Free Nothing Like Love by Sabrina Ramnanan

some food for you, too. She know you ain’t cooking much these days.”
    Om noted the rise and fall of Chandani’s small chest with glee. She was breathing heavily now.
    “You should ask Sangita how she does make she coconut chutney, Chand. It have a different kind of zing than yours,” he mused.
    Chandani moved then, swiftly down the stairs and into the kitchen. She made a racket with her pots and spoons and all her stomping about. Om chuckled; the bed squeaked. The kitchen din went on for some time and Om wondered if Chandani was whipping up another dinner for him, something to top Sangita’s, he hoped. He licked his lips in anticipation.
    Chandani returned minutes later with her dutiful
belna
in hand and a deep scowl on her lips. Om smiled. How beautiful she was. But when she charged toward him with the rolling pin raised high above her head, his smile faltered. He receiveda solid blow to his belly before he managed to haul himself off the bed. When she raised the rolling pin to strike again, he caught it in his giant hand and the sharp sting of the slap quivered through his fingers. Om wrenched the belna from her grasp and stuck it gruffly in his back pocket and then hoisted Chandani over his shoulder, kicking and quarreling. Down the stairs they went, straight into the kitchen. Om set his wife down in front of the stove. He retrieved her belna from his back pocket and handed it to her, which she accepted.
    Chandani began to make dough, mixing water into a small basin of flour as she raged on. How could Om have added to her humiliation? First Vimla was discovered gallivanting in Chance’s bush with Krishna Govind, then Vimla lost her teaching job at Saraswati Hindu School and now Om was taking meals cooked by the neighbours! She would die with the legacy of an unfit mother and wife, she declared, kneading and punching the dough.
    Om looked on from the kitchen table, satisfied. He strummed his fat fingers on the red-and-white plastic tablecloth to the tune of his wife’s rage.
    “You
coonoomoonoo!
It was Sangita who see Vimla that night!” Chandani said, stabbing the air with her belna as she cut Om down with her razor stare. When Om looked back at her blankly, Chandani attacked the dough with aggressive sweeps of the rolling pin. “Sangita go spread the news for all of Chance to hear: Chandani Narine have a jammette for a daughter and a greedy jackass for a husband.” She peeled the dough off its smooth surface, sprinkled some flour onto the counter and dropped the dough back with a slap. When it was made smooth and flat under her abuse,Chandani expertly transferred it to the flat, cast-iron pan, a
tawa
, to cook.
    Om was not bothered by the insults. In fact, he found himself aroused by the pairing of belligerence and culinary skills. When Chandani tilted the tawa at an angle off the stove burner so that the dough swelled into a delicious balloon, Om felt a similar hot rising and swelling in his body. Chandani quickly flipped the inflated roti over on the tawa and grimaced at him. Om smiled back at her adoringly. He had missed her.
    That evening Om and Chandani ate and cussed, respectively, well into the night. A stranger might have found their relationship dysfunctional, even borderline abusive, but to Vimla, who lay listening in the hammock just outside the kitchen, they were a perfect picture of love. She pulled the sides of the flour bag hammock up around her body, the rough textile scratching against her exposed arms. But the makeshift cocoon didn’t ward off her loneliness; in fact, it only made her isolation more pronounced.
    That evening the sun dissolved so quickly into the cobalt sky Vimla felt cheated. Now the only light escaped from the kitchen and cast itself in a scalene triangle on the dark concrete beneath the hammock, pointing accusingly at her. Everywhere else there was blackness. Amid the nighttime noises she heard the swish of the island breeze stirring some leaves awake, and from every