Secrets We Kept Read online

  This book is for you, Mom and Gramma.

  May the words we’ve breathed life into live on forever,

  no longer an oral tale carried to the depths of the ocean.

  To my partner, Pawel Grzech,

  who believed in me always and supported me when

  I didn’t have the energy to do it myself. Your dedication and kindness

  have shown me over and over again what love truly is.

  And to the three stars in our lives

  —Amelia, Emelina, and Grayson—

  I hope this book reminds you of how you came to be.

  May you grow to be brilliant, kind, and patient, my three warriors.

  CONTENTS

  Trinity

  Beginning

  ARYA: 1972–1986

  Witness

  Betrayal

  Beaten

  Exams

  Wooing

  Propose

  House

  Accident

  Interim

  Tradition

  Foundation

  Blows

  MY GRANDFATHER: 2006–2008

  Legacy

  Bond

  Unsettling

  Glint

  REBECCA: 1954–1980

  Coffee

  Dougla

  Days

  Look

  MY MOTHER: 1997–2007

  Cheated

  Realm

  Letters

  Crushed

  WEIGHTED: 2007–2010

  Memories

  Funeral

  Eulogy

  EPILOGUE

  Acknowledgments

  TRINITY

  WE ARE OF TRINIDAD—my grandmother, my mother, and I.

  Our island is located in the Lesser Antilles of paradise, a dot on the map that is often forgotten. It like ah drop ah oil, some say, as doh somebody forget to wipe it ahwey.

  The bodies of water that seep into the island are as much a part of the island’s identity as they are a part of ours, and everywhere we have come to settle after abandoning home has been with the proximity of the seaside in mind. Perhaps the openness of the sea soothes the inner turmoil of us island women, or perhaps it shows the island’s inability to contain us.

  While attending school in Trinidad—hwome, as we will call it for the rest of our lives, though we are all now settled in America—we’re taught how Christopher Columbus discovered it in 1498. That the Carib and Arawak tribes were indigenous didn’t stop historians from calling it a discovery. In conversation with Americans, I’ve heard my grandmother and mother draw the same facts from our elementary education, the same ones I mention to others today. Do you know why it’s called Trinidad?, It’s because of the three hills along the southern coast of the island—Morne Derrick, Gros Morne, and Guaya Hill. When Columbus first spotted the land on July 31 in 1498 he was inspired to name it after the three hills—La Trinidad, the Trinity. These ternate hills that peak above the clouds in mottled greens, picturesque, majestic, form a wall that breaks the patterns of the most ferocious hurricanes, a natural protection that no other island in the Caribbean owns. The Trinity represents our most powerful guardians.

  Rising with elegance along the bluffs, the supple branches of immortelle trees stretch wide, their leaves on fire against the backdrop of a perfect Caribbean sky. Native to Venezuela, just off the coast of Trinidad, these mountain trees shine emerald all year round in their natural habitat. Once they were brought to ­Trinidad to cast shade over the cocoa plantations in the nineteenth century, they too, like all else touched by the islands, changed. Their roots burrowed deep, and they exchanged their greenery for fire petals that flicker orange and red along the regions of Trinidad and Tobago. Sown into the very history of the terrain, we choose what of the island we will share with others, and so the beak of a hummingbird dipping into the beaded nectar of an immortelle flower creates the ambiance for the stories we choose to tell. And so, like the fingers of a hand skimming the water of a glassy tide pool, you touch but the surface.

  What we never say is how historians call the naming of ­Trinidad a “historical hoax.” Columbus had every intention of baptizing the next land he found La Trinidad. Its having three hills was either mere coincidence or a miracle. It depends on how one chooses to tell the story.

  Most people shake their heads in confusion when we tell them where we’re from. Where? they ask. Where exactly is that? And sometimes those who have a vague familiarity with the Caribbean will say, I thought everyone there was black.

  On our islands you will find descendants of the Carib and Arawak tribes, Europeans, Venezuelans, Chinese, Syrians, French, Portuguese, and Lebanese, but of them all, the two largest groups by far are East Indians and Africans. Centuries before Trinidad became a British colony, before Sir Walter Raleigh discovered the natural Pitch Lake that gleamed the blackest blue along spools of water on Trinidad’s knee, before Columbus spotted the island, Amerindians called it home. They called it Ieri—Land of the Hummingbird. But when Columbus sailed upon them, these people were captured, enslaved, and littered along the coasts of other Caribbean islands, forced to work for Spain.

  Our island changed hands, and when the British captured it from Spain, they brought African slaves to work the leafy grounds of the sugar plantations. This was the only group of people to exist on the island as slaves, and when slavery was abolished in England, the wealthy landowners in Trinidad then brought indentured laborers from India to replace the Africans on the plantations.

  At least we geh pay, the Indians now say, dem niggas an dem come as slave. They know the history but continue to etch in these lines drawn for them. They perpetuate a war, the East Indians and Africans, one group thinking they are better than the other, East Indian children rhyming in the schoolyard, Nigga nigga come foh roti, all de roti done, when de coolie raise e gun, all de nigga run. And Africans taunting, Eenie meenie miney mo, ketch ah coolie by e toe, when e ready let im go, eenie meenie miney mo.

  And so this enmity between Africans and Indians led them, and others, to maintain the perceived purity of their bloodlines, further carving hatred into our islands’ history. Interracial couples and their multiracial children are still shunned as they were in my mother’s childhood and my grandmother’s. The blended are labeled mulatto, dougla, cocopanyol. These words are hissed and spat at my family: my grandmother is mixed, my Indian grandfather is not.

  The shorelines of the islands are still unmarred by cement skyscrapers, but throngs of tourists trample lands natives can no longer afford, and boardwalks, chlorinated pools, and lobbies adorned with plastic plants have been cropping up with the image of paradise being sold.

  But the republic of Trinidad and Tobago is where coconut trees rise out of the land, their backs braced against the breezes, spines curved into C’s all along the shores, and coconut husks ripped from their mother trees dot the sand on every coast.

  Our stories are rooted in the Caribbean, our histories woven into its bougainvillea trellises with their paper-thin petals; the lone road winding round and round the mountain like a serpent strangling a tree, coiling up and down again to the virgin beaches untouched by hotels and tourists, crowds, and money; the foliage so dense and green it’s a prismatic shade of malachite, almost as though the vegetation itself is choking the life out of the island. This is a place where the intoxicating aroma of curry drapes itself around you in layers; where bake and shark sandwiches are fried on the beach; where the main ingredient for every dish is the heady bandanya, our word for culantro—no, not cilantro, it is much stronger than that. Here, people devour every part of every animal from the eyeballs to the guts and lick their fingers and pat their bellies when they are through.

  The island can be traversed in a day, le
ss than that if you know what you’re doing. A mere ten degrees north of the equator, it is a place of heat so intense it can drive a person insane, and yet the waves curling against the seashore deep in the valleys between mountains and the luminous rivers that seem to fall from the sky itself can quench that same person’s soul for eternity.

  Trinidad is our fears and our loves. There we discovered our beings, we dug deep and planted our roots assuming we would never leave, sucking on the armored cascadura with its silver-plaited shell, devouring the sweet flesh beneath, the only fish the legend says ties you to the land forevermore, smacking our lips when we were done. We never thought we would have to leave this place, since our mothers and fathers planted our placentas beneath mango and plum, pomegranate and coconut trees.

  But in the end we choose to flee.

  We leave. We do. With no intention of turning back, we embrace America for everything Trinidad was not.

  BEGINNING

  2006

  FALL SWEEPS THROUGH NEW JERSEY wrathfully this November, turning the vibrant green leaves the color of rust. Everything and everyone is curved to the earth as though hastening their descent to ash, to be blown about and sting the eyes of the living.

  My grandmother finds my grandfather splayed out on the cold, hard floor, the left side of his head oddly flat against the tiles, his neck twisted grotesquely, his face pressed into the darkness between the hem of the couch and the floor. Rebecca discovers Shiva this way on returning to their senior citizen apartment complex in Jersey from a matinee and lunch with friends. Finding him like this, she pauses in the living space they’ve bifurcated—half the bedroom his, the other hers; half the living room his, the other hers.

  She pauses.

  Rebecca places her handbag on the dining table, her keys next to it, and takes out her phone. Her actions are measured. Who should she call?

  Her husband, my mother’s father, my grandfather, Shiva Singh, lies at her feet, possibly dead, and Rebecca contemplates whose number to dial.

  When I first heard this story, I felt the heat of anger consume me—but it quickly zapped away, to be replaced by an intense curiosity. She pauses. Why would my grandmother not hysterically dial 9-1-1 and scream at the operator on the phone to get someone there as swiftly as possible? Why the calm? The calculated movements?

  Rebecca calls my mother, and then it’s my mother who makes the emergency call; she does so frantically, in the way we would all expect my grandmother to have reacted.

  Later, my grandmother confided in me, It was right dey een front ah meh, Krys. So. Easy.

  Here is what I now believe is the truth: I think she calls my mother in hopes she will find an ally who will say to her, Let im go. But in searching for permission to let him die, Rebecca is shot down by her child. She will be denied her freedom over and over again by her children in the coming years.

  Arya screams through the phone for her mother to get into the ambulance, and Rebecca, numb, follows the instructions. Rebecca melts into the bustle of machines beeping and people barking. Once there, she waits for her children to arrive, striking up a conversation with someone nearby. This is how they find her: laughing.

  Her girls prod and push her into Shiva’s hospital room. As she enters, Shiva’s hand falls from my mother’s grasp. It hits the bed with a thud. Lifeless. Two nurses buzz around him arranging a bowl of water, a sponge, a pair of scissors, and an electric razor. Then they wait with fingers poised while my grandmother is handed the paperwork. He has a cerebral hemorrhage and is diagnosed with a hematoma. While doctors advise surgery on the pooled mass of blood as the best course of action, it’s a choice, and only Rebecca, his wife, can make it.

  Three of their seven children are able to rush to the hospital when they hear the news—Arya, Gita, and Pooja. Their three voices rise before my grandmother is given time to think or read what’s been placed before her. Mammy, sign it now. E goh dead widdout it. Sign it now!

  There is another moment of hesitation, the second my mother is privy to, and it is in this space where my curiosity and compassion bloom—as a wife to this man for the past fifty-three years, does she not want to sign anything to help him survive?

  I watch as Rebecca’s daughters shove her into a chair and swarm her. My grandmother wears her hair in a military-style haircut, so when she presses her fingers to her eyes and bows her head away from her daughters, she reveals rolls of fat pleated at the base of her neck. Her buzzed hair is a motley of home-dyed browns each as unsuccessful as the last at covering her lustrous silver.

  Yuh wahn im dead eh? one of them accuses her. Sign de damn papahwerk. Yuh eh see everybody waitin on yuh? Yuh is de onliest one eh realize we hah toh save e life awah?

  From her seated position, Rebecca is forced to look up at everyone from behind gold spectacles, half-moon magnifiers obscuring the cinnamon hue of her eyes. Her face is peppered with skin tags and moles she gave up on trying to remove years ago. A dusting of face powder a shade too light quivers on the whiskers sprouting from her chin. Bangles jingle on her wrists, and gems glow on her thick fingers, her nails filed to points. Draped on her body is a cream and blue pantsuit with gold trimmings. Her legs seem to just fall from her, akin to sturdy tree trunks planted in soil long ago. Though she tries to hide her legs with stockings when the hem of her pants rides up past the ankles, her varicose veins bloom beneath her thinning skin, a latticework of greens and purples imprinting history on her very self. My grandmother remains a robust woman but one whose body has now succumbed to age and the erosion of farm work.

  In front of everyone, they bully her into signing the papers. Is yuh who goh keel im if yuh eh sign dat papahwerk right dey.

  Her daughters give her no time to breathe in between accusations. The papers shiver in Rebecca’s grasp as she lowers them to her lap.

  We should read it, my grandmother mumbles.

  Read wah? Read wah, eh Ma? How long yuh wantah read? Like yuh eh get it awah? E go DEAD! Listen toh wah dem doctahs tellin yuh. Sign it. Here, look de friggin pen.

  The second Rebecca signs, the razor buzzes against Shiva’s head, and I feel raw all over. They shave his head haphazardly and leave behind a lane of silvered hair on his left side. This deflated man, a ventilator pumping air into his lungs and a catheter snaking down to a urine bag, is not the grandfather whose broad muscled chest rippled when he hacked down trees or battled snakes.

  The Shiva Singh I knew was a tall man with skin the color of a sapphire sky, sweat beading his arms like gold dust. He used to snap pomegranates from their branches just for me, crack them in half, and let ruby petals flutter to the emerald grass. He gnashed at the bloody insides of the fruit, sucking the arils dry, and spitting them where the chickens would peck at them later. I would stand at his side, one hand tucked comfortably into his, and as I gazed up at him, he seemed to pulse with the intensity of a twilight sky. My grandfather passed me one aril at a time, making sure I spat out each seed, afraid I might choke. He rustled my hair and kissed the top of my scalp.

  Finished, he let go of my hand and walked past the barrels of water to a stone sink at the back of the half-concrete, half-wooden house. Burgundy droplets spilled down his face and dripped off the point of his chin. The stillness of the water’s surface was broken, imbuing the water with the rich color of cabernet wine. He scrubbed his neck, back, and chest, a light breeze cooling his wet skin. Reaching for a towel draped next to him, he dried himself and looped it on his shoulders. The strands of his hair were atramentous, the depths of its blackness fathomless. He kept it oiled and combed, parted neatly off to one side, the fragrant sweetness of coconut lingering on him. His skin was the darkest shade of cacao, the powdery smoothness of chocolate pulled taut over supple muscles, his features devoid of wrinkles and time.

  I followed a few steps behind him as he slipped his hand into his pocket to extract another pomegranate. He twisted it in two. The halves filled the crescents of his hands as he stood on the edge of his property overlooking th
e steep drop to the well, the chicken pens, and the winding road leading past rivers and trails to the cocoa plantations, orange groves, and banana fields. The house cast a shadow over his frame as the sun followed its path overhead, its warmth never reaching him. The sky was clear, wispy hairlines of clouds swirling past the horizon of bergamot and rose.

  That landscape was familiar to us, and as I took my place beside him, I felt the overwhelming emotion of reverence grip me when we took our ritualistic gaze over our view: a sloping gravel road following the gentle curve of each hill, a lazing river in the distance; galvanized metal against plush elephantine grass; collapsed trees as bridges over rivers; and bunches of figs where serpents wove and hid. My grandfather and I often foraged together, filling burlap sacks with oranges and bananas, and though we wandered deep into the heart of the forests, I knew this man, my protector, would always keep me safe.

  A nurse brushes past me as they take him away, the squeaking of those rusted wheels a haunting sound echoing in our heads as we flutter to his side to say our goodbyes. My grandmother sits the furthest away on one of those plastic bucket chairs, no whispered words of prayer falling from her lips.

  We mark his surgeries throughout November in weeks.

  Week one, surgery one: seizures start. Unsuccessful.

  Week two, surgery two: my grandfather’s body writhes on the bed like a struck snake. His hands have been secured to the railing to keep his wires in. Muted howls emanate from him through his oxygen mask.

  Week three, surgery three: I’ve often heard people talk about the eyes when they see someone close to death. They say the eyes of the dead are hollow, that the emptiness they see is fathomless, that if you are captured too long then you too will follow. In his eyes I see all of this, and I am terrified. He chokes and splutters at my mother, and she looks at him far too long, absorbing his pain.

  With each procedure, my uncles and aunts force ­Rebecca’s hand to produce a signature of approval. My grandfather becomes more unresponsive with each passing surgery and I think to myself he will never come home. Never again will we sit and watch a Bollywood movie together on a Sunday afternoon when he would ask me to read him the subtitles because his eyesight failed him; never again would he slip a crisp bill into my hand and then act as though nothing had transpired between us; I would no longer have a grandfather.