Valmiki's Daughter by Shani Mootoo Read Free Book Online

wouldn’t last a minute. You think I hit him good? They will beat his ass to a pulp.”
    Valmiki’s mother rubbed aloe on his buttocks until his sobbing eventually subsided and he lay limp. The sheet about hisface was wet from his crying, and about his body it was drenched in the sweat of humiliation and anger at his father. All the while his mother cooed, “Bayta, don’t mind your pappa. He have a temper. He love you, child, but he find you too soft. Mamma love you, too.” She held his face and turned him to face her. “Just so, just how you stay. Don’t mind Pappa beat you. He is not a bad man, he just want you to toughen up a little.” Valmiki was perplexed at the softness his parents saw in him, and from then on he pondered how he might fix that.
    He hadn’t seen those boys, men they would be now, in more than thirty years. Trinidad wasn’t a big country, but still their paths wouldn’t readily have crossed. He only thought of them and this incident because of his patient’s story. He wondered where those three boys — men — were now. If he knew and called them up right that minute, could he have said to them, Let’s go find a cow to milk, or a bar to drink dry and catch up? And would they go? They might have continued the old teasing in a good-natured manner, and in a good-natured manner he would have accepted it because they would all see that he had changed and was no longer the boss’s too-soft, mamsy-pamsy son.
    BACK THEN, HE HADN’T WANTED TO BE WHERE HE WAS RIGHT NOW, that was for sure. If his own son were still alive, he couldn’t help but think — and he imagined a boy of five or so, not a youth of eighteen, which would make chronological sense — he would have that second got into his car and taken the boy out of school, driven with him to the foot of the San Fernando Hill or into the forested lands of the central hills, and taken him hunting, or at least to catch birds there. This, in spite of the fact that he had never actually taken his son anywhere, his son being a sickly boy from the day he was born until he died at age five. Instead, hehad several times taken Viveka, older than her little brother by two years, to the forested lands, and walked her along a cutlassed path so that he could show her where he hunted. He used to be big in her eyes then, bigger than he was in anyone else’s, ever. How could a child, your own daughter, unsettle you so, without you knowing exactly why?
    â€œThose were different days then, weren’t they?” Valmiki mumbled, returning to his patient, raising his eyebrows as if in surprise at himself.
    Mr. Deosaran offered, in a quiet tone, “Sometimes the doctor might need to see a doctor too, not so, Doc?”
    Valmiki rubbed his mouth with a circular hand motion. Finally he said, “You know, the truth is that the doctor can’t fix everything.”
    Thinking that his advice was being solicited, the man grew bolder. “Well, I could take it if the doctor can’t fix heself. That make a kind of sense. But I hope the doc still good with his patients.”
    At this, Dr. Krishnu snapped back fully. He looked Mr. Deosaran directly in the eyes, assured him that while everyone else was easy to care for, the doctor himself was typically the worst patient. He muttered, “Physician heal thyself,” to which the Mr. Deosaran said, “That is a good one, Doc. They should make that a saying. Is a good one.” The man picked up the umbrella he had left by the door, lifted his hat to his head, and tapped it into place. Then he backed out of the door.
    And that was when Valmiki leaned toward the table, tipped the swivel chair forward, and dug his elbows into his desk. He brought his palms together as if to pray, although he was far from doing any such thing. He tapped together the tips of his first three fingers, opened his palms, and lowered his face into them just as