Free The Worlds Within Her by Neil Bissoondath

says, “That’s Ash. He lives with us. His parents are cousins of ours. Distant — but family is family, eh? They take off for South America with a circus six, seven years ago. They wanted to take Ash with them, but I convince them he was too young, so they leave him here with me. Last we hear, about three years ago, they digging for gold in the Amazon.”
    Yasmin stares at the young man through the windshield. Shewonders if this is what amnesia feels like — an unknown face, the knowledge of shared blood — and after a moment says the only words that come to her: “I see.”
    The gravel crunches lightly under the tires as the car proceeds up the driveway towards a spacious two-car garage beside the house. It is of wood, painted green like the house, but in a state of disrepair, large doors hanging open on broken hinges. One side is taken up with an old American car that sits on blocks, rear lights broken, chrome bumper detached at one end and resting on the ground.
    Penny says, “Looks like we interrupted his workout. Weight-liftin’. Mr. America stuff, nuh.” She pulls carefully into the garage, crowded with bags and boxes and dismounted bicycles. Puts the car into park, pulls up the hand brake, turns off the ignition and says, “Home.”
    Yasmin glances at her. Who, she wonders, is Penny talking to?
    When they get to the top of the stairs, Yasmin is surprised to hear a voice say, “Hello, hello.” It is a man’s voice, musical and merry. “Welcome, welcome. I’m Cyril.”
    Cyril. Her father’s younger brother. Yasmin smiles, extends a hand — and sees immediately that the action relieves him of the burden of how to greet her. He is a short man, and short of hair, with the neatness that so often seems innate to the balding. Even his belly, rotund and solid, hangs over the top of his belt with a certain precision, a belly indicative not of gluttony but of a measured satisfaction. The grasp of his hand is warm, and she sees, as he lets his gaze linger on hers, that he has invested her visit with hopes that Penny has not.
    Penny says, “Cyril, keep Yasmin company while I help Amie in the kitchen.” And turning to Yasmin she adds, “Something cold to drink? Or maybe some tea?”
    Yasmin asks for coffee and Penny, after the briefest of pauses, says, “Instant or perked?”
    â€œPerked, please.”
    Cyril, with some haste, says he too will have coffee.
    Penny taps her chest and says his name as if in warning.
    Cyril is adamant. “Is a special occasion,” he says.
    After Penny slides through the lace curtains hanging at the door, Cyril says, “You’d think is
her
heart that blocks up.”
    Yasmin chooses to ignore the invitation to inquire about his health problems. Instead she steps closer to the waist-high wall enclosing the porch and gazes out at a small boat cutting slowly through the water towards the horizon.
    Cyril shuffles over beside her and she gets a whiff of baby powder. He says, “Your father was a romantic, you know. Ram use to stand here, on the balcony, with his hands just so” — he flattens his palms on the smooth top of the wall — “an’ just look out, for hours on end. Dreamin’ his big dreams.”
    And the view from here, Yasmin thinks, is one made for big dreams. It is a view that not only offers the spectacular but, because of the extra elevation of the house, dominates it.
    â€œThey say that from here you could o’ watch the history of the island,” Cyril continues. “Five hundred years ago you would o’ seen Columbus sail across the bay. Then the Spanish treasure galleons goin’ to and from South America. The raiders of one kind or another. French, Dutch, English. The traders. And the slave ships. For a very long time, the slave ships. And when the slavers stopped comin’, other ships came, first with the Chinese and when they