Oonya Kempadoo - All Decent Animals

The lunch was good middle-class Sunday best, with way too much food spread out like a feast for a dozen people. But they all made good with the occasion. They washed down as much of it as possible with one bottle of cheap rosé that Mrs. Goodman had flourished, then two good bottles of white that Pierre had brought. Fraser had reverted to the overly sensitive, tremulously unhappy small boy he claimed to have been in this house. Bit his tongue a few times, as the little signs of distrustful marriage slipped out every now and then from under the angled rugs. Ata helped Mrs. Goodman put away the loads of leftover macaroni pie, stewed chicken, roast beef, kidney beans, rice, curried duck, coleslaw.

“I know you like it!” Dorothy exclaimed when Fraser asked again why she had cooked so much, and curry too. “And you could take some home, I don’t know what you eat in town. Alice came in and cooked most of it anyway, you know me.”

The “top it off” trifle was more than great. By then even Pierre drank the sickly sweet sherry served in little cut-crystal glasses and matching decanter. They all did. To give the lunch a fitting end, as suggested by Mrs. Goodman. And in the warm afternoon, the stuffing took effect, stretching them out on wicker chairs in macajuel-snake syndrome. Mr. Goodman reclined in his special chair for retirees with tired bones and arthritis, the ones that old men sit and shrink slowly in, until they die. A chair too aging for such a strong, early-retired man. It seemed merely a pose, his gesture to his wife, about settling into forever. He sat in it now, broad, red, and comfortable in his pose, half listening to Mrs. Goodman still tweeting fitfully, unaware that his son had already told the secrets of his failed marriage to his guests.

* * *

Food is love. Sammy stay in the kitchen waiting for the food to finish. The big aluminum rice pot almost full to the brim with pilau. The trickiest part — when you have to keep checking to make sure it not sticking — although many a good pilau must get a lil’ burn at the bottom. Some say that is the bestest part. Sam smell his fingernails. Raw chicken and seasoning. His hair must be burnt-sugar-browning flavor. Cookeen and salty red-butter sweat. “Is in yuh blood,” his mother had tell him when he take over the pot and make it taste better, meltier … “Ain’ no shame for a boy neither. Cooking food is how I put clothes on yuh back and build this house.” This selfsame house Sammy loves, loves it just how he love his Moms and daughter. Douli love is different, red bird-pepper explosion. Hot hot in he head and heart, heating up blood and making him faster, finer, fantastical. Sometimes he does feel like he flying with Douli on a silky flow’a black glass and Caroni skin. Yes. Bird-pepper love like scarlet ibis in the swamp at sunset. Plentiful, fiery, and beautiful.

Sammy rise, take up the long-handle pot spoon, and force it down through the sticky rice. The open window by the stove suck out the cooking air. That was one good thing with this kitchen, always cool ’cause it’s at the back. Concrete attach on to the lil’ wooden house, and the breeze like to lick through as it open to the yard. No sweaty baking box. From this kitchen, he and he mother feed a ton’a people already. All kind’a food. And the events they cooking for getting more varied now. He, knowing he brighter than he mother, introduced entrepreneur skills to what she been doing for years — food vending. Now they catering. At first for the police, and one or two government functions, then now they getting private and corporate functions. Sam even have to hire neighbors and friends to help, sometimes. But the trick is to keep it simple. Never hang your hat where you hand can’t reach.

As Sam heave the wet rice, he watch his mother checking on the ducks outside. She bend right over the lil’ fence and pick up the water pan to refresh it. He heave some more. How women able with this kind’a heavy turning and lifting, boy? Sam thinking that is why his Queen and them vendor ladies so strong. Iron-pot strength. Ladies does have to go through plenty more than men — where they find the patience from, he don’t know.

Moms come through the door sniffing the air. When she do so Sam know she mean is good. She wipe her feet and start on the few wares — never stop cleaning or doing something with her hands. She pack away the plastic bowls, even though she know Sammy would do that. He works nice and clean in the kitchen. He learn good, from her.

“What that girl father saying now?” she ask, back to back in the small space.

“He ain’ saying nuttin’ … and I can’t akse nuttin’.

“Most times, he does can’t even look upon me. And like it getting worser and worserer”—Sam cover the pot and step back to his stool—“since they been having praise meetings by he house, with a set’a pundit and t’ing.”

“Hemph.” Moms didn’t turn around from the sink. “I know you love dat girl, eh. But you buttin’ up yuh head for nuttin’. Sometimes, the company a man keep.”

“More like the babash! He drinking heavy too.”

“Unh.”

Douli’s silky hair and skin, warm as this smell of sticky rice, stay with Sam. Douli my Douli. Chutney sweetness, sugar dumpling. Is only she stupid father can’t see that, treating her like she is a blight. The man’s bad company watching her like she is poison. Douli my Douli. My pepper love.

* * *

Fraser’s parents, Ata, and Pierre entered the hospital waiting room and Mrs. Goodman stopped abruptly, eyeing Fraser’s “bad taste of character,” his gardener and “house boy,” Vernon. Ata went over and hugged him. Vernon awkwardly patted her back, eyes bouncing off Mrs. Goodman as they settled to wait for the doctor.

Vernon tapped his suede Hush Puppies. He shifted his long gaberdined legs and slouched a little in the hard plastic seat. Fraser and Pierre used to laugh at Ata’s imitation of Vernon’s voice and manner of speech, an incomprehensible, deep rumble that rolled out as he looked everywhere but at you. His eyes were shuttered but smart and dark-street wise, when you got a glimpse of them. In his early twenties, tall and darker than Fraser, he had an invisibility about him, a way of wearing clothes so that you didn’t notice his body. So when you saw him topless, with perfect abs and every muscle moving as he swept leaves, it was shocking. Like a stray dog used to being unnoticed, he could appear and disappear without a shadow, just slipping past the gate, down the steps, to his “grotto,” as Fraser called it. His fleeting handsomeness was captured in a quick sketch by Fraser and it made you wonder how you could miss it. Or, could Fraser only see this for his attraction to him? His romantic attraction to ghettoness. Or artist’s eye for beauty in the unusual. Mrs. Goodman had repeatedly warned Fraser about having Vernon “all inside” his house and about letting him drive his jeep. “You can’t trust them,” she insisted. And Fraser would hand Vernon his keys while looking her straight in the eye.

Mrs. Goodman glared at Vernon like he had no right to be at the hospital now. She sat there quivering her purple-tinted hair at him but then SC arrived together with Helen the Greek, Fraser’s best friend. After hugging everyone firmly and somberly enough, SC had to break the silence. “Oh jeez, this is something else, eh? Who could’a guess? Youall had any idea…?” She needed no answer but turned straight to Vernon, to feel some impact.

He squirmed, with more than his usual discomfort, in her full-on female presence.

“Thank God for Pierre’s doctor-friend or else he could’a … knock out, right there on the couch.”

Helen had sat quietly next to Mrs. Goodman, holding her hand and staring deep into her eyes. Her full, genuine features radiated all the goddess compassion and intelligence that Fraser worshipped.