Oonya Kempadoo - All Decent Animals

“Wonderful! Magnificent! Isn’t it?” He forces the others to agree. “Walk around, my child, move. You look lovely, by the way, quaintly old-fashioned.” He takes the offered stool to the middle of the room. “But it’s the hat … the hat…”

Firerago clenches.

“Why am I seeing patches of basketry?”

“Basketry?”

“Yes. That is bare patches of straw hat I’m seeing, isn’t it?”

“Of course! You wanted bunches and height on it too, right?”

“Depth, yes. But we can’t have bare patches of straw-colored basketry . The underside of the brim is bad enough. Ah — maybe we could cover that with satin! The flash of shine against beautiful faces in the sun would be the ultimate … once the whole hat is covered in those blooms and leaves and things.” He isn’t even looking at Firerago.

She has her hand with the gun on her hip, akimbo, breathing hard. “Slinger!” she shouts. Firerago is the only one who ever shouts at him, and everybody believes he accepts it because she is crazy and hysterical, but good at what she does. That is why he likes her, mad attracts mad. And she must be, to stick with him all these years and return after quitting upon the completion of each band. “Laws of attraction,” she explained, her girlfriend who reads runes had told her, after the breakdown.

“How much of the freaking ‘lovely blooms’ you think there on de blooming hat? EH? Take a guess. ONE HUNDRED! One freaking hundred and now you looking at wanting to cover de whole entire hat? You can’t afford to put more flowers on one hat. You can’t afford to pay me…” She brandishes the gun again, gesticulating between Slinger and Ata.

He keeps leaning aside, to see round her.

“Impossible! Unh-unh, never! We could maybe spread them out instead of bunching them up—”

“No, no, that would lose the exotic shape you’ve created.”

“Or we could cover the hat first with satin … then the weight…”

“That would look cheap — too much plain satin. It would only take a few more to fill in … maybe about thirty—”

Firerago starts hopping. “One hundred and thirty mad flowers?” she screams, banging the table with the gun. “NO, no way, NO!” Stamping her foot in time with the banging, fabric and tools bouncing on the table, she refuses point-blank.

Everybody stares, admiring her bold tantrum. While Design God chills on his stool, marveling at his creation — the shivering gold lamé leaves, pipe-cleaner tendrils, the flounce and textures, layers of net dangling a large sequin here and there. Sparkle, on top of shine, outdid the solid yellow spandex against dark skin. Alive — before his very eyes. Everybody could see he was imagining five hundred such bridesmaids.

After he leaves, Firerago breaks down in tears. Ata and the manager comfort and console her, assuring her of Slinger’s lunacy. The manager promises to work out the costs and hours of labor, not only for this but for other impossible designs, and present it to Slinger the very next day.

“I not letting this band buss me,” she sobs. “Even if it buss, it ain’ go buss me, ah swear. You know how many hours I spend here already for today?”

Too many, they all agree. They should pack up now, even though they had prepared to work late into night. The sewer quietly insists they leave him there, he would like to continue.

* * *

Pierre strokes Ata’s hip bone and pulls her closer to him in bed. He inhales the scent of her thick curls and sighs. “Mermaid’s Brush”—her hair and vetiver. She feels him stir and slides her thigh against his warm flank. Neither of them likes getting up early, but as the morning warms, Ata’s strength thickens and she listens to Pierre’s arrogance and impatience fire up. As he gets ready for work he can’t keep it in — the vacillation, the lack of responsibility, he thinks, is the problem with these people in the first place. It is simple.

It is not. Ata insists, “Nothing is black-and-white, you know that. And wishes must be respected. Give him time.”

“Time for what? Other people have rights too and he made his choice. A week has passed and his friends are just pussyfooting around, like you.” But as he kisses Ata goodbye for the day, he knows she was caught between worlds, between black and white. He can’t say this, though. Or talk about his complex love for her, how it puzzled him and his logical, straightforward heart. “I love you,” he says as he kisses her, and it will suffice. She must feel the reliability of his steely support. “Be strong,” he tells her, pulling out of the garage.

“I am,” she says.

Why does he have to fight me even now? she wonders. Why do I have to be the strong one? She could feel his love but also his fragility, when he looks at Fraser. Pierre couldn’t spend time with him. He offers generosity in exchange for his “weakness.” But why the fight? Why fight the soft and gray, when life is so harsh already? Oatmeal strength. Ata goes with her thick, lumpy feelings to bathe their friend.

* * *

Fraser is sitting up in bed, looking down at his second navel. The skin around the tube sticking out above his waistband is almost dry, scabby. “You’ll be able to bathe completely soon,” Ata says.

“I want to shower and feel the water beating on my skin like rain. How I long for that feeling — to be clean all over.”

They cover the tube with a loose dressing and then wrap cling film around his waist. Pin and tuck the towel over the plastic with diaper pins like a sumo-wrestler baby.

“Ready?”

He nods and stands slowly. Still weak, he waddles straight-backed into the steamy peach bathroom. Dove soap and a washrag. Another washrag by the gleaming sink. Two towels ready, clean and soft, and a fresh mat on the floor.

Bracing on the corner of the tub, he lets her pour a bowl of water over his head. Warm water sheets over soft fuzz and fat flesh. He swipes his nose and jowls and groans, every time she pours a bowl. A round soft shoulder and upper arm, Ata cups the water under, into his shy hair there. She has washed the small bare armpits of her nieces and nephews but this intimacy feels illicit, with her hand disappearing in a slippery crevice. “The other one.” Soaping, sudsing the soft, baby smell. One bowl for a powerful calf, cup behind bent knees, more for arms, flipper-fingers draining, swirling white soap clouds. Neither of them has spoken again about Sammy’s tragedy. But it tries to sneak into the soft bathroom with them. Ata pours again and they watch the bubbles stir the scented water.

“Smells nice,” he says. “Safe.”

They retreat right to diaper days of silky skin and powder-puff hygiene. A mother’s sure grip on a slippery arm, her breath against your cheek, sweeter and hotter than the steamy air.

Fraser’s legs tremble as he stands and steps out slowly, leans heavy on the hand basin. The air is peach vapor and Fraser’s head sinks between towel-shoulders, a brown sheen in the misty mirror.

“You should lie down now. You can make it?”

He lets her help him, his voice too rusty to talk.

Ata silently dons the sterile gloves and connects his dialysis bag to a fresh nozzle, as she was shown. Taking care to preserve the sterility, she attaches the tube to his clean navel hose and Fraser tries not to tense against the cool, purifying solution filling his abdomen.

“It feels so strange cold,” he whispers. “I don’t think I could ever get used to this.” Three cycles a day, for now. But that would reduce as he detoxified, the doctors had said.

There is a new coldness creeping out of Fraser, though, sliding around sometimes, like the cool fluid filling and draining from his insides. It saddens Ata but some of his older friends don’t seem that surprised. He still refused counseling or any mention of the dreaded disease and, as much as he could, rejected the help they took turns providing. Ata had taken over most of it and felt privileged yet burdened with the responsibility. She had, with Pierre’s logistical help, worked out Fraser’s daily diet and care routine and pinned it up in the orderly kitchen.