turned to her son. His broad chest and high belly made her seem even thinner. Her hands fidgeted with the sheet, fixing, patting, tucking. She tapped his chest lightly, scanned the wheezing machine. “They say they should be able to take him off the oxygen soon.” She looked quickly at everyone for approval.

“That’s good,” Ata said.

The two men nodded agreement.

“Yes,” Mrs. Goodman said.

Everyone solemnly nodded again, glad for something to feel better about. Hope as something separate. They looked at Mrs. Goodman’s nervous fingers fluttering around the edge of her son’s body. She uncovered his feet, touched them quickly, noticed the gleam, and darted a look at Ata.

“I creamed them,” Ata said quickly, “they were dry.”

Dorothy looked at her in some sort of surprise, just a little more than when they had entered. Ata moved to the balcony door, to give her room with her son. Her birdlike way made her husband seem very solid and calm but it was unsettling. Ata and Pierre had met them only once, a year ago, at their home for Sunday lunch, and Mrs. Goodman was only slightly less nervous then.

* * *

In her own kitchen, Mrs. Goodman was overwhelmed by the piles of food she was preparing. She spotted Fraser parking outside the yard and hopped out to greet them. “You reach! Oh gosh, I thought youall would never get here. How many times you do me that, eh?” Reaching out for Fraser’s face. “Look at you, what happen?” Taking in his rumpled T-shirt and shorts.

Fraser automatically smoothed his T-shirt, sucked in his belly, and tried to straighten up to the Sunday formality she expected.

She greeted Ata and Pierre perkily, glances darting at everything — Ata’s white skirt, Pierre’s long pants and closed shoes, their color and class — well suited, she thought, to Sunday lunch at her home in the green suburbs of Arima. Fraser had pointed out, tour-guide-style, the well-kept houses with pretty flower gardens and how this marked the neighborhood off from the roadside town and Carib capital of the island. It was a history he was proud of, in a different way to the middle class he mocked.

“Arima — a blend of all the races, including the last Amerindians, with an old-fashioned emphasis on good ‘proper education,’ faith, and hard work. People like my father, agriculturists, from humble backgrounds, came to set up field stations and food-processing plants. Those people worked, boy, they worked their way up to cushy class and respectability. In this case, with my mother’s constant nagging and pushing, I don’t know if it so cushy after all, nuh. She wasn’t easy, boy. Still isn’t. I love her but that woman can make you miserable!”

“Mothers,” the Brit in Pierre had sympathized. “If only we could be born without them.”

Then Mrs. Goodman was ushering Pierre to the front door, harassing her husband to get out here. Mrs. Goodman had instantly decided that Pierre was the most important guest from the time his mouth opened. The English accent did it. Upper-class, she thought, with a touch of French — it thrilled her no end and was clear to Ata, as was Fraser’s embarrassment. She practically twittered around Pierre, to seat him, to find out where he lived in Port of Spain.

Mr. Goodman was quiet all the while. He didn’t need to add much to his wife’s chatter, which was filling up the already cluttered living and dining room. Every surface was crammed with porcelain and glass ornaments. Carpets and rugs, at different angles, covered any stretch of floor. A cream synthetic one even lay under the dining table and chairs. Little plants and wind chimes hung on the ironwork that enclosed a little veranda at the end of the room, and out there, plant pots, pedestals with urns and hanging ferns crowded the few garden chairs. Mr. Goodman seemed at odds with his own house, even after living in it for twenty years. Something Mrs. Goodman still didn’t seem to take into account. Ata had noticed Fraser’s reaction, almost a wince, as he stepped in. Maybe it had gotten more cluttered, maybe he never felt at home either.