Valmiki's Daughter by Shani Mootoo Page A

scrunched up her mouth and forehead, and looked at her sister in confusion.
    But Devika was not about to play this game with her daughter. “Look, get to the point, Viveka. You are talking about joining that club again, aren’t you?”
    â€œWell, Mom, Helen . . .”
    Viveka’s tone immediately went from the pulpit one she had managed so calmly to a high-pitched one, but she got no further than the mention of her friend Helen’s name. Her mother lashed out, “Look, I don’t want to hear about Helen. Helen is not even Indian. At least, not
properly
Indian. Her father is white — which, let me remind you, not just you, but you
and
your father, does not mean that he is one bit better than us. Most of those foreign whites who leave their countries and come here are not from our class. They come here because they can’t do better for themselves in their own countries. They come behaving as if they are superior, lording it over us. They have no social graces whatsoever, and people like you and your father fall for all of their nonsense.”
    Valmiki was irked. He gasped at the manner in which he was so suddenly insulted, but knowing better than to get trapped by either his wife or Viveka, he simply threw his hands up in mock defeat and shook his head.
    â€œOn top of that, Helen’s mother is a brassy Port of Spain Indian. Those Indians from the north like to think they are toodifferent. They do whatever they please without thinking of what others might say. Mix that sort of attitude with a little whiteness and they have their children joining swim clubs and tennis clubs, prancing about like horses, and you hear about their children attending all kinds of parties they have no right being at, you hear things about them, things that I would be ashamed to repeat to your father. Those town Indians have no respect for their origins, they forget their place, they ooh and they aaah over curry as if they never had curry before, and they give their children names like Helen. You are not joining that club.”
    Viveka opened her mouth but was cut off again.
    â€œYou tell me, are there any other Indian girls on that team? Go on. Tell me.” Devika asked this with a confidence in the answer that both annoyed her husband and inspired awe in him.
    â€œWomen,” Viveka corrected, albeit in a less confident tone now.
    â€œAs long as you’re living in my house I will call you what I like.”
    Valmiki slid one of the Rimpty’s chocolates off the plate and his hand hovered in front of his mouth. He could smell the sugar in the candy. In a softer manner he tried to employ a different tactic: he and her mother didn’t think Viveka joining the team was a good idea because it might affect her studies, he said. Devika inhaled loud and long to let them both know that she thought this was pandering, and she did not approve of it.
    Viveka sulked back that playing a sport did not mean her grades would suffer or that she would not qualify with a degree. Valmiki asked how long each evening’s session would last. Before Viveka could answer, her mother snapped: Time didn’t matter, what mattered was that club days were during the week. When neither Valmiki nor Viveka said anything, Devika added in her inimitable tone that weekdays were impossible.
    The topic had first come up several weeks previously. At the time, Devika had expressed her worry to Valmiki that since Viveka already lacked a certain finesse one wanted in a girl, engaging in team sports and competition might only make her that much more ungainly, and whatever polish she, Devika, had tried so hard to impart would certainly be erased. But other things were on Valmiki’s mind, then and now. He could not imagine either of his daughters being at that park late into the evenings. Young men idled there, men of African origin in particular. But he knew better than to say this out loud, as Viveka would then have asked about