Read Online Valmiki's Daughter by Shani Mootoo - Free Book Online

his “quads,” the boy would say. His calves. And even his feet, one foot held in the boy’s hands as Valmiki leaned his shoulders back against the mossy concrete wall of the stall so as not to slip in the soapy pool collecting about them. One toe at a time the boy soaped and pulled, and Valmiki would laugh and kick and pull back his foot, doing a sort of dance to balance himself that made them laugh to the point of tears. “How a lil fellow like you could kick so big and hard and direct, boy?” the older boy would ask, and Valmiki would feel as if he had been lifted high into the air.
    But then one day the boy, while soaping Valmiki’s back, slipped his hand inside of the waistband of Valmiki’s under-pants, a soapy finger sliding into the crease of his bottom. Valmiki spun around fast and backed away from the boy, who, grinning widely, put his forefinger to his lips. The boy reached into the front of his own pants and pulled out his hardened penis. Valmiki stood still and stared. The older boy stepped toward Valmiki and put his free hand on Valmiki’s shoulder ashe pulled at himself until his penis spluttered its semolina-like fluid. Valmiki’s face burned with a sudden terror, but his body trembled with excitement. His own penis had hardened, but the older boy only patted him on the face and laughed. He turned his back to Valmiki and washed his face rapidly with soap, breathing out noisily against his hands and the onslaught of water from the shower head. Valmiki’s curiosity had been piqued. Even as he knew better than to make his interest obvious, he began to keep the older boy in sight, to shift his body this way or that in an attempt to catch the boy’s attention. But the boy had changed. He kept a distance now, even during the physical education period. Come shower time, he would make a show of entering a shower stall alone. Valmiki watched the older boy as he stood with groups of other students chatting and laughing among themselves. He felt scorned, and shame blossomed soon enough into anger when he imagined the boys were watching him, as if they knew.
    One day, when there was no physical education class, not minutes after the bell rang to announce the start of the long lunchtime period, Valmiki buckled his courage and with a studied calm walked across the field, far away from the school building, to the edge where the unfenced property was marked by the neighbouring one, an unkempt stretch of overgrown razor grass and guava trees. Valmiki knew the boy would see him go to the bushes. He looked back, caught the boy’s eye, and then carried on. He could only hope, and sure enough, the boy waited until Valmiki had entered onto a narrow path and disappeared into the grasses that closed in behind him. He crossed the field, entered the same path, and caught up with Valmiki, who had stopped among the guavas to wait for him. They held hands as naturally and as easily as if they had done it before andValmiki led the older boy as he ducked in and about the trees. Suddenly, the older boy pulled Valmiki to a stop and suggested they take their long-sleeved white school shirts off so they would not easily be seen. Shirt and tie off, they drew each other farther along to a spot where they could, through the foliage, still see bits of the school building, but where they were sure they themselves could not be seen. Even now, decades later, Valmiki could conjure up the cloying perfume of that guava orchard, and remembered how the cuts from the razor grass there stung his legs, his bare back, and his chest. The memory of this concoction made him feel at once ill and nostalgic.
    Their tongues had hesitantly touched.
    The memory now caused a lurch in Valmiki, from his waist down to his toes. The older boy had undone the zipper of Valmiki’s short khaki trousers and taken Valmiki in his hand. He and the boy continued to stick their tongues out of their mouths so that only the tips