He Drown She in the Sea by Shani Mootoo

Author:Shani Mootoo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 2005-01-17T16:00:00+00:00

“What happen? The old one collapse or what?” This sudden confidence relaxed the passengers.

The soldier didn’t answer; he clapped his hands more impatiently and said, “Move it. You’re holding up the traffic, sir.”

Mr. Walter hesitated. He beamed. These white men were not at all like the ones from the mother country. He had heard so, in truth, and now he was seeing it for himself. They did their job, but they were respectful, calling him “sir” and speaking with him like a person and not a taxi driver. He was happy that he, too, had called the soldier “sir.” Mutual respect. They were behaving like civilized people, living and working together, even in wartime.

As Mr. Walter completed the U-turn, the passengers looked back down the road. They saw tractors being driven by white-skinned soldiers, and more of them digging up the road, some working away in the ditches that had been made.

Mr. Walter had obeyed, but as he drove along in the opposite direction, his spirits were buoyed by having dared to ask a question, to ask it of a soldier, and a white-skinned one at that, and to have been addressed with a great measure of respect. He had to take a route into the town that would practically circumnavigate the cane fields, bypass the town, and come around to enter it from the east. All the talk in the taxi was of the foreign soldiers who were in their country, of their generosity in doing manual labor, building bridges and roads, the kind of work only idlers and alcoholics or gamblers took to make quick money once in a while.

By the time they reached Marion, it was the middle of a blistering day, and they were perspiring. Even with downturned windows, the car was rank with the odor of skin overheating and the perfumed soap that Dolly and one man in the car wore. When they stopped to fill up with petrol, it was almost noon. They reached the Sanghas’ house almost four hours later than usual.

Although she had experienced Mrs. Sangha’s leniency and kindness time and again, Dolly was taken aback to find her worried more about her and her son’s welfare, that they might be hungry and thirsty, than that she was late. She knew Mrs. Sangha was interested in the war abroad, and Dolly was excited to be the one bearing news for a change. She told Mrs. Sangha about the bridge and how she herself had seen with her own eyes how the white soldiers were doing dirty street work that you couldn’t get even Guanagaspar men in desperate need of work to do. Mrs. Sangha treated Dolly as if she had come from a long and arduous journey bearing long-awaited, life-giving news. When Mrs. Sangha dragged out a chair for her, coaxed her to sit, and poured a glass of ice water for her, Dolly, enjoying the respect and attention, carried on. She reported what Mr. Walter had said and embellished everything, said

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