Read Online Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab by Shani Mootoo - Free Book Online Page B

to the house and, with some relief at being able to admit it, she said he did. It was my turn now to be enraged. I asked if she had gone mad, and she nodded. Although Angus travelled for work, she explained, she’d always refused his desire to hire security guards for the house while he was away. She felt that an alarm system was enough protection even though she seldom bothered to engage it. Eric worried about her for thesame reasons as Angus, and felt that Angus was “slack” in not hiring a security company regardless of what she wanted. A couple months ago he’d gone with her to a nearby hardware store, taken her house key from her and copied it, so that if there was any trouble at her house while Angus was away—or even if she was frightened, for any reason—he would be able to come over at once. It was a matter of trust between them that he would never enter the house without her prior knowledge and permission, and of course would only do so when she was there alone. Angus had always given in to her, and Eric’s protectiveness and insistence made her feel simultaneously vulnerable and taken care of. She found she liked the idea that someone would step in and do what needed to be done, not only without her having to ask, but against her wishes. So she let Eric make the copy.
    I said nothing, but I was appalled. For a moment I felt that I didn’t know who Zain really was. She hadn’t yet had a chance, she concluded, to get the key back from Eric after their fight on his boat. She would deal with it the very next morning.
    When Angus returned he sensed our unease and insisted on knowing what was bothering us. I said I was upset because I didn’t want to return to Canada; I no longer wanted to live in a place where I didn’t have family and where I wasn’t part of a community. Zain busied herself fixing him a plate of food. She and I were quiet, but Angus did not seem to notice. After he ate, we readied ourselves for the long drive south, back to my parents’ home.
    Just before we left, Zain called me into her bedroom. She held my hands in hers and said in a low voice that what Eric had done that night was wrong, but that I wasn’t to worry. I made her promise that she would arrange to meet him only one more time, for the sole purpose of getting back her key, and that she would do so only in a public place, in the daytime. Then she went to her dresser, opened a drawer and pulled out a bulging white envelope, which she handed me. She told me that for years she’d been saving whatever U.S. currency she came across and that after our many conversations she knew what she wanted to do with that money.
    In the envelope were two rubber band–bound bundles, each one holding thirty one-hundred-dollar bills. Six thousand dollars in all.
    She would not accept my protests, insisting that I was to use it to do whatever would make me more comfortable in myself and in the world.
    Angus and Zain drove me back to my parents’ house. And that was the last time I saw Zain.
    I returned to Toronto, and over the course of the next few days she and I spoke on the phone a couple of times. In one of those calls she told me that the day after I left she’d gone to the trailer on the yacht club grounds and confronted Eric about the key and the intrusion. He had laughed with incredulity and ridicule, as if she were mad.
    One week after I left Trinidad, one week and one day after she and I had lain on the bed in her guest room, I was awakened by a phone call early in the morning. When you live in another country, far from your aging parents, every call from them causes a lurch of fear. A call outside the usual schedule can stop one’s heart. My parents knew this, so they would begin each call by saying, “Hello, Sid, everything’s okay here. Are you well?” But this time my mother’s first words were, “Sid? It’s Mum.” I waited some seconds for the usual reassurance. None came, and so I braced myself for news about my father